Prussian Blue

FIFTY-NINE

Early the next morning Zander and I borrowed a car from the police and drove out of town along the Kaiserslautern road, toward the little town of Homburg. I was behind the wheel of a very battered 260 convertible but Zander sat in the rear seat, as if I were his chauffeur. Not that I cared very much. I laughed when I realized this was how he proposed to make the journey to the Karlsberg Brewery.

“You really want to travel like this?”

“I don’t drive. And I believe I might as well sit in the back as anywhere else.”

“It’s not considered polite to treat a colleague like the hired help.”

“Since when did being polite worry you?”

“Now that you mention it, you’re right. Maybe we should take the top down and some local dimwit will mistake you for the Archduke Ferdinand and put a hole in your big head.”

It was cold and we were both wearing overcoats but Zander was also dressed in his customary brown Party tunic, with the red leadership collar patches that signified something, I supposed, but I had little or no idea what this might be; all I knew was that the man from Saarbrücken looked as neat as a new pin and was just as prickly. Mostly he just smoked endless French cigarettes and stared sourly out the rear window as we left behind the gray streets and continued into the surrounding gray countryside. After a while, however, he spoke. I think it was me having to wait for a herd of red pied cattle to cross the road and the amount of dung they left behind that prompted him to open his slit of a mouth.

“Christ, I hate this damn place. The only good thing about being back here is the French cigarettes.”

“Anything in particular you hate?” I asked brightly. “Or is it mainly yourself?”

In my rearview mirror I saw him bite his lip before answering; I imagine he’d have preferred it had been my jugular vein. Clearly I’d touched a raw nerve.

“You wouldn’t understand. The whole world looks different when you come from somewhere like Berlin.”

“I always thought so.”

I might have mentioned in evidence for this assertion the fact that the Nazis had never been that popular in Berlin, where no more than thirty-one percent of people had ever voted for them in any election, but there seemed to be no point in antagonizing the little man, or in earning myself a trip to see the Gestapo. If Zander’s red collar patches meant anything, they meant that he hadn’t got where he was by ignoring even the smallest sign of disloyalty to the Party. He’d have denounced me as quickly as he could light another cigarette.

“Coming from Berlin you’ve probably never felt the need to escape from the place you came from to go somewhere else. Have you?”

“Not until very recently.”

“You’re lucky,” he said. “And you heard what Martin Bormann said about the Saarland, back in Obersalzberg. You’re automatically suspect if you come from somewhere like this. Why else does the Leader surround himself with Bavarians? For the simple reason they were always there for him. From the very beginning. When Hitler was marching through the streets of Munich with Ludendorff in 1923, I was growing up in a place that was ruled jointly by Britain and France under the Treaty of Versailles. I was a man without a country until 1935. What kind of a German does that make me in the Leader’s eyes?” He sneered out the window. “Of course I hate this place. Anyone would. Anyone who wants to get somewhere in the new Germany.”

After that he didn’t say much about anything. But I now had a keener appreciation of why people became Nazis in the first place; perhaps it was like he said: that they wanted to get away from dead-end, no-account places like Saarbrücken, wanted to achieve some sort of status among their fellow men, wanted their shitty, insignificant lives to mean something, even if they could find that meaning only in being mean to others—Jews, mostly, but anyone who didn’t agree with them would do.

We drove into Homburg and found it a place even less remarkable than Saarbrücken, which was saying something. The weather had closed in and rain lashed the windscreen so loudly it sounded as if someone was frying bacon. And Zander’s depression was becoming infectious, like a bad spell. I followed the signs for the brewery, which was the sensible thing for any German to do, and the route led us up a hill in the same direction as the ruins of Karlsberg Castle.

“Is it an interesting castle?” I asked. “Only I remember some of the lecture you gave at the theater in Antenberg. You used to come here when you were a boy, didn’t you?”

“There’s very little of the castle left nowadays. It was one of the largest châteaus in Europe and the residence of the Duke of Zweibrücken until an ill-disciplined rabble of a French revolutionary army turned up and set fire to it in 1793. Most of the ruins are gone. Only the foundations remain, I think. The one building that still stands belongs to the brewery. Anyway, that was the last time anything interesting happened in Homburg. History has been sidestepping this place ever since.”

I pulled into a car park in front of the brewery, which was itself as large as a decent-sized castle, much bigger and more modern than the one back in Berchtesgaden, and turned around to face my surly backseat passenger.

“You’re not nearly as dull a traveling companion as I thought you’d be.”

He smiled a sarcastic, weary smile. “I’ll wait in the car,” he said, and sank farther down into the collar of his greatcoat, like a grumpy Napoleon.

I opened the car door to a strong smell of roasting hops that made me wish I had a beer in my hand; then again, I already needed a beer after half an hour in the car with Zander.

I wasn’t gone for very long. The director of the brewery, Richard Weber, was a big man in his seventies, with a pinstripe suit and a bow tie, an expensive-looking belly, puffy red eyes, a little gray beard, and a receding hairline. Like many affluent German men of a certain age, he reminded me a little of Emil Jannings, but mostly he reminded me of my own father. He even smelled like him: tobacco and mothballs. From the high point that was his office window I could see the town on the plain below and the hexagonal tower of the local church. It wasn’t much of a view but it was probably the best one in Homburg.

