The Lady from Zagreb

Two

Ever since the Second Reich, Berlin’s city architects have been trying to make its citizens feel small and insignificant, and the new wing of the Reich Ministry of Propaganda and National Enlightenment was no exception. Located on Wilhelmplatz, and just a stone’s throw from the Reich Chancellery, it looked very much like the Ministry of Aviation on the corner of Leipziger Strasse. Looking at them side by side it would have been easy to imagine that the architect, Albert Speer, had managed to mix up his drawings of these two gray stone buildings, so closely did they resemble each other. Since February, Speer was the minister of Armaments and War, and I hoped he was going to make a better job of doing that than he had of being Hitler’s court architect. It’s said that Giotto could draw a perfect circle with just one turn of his hand; Speer could draw a perfectly straight line — at least he could with a ruler — and not much else. Straight lines were what he was obviously good at drawing. I used to sketch quite a good elephant, myself, but there’s not much call for that when you’re an architect. Unless the elephant is white, of course.

I’d read in the Volkischer Beobachter that the Nazis didn’t much like German modernism — buildings like the technical university in Weimar, and a trade union building in Bernau. They thought modernism was un-German and cosmopolitan, whatever that meant. Actually, I think it probably meant that the Nazis didn’t feel comfortable living and working in city offices designed by Jews that were mostly made of glass, in case they suddenly had to fight off a revolution. It would have been a lot easier defending a stone building like the Ministry of Propaganda and National Enlightenment than it would have been defending the Bauhaus in Dessau. A German art historian — probably another Jew — once said that God was in the details. I like details, but for the Nazis a soldier positioned in a high window with a loaded machine gun looked like it offered more comfort than anything as capricious and unreliable as a god. From any one of the new ministry’s small, regular windows a man with an MP40 commanded a clear field of fire across the whole of Wilhelmplatz and could comfortably have held an intoxicated Berlin mob at bay for as long as our handsome new minister of Armaments and War could keep him supplied with ammunition. All the same, it was a contest I should have enjoyed watching. There’s nothing quite like a Berlin mob at play.

Inside the ministry things were a little less rusticated and more like a sleek, modern ocean liner; everything was burred walnut, cream walls, and thick fawn carpets. In the ballroom-sized entrance hall, underneath an enormous portrait of Hitler — without which no German ministry could possibly do its work — was an outsized scalloped vase of white gardenias that perfumed the whole building and doubtless helped conceal the prevailing smell of billy goat shit that’s an inevitable corollary of national enlightenment in Nazi Germany, and which otherwise might have offended the nostrils of our glorious leader.

“Good morning, gentlemen,” I said as I turned right through the heavy doors and entered what I assumed was the old Leopold Palace.

Behind a solid oak reception desk they could have used as a redoubt to provide a second line of defense against a mob, a couple of silent clerks with soft collars and softer hands regarded my slow progress across their floor with a well-practiced show of indifference. But I welcomed it: the only pleasure I ever get from wearing the uniform of an SD officer is the knowledge that if I wasn’t wearing it I might have to take a lot more humiliation from the kind of stone-faced bureaucrats that run this country. Sometimes I even get the chance to hand out a little humiliation of my own. It’s a very sadistic, Berlin sort of game and one I never seem to get tired of playing.

The two clerks were a low pair of clubs and didn’t look particularly busy but they still went through a comedy routine they had perfected that was supposed to make me feel as if they were. It was several minutes before one of the men looked like he was paying me some attention.

And then another minute.

“You ready now?” I asked.

“Heil Hitler,” he said.

I touched my cap with a finger and nodded. Paradoxically, without any storm troopers around to kick your backside, not giving the Hitler salute was safe enough in a place like a Reich ministry.

“Heil Hitler,” I said, because there is only so much resistance that can safely be given at any one time. I glanced up at the painted ceiling and nodded my appreciation. “Beautiful. This is the old ceremonial palace, isn’t it? It must be fine working here. Tell me, have you still got the throne room? Where the Kaiser used to hand out the important decorations and medals? Not that my own Iron Cross would count as anything like that. It was given to me in the trenches, and my commanding officer had to find a space on my tunic that wasn’t covered in mud and shit to pin it onto my chest.”

