Philip Kerr - Prussian Blue

The elevator doors parted to reveal a mirrored car with a leather bench seat and its own RSD operator. We stepped inside and the brass doors closed again.

“Powered by two engines,” said Högl. “One electric. And a backup diesel engine that was taken from a U-boat.”

“That should come in handy if there’s a flood.”

“Please,” said Högl, “no comedians. The deputy chief of staff doesn’t have a sense of humor.”

“Sorry.”

I smiled nervously as the elevator car rose up the shaft. It was the smoothest elevator ride I’d ever taken, although I had the strong idea that it should have been traveling in the opposite direction. Then the doors opened and I was ushered through a doorway and what looked like a main dining room, down some steps, and straight into the presence of Martin Bormann.

He wasn’t tall and at first I didn’t see him. I was too busy staring in wonder at the Kehlstein reception hall, where everyone was waiting for me. It was a large round room, perfectly proportioned, made of gray granite blocks, with a coffered ceiling and a marble fireplace that was the size and color of an S-Bahn train. Above the fireplace was a Gobelin tapestry featuring a couple of bucolic lovers and on the floor was an expensive crimson Persian rug. In front of the red fireplace a circular table was surrounded by comfortable armchairs that made me feel tired just looking at them. There were no curtains on the big square windows that provided an unimpeded mountaintop view of a dark and stormy night. Light snow was dusting the glass and outside the window I could hear the lanyard shifting in the wind on a tin flagpole like the clapper in a tiny bell. It was a good night to be inside, especially on top of a mountain. A log the size of the Sudetenland was smoking in the grate and on the walls were several electric candelabra that looked as if they’d been placed there by a mad scientist’s faithful retainer. There was a mahogany grand piano and a small rectangular table and some more chairs, and in another doorway a man wearing a white SS mess jacket with a silver tray under his arm. It was a room with the kind of rarefied atmosphere in which some men might have thought they could decide the future of the world, but it made my ears feel as if someone had pulled a cork out of my skull, although that could as easily have been the sight of an open flask of Grassl on the table, prompting the sudden realization that I needed a drink that wasn’t tea. Only one of the five men around the table was in uniform but I knew he couldn’t be Bormann, as the man had only a colonel’s helping of cauliflower on his SS collar badge; he was also the one man who got to his feet and returned my Hitler salute, politely. The others, including the pugilistic-looking type who now took charge of things in the tea house, and whom I guessed was probably Martin Bormann, remained firmly seated. I didn’t blame any of them much for not wanting to get up to greet me — sudden movements like that at such high altitude can give you a nosebleed. Besides, the chairs really did look very comfortable and, after all, I was just a copper from Berlin.

“Commissar Gunther, I presume?” asked Bormann.

“How do you do, sir?”

“You’re here, at long last. We would have had you flown here, but there wasn’t a plane available. Anyway, sit down, sit down. You’ve come a long way. I expect you’re tired. I’m sorry about that, but it really can’t be helped. Are you hungry? Of course you are.” He was already snapping his fingers in the air — strong, fat fingers that were wholly unsuitable for something as delicate as a tea house to summon the man in the SS mess jacket. “Fetch our guest something to eat. What would you like, Commissar? A sandwich? Some coffee?”

I couldn’t place the man’s accent. Perhaps it was Saxon. It certainly wasn’t an educated sort of voice. He was right about one thing, however: I was as hungry as a threshing machine. Högl and Kaspel had sat down at the table as well, but Bormann didn’t offer them anything. I soon realized that he was wont to treat the men who worked for him with open contempt and brutality.

“Perhaps a slice of bread with mustard and some sausage, sir. And maybe a cup of coffee.”

Bormann nodded at the waiter, who went to fetch my dinner.

“First of all, do you know who I am?”

“You’re Martin Bormann.”

“And what do you know about me?”

“From what I’ve been told you’re the Leader’s right-hand man here in the Alps.”

“Is that it?” Bormann uttered a scornful laugh. “I thought you were a detective.”

“Isn’t that enough? Hitler’s no ordinary leader.”

“But it’s not just here, you know. No, I’m his right-hand man in the rest of Germany, too. Anyone else you’ve ever heard of as being a person who’s close to the Leader — Göring, Himmler, Goebbels, Hess — believe me, they don’t amount to shit when I’m around. The fact is that if any of them wants to see Hitler, they have to come through me. So when I talk, it’s as if the Leader were here now, telling you what the fuck to do. Is that clear?”

“Very clear.”

“Good.” Bormann nodded at the bottle of schnapps on the table. “Would you like a drink?”

“No, sir. Not when I’m on duty.”

“I’ll decide if you’re on duty, Commissar. I haven’t yet made up my mind if you’re the real deal or not. Until then, have a drink. Relax. That’s what this place is all about. It’s brand-new. Even the Leader hasn’t seen it yet, so you’re very privileged. We’re here tonight because we’re field-testing the place. Seeing that everything works before he gets here. That’s why you can’t smoke, I’m afraid. The Leader always knows when someone’s been smoking, even in secret — I’ve never known a man with such heightened senses.” He shrugged. “Not that I should be surprised, of course. He’s the most extraordinary man I’ve ever met.”

“If you don’t mind me asking, sir, why a tea house?”

Bormann poured me a glass of schnapps and handed it to me with those fat fingers of his. I sipped it carefully. At fifty percent proof, it rated a bit of caution, just like the man who’d poured it. There was a largish scar above his right eye and, with his plus-four trousers and thick tweed jacket, he had the look of a prosperous farmer who didn’t mind kicking his prize pig. Not fat, but a burly middleweight going to seed, with a proper double chin and a nose like a parboiled turnip.

“Because the Leader likes tea, of course. Stupid question, really. He already has a tea house just across the valley from the Berghof — the Mooslahnerkopf. Which he enjoys walking to. But it was thought that perhaps something more spectacular was fitting for a man of such vision. In daylight the views from this room are breathtaking. You might almost say that this tea house is designed to help provide him with some necessary inspiration.”

“I can imagine.”

“Do you like the Alps, Herr Gunther?”

“They’re a little too far off the ground for me to feel quite comfortable. I’m more of a city boy. The beanpole — that is, the Berlin radio tower — is quite high enough for me.”

He smiled patiently. “Tell me about yourself.”

I sipped some schnapps and leaned back in my armchair, and then sipped some more. I was dying for a smoke and a couple of times I even reached for my cigarette case before I remembered how health-conscious they were in Obersalzberg. I glanced at the faces of the other knights seated at this particular round table and perceived that perhaps I wasn’t the only one who needed a cigarette.

“I’m a Berliner, through and through, which means I’m just naturally opinionated. Not necessarily in a good way. I got my Abitur and I might have gone to university but for the war. Saw enough in the trenches to persuade me that I like mud even less than snow. I joined the Berlin police right after the armistice. Made detective. Worked in the Murder Commission. Solved a few cases. Was on my own for a while — a private investigator, and I was doing all right for myself, making good money, until General Heydrich persuaded me to come back to Kripo.”