Philip Kerr - Prussian Blue

“It’s a great book.”

“Zander certainly thought so.”

“I suppose he’s another Bavarian.”

“No. He’s from Saarbrücken.”

The car slithered a bit as it accelerated again. In some parts the road was high up and narrow, and I didn’t give much for our chances if we came off it. “What’s the story between Martin and Albert?”

“They hate each other. But I don’t know why. Heydrich is always pushing me to find out, but I still have no idea what the reason is. Once I heard Martin Bormann refer to Albert as the man who holds the Leader’s coat. Which says all you need to know.”

“Unless you’re Heydrich.”

“Maybe you can find out something. In case you didn’t know it, I think you’re doing all right.”

“I wish I shared that opinion.”

He jerked his thumb behind him. “Anyway, that’s the Leader’s Territory and strictly off-limits to everyone who’s not anyone. But surrounding this three-kilometer area is another enormous fence measuring eleven kilometers long; it encloses almost the whole area around the Kehlstein, which is the game and bird sanctuary. That’s where we’re headed now. A couple of years ago, when Bormann was planning to have the whole area enclosed, Geiger, the gamekeeper, pointed out the disastrous consequences for the local wildlife. Much of that was already gone because of all the noise from construction work. Driven off like many of the people, I suppose. Mindful of Hitler’s love of nature, Bormann created the Landlerwald Forest, just south of the Riemertiefe, and they’ve reintroduced chamois, fox, red deer, rabbits, you name it. Everything except a unicorn.”

“No wonder the poachers like it here.”

“They drive Bormann mad. And of course he’s scared Hitler will find out and want to do something radical about it. I think Hitler cares more about little furry animals than he does about people.”

“Evidently,” I said.

“What are you reading?”

“It’s from Major Högl. A list of all the fatalities sustained by the local workforce during the last couple of years. Ten workers killed in an avalanche on the Hochkalter. Eight killed when a tunnel collapsed under the Kehlstein. One worker who fell into the elevator shaft. Five workers killed by a landslide below the Südwest tunnel. Three truck drivers killed when their vehicles went off the road. One worker stabbed to death by a co-worker at the Ofneralm camp, because he didn’t want to pay off a bet. And this is odd: there’s a P&Z worker listed as dead, cause unknown.”

“Nothing odd about that. People die for all kinds of reasons, don’t they? If the work doesn’t kill them, the magic potion will. I’m sure of it. I’ve got to lay off that stuff myself. My heart feels like a hungry hummingbird.”

“So lay off it. I won’t mind if you want to get some shut-eye.”

“I’ll be okay. Just tell me what’s so odd about this dead worker.”

“Only the name, so far. R. Prodi.”

“And?”

“There was a snapper who went home from the P-Barracks because she had a dose of jelly. Her name was Prodi. Renata Prodi. She was the one favored by Karl Flex.” I paused, and when Kaspel didn’t say anything, I let a couple of thoughts loose in the car. “But maybe she didn’t go home after all. Maybe her being on this list is some kind of bureaucratic oversight. At the very least we ought to find out if she ever made it to Milan. And how she comes to end up on a list of dead workers put together by your boss.”

A few minutes later we drew up in front of a wooden chalet that was about twenty meters long and perhaps half as wide; there was a chimney on the sloping roof and about two hundred and fifty small square windows in the four walls. There was no glass in the windows because they weren’t the kind of windows anyone was going to be looking through or even going near, not without a veil and a smoker. What I was looking at was the Adlon Hotel of beehives.

Inside the apiary door the first thing you saw was a little glass bee house where, if you were interested, you could see a hive of bees doing what bees do. They call it work but I’m not so sure that the bees would; I doubt they had a union. But it was only the one bee I was interested in — the one in my pocket, from the dead man’s trouser turnup. I wasn’t especially curious about the rest of the bees, but the three men in the small apiary office were of great interest to me, not least because two of them had scoped rifles and one of them stood up and smiled as soon as he saw me and what I was holding.

“You found my field glasses,” he said simply.

“You must be Herr Geiger, the gamekeeper.”

“That’s right.”

I let him have the binoculars and then shook his hand. “They are yours, then?”

He unfastened the lid and pointed to what was written there. “My initials: JG . Where did you find them?”

I wasn’t ready to supply an explanation to that so I showed them my brass warrant disc. That usually deflects questions I don’t want to answer. “I’m here from the Police Praesidium in Berlin at the request of Government Deputy Chief of Staff Bormann to investigate the murder of Karl Flex.”

“Bad business,” said one of the other two.

“And you are?”

“Hayer. I’m the Landlerwald ornithologist.”

“Udo Ambros,” said the other, who was smoking a pipe. “One of the assistant hunters. And I ain’t ever been to Berlin. Nor likely to go, neither.”

“Did any of you know Dr. Flex?”

“I’ve seen him around,” said Geiger.

“Me too,” said Ambros. “But I didn’t know he was a doctor.”

“He was a doctor of engineering,” I said. “With P&Z.”

“That explains it, then,” said Ambros. “They’re not what you’d call popular around here, the folk from P&Z.”

“Still,” added Hayer, “no one deserves that. To be murdered, I mean.”

I left that one alone. So far I’d not seen much to persuade me that Flex hadn’t had it coming.

“It’s quite the place you have here,” I said. “I had no idea that bees could live so well in Germany.”

“These bees have better lives than a lot of Jews, I think,” said Geiger.

“Yes, but they’re just as cliquey,” said Ambros.

“It’s not only the bees who are well looked after in the Landlerwald,” said Geiger. “There’s another hut like this one just a few hundred meters away where the deer come and go for hay and grain. Especially in winter, when the grazing’s harder.”

“Not to mention a sanctuary for predatory birds,” added Hayer. “Eagles, owls. To protect our many breeding species.”

“Bigger windows, I suppose,” I said.

Nobody smiled. Things were a bit like that in Obersalzberg. Their own jokes were just fine; but there was nothing funny about a Kripo commissar from Berlin.

“We have about two thousand numbered breeding boxes for every variety of bird, some of which are quite rare,” said Hayer proudly. “They’re all over the Landlerwald.”

“But it’s not a zoo,” insisted Geiger. “There are no tame animals here. Our work here is governed by the rules of the Bavarian State Forest Administration.”

I took another look at the three men in the apiary office. They had durable outdoor faces and durable outdoor clothes. Thick tweed suits, with plus-four trousers, stout boots, cream woolen shirts, green woolen ties, and Bavarian-style felt hats with gray feathers. Even their thick eyebrows and mustaches looked like the warmest ones in the shop. Their German rifles were mounted with sniper scopes and well maintained; you could smell the gun oil. There were also a couple of shotguns on a rack behind the desk. It looked like a lot of firepower for killing a few cats.