“Fascinating, I’m sure,” said the man who was the taller of the two. “But this has been the government press building since 1919.”

He wore pince-nez and lifted himself up on his toes as he spoke, like a policeman giving directions. I was tempted to give him some directions of my own. The white carnation he wore in the buttonhole of his summer-weight, double-breasted black jacket was a friendly touch but the waxed mustache and the pocket handkerchief were pure Wilhelmstrasse. His mouth looked like someone had poured vinegar in his coffee that morning; his wife, supposing he had one, would surely have chosen something a little more fatal.

“If you could come to the point, please. We’re very busy.”

I felt the smile drying on my face like yesterday’s shit. “I don’t doubt it. Did you two characters come with the building, or did they have you installed with the telephones?”

“How can we help you, Captain?” asked the shorter man, who was no less stiff than his colleague and had the look of a man who came out of his mother’s womb wearing pin-striped trousers and spats.

“Police commissar Bernhard Gunther,” I said. “From the presidium at Alexanderplatz. I have an appointment with State Secretary Gutterer.”

The first official was already checking off my name on a clipboard and lifting a cream-colored telephone to his pink rose of an ear. He repeated my name to the person on the other end of the line and then nodded.

“You’re to go up to the state secretary’s office right away,” he said as he replaced the phone in its cradle.

“Thank you for helping.”

He pointed at a flight of stairs that could have staged its own “Lullaby of Broadway.”

“Someone will meet you up there, on the first landing,” he said.

“Let’s hope so,” I said. “I’d hate to have to come down here and be ignored again.”

I went up the stairs two at a time, which was a lot more energy than they’d seen around that palace since Kaiser Wilhelm II lifted his last Blue Max off a silk cushion, and came to a halt on the enormous landing. No one was there to meet me but without a pair of binoculars to see across to the other side of the floor I couldn’t be sure. I glanced over the marble balustrade, and rejected the idea of whistling at the two tailor’s dummies downstairs. So I lit my last cigarette and parked my behind on a gilt French sofa that was a little too low, even for a Frenchman; but after a moment or two I stood up and walked toward a tall open door that led into what I assumed was the old Blue Gallery. It had frescoes and chandeliers and looked like the perfect spot if they ever needed somewhere to dry-dock a submarine for repairs. The frescoes covering the walls were mostly naked people doing things with lyres and bows, or standing around on pedestals waiting for someone to hand them a bath towel; they all looked bored and wishing they could be out on the nude beach enjoying the sun at Strandbad Wannsee instead of posing in a government ministry. I had the same feeling myself.

A slim young woman in a dark pencil skirt and white blouse appeared at my shoulder.

“I was just admiring the graffiti,” I said.

“They’re called frescoes, actually,” said the secretary.

“Is that so?” I shrugged. “Sounds Italian.”

“Yes. It means fresh.”

“It figures. Personally, I think there’s only so many naked people you can have getting fresh with each other on one wall before the place starts to look like a Moroccan bathhouse. What do you think?”

“It’s classical art,” she said. “And you must be Captain Gunther.”

“Is it that obvious?”

“It is in here.”

“Good point. I guess I should have taken off my clothes if I’d wanted to blend in a bit.”

“This way,” she said without a flicker of a smile. “State Secretary Gutterer is waiting for you.”

She turned away in a haze of Mystikum and I followed on an invisible dog leash. I watched her arse and gave it careful appraisal as we walked. It was a little too skinny for my taste but it moved well enough; I expect she got a lot of exercise just getting around that building. For such a small minister as Joey the Crip it was a very big ministry.

“Believe it or not,” I said, “I’m enjoying myself.”

She stopped momentarily, colored a little, and then started walking again. I was starting to like her.

“Really, I don’t know what you mean, Captain,” she said.

