that was about the same size as a U-Bahn tunnel. On the immaculate lawn was yet another piece of stone statuary: an enormous stag and two deer who were running away from the house. I took one look at the number of SS patrolling the grounds and felt like galloping away myself. With a couple of females in season for frolicsome company I might even have made it over the high wall.
Klein drew up at the front door and switched off the 320’s three-litre four-stroke engine. As it cooled, it ticked away like there was a family of mice living underneath the 2?-metre long hood.
For a moment I just sat there looking up at the house, listening to the soothing coo of some pigeons and, it seemed, to the sound of someone not too far away who was shooting at them.
‘Executions?’ I said, retrieving my pistol from the door pocket.
Klein grinned. ‘Hunting. There’s always something to shoot around here.’
‘Something, or someone?’
‘I can get you a gun if you’d care to go out and bag something for the pot. We eat a lot of game here at the Castle.’
‘Well, I always say, if you can’t play the game properly, eat it. That reminds me. Who do I give my food coupons to?’
The Lower Castle didn’t look like a food coupon sort of place, but I said it anyway, just for the fun of it.
‘You can forget about that sort of thing for a while. This is not like Berlin. There are no shortages of anything. The General lives very well out here in the countryside. Cigarettes, booze, chocolate, vegetarian. Anything you want. Just ask one of them.’
Klein nodded in the direction of an approaching SS valet wearing a white mess jacket who opened my door and came smartly to attention.
‘I’m beginning to see why he lives here. We’re not just outside Prague. We’re outside what counts as normal as well.’
I stood up, returned the Hitler salute, and followed the valet inside the house.
The main hallway was two storeys high with a wrought-iron gallery and a large, ornate brass chandelier that looked like Dante, Beatrice and the Heavenly Host of Angels waiting around for an appointment with Saint Peter. Behind the heavy oak door was a long-case clock the size of a beech tree and which I quickly learned was about as good at keeping time. There was a big round walnut wood table with a bronze of a mounted Amazon fighting a panther. The panther was wrapped around the horse, which looked like a mistake when you took into account the Amazon’s breasts. Then again, the Amazon had a spear in her hand, so maybe the panther knew what he was doing. There are some women who, no matter how good-looking they are, it’s best to leave well alone.
Across the hall and down a short flight of marble steps was a large room with tie-side Knoll sofas and a hardwood coffee table that might once have been a small Caribbean island. The only reason you might have assumed this was a room was if you also assumed that somewhere further than the human eye could see there were more walls and windows and a door or two. There was a big empty fireplace with brass firedogs and a cast- iron screen that belonged on the door of a gaol. Above this was a mantelpiece with a muscle-bound Atlas at each corner and on the mantel itself several framed photographs of Hitler, Heydrich, Himmler, and a strongly featured blonde I assumed was Heydrich’s wife, Lina. In another picture she and Heydrich were wearing Tyrolean costume and playing with a baby; they all looked very German. And it was difficult not to think of those Atlases as two poor Czechs groaning under the burden of their new masters. Above the mantel there was a large and unnecessarily well-painted portrait of the Leader, who seemed to be staring up at the Lower Castle’s gallery as if he was wondering when on earth someone was going to come down and inform him exactly what he was doing there. I had exactly the same feeling myself.
As my eyes gradually adjusted to the size of the place I saw, in the distance, a set of French windows and through them a lawn, some shrubberies and trees, and the clear blue sky that was the inevitable and very pleasant corollary of having no neighbours.
A tall butler wearing a tailcoat and a wing collar glided silently into the hall and bowed, giving me time enough to get a good look at his hair, which, like the deferential expression on his face, seemed to have been painted on his head. The Iron Cross first class ribbon on his coat lapel was a nice touch, reminding everyone wearing a uniform that he, too, had done his bit in the trenches. He had a thick, jowly face and an even thicker beef-soup of a voice.
