The Lady from Zagreb

Thirty-eight

The next day Schellenberg and Eggen returned to Germany. Meyer and I drove them to a small private jetty in an extensive pear orchard on Meyer’s estate. A Swiss Army motorboat was waiting to take them quietly back across Lake Constance to the island of Reichenau, where an SS staff car was ready to drive the general to an airfield in Konstanz. From Konstanz, Eggen was going by road to Stuttgart to catch a train back to Berlin, while the general had arranged to fly straight to the Wolf’s Lair at Rastenburg. I didn’t envy Schellenberg that journey. Quite apart from my fear of flying, which had been hardly helped by the severe electrical storm we had encountered on my trip back from Zagreb, deceiving Hitler and all his staff generals was a task that would have given any ordinary man considerable pause. Deceiving Dalia’s husband, Stefan Obrenovic, felt like something I was much more equal to. Him, and perhaps the minister of Propaganda, for whom, of course, I was still working; otherwise I might have chosen to accompany Eggen back to Germany. After the events at Uetliberg, I’d had enough of Switzerland. But there was still the matter of Dalia’s future to consider, for, although she seemed to have given me a definitive answer to the question of her own return to Germany, I knew it was a question that I was obliged to put to her again, if only because of who my client was. Goebbels wasn’t the kind of man who would have allowed me to take Dalia at her word. I could almost hear his brittle sarcasm now, wiping the floor with me like a rag in that mocking Westfalish accent of his, for not even trying to talk her out of it.

“What are your plans now, Bernie?” asked Meyer.

“I can’t go back to Zurich. Not after what that stupid cop from police headquarters told me. I’m not entirely sure what I’m going to do now. It all depends on a telephone call I need to make. I have my own rather more mundane mission to complete.”

“You’re very welcome to use our telephone. And to stay here at Wolfsberg. For as long as you want.”

“Believe me, you and your wife wouldn’t want me for that long.”

“Schelli spoke very highly of you to me last night, after you’d gone to bed. He says he thinks you’d be a good man to have around in a tight spot.”

“Maybe. But of late the spots seem to be getting tighter.”

“I’d really like you to stay so that I could ask you a few more questions about your old cases. You know? For my next book. I’m thinking of a story of a Swiss cop with a Berlin connection. Before the war, of course.”

“Of course. When there was still some real crime about.” I smiled thinly. Somehow the idea of helping Meyer with his book appealed a lot less to me than the possibility of seeing Dalia again. “And some real detectives, too.”

“Exactly.”

“It’s kind of you, Paul, but I can’t. I thought I’d motor down to Rapperswil and send Goebbels a telegram, then wait for further instructions. I really can’t leave Switzerland until that’s happened. I’ve heard Rapperswil is very pretty. With a castle and everything.”

“Oh, it is. Very picturesque. But you know, I could drive you down there myself. It so happens that there’s an unsolved murder that took place in Rapperswil. The local police inspector is a friend of mine. Perhaps you might even remember me mentioning it when I was in Berlin last year.”

I didn’t, and of course I certainly wasn’t remotely interested in some old murder case but it occurred to me that if I did go to Rapperswil it might be useful to have a Swiss police inspector on my side, especially if I was going to be meeting in secret with the wife of a prominent local businessman. Besides, with the OSS probably still convinced that I was Walter Schellenberg, it couldn’t do any harm to have a cop to help me out if they again tried to kidnap me, or worse.

“I’ll be straight with you, Paul. I like you. I’m grateful for your hospitality and I wouldn’t like to embarrass you. But there’s a lady I have to see when I’m down there.”

“This actress who Dr. Goebbels is interested in. The one he wants to go back to work at UFA studios. Sure, I get it.”

“No, you don’t. The fact of the matter is, he’s not the only one who’s interested in her. You know what I mean? She and I — it’s complicated. She has a husband. In Küsnacht. Which is just up the lakeshore from Rapperswil, right?”

Meyer nodded.

“She and I had sort of planned that we might find a nice hotel. Just for the afternoon.”

“Bernie, I’m a detective writer, not a monk.”

“You’d be surprised what monks are capable of. Believe me, you could write a hell of a book about one particular monk that I met down in Croatia.”

“Look, I know just the place for you both. In Rapperswil. The Pension du Lac. I’ll check into the Schwanen Hotel, next door, so there won’t be any possibility of embarrassment for either one of you. We’ll drive down this afternoon. Have dinner with Inspector Leuenberger tonight. Chat about the case. You can see your lady friend tomorrow. And then we’ll drive back. What could be simpler?”

“Let me call her first.”