Prague Fatale

CHAPTER 12

The General’s driver was an SS sergeant who told me his name was Klein. He was a large, heavy man with fair hair, a high forehead and an expressionless face. I soon learned he was also tight-lipped. Working for the Reichsprotector of Bohemia and Moravia, there was a lot to be tight-lipped about.

The car was a dark green Mercedes 320 convertible, and with its less than discreet number plate – SS-4 – it was what Klein drove when Heydrich was not on official or state duties. For those, I soon learned, there was a larger model, a Mercedes 770. The 320 had an extra spotlight mounted on the front fender in case the General had to stop and interrogate someone at the side of the road. There was no flag on the wing but that hardly made me feel any less obvious or insecure. Both of us were in uniform. The top was down. There was no armed escort. We were in enemy territory. To me it felt like visiting an Indian Thuggee village wearing a red coat and whistling ‘The British Grenadiers’. And noting with some amusement my obvious discomfort, Klein explained that the General scorned any escort as a sign of weakness, which was why he preferred him to be driven around Prague with the top down.

‘And how often do you drive him around Prague?’

‘Between Prague Castle and the General’s country house? Twice a day. Regular as sunrise.’

‘You’re joking.’

‘Nope.’

‘With one of the Three Kings at liberty, that seems unwise to me.’

We set off and I shrank back into the front passenger seat as a tall man standing beside the road snatched off his battered felt hat out of respect for who – but more probably what – we were. There was a lot of that in Prague. Because the Nazis liked this kind of thing. But I didn’t like it at all, any more than I liked driving around with a three-colour target painted on my chest; and taking out my pistol, I worked the slide and dropped it into the leather pocket on the inside of the car door, from where it might be easily and quickly retrieved in an emergency.

Klein laughed. ‘What’s that for?’

‘Just ignore me, Sergeant. I was in the Ukraine until the end of August. In the Ukraine there are lots of Ivans who want to kill Germans. I assume the same holds true for almost any conquered country. Except perhaps France. I never felt unsafe in France.’

‘So why feel unsafe here?’

‘To my ignorant ears at least, the Czech language sounds a lot like Russian. That’s why.’

‘Then let me reassure you, sir. To attack this, or the General’s other car, SS-3, would be to risk the most severe retribution. That’s what the General says. And I believe him.’

‘But what do you think?’

Klein shrugged. ‘I think this is a fast car and the General likes me to drive fast.’

‘Yes, I noticed.’

‘I think you’d have to be damned lucky to ambush this car. And that, in the long run, would be very unlucky for the Czechos.’

‘And for the General, I’d have thought. Possibly you, too, Sergeant. Really yours is not much of a threat, because it seems to me as if their bad luck is predicated on yours. It’s like saying that if you drown you’ll make sure you take them with you. When they’re dead, so are you.’

We drove about fifteen kilometres north-east of the city centre to a small village called Jungfern-Breschan. The Czechos called it Panenske-Brezany, which is probably Czech for a very quiet village that’s surrounded by a depressingly featureless landscape – just a lot of flat, recently ploughed and very smelly fields. The village itself was rather more quaint and picturesque as long as your idea of what was quaint and picturesque included a few checkpoints and the odd detachment of motorized SS. Anyone foolish enough to have attacked Heydrich’s car would have discovered that the countryside afforded them little cover from these soldiers. A team of assassins at Jungfern-Breschan would have been caught or killed within minutes. Even so, I had to wonder why Heydrich had chosen to live out here, in the middle of nowhere, when he had at his disposal in the centre of Prague a castle the size of the Kremlin, not to mention a handful of elegant Bohemian palaces. Maybe he was worried about defenestration. There was a lot of that kind of thing in Prague. I wouldn’t have minded pushing Heydrich or any number of Nazis out of a high window myself.

We turned off the main highway and Klein steered the Mercedes down a gently sloping road that wound around to the right and then the left. There were trees now and the air was strong with the smell of freshly mown grass and pine-needles, and after the grey misery of Prague this felt like a place where it might be easier for Heydrich to escape from the cares of the world, even the ones he himself had inflicted or was planning to inflict. At Jungfern-Breschan, he might get away from it all, just as long as he didn’t mind the several hundred SS stormtroopers who were there to protect his privacy.

A handsomely baroque pink stucco house came into view on our right. Behind a gated and guarded archway I counted six windows on the upper floor. It looked like a hunting lodge but I couldn’t be sure. I’d rarely been hunting myself, and never for anything more elusive than a missing person, a murderer, or an errant wife, and it was hard to comprehend how anyone wanting to shoot a few pheasants also needed a matching Russian Orthodox chapel and a swimming pool in the grounds to be able to do it. Of course, it’s always possible that if I’d prayed a bit more and learned to swim a bit better I might have bagged the odd snipe or two myself.

‘Is that General Heydrich’s new house?’

‘No. That’s the Upper Castle. Von Neurath continues to live there. For the moment, anyway.’

Konstantin von Neurath had been the Reichsprotector of Bohemia until Hitler decided he was too soft and gave the job to his blond butcher; but before that von Neurath had been the German Foreign Minister – a job now held by the most unpopular man in Germany, Joachim von Ribbentrop.

‘There’s an Upper Castle and a Lower Castle,’ explained Klein. ‘Both of them were owned by some Jewish sugar merchant. But when the Jew bastard took off in 1939 the estate was confiscated. The main house is the Lower Castle, further down the hill. It’s a nicer house.’

‘Doesn’t the General mind? That the place used to be lived in by Jews?’

‘Sir?’

‘You’ve seen the propaganda films,’ I said. ‘Those people carry diseases, don’t they? Like rats.’

Klein shot me a look as if he wasn’t quite sure if I was serious, and decided, wrongly, that I was. To be fair to him, my sarcasm had a cautious ambivalence about it since coming back from the Ukraine.

‘No, it’s all right,’ he insisted. ‘This merchant, he only owned the house since 1909. Originally, the house was owned by a German aristocrat who lost the place to the bank, who sold it to the Jew at a knock-down price. And before either of them, the estate was owned by Benedictine monks.’

‘Well, you can’t be less Jewish than a Benedictine monk, now can you?’

Klein grinned stupidly and shook his head.

I was toying with the idea of asking how a man with a name like Klein got to be in the SS at all, let alone driving for Heydrich, when the larger gates of the Lower Castle came in sight. In front of the gate posts were a pair of stone statues that would have given any animal-lover a moment’s pause. One statue depicted a bear being torn to bits by a pair of hunting dogs; and the other, a similarly beleaguered wild boar. But you could see how that sort of thing would have been appreciated by Heydrich, who was certainly the incarnation of Nature red in tooth and claw.

Beside the wild boar an SS soldier stepped out of his sentry box and came smartly to attention as our car turned into the gateway. At the end of a drive about fifty metres long was the Lower Castle itself. It was a modest little place, but only by the standards of Hermann Göring, or Mussolini, perhaps.

This ‘castle’ was actually a late nineteenth-century French style chateau, but no less impressive for that, with sixteen windows on each of two well-proportioned floors, front and back. Unlike the pink stucco Upper Castle, the Lower Castle was canary-yellow with a red roof, a square-tower portico painted white, and a central arched window that was about the same size as a U-Bahn tunnel. On the immaculate lawn was yet another piece of stone statuary: an enormous stag and two deer who were running away from the house. I took one look at the number of SS patrolling the grounds and felt like galloping away myself. With a couple of females in season for frolicsome company I might even have made it over the high wall.

Klein drew up at the front door and switched off the 320’s three-litre four-stroke engine. As it cooled, it ticked away like there was a family of mice living underneath the 2½-metre long hood.

For a moment I just sat there looking up at the house, listening to the soothing coo of some pigeons and, it seemed, to the sound of someone not too far away who was shooting at them.

‘Executions?’ I said, retrieving my pistol from the door pocket.

Klein grinned. ‘Hunting. There’s always something to shoot around here.’

‘Something, or someone?’

‘I can get you a gun if you’d care to go out and bag something for the pot. We eat a lot of game here at the Castle.’

‘Well, I always say, if you can’t play the game properly, eat it. That reminds me. Who do I give my food coupons to?’

