‘I am supposed to be investigating a murder,’ I said, eventually. ‘Two murders, if you count Geert Vranken. However, neither one of them is paying out right now; and I am owed some leave. So, maybe, yes, I could use a holiday. Only I’m going to have to clear it with the Commissioner. He worries when I’m not around. I’m the last real cop in Berlin. When I go, it’s just the two sentries out front of the Alex and the cleaning lady. So I’ll let you know, angel. Tomorrow, probably.’
Chapter 9
‘I’m afraid that’s quite impossible, Bernie.’
I shifted uncomfortably in Ludtke’s office. I felt about ten years old, a schoolboy again, in trouble with his headmaster.
‘Would you mind telling me why, sir?’
‘I was about to. I’ve just had a telephone call from an SS major called Doctor Achim Ploetz.’
‘Never heard of him.’
‘In Prague.’ Ludtke grinned. ‘Yes, I thought that would shut you up. Major Ploetz is the Chief Adjutant to General Heydrich. It seems that your presence is required in Bohemia and Moravia. Or perhaps it’s just Bohemia. I’m not sure.’ He shrugged. ‘Whichever one Prague is in is where you are requested to go.’
I felt a sudden chill on the back of my neck as if I’d run my finger along the edge of the blade of the falling axe at Plotzensee. Heydrich had that effect on people, which was probably why he was nicknamed ‘the Hangman’.
‘Did Major Ploetz explain why I’m needed in Prague, sir?’
‘It seems that the General is planning some sort of weekend with friends, at his country house outside Prague. To celebrate his appointment as the new Reichsprotector of Bohemia. I had no idea that you and General Heydrich were on such cordial terms, Bernie.’
‘No sir. Nor had I.’
‘Oh, come now. You might not wear a scary badge on your lapel but everyone at the Alex knows you’ve got vitamin B. Even the footballs handle you with care.’
Many Gestapo officers were fond of wearing leather coats and hats; and since many of them were also better fed than the rest of us and hence fatter, too, they were known as ‘footballs’. But sadly, kicking one was not an option.
‘Perhaps I’ll have my own adjutant telephone the General’s adjutant and inform him that I will have to decline the invitation,’ I said.
‘You do that.’
‘What about the case I’m working on? This Czech spy who got himself killed.’
‘You told me it was a traffic accident, didn’t you? Happens every day. And spies are apparently no exception.’
‘Yes, but I’m pretty sure that he murdered that Dutch foreign worker, Geert Vranken. You remember. The fellow who got himself hit by a train after receiving multiple stab wounds.’
‘I’m sure he’ll be waiting for you when you get back from your weekend with the General.’
Ludtke looked like he was enjoying my discomfort. He knew the truth about my dislike for the Nazis but it didn’t stop him from savouring my dilemma: for me not to be a Party member and yet still in such apparent high favour with Heydrich was amusing to him. It amused me, too, which is to say it stopped me from thinking about much else.
‘Doctor Ploetz, you say?’
‘Yes.’ Ludtke leaned back in his chair and folded his hands behind his head as if he was about to surrender. ‘I hear Prague’s very nice at this time of year. I’ve often fancied going there with the wife. She collects glass, you know. And there’s a lot of glass in Prague.’
‘That should keep the Nazis happy. They like smashing glass. Here, maybe you should go instead of me.’
‘Oh no.’ Ludtke smiled. ‘I wouldn’t know what to say to a man as important as the Reichsprotector of Bohemia. My God, I should be surprised if he even knew I existed.’
‘Any man who can persuade Berlin detectives to wear women’s clothes in order to catch a murderer is certain to have been noticed upstairs.’
‘It’s kind of you to say so, Bernie. But of course I had lots of help. Remember Georg Heuser?’
‘Yes.’
‘Georg Heuser was one of my best detectives on the S-Bahn murder case. Good man, is Georg. Of course, he lacks your subtlety and experience, but he’s a promising young policeman. And of more use here than where he is now.’
‘And where is that?’
‘In a Special Action Group somewhere in the Ukraine.’
I didn’t reply. Suddenly going to Prague didn’t seem so bad after all. Not when they were still sending ‘good’ men to Special Action Groups in the Ukraine. Just thinking about Georg Heuser and what he was probably going through in Minsk, or Pinsk, or Dnipropetrovsk, or any one of a hundred Jew towns where innocent people were being murdered in their thousands, made me feel that I was much better off than I realized. And all talk of an S-Bahn murderer seemed laughable when one of our own investigating detectives now seemed likely to chalk up more victims in twenty-four hours than Paul Ogorzow had managed in one murderous year.
Ludtke played with the rocker blotter on his desk for a moment as if trying to measure something.
‘You hear stories,’ he said, finally. ‘About what is happening out east. In Ukraine and Latvia, for example. The Police Battalions. Special Action Groups and what have you. You were there, Bernie. What is the truth about what’s happening? Is it true what they’re saying? That people are being murdered? Men, women and children. Because they’re Jews?’
I nodded.
‘My God,’ he said.
‘I think you once said that whenever I came in here it was like rain coming in at the eaves. Now you know why. Since I came home there hasn’t been a day when I didn’t feel ashamed. And the nights are worse.’
‘My God.’
‘That’s the third time you’ve mentioned God, Friedrich-Wilhelm. And I’ve been thinking that there must be a God because after all, the Leader is always mentioning Him and it’s inconceivable he could be wrong about that. But what we’ve done to the Jews, and what we’re still doing to the Jews, and, I think, what we seem intent on doing to the Jews for a good while longer, well, He’s not going to forgive that in a hurry. Perhaps not ever. In fact, I’ve a very terrible feeling that whatever we do to them He’s going to do to us. Only it’ll be worse. Much worse. It’ll be much worse because He’s going to get the fucking Russians to do it.’
‘I hear Prague is very nice at this time of year. I’ve often wanted to go there.’ Arianne shook her head. ‘I really can’t imagine why I haven’t been already. After all, Prague is only a couple of hours on the train from Dresden. And my Mama’s a German-speaking Czech from Teplitz. Did I tell you that? She moved to Dresden when she met my Papa. Not that she ever really thought of herself as a Czech. Nobody does in Teplitz. At least that’s what my Mama says.’ She paused. ‘Maybe I could go and see my brother. His unit is stationed near Prague.’
We were at Kempinski’s Vaterland on Potsdamer Platz, a department store of cafes and restaurants that described itself as ‘the jolliest place in Berlin’ and which was as ersatz as the coffee we were drinking in the Grinzing Cafe, which with its diorama of Old Vienna and the Danube River was itself pretty ersatz. Of the several bars and cafes in Vaterland, Arianne much preferred the Wild West Bar’s log-cabin walls, American flags, and the picture of Custer’s Last Stand, but, immediately outside its door was an amusement machine with a light-gun on which you could shoot at pictures of aircraft, and the city’s young anti-aircraft gunners were fond of using it for their boisterous practice. This particular form of entertainment was too like the real thing for my money and so we sat in the Grinzing and hugged each other fondly in sight of a trompe-l’oeil of the Austrian capital city with miniature bridges, mechanical boats, and an electric train-set while a little orchestra played Strauss waltzes. It was like being a giant or a god, which, in Germany, usually amounts to the same thing. Arianne was smaller than me by a head, and while that didn’t make her Freia to my Fasolt, she was very much a goddess of feminine love. I’d seldom had a
