The Lady from Zagreb

Eight

General Schellenberg presents his compliments and asks if you might join him outside on the terrace. There’s someone very keen to meet you.”

I was lurking in the conservatory by the marble fountain, enjoying a quiet cigarette away from all the cauliflower outside; the man who addressed me now was a major, but the majors working for Walter Schellenberg were usually destined for higher things, and I didn’t doubt that some cauliflower of his own would soon replace the four pips that were on his gray tunic’s collar tabs. He was about thirty and — I later learned — an ex-lawyer from somewhere near Hannover. His name was Hans Wilhelm Eggen and he was the officer I’d seen coming out of the Stiftung Nordhav office on the first floor.

I glanced at the cigarette smoking in my hand. A Manoli, it tasted even better than the ones I’d stolen before. Doubtless someone had thought it important to make a good impression on all our foreign guests and, in my experience, there is no more effective way of doing this in wartime than providing good smokes for the cigarette boxes. My own cigarette case was full again. Things were looking up. At this rate I was going to get my smoker’s cough back in no time at all. I took another puff and crushed the end onto a slab of crystal that passed for an ashtray.

“Of course, sir,” I lied. “I’d be delighted.”

As I followed Major Eggen onto the villa terrace I prayed I wasn’t about to be introduced to one of what were jokingly known as the big three: Himmler, Kaltenbrunner, and Müller. I didn’t think my nerves were up to the task of a conversation with any of them, not without a silver crucifix in my pocket. But I needn’t have worried. When I got outside I saw that Schellenberg was with the same Swiss army officer I’d seen coming out of the Nordhav office with Major Eggen. I’d met Schellenberg before at Prinz Albrechtstrasse when he’d been working closely with Heydrich. He was good-looking and as smooth as an English butler’s silk underwear and, since Heydrich’s demise, in charge of the SD’s Foreign Intelligence department. Most people had believed Schellenberg would take over from Heydrich when he was assassinated, including Schellenberg himself. He was able enough. But the splash in the RSHA’s men’s room was that Himmler thought Schellenberg was too smart for Heydrich’s job; and if the Reichsführer had preferred Kaltenbrunner it was only because he wanted someone who was easier to control, especially with good brandy in such short supply.

The Swiss was taller by a head than the shortish Schellenberg and as handsome as he was self-assured. From his manner I thought maybe he owned a small bank but, as things transpired, it was just a large castle. Generally speaking, something like that produces the same overprivileged, nothing-can-touch-me effect. The boots he was wearing looked as if they’d been polished by Carl Zeiss, while the thighs of his pegged riding breeches were so flared he might have got clearance for a takeoff from Tempelhof. His hand was inside his gray tunic, Napoleon-style, although it might just have been holding the broom handle that was doubling as a backbone. But his smile was genuine enough; he was pleased to see me, I guess.

“This is Captain Paul Meyer-Schwertenbach,” said Schellenberg. “From the Swiss military police.”

The Swiss bowed stiffly. “Captain Gunther,” he said. “It’s an honor, sir.”

“Captain Meyer is a famous Swiss novelist,” explained Schellenberg. “He writes adventure and detective stories under his pen name, Wolf Schwertenbach.”

“I don’t read many detective stories,” I admitted. “Or anything else very much. It’s my eyes, you understand. They don’t see as well as they used to. But I knew a Swiss detective once. At least, I spoke to him several times on the telephone. Fellow called Heinrich Rothmund.”

“Rothmund’s now the head of the Swiss Federal Police,” said Meyer.

“Then I wonder why he’s not here,” I said, glancing around.

“He was going to come,” said Schellenberg. “But I’m afraid his visa didn’t arrive in time.”

“That would explain it,” I said, although it hardly explained why a mere captain had been granted a visa to visit Germany ahead of a detective of the caliber of Heinrich Rothmund. “Pity. I should like to have talked to him again.”

“I must confess that I’m a great admirer of yours,” said Meyer.

“That’s quite a confession these days.”

“Both as an author of detective fiction and as a criminologist. Before I was a writer I was a lawyer. Every lawyer in Zurich remembers reading about the famous Gormann case.”

“Like I said, I was lucky. Well, almost. You know, it might just be that I’m the only Fritz here who was never a lawyer.” I glanced at Schellenberg. “How about it, General?”

“Yes, I studied law.”

“Major Eggen?”

Eggen nodded. “Guilty as charged,” he said.

“I enjoyed your talk,” said Meyer. “While I am in Berlin I should like very much to speak with you in private, Captain Gunther. Perhaps you would indulge the questions of an enthusiastic amateur. For the purposes of my research, you understand.”

“You’re writing another novel?”

“I’m always writing another novel,” he said.

“That’s good. In Germany there’s always room for another novel, so long as we keep burning them.”

Schellenberg smiled. “Captain Gunther is that rare thing in the Reich Security Office. A man who is a very poor Nazi. Which sometimes makes him quite entertaining to the rest of us.”

“Does that include you, General?” I had long suspected that, like Arthur Nebe, Walter Schellenberg was a lukewarm Nazi and more interested in his own profit and advancement than anything.

“It might do. But it’s not my entertainment with which we’re concerned right now. It’s Captain Meyer’s.”

“He’s quite right,” Meyer told me. “As an author it’s not very often that I get the chance to find out where a real detective’s inspiration starts and stops.”

I was thinking of a few questions I might have for the captain myself; questions about Stiftung Nordhav, perhaps, or Export Drives GMBH.