The Lower Castle didn’t look like a food coupon sort of place, but I said it anyway, just for the fun of it.

‘You can forget about that sort of thing for a while. This is not like Berlin. There are no shortages of anything. The General lives very well out here in the countryside. Cigarettes, booze, chocolate, vegetarian. Anything you want. Just ask one of them.’

Klein nodded in the direction of an approaching SS valet wearing a white mess jacket who opened my door and came smartly to attention.

‘I’m beginning to see why he lives here. We’re not just outside Prague. We’re outside what counts as normal as well.’

I stood up, returned the Hitler salute, and followed the valet inside the house.

The main hallway was two storeys high with a wrought-iron gallery and a large, ornate brass chandelier that looked like Dante, Beatrice and the Heavenly Host of Angels waiting around for an appointment with Saint Peter. Behind the heavy oak door was a long-case clock the size of a beech tree and which I quickly learned was about as good at keeping time. There was a big round walnut wood table with a bronze of a mounted Amazon fighting a panther. The panther was wrapped around the horse, which looked like a mistake when you took into account the Amazon’s breasts. Then again, the Amazon had a spear in her hand, so maybe the panther knew what he was doing. There are some women who, no matter how good-looking they are, it’s best to leave well alone.

Across the hall and down a short flight of marble steps was a large room with tie-side Knoll sofas and a hardwood coffee table that might once have been a small Caribbean island. The only reason you might have assumed this was a room was if you also assumed that somewhere further than the human eye could see there were more walls and windows and a door or two. There was a big empty fireplace with brass firedogs and a cast-iron screen that belonged on the door of a gaol. Above this was a mantelpiece with a muscle-bound Atlas at each corner and on the mantel itself several framed photographs of Hitler, Heydrich, Himmler, and a strongly featured blonde I assumed was Heydrich’s wife, Lina. In another picture she and Heydrich were wearing Tyrolean costume and playing with a baby; they all looked very German. And it was difficult not to think of those Atlases as two poor Czechs groaning under the burden of their new masters. Above the mantel there was a large and unnecessarily well-painted portrait of the Leader, who seemed to be staring up at the Lower Castle’s gallery as if he was wondering when on earth someone was going to come down and inform him exactly what he was doing there. I had exactly the same feeling myself.

As my eyes gradually adjusted to the size of the place I saw, in the distance, a set of French windows and through them a lawn, some shrubberies and trees, and the clear blue sky that was the inevitable and very pleasant corollary of having no neighbours.

A tall butler wearing a tailcoat and a wing collar glided silently into the hall and bowed, giving me time enough to get a good look at his hair, which, like the deferential expression on his face, seemed to have been painted on his head. The Iron Cross first class ribbon on his coat lapel was a nice touch, reminding everyone wearing a uniform that he, too, had done his bit in the trenches. He had a thick, jowly face and an even thicker beef-soup of a voice.

‘Welcome sir, to Jungfern-Breschan. I am Kritzinger, the butler. The General presents his compliments and asks you to join him for drinks on the terrace at twelve-thirty p.m.’ He lifted one arm in the direction of the French windows, as if he had been directing traffic on Potsdamer Platz. ‘Please let me know if there’s anything I can do to make your stay here more comfortable. Until then, if you’ll come this way, I’ll show you to your quarters.’

My room, in the north wing, was larger and better appointed than I’d been expecting. There was a good-sized bed, a secretaire desk with three ebonized drawers for the clothes I had brought from the Imperial, a table-chair and a leather armchair that stood next to a fireplace that was laid but not lit. In the window was a folding tray-table with a princely range of alcoholic drinks, chocolate, newspapers and American cigarettes, and as soon as Kritzinger had made himself scarce, I set about throwing away my Johnnies and filling my cigarette case. With a drink in my hand and a decent cigarette in my mouth I inspected my principality in more detail.

On the desk was a Brumberg table lamp with a parchment shade, and on the floor a dull maroon Turkish kilim. There were some towels on the end of my bed and the door had a key and a bolt, for which I was grateful. Absurdly so. When you’re in a house that’s already full of murderers it’s perhaps foolish to think that locking your door is going to keep you safe. There were bars on the lower-floor windows but not on those of the upper floor. The window in my room, which had some sturdy brass bolts, had a fixed windowpane and two casements that opened out onto the back garden. There was a roller blind for summer and some thick red curtains for when the weather turned colder, which, in that part of the world, it always does.

I poked my head outside. The ground was about five or six metres below the window ledge. In the centre of a circular bed of flowers a sprinkler was a whirling dervish of water and rhythm. Beyond that was a gravel path lined with neatly trimmed bushes and then a thick clump of trees. And on the lawn was another stone group of escaping deer that was perhaps a pair to the one in the front garden.

I lay on my bed and finished my drink and smoked my cigarette. These did little to calm me. To be under the same roof as Heydrich made me nervous. I got up and poured myself another drink, which helped, but only a little. Whatever he wanted, I knew it wouldn’t sit well with my conscience, which was already badly bruised, and I resolved that when eventually he got around to explaining what this was, I would tell him, as politely as I could, to go to hell. There was no way I was ever going back to the Ukraine to perform some loathsome act of genocide and it really didn’t matter if that meant being sent to a concentration camp. I wasn’t the same as any of those other bastards in uniform. I wasn’t even a Nazi. Perhaps they needed reminding of that. Perhaps it was time I repeated my allegiance to the old Republic. If they were looking for an excuse to throw me out of the SD then I would hand them one. Arianne was surely right: if more people stood up to Heydrich the way I’d stood up to the Labour leader on the train then, maybe, things would change. More people would be dead, too, including myself, but that couldn’t be helped. Lately that didn’t seem so bad. That’s what I told myself, anyway. It might have been the schnapps. And of course I wouldn’t know for sure until the time came. But I knew it was going to take some courage on my part because I was also afraid. That’s the only way I know that you can distinguish being brave from being stupid.

‘That’s rather beautiful, don’t you think?’

I was looking at a dazzling modern picture of a dark-haired femme fatale. She was wearing a fabulous long dress that seemed to be made of golden Argus eyes, all set against a radiantly primordial golden background. There was something terrifying about the woman herself. She looked like some remorseless Egyptian queen who had been made ready for eternity by a group of economists who were slaves to the gold standard.

‘Unfortunately it’s a copy. The original was stolen by that greedy fat bastard Herman Göring and is now in his private collection, where nobody but him can see it. More’s the pity.’

I was in the Lower Castle library. Through the window I could see the back garden where several SS and SD officers were already collected on the terrace. The officer speaking to me was about thirty, tall, thin, and rather effete. He had white blond hair and a duelling scar on his face. The three pips on his black collar-patch told me he was an SS-Hauptsturmführer – a captain, like me; and the monkey swing of silver braid on his tunic – properly called an aiguillette, but only by people who knew their way around a dictionary of military words – indicated he was an aide-de-camp, most likely Heydrich’s.

‘Are you Doctor Ploetz?’ I asked.

‘Good God, no.’ He clicked his heels. ‘Hauptsturmführer Albert Kuttner, fourth adjutant to General Heydrich, at your service. No, you’ll know when you meet Ploetz. It will feel like someone left a freezer door open.’

‘Cold, huh?’

‘I’ve met warmer glaciers.’

‘How many adjutants does he have?’

‘Oh, just the four. A man for each season. There’s myself. Captains Pomme and Kluckholn. And Major Ploetz, who’s the Chief Adjutant. You’ll have the great pleasure of meeting them all while you’re here.’

‘I can’t wait.’

Kuttner smiled a knowing smile, as if he and I were already occupying the same forbidden radio frequency. ‘And you, I assume, must be Captain Gunther.’ He shook his head. ‘The Berlin accent. It’s quite unmistakable. By the way, the General doesn’t go in for the Hitler salute very much, while we’re here at the castle.’

‘That suits me. I don’t go in for Hitler salutes much myself.’

‘Yes. The General likes to keep things very informal. So mess rules apply. No belts worn.’ He nodded at my crossbelts. ‘That kind of thing.’

‘Thanks,’ I said, unbuckling the crossbelt I was wearing.