“Sure you do. But I’ll certainly try to enlighten you if you care to meet me for a drink after work. That’s what people do around here, isn’t it? Enlighten each other? Look, it’s all right. I got my Abitur. I know what a fresco is. I was making a little joke. And the scary black badge on my sleeve is just for show. I’m really a very friendly fellow. We could go to the Adlon and share a glass of champagne. I used to work there so I’ve got some pull with the barman.”

She didn’t say anything. She just kept walking. That’s just what women do when they don’t want to tell you no: they ignore you and hope you’ll go away right up until the moment you don’t and then they find an excuse to say yes. Hegel got it all wrong; relations between the sexes, there’s nothing complicated about it — it’s child’s play. That’s what makes it such fun. Kids wouldn’t do it if it wasn’t.

Blushing now, she led me through what looked like the Herrenklub library into the presence of a heavyset, clean-shaven man of about forty. He had a full head of longish gray hair, sharp brown eyes, and a mouth like a bow that no ordinary man could draw into a smile. I resolved not to try. The air of self-importance was all his but the cologne with which it was alloyed was Scherk’s Tarr pomade and must have been battering on the panes of the double-height windows there was so much of it. He wore a wedding band on his left hand and plenty of cauliflower on the lapel badges of his SS tunic, not to mention a gold party badge on his left breast pocket; but the ribbon bar above the pocket was the kind you bought like sticks of candy from Holter’s, where they made the uniform. On such a warm day the brilliantly white shirt around his neck was perhaps a little snug for comfort but it was perfectly pressed and encouraged me to believe that he might be happily married. To be well fed with all laundry found is really all that most German men are looking for. I know I was. There was a large gold pen in his fingers and some red ink on a sheet of paper in front of him; the handwriting was neater than the typing, which was mine. I hadn’t seen that much red ink on my homework since leaving school.

He pointed to a seat in front of him; at the same time he consulted a gold hunter watch that was on his desk as if he had already decided for how long I was going to waste his time. He smiled a smile that wasn’t like any smile I’d seen outside a reptile house and leaned back in his chair while he waited for me to get comfortable. I didn’t, but that hardly mattered to someone as important as him. He fixed me with a look of almost comic pity and shook his head.

“You’re not much of a writer, are you, Captain Gunther?”

“The Nobel Prize Committee won’t be calling me anytime soon, if that’s what you mean. But Pearl Buck thinks I can improve.”

“Does she, now?”

“If she can win, anyone can, right?”

“Perhaps. From what General Nebe has told me, this is to be your first time on your hind legs at the lectern in front of an audience.”

“My first, and hopefully my last.” I nodded at the silver box on the desk in front of me. “Besides, I usually do all my best talking with a cigarette in my mouth.”

He flipped open the box. “Help yourself.”

I took one, latched it onto my lip, and lit myself quickly.

“Tell me, how many delegates are expected at this IKPK conference?”

I shrugged and took a puff at the nail in my mouth. Lately I’d been going for a double pull on my cigarettes before inhaling; that way I got more of a hit from the shitty tobacco when the smoke hit my lungs. But this was a good cigarette; good enough to enjoy; much too good to waste talking about something as trivial as what he had in mind.

“From what I’ve been told by General Nebe, some senior government officials will be present,” he said.

“I wouldn’t know about that, sir.”

“Don’t get me wrong, what you’ve written, it’s all fascinating stuff, I’m sure, and you’re an interesting fellow right enough, but from what’s written here, you’ve certainly a lot to learn about public speaking.”

“I’ve cheerfully avoided it until this present moment. Like the saying goes, it’s hard to press olive oil out of a stone. If it was down to me, Brutus and Cassius would have gotten away with it, and the First Crusade would never have happened. Not to mention Portia in The Merchant of Venice.”

“What about her?”

“With my speaking skills I’d never have gotten Antonio off the hook with Shylock. No, not even in Germany.”

“Then let us be grateful that you don’t work for this ministry,” said Gutterer. “Shylock and his tribe are something of a specialty in our department.”

“So I believe.”

“And yours, too.”

I tugged some more on his nail; that’s the great thing about a cigarette — it lets you off the hook sometimes; the only thing that need come out of your mouth is smoke, and they can’t arrest you for that; at least not yet. These are the freedoms that are important.

