Prague Fatale

CHAPTER 9

‘I’m afraid that’s quite impossible, Bernie.’

I shifted uncomfortably in Lüdtke’s office. I felt about ten years old, a schoolboy again, in trouble with his headmaster.

‘Would you mind telling me why, sir?’

‘I was about to. I’ve just had a telephone call from an SS major called Doctor Achim Ploetz.’

‘Never heard of him.’

‘In Prague.’ Lüdtke grinned. ‘Yes, I thought that would shut you up. Major Ploetz is the Chief Adjutant to General Heydrich. It seems that your presence is required in Bohemia and Moravia. Or perhaps it’s just Bohemia. I’m not sure.’ He shrugged. ‘Whichever one Prague is in is where you are requested to go.’

I felt a sudden chill on the back of my neck as if I’d run my finger along the edge of the blade of the falling axe at Plotzensee. Heydrich had that effect on people, which was probably why he was nicknamed ‘the Hangman’.

‘Did Major Ploetz explain why I’m needed in Prague, sir?’

‘It seems that the General is planning some sort of weekend with friends, at his country house outside Prague. To celebrate his appointment as the new Reichsprotector of Bohemia. I had no idea that you and General Heydrich were on such cordial terms, Bernie.’

‘No sir. Nor had I.’

‘Oh, come now. You might not wear a scary badge on your lapel but everyone at the Alex knows you’ve got vitamin B. Even the footballs handle you with care.’

Many Gestapo officers were fond of wearing leather coats and hats; and since many of them were also better fed than the rest of us and hence fatter, too, they were known as ‘footballs’. But sadly, kicking one was not an option.

‘Perhaps I’ll have my own adjutant telephone the General’s adjutant and inform him that I will have to decline the invitation,’ I said.

‘You do that.’

‘What about the case I’m working on? This Czech spy who got himself killed.’

‘You told me it was a traffic accident, didn’t you? Happens every day. And spies are apparently no exception.’

‘Yes, but I’m pretty sure that he murdered that Dutch foreign worker, Geert Vranken. You remember. The fellow who got himself hit by a train after receiving multiple stab wounds.’

‘I’m sure he’ll be waiting for you when you get back from your weekend with the General.’

Lüdtke looked like he was enjoying my discomfort. He knew the truth about my dislike for the Nazis but it didn’t stop him from savouring my dilemma: for me not to be a Party member and yet still in such apparent high favour with Heydrich was amusing to him. It amused me, too, which is to say it stopped me from thinking about much else.

‘Doctor Ploetz, you say?’

‘Yes.’ Lüdtke leaned back in his chair and folded his hands behind his head as if he was about to surrender. ‘I hear Prague’s very nice at this time of year. I’ve often fancied going there with the wife. She collects glass, you know. And there’s a lot of glass in Prague.’

‘That should keep the Nazis happy. They like smashing glass. Here, maybe you should go instead of me.’

‘Oh no.’ Lüdtke smiled. ‘I wouldn’t know what to say to a man as important as the Reichsprotector of Bohemia. My God, I should be surprised if he even knew I existed.’

‘Any man who can persuade Berlin detectives to wear women’s clothes in order to catch a murderer is certain to have been noticed upstairs.’

‘It’s kind of you to say so, Bernie. But of course I had lots of help. Remember Georg Heuser?’

‘Yes.’

‘Georg Heuser was one of my best detectives on the S-Bahn murder case. Good man, is Georg. Of course, he lacks your subtlety and experience, but he’s a promising young policeman. And of more use here than where he is now.’

‘And where is that?’

‘In a Special Action Group somewhere in the Ukraine.’

I didn’t reply. Suddenly going to Prague didn’t seem so bad after all. Not when they were still sending ‘good’ men to Special Action Groups in the Ukraine. Just thinking about Georg Heuser and what he was probably going through in Minsk, or Pinsk, or Dnipropetrovsk, or any one of a hundred Jew towns where innocent people were being murdered in their thousands, made me feel that I was much better off than I realized. And all talk of an S-Bahn murderer seemed laughable when one of our own investigating detectives now seemed likely to chalk up more victims in twenty-four hours than Paul Ogorzow had managed in one murderous year.

Lüdtke played with the rocker blotter on his desk for a moment as if trying to measure something.

‘You hear stories,’ he said, finally. ‘About what is happening out east. In Ukraine and Latvia, for example. The Police Battalions. Special Action Groups and what have you. You were there, Bernie. What is the truth about what’s happening? Is it true what they’re saying? That people are being murdered? Men, women and children. Because they’re Jews?’

I nodded.

‘My God,’ he said.

‘I think you once said that whenever I came in here it was like rain coming in at the eaves. Now you know why. Since I came home there hasn’t been a day when I didn’t feel ashamed. And the nights are worse.’

‘My God.’

‘That’s the third time you’ve mentioned God, Friedrich-Wilhelm. And I’ve been thinking that there must be a God because after all, the Leader is always mentioning Him and it’s inconceivable he could be wrong about that. But what we’ve done to the Jews, and what we’re still doing to the Jews, and, I think, what we seem intent on doing to the Jews for a good while longer, well, He’s not going to forgive that in a hurry. Perhaps not ever. In fact, I’ve a very terrible feeling that whatever we do to them He’s going to do to us. Only it’ll be worse. Much worse. It’ll be much worse because He’s going to get the fucking Russians to do it.’

