The Isis Covenant

XXXII

‘Bodo Ritter had the coldest eyes of any man I’d ever seen and we were all scared shitless of him. Any man who stepped out of line was sent straight to the Eastern Front and knew he could count himself lucky. From the first day I met him I knew that good job or not, one day Bodo Ritter would be my executioner. Sure, I was the unit mascot, but that wasn’t going to save Bernie. It was the way he watched me, like a snake watching a mouse and all the time its little brain is full of the details of the kill. But all the time he was watching me, I was watching him. I noticed that everywhere he went, Ritter carried a leather case with him, like an old-fashioned surgeon’s bag. He treated that case like it was his old man’s ashes and I knew that whatever was in it must be worth a fortune. But no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t get a look inside. Not until Berlin.’ He shook his head and his mood changed again. ‘The bastard tried to kill me, but I fucked him. I pinched the love of his fucking life.’

‘I still don’t understand.’ Jamie frowned. ‘Bodo Ritter’s testimony to the war crimes tribunal said he left Berlin on April the twentieth on a secret mission for Heinrich Himmler. Why would he say that if he was still in the city fighting one of the last battles of the war? Let’s face it, a battle which, enemy or not, won the admiration of most of the world apart from Joe Stalin and the Red Army.’

To understand, you have to understand Bodo, Bernie Hartmann told them. Bodo with his animal cunning, always sniffing the wind, always looking for a new opportunity or a new threat.

‘He could see what was coming better than any of us and, looking back, he knew things, terrible things, that only a few dozen people in the Third Reich knew. Things that, when they came out, would be the death of him. The big shots, they all made their plans to get out. Bodo wasn’t a big shot, so he did the next best thing. He decided not to be Bodo any more. You have to understand that G88 wasn’t a real military unit and we weren’t real soldiers. We were a pinkelwurst of thieves and conmen, hucksters and pencil-pushers with machine guns. Sometimes we had to blend into the background, like chameleons. When Bodo and Max decided to swap identities while the world was burning down around us, it was almost normal.’

‘That’s impossible.’ Jamie didn’t try to hide his disbelief. ‘A man in Ritter’s position must have been known to dozens of people at the top of SS.’

Bernie Hartmann snorted his disdain. ‘You don’t know how it worked and you don’t understand how it was back then. Chaos. Sure he might have been spotted wearing a different rank, but so what? All the top guys had different ranks in the Waffen SS and the Allgemeine SS. Fegelein was an Obergruppenführer in the Waffen SS, but when Bodo shot him he was wearing the uniform of an Allgemeine SS Gruppenführer. Bodo Ritter and G88 worked to Himmler and Himmler alone. Maybe a couple of secretaries at the hell house on Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse might have recognized him, but apart from that nobody in Berlin knew Max Dornberger from Adolf Hitler. I think maybe Rattenhuber, the bunker security boss, suspected something, but he had problems of his own right then.’

‘But he went on trial at Nuremberg,’ Danny pointed out. ‘He stood in the dock with the other commanders of the Einsatzgruppen. Surely they would have recognized him?’

‘Before the trial,’ Bernie explained patiently, ‘Max Dornberger spent eighteen months as a prisoner of the Russians, sometimes in solitary confinement, but mostly working down a salt mine. I saw the pictures. By the time he stood in the dock his own mother wouldn’t have recognized him.’

Jamie took up the attack. ‘That still doesn’t explain why Max Dornberger would put his neck in a noose for Bodo Ritter?’

The little German didn’t bat an eyelid. ‘Max hadn’t been looking too good for a couple of months. We thought it was the rations. but before he left Berlin Max told me it was stomach cancer. Bodo convinced Max that he would make sure his wife and kids would want for nothing if he did the swap. He was going to die anyway, what did he have to lose?

‘Max also told me to watch my back with Bodo, but maybe I wasn’t listening too hard, because the bastard had me cold, sharing a new-dug grave with Hermann Fegelein, and it was only luck or God saved me. When the shell hit the bunker and Bodo went down, I didn’t hang about. We had this house up in Wilhelmstrasse, nice big place with lots of rooms. Lots of hiding places, too. I’d been watching him with his bag since we’d got back to Berlin. Hell, it got so he talked to the fucking thing. Most of the time, it never left his side, even when we were playing tag with Soviet tanks. But he couldn’t take it to the bunker because everybody was searched on the way in. That meant he had to hide it. But you can’t hide anything from a thief.’

He described how he’d run back to the building and searched the room where he knew Ritter had stashed the leather surgeon’s bag. It had taken him longer than he liked, but he’d eventually found it. Opened it.

‘At first, I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. Some kind of crazy gold hat—’

‘Describe it.’ The words choked in Jamie’s throat.

