Prague Fatale (8 page)

A science graduate from the University in The Hague, Vranken had been quickly eliminated from Lüdtke’s inquiry when his alibi checked out; but, hardly wanting to rely on this alone – after all, his alibi relied on other foreign workers
– he had been at pains to adduce evidence of his good character, and to this end he had offered the name of a German whom he’d met before the war, in The Hague. Lüdtke’s team of detectives, several of whom I knew, had hardly needed to take up this reference because, a week or so after Vranken’s interview, Paul Ogorzow had been arrested. The certainty – on my part – that for once the right man had been sent to the guillotine at Plotzensee, in July 1941, gradually gave way to a feeling of pity for Geert Vranken and, more particularly, the wife and baby he had left behind in the Netherlands. How many other families, I wondered, would be similarly destroyed before the war was over?

Of course, this was hardly normal for me. I’d seen plenty of murder victims in my time at the Alex, many of them in even more tragic circumstances than these. After Minsk I suppose my conscience was easily pricked. Whatever the reasons, I determined to find out if, as Commissioner Lüdtke had said it would, the State Labour Service had yet informed Vranken’s family that he had met with a fatal accident. Thus it was that I spent a fruitless hour on the telephone being rerouted from one bureaucrat to another before I finally gave up and wrote a letter myself, this to an address in The Hague that was in Vranken’s work book and which, prior to its issue by the State Labour Service, was where previously he had been employed. In my letter I made no mention of the fact that Geert Vranken had been murdered, only that he had been hit by a train and killed. His being stabbed six times was more than any family needed to be told.

I had an office in the Police Praesidium, on the third floor – a small room on the corner underneath the tower and overlooking the U-Bahn station on Alexanderplatz. The view out of the window on a late summer evening was the best thing about it. Life didn’t look quite so dismal at that kind of altitude. I couldn’t smell the people or see their pale, undernourished and sometimes just plain hopeless faces. All the streets came together in one big square just the same as they had done before the war, with trams clanging and taxis honking their horns and the city growling in the distance the way it always did. Sitting on the windowsill with my face in the sun, it was easy to pretend there was no war, no front, no Hitler and that none of it had anything to do with me. Outside there wasn’t a swastika in sight, just the many varieties of specimen in my own favourite game of girl spotting. It was a sport I was always passionate about and at which I excelled. I liked the way it helped me tune in to the natural world, and because girls in Berlin are visible in a way that other Berlin wildlife is not, I never seemed to grow tired of it. There are so many different girls out there. Mostly I was on the lookout for the rarer varieties: exotic blondes that hadn’t been seen since 1938 and fabulous redheads wearing summer plumage that was very nearly transparent. I’d
thought about putting a feeder on my windowsill but I knew it was hopeless. The climb up to the third floor was simply too much for them.

The only creatures that ever made it up to my office were the rats. Somehow they never run out of energy, and when I turned back to face the room with its awful portrait of the Leader and the SD uniform that was hanging in an open closet, like a terrible reminder of the other man I’d been for much of the summer, there were two of them coming through the glass door. Neither of them said anything until they were seated with their hats in their hands and had stared at me for several seconds with preternatural calm, as if I were some lesser being, which of course I was, because these rats were from the Gestapo.

One of the men wore a double-breasted navy chalk-stripe, and the other, a dark grey three-piece suit with a watch-chain that glittered like his eyes. The one wearing the chalk-stripe had a full head of short, fair hair that was as carefully arranged as the lines on a sheet of writing paper; the other was even fairer but losing it on the front almost as if his forehead had been plucked like one of those medieval ladies in a rather dull oil painting. On their faces were smiles that were insolent or self-satisfied or cynical but mostly all three at the same time and they regarded me and my office and probably my very existence with some amusement. But that was okay because I felt much the same way myself.

‘You’re Bernhard Gunther?’

I nodded.

The man with the chalk-stripe suit checked his neatly combed hair fastidiously, as if he had just stepped out of the barber’s chair at the KaDeWe. A decent haircut was about the only thing in Berlin that was not in short supply.

‘With a reputation like yours I was expecting a pair of Persian slippers and a calabash.’ He smiled. ‘Like Sherlock Holmes.’

