Philip Kerr - Prussian Blue

“Bernie,” he said, shaking my hand, “it’s good you see you again.”

“Arthur. This is a surprise. What the hell are you doing here?”

“I’m the house manager here at the Berghof. Herr Bormann told me to expect you. So here I am, at your service.”

“Thanks, Arthur, but I’m sorry if that meant you had to stay up so late.”

“Actually I’m used to it. The Leader is a bit of a night owl, to be honest. Which means I have to be one, too. Anyway, I wanted to make sure everything was arranged to your satisfaction. We’ve made an office for you in one of the spare rooms on the second floor.”

Kaspel made himself scarce while I followed Kannenberg under a covered walkway and then entered a vestibule through a heavy oak door.

“Are you still playing that accordion of yours, Arthur?”

“Sometimes. When the Leader asks me to.”

With its low ceilings, dim lighting, red marble columns, and vaulted arches, the lobby area resembled the crypt in a church. Homely, it wasn’t. Kannenberg led the way upstairs and we walked down an impressively wide corridor that was lined with pictures. He showed me into a quiet room with a cream-colored tile stove painted with green figures. The walls were clad in sanded spruce and a wooden seat was built around a corner with a rectangular table. On the floor were several rugs and a wrought-iron basket full of logs for the wood-burning stove. There were two phones and a filing cabinet, and everything I’d asked for, including fur-lined Hanwag boots. Seeing them I sat down and put them on immediately; my feet were freezing.

“This will do very nicely,” I said, standing up and stamping around the room for a moment to test my new boots.

Kannenberg switched on a table lamp, lowered his voice, and leaned closer.

“Anything you need while you’re here — and I do mean anything — you come to me, all right? Don’t ask any of these SS adjutants. You ask them a question, they’ll want to clear the answer with someone else first. You come to me and I will sort you out. Just like we were back in Berlin. Coffee, alcohol, pills, something to eat, cigarettes. Only, don’t for Christ’s sake smoke in the house. The Leader’s girlfriend, she smokes in her room with the window open and she thinks he doesn’t smell it, but he does and it drives him mad. She’s here now and just because he’s away she thinks she can get away with it. But I can smell it in the morning. You’re just across the hall from his private study so please, Bernie, if you want a cigarette, take it outside. And make sure you pick up your butts. Anyway, I’ll take you around the house in the morning. But for now, let me show you how close you are to him. Just to make the point about the cigarettes.”

We were standing in the doorway and Kannenberg opened the opposite door and switched on a light to let me peek inside the Leader’s study. It was a spacious room, with French windows, a green carpet, lots of bookshelves, a big desk, and a fireplace. On the desk was a pair of chest expanders, and above the fireplace was a painting of a pink-faced Frederick the Great when he was still a young man and probably just the crown prince. He was wearing a blue velvet coat and holding a sword and a telescope as if he were expecting to admire the view from the Leader’s French window. I know I was.

“You see? You’re just across the hall.”

Kannenberg picked up the chest expanders and put them in a desk drawer.

“He needs these because his right arm gets all the exercise,” he explained sheepishly. “Makes his left arm weaker.”

“I know the feeling.”

“He’s a great man, Bernie.” He glanced around the study, almost as if it were some sort of shrine. “One day, this room, his study, will be a place of pilgrimage. Thousands of people already come here in the summer just to catch a glimpse of him. That’s why they had to buy the Türken Inn, to give him some peace and quiet. This is what this place is meant to be all about. Peace and quiet. Well, it was, until yesterday morning’s tragedy. Let’s hope you can quickly restore things to how they were, before.”

Kannenberg switched out the light and stepped back into the hall.

“Were you there, Arthur? When Karl Flex was shot?”

“Yes, I saw the whole thing. Weber and the others were just about to adjourn to the new Platterhof Hotel to see how far things had progressed with the building work there, when it happened.”

“Weber?”

“Hans Weber, the lead engineer from P&Z. I was standing about a meter away from Dr. Flex, I suppose. Not that I realized what had happened for a moment or two. Mainly because of the hat he was wearing.”

“Hat? I haven’t seen any hat.”

“It was a little Tyrolean green hat with feathers. Like something a local peasant would wear. It was only when his hat fell off that anyone realized the extent of his injuries. It was as if his head had exploded from inside, Bernie. Like when an egg you’re boiling just bursts open. I expect someone threw the hat away because it was soaked with blood.”

“Do you think you could find that hat?”

“I could certainly try.”

“Please do. Was anyone else wearing a hat?”

“I don’t think so. And if they were it wouldn’t have been like that one. It wasn’t what you’d call a gentleman’s hat. I think Flex wore it because he thought it made him look like one of the locals. Or a character.”

“And was he? A character?”

“I really couldn’t say.” But Kannenberg caught my eye and, placing a forefinger over his lips, he shook his head meaningfully.

“I know it’s very late, Arthur, but I’d appreciate it if you could accompany me onto the terrace for a few moments and explain exactly what happened. Just so that I can build a picture in my mind.”

We went downstairs.

“It’s this way. Through the Great Hall.”

“How about that wife of yours? Freda. Is she here, too?”

“She is. And she’ll fix you a big Berlin-sized breakfast in the morning. Whatever and whenever you want.”

The Great Hall was an oversized rectangle with a red-carpeted floor on two levels and a larger version of the hall on top of the Kehlstein. On one side was a red marble fireplace and on the northern side, the huge panoramic window. It was the sort of room where a medieval king might have given banquets and administered a rough kind of justice. Thrown a condemned man out of that window, perhaps; according to Kannenberg, the window was powered by an electric motor to wind it up and down, like a cinema screen. There was another grand piano, a huge tapestry of Frederick the Great, again, and by the window a marble-topped table and an enormous globe, which did little to assuage any fears I had about Nazi Germany’s territorial ambitions. Hitler’s devotion to the example of Frederick the Great persuaded me that he must have often stood beside that globe and wondered just where he might send Germany’s armies next. We crossed the upper level, and exited the Berghof through the winter garden which, in stark contrast to the Great Hall, looked like my late grandmother’s sitting room. Outside, on the freezing terrace, the arc lights were shining brightly and several RSD men, including Kaspel, were awaiting my arrival.

“So,” said Kannenberg, heading straight for the low wall that bordered the terrace, “Dr. Flex was standing here, I think. Next to Brückner. One of Hitler’s adjutants.”

“Was Brückner wearing a uniform?”

“No. Everyone was looking at the Untersberg — that’s the mountain that can be seen on the other side of the valley. Everyone except Dr. Flex, that is. He was looking in the opposite direction. Straight up at the Hoher Göll. Like I am now.”

“You’re sure about that, Arthur?”