If the Dead Rise Not (31 page)

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Authors: Philip Kerr

Tags: #Mystery, #Thriller, #Suspense, #Historical

BOOK: If the Dead Rise Not
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Fifteen minutes later I was sitting opposite the Berlin chief of KRIPO and smoking one of the Black Wisdom cigars Bernhard Weiss had been obliged to leave behind when he left.
“If this is about that unfortunate business involving August Krichbaum,” said von Sonnenberg, “then you needn’t worry, Bernie. You and the other cops who were in the frame as possible suspects are in the clear. Everything has been brought to a sort of conclusion. It was a lot of nonsense, of course.”
“Oh? How’s that?” I tried to contain the relief I felt. But after Noreen’s departure, I hardly cared nearly as much. At the same time, I hoped they hadn’t framed someone for the killing. That would really have given my conscience something indigestible to chew on for a while.
“Because we no longer have a reliable witness. The hotel doorman who saw the culprit was an ex-policeman, as you probably know. Well, it turns out that he is also a queer and a communist. It seems that this was why he left the police in the first place. Indeed, we now think his evidence may even have been motivated by malice against the police in general. Anyway, all of that’s irrelevant, since the Gestapo has had him on an arrest list for several months. Not that he knew, of course.”
“So where is he now?”
“In the concentration camp, at Lichtenberg.”
I nodded, wondering if they’d made him sign a D-11.
“I’m sorry you had to go through all of that, Bernie.”
I shrugged. “I’m sorry I wasn’t able to do a bit more for your protégé, Bömer.”
“You did all you could under the circumstances.”
“I’d be glad to help out again.”
“These young men today,” said von Sonnenberg. “They’re in too much of a hurry, if you ask me.”
“I got that impression. You know, there’s a bright young fellow wearing green on the desk in the entrance hall downstairs. Name of Heinz Seldte. You might give him a lick. Fellow’s too smart to be left with his balls in a desk drawer like that.”
“Thanks, Bernie. I’ll have a look at him.” He lit a cigarette. “So. Are you here to play the accordion, or is there some business you and I can do?”
“That all depends.”
“On what?”
“On your opinion of Count von Helldorf.”
“You might as well ask if I hate Stalin.”
“I hear the count’s trying to rehabilitate himself by tracking down anyone the SA ever had a grudge against.”
“That would certainly look commendably loyal, wouldn’t it?”
“Maybe he still wants to be your boss here in Berlin.”
“Have you got a way of making sure that couldn’t happen?”
“I might have.” I puffed the strong cigar and aimed the smoke at the high ceiling. “You remember that stiff we had in the Adlon a while ago? The one you gave to Rust and Brandt.”
“Sure. Natural causes. I remember.”
“Suppose it wasn’t?”
“What makes you think different?”
“Something von Helldorf said.”
“I didn’t know you were cozy with that queer, Bernie.”
“For the last six days I’ve been his houseguest at the police praesidium in Potsdam. I’d like to repay his hospitality, if I can.”
“They say he’s still holding on to some of Hanussen’s dirt, as an insurance policy against arrest. The films he shot on that boat of his.
The Ursel
. I’ve also heard that some of the dirt comes from underneath some very important fingernails.”
“Like whose, for instance?”