‘Welcome sir, to Jungfern-Breschan. I am Kritzinger, the butler. The General presents his compliments and asks you to join him for drinks on the terrace at twelve-thirty p.m.’ He lifted one arm in the direction of the French windows, as if he had been directing traffic on Potsdamer Platz. ‘Please let me know if there’s anything I can do to make your stay here more comfortable. Until then, if you’ll come this way, I’ll show you to your quarters.’
My room, in the north wing, was larger and better appointed than I’d been expecting. There was a good-sized bed, a secretaire desk with three ebonized drawers for the clothes I had brought from the Imperial, a table-chair and a leather armchair that stood next to a fireplace that was laid but not lit. In the window was a folding tray-table with a princely range of alcoholic drinks, chocolate, newspapers and American cigarettes, and as soon as Kritzinger had made himself scarce, I set about throwing away my Johnnies and filling my cigarette case. With a drink in my hand and a decent cigarette in my mouth I inspected my principality in more detail.
On the desk was a Brumberg table lamp with a parchment shade, and on the floor a dull maroon Turkish kilim. There were some towels on the end of my bed and the door had a key and a bolt, for which I was grateful. Absurdly so. When you’re in a house that’s already full of murderers it’s perhaps foolish to think that locking your door is going to keep you safe. There were bars on the lower-floor windows but not on those of the upper floor. The window in my room, which had some sturdy brass bolts, had a fixed windowpane and two casements that opened out onto the back garden. There was a roller blind for summer and some thick red curtains for when the weather turned colder, which, in that part of the world, it always does.
I poked my head outside. The ground was about five or six metres below the window ledge. In the centre of a circular bed of flowers a sprinkler was a whirling dervish of water and rhythm. Beyond that was a gravel path lined with neatly trimmed bushes and then a thick clump of trees. And on the lawn was another stone group of escaping deer that was perhaps a pair to the one in the front garden.
I lay on my bed and finished my drink and smoked my cigarette. These did little to calm me. To be under the same roof as Heydrich made me nervous. I got up and poured myself another drink, which helped, but only a little. Whatever he wanted, I knew it wouldn’t sit well with my conscience, which was already badly bruised, and I resolved that when eventually he got around to explaining what this was, I would tell him, as politely as I could, to go to hell. There was no way I was ever going back to the Ukraine to perform some loathsome act of genocide and it really didn’t matter if that meant being sent to a concentration camp. I wasn’t the same as any of those other bastards in uniform. I wasn’t even a Nazi. Perhaps they needed reminding of that. Perhaps it was time I repeated my allegiance to the old Republic. If they were looking for an excuse to throw me out of the SD then I would hand them one. Arianne was surely right: if more people stood up to Heydrich the way I’d stood up to the Labour leader on the train then, maybe, things would change. More people would be dead, too, including myself, but that couldn’t be helped. Lately that didn’t seem so bad. That’s what I told myself, anyway. It might have been the schnapps. And of course I wouldn’t know for sure until the time came. But I knew it was going to take some courage on my part because I was also afraid. That’s the only way I know that you can distinguish being brave from being stupid.
‘That’s rather beautiful, don’t you think?’
I was looking at a dazzling modern picture of a dark-haired femme fatale. She was wearing a fabulous long dress that seemed to be made of golden Argus eyes, all set against a radiantly primordial golden background. There was something terrifying about the woman herself. She looked like some remorseless Egyptian queen who had been made ready for eternity by a group of economists who were slaves to the gold standard.
‘Unfortunately it’s a copy. The original was stolen by that greedy fat bastard Herman Goring and is now in his private collection, where nobody but him can see it. More’s the pity.’
I was in the Lower Castle library. Through the window I could see the back garden where several SS and SD officers were already collected on the terrace. The officer speaking to me was about thirty, tall, thin, and rather effete. He had white blond hair and a duelling scar on his face. The three pips on his black collar-patch told me he was an SS-Hauptsturmfuhrer — a captain, like me; and the monkey swing of silver braid on his tunic — properly called an aiguillette, but only by people who knew their way around a dictionary of military words — indicated he was an aide-de-camp, most likely Heydrich’s.
‘Are you Doctor Ploetz?’ I asked.
