Philip Kerr - Prussian Blue

“Heydrich says you’re his best detective. Is that really true? Or are you just some Fritz he’s sent down here to spy on me?”

“I know how to work a case by the book when that’s what’s required.”

“And what book might that be?”

“The Prussian General Code of 1794. The Police Administration Law of 1931.”

“Ah, that kind of book. The old kind.”

“The legal kind.”

“Does Heydrich still pay attention to that sort of thing? To the letter of the pre-Nazi law?”

“More often than you might think.”

“But you don’t like working for Heydrich, do you? At least that’s what he tells me.”

“It has its interesting side. He keeps me around because, for me, work is the best jacket. I don’t like to take it off until I’ve worn it out and then some. Tenacity — and a stolid propensity to obstinacy — are forensic qualities the general seems to appreciate.”

“He tells me you’ve got a lot of snout, too.”

“I certainly don’t mean to be that way, sir. To other Germans, we Berliners seem to be insolent when we’re not. About a hundred years ago we worked out that there’s no point in being friendly and polite if no one else appreciates it. No one in Berlin, that is. So now we please ourselves.”

Bormann shrugged. “That’s honest enough. But I’m still not convinced you’re the right fist for this particular eye, Gunther.”

“With all due respect, sir, neither am I. With most murder cases I’m usually not required to audition for the job. On the whole, the dead don’t mind much who gives them their last manicure. And I’m not about to convince a man as important as yourself of anything, probably. I wouldn’t presume even to try. The kind of Fritz who can talk a hole through someone’s stomach — that isn’t me. These days there’s not much of a market for what’s laughingly called my personality. I certainly didn’t bring any of my favorite music to put on your nice Bechstein.”

“But you did bring your own piano player, didn’t you?”

“Korsch? He’s my criminal assistant. In Berlin. And a good man. We work well together.”

“You won’t need him while you’re here. My men will give you all the assistance you need. The fewer people who know about what’s happened here, the better.”

“With all due respect, sir. He’s a good copper. Sometimes it helps to have another brain I can borrow — to add another tooth just when I need to chew something hard. Even the best men need a good deputy, someone trustworthy they can rely on, who won’t let them down. That would seem to be as true here as anywhere else.”

It was supposed to be a compliment and I hoped he’d see it that way, but he had the most pugnacious jaw I’d seen outside of a boxing ring. I had the sense that at any moment he might grab me by the throat, or have me thrown from the battlements — if a mountaintop tea house has such a thing as battlements. This was the first tea house I’d been in that looked as if it could have kept the Red Army at bay. Perhaps that was the real reason it had been built and I didn’t doubt that inside the rest of Hitler’s mountain were other secrets I might prefer not to know about. It was enough to make me finish the schnapps a little more quickly than I ought to have done.

Bormann rubbed his roughening, midnight chin thoughtfully.

“All right, all right, keep the bastard. But he stays down at the Villa Bechstein. Outside the Leader’s Territory. Is that clear? If you want to pick his brains, you do it there.”

Bormann leaned forward and poured me another drink. “I would have preferred a Bavarian up here. The Leader thinks Bavarians have a better understanding of how things work on this mountain. I think you’re probably just another Prussian bastard, but you’re my kind of bastard. I like a man with some blood in his veins. You’re not like a lot of these albino Gestapo types that Heydrich and Himmler grow on a petri dish in some fucking science lab. Which means you’ve got the job. You are acting with my full authority. At least until you screw up.”

I steadied the glass as he filled it to the top, which is the way I like my schnapps served, and tried to look like I was taking a compliment.

“Either way, when this is all over and you’ve caught this bastard, it never happened, do you hear? The last thing I want is for the German people to think that security here is so lax that every Krethi and Plethi can just stroll up the hill from Berchtesgaden and take a potshot at their beloved Leader outside his own front door. So you’ll sign a confidentiality agreement, and you’ll like it.”

Bormann nodded at the man next to him, who produced a sheet of printed paper and a pen and placed them in front of me. I glanced over it quickly. “What’s this?” I asked. “Next of kin?”

“What it says,” said Bormann.

“I don’t have a next of kin.”

“No wife.”

“Not anymore.”

“Then put your girlfriend down.” Bormann grinned unpleasantly. “Or the name and address of someone you really care about in case you’ve screwed up or you’re about to open your trap and we have to threaten to take it out on someone else.”

He made it sound entirely reasonable that this was how things were done — how a policeman who failed to catch a murderer would be treated by the state. I thought for a moment and then wrote down the name of Hildegard Steininger and her address in Berlin’s Lepsiusstrasse. It had been six months since she’d been my girlfriend and I hadn’t liked it very much when I found out that she was seeing someone else — some shiny-looking major in the SS. I hadn’t liked it at all so I suppose I didn’t give a damn if Bormann ever decided to punish her for my shortcomings. It was small-minded, even vindictive, and I’m not proud of what I did. But I wrote her name down all the same. Sometimes true love comes with a black ribbon on the box.

“So to find the hammer and the nails,” said Bormann, “let’s get to the reason why you’ve been brought all the way from Berlin.”

“I’m one big ear, sir.”

At this moment the SS waiter arrived back at the table with a tray bearing the food, and the coffee, for which I was especially grateful since the armchair was extremely comfortable.

“This morning at eight o’clock, there was a breakfast meeting at the Berghof. That’s the Leader’s own house. Which is next to mine, a few meters farther down the mountain. The people present at this meeting were largely architects, engineers, and civil servants, and the purpose of the meeting was to consider what further improvements might be made at the Berghof and in Obersalzberg for the convenience, enjoyment, and security of the Leader. I suppose there must have been about ten or fifteen men who were present. Perhaps a few more. After breakfast, at about nine o’clock, these men went out onto the terrace that overlooks the area. At nine fifteen a.m., one of these men — Dr. Karl Flex — collapsed onto the terrace, bleeding profusely from a head wound. He’d been shot, most probably with a rifle, and died at the scene. No one else was wounded, and curiously, no one seems to have heard a thing. As soon as it was established that he had been shot, the RSD cleared the building and conducted an immediate search of the woods and mountainsides that directly overlook the Berghof terrace. But so far no trace of the assassin has been found. Can you believe it? All these SS and RSD and they can’t find a single clue.”

I nodded and kept eating my sausage, which was delicious.

“I don’t have to tell you how serious this is,” said Bormann. “Having said that, I don’t think this was connected with the Leader, whose movements today and yesterday have been widely reported in the newspapers. But until the killer is apprehended, it will be quite impossible for Hitler to go near that terrace. And as you will doubtless be aware, it’s his fiftieth birthday on April twentieth. He always comes here to Obersalzberg on or just after his birthday. This year will be no exception . Which means you have seven days to solve this crime. Do you hear? It’s imperative that this murderer is caught before April twentieth because I certainly don’t want to be the man who tells him he can’t go outside because there’s an assassin on the loose.”