I sat down behind my desk facing the pair and smiled back. ‘These days I find that a three-pipe problem’s just the same as a one-pipe problem. I can’t find the tobacco to smoke in it. So I keep the calabash hidden in the drawer alongside my gold-plated syringe and some orange pips.’

They kept on looking, saying nothing, just sizing me up.

‘You fellows should have brought along a blackjack if you were expecting me to talk first.’

‘Is that what you think of us?’

‘I’m not the only one with a colourful reputation.’

‘True.’

‘Are you here to ask questions or for a favour?’

‘We don’t need to ask favours,’ said the one with the basilica skull designed by Brunelleschi. ‘Usually we get all the cooperation we require without having to ask anyone a favour.’ He glanced at his colleague and did some more smiling. ‘Isn’t that right?’

‘Yes, that’s right.’ The one with the neat hair was like a thicker-set version of von Ribbentrop. He had no eyebrows to speak of and big shoulders: I didn’t think he was a man you wanted to see taking off his coat and rolling up his sleeves in search of answers. ‘Most people are only too willing to help us and it’s rare we are ever obliged to ask for something as quaint as a favour.’

‘Is that so?’ I put a match in my mouth and started to chew it slowly. I figured that as long as I didn’t try inhaling it, my lungs would stay healthy. ‘All right. I’m listening.’ I leaned forward and clasped my hands with an earnest reverence that bordered on the sarcastic. ‘And if it persuades you
to come quickly to the point then this is me looking all ready and willing to help the Gestapo in any way that I can. Only do stop trying to make me feel very small or I’ll start to question the wisdom of letting you sit in my office with your hats in your hands.’

Chalk-stripe pinched the crown of his hat and inspected the lining. For all I knew it had his name and rank written there just in case he forgot them.

‘You know my name. So why don’t you introduce yourselves?’

‘I’m Commissar Sachse. And this is Inspector Wandel.’

I nodded politely. ‘Delighted, I’m sure.’

‘How much do you know about the Three Kings? And please don’t mention the Bible or I shall conclude that I’m not going to like you.’

‘You’re talking about the three men who came to Berlin from Czechoslovakia in early 1938, aren’t you? I’m sorry, Bohemia and Moravia, although I’m never quite sure of the difference and anyway, who cares? The Three Kings are three Czech nationalists and officers of the defeated Czech Army who, having conducted a series of terrorist attacks in Prague – it is still called Prague, isn’t it? Good. Well then, having orchestrated a campaign of sabotage there they decided to bring their war here, to the streets of Berlin. And as far as I know, for a while they were quite successful. They planted a bomb at the Aviation Ministry in September 1939. Not to mention one in the doorway here at the Alex. Yes, that was embarrassing for us all, wasn’t it? No wonder the Press and radio didn’t mention it. Then there was the attempt on Himmler’s life at the Anhalter Railway Station in February of this year. I expect that was even more embarrassing, for the Gestapo, anyway. I believe the bomb was placed in the
left luggage office, which is an obvious place and one that should certainly have been searched in advance of the Reichsführer-SS’s arrival in the station. I bet someone had a lot of explaining to do after that.’

Their smiles were fading a little now and their chairs were starting to look uncomfortable; as the two Gestapo men shifted their backsides around, the wagon-wheel backs creaked like a haunted house. Chalk-stripe checked his hair again almost as if he’d left the source of his ability to intimidate me on the barbershop floor. The other man, Wandel, bit his lip trying to keep the death’s head moth of a smile pinned to his delinquent mug. I might have stopped my little history there and then out of fear of what their organization was capable of, but I was enjoying myself too much.

I hadn’t considered the concept of suicide by Gestapo until now, but I could see its advantages. At least I might enjoy the process a little more than just blowing my own brains out. All the same, I wasn’t about to throw my life away on some small-timers like these two; if ever I did decide to blow a raspberry in some senior Nazi’s face I was going to make it count. Besides, it was now plain to me that they really were after a favour.

‘You know, the word here in Kripo is that the Three Kings get a kick out of embarrassing the Gestapo. There’s one particular story doing the rounds that one of them even stole Oscar Fleischer’s overcoat.’

