Philip Kerr - Prussian Blue

“Seriously, though,” she said. “Where did you get this?”

“I found it. On the floor of the room at the local hospital where we took Karl Flex’s body for the autopsy.”

“You sure about that?”

“Sure I’m sure.” I glanced around. “Are we allowed to smoke in here? Only, my answers are always much more convincing when I have a nail in my face.”

Gerdy found her own cigarettes and poked one in my mouth and then one in hers. They were the good, solidly packed cigarettes with the best Turkish tobacco the Nazis kept for themselves, at least when Hitler wasn’t around to sniff the air in the corridors and check for nicotine on their thumbnails. He’d have made a good detective, maybe. He seemed to have a nose for people breaking the rules. Takes one to know one. I let her light me, too. I realized I liked the idea of that. It made me feel as though we were almost fellow conspirators, two of life’s problem children locked inside Hitler’s morbid sanatorium, rebels seeking a cure from the stiflingly pure atmosphere of the magic mountain.

“You worry me, Gunther. And I just know I’m going to regret helping you.”

“You’re the one pushing the cigarette in my mouth, lady. The Leader wouldn’t like you corrupting me in this way. I was in the choir when I was at school. I had a lovely voice.”

“And you’re the one breaking into confidential filing cabinets with vaginal dilators.”

“I love the way you say ‘filing cabinets.’ Which reminds me.” I handed her the ledger. “Read out some of those names, will you? We’ve got work to do.”

In a civilization ruled by cruelty and blind obedience, ignorance and bigotry, intelligence shines out like the Lindau Lighthouse, casting its beam for miles in all directions. The famous old Lindau Lighthouse, situated on the northeastern shore of Lake Constance, is perhaps unusual in that it also boasts a massive clock that can easily be viewed from the city. Thus it was with Gerdy Troost. Not only was she extremely bright, she was also perceptive and informative and I seriously doubt I would have made any real progress with my investigation without her help. It was easy to see why Adolf Hitler had made this elfin-faced woman a professor and kept her around the Berghof; it wasn’t only for her ideas on architecture. Famously, she had designed and supervised the construction of the Leader’s new buildings on Munich’s Königsplatz. Gerdy Troost was ferociously smart and from what she herself had said to me, I gathered that she was probably able to tell him a few home truths where no one else would have dared. When the most wicked and mendacious are in charge, truth is the one commodity that is the most valuable of all. To that extent, Gerdy Troost reminded me of me. But which of us would remain alive for longer in Nazi Germany remained to be seen. Truth nearly always outstays its welcome.

After reading aloud almost fifty names from Karl Flex’s ledger, she and I had discovered only that none of them related to a specific personnel file that was in the OA filing cabinets for Polensky & Zöllner, or for Sager & Woerner. The names appearing in the ledger were in a single file on one master list of all OA employees — this amounted to more than four thousand men — but that was all. For none of Flex’s B -list names did we find any individual personnel files with the kind of cross referencing of numbers for employment identification books, identity cards, labor service passbooks, craftsman’s guild certificate numbers, NSDAP personal identity documents, racial declarations, family books, Aryan family tree records, and paybooks that appeared on the files of those employees who were not on the ledger’s B list and which were entirely typical of the bureaucratically minded Nazis.

And as I closed one drawer and opened another, Gerdy said: “I have a question. A fundamental question.”

“Go ahead and ask it.”

“You seem to have a great deal of faith that this ledger provides solid evidence of criminality. But why would someone record and keep evidence that could put him in prison? Or worse. You’d think he would want to keep this kind of thing a secret.”

“It’s a good question. For one thing, Bormann doesn’t trust anyone. Certainly not these people he uses for his dirty work — Flex and Schenk and Zander. They’re criminals. I’m quite convinced of that. But they’re also bureaucrats. Record-keeping is second nature to men like this. It’s almost as if the keeping of detailed records makes what they’re doing less criminal. They can even convince themselves that they were only doing what they were told. Besides, the ledger was a secret. I had to break into a hidden safe in order to find it.”

“Maybe so. But I’m looking at it now, and there’s nothing in these OA files that corroborates any actual evidence of criminality. Either Karl Flex wasn’t doing anything wrong in the first place, or the people running Obersalzberg Administration are just plain incompetent.”

“Did they previously strike you as incompetent? Careless?”

“Not in the least. If anything they’re meticulous in OA. I happened to catch sight of the interior decorating expenses for the tea house the other day. Everything was noted. And I mean everything. The tablecloths from Deisz, the deck chairs from Julius Mosler, and the Savonnerie rug from Kurt Goebel.”

“As a matter of interest, how much does one of those rugs cost anyway?” I shrugged. “I’ve been thinking of redecorating my apartment in Berlin.”

“Forty-eight thousand reichsmarks.”

“For a rug? That’s more than my whole building cost.”

Gerdy looked sheepish. “Everything used by the Leader is of the very best quality.”

“You don’t say. By the way, and not that it’s any of my business — I’m just a taxpayer — but how much in total has been spent on this vitally important project?”

“I can’t tell you that. This is a very sensitive subject.”

“Tea houses usually are.”

“This one certainly is.”

“Come on. Who am I going to tell? The newspapers? The International Tea Association? The Emperor of Japan? Humor me.”

I opened another drawer to look for a file in the name of someone on Flex’s list; but there was nothing. Gerdy let out a sigh and folded her arms, defensively.

“All right. And the numbers are, I admit, inherently unbelievable. But all this had to be done in time for Hitler’s fiftieth birthday. So I think Polensky & Zöllner’s costs are something in the region of fifteen million. Sager’s, maybe half that. The fact of the matter is that the tea house on the Kehlstein has cost at least thirty million reichsmarks.”

I whistled. “That’s a lot of money for a cup of tea and a nice view. It might have been cheaper to buy Ceylon. It makes you wonder what the Berghof cost. And the rest of the houses here in Asgard. Not to mention all the roads and tunnels, the railway station, the Platterhof, the local Reichs Chancellery, the theater, the youth hostel, and the Landlerwald.” I whistled some more. A figure like thirty million reichsmarks is worth a good deal of whistling. “How much do you think Bormann makes in kickbacks on a figure like that?”

“It’s only a guess, mind — but at least ten percent. Not that you could ever prove it.”

“And Hitler? What about his end? Or is Bormann taking care of the Leader out of his share?”

“Hitler’s not interested in money. That’s one of the things that makes him different.”

“Look, I hate to sound penny-pinching regarding the Leader’s comfort and relaxation but doesn’t any of this strike as you just a little bit insane?”