“I don’t know much about inspiration, Captain Meyer. But I’d be glad to help you in any way I can. Are you staying here at the Villa Minoux?”

“No, at the Adlon Hotel.”

“Then you’re in very good hands.”

“Why don’t you meet there for drinks?” suggested Schellenberg. “This evening? I’m sure you can spare some time for the captain, Gunther.”

“Actually I have tickets for the German Opera,” said Meyer. “Weber’s The Marksman. But before might be possible. Or after.”

“There is no after in German opera,” I said. “There’s only the eternal present. Besides, the opera’s a little too far from the Adlon to be comfortable for the curtain-up. Perhaps we’d better meet at the Grand Hotel on the Knie.”

“Gunther’s right,” agreed Schellenberg. “The Grand would be more convenient for you, Paul.”

“Shall we say six p.m.?” asked Captain Meyer.

I nodded; men were drifting back into the villa for the next lecture, but before that happened, Major Eggen took me aside.

“The general would like you to take special care of Captain Meyer and Lieutenant Leuthard.”

“Is he Swiss, too?”

“Yes. That’s him over there.” Eggen nodded at a tall young man with a hard, unsmiling face that could easily have found a home in the Gestapo. “Go to the general’s office on Berkaerstrasse and borrow a car. I’ll telephone ahead so they’ll be expecting you. Come back here. Drive them to the Grand Hotel for drinks, to the opera, and then wherever they want to go. Show them a good time.”

“At the German Opera?” I smiled. “I’m not sure something like that’s even possible.”

“Before. During the interval. After. Then take them back to the Adlon. Just make sure they’re happy, all right?”

“That’s asking rather a lot, don’t you think? They’re Swiss. Especially that young one. He looks very Swiss indeed. I could make a wristwatch happier than him.”

“Maybe so. But right now, you’re Captain Meyer’s enthusiasm, and whatever Captain Meyer wants, Captain Meyer gets. Understood?”

He handed me a fistful of banknotes and some food and drink coupons.

“I’ll bet you’re the man who made sure the cigarette boxes were full today,” I said.

“I beg your pardon?”

“You’ll forgive me for asking, sir, but who the hell are you? I’m not under your command. Exactly who do you work for? Foreign Intelligence? Stiftung Nordhav? With that manicure I know you’re not police. It was General Nebe who asked me to be here today. I’m sure he wouldn’t like it very much if I went off the farm before we’ve finished making hay here and slipped away into town like you’re asking. It’s not good manners to make a speech and then quit before some of my colleagues have had a turn at the lectern.”

“I work for the Reich Ministry of Economic Affairs,” he explained. “And if I square it with Nebe, will you do as General Schellenberg asks?”

“Well, I hate to drag myself away from this crime conference. Usually I’m very good at concealing my boredom. But if it’s all right with Nebe, it’s all right with me. Frankly I’ve already heard enough billy goat shit for one day. I know. I could take him to a couple of shops to see if we can find some of his books. Marga Schoeller’s Bookshop, perhaps. I expect he’d like it there, being an author.”

Marga Schoeller’s, on the Ku’damm, was the only bookshop in Berlin that still refused to sell Nazi literature.

“I don’t care where you take him, as long as he has a good time. Understood?”

Half an hour later I was walking down Am Grosser Wannsee again, only this time with a bit of a spring in my step. Frankly I was glad to be away from the Villa Minoux, even though it meant missing out on a lunch of mustard eggs and a pig knuckle with pea puree, not to mention more free cigarettes. The thought of meeting Himmler a second time was much too daunting; my shins couldn’t have taken it. The smile on my face lasted for precisely a hundred meters, at least until I came past the SS Horticultural School, where three undernourished young men were toiling in the sun with rakes and hoes. I walked up to the wrought-iron gate and watched them work. I’m good at that, too. But I never did like gardening very much, not even when there was a well-stocked window box on the sarcophagus-sized balcony outside my living room. I have green fingers only when I dip them in a Berliner Weisse with woodruff syrup — the champagne of the North. The three didn’t look up. Not even to wipe their brows, and the blue sky might as well have been gray for all the interest they had in looking at it.

There didn’t seem to be anyone in a uniform keeping guard so I whistled to one of the men and, seeing my uniform, he came running over to the gate, snatched off his cap, and then bowed his head, like someone in the SS had taught him that little show of respect with the toe of a boot and the end of a quirt. Now that he was near I could see that he wasn’t much more than a boy; perhaps fifteen or sixteen years old.

“Jewish?”

“Yes, sir.”

“From Berlin?”

“Yes, sir.”

“What were you, son? I mean, before they got you doing such vital war work for your country?”

“I was studying for my Abitur,” he said.

“Which school?”

“The Jewish School, on Kaiser-Strasse.”

“I know it. I used to know it well.” I swallowed uncomfortably, and removing a fist from my breeches pocket, I pushed it through the bars of the wrought-iron gate. “Take it quickly,” I said. “Before someone sees you.”

He looked at the banknotes and the cigarettes I’d dropped into his hand with astonishment and then pocketed them swiftly. Too surprised to say thank you, he just stood there with his cap in his bony hand, sweating uncomfortably, with eyes that were as hollow as a half-empty catacomb.

“An Abitur isn’t much good these days if you end up wearing a uniform like this one. Take my word for it, my boy. At least you have the scent of those nice flowers in your nostrils. Not like me. I get to smell shit all day long. And sometimes I even have to eat it, too.”