Philip Kerr - Prussian Blue

Meanwhile Heidi Hobbin made a small, tight fist that strongly resembled her pugnacious personality, turned abruptly away, and then started back up the stairs and, reasoning that my laughter would only make her even more angry, I let out a loud guffaw and was pleased to hear my escorts do the same.

“Must be nice, working for Heydrich,” said one, slapping me on the back by way of congratulation.

“Yes,” said his partner, “even the bosses have to go careful with you, eh? You can tell them to go where the pepper grows, right?”

I smiled uncomfortably and followed them both down to the side door of the Alex. I wouldn’t ever have described the secret security service boss as my friend. Men such as Heydrich didn’t have friends; they had functionaries, and sometimes myrmidons, such as I was, for I had little doubt that Heydrich had another unpleasant job that he thought only Bernhard Gunther could do. No one ever had to go more carefully in Germany than former SPD members who now worked for Heydrich — especially now, given the recent invasion of what remained of Czechoslovakia after Munich, which had made another war seem almost inevitable.

Outside, on Dircksenstrasse, I lit my last cigarette and hurried into the backseat of a waiting Mercedes. The morning air was freezing due to a fall of spring snow but the car was warm, which was just as well as I’d forgotten my coat, such was the urgency of the summons; one moment I’d been staring out of my corner office window at the model train set below that was Alexanderplatz and the next — with no explanations needed or supplied — I was sitting in the back of the car, heading west along Unter den Linden and rehearsing a form of words that might enable me to body-swerve the particular job Heydrich had in mind for me. I was just a bit too scrupulous and questioning to make a good myrmidon. Intransigence was futile, of course; like Achilles, the general was not someone who could easily be deflected. You might just as well have tried to fend off a Greek hero’s javelin with a Meissen dinner plate.

Unter den Linden was choked with traffic and pedestrians and there were even a few cars parked in front of the government buildings on Wilhelmstrasse, but Prinz Albrechtstrasse was always the quietest street in Berlin and for much the same reason that the remoter parts of the Carpathian Mountains were avoided by all sensible Transylvanians. Like Castle Dracula, number 8 Prinz Albrechtstrasse contained its own pale-faced prince of darkness, and whenever I approached the neo-baroque entrance I couldn’t help but think that the two naked ladies who adorned the broken segmental pediment were actually a pair of vampire sisters married to Heydrich who wandered the building at night in search of some clothes and a good meal.

Inside, the huge building was all high arched windows, vaulted ceilings, stone balustrades, swastikas, busts of the Antichrist, and bare of much in the way of furniture and human feelings. A few wooden seats were arranged along the plain white walls as in a railway station, and the only sounds were whispered voices, footsteps hurrying through the marble-floored corridors, and the reverberating echo of an occasional door slammed hard on hope in some remote corner of eternity. No one but Dante and perhaps Virgil went into that place of woe without wondering if they would ever come out again.

Located on the second floor of the building, Heydrich’s office was not much bigger than my flat. The room was all grand space, cold white simplicity and neat order — more like a parade ground than an office; with no discernible personal touches, it had the quality of making Nazism seem clean and stainless and, in my eyes at least, summed up the moral void that lay at the heart of the new Germany. There was a thick, gray carpet on the polished wooden floor, some decorative inlaid pillars, several high windows, and a bespoke rolltop desk that was home to a regiment of rubber stamps and a switchboard. Behind the desk were two sets of tall double doors and between these a half-empty bookcase on which stood an empty goldfish bowl. Immediately above the goldfish bowl was a framed photograph of Himmler, almost as if the bespectacled Reichsführer-SS was himself a strange species of creature that could live in and out of water. Which is another word for a reptile. Beside a large map of Germany on the wall was an arrangement of leather sofas and armchairs and it was on one of these that I found the general with three other officers, including his adjutant, Hans-Hendrik Neumann, Kripo boss Arthur Nebe, and Nebe’s deputy, Paul Werner — a beetle-browed state prosecutor from Heidelberg who hated me no less than Heidi Hobbin hated me. Heydrich and Nebe were both possessed of stronger profiles, but while Heydrich’s was the kind of head that belonged on a banknote, Arthur Nebe’s belonged in a pawnshop. Nazi racial experts were keen on using calipers to measure noses to scientifically determine Jewishness and I wasn’t the only cop at the Alex who wondered if either man had ever submitted himself to a test and if so, what the result had been. Hans-Hendrik Neumann looked like a cut-price Heydrich. With his fair hair and high forehead, he possessed an interesting nose that was sharp but still had some growing up to do before it could ever match his master’s beaky schnoz.

No one got up from their seats and no one but me gave the Hitler salute, which Nebe must have especially enjoyed, given how long we’d known and distrusted each other. As usual, giving the salute made me feel like a hypocrite but hypocrisy has its positive side — what Darwin or one of his early followers would have called survival of the fittest.

“Gunther, at last you’re here,” said Heydrich. “Sit down, please.”

“Thank you, sir. And may I say, General, what a great pleasure it is to see you again. I’ve missed these little talks we used to have.”

Heydrich grinned, almost enjoying my insolence.

“Gentlemen, I must confess that there are times when I do believe in a providence that protects idiots, drunkards, children, and Bernhard Gunther.”

“I think you and I might just be the directors of that providence, sir,” said Nebe. “If it wasn’t for us, this man would have bitten the grass by now.”

“Yes, perhaps you’re right, Arthur. But I can always use a useful man, and he’s nothing if not that. In fact, I think his greatest virtue is his usefulness.” Heydrich stared up at me as if he was genuinely looking for an answer. “Why is that, do you think?”

“Are you asking me, sir?” I sat down and glanced at the silver cigarette box on the coffee table in front of us. I was dying for a smoke. Nerves, I suppose. Heydrich could do that to you. Two minutes in his company and he was already on my case.

“Yes. I rather think I am.” He shrugged. “Go ahead. You can speak quite freely.”

“Well, I think that sometimes a harmful truth is better than a useful lie.”

Heydrich laughed. “You’re right. Arthur, we are the directors of providence where this fellow is concerned.” Heydrich flipped open the lid of the silver cigarette box. “Do smoke, Gunther, please; I insist. I like to encourage a man’s vices. Especially yours. I have a feeling that one day they might be even more useful than your virtues. In fact, I’m sure of it. Turning you into my stooge is going to be one of my long-term projects.”

I took a cigarette from the silver box, fired it up, crossed my legs, and directed my smoke at the moldings on the high ceiling of Heydrich’s office. I’d said enough for the moment. When you sit down with the devil it’s wise not to insult him more than you have to. The devil was wearing a uniform that was the same color as his heart: black. So were the others. It was only me who was wearing a lounge suit, which helped to persuade me that somehow I was different from them — better, perhaps. It was only later on, in the war, that I formed the conclusion that perhaps I wasn’t much better after all. For me, prudence and good intentions always seemed to take precedence over conscience.