“Ever ask yourself how he managed to get on that Olympic committee? It’s not his love of riding, I can tell you that much.”
“Von Tschammer und Osten?”
“Small fry. No, it was Goebbels who got him the job.”
“But he was the one who broke Hanussen.”
“And it was Goebbels who saved von Helldorf. But for Joey, von Helldorf would have been shot alongside his warm friend, Ernst Röhm, when Hitler settled the SA’s hash. In other words, von Helldorf is still connected. So I’ll help you get him, if you can. But you’ll have to find someone else to put the stake through his heart.”
“All right. I’ll leave your name out of it.”
“What do you need from me?”
“The case file on Heinrich Rubusch. I’d like to check a few things out. Go and see the fellow’s widow, in Würzburg.”
“Würzburg?”
“It’s near Regensburg, I believe.”
“I know where the hell it is. I’m just trying to remember why I know where the hell it is.” Liebermann von Sonnenberg flicked a switch on his desk intercom to speak to his secretary. “Ida? Why does Würzburg mean something to me?”
“You had a request from the Gestapo in Würzburg,” said a woman’s voice. “In your capacity as Interpol liaison officer. Requesting that you contact the FBI in America about a suspect living here in Germany.”
“And did I?”
“Yes. We sent them what we got from the FBI a week or so ago.”
“Wait a minute, Erich,” I said. “I’m beginning to think this bone might make a lot more than just soup. Ida? This is Bernie Gunther. Can you remember the name of that suspect the Gestapo in Würzburg wanted to know about?”
“Wait a minute. I think I still have the Gestapo’s letter in my tray. I haven’t filed it yet. Yes, here we are. The suspect’s name is Max Reles.”
Von Sonnenberg flicked off the intercom and nodded. “You’re smiling like that name means something, Bernie,” he observed.
“Max Reles is a guest at the Adlon and a good friend of the count’s.”
“Is that so?” He shrugged. “Maybe it’s just a small world.”
“Sure it is. If it was any bigger, we’d have to hunt for clues like they do in the stories. You’d have a magnifying glass and a hunting hat and a definitive collection of cigarette ends.”
Von Sonnenberg stubbed out his cigarette in the overflowing ashtray. “Who says I don’t?”
“This information you had from the FBI. Any chance you kept a copy?”
“Let me tell you about being the Interpol liaison officer, Bernie. It’s extra sauerkraut. I’ve got plenty of meat and potatoes on my plate already, and what I don’t need is extra sauerkraut. I know it’s on the table because Ida tells me it is. But mostly it’s her that eats it, see? And the fact is that she wouldn’t keep a copy of Luther’s ninety-five theses unless I told her to. So.”
“So now I’ve got two reasons to go to Würzburg.”
“Three, if you include the wine.”
“I never did before.”
“Franconian wines are good,” said von Sonnenberg. “If you like your wines sweet, that is.”
“Some of these provincial Gestapo officers,” I said. “They can be anything but sweet.”
“I haven’t noticed their big-city counterparts assisting old ladies to cross the road.”
“Look, Erich, I hate to give you more sauerkraut, but a letter of introduction from you or even a telephone call would straighten this Gestapo man’s tie for him. And keep it straight while I was squeezing his eggs.”
Von Sonnenberg grinned. “It’ll be a pleasure. There’s nothing I like better than clipping the tails on some of these young pups in the Gestapo.”
“I think that’s a job I’d be good at.”
“Maybe you’ll be the first person who ever enjoyed going to Würzburg.”
“That’s always a possibility.”
27
 
