Paving the New Road (47 page)

“Herr Richter,” Rowland interrupted him. “Where are my friends? We must leave Germany now.”

“They are at the ball … under the impression that I have gone back to fetch you, Herr Negus. I am very disappointed to find you like this.”

Rowland winced as he tried to sit up. “I’m not exactly happy about it myself.” Stasi emerged from under the couch and whined. Strangely, Richter ignored his dog. “Have you found Frau Schuler?” Rowland asked. “Is she all right?”

“I instructed her to leave before the SA arrived. She will return tomorrow to put things in order. Do not trouble yourself to get up.” Richter pulled a pistol from his pocket and trained it on Rowland. “It will be of no purpose.”

Somehow Rowland was not surprised. “You killed Peter Bothwell,” he said.

“Yes. I did not want to, but Peter was about to betray my secret.”

“That you spied for the Allies in the Great War?” Rowland watched the gun. It was unlikely Richter would miss at this range.

“I have rebuilt my life!” Richter spat. “Back then I was young and in love. For Anna and the future of our child, I became a traitor. Now I clothe the Reich … and nothing of that past can be revealed.”

“Peter Bothwell had no intention of betraying you, Herr Richter.” Rowland tried to play for time with what he was sure was the truth.

“I am not a fool, Herr Negus!” Richter said. “I know Peter was here for a purpose … secret meetings … telegrams … telephone calls … and he would tell me none of it. And then he takes me to see Anna!”

“Perhaps he thought you might like to see your wife again.”

“He wished to destroy me!”

Rowland began to shiver.

Richter looked at him impassively. “Shock,” he said. He waved the gun. “Do not worry, it will be over soon.”

“Where is Anna Niemann?”

“She is dead … I buried her with all Peter’s coded documents—his so-called book. Now there is no one but you who knows that Alois Richter ever betrayed his country.”

“What are you planning to do?”

“Is it not obvious? I plan to kill you. It should have been done … but Röhm and his trained monkeys never do anything properly.”

Desperately, Rowland sought some leverage. He clutched at Richter’s affection for Edna, hoping it was genuine. “Millicent will never forgive you.”

“She will suspect me of nothing but finding your body. She will stay to nurse me through the shock of discovering you in such a state. And I too will comfort her.”

Rowland pushed himself back as if he were trying to get away. He slid over the bullet holes in the floor. It was getting dark and he didn’t think Richter had noticed them. “How are you going to explain the shooting of a man in your home?” he said.

Richter shrugged. “You died of your wounds after an interrogation by those SA ruffians. Their brutality is well known, and certainly you have the look of a man who has been beaten to death.” He smiled, pleased with the neatness of his plan. “Always the SA goes too far. Himmler and Göring have become concerned about Röhm’s power. They will be happy to have the SA blamed.”

“The bullet hole in my head is going to make it hard to believe I’ve been beaten to death,” Rowland retorted.

Richter considered it. He spied the fire iron that Röhm had used to break Rowland’s arm on the card table. He took it in one hand, the pistol still in the other.

Rowland felt a glimmer of hope and with it a rush of blood and strength. Richter was not a young man, and his build was slight … He would need two hands to beat a man to death with the fire iron. He would have to put down the gun and then, Rowland thought, he might have a slim chance.

With the pistol still aimed, Richter stepped over to the gramophone and reset the record. Once again, Wagner became a backdrop to violence.

Rowland braced himself … despite his injuries, he was certain he could overcome Richter if the man would just put down the gun.

But Richter swung the fire iron first with a single hand. The blow was weak but it was well aimed. Rowland cried out in agony as the iron bounced against his broken arm, and he fell back incapacitated by pain. Only then did the tailor place the gun on the card table so that he could grip the rod in both hands. He heaved the fire iron
above his head while Rowland lay helpless beneath him. Stasi barked suddenly, and for a breath, the tailor hesitated.

The shot entered Richter’s back and exploded out of his chest in a bloody splatter. He fell forward onto Rowland.

Rowland wasn’t sure what had happened. Just faintly over the music, he could hear someone crying—a woman—but it was not Edna. Richter spasmed and gurgled before he fell still. Rowland felt the warm moist spread of the tailor’s blood as it soaked his chest.

He assumed Richter was dead … he was certainly a dead weight. The body was slippery with blood and Rowland was able to slide out from under it, though the effort was excruciating. As he lay gagging on the floor, he could just make out the figure by the card table. A woman. She held Richter’s gun in both hands.

“Eva?” he said.

She looked at him, her eyes wild and glassy. The revolver shook in her hands, but she didn’t let the barrel drop. It was pointed at him now.

“Eva … no …” Rowland stared at her, confused and finally beaten. A cold certainty that he was about to die pressed heavily on his ribs.

Eva looked down at the revolver and then back at him. Slowly, gradually she placed the weapon on the card table and then dropped to her knees beside him. At first her lips moved without sound. “Robbie,” she rasped in the end.

Rowland’s chest heaved, and he realised he’d been holding his breath. “I thought …” He didn’t finish. Eva stroked his face.

Rowland groaned. “Would you mind turning off that blessed gramophone?” He was beginning to despise Wagner as much as Clyde did.

Eva did so, switching on a lamp before she returned to him. She was bewildered, crying. She spoke in a stumbling outpour. “The
door was not locked and I heard the music so I came in. It was dark, but I saw him hit you … and put down the gun … He was going kill you. There wasn’t time to do anything else …”

“Eva,” Rowland reached out with his good hand and grabbed hers. “We have to get out of here … We must leave Germany before they—”

Eva interrupted, distraught. “
Mein Gott
, I have killed a man. He’ll never be with me now.”

