According to Max Merten, Munich RE had insured all of the Nazi concentration camps against fire, theft, and other risks. They’d also been in business with the SS. I certainly wasn’t about to look for any moral high ground where that was concerned. Besides, I actually believed what I’d told Dietrich about international amnesia. Nobody was losing any sleep about what Germany did in the war. Nobody but me, perhaps.
The chairman’s office was an aerie fit for some giant bird of prey and the small thin man who occupied the premises was no less keen-eyed than any mythical hawk or eagle. Alzheimer was a smooth, rich-looking Bavarian with a tailor-made gray suit, a light tan, dark hair, darker eyebrows, and a face as shrewd as an actuary’s life table. If Josef Goebbels had stayed alive he might have looked like Alois Alzheimer. While Dietrich went about the task of recommending me, the chairman gave me an appraising sort of look as if he were calculating how long I had to live and what the premium on my policy ought to be. But even Pollyanna could have seen that I was a risk too far. In spite of that, the chairman of Munich RE approved my appointment. I was now a claims adjustor making twenty-five deutschmarks a week, plus bonuses. It wasn’t a fortune but it paid a lot better than the mortuary; like my mother used to say, it’s good to make ends meet but sometimes it’s nice to have enough to tie a bow. And I owed it all to Max Merten. I walked out of the building feeling almost happy with myself. Insurance seemed no less obscure than what I’d been doing at the hospital and therefore every bit as appealing. More so, perhaps. Even the word “insurance” seemed to underwrite a desirable element of safety. It was hard to imagine a disgruntled claimant putting a gun to my ear while he argued the finer points of the small print in his policy.
I was wrong about that.
ELEVEN
–
“Do you know where the Glyptothek is, Christof?”
“I know where it is,” I told Dietrich. “I’m not sure what it is.”
“It’s Munich’s oldest public museum and the only one in the world solely dedicated to ancient sculpture. There was a break-in last night and I’d like you to go and see what’s been stolen. Which is another way of me telling you to find out if they’re going to make a claim. If they are—check them out for contributory negligence, that kind of thing. Something that might affect a payout. Did someone leave a door unlocked or a window open? You know.”
“I know.”
And I did. Before joining Berlin’s Murder Commission I’d attended enough burglaries to feel confident and even quite nostalgic about investigating this for Munich RE.
It was about a thirty-minute walk southwest to the museum on the north side of Königsplatz; the Glyptothek had been badly damaged in 1943–44 and restoration was now almost complete but there was still scaffolding on the side of the west wing and I wondered if this was where the break-in had occurred. Behind a portico of Ionic columns with two wings adorned with niches were the exhibition rooms deriving their light from a central court and, in a way, the place reminded me of the offices of Munich RE, which said a lot more about the insurance business than it did about the plastic arts, at least in Germany. The marble group on the pediment featured a one-armed Athena ordering around a bunch of workers who couldn’t have looked more indifferent to her protection, which made me think they were already members of a trade union—and very probably English, since none of them seemed to be doing much. Outside the entrance was a police car; inside were a lot of Greek and Roman marble sculptures, most of them too big to steal or already too badly damaged to notice if they’d been damaged, so to speak. A uniformed cop asked me who I was and I gave him one of my new business cards, which seemed to satisfy him. They certainly satisfied me; it was several years since I’d had a business card and this one was as stiff as a starched wing collar.
The cop told me the break-in had taken place on the floor above and, noting an alarm bell as big as a dinner gong and a ladder under the stairs, I followed the sound of voices as I climbed to a suite of offices on the second floor of the west wing. A detective was inspecting a cracked window that looked as if it had been forced open, while another was listening to a man with glasses and a chin beard, whom I took to be someone from the museum.
“It’s very odd,” said the man from the museum, “but as far as I can see almost nothing was taken. Just a few very small pieces, I think. When I think of all the treasures they could have stolen, or vandalized, my blood runs cold. The Rondanini Medusa or the Barberini Faun, for example. Not that it would be easy to move such a thing as our treasured Faun. It weighs several hundred kilograms.”
“Was anything damaged?” asked the detective.
“Only the desk in my office. Someone forced it open and had a good rake around in the drawers.”
“Probably kids,” said the detective, “looking for some easy cash.”
It was about now that they both noticed me and I stepped forward with my business card and introduced
