‘Try and trace Lotte Hartmann at Sievering. That shouldn’t be too difficult. You don’t go after a part in a film without leaving an address where you can be contacted.’
Liebl sipped his coffee noisily, and then dabbed daintily at his mouth with a spinnaker-sized handkerchief.
‘Please waste no time in tracing this person,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry to have to press you like this, but until we discover Herr Konig’s whereabouts, we have nothing. Once you find him we might at least try and oblige him to be called as a material witness.’
I nodded meekly. There was more I could have told him but his tone irritated me, and any further explanation would have generated questions I was simply not equipped to answer yet. I could, for instance, have given him an account of what I had learned from Belinsky, at that same table in the Schwarzenberg, about a week after he had saved my skin – information that I was still turning over in my mind, and trying to make sense of. Nothing was as straightforward as Liebl somehow imagined.
‘First of all,’ Belinsky had explained, ‘the Drexlers were what they seemed. She survived Matthausen Concentration Camp, while he came out of the Lodz Ghetto and Auschwitz. They met in a Red Cross hospital after the war, and lived in Frankfurt for a while before they went to Berlin. Apparently they worked pretty closely with the Crowcass people and the public prosecutor’s office. They maintained a large number of files on wanted Nazis and pursued many cases simultaneously. Consequently our people in Berlin weren’t able to determine if there had been any one investigation which related to their deaths, or to Captain Linden’s. The local police are baffled, as they say. Which is probably the way they prefer it. Frankly, they don’t give much of a damn who killed the Drexlers, and the American MP investigation doesn’t look as if it’s going to get anywhere.
‘But it doesn’t seem likely that the Drexlers would have been very interested in Martin Albers. He was S S and SD clandestine operations chief in Budapest until 1944, when he was arrested for his part in Stauffenberg’s plot to kill Hitler, and hanged at Flossenburg Concentration Camp in April 1945. But I dare say he had it coming to him. From all accounts, Albers was a bit of a bastard, even if he did try and get rid of the Fuhrer. A lot of you guys were a hell of a long time about that, you know. Our Intelligence people even think that Himmler knew about the plot all along and let it go ahead in the hope that he could take Hitler’s place himself.
‘Anyway, it turns out that this Max Abs guy was Albers’ servant, driver and general dogsbody, so it kind of looks as if he was honouring his old boss. The Albers family was killed in an air-raid, so I guess there was no one else to erect a stone in his memory.’
‘Rather an expensive gesture, wouldn’t you say?’
‘You think so? Well, I’d sure hate to get killed minding your ass, kraut.’
Then Belinsky told me about the Pullach company.
‘It’s an American-sponsored organization, run by the Germans, set up with the aim of rebuilding German commerce throughout Bizonia. The whole idea is that Germany should become economically self-supporting as quickly as possible so that Uncle Sam won’t have to keep baling you all out. The company itself is located at an American mission called Camp Nicholas, which until a few months ago was occupied by the postal censorship authorities of the US Army. Camp Nicholas is a big compound that was originally built for Rudolf Hess and his family. But after he went AWOL Bormann had it for a while. And then Kesselring and his staff. Now it’s ours. There’s just enough security about the place to convince the locals that the camp is home to some kind of technical research establishment, but that’s no surprise given the history of the place. Anyway, the good people of Pullach give it a wide berth, preferring not to know too much about what’s happening there, even if it is something as harmless as an economic and commercial think-tank. I guess they’re good at that, what with Dachau just a few miles away.’
That seemed to take care of Pullach, I thought. But what of Abs? It didn’t seem to be in character for a man who wished to commemorate the memory of a hero of the German Resistance (such as it had existed), to kill an innocent man merely in order to remain anonymous. And how could Abs be connected with Linden, the Nazi- hunter, except as some kind of informer? Was it possible that Abs had also been killed, just like Linden and the Drexlers?
I finished my coffee, lit a cigarette and for the present moment I was content that these and other questions could not be asked in any forum other than my own mind.
The number 39 ran west along Sieveringer Strasse into Dobling and stopped just short of the Vienna Woods, a spur of the Alps which reaches as far as the Danube.
A film studio is not a place where you are likely to see any great evidence of industry. Equipment lies forever idle in the vans hired to transport it. Sets are never more than half-built even when they are finished. But mostly there are lots of people, all drawing a wage, who seem to do little more than stand around, smoking cigarettes and nursing cups of coffee; and these only stand because they are not considered important enough to be provided with a seat. For anyone foolish enough to have financed such an apparently profligate undertaking, film must seem like the most expensive length of material since Chinese silk, and would, I reflected, surely have driven Dr Liebl half-mad with impatience.
I inquired after the studio manager from a man with a clipboard, and he directed me to a small office on the first floor. There I found a tall, paunchy man with dyed hair, wearing a lilac-coloured cardigan and having the manner of an eccentric maiden aunt. He listened to my mission with one hand clasped on top of the other as if I had been requesting the hand of his warded niece.
‘What are you, some kind of policeman?’ he said combing an unruly eyebrow with his fingernail. From somewhere in the building came the sound of a very loud trumpet, which caused him to wince noticeably.
‘A detective,’ I said, disingenuously.
‘Well, we always like to cooperate with them at the top, I’m sure. What did you say this girl was casting for?’
‘I didn’t. I’m afraid I don’t know. But it was in the last two or three weeks.’
He picked up the telephone and pressed a switch.
‘Willy? It’s me, Otto. Could you be a love and step into my office for a moment?’ He replaced the receiver, and checked his hair. ‘Willy Reichmann’s a production manager here. He may be able to help you.’
‘Thanks,’ I said and offered him a cigarette.
He threaded it behind his ear. ‘How kind. I’ll smoke it later.’
‘What are you filming at the moment?’ I inquired while we waited. Whoever was playing the trumpet hit a couple of high notes that didn’t seem to match.
Otto emitted a groan and stared archly at the ceiling. ‘Well, it’s called
‘Would that be Karl Hartl?’
‘Yes. Do you know him?’
‘Only
‘Oh,’ he said sourly. ‘That.’
There was a knock at the door and a short man with bright red hair came into the office. He reminded me of a troll.
‘Willy, this is Herr Gunther. He’s a detective. If you’re willing to forgive the fact that he liked
Willy smiled uncertainly, revealing small uneven teeth that looked like a mouthful of rock salt, nodded and said in a high-pitched voice: ‘You’d best come into my office, Herr Gunther.’
‘Don’t keep Willy too long, Herr Gunther,’ Otto instructed as I followed Willy’s diminutive figure into the corridor. ‘He has an appointment in fifteen minutes.’
Willy turned on his heel and looked blankly at the studio manager. Otto sighed exasperatedly. ‘Don’t you ever write anything in your diary, Willy? We’ve got that Englishman coming from London Films. Mr Lyndon-Haynes? Remember?’
Willy grunted something and then closed the door behind us. He led the way along the corridor to another office, and ushered me inside.
‘Now, what is this girl’s name?’ he said, pointing me to a chair.
‘Lotte Hartmann.’
‘I don’t suppose you know the name of the production company?’
