Philip Kerr - Prussian Blue

“Alex Piorkowski is the camp commandant at Dachau,” explained Korsch. “A real bastard, if you ask me.”

“The man’s a golem,” said Joe Krauss. “A monster.”

“Look,” I said, “I’ll tell you honestly, gentlemen, I have absolutely no idea what’s inside the nut. But I’m hoping what’s in there will help prove that a local Nazi official was corrupt. He’s dead but there could be evidence in there that will take a few others down with him. Papers, documents, ledgers, that’s what I’m hoping for. But if there’s any money or jewelry in there, it’s yours. To keep. All of it. That and the Maserati sports car parked in the street. You can drive it anywhere you like. And I give you my word that we won’t come after you. Or prevent your exit. You can hear me make the call to the border police to let you through. If necessary I’ll even drive you there myself.”

“I’m liking this more now.” Karl Krauss shrugged. “That red Italian job? It’s a nice car. But even in Italy it’s just a noodge . Not a car for gonifs like us. We’ve never been the kind to flash the money around when we had it. That’s how you get pinched. We gay avek in a car like that and the whole world sees, and hears, too, probably. A military brass band couldn’t make more noise than that car. So if we do this job for you we’ll take the beer truck. Who notices such a thing in this part of the world?”

“Then that’s agreed. The truck is yours.”

“But suppose there’s nothing in the safe. Which means you’re disappointed. What then, Commissar? You’ll still let us go? It’s difficult, like my brother Joe says. To have all this trouble for nothing.”

“Give him the keys to the truck now,” I told Korsch. “And the car. Take both, for all I care. Drive in opposite directions. But please open that safe. You can be halfway to Italy in the time it takes for me to get over my disappointment. Not that I pay much attention to things like that these days. To be disappointed you’ve got to believe in something in the first place, and I haven’t believed in anything of late. And certainly very little since 1933. The only reason I’m still a cop is not because I believe in the law or a moral order but because the Nazis wanted it that way. They had me back because they need a glove puppet they can use to ask the wrong questions, at the right time. Which makes me as bad as them, probably.”

“Listen to the police commissar, Karl,” said Joe Krauss. “And we’re the ones who were sent to Dachau. Can you believe it?”

“He’s a real contradiction, and no mistake.”

“Have you got guns?” asked Joe.

“We’re coppers, not Boy Scouts.”

“Let’s see them.”

Korsch and I each pulled out a Walther PPK and tried to hold them in a way that wouldn’t intimidate the brothers.

“So if you hand over the magazines, then maybe we’ll feel a bit more comfortable,” said Joe. “For safekeeping, you might say. We’ll feel safer that way. My brother doesn’t like working when there are guns around. Especially when he doesn’t have one himself.”

“All right.” I turned the Walther upside down, thumbed the release catch, and then worked the slide to drop the last round from the barrel. I pressed the spare round into the mag and then handed it to Joe Krauss. Korsch did the same.

“That’s more haymish ,” he said, and pocketed the magazines. “All right. We’ll do it. Not because we trust you, Commissar. But because you’re an honest fool and it’s lucky for you that you have an honest fool’s face. Isn’t that right, Karl?”

“You’re right, Joe. Honestly, only a fool would work for the Nazis and think there’s not a high price to be paid for mere survival. But I suspect you know this already.” He nodded firmly. “So let’s get on with it, shall we? All I need is a pencil and paper and that rubber mallet. But it’s not to hit the safe. It’s to hit my brother on the head and knock some sense into him when you betray us after all.”

Karl Krauss knelt down beside the York and took hold of the dial and pressed his face to the door. “So,” he whispered, “we start with the mark at the top of the dial in the twelve o’clock position. Now we keep turning to the right and going very slowly we feel for the drop. It doesn’t matter what order we get them in yet, all we’re doing now is just feeling for the drop, see? And there’s one right away on zero. There usually is. Most people like zeroes. It reflects their own life expectations. Of course, if we have got more than one zero, then this complicates matters.”

Joe wrote the number on Korsch’s notepad and waited as his brother explored the feeling in the dial for the next number. I smiled. He looked like any German listening, illegally, to the BBC on the radio.

While the brothers worked on the safe I took Friedrich Korsch outside and explained how the Linz Gestapo had tried to arrest me, and what I’d recently discovered at the house of Udo Ambros.

“Udo Ambros couldn’t be more dead if he was Hindenburg’s great-grandfather. Most of his head is sticking to the wall like the kitchen clock. Someone tried hard to make it look like suicide by shotgun. Left a nice confession for us on the mantelpiece, which was so neatly written it looked like a telegram. Hardly the work of someone who was getting ready to blow his own head off. I’ve seen enough real suicides to know a murder when I smell one. And this one is Limburger cheese.”

“Hey, talking of suicide, that yid eye specialist you were asking about, Dr. Karl Wasserstein? Threw himself into the Isar last Saturday morning wearing his Military Merit Cross and drowned. The Munich cops found a note on his surgery door, which they let me have. I think they had orders from on high not to tell your friend Frau Troost. But if you ask me, that’s another suspicious suicide. Who the fuck ends his life on a Saturday morning? Monday morning I could understand. But not a Saturday.”

Korsch laughed bitterly and handed the note to me, and I put it in my pocket to give to Gerdy later on; maybe. In Germany, disappointment was contagious and often came with consequences. I certainly wasn’t about to squander her willingness to help me in my inquiry with some premature candor regarding the fate of her friend.

“Anyway,” he continued, “it seems that he may have got his doctor’s license back, but only for general practice. Not for ophthalmology.”

“So maybe it was a suicide note after all.”

“Maybe. Anyway, the poor bastard said he thought his life had lost its meaning. Because he couldn’t look at people’s eyes.”

“Nobody looks anyone in the eye these days. Not if they can help it.”

“It would be like you prevented from being a cop anymore, I guess.”

“Try me, Friedrich. The day I can walk away from this bloody life, you won’t find me heading for the nearest river to drown my sorrows. I’ll be at the lakes with a bottle of spiritual ointment, drinking it up in a park in Pankow like a good Bolle boy.”

“Maybe I’ll join you, boss. I was born near that park. Schönholzer Heide. Tschaikowskistrasse, 60.”

“Then that makes us practically related. I know that building. Gray building near the bus stop? I had a cousin who lived there.”

“Every apartment building in Berlin is gray and near a bus stop.”

“Small world, isn’t it?”

“It is until you have to catch the bus.”

I almost couldn’t believe it when Karl Krauss turned the little handle and opened a heavy steel door that creaked like a lock-up in the basement of the Alex.

“Didn’t I tell you?” said Joe proudly. “My brother Karl is an artist. That man could top the bill at the German Opera. Just look at that door, Commissar, and then remember what it means to crack a nut like this. Drilled or puzzled, this is difficult. You appreciate that now, don’t you?”