‘I hear Prague is very nice at this time of year. I’ve often wanted to go there.’ Arianne shook her head. ‘I really can’t imagine why I haven’t been already. After all, Prague is only a couple of hours on the train from Dresden. And my Mama’s a German-speaking Czech from Teplitz. Did I tell you that? She moved to Dresden when she met my Papa. Not that she ever really thought of herself as a Czech. Nobody does in Teplitz. At least that’s what my Mama says.’ She paused. ‘Maybe I could go and see my brother. His unit is stationed near Prague.’

We were at Kempinski’s Vaterland on Potsdamer Platz, a department store of cafés and restaurants that described itself as ‘the jolliest place in Berlin’ and which was as ersatz as the coffee we were drinking in the Grinzing Café, which with its diorama of Old Vienna and the Danube River was itself pretty ersatz. Of the several bars and cafés in Vaterland, Arianne much preferred the Wild West Bar’s log-cabin walls, American flags, and the picture of Custer’s Last Stand, but, immediately outside its door was an amusement machine with a light-gun on which you could shoot at pictures of aircraft, and the city’s young anti-aircraft gunners were fond of using it for their boisterous practice. This particular form of entertainment was too like the real thing for my money and so we sat in the Grinzing and hugged each other fondly in sight of a trompe-l’oeil of the Austrian capital city with miniature bridges, mechanical boats, and an electric train-set while a little orchestra played Strauss waltzes. It was like being a giant or a god, which, in Germany, usually amounts to the same thing. Arianne was smaller than me by a head, and while that didn’t make her Freia to my Fasolt, she was very much a goddess of feminine love. I’d seldom had a lover as expert as Arianne and, after the depressing horrors of the Ukraine, which, whenever possible, I was keen to put out of my mind, perhaps I was falling for her. Hell, I had fallen for her. Since meeting her I hadn’t thought about killing myself. Not once. I knew she was riding for herself but I could hardly blame her for that. The whole damned country was addicted to its own selfish pursuits. So I heard her out as she made her play and probably smiled a fond, indulgent sort of smile as she went about it. Because while there was a part of me that still didn’t trust her, there was an even larger part that simply didn’t care. Not any more. I was in Gaza, bound with new ropes and fresh bowstrings, with my hair in knots and my head in her lap. Sometimes it just happens that way.

‘Have you got a passport?’

She nodded. ‘When I was working for BVG my boss told me to get one so I could accompany him on a business trip to Italy. I knew what I was in for and if we’d ever actually got there I might have let him sleep with me, only his wife found out that I was going and then I wasn’t going, and then I was out of a job. It’s a very common story.’

‘You’d need a visa, of course.’

‘Sure. From the Police Praesidium on Alexanderplatz. Isn’t that convenient, you working there and everything?’

‘I don’t know. It’s possible you might need to produce some certification concerning the military importance of your journey. In which case – well, there is no military importance, angel. Not unless we count the restoration of my own morale. But somehow I don’t see them buying that one.’

Arianne shook her head. ‘No, you only need that kind of certification if you’re planning to take the express train.’ Smiling, she added, ‘You forget. I used to work for BVG. I know all the rules and regulations that affect the railways. No certification of a journey’s relevance is required for any other train. If we take the regular service between Anhalter Station and Jan Masaryk Station, there won’t be a problem. I could probably remember the timetable if I put my mind to it.’

‘I don’t doubt it. But look, angel, I’m not sure where I’ll be staying or what I’ll be doing. You might find yourself on your own for longer than you’d like. For longer than I’d like, if it comes to that. It could even be dangerous.’

‘I’ll go and see the sights when you’re not around. That shouldn’t be too difficult to do. German’s now the official language in Prague. And it’s not like I’ll be wearing a uniform. So I can’t see how I’m likely to get into any trouble. Or how it could possibly be dangerous.’ She frowned. ‘I think you’re just saying that because you don’t want me to come with you.’

‘I wasn’t thinking about the danger you might be in from the Czechos,’ I said. ‘Frankly, they’re the least of our problems. No, there’s something far more dangerous in Prague than the damned Czechos.’

‘And what’s that?’

‘The new Reichsprotector of Bohemia and Moravia, that’s what. General Reinhard Heydrich.’

Someone once said there’s no fool like an old fool in love. But middle-aged fools aren’t any less foolish. I walked home and thought some more about taking Arianne with me to Prague. No matter how smart you are, sometimes you just have to sit down and lay out a balance sheet to help you decide on something. On the credit side Arianne was a potential liability; and on the debit side, she gave me a lot of pleasure, and not all of it horizontal. They say that if, in every transaction, you can identify what you received, where it came from, and what it cost, then you have debits and credits mastered. But what they don’t say is that sometimes you just figure the world owes you a little bit extra and to hell with the consequences. In truth, that’s how most people handle life’s book-keeping. If you believe Prince Hamlet, conscience makes cowards of us all; but I can attest that it’s just as likely that conscience, especially a guilty one, can make you just a little bit reckless.