‘It’s all right, Corporal,’ Ploetz said smoothly. ‘I’ll handle things from here.’
‘Sure, doc, sure,’ I said. ‘You can pretend there’s a perfectly innocent explanation for all that recording equipment and while you’re at it, I’ll pretend I’m a proper detective. Right now the only thing I am absolutely certain of is the quality of that brandy. Better pour me another, Kritzinger. I pretend better when I’ve had a drink.’
‘Don’t give him any,’ Ploetz told Kritzinger. And then: ‘Your tongue is quite loose enough as it is, Gunther. We wouldn’t want you to say something to your own detriment. Especially not now you’re in the General’s good books.’
I ignored this. It didn’t sound right. Clearly the blow on the back of my neck had affected my hearing.
‘That’s right, doc. We’ve got to be careful what we say. What is it that the sign says? Attention! The enemy is listening. Well, they are. And they’re pretty good at it, too. Aren’t you, boys? What were you listening to anyway? And don’t tell me it was the Leader talking about the Winter Relief. Something in the Meeting Room? Something in the bedrooms? Maybe you’ve got a recording of Kuttner getting shot. That might come in useful. For me, anyway. Something in the Morning Room? Me, perhaps. Only what would be the point in that? I don’t mind calling you all crooks and liars to your ugly faces. Just see if I don’t.’
Ploetz moved his head in the direction of the door and the two SS men started to leave.
‘Look, Gunther,’ Ploetz said, ‘I think it might be better if you returned to your room and had a lie-down. I’ll inform the General of what’s happened. Under the circumstances, he’ll want to know you’re all right.’
At this moment a lie-down looked very appealing.
Ploetz went outside while Kritzinger helped me to my feet.
‘Are you all right, sir? Would you like me to help you back to your room?’
‘Thanks no, I’ll manage. I’m used to it. It’s an occupational hazard for a policeman, being hit. It comes of sticking my nose in where it’s not wanted. I should know better by now. It used to be that a detective could turn up at a country house, question everyone, find some recognizable clues, and then arrest the butler over chilled cocktails in the library. But it hasn’t worked out like that, I’m afraid, Kritzinger. I’m afraid you won’t be getting your big moment when everyone realizes what a clever fellow you’ve been.’
‘That is disappointing, sir. Perhaps you would care for another brandy after all.’
I shook my head. ‘No. I expect Doctor Ploetz is right. I do talk too much. It comes of not having any answers. I don’t suppose you know who shot Captain Kuttner.’
‘No, sir.’
He smiled a fleeting smile and then scratched the back of his head, awkwardly.
‘Pity.’
‘You understand, sir, that there are lots of things in this house I prefer not to hear, but if these things had included a shot, or perhaps a snippet of conversation that might shed some light on his unfortunate death, then I should certainly tell you, Commissar. Really I would. However, I am certain there’s nothing I can tell you.’
I nodded. ‘Well, that’s very good of you to say so, Kritzinger. I really think you mean that. And I appreciate you saying it.’
‘Really?’ The smile flickered on again for just a second. ‘I wonder.’
‘No, I do.’
‘I flatter myself that perhaps I know your own independent cast of mind. One can’t help but hear things in a house like this.’
‘So I noticed.’
‘Consequently, I know you believe that I think in a certain way only, for what it’s worth, I don’t. I never have. I am a good German. Like you, perhaps, I don’t know what else to be. But unlike you, I am not a courageous man, if you follow me.’
‘That Iron Cross ribbon in your buttonhole says otherwise, Mister Kritzinger.’
‘Thank you, sir. But that was then. I think things were simpler in that war, were they not? Courage was perhaps easier to recognize not only in oneself but in others as well. Well, I was younger then. I have a wife now. And a child. And long ago I concluded that the only practical course of action available to me was simply to do as I’m told.’
‘Me, too.’
I headed for the stairs a little unsteadily. It had been a very German conversation.
As I passed the dining room I noticed that lunch was finishing. Seeing me, Heydrich made his excuses to the other cauliflower and, smiling, nodded toward the Drawing Room.
It wasn’t every day that Heydrich smiled at me. I followed him, and he led me to the French windows and out onto the terrace where he offered me one of his cigarettes and even condescended to light it for me. He did not smoke one himself. And he seemed oddly cheerful considering that Vaclav Moravek continued to elude the Gestapo. I had only ever seen him like this once before, and that had been in June 1940, after the French capitulation.
‘Major Ploetz told me what happened to you below stairs,’ he said, almost apologetically. ‘I should have informed you about the SD listening station but really, I’ve had so much on my plate. As if I didn’t have enough to do here in Bohemia with the Three Kings and UVOD and the traitor X. Reichsmarshal Goring has tasked me to submit to him a comprehensive draft as to how we can sort out the way the Jews are being handled in all new territories under German influence. Well, I’m sure I don’t have to tell you what things are like in the East. It’s nothing short of chaos. But that’s hardly your concern.
‘But to come back to the traitor X: as you know, all of the guests in this house were under suspicion in that respect. However, by a simple process of elimination our intelligence analysts had narrowed down the search for the traitor’s identity to one of six or seven officers. Consequently everything these men said on the least of subjects was of interest to us. Which is why some of the rooms in the Lower Castle have concealed microphones, just in case one of them should let something important slip.’
‘You mean, like the Pension Matzky.’
Heydrich nodded. ‘You know about the microphones, do you?’ He grinned. ‘Yes, like the Pension Matzky.’
‘And do these rooms here include the Morning Room?’
‘Yes, they do.’
My stomach turned over for a moment; not for my own sake — as far as Heydrich was concerned, I was a hopeless case — but for Kurt Kahlo’s, and I started to rack my brains for anything he had said that might have been interpreted as evidence of his disloyalty.
‘So you’ve heard everything that was said in there?’
‘No, not me personally. But I’ve read some of the transcripts.’
‘Kuttner’s room?’
‘No. My fourth adjutant was hardly important enough to have rated that level of surveillance.’ Heydrich made a face. ‘Which is a pity, because if he had been, then of course we would now know who it was who pumped two bullets into his chest.’
I let out a weary sigh and tried to put some sort of tolerant, understanding face on what had just been revealed to me.
‘In my book, a traitor is a traitor. I can easily see why you should wish to employ every method at your disposal in order to catch him. Including secret microphones. But I just hope you’ll excuse some of my Criminal Assistant Kahlo’s looser talk in the Morning Room. You can blame me for a lot of that. He’s a good man. I’m afraid I’ve been a bad influence on him.’
‘On the contrary, Gunther. It’s thanks to you and your unconventional, not to say insubordinate methods, that the traitor has now been revealed. In fact, everything has worked out exactly as I had hoped it would. You, Gunther, have been the catalyst that changed everything. I don’t know who to congratulate more: me for having the inspiration of bringing you here in the first place, or you for your own stubbornly independent cast of mind.’
I felt my face take on an expression of disbelief.
‘Yes, it’s quite true. It seems that we owe you everything in this matter, Gunther. Which makes it all the more unfortunate that your immediate reward should have been to be knocked unconscious by one of our more robust colleagues in the SD. For which, once again, I offer my sincere apologies. You were after all merely doing your job. A job well done. For even as we speak the traitor is under close arrest and on his way to Gestapo headquarters in Prague.’
‘But who was it? The traitor.’