‘I can see it as if it was yesterday.’ Bernie Hartmann grinned. ‘A circlet of gold, with two horns spiralling up from it, and at its centre, where your forehead would be, an eye that stared at you the way Bodo Ritter’s eyes did, but …’ He hesitated and Jamie wondered if the secret was too great to share. If the old mistrustful Bernie Hartmann had won the fight and they would never know the whole truth. But Bernie was only gathering his thoughts. ‘But the most wonderful thing about it was the stone. It wasn’t like any diamond you’d see today, not in a jeweller’s window. It was rough cut, opaque in places, and dazzlingly polished in others. But it was a diamond,’ his voice mirrored the wonder he’d felt on that day sixty-three years earlier, ‘a diamond as big as a goose egg. A great big hundred-million-dollar hand grenade and it was all Bernie Hartmann’s.

‘Thieves are greedy, but we’re not stupid.’ The old man looked to Danny for confirmation. ‘I wanted it all, the gold and everything, but I knew it would be tough to get something as big as the Crown out of Berlin. The first thing I did was take my trench knife and prise open the clasps to remove the stone. When I held it in my hand I’d never felt anything like it. As if I was floating. I’d expected it to be heavy and cold, like a lump of frozen snow, but it was light and warm, so warm that I could feel its energy creeping into my body. I don’t know how long I sat there with it in my hands, but it was too long, as if the rock had hypnotized me. Next thing I heard was a burst of machine-gun fire and the front door crashing open and I knew Bodo was coming for me. I stuffed the diamond in the pocket of my camo smock and buttoned it up real tight. I was on my way to the window when the glint of that golden crown drew me back, like a fish to a spinning lure.’ He shook his head at his own foolishness. ‘I had to have it. I couldn’t leave it for Bodo. That moment of greed almost killed me. Another burst of fire, the door splintered and Bodo charges in like the Angel of Death he was. He raises the gun and fires, but a second later he’s out of bullets. Bernie Hartmann, he doesn’t need no second invitation, he’s through the window, sash, splinters and all—’

‘Hang on,’ Danny interrupted. ‘You left the Crown behind? So when did you try to sell it?’

‘So you know about that, huh?’ Bernie gave her a sly sideways glance. ‘You’re a pretty clever detective lady.’

‘That’s right, Mr Har … Bernie. A clever detective lady who still wants an answer.’

He shrugged. ‘So my memory’s a little off. It happens when you get as old as I am. Maybe it didn’t happen quite so quick. Maybe I went across Wilhelmstrasse to a jeweller’s shop. It was gold, worth thousands of marks; I couldn’t just leave it behind? Only the bastard stalled me. He told me to come back later, but I knew he was setting me up for a fall.’

‘Okay, you went back into the house and Ritter burst inside. What then?’

‘Just like I told you. Straight out the window. Death or fucking glory. I got lucky. Landed in a pile of builders’ sand. I got up, checked the diamond was still in my pocket and ran for the nearest alley. That’s when he shot me. Bodo Ritter shot me in the arse.’

It was dusk by now, and one of the twins came into the room and pressed a button that automatically closed the curtains and turned up the ceiling lights.

‘We’ll have dinner in the window room, Matthias,’ Bernie Hartmann instructed. ‘Do you have any preferences? Vegetarian?’ His face twisted into a mock grimace and Jamie and Danny shook their heads. ‘The veal then,’ he said gratefully. ‘And a bottle of the ’ninety-six Montrachet, and put another on ice.’

The window room turned out to be exactly that and confirmed what Jamie had suspected. Bernie Hartmann’s home was an enormous mansion house set into a low hill overlooking the eastern edge of the lake.

‘Better if I turn off the lights,’ their host said. For the next five minutes they stood in silent wonder looking out over the darkening expanse of water as the flat hazy glow on the other side turned into a million twinkling sparks that covered the faraway hillside and coated the surface of the lake with shimmering bands of reds and pinks, oranges and yellows, purples and blues. Dinner came, and with it the finest white wine either of them had ever tasted. Jamie complimented Bernie and the wizened old man grinned.

‘You can thank Bodo Ritter and Heinrich Himmler.’

Their puzzlement gave him obvious pleasure, and he continued with his story, except that they both noticed there was an important piece missing, a piece that sparkled like a star fallen from the sky.

‘Eventually, the Yanks got me, but they didn’t keep me for long and after I got out of hospital I headed for what had been a G88 safe house south of Munich. I wasn’t sure what to expect, but I’d been a regular visitor and the old couple who looked after the place seemed happy enough to see me. It wasn’t long before they put me in touch with some old comrades who got me out on a ratline to Italy, then Argentina. Maybe I could have stayed in Germany, but they were trawling the camps for SS then and the Heimat didn’t look too healthy for the likes of Bernie Hartmann. Argentina might have been great for the Golden Pheasants, but for the small fry like me it was a dump. Just heat and dust and flies so big they coulda had you for breakfast. I laid low for three years working on a farm outside Buenos Aires before I got the papers I needed to allow me to visit Europe legitimately.’