 
I
READ HER LETTER ON THE TRAIN TO WÜRZBURG.
Adlon Hotel, No. 1 Unter den Linden, Berlin
 
My dearest Bernie,
It grieves me more than words can tell you that I cannot be there to say good-bye in person, but I’ve been told by someone from the police chief’s office in Potsdam that you won’t be released from prison until I have left Germany.
It looks as if this has to be for good, I’m afraid—at least for as long as the Nazis are in government, anyway—as I’ve also been informed by someone in the Foreign Ministry that I won’t be given a visa again.
And if all that wasn’t bad enough, I’ve been told by an official in the Propaganda Ministry that if I publish the newspaper article I was planning to write and call upon the AOC to boycott the German Olympiad, then you could find yourself in a concentration camp; and since I have no wish to expose you to this kind of threat, you can rest assured, my dear Bernie, that no such article will now appear.
Perhaps you will consider that this will be a tragedy to me; but while I lament that I am now forbidden the chance to oppose the evil of national socialism in the way I know best, the greater tragedy, according to my understanding of that word, is the obligation I now have to give you up, and the utter improbability of seeing you at any time in the near future. Perhaps ever!
Given more time, I should have spoken to you of love and, perhaps, you would have done the same. Tempting as it is for a writer to put words in someone else’s mouth, this is my letter and I must limit myself to what I myself can say. Which is this: I love you, right enough. And if I now seem to draw a line under that, it’s only because the elation that I once might have felt at being in love with someone again—it’s not easy for me to love anyone—is alloyed with the acute pain of our parting and separation.
There is a painting by Caspar David Friedrich that encapsulates the way I’m feeling right now. It’s called
The Wanderer above the Sea of Fog,
and if you’re ever in Hamburg, you should go to the local art gallery and take a look at it. If you don’t know this painting, it depicts a solitary man standing on a mountaintop staring out over a landscape of distant peaks and jagged rocks. And you should picture me, similarly positioned on the stern of the SS
Manhattan
carrying me back to New York, and all the while staring back at a rocky, jagged, increasingly remote Germany that contains you, my love.
You might equally think of another Friedrich painting when you try to visualize my heart. This picture is called
The Sea of Ice,
and it shows a ship, hardly visible, crushed by great shards of ice upon a landscape more bleak than the surface of the moon. I’m not sure where this picture can be seen, as I only ever saw it myself in a book. Nevertheless, it represents very well the cold devastation that is my current situation.
It seems to me I might very easily curse the fortune that made me love you; and yet I know, in spite of everything, that I don’t regret it one little bit, because, in the future, every time I read of some dreadful deed or criminal policy carried out by that big-talking man in his silly uniform, I will think of you, Bernie, and remember that there are many good Germans who have courageous, good hearts (although none, I think, could ever have a heart as courageous and good as yours). And this is good, for if Hitler teaches us anything, it is the stupidity of judging a whole race as one. There are bad Jews and there are good Jews, just as there are bad Germans and there are good Germans.
You are a good German, Bernie. You protect yourself with a thick coat of cynicism, but at heart I know that you are a good man. But I fear for all good men in Germany and I wonder what terrible choices now lie ahead of them and you. I wonder what awful compromises you will be called upon to make.
Which is why I want to help you to help others in the only way now open to me.
By now you will have found the enclosed check, and your first inclination on seeing that it is much more than you asked to borrow may be not to cash it at all. That would be a mistake. It seems to me that you should take it as my gift to you and start the private detective business you told me about. And for this good reason: in a society founded upon lies, the discovery of truth will become more and more important. Probably it will land you in trouble, but, knowing you, I suspect you can handle that in your own way. Most of all, I hope that you can come to the aid of others in need of your help, as you tried to help me; and that you will do what, because it is dangerous, you ought not to do because it is also right.
I’m not sure I expressed that correctly. While I speak German well enough I find I am out of practice writing it. I hope this letter does not seem too formal. Emperor Charles V said he spoke Spanish to God, Italian to women, French to men, and German to his horse. But you know, I think that horse might just have been the creature he loved best in the world and that, like you, his horse was very bold and full of spirit; and I cannot think of any other language that suits your temperament, Bernie. Certainly not English, with its many shades of meaning! I never met a more straightforward man than you, which is one of the reasons why I love you so much.
These are ugly times and you will have to go to ugly places and deal with people who have made themselves ugly, but you are my knight of heaven, my Galahad, and I feel certain you can endure all these tests without becoming ugly yourself. And you must always tell yourself that you are not just sweeping leaves on a windy day, although there will be times when that is what it will feel like.
 
I kiss you. Noreen. xx
WÜRZBURG WASN’T AN UGLY PLACE, although the Franconians had done their best to make their state capital a virtual shrine to Nazism and had effectively uglified what was a pleasantly situated medieval red-roofed town in an open part of a river valley. In almost every shop window there was a photograph of Hitler or a sign advising Jews to keep out or risk the consequences—sometimes both. The town made Berlin look like a model of true representative democracy.
Dominating the landscape from the left bank of the river was the old castle of Marienberg, built by the prince-bishops of Würzburg who had been champions of the Counter-Reformation during another ugly time in German history. But it was just as easy to imagine the imposing white castle inhabited by some evil scientist who exercised a powerful and malign influence on Würzburg, unleashing an elemental force to make monsters of the town’s unsuspecting peasants. These were mostly ordinary-looking folk, although there were one or two with boxy foreheads, vivid surgical scars, and ill-fitting coats who might have given even the most committed galvanist some pause for thought. I felt kind of inhuman myself and walked south from the railway station and onto Adolf-Hitler-Strasse with awkward, stiff legs, which might easily have belonged to a dead man, although that might have been the lingering effect of Noreen’s letter.

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