‘Also, it’s fine to introduce yourself with your SS rank but, after that, do try not to use SS ranks when describing yourself or a brother officer. Army ranks or surnames save time. The General’s very keen on saving time. He often says that while we delay time does not and that lost time is never found again. Very true, what?’

‘He’s always been very quotable, the General. You must try to write some of these sayings down. For the sake of posterity.’

Kuttner shook his head. It seemed he wasn’t quite on my own frequency after all.

‘That wouldn’t do at all. The General hates people writing down what he says. It’s an idiosyncrasy he has.’

I smiled. ‘It’s evidence, that’s what it is.’

Kuttner smiled back. ‘Yes, I see what you mean. Very good. Very good.’

‘I guess that’s why he has four adjutants,’ I added. ‘To help keep everything off the record.’

‘Yes, I hadn’t thought of that. But you could be right.’

I turned back to the golden picture in front of us. ‘Who is she, anyway?’

‘Her name is Adele Bloch-Bauer and her husband, Ferdinand, used to own this house. A Jew, which makes you wonder why Göring likes her so much. But there it is. Consistency not his strong suit, I’d say. It’s a nice copy of course but I think it a great pity that the original isn’t in the house, where it truly belongs. We’re trying to persuade the Reichsmarshal to give it back, but so far without much success. He’s like a dog with a bone when it comes to paintings, I believe. Anyway, one can easily see why he likes it so much. To say that Frau Bloch-Bauer looked like a million marks hardly seems to do her portrait justice. Wouldn’t you agree?’

I nodded and allowed myself another look, not at the painting but at Captain Kuttner. For a man who was Heydrich’s adjutant, his free and frank opinions seemed to veer toward the dangerous. A bit like my own. It was clear we had more in common than just a uniform and a keen appreciation of modern art.

‘It’s different,’ I allowed.

‘Superficially stylish, perhaps. But somehow even a copy is deeper than the gold paint, which seems almost to have been spilled onto the canvas. Eh?’

‘You sound like Bernard Berenson, Captain Kuttner.’

‘Lord, don’t say that. At least not within earshot of the General. Berenson’s a Jew.’

‘What happened to her anyway?’ I lit a cigarette. ‘To the golden lady in the picture?’

‘Sad to say, and rather ingloriously given how she looks in this painting, the poor woman died of meningitis in 1925. Still, that might turn out to be just as well, when one considers what is happening to Jews in this country. And in her native Austria.’

‘And Ferdinand? Her husband?’

‘Oh, I’ve no idea what happened to him. And I don’t much care, quite frankly. He sounds like your typical grasping Jewish merchant and he quite wisely cleared off the minute we walked into the Sudetenland. But I do know that the artist – another Austrian named Gustav Klimt – died at the beginning of the influenza epidemic in 1918, poor fellow. But he was a frequent guest here, I believe. Adele was rather fond of old Klimt, by all accounts. Perhaps a bit too fond. Funny to think of them all here, isn’t it? Especially now that General Heydrich owns the house. O quam cito transit gloria mundi.’

I nodded but said nothing. While the eccentric young adjutant seemed to be a cut above the average SD automaton, I wasn’t in the mood to mention the loss of my own wife to the influenza epidemic: if Klimt had been an early victim, my wife had been one of the very last to die of flu, in December 1920. Besides, there was something just a bit unpredictable about Captain Kuttner that made me wonder how someone like Heydrich could tolerate him. Then again, the General also managed, somehow, to tolerate me, and that spoke either of his enormous toleration – which seemed improbable – or his enormous cynicism.

Kuttner tried and failed to stifle a yawn.

‘The General working you late, is he?’

‘Sorry. No, actually I’m just not sleeping very well. Hardly at all, if I’m honest.’

‘He has the same effect on me. I’ve hardly slept a wink since I received his kind invitation to Prague. And it’s not from excitement, either.’

‘Really?’ Kuttner sounded surprised.

‘Really.’

‘You surprise me. Actually he’s been very understanding of my situation. Very understanding. He even referred me to his own doctor. He gave me something called Veronal, which is quite effective. For sleeping. Although you have to be careful not to mix it with alcohol.’

‘Then I’d better make sure I never take any.’ I grinned. ‘I’m usually very careful never to let anything stand in the way of my drinking. But what I meant was that the General’s reputation goes before him. He’s not exactly Mohandas K. Gandhi, is he? And I might sleep a little better knowing exactly why the hell I’m here. I don’t suppose you can shed any light on that, can you? In the same thoughtful and well-informed way that you have illuminated this picture for me.’

Kuttner scratched the duelling scar on his cheek. He seemed to do it when he was nervous, which was often.

‘It was my understanding that you and the General were friends.’

‘If you mean like a friend in need is a friend to be avoided, then yes we’re friends. But I guess the friends we have are probably the friends we deserve.’

‘You do surprise me, Commissar Gunther.’

‘Well, maybe you’ve put your finger on it, Captain. Maybe I’m supposed to be the licensed jester here, to make everyone else but the General feel uncomfortable. Knowing Heydrich as I do, I can easily see how that might amuse him.’

‘I can assure you that what you say simply cannot be the case. Most of the people here this weekend are the General’s most intimate friends. And he’s gone to considerable trouble to make sure that everyone enjoys themselves. Good food, excellent wine, fine brandies, the best cigars. Perhaps it’s just you who is supposed to feel uncomfortable, Commissar.’

‘That is always possible. The General always did like what the English call a Roman holiday. Where one man suffers for the pleasure of others.’

Kuttner was shaking his head. ‘Please let me reassure you, Gunther. I was joking, just now. Your fears are entirely without foundation. The General was most anxious that you should be comfortable. He chose your quarters himself. He chose everyone’s quarters. Including my own. I’ve known the General for quite a while now, off and on, and I can attest to his generosity and thoughtfulness. He’s not at all the capricious cruel man that you seem to know. Really.’

‘Yes, I’m sure you’re right, captain.’ I nodded at the femme fatale in gold. ‘All the same, I wonder if the unfortunate sugar merchant’s wife would agree with you.’

It was one of those early October afternoons that made you think winter was just a word and that there was no earthly reason why the sun should ever stop shining. The flowers in the Lower Castle’s well-tended beds were mostly pink dahlias, white asters and red marigolds, providing a riot of autumn colour – which was the only kind of riot that the SS was likely to tolerate. The lawn was as green and smooth as a python’s eyeball. Crystal glasses clinked, heels clicked, and somewhere someone was playing a piano. A soft breeze in the trees sounded like an enormous silk dress. They had turned off the sprinklers but there was strawberry cup with real strawberries and delicious Sekt so I managed to get nicely wet all the same.

About eighteen of us went in for lunch. With only another four we could have tossed a coin for kick-off. The white tablecloth was as stiff as a sail on a frozen schooner and there was enough silver on it for an army of conquistadores. Otherwise things were informal, as Captain Kuttner had promised, and I was glad we had abandoned crossbelts as the food was as spectacular as it was plentiful: pea soup with real peas and bacon, liver dumplings with real liver and real onions, Holstein Schnitzel with real veal, a real egg and real anchovies served with a real Leipziger Everything. I hardly had room for the real strudel and the real cheese that followed. The wines were equally impressive. There was a box on the table for food coupons, but no one was paying any attention to that and I figured it was just for show. I looked at it and wondered about the two Fridmann sisters in the apartment beneath mine back in Berlin and how they were getting on with the canned food I’d given them, but mostly I just kept on filling the hole in my face with food and wine and cigarette smoke. I didn’t say much. There wasn’t much need to say anything very much. Everyone paid close attention to Heydrich’s table talk, which was the usual Nazi twaddle, and it was only when he started talking about the stupidity of trying to turn Czechs into Germans that I gave my jaws a rest and let my ears take over:

‘People of good race and good intentions, they will be Germanized. Those we can’t Germanize and educate to think differently from the way they think now, we’ll have to put up against the wall. The rest – that’s potentially at least half the population of Bohemia and Moravia – they will have to be moved out and resettled in the East where they can live out their miserable days in Arctic labour camps. However, whenever we can we must act with fairness. When all is said and done, the Czechs should be made to see the advantages of cooperation over opposition. And when the current state of emergency has ended, I will increase the local food ration and do everything in my power to hunt down black-market profiteers.’