Matthias, or perhaps his brother, appeared to remove the remnants of their meal. Bernie frowned, and poured himself another glass of wine. For a moment, he seemed to shrink into himself, but from somewhere he found the strength to straighten in his chair.

‘I’m not proud of what I’m going to tell you now, but I can’t change any of it, though please believe me, I’ve done what I can in the past few years to try to make up for it. Geistjaeger 88 wasn’t just a freeloading operation to hunt down trinkets that might interest Crazy Heinrich; it was part of the plan to turn the SS into the richest and most powerful organization in Germany. Even more powerful than the Nazi party itself. Between nineteen forty-two and ’forty-five, Bodo Ritter and Max Dornberger organized the transfer of hundreds of millions of marks’ worth of gold bullion, works of art, currency, government bonds and jewellery to numbered accounts in Swiss banks in Zurich. I became part of this operation in nineteen forty-four when Himmler agreed to transfer most of Geistjaeger 88’s personnel to SS units fighting on the Eastern Front and Ritter didn’t have no option. We’d dress as civilians and use diplomatic passports to cross into Switzerland at Gaillingen, north-west of the Bodensee. Once we hit Zurich either Bodo or Max would present their credentials at the bank and we’d make the deposit. But this was Geistjaeger 88 and nothing was that simple. Right from the start Bodo operated a policy he called System H: one for Heinrich and the rest for the boys. Himmler only wanted the good stuff and the relics that fulfilled his fantasies, so what were we going to do with the rest? Donate it to the party? Not a chance. We took what we wanted from a chateau or a villa and torched the place so that we could claim the stuff went up with the house. In the early days that was fine, but the problem was there was just too much loot. Soon we began to look like a caravan from the Arabian nights. So the Zurich trips would have a double purpose: to fill the SS accounts and to top up the G88 pension fund. Naturally, only Bodo or Max had access, but Bernie Hartmann isn’t a thief for nothing. On one trip I followed Max to find out which bank they were using. Now, the only thing I needed was a way to get at the account. Security in Swiss banks wasn’t as tight as it is now, but tight enough. Still, it turned out to be easier than I thought. Every time Max and I came back from a Zurich trip, I noticed him palm something to Bodo. A key maybe? Eventually I worked out that it was a piece of paper that Bodo kept in his billfold, because he thought it was so innocuous no one would suspect what it was used for. That’s why, when Bodo was knocked unconscious outside the bunker, I took this from him.’ He reached into his pocket and pulled out half of a playing card, torn from top to bottom up the centre. ‘The ace of spades.’ He grinned. ‘My passport to paradise. All I had to do was walk into the bank, say I was Bodo Ritter and present my half of the card and they’d show me to the vault, no questions asked. Then, I’d fill a case with what I fancied and carry it across the street to a second Swiss bank where I’d opened an account in a new name. Bodo Ritter paid for this,’ he waved at the picture window, ‘my place in Boston and the villa in the South of France. He also paid to set up my security consultancy and the safe manufacturing business, from which I’ve now retired. You look sceptical, young man? Maybe you think Old Bernie’s off his rocker?’

‘It just seems so easy …’

‘Oh, it was easy all right. Our Swiss friends were remarkably cooperative. It’s just business, after all, and they’re so very good at business. I wouldn’t be surprised if the SS account still exists. You think I’m kidding, just look in the papers. Not two years ago a prosecutor from Geneva working on some money-laundering case opened a vault in the Zürcher Kantonalbank and found fourteen paintings by Monet, Renoir and Pissarro. The account was in the name of Bruno Lohse, an art dealer who was part of the Göring operation all those years ago. Lohse had been cleared of any crime after the war and continued to work as a dealer. Who knows how many paintings were put in that vault when he opened it?’

‘So you made your fortune from money and paintings from the Jews?’

‘Don’t waste your anger or your disgust on me, Detective Fisher. In the past few years I’ve heaped enough self-disgust on myself for a hundred lifetimes. In any case,’ he smiled, ‘this old, wrinkled skin is like rhinoceros leather, it would take much more than that to hurt me.’

‘Then let me be equally frank, Mr Hartmann. We didn’t come here to listen to your life story, interesting as it is. We came here to find out what happened to the Eye of Isis. Maybe it’s time you quit stalling and told us.’

Bernie Hartmann nodded as he made his decision. ‘Of course, but I’m an old man and it’s getting late. Please be my guests and stay the night. We have plenty of room and you’ll be perfectly safe under this roof. Tomorrow, after breakfast, I’ll tell you everything. I promise. There’s only one thing I ask in return.’

‘What’s that?’ Jamie said warily.

‘If Bodo Ritter is alive, kill him. If he’s dead, find his grave and put a stake through his black heart.’