“Eva,” Rowland said again. “We cannot stay. Herr Richter had powerful friends …”

Eva stopped crying. She looked at him in horror. “I cannot go. I cannot leave my Wolf … Not now, not ever.”

“Eva, if he loved you, surely he would marry you,” he said, more harshly than he intended in his desperation to snap her out of her mindless devotion. “He would not let anything stop him.”

“That is not true!” She turned on him angrily, striking him with her fist. “If it were, you would be married to Millicent Greenway.”

Rowland pulled away, cursing, not because the blow had of itself been hard but because it had landed on his arm. Eva was immediately sorry.

“Oh, Robbie … I did not mean to hurt you.”

Rowland almost laughed. Röhm had broken his arm and burned him, Richter had tried to smash his skull, and Eva was sorry. He tried again to convince her that she should leave with him, begged her to do so, but the girl was resolute. She would not leave her Herr Wolf.

Rowland dragged himself upright and away from Richter’s body as he tried to think. The SA had intended to kill him. Even with Richter now dead, they needed to leave. But how could he abandon Eva to the consequences of having saved his life? He looked at her. Smeared with blood and tears, she could not even leave the house.

“Take off your clothes, Eva,” he said.

She stared at him.

“Put them into the fire and burn them. Go upstairs to the second floor. The first door on the right is Miss Greenway’s room—her clothes should fit you. There’s a bathroom at the end of the hallway … shower and get dressed. He glanced at her blood-splattered feet. “You’d best take a pair of her shoes, too.”

“But why?”

“You’re going to go home and forget you were ever here. You must burn the painting I did of you and deny it ever existed. I don’t know who your Herr Wolf is among the Nazis but Röhm seemed rather keen to make an improper connection between us.”

“
Gott
,
meine leiber Gott …
What did they make you say?”

“Nothing, Eva. Really. If you go, they will have no reason to accuse you of anything.”

Eva looked at the cigarette burns on his chest, visible despite the blood, and hesitated. He followed her gaze, blanching though he knew what was there.

“I didn’t say anything that could be misconstrued, Eva,” he said again. “You have my word. Nobody need know that we’re anything more than passing acquaintances, or that you were here tonight.”

“But what about you, Robbie?”

“All the buildings around here are commercial offices … empty at this time. I’m hoping no one will discover Herr Richter’s body until the morning, when the servants return. When they find him, they will assume I killed him … and with luck, I will be long gone.”

Eva stared at him mutely.

“Eva, please, hurry. If you insist on staying, this must be done.”

She nodded and unbuttoned her dress, letting it drop to the floor, as she stepped out of her slip. Naked, she stoked the fire and threw
the garments into the flames. She left Rowland, then, to do as he asked.

Rowland used the back of the armchair to struggle to his feet, and then, staggering over to the front door, he bolted it shut. He made his way back to the drawing room and, with one arm, fumbled with the decanters to pour himself a drink. He drained the glass and resisted the urge to pour a second. He would need his wits about him.

He coaxed Stasi out from under the couch. The terrier sniffed the body of his master, whining and pawing at the corpse. Rowland felt sick.

Eva descended the stairs wearing the green-spotted sundress that Edna had last worn when they were at the Starnberger See. Her hair, still wet from bathing, had been pulled into a coif and she’d reapplied her make-up.

Rowland backed away as she approached him. “Be careful, Eva. You don’t want to soil your clothes again.”

“But you are so terribly hurt,” she said. “I cannot leave you like this.”

“The Greenways and Herr Ryan will return in a couple of hours,” Rowland said firmly. “I’ll be all right till then. Will you not change your mind and come with us, Eva? If you don’t wish to go to Australia, I could take you to London or Paris …”

Eva shook her head. “My place is here with Herr Wolf. I cannot breathe without him.”

Rowland exhaled. “Then remember, you must never talk of us or Herr Richter. You must deny knowing me other than as a vague acquaintance and you must destroy that painting. Promise me you’ll do that, Eva.”

Her eyes welled again, but she nodded.

“Don’t cry,” he said gently.

“I’ll never see you again.”

“Not unless things go rather badly from here.” He was aware that he was shivering again. He smiled, not wanting to distress her, lest she try to stay and help him.

Stasi whimpered and she looked down at the confused hound who sat by his master’s body.

“Shall I take him?” she whispered. “May I take him?”

Rowland hesitated.

“Please …”

“If anyone asks, you found him in the street,” Rowland said, relenting. He could feel himself fading and he needed to get Eva away while he still had the strength and will to do so. He motioned towards the hat rack where Richter had always kept the dog’s lead.

Eva found it, and, coaxing Stasi away from the body, secured it to his collar. Despite everything, her misery seemed to lift with a simple childlike glee that she had a dog of her own.

Rowland unbolted the door, with a single unsteady hand. “Walk down to Hoffman’s and catch a taxi from there. It will look as though you’ve simply worked rather late.”

She nodded.

“Eva.”

She looked up into his face.

“Thank you. You saved my life.”

She smiled. “
Pfüat di
, Robbie.”

He locked the door after her and, stumbling to the chair by the fire, collapsed into it to wait.

38

DRIVEN UNDERGROUND

GERMAN COMMUNISTS

WHOLESALE ARRESTS

(Australian Cable Service)

BERLIN, July 30

In spite of the ferocious measures taken, to suppress the Communists, the secret police declare that the movement has only been driven underground and that the Reds are plotting throughout Germany. Stormtroops at Niochsen, in the Ruhr, discovered an organisation with 40,000 to 50,000 members resulting in arrests and seizures of explosives, ammunition and weapons. Thirty were caught practising military exercises and will be charged with high treason.

The Cairns Post, 1933

M
ilton slipped behind the wheel of the Mercedes and started the engine, screeching away from the parking valet who’d brought the car around.