There was a lot more of this guff, and I looked at the fat faces of my fellow officers to see if anyone felt the same way about it that I did, but I saw only consent and agreement. Probably they looked at me and thought the same thing.

Among these faces there was only one, apart from Heydrich’s long, thin witch-doctor’s mask, that I recognized and this was the former Foreign Minister and ex-Reichsprotector, Konstantin von Neurath. At almost seventy, he was the oldest person at the table and easily the most deserving of respect. Not that his ambitious young successor, Heydrich, accorded him much of this. From time to time he would pat the old man on the hand like a pet dog and speak to him in a louder voice, as if the Baron were deaf, although it was quite plain to anyone who had talked to him that there was nothing at all wrong with his hearing. I suspected that von Neurath was only present to make the new Reichsprotector’s triumph complete.

Heydrich avoided conversation with me until well after we had risen from the table and were out on the terrace again with brandies and cigars – or in my case, coffee and cigarettes. It was there that he caught my eye and, having walked me down the Upper Castle’s back garden, finally explained the point of my being there.

‘You remember our conversation at my office in Berlin, the day we defeated the French. In June 1940.’

‘I remember it very well. How could I forget the day when Germany defeated France? So that’s what this is all about.’

‘Yes. Again, someone is trying to kill me.’

I shrugged. ‘Any number of Czechos must want you dead, sir. I assume that we’re not discussing one of them.’

‘Naturally.’

‘Has there been a recent attempt on your life?’

‘You mean, am I imagining this?’

‘All right then. Are you?’

‘No. There was an attempt made to kill me just days ago. A serious attempt.’

‘When, where and how?’

‘At the Wolf’s Lair. Hitler’s own field headquarters, in East Prussia. Yes, I thought that would surprise you. As a matter of fact I was surprised myself. It was September 24th. I had been summoned to Rastenburg to be told by Hitler that he was appointing me as von Neurath’s successor, here in Bohemia. Well that’s the when and where. The how is that someone tried to poison me. Toxicologists in the SD’s laboratories are still trying to isolate the particular substance that was used. However, they’re inclined to believe that it may have been a protein-based toxin called botulinum. From Latin botulus, meaning sausage.’

‘That sounds especially lethal, for a German.’

‘It’s a bacterium that often causes poisoning by growing in improperly handled meat. I might have assumed it was just a simple case of food poisoning were it not for the fact that some of our SS doctors have been trying to synthesize it and other antibiotic compounds such as sulphanilamide. As a means of treating wound infection. But also as a compound neurotoxin. Or to put it another way, as a poison.’

‘Perhaps it was a simple case of food poisoning,’ I said. ‘Have you considered that possibility?’

‘I’ve considered it. And I’ve rejected it. You see mine was the only food that was contaminated. Fortunately I wasn’t hungry and didn’t eat. Instead I fed the food off my plate to Major Ploetz’s dog, which subsequently died. Obviously the Leader could not have been the target because he is vegetarian. Naturally, all inquiries that could be made without alarming the Leader were made; and all of the foreign workers at the Wolf’s Lair were replaced, as a precaution. But so far, nothing has been discovered that sheds any light on who was responsible for the incident. And there I feel we have to leave the matter. At least as far as Rastenburg is concerned. As I say, I have no wish to alarm or embarrass the Leader. But here in Prague I am able to take other precautions. You, Gunther, are to be one of these precautions, if you agree.’

‘So you want me to do what? Be your food taster?’ I shrugged. ‘You should have mentioned this before lunch. I’d have sat beside you.’

Heydrich shook his head.

‘Keep a lookout for someone who might be trying to kill you? Is that it?’

‘Yes. In effect I want you to be my personal bodyguard,’ said Heydrich.

‘You mean you have four adjutants and no bodyguard?’

‘Klein, my driver, is quite capable of pulling out a gun and shooting at some witless Czecho. As am I. But I want someone around me who understands murder and murderers, and who can handle himself, to boot. A proper detective who is trained to be suspicious.’

‘The Gestapo isn’t known to be naïve in my experience.’

‘I want someone who is usefully suspicious as opposed to officious.’

‘Yes, I see the difference.’

‘And since I can’t offer the position to Hercule Poirot naturally I thought of you.’

‘Hercule Poirot?’

Heydrich shook his head. ‘A fictional detective created by an English lady novelist. It doesn’t matter. You’re obviously not a reader. He’s very popular. And so is she.’

I shook my head. ‘You know that most bodyguards are supposed to care about what happens to their employers, don’t you?’

Heydrich grinned. This didn’t happen very often, and when it did his youngish, beaky face looked more like a nasty schoolboy’s.

‘Meaning you’re not qualified, is that it?’

‘Something like that.’

‘I can get any number of “yes” men from the SD,’ said Heydrich. ‘The trouble is, will they be honest with me? Will they tell me unpalatable truths? What I need to know? And can I trust them?’

‘It’s true, sir. Without a gun in my hand you’re not an easy man to contradict.’

‘You, I’ve known for five years. I know you’re not Himmler’s man. I know you’re not even a Nazi. I know you probably hate my guts. But while you almost certainly dislike me I don’t believe you would actually murder me. In other words, I can trust you, Gunther; trust you not to kill me; and trust you to tell me those unpleasant truths that others would shrink from. That seems to me to be essential for what I need from a bodyguard.

‘Of course, in many ways you’re a fool. Only a fool would continue to remain in the police without joining the Party. Only a fool would remain sentimental about the Weimar Republic. Only a fool could fail to see that the new Germany cannot be resisted. But I have to admit, you’re a clever and resourceful fool. I can use that. Most important of all, you’re a damned good policeman. If you become my detective you’ll have a room here at the Lower Castle; your own car; and an office at Hradschin castle, in the city. From time to time you’ll even get to see that charming little whore you brought with you from Berlin. What’s her name? Arianne, isn’t it?’

That surprised me, although I suppose it ought not have done; there wasn’t much that happened in Prague that Heydrich didn’t know about.

‘Frankly I’m not at all sure what she sees in you. The sort of woman who goes to the Jockey Bar is usually looking for someone with a bit more vitamin B than you have, Gunther. Of course, that particular disadvantage will be quickly remedied if you agree to take this position. Suddenly your status will be improved. You’ll forgive me for saying so, but this is an important job.’

Throughout our conversation Heydrich’s long thin pianist’s hands were deep in the pockets of his uniform’s riding breeches and this seemed to make his horseman’s bandy legs even more U-shaped than normal. Now he pulled them out and from the pocket of his fart-catcher – an SD service tunic that was covered with so many gold and silver badges it looked more like a priest’s reliquary – he produced a small silver cigarette case and offered me one. ‘Smoke?’

‘Thank you, sir.’

Finding a match, I lit us both.

‘So what do you say?’

‘Just how honest do you want me to be, General? Imprudently honest? Unflinchingly honest? Or just brutally honest? And what’s in it for me apart from some more vitamins in my otherwise lousy diet? One of those opinion reflectors on your breast pocket if I manage to keep you alive? Or a oneway ticket on the partisan express if I don’t?’

‘Whenever we’re alone you can say what the hell you want. At least on matters concerning my personal security. In fact I’m counting on it. On everything else – politics, government, racial policy – your stupid Republican opinions are of no interest to me and you’ll have to keep your trap shut. As for what’s in it for you, I should have thought that was obvious. You’ll have free board and lodging, of course. And look around. We Germans live well here in Bohemia. Better than in Berlin. Good food, good wine, plenty of cigarettes and women – should your tastes run to more than one woman at a time. I know mine do. It’s all to be had here in Prague. And if I am unlucky enough to be murdered by our own side, all I ask is that you present the evidence to Arthur Nebe or Walter Schellenberg. Between them they’ll find some way of putting it in front of Martin Bormann.’

‘All right, General. But here’s my price. That you have to listen, now, to some of those stupid Republican views that you mentioned. The ones regarding politics and government and racial policy you said are of no interest to you. I’ll say my piece and you listen. And when I’ve done, I’ll do what you ask. I’ll be your detective.’

