Philip Kerr - Prussian Blue

“Sure. It’s an occupational hazard for any cop. Things always look better for crooks who are making serious money.”

“Especially when the crooks are in government.”

“Well, who knew? When they were elected. That they were crooks, I mean.”

“Pretty much everyone who didn’t vote for them, Friedrich. And I suspect quite a few of the stupid fools who did. Which only makes it worse.”

“Who’s this second signatory on the Bormann account? Max Amann?”

“I think he’s chairman of the Reich Media Chamber. Whatever that is.”

“Must be close to Bormann.”

“I guess so.”

“Just seeing these two passbooks scares the shit out of me,” said Korsch. “I don’t mind admitting it. You know, it’s like I was saying before, boss. What happens when Bormann wants his passbook? To have access to his money.”

“According to Bormann’s passbook, there are three passbooks for that account. This one, and two others. Presumably the others are in Bormann’s possession. Which explains why he’s not asked about this one yet. Who knows? Perhaps he never will.”

“That’s a comforting thought. But either way, Bormann’s got to worry that if you do find his bankbook you’re going to give it to General Heydrich. And that Heydrich will use it against him. It’s exactly the sort of thing Heydrich would do. He collects dirt like a schoolboy’s fingernails.”

“Even Heydrich isn’t mad enough to believe he could blackmail Martin Bormann. Especially now, with another war looming.”

Actually, I wasn’t so sure about this; Heydrich had just enough nerve to blackmail the devil himself, and collect on his menaces, too. I told myself it was the only reason I was working for the general, and sometimes I even believed my own story — that I really was tired of being a cop in Nazi Germany and craved a quiet life in rural obscurity, as a village policeman, perhaps. Of course, the truth was very different. Mostly you just do what you’re good at, even if the people you’re doing it for are no good themselves. Sometimes you want to kill them but most of the time you know you’re never going to do it. In Germany that’s what we call a successful career. I opened the big leather ledger and began to turn the stiff pages. But beyond recognizing a few names and addresses, I had no real clue what it all amounted to, apart from a great deal of money.

“It would seem that the details of what Flex and his masters were up to are in this book. Although for the life of me I’m not sure what I’m looking at. I never was very good with figures that don’t wear pretty lingerie and ask me to buy them a beer with some red syrup in it. It seems clear to me that a lot of people around here were handing over sums of money quite regularly to Karl Flex. But it’s hard to say exactly why they did that. Not yet, anyway. A lot of these names are marked with the letters P, Ag , or B , which must have meant something to Flex but it means nothing to me. Flex was at the money end of some sort of local racket that wasn’t anything to do with compulsory purchase orders. These are people paying smaller, regular sums to Flex, not the Obersalzberg Administration paying them for their cuckoo-clock houses.” I shrugged. “You know, this sort of thing reminds me of the good old days when there were criminal rings who charged people protection. The trouble is, the only people you need protection from these days is the government. They’re the biggest criminal ring in history.”

Korsch turned the ledger to look at it and nodded.

“So here’s a thought,” he said after a while. “Why don’t we just pick someone out from all these names and go and ask them? That fat lawyer, for example. Dr. Waechter. The one who bought Rothman’s premises? I see his name is down here in the ledger with a B and an Ag in his column. Let’s go back there and just ask the bastard, straight out. And if he doesn’t tell us, we should drive him straight to Dachau and threaten to leave him there. I know the road now. And I bet that Captain Piorkowski would go along with it, too. He’d just assume that Heydrich wanted things that way. Believe me, that bastard lawyer will start talking the minute he smells the not-so-fresh air and sees the friendly motto on the gate.”

“You really didn’t like him, did you, Friedrich? Waechter.”

“Did you?”

“No. But I’m prejudiced. I never met a German lawyer yet who I didn’t want to defenestrate from the sixth floor of the Alex.”

“You scared him once. You could scare him again. We both could. With any luck he’ll shit himself on Piorkowski’s office floor.”

“Much as I would like to put the fear of Heydrich up Waechter’s fat arse I’d prefer to have half an idea of what this ledger means first. One thing I’ve learned since coming back to work for Kripo is that it’s never a good idea to ask questions in Nazi Germany until you know what some of the answers are. Especially after that case last November. Karl Maria Wiesthor. All that work to catch a murderer who turned out to be Himmler’s best friend. What a waste of time. Himmler hated me for solving that case. I told you he kicked me on the shin, didn’t I?”

“Several times. I’d love to have seen that.”

“It wasn’t so funny at the time. Although I think Heydrich and Arthur Nebe enjoyed it. Besides, Waechter might tell Bormann and we’d lose possession of our Bible. Which is what we have here, I suspect. That’s our edge. Even if we don’t know what these people were paying for. No, right now we need someone to help us to decode what’s here in Flex’s holy book. God’s high priest, perhaps.”

“There’s only one true God in Obersalzberg. And Bormann is his prophet.”

“Then if not a priest perhaps a high priestess to help us understand the holy writ. A local Cassandra.”

“Gerdy Troost.”

I nodded. “Exactly. She’s not going to be pleased when I tell her what’s become of her medical friend. When she finds out he drowned himself in the Isar she might just be ready to tell me everything she knows — which, I suspect, is quite a lot.”

“What’s this woman like, boss? Pretty?”

“No,” I said firmly. “Not particularly.”

“Well, that never stopped you before, did it?”

“Listen, I’m glad about that. I’d hate to be tempted to do something indiscreet in Hitler’s house. If he dislikes smoking and drinking it’s hard to imagine what he’d make of two people at it like rabbits in the guest room. For all I know she’s the Leader’s girlfriend. Although it’s hard to imagine what they might get up to that wouldn’t include a two-hour speech at the Sportpalast instead of dinner at Horcher’s.”

“You’d think he’d pick someone pretty,” said Korsch. “I mean, he could have almost any woman in Germany.”

“Maybe he likes good conversation over his tea and cake.”

“I can put up with a clever girl as long as she’s pretty.”

“I’ll let them know. Me, I’m a man of simple tastes, Friedrich. I don’t mind what they look like just as long as they look like Hedy Lamarr. This one. Frau Troost. She’s a designer, she says. As if that’s unusual in a woman. In my experience they’ve all got their designs. Most of them never tell you what those are until it’s too late.” I was thinking of my last girlfriend as I spoke. I still wasn’t sure what Hilde had wanted, only that it hadn’t included me.

“What happened to her old man, then?”

“Paul Troost? All I know is that he’s dead. And that he was much older. Which makes me wonder about their marriage. Gerdy — she’s not like most women. I don’t think she likes men very much. Just Hitler. And I’m not sure he even counts in the man department. He probably doesn’t think so. Not on the evidence of the tea house on the Kehlstein. It’s the kind of place where gods go to plan the conquest of this world and the next.”