Paula Berge, Richard Weber told me, had worked for his father, Christian Weber, who was almost a hundred years old now and retired. He provided me with her address from a detailed filing system that would have been the envy of Hans Geschke. She still lived in Homburg, in an apartment in Eisenbahnstrasse, on the corner of Markt Platz. Herr Weber assured me it was only a two-minute walk from his office. I rather doubted that; besides, it was still raining heavily and much as I would have preferred to leave Zander behind while I walked to the address, I hurried back outside and started the car again.

“Did you speak to her?” asked Zander, stirring inside his coat.

“No, but Herr Weber, the son of her old boss, gave me an address where we can find her. Diesbach, too, I hope.”

“Excellent.”

“Let’s just hope she doesn’t have a telephone.”

“Why would that matter?”

“In case Weber thought to call her up and warn her that the Gestapo are coming.”

“But you’re not from the Gestapo.”

“There’s not much difference when a man with a warrant disc knocks on your door. It’s never good news.”

“But why would he? Call her, I mean.”

“Because he knew exactly who she was, and because he didn’t have to look very hard to find her address. And because he only ever used her Christian name, like they were well acquainted. But mostly because the brewery switchboard is beside the reception desk and as I was on my way out of the door I heard one of the telephonists connecting Weber with a number he’d just asked her to get.”

“You should be a detective.”

“No, but calling her is what I would have done.”

“Calling Frau Berge to warn her of our arrival would hardly be the action of a good German.”

“Perhaps. But it might have been the action of a good friend.”

“Well, who knows who it was he called—it could have been anyone,” said Zander.

“We’ll find out, won’t we?”

The address on Markt Platz was a four-story corner building next to a bookshop. On the opposite side of the square was a redbrick church—the same church I’d seen from Weber’s office window. It looked like a maximum-security prison but then every building in Germany looks like a prison these days. The clock on the hexagonal tower said it was ten o’clock. It might as well have been another century. I parked the car and waited until the rain had stopped and then opened the door.

“You staying in the car again? Only, if she’s in there, your uniform might help. No one likes to see a Nazi uniform like that first thing in the morning. Makes them feel guilty.”

“Why not? I could use some fresh air, or what passes for fresh air in this place. I swear, the backseat of this wretched car is covered in something sticky. I’m going to have to have this coat cleaned.”

“Probably blood. You’ll usually find that the only clean seats in a police car are the ones in front, Wilhelm.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

I frowned. “I should care about a man who thinks I’m poor company.”

We got out of the car and approached Paula Berge’s building. Ahead of us was a tall, blond woman carrying an umbrella. She was wearing black-and-white leather oxfords with two-inch heels and a gray tweed suit, and she walked directly into the bookshop. For several heart-stopping moments I thought I recognized her. Someone from my past. This was, I knew, unlikely to happen in a dump like Homburg. But before I had realized I had the wrong woman I’d ended up following her into the bookshop, where she quickly selected a copy of Gone with the Wind and took it to the desk. The clerk recorded the sale and then handed her a pay slip.

Six long months had passed since Hilde, the last woman to walk into my life, had walked just as smartly out of it. I didn’t blame her for walking out, just the manner of her doing it. I don’t know why, but a small part of me still hoped that one day she would see the error of her ways, just as a microscopic part of me hoped she would be happy with her SS major. Not that happiness meant anything anymore; it was just an idea for children, like God and birthday parties and Santa Claus. Life felt much too serious to be diverted by bagatelles like happiness. Meaning was what mattered, not that there was much of that around, either. Most of the time my life had less meaning than yesterday’s crossword.

With eyes only for the woman in the bookshop—she was uncannily like the one I’d mistaken her for—I watched her hand over the pay slip at the cash till, pay for the book, and then leave, not far behind the shop’s only other customer, a tallish man in a green loden coat who had somehow managed to forget his valise.

“Is that woman someone you know?” whispered Zander.

“No.”

“Good-looking, I suppose.”

“I thought so.”

“For Homburg.”

“For anywhere.”

Meanwhile, I’d picked up the valise and was about to call after the man when I noticed a neat little label on the leather side: it featured a pickax and a mallet, and the words Berchtesgaden Salt Mines and Good Luck. I’d seen that design before: on an enamel badge in Udo Ambros’s buttonhole. Suddenly I realized who the man was and, still holding the valise, I ran out of the bookshop to see where he’d gone; but Markt Platz was deserted and Johann Diesbach—I was certain it had been him—had disappeared.

“Damn,” I said loudly.

Zander followed me out of the shop and lit a cigarette. “She wasn’t that special,” he said. “Oh, I’ll grant you, unusually good for these parts. But hardly worth losing your head over.”

“No, you idiot, the man who left this valise—it was Diesbach.”

“What?” Zander looked one way and then the other, but of Diesbach there remained no sign. “You’re kidding.” He frowned. “That man at the brewery. He must have tipped the sister off, just as you supposed. You should go back and arrest him.”

“There’s no time for that. Besides, I only told him I was looking for Paula Berge, not her brother. So he really doesn’t deserve to be arrested.”

“But why did Diesbach leave his case?”

“Nerves got the better of him, I suppose. Here’s what I want you to do, Wilhelm.” I handed him Diesbach’s valise. “Go and stand in front of Paula Berge’s building door. And don’t let anyone leave.”

Zander looked alarmed. “Suppose he’s in there. The man’s a murderer. He’s got a gun, hasn’t he? Suppose he comes out shooting?”

“Then shoot back. You’ve got a gun.”

Zander pulled a face.

“Have you ever fired it before?” I asked.

“No. But how difficult can it be?”

“Not difficult at all. Just pull the trigger and the Walther will do the rest. That’s why it’s called an automatic.”