Heydrich’s eyes narrowed. I preferred his profile. When you saw his profile it meant he wasn’t looking at you. When he looked at you it was only too easy to feel like the helpless prey of some deadly animal. It was a face without expression behind which some ruthless calculation was in progress. He flicked away his half-smoked cigarette and glanced at the Rolex on his wrist.

‘All right. You’ve got five minutes. But it won’t do any good, you know. When the panzers have finished doing their work in Russia what you say now will seem quite irrelevant. Even to you, Gunther. Even to you. We’ll make a Nazi of you yet.’

After lunch Heydrich and Generals Frank, Henlein, Hildebrandt and von Eberstein, a couple of colonels, and three of the adjutants convened a meeting in the castle library, leaving me and some others to amuse ourselves. Which is probably overstating what I was likely to do.

I was feeling tired, which was a combination of good wine and the adrenalin that was still in my blood after telling Heydrich what I really thought about his aim of Germanizing the Czech population, as well as several words on what was happening in the Ukraine. True to his word Heydrich listened for exactly five minutes, after which he walked silently back to the house leaving me feeling like a novitiate toreador who has just taunted his first bull. Perhaps I was still a little suicidal. It’s the only possible explanation for what I’d done.

For a while I contemplated returning to my room and having a sleep; I also contemplated returning to the Imperial Hotel and spending what remained of my life with Arianne, but I was unable to find Klein or anyone who could organize me a car and, mindful of the warm sunshine, I went for a walk in the castle grounds instead.

Naturally, I was unnerved by how much Heydrich already seemed to know about Arianne. But, more importantly, I was already regretting my candour with him, which I attributed to the amount of alcohol I had consumed during lunch. And I asked myself how long it would be before a couple of SS guards came and fetched me for execution at some pit that was even now being dug in the adjacent forest. That was surely one advantage of living in the countryside: there was always plenty of space to bury a body.

Half-convinced that this was to be my fate, I found myself heading out of the front gates, smiling a nervous smile at the stone-faced sentry, and then setting off up the fairy-tale road in the general direction of the Upper Castle. This wasn’t exactly an escape but I needed to be away from my so-called colleagues.

Thinking about escape I got to wondering about Ferdinand Bloch-Bauer, the Jewish sugar merchant whose estate this had once been. Had the statues been placed at the gates by him, or the aristocrat who had owned the house before? And where was he now? England? America? Switzerland? Or was he one of those unfortunate Czech Jews who’d fled to France thinking it was safe there only to find it overrun with Nazis in 1940? Time would tell who had been luckier – Ferdinand or his late wife, Adele.

Further along the quiet road I came in sight of the Orthodox chapel, and as I rounded the bend I saw the matching pink gateway of the Upper Castle and, walking toward me, another SS officer – a General whom I recognized from lunch but whose name eluded me. I wasn’t wearing a cap or belts and neither was he, which meant I was able to forgo a salute. All the same I came to attention as he got nearer. I’d irritated enough SS generals for one day.

Even in uniform this General was a poor example of the master race. A bespectacled Himmler type with thinning hair, a wide mouth and a double chin, he was one of those pale, bloodless Nazis that reminded me of a very cold fish on a very white plate. Nevertheless, he smiled and stopped to talk, rippling his fingers in the air as though he was playing the upper register of a church organ as he tried to remember who I was.

‘Ah yes, now you’re—’

‘Hauptsturmführer Gunther, sir.’

‘Yes. Now I have it. You’re the Police Commissar from Berlin, are you not? The Kripo detective.’

‘That’s right, sir.’

‘I’m Jury, Doctor Hugo Jury. No reason why you should remember me either, especially after a lunch like that, eh? I’ll say one thing for our new Reichsprotector, he knows how to entertain. That’s the best lunch I’ve eaten in God knows how long.’

Jury was an Austrian, his accent – or rather his vocabulary – unmistakably Viennese.

‘Walk with me for a while if you will, Captain. I’d like to hear more about the exciting life of a real Berlin detective.’

‘If you like, sir. But there’s not much to tell. I’m forty-three years old. I got my school certificate but didn’t go to university. The war got in the way and then there didn’t seem to be much call for a degree when there was a more urgent call to make a living and earn some money. So I joined the police and got married to a woman who died almost immediately afterward. Influenza they called it, but these days I’m not so sure. A lot of different illnesses got swept into that bin by a lot of overworked doctors and by some who were maybe not so much overworked as just inexperienced or even incompetent.’

‘And you’d be absolutely right to have doubts. I should know. You see, I’m not one of these legal doctors we seem to be overrun with these days. I’m a medical man. I took my degree in 1911 and the chances are that I was one of those overworked, inexperienced and very possibly incompetent doctors you were talking about. During the influenza epidemic I remember sleeping for less than four hours a night. Hardly a recipe for good medical care, is it? Throughout the Twenties I was a specialist in tuberculosis. TB’s one of those infectious diseases that present a lot of symptoms that are common to influenza. Indeed, I’ve sometimes thought that what we thought was a flu virus was actually pneumonia brought on by a massive outbreak of TB. But that’s another story.’

‘I’d like to hear it sometime.’

‘If I may ask: How old was she? Your wife?’

‘Twenty-two.’

‘I’m sorry. That’s young. Very young. And you’ve never remarried?’

‘Not so far, sir. Most women don’t seem to find my being a Berlin detective as exciting as you.’

‘I’ve been married for almost thirty years and I can’t imagine what I’d have done without my wife, Karoline.’

‘You’ll forgive me for saying so, sir, but I can’t imagine you’re an SS general because you’re a doctor, sir.’

‘No. I’m the District Leader of Moravia. And head of the Party Liaison Office in Prague. Before the war I was deputy leader of the Nazi Party in Austria. And if all of that sounds important, well, it isn’t. Not any longer. Not since General Heydrich took over. I had hoped to persuade the Leader to break up the Protectorate in order that Moravia could become a separate state. Which is really what it’s always been. But that isn’t going to happen. Or so I’ve been told. I had also hoped to be able to discuss the matter with Heydrich, but one of his minions told me that this wouldn’t be possible. Which leaves me rather wondering why I bothered to come along on this little weekend. In the circumstances, I’m surprised that I was asked at all.’

‘That makes two of us, sir. General Heydrich and I were never what you might call close. Then again, one hesitates to decline such an invitation.’

‘Quite so.’

By now we were about halfway back down the road to the Lower Castle and during our stroll no traffic had passed us, not even a man on a bicycle or a horse. Somewhere in the distance shots were being fired; presumably one of Heydrich’s guests was trying to bag something for the pot. There were certainly plenty of pheasants about. Up ahead we saw Captain Kuttner standing in the Lower Castle gateway; and seeing us, he threw down his cigarette and ran toward us.

He was light on his toes; but there was also something vaguely girlish about the elbows-out way he ran.

‘I loathe this little bastard,’ murmured Doctor Jury. ‘This is the cunt who told me I wasn’t going to be able to have any time with General Heydrich.’ Jury let out a sigh. ‘Just look at him. Little fucker.’

‘Hmm.’

‘Like all of the General’s henchmen he’s a bit of a golem. Except that he’s a German, of course. The original Golem of Prague was—’

‘Jewish. Yes, I know.’

‘Like his master.’ Doctor Jury smiled. ‘Rabbi Loew that is. Not General Heydrich.’

Kuttner clicked his heels and bowed a curt little bow. ‘General,’ he said. ‘Captain. I regret I forgot to inform you both that for security reasons if you leave the grounds of the Lower Castle you will need a password to get back in.’

‘And that is?’ asked Doctor Jury.

‘Lohengrin.’

‘Very appropriate.’

‘Sir?’

‘The new king has assembled all of the German tribes in order to expel the Hungarians from his dominions,’ said Doctor Jury. ‘That’s the plot of Wagner’s opera. Or at least, that’s how it begins.’

‘Oh. I didn’t know. Unlike you, sir, I don’t go to the opera very often. In fact, hardly at all.’

‘Hmm. Waste of a life.’

‘Sir?’

