Prussian Blue

FORTY-TWO

Friedrich Korsch and I watched the Krauss brothers drive slowly away from Berchtesgaden in the Paulaner beer truck. It looked as if they were driving south toward the Austrian border with twenty thousand reichsmarks in their pockets, but looks can be deceptive.

“It was a clever idea,” I said. “Bringing them down from Munich in that truck. With any luck, no one will ever know they were here.”

“That was Heydrich’s idea. His office telephoned the Paulaner Brewery in Munich and ordered them to let me have a beer truck. I’m not sure if they’re expecting to get it back or not. But when the SD tells you to hand over a beer truck, you do what you’re told, right? Even if that means supplying one that’s still full of beer.”

“It figures. Heydrich was Gestapo boss in Munich before he took charge of the SD. If he ever learned how to make friends, then maybe he still has some.”

“I’m not sure what I’m going to tell them now the truck has gone. And, more important, their beer.”

“Heydrich’s problem. Not yours. He’ll probably just tell them it was stolen. What can you expect of Jews? Something sensitive, like that.”

“You know, I almost envy those two kikes,” said Korsch. “Going to Italy with all that money. Think of those lovely Italian women with big tits and huge arses. I can’t think of a better way to spend twenty thousand marks.”

“Me neither. Of course, it’s just a guess, but I wouldn’t be at all surprised if they turn around and drive northwest. Back to Berlin. Maybe even dump the truck and make for the railway station here in Berchtesgaden. It’s what I’d do if it was me. After all, would you trust the police to keep their word if you were two kikes with twenty thousand in cash in your coat pockets?”

“Since you put it like that, no, I would not.”

“Do the opposite thing from what’s expected. That’s the key to survival when you’re on the run. Besides, they’d only stand out in Italy in a way they don’t stand out in Germany. Even today. It’s the last place anyone would think to look for them. Especially now that they know we’re going to be telling everyone they went to Italy.”

“They’d stand out anywhere. Half the time I didn’t even know what they were saying. They’re the kind of Jews who make you glad you’re a German.”

“All that Eastern European Yiddish crap? They were laying it on with a baker’s chocolate knife. For their own amusement. No, really, they were twisting your cord, Friedrich. They’re not like that at all. That’s how they were successful burglars for so long. Because they can blend in when and where they want. Of course, in that respect they’re like any other Jews in Germany, very easy to spot. Most heebs look like you and me.”

“Maybe so, but I still think Germany’s finished for the Jews.”

“Let’s just hope it’s not finished for the Germans, too. But Berlin isn’t Germany. That’s why Hitler hates us so much. If you know the right people and have enough money, a man—even a Jew—can still disappear in Berlin. The Krauss brothers are smart. It’s where I would go if I thought the police were coming after me and I had all that coal in my pockets. I certainly wouldn’t go to Italy. Not anymore. Not since the Duce started blaming his troubles on the Jews, too.”

Korsch gave me a sideways look and I could tell what he was thinking. I pulled a face.

“They are smart,” I said. “It’s only in stupid little towns like Berchtesgaden that people believe in all that subhuman horseshit that Julius Streicher peddles in Der Stürmer. You know that as well as I do. There was no one smarter than Bernhard Weiss. Best chief of Kripo we ever had. I learned more from that Jew than I did from my own mother. What irritates me most about the Nazis is not that I’m supposed to hate the Jews, Friedrich. And I don’t. Hate them. No more than I hate anyone else these days. What I find a lot harder to deal with is that I’m supposed to love Germans and everything German. That’s a tall order for any Berliner. Especially now that Hitler’s in charge.”

We returned the red Maserati to the garage, locked up, and took the ledger and the bankbooks to the nearby Hofbräuhaus, where, at a quiet corner table under a gloomy picture of the Leader, we ordered tall beers and long sausage with mustard and sauerkraut and, after paying the homage that was due to a waitress with a low-cut Bavarian-style blouse and cleavage that looked like a celebrated geological feature, we settled down to our rather less compelling financial study. Most of the men in the beer house were smoking pipes and wearing smelly leather shorts and trying to pretend they weren’t interested in the local geology; it was obvious that they were but they were as slow as ancient glaciers and had less chance with the waitress than a deaf kid with scabies. If I’d not been on a case myself I’d have given her some city-smart story about how she was special and how I was in love with her already and maybe she would have believed it, because that is usually all it takes these days. In Germany love is as rare as a Jew with a telephone. And Hitler wasn’t the only man who could be cynical. Meanwhile, I discovered that the bankbooks contained a more plausible story that was much easier to understand and relate than what was in the ledger. I could almost see the silent movie that would have illustrated it.

“So,” I said, “it would seem that as regular as shit, on the first Monday of every month, Karl Flex took that lovely red Maserati out of the Rothman garage and drove all the way from here to St. Gallen in Switzerland, where he paid lots of cash into two separate accounts at the Wegelin Bank & Co., which, according to this passbook, purports to be the oldest in the country. One of the passbooks is in Karl Flex’s name and the other is in Martin Bormann’s. And will you look at these amounts? Christ, I never felt so poor until I came to Berchtesgaden. Karl Flex had over two hundred thousand Swiss francs in his personal account. But Bormann’s account has millions. Can you believe it? With this amount of money the Nazis really don’t need to conquer Poland by force of German arms. They could buy all the damn living space Hitler says we need for half of what Bormann’s got put aside for a rainy day. Frankly, I wish he would; then maybe the Poles wouldn’t put up as much of a fight.”

I showed Korsch the bottom line in the second NSDAP passbook and he whistled quietly over the creamy head on his white beer. “This explains the hotel bill we found in the car,” he said. “Remember? The Hotel Bad Horn? On Lake Constance? Lake Constance isn’t very far from St. Gallen. Maybe fifteen or twenty minutes according to that map we found in the Maserati.”

“Right. So after he paid the cash into the bank in St. Gallen, he must have driven to Lake Constance, checked into a suite, eaten an expensive dinner, and then driven back here to Germany the very next day. Maybe took that missing whore from P-Barracks and made a nice weekend of it. Who knows? Maybe he left her there. Meanwhile, the cash kept on rolling in. Did you ever think you were in the wrong job?”

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

“Especially when the crooks are in government.”

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

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

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

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

“Must be close to Bormann.”

“I guess so.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

Korsch turned the ledger to look at it and nodded.

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

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

“Did you?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Gerdy Troost.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“What happened to her old man, then?”

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

Korsch nodded. “Well, if your friend Gerdy is disposed to foretell the future, see if she can predict if there’s going to be another war.”

“You don’t need Cassandra for that, Friedrich. Even I can tell there’s going to be another war. It’s the only possible explanation for Adolf Hitler. He just wants it that way. He always did.”