Gutterer gathered the sheets of laboriously typed paper in a neat stack and pushed them across the desk as if they were a dangerous species of bacillus. They’d damn near killed me anyway; I was a lousy typist.

“Your speech has been rewritten by me and retyped by my secretary,” he explained.

“That’s enormously kind of her,” I said. “Did you really do that for me?”

I turned in my chair and smiled warmly at the woman who had brought me to Gutterer. Positioned behind a shiny black Continental Silenta as big as a tank turret, she did her exasperated best to ignore me but a touch of color appearing on her cheek told me that she was losing the battle.

“You didn’t have to.”

“It’s her job,” said Gutterer. “And I told her to do it.”

“Even so. Thanks a lot, Miss—?”

“Ballack.”

“Miss Ballack. Right.”

“If we could get on, please,” said Gutterer. “Here’s your original back, so you can compare the two versions and see where I’ve improved or censored what you wrote, Captain. There were several places where you allowed yourself to become a little sentimental about how things were in the old Weimar Republic. Not to say flippant.” He frowned. “Did Charlie Chaplin really visit the Police Praesidium on Alexanderplatz?”

“Yes. Yes he did. March 1931. I remember it well.”

“But why?”

“You’d have to ask him that. I think he may even have been doing what the Americans call ‘research.’ After all, the Murder Commission used to be famous. As famous as Scotland Yard.”

“Anyway, you can’t mention him.”

“May I ask why?” But I knew very well why not: Chaplin had just made a film called The Great Dictator, playing an Adolf Hitler lookalike who was named after our own minister of culture, Hinkel, whose high life at the Hotel Bogota was the subject of intense gossip.

“Because you can’t mention him without mentioning your old boss, the former head of Kripo. The Jew, Bernard Weiss. They had dinner together, did they not?”

“Ah yes. I’m afraid that slipped my mind. His being a Jew.”

Gutterer looked pained for a moment. “You know, it puzzled me. This country had twenty different governments in fourteen years. People lost respect for all the normal standards of public decency. There was an inflation that destroyed our currency. We were in very real danger from Communism. And yet you almost seem to imply that things were better then. I don’t say that you say it; merely that you seem to imply it.”

“As you said yourself, Herr State Secretary, I was being sentimental. In the early years of the Weimar Republic my wife was still alive. I expect that would help to explain it, if not to excuse it.”

“Yes, that would explain it. Anyway, we can’t have you even suggesting as much to the likes of Himmler and Müller. You’d soon find yourself in trouble.”

“I’m relying on you to save me from the Gestapo, sir. And I’m sure your version will be a great improvement on mine, Herr State Secretary.”

“Yes. It is. And in case you are in any doubt about that, let me remind you that I’ve spoken at a great many Party rallies. Indeed Adolf Hitler himself has told me that, after Dr. Goebbels, he considers me to be the most rhetorically gifted man in Germany.”

I let out a small whistle that managed to sound as if I was lost for words and impertinent at the same time, which is a specialty of mine. “Impressive. And I’m absolutely certain the leader couldn’t be wrong — not about that kind of thing, anyway. I’ll bet you treasure a compliment like that almost as much as you do all of those medals put together. I would if I were you.”

He nodded and tried to look through the veneer of a smile that was on my face as if searching for some sign that I was absolutely sincere. He was wasting his time. Hitler might have held Gutterer to be one of the most rhetorically gifted men in Germany but I was a grand master at faking sincerity. After all, I’d been doing it since 1933.

“I expect you’d like a few tips on public speaking,” he said without a trace of embarrassment.

“Now you come to mention it, yes, I would. If you feel like sharing any.”

“Give up now, before you make a complete fool of yourself.” Gutterer let out a loud guffaw that they could have smelled back at the Alex.

I smiled back, patiently. “I don’t think General Nebe would be too happy with me if I told him I couldn’t do this speech, sir. This conference is very important to the general. And to Reichsführer Himmler, of course. I should hate to disappoint him most of all.”