‘You seem to be as ignorant as you are stupid,’ said Jury. Then he smiled at me, bowed slightly, and said: ‘Nice talking to you, Captain Gunther.’

He walked quickly down toward the sentry box and then, having uttered the password, passed through the gate leaving me alone with Captain Kuttner.

‘Bastard,’ said Kuttner. ‘Did you hear what he said? How unbelievably rude.’

‘I wouldn’t let it bother you, Captain. I don’t much like opera either. Especially Wagner. There’s something about Wagner that’s just too piss-German, too fucking Bavarian for a Prussian like me. I like my music to be every bit as vulgar as I am myself. I like a bit of innuendo and stocking top when a woman’s singing a song.’

Kuttner smiled. ‘Thanks,’ he said. ‘But the real reason why Doctor Jury likes opera so much is every bit as vulgar as you describe. Rumour has it that he’s been having an affair with a young singer at the Deutsches Oper in Berlin. Rather an attractive creature by the name of Elisabeth Schwarzkopf. And that would be vulgar enough were it not for the fact that she’s also singing a duet with Doctor Goebbels. At least, that’s what General Heydrich says.’

‘Then it must be true.’

‘Yes, that’s what I thought.’

‘General Heydrich always knows our dirtiest little secrets.’

‘Oh God, I hope not.’

‘Well, he certainly knows mine,’ I said. ‘You see, after lunch we went for a short walk in the castle grounds and I made the mistake of reminding him exactly what they are, just in case he’d forgotten.’

‘I hardly think that can be true. Not if he’s appointed you as his new bodyguard.’ Kuttner lit a cigarette. ‘Is it true? That you’re going to be his detective?’

‘I had thought I might have been arrested by now. So it would seem so.’

‘Congratulations.’

‘I’m not so sure about that.’

‘You’re right, it won’t be easy. But he’s fair, you know. And a good man to have on your side. I don’t know what would have happened to my SS career if he hadn’t taken me on. By the way, how’s your stomach for flying?’

‘Not good.’

‘What a pity. The General insists on flying himself to Berlin and Rastenburg. Frankly, I’m always terrified. He thinks he’s a much better pilot than he really is. He’s had several crashes.’

‘That’s a comforting thought.’ I shrugged. ‘Perhaps we’ll get lucky and end up in Scotland. Like Hess.’

‘Yes. Quite.’ Kuttner laughed. ‘Still, I hate to think what would happen if we ever flew into some real trouble.’

‘As a matter of fact that’s what I was doing just now. Looking for trouble. I thought I’d get out of the house and scout the area.’

Kuttner winced, noticeably.

‘The lie of the land, so to speak,’ he said.

‘Yes. Generally, trouble sort of comes looking for me, so I don’t have to venture too far. I’ve always been lucky that way.’

‘Quite a few of us in the SS have been lucky that way, don’t you think?’ Kuttner sighed a faint sigh of regret. ‘With trouble. Frankly, I’ve had a bit of a rough summer.’

‘You’ve been east, too, huh?’

Kuttner nodded. ‘How did you know?’

I shrugged. ‘I look at you and maybe I see something of myself.’

‘Yes. That must be it.’

‘Where were you posted?’

‘Riga.’

‘I was in Minsk.’

‘How was that?’

‘Loathsome. And Riga?’

‘The same. And really quite unnecessary, a lot of it. You go to war, you expect to kill people. I was almost looking forward to it; to being in action. When one is young one has such romantic ideas of what war is like. But it was nothing like that, of course.’

‘No. It never is.’

Kuttner tried to smile, but the part he needed inside himself to make the smile work properly was broken. He knew it. And I knew it.

‘It’s an odd state of affairs, don’t you think, when a man feels guilty for doing his duty and obeying orders?’ He took a sharp drag of the cigarette he was smoking as if he hoped it might suddenly kill him. ‘Not that guilt even begins to cover the way I feel.’

‘Believe me, Captain, I know exactly how you feel.’

‘Do you? Yes. I can see that you do. It’s in your eyes.’

‘And that’s the reason you’re not sleeping?’

‘Can you?’ Kuttner shook his head. ‘I don’t think I’ll ever sleep, properly, again. Not ever. Not in this life.’

‘Talk about it now, if it makes you feel any better.’

‘Does it make you feel any better? To talk about it?’

‘Not much. I talked about it once, quite recently, to an American journalist. And I felt a little better about it. I felt that it was at least a start.’

Kuttner nodded and then dredged up something from his memory. I didn’t have to wait long.

‘When you mentioned scouting the area, it made me think of something. Something awful. We were on our way through Poland. This was before our assignment in Riga. We had stopped at a town called Chechlo. It’s a broken-down, shit-on-your-shoes, nowhere sort of place with a lot of drooling peasants whose tongues are too big for their mouths. But I don’t suppose I shall ever forget it now; not for as long as I live. We had been burning down Polack villages for no real reason that I could see. Certainly there was no military necessity in it. We were just throwing our weight around like brutes. Some of my men were drunk and nearly all of them were animals. Anyway, we came across a troop of Polish boy scouts. The oldest of them couldn’t have been more than sixteen and the youngest perhaps as young as twelve. And my commanding officer ordered me to put all of them up against a wall and shoot them. Shoot them all. They were in uniform, he said and we have orders to shoot anyone in uniform who hasn’t surrendered. I said they were just schoolboys who didn’t know any better because they didn’t speak German, but he didn’t want to know. Orders are orders, he said, get on with it. I remember their mothers screaming at me to stop. Yes, I’ll always remember that. I wake up sometimes still hearing them beg me to stop. But I didn’t. I had my orders. So I carried them out, you see. And that’s all there is to it. Except it isn’t, of course. Not by a long way.’

After several stiff drinks I can talk to anyone, even to myself. But mostly I was drinking so that I could talk to Heydrich’s other guests. I like to talk. Talking is something you need to do if you’re ever going to encourage a man to talk back at you. And you need a man to talk a little if he’s ever going to say something of interest. Men don’t trust other men who don’t say much, and for the same reason they don’t trust men who don’t drink. You need a drink to say the wrong thing, and sometimes, saying the wrong thing can be exactly the right thing to say. I don’t know if I was expecting to hear anything as romantic as a confession to an attempted murder, or even a desire to see Heydrich dead. After all, I felt that way about him myself. It was just talk, a little bread on the water to bring the fish around. And the alcohol helped. It helped me to talk and to anaesthetize myself against the more revolting chat that came my way. But some of my colleagues were just revolting. As I glanced around the library it was like looking at a menagerie of unpleasant animals – rats, jackals, vultures, hyenas – who had sat for some bizarre group portrait.

It’s hard to say exactly who was the worst of the bunch, but I didn’t speak to Lieutenant Colonel Walter Jacobi for very long before I was itching all over and counting my fingers. The deputy head of the SD in Prague was a deeply sinister figure with – he told me – an interest in magic and the occult. It was a subject I knew a little about, having investigated a case involving a fake medium a few years back. We talked about that and we talked about Munich, which was where he was from; we talked about him studying law at the universities of Jena, Tübingen and Halle – which seemed like a lot of law; and we even talked about his father, who was a bookseller. But all the time we were talking I was trying to get over the fact that with his Charlie Chaplin moustache, his wire-framed glasses and his praying-mantis personality, Jacobi reminded me, obscenely, of what might have resulted if Hitler and Himmler had been left alone in the same bedroom: Jacobi was a Hitler–Himmler hybrid.

Equally unpleasant to talk to was Hermann Frank, the tall thin SS general from the Sudetenland who’d been passed over to succeed von Neurath as the new Reichsprotector. Frank had a glass eye, having lost the real one in a fight at school in Carlsbad, which seemed to indicate an early propensity to violence. It was the right eye that was fake, I think, but with Frank you had the idea he might have changed it around just to keep you guessing. Frank had a low opinion of Czechs, although as things turned out they had an even lower opinion of him: five thousand people filled the courtyard of Pankrac Prison in the centre of Prague to see him hanged the old Austrian Empire way one summer’s day in 1946.