Fleischer was head of the Gestapo’s Counterintelligence Section in Prague.

‘And that the same brazen fellow won a bet that he could cadge a light for his cigarette off Fleischer’s cigar.’

‘There’s always a lot of gossip in a place like this,’ said Sachse.

‘Oh sure. But that’s how cops work, Herr Commissar. A nudge here. A wink there. A whisper in a bar. A fellow tells you that someone else says that his pal heard this or that. Personally I’ve always put a vague rumour ahead of anything as imaginative as three pipes’ worth of deductive reasoning. It’s elementary, my dear Sachse. Oh yes, and didn’t these Three Kings send the Gestapo a complimentary copy of their own underground newspaper? That’s the gossip.’

‘Since you appear to be so well informed—’

I shook my head. ‘It’s common knowledge, here on the Third Floor.’

‘—Then I dare say you will also know that two of the Three Kings – Josef Balaban and Josef Masin – have already been arrested. As have many other of their collaborators. In Prague. And here in Berlin. It’s only a matter of time before we catch Melchior.’

‘I don’t get it,’ I said. ‘You caught Josef A in April; and Josef B in May. Or maybe it was the other way round. But here we are in September and you still haven’t managed to shake the third King out of their sleeves. You boys must be going soft.’

Of course I knew this couldn’t be true. The Gestapo had moved heaven and earth in search of the third man, but mostly they’d employed a more infernal sort of help. Because there was another rumour around the Alex: that the Prague Gestapo had enlisted the services of their most notorious torturer in Bohemia, a sadist called Paul Soppa, who was the commander of Pankrac Prison in Prague, to work on the two Czechs in his custody. I didn’t give much for their chances but, in the light of the continued liberty of Melchior, the certainty that neither man had talked was proof positive of their enormous courage and bravery.

‘There are different ways of approaching every problem,’
said Wandel. ‘And right now we should like you to help us with this problem. Colonel Schellenberg speaks very highly of you.’

Walter Schellenberg was close to General Heydrich, who was Chief of the whole RSHA, of which Kripo was now one part.

‘I know who Schellenberg is,’ I said. ‘At least, I remember meeting him. But I don’t know what he is. Not these days.’

‘He’s the acting chief of foreign intelligence within the RSHA,’ said Sachse.

‘Is this problem a foreign intelligence matter?’

‘It might be. But right now it’s a homicide. Which is where you come in.’

‘Well, anything to help Colonel Schellenberg, of course,’ I said, helpfully.

‘You know the Heinrich von Kleist Park?’

‘Of course. It used to be Berlin’s botanical garden before the Botanical Gardens were built in Steglitz.’

‘A body was found there this morning.’

‘Oh? I wonder why I haven’t heard about it.’

‘You’re hearing about it now. We’d like you to come and take a look at it, Gunther.’

I shrugged. ‘Have you got any petrol?’

Sachse frowned.

‘For your car,’ I added. ‘I wasn’t proposing that we burn the body.’

‘Yes, of course we have petrol.’

‘Then I’d love to go to the Park with you, Commissar Sachse.’

Kleist Park in Schöneberg had something to do with a famous German Romantic writer. He might have been called Kleist. There were lots of trees, a statue of the goddess Diana, and,
on the western border of the park, the Court of Appeal. Not that Hitler’s Germany had much use for a Court of Appeal. Those who were convicted and condemned in a Nazi court of first instance usually stayed that way.

On the southern border was a building I had half an idea might once have been the Prussian State Art School, but given that the Gestapo was now headquartered in the old Industrial Art School on Prinz Albrechtstrasse, there seemed to be little or no chance that anyone was being taught how to paint someone’s portrait in the Prussian State Art School; not when they could more usefully be taught how to torture people. It was a fact that the Gestapo had always taken its share of the city’s best public buildings. That was to be expected. But lately they’d started confiscating the premises of shops and businesses that had been abandoned as a result of the shortages. A friend of mine had gone into the Singer Sewing Machine salesroom on Wittenberg Platz looking for a new treadle-belt only to discover that the place was now being used as an arsenal by the SS. Meyer’s Wine Shop, on Olivaer Platz, where once I’d been a regular customer, was now an SS ‘Information Bureau’. Whatever that was.