“Yes, I can see that.”

It wasn’t much of a joke, which was probably why he didn’t laugh very much. But at the mention of Himmler’s name Gutterer started to sound just a little more cooperative.

“Tell you what,” he said. “Let’s go along to the cinema theater and you can give me a read-through. I’ll explain where you’re going wrong.” He glanced around at Miss Ballack. “Is the theater free at this present moment, Miss Ballack?”

Poor Miss Ballack snatched a diary off her desk, found the relevant date, and then nodded back at him. “Yes, Herr State Secretary.”

“Excellent.” Gutterer pushed back his chair and stood up; he was shorter than me by a head, but walked like he was a meter taller. “Come with us, Miss Ballack. You can help make up an audience for the captain.”

We walked toward the door of the vast, uncultivated acreage he called an office.

“Is that wise?” I asked. “After all, my speech — there are some details about the murders committed by Gormann that might be unpleasant for a lady to hear.”

“That’s very gallant, I’m sure, but it’s a little late to be thinking about sparing poor Miss Ballack’s feelings, Captain. After all, it was she who typed your speech, wasn’t it?”

“Yes, I suppose so.” I looked at Gutterer’s secretary as we walked. “I’m sorry you had to read some of that stuff, Miss Ballack. I’m a little old-fashioned that way. I still think murder is a subject best left to murderers.”

“And the police, of course,” said Gutterer without turning around.

I thought it best to let that one go. The very idea of policemen who’d killed more people than any lust murderer I’d ever come across was as challenging as watching a hopped-up Achilles failing to overtake the world’s slowest tortoise.

“Oh, that’s all right,” said Miss Ballack. “But those poor girls.” She glanced at Gutterer for just long enough for me to know that her next remark was aimed right between her boss’s shoulder blades. “It strikes me that murder is a little like winning the German State Lottery. It always seems to happen to the wrong people.”

“I know what you mean.”

“Where are you going to make this speech, anyway?” asked Gutterer.

“There’s a villa in Wannsee that the SS use as a guesthouse. It’s close to the IKPK.”

“Yes, I know it. Heydrich invited me to a breakfast meeting he held there in January. But I couldn’t go, for some reason. Why was that, Miss Ballack? I forget.”

“That’s the conference that was supposed to be held back in December, sir,” she said. “At the IKPK. You couldn’t go because of what happened at Pearl Harbor. And there was already something in the diary for the date they supplied in January.”

“You see how well she looks after me, Captain.”

“I can see a lot of things if I put my mind to it. That’s my trouble.”

We went along the corridor to a handsomely appointed cinema theater with seats for two hundred. It had little chandeliers on the walls, elegant moldings near the ceiling, plenty of tall windows with silk curtains, and a strong smell of fresh paint. As well as the screen there was a Telefunken radio as big as a barrel, two loudspeakers, and so many stations to choose from they looked like a list of lagers in a beer garden.

“Nice room,” I said. “A bit too nice for Mickey Mouse, I’d have thought.”

“We do not show Mickey Mouse films in here,” said Gutterer. “Although it would certainly interest you to know that the leader loves Mickey Mouse. Indeed, I don’t think he would mind me telling you that Dr. Goebbels once gave the leader eighteen Mickey Mouse films as a Christmas present.”

“It certainly beats the pair of socks I got.”

Gutterer glanced around the cinema theater proudly.

“But it is a wonderful space, as you say. Which reminds me. Tip number one. Try to acquaint yourself with the room where you’re to make your speech, so that you will feel comfortable there. That’s a trick I learned from the leader himself.”

“Is that so?”

“You know, if I’d thought about it, we could have filmed this,” said Gutterer, giggling stupidly, “as a sort of training film for how not to be a public speaker.”

I smiled, took a long hit on another cigarette, and blew some smoke his way, although I would have much preferred a hot round from a tank gun.

“Hey, Professor? I know I’m just a stupid cop but I think I’ve got a good idea. How about giving me an even chance to succeed before I fall flat on my face? After all, you said yourself, I’ve got the third best public speaker in Germany to teach me.”