‘They’re a greedy barbarous people,’ he told me candidly. ‘I don’t feel in the least bit Czech. The best thing that ever happened to me was to be born in the German-speaking part of the country, otherwise I’d be speaking their filthy Slavic language now, which is nothing more than a bastardized form of Russian. It’s a language for animals, I tell you. Do you know that it’s possible to speak a whole sentence in Czech without using a single vowel?’

Surprised at this startling display of hatred I blinked and said, ‘Oh? Like what, for example?’

Frank thought for a moment and then repeated some words in Czech which might or might not have had some vowels only I didn’t feel like looking inside his mouth to see if he was hiding any.

‘It means “stick a finger through your throat”,’ he said. ‘And every time I hear a Czech speak, that’s exactly what I want to do to them.’

‘All right. You hate them. I get the picture. And losing your eye at school like that must have been pretty tough. It explains a lot, I guess. I went to a pretty tough school myself and there are some boys I might like to get even with one day. Then again, probably not. Life’s too short to care, I think. And now you’re in such an important position, sir – the police leader in Bohemia, effectively the second most powerful man in the country – well, that’s the part I don’t understand at all, sir. Why do you hate the Czechs so much, General?’

Frank straightened absurdly. It was almost as if he was coming to attention before answering – an effect enhanced by the fact that he was wearing spurs on his boots, which seemed an odd affectation to me, even in Heydrich’s country home, which had stables, with horses in them. Pompously, he said:

‘As Germans it’s our duty to hate them. It was the failure of the Czech banks that helped to precipitate the financial crisis that brought about the Great Depression. Yes, it’s the Czech bankers we can thank for that disaster.’

Resisting my first instinct, which was to shiver with disgust as if Frank had vomited onto my boots, I nodded politely.

‘I always thought that was because our economy was built on American loans,’ I said. ‘And when they came due our own German banks failed.’

Frank was shaking his head, which was full of grey hair combed straight back so that the top of his head seemed to be in a line with the tip of his longish nose. It wasn’t the biggest nose in the room so long as Heydrich was around, but at the same time you wouldn’t have been surprised to see it pointing out the way at a crossroads.

‘Take it from me, Gunther,’ he said. ‘I do know what I’m talking about. I know this damnable country better than anyone in the fucking room.’

Frank spoke with some vigour and he was looking at Heydrich as he did, which made me wonder if there was not some grudge he nursed for his new master.

I was glad when Frank walked away to fetch himself another drink, leaving me with the impression that spending an eternity with men like Heydrich, Jacobi and Frank was the nearest thing to being in hell that I could think of.

But the Knight’s Cross with Oak Leaves and Berries – for that matter the whole damned tree – for the curling turd of the evening went to Colonel Doctor Hans Geschke, a 34-year-old lawyer from Frankfurt on the Oder who was chief of the Gestapo in Prague. While studying in Berlin, he’d seen my name in the newspapers, and in spite of our differences in rank, this was a good enough reason for him to try to make common cause with me. Which is another way of saying he needed someone to patronize.

‘After all,’ he explained, ‘we’re both policemen you and I, doing a difficult job, in very difficult circumstances.’

‘So it would seem, sir.’

‘And I like to keep abreast of ordinary crime,’ he said. ‘Here in Prague we have to deal with more serious stuff than some Fritz slicing his wife up with a broken beer bottle.’

‘There’s not so much of that around, sir. Beer bottles are in rather short supply in Berlin.’

He wasn’t listening.

‘You should come in and see us very soon, at the Pecek Palace. That’s in the Bredovska district of the city.’

‘A palace, eh? It sounds a lot grander than the Alex, sir.’

‘Oh no. To be quite honest with you it’s hard to see how it was ever a palace except in some dark corner of Hades. Even the executive rooms have very little charm.’

Geschke’s was a waxwork’s expressionless face. Captain Kuttner had said that at the Pecek Palace Geschke was known as ‘Babyface’, but this could only have been among people who knew some very frightening babies with duelling scars on their left cheeks. Geschke was one of those factory-manufactured Nazis they turned out like unpainted Meissen porcelain: pale, cold, hard, and best handled with extreme care.

‘I haven’t seen much of the city yet,’ I said. ‘But it does seem rather infernal.’

Geschke grinned. ‘Well, we do our best in that respect. So long as they fear us, they do what they’re told. We mustn’t let these Czechos make fools of us, you see. We have to be the master in our own house, so we can’t afford to overlook any wrong. We really can’t. You let them get away with one thing, there will be no end to it. But tell me, Gunther. In the Weimar Republic, when you had a suspect at the Alex and he refused to cooperate, what did you do? How on earth did you manage?’

‘We never hit anyone, if that’s what you’re driving at, sir. We weren’t allowed to. The Prussian Police Regulations forbade it. Oh, some cops smacked a suspect around now and then, but the bosses didn’t like that. We got results because we got the evidence. Once you have the evidence it’s hard for a man not to sign a confession. Find the evidence and everything else follows. We were good at that: finding evidence. The Berlin Detective Service was, for a while, the envy of the world and its backbone was the police commissars.’

‘But weren’t you at all frustrated by the stupidities of Prussian justice? Sometimes it seemed to be absurd that penal servitude for life rarely ever lasted longer than twelve years. And that so many criminals deserving of their death sentences were reprieved by the Prussian government. For example, those two Jews, Saffran and Kipnik. Remember them?’

I shrugged. ‘Honestly? I can think of many others I’d like to see under the falling axe before those two. Why, just a few months ago there was the S-Bahn murderer case. Fellow named Paul Ogorzow who killed six or seven women and tried to kill as many more again. Now, he deserved his fate.’

‘Is it true that he was a Party member?’

‘Yes.’

‘Unbelievable.’

‘Lots of other people thought so, too. That’s probably why it took so long to catch him. But what you were saying is absolutely right. We can’t afford to overlook any wrong. Especially when it’s a wrong committed by our own, don’t you think?’

‘Ah, now there speaks a true policeman.’

‘I like to think so, sir.’

‘Well, if there’s anything I can do to help you, Gunther, in your new capacity as the General’s personal detective, then please let me know.’ Geschke raised his glass and bowed. ‘Anything to help General Heydrich and keep him safe for the new Germany.’

‘Thank you, sir.’

I glanced around the room and tried to picture which, if any, of the General’s guests might actually try to poison him and found that in the new Germany it wasn’t so hard. In a room full of murderers anything seemed possible.

About halfway through this unforgettable evening Major Dr Ploetz, Heydrich’s First Adjutant and number one myrmidon, turned on the library radio so that we could listen to Hitler’s speech from the Sports Palast, in Berlin.

‘Gentlemen, please,’ he said, while the radio was warming up. ‘If I could ask you to be silent.’

‘Thank you, Hans-Achim,’ said Heydrich, as if he and not the Leader had been at the microphone. And then solemnly, as the sound of the Sports Palast crept into that room, he intoned: ‘The Leader.’

It was typically thoughtful of Heydrich. I suppose he thought it would be a treat for those of us who were feeling a little homesick. And it was: a bit like hearing my mother reading the old story of how the bad boy Friedrich terrorized a lot of animals and people. It remained to be seen if the Third Reich’s ranting answer to bad Friedrich might yet be bitten by the same dog that had eaten the naughty boy’s sausages but, for me at any rate, there was always the hope that he would be. It was hard to think of a treat half as enjoyable as the idea of the Leader being bitten by a greedy dog. His own, perhaps.

In the corridor outside the library a man was on the telephone, and I poked my head out of the door to see who among Heydrich’s guests had dared to make or take a call in the middle of Hitler’s speech. Whoever he was I certainly didn’t blame him. Even at the best of times the Leader was always too loud for me. Probably he’d honed his oratorical skills in the trenches, during bombardments.

Not that you couldn’t have heard every rasping word of the broadcast in the corridor. The radio was an AEG Super Orchestra as big as a Polish peasant’s barn, and with the speech playing at full volume there was no chance of not hearing it almost anywhere in the house. Probably you could have heard the speech at the centre of the earth.

‘No, you did the right thing in calling me here, Sergeant Soppa.’

The man speaking was Oscar Fleischer, head of the Gestapo’s Resistance Section in Prague – the same man who had been taunted so infamously by one of the Three Kings.

‘All right, I’ll be there in half an hour. Just don’t let the bastard die until I get there. He did? So it was him after all.’

Fleischer caught my eye and turned his back on me.

‘No, no, I’m perfectly certain he’ll want to know. Yes, of course I’ll tell him. I’ll do it right now. Yes. Goodbye.’

Fleischer replaced the telephone and, grinning excitedly, scribbled something on a piece of paper before handing it to Captain Pomme and then running upstairs, two steps at a time.

I lit a cigarette and drifted out into the corridor next to Captain Pomme.

‘Good news?’ I asked.

‘I should say so,’ said the adjutant and went back into the library without further eludication.

I was about to follow when I glanced out the window above the telephone and had a good view of Heydrich’s other adjutants – Kuttner and Kluckholn – standing under the flagpole on the front lawn. Although the window was open, I couldn’t hear what was said – not with the radio in the library so loud – but it was plain that a heated argument was in progress, indeed that the two men were on the edge of exchanging blows. I was about to go outside and play Saturday night policeman when Kuttner strode angrily up the drive toward the gatehouse. A moment later Fleischer, wearing belts and his cap, galloped downstairs again and went straight out the front door as a car drew up and then took him away in a furious spray of gravel.

A little disappointed that I was not going to break up a fight between two SS officers, I turned my attention back to what was being broadcast in the library.

Hitler’s speech was the traditional opening of the Winter Relief Campaign. This was the Nazi Party’s annual charitable drive to provide food and shelter for the less fortunate during the coming winter months and was as near as it ever got to real socialism. Failure to donate was not an option. People who forgot to donate were quite likely to find their names in the local newspaper. Or sometimes, worse.

Hitler’s oratorical style for the Winter Relief speech was calculated to impress rather more than the actual content and usually it wasn’t so much what he said as the way he said it. But my normal reaction was that it was a little like listening to Emil Jannings recite a bit of cudgel verse, Caruso singing a song from a Silly Symphony or Mark Antony eulogizing a dead cat. This year it was different, however, as it soon became clear that there was more at stake than a few fat Germans going hungry in January. As well as the more predictable bromides about the glory of giving and being generous – something that was second nature to us Germans, of course – the Leader proceeded to make an announcement concerning the beginning of ‘the great decisive battle of the coming year’, which would be devastating to the enemy.

Now many of us in that library and in the country at large were already under the impression that ‘the great decisive battle’ was already as good as won. We had certainly been told as much by Doctor Goebbels on several previous occasions. But here was Hitler more or less admitting that he’d bet the family silver on what was yet to happen, that he’d gambled all of our futures on something that was not a cast-iron certainty; and the upshot was that anyone listening to him now was left inescapably with the distinct idea that things in the East were not going entirely to plan for our hitherto invincible armed forces.

When the speech and the thunderous applause that greeted it in the Sports Palast had finally concluded and the AEG radio was, at last, turned off by Major Dr Ploetz, it was immediately apparent that there were several others in that library who had the same thought as me: someone in the government – Hitler himself, perhaps? – had woken up to the painful reality of just what Germany had undertaken to do in Russia. And this being the Third Reich of course, which was based on lies, it meant that things were probably much worse than we had been told.

Our sombre faces told the same grim story. Indeed, General von Eberstein, who was some big noise in the SS general staff, may actually have muttered some desperate imprecation to a God who was certainly some place else, if anywhere at all. General Hildebrandt, who was Heydrich’s equivalent rank in Danzig, merely hurled his cigarette into the fireplace as if he was as disgusted with it as he was with everything else.

This might have been what prompted Heydrich to say a few words, to resurrect our visible lack of enthusiasm. More likely it was Fleischer’s handwritten note that Captain Pomme had handed him a few minutes earlier. Heydrich himself was grinning like he’d just eaten the last slice of honey-cake.

‘Gentlemen,’ he said. ‘If I could have your attention for just a few more minutes. I’ve been given a note by Criminal Commissar Fleischer of the Gestapo, which contains some excellent news. As most of you know, since May of this year we’ve had two of the Three Kings – Josef Balaban and Josef Masin – in custody at Pankrac Prison, here in Prague. These are, of course, two of the three leaders of Czech terrorism here in Bohemia. However, the third king, Melchior, as we like to call him, has eluded us. Until now. It seems that one of our two prisoners – I don’t know which, but somehow I feel sure that his name must be Josef – has agreed to cooperate with our inquiries and, finally, has revealed that Melchior’s real name is Vaclav Moravek, formerly a captain in the Czech Army. We have already begun a search for him here in Prague and at his home town of Kolin, near Losany, and it is now expected that we shall shortly make an arrest.’

I felt oddly sick. It seemed that while we’d been stuffing ourselves with Veal Holstein and Leipziger Everything, a brave man had been tortured into revealing the name of the most wanted man in the Third Reich.

‘Bravo,’ said one of my brother officers, an Abwehr major named Thummel.

Others also present applauded this news, which seemed to please Heydrich no end, and there he might, and perhaps should, have left the matter. But full of his own importance, Heydrich continued to talk for several more minutes. He was not, however, a public speaker. Self-conscious and calculating, he lacked Hitler’s common touch and rhetorical flourish. His voice was pitched too high to inspire men; worst of all, he used a string of big German words where one or two smaller ones would have worked better. Of course, this was typical of the Nazis, for whom language was often used to mask their own ignorance and stupidity – which they possessed in an inexhaustible supply – as well as to give their words the placebo effect of authority; like a doctor who has an impressive Latin name for what is wrong with you, but sadly not a cure.

Fortunately for everyone present, Captain Kuttner and Kritzinger the butler appeared with champagne and a tray of Bohemian glass flutes, and before long there was something of a party atmosphere in that library. I drank a glass without much pleasure and, when I thought I was unobserved, I slipped away onto the terrace and smoked a cigarette in the darkness. It felt like somewhere I belonged – a crepuscular world of creatures that hooted and howled and where one might hide to avoid larger predators.

After a while I glanced through the leaded library window and seeing no sign of Heydrich, I decided I might sneak off to bed. But I had not reckoned on Heydrich’s study being immediately at the top of the first flight of stairs; the doors were open and he was seated behind his desk signing some papers under the cold bespectacled eye of Colonel Jacobi. Insouciantly I headed toward the north wing corridor and my room; but if I had hoped not to catch the General’s eye I was quickly disappointed.

‘Gunther,’ he said, hardly looking up from his signature file. ‘Come in.’

‘Very well, sir.’

Entering Heydrich’s study in the Lower Castle at Jungfern-Breschan I had the distinct feeling that I was in a smaller, more intimate version of the Leader’s own study at the Reich Chancellery, and this would have been typical of Heydrich. Not that there was very much that was small or intimate about that room. The ceiling was about four metres high and there were marble relief columns on the walls, a fireplace as big as a Mercedes, and enough green carpet on the floor for a decent game of golf. The refectory-style desk had more glass protecting its smooth oak surface than a good-sized shop window. On this were a marble-urn lamp, a couple of telephones, a leather blotter, an ink-stand, and a brass model of a plane – quite possibly the same Siebel Fh 104 he used to fly himself to and from Berlin. In the arched window was a bronze bust of the Leader, and behind a throne-sized desk chair was a green silk wall-hanging with a gold German eagle holding onto a laurel wreath enclosing a swastika, as if it was something worth stealing.

Heydrich put down his fountain pen and leaned back in the chair.

‘That girl back at your hotel,’ he said. ‘Arianne Tauber. Have you called her to tell her you won’t be coming to see her tonight?’

‘Not yet, sir.’

‘Then don’t. Have Klein drive you into Prague. I think I will be safe enough tonight, don’t you?’

‘If you say so sir.’

‘Oh no. In future it’s for you to say so. That was rather the point of your appointment. But I’m sure you’ll get the hang of it. Meet me at Pecek Palace tomorrow morning at ten o’ clock. I have a meeting there to coordinate the arrest of this Moravek fellow.’

‘Very well, sir. And thank you.’

I may even have clicked my heels and bowed my head. Working for Heydrich was like being friendly with a vicious tom cat while you were looking around for the nearest mouse hole.