The Lady from Zagreb (20 page)

“Suppose she doesn’t want to get married? Suppose she sees six months in prison as the lesser of two evils?”

“Did I say six months? It could even be worse than that. The war isn’t going so well right now. It might just be that some judge like Roland Freisler decides to make an example of her. He’s become rather severe of late. You heard what happened to those idiotic students in Munich. And to Max Sievers.”

I nodded.

“So, it’s up to you to convince her, isn’t it?”

I chose my next words carefully. “It’s kind of you to take an interest in my personal affairs. But there’s just one problem as far as I can see it. And it’s perhaps one reason why I haven’t married before. At the risk of a prosecution for antisocial remarks myself, there’s this stupid thing called the Bride School, which all SS and SD brides are obliged to attend, to prevent the men from marrying unsuitable women. Quite apart from the fact that unsuitable women are the only ones I’m ever really interested in, there’s the fact that the women attending the school have to study childcare, sewing, obedience in marriage, and, at the end of it, there’s a certificate issued without which the marriage is deemed invalid. Something like that, anyway. Apparently all that takes several months. I can’t see how I can get married in sufficient time to go to Switzerland as quickly as you want.”

Goebbels folded his arms and looked thoughtful, the way I’d seen him do when making a speech on the newsreels.

“Yes, I remember now. More of Himmler’s mad ideas about blood and matrimony. As always, he makes the master race sound like a matter of getting the right badges in the Boy Scouts. Look, I’ll speak to Schellenberg about this, too. I’m sure there’s a way around this nonsense.” He grinned. “Besides, Dalia’s husband—Dr. Obrenovic—will feel a lot more comfortable about a handsome fellow like you meeting with his wife knowing that you’re a happily married man. And so will I. Yes. I’ll make a respectable fellow of you yet, Captain Gunther. Nothing is impossible when you put your mind to it.” He laughed. “Nothing is impossible. Try to remember that when you’re in Zurich. Just make sure you bring Dalia back. Even if you have to kidnap her.”

T
he next day I caught the S-Bahn to Berlin West to see Walter Schellenberg. He sat behind his neatly arranged desk, smiling his sardonic smile, stroking his own smooth face or fiddling with the shiny Iron Cross on his breast pocket, and looking like a clever schoolboy who’d sneaked in the back door of the SD building on Berkaerstrasse, tried on a discarded uniform and discovered that, while it was very obviously a size too large, no one was about to challenge the general’s cauliflower on his lapels. Certainly not in Germany, where it was never much of a handicap to look like you were physically unsuited to high office. Goebbels was the living proof of that and no one looked more ridiculous in military uniform than him, except perhaps Fat Hermann, although that had more to do with his white peacock uniforms than the man himself. Schellenberg wasn’t a lot bigger than Goebbels but as befits a Foreign Intelligence chief, perhaps, much more quietly spoken than the Reich Minister, and handsome with it. Now that I knew him a little better I could see how he was probably just as cynical as Heydrich except that there was something in his character—perhaps it was French upbringing, Schellenberg having spent much of his early life in Luxembourg—that made you call it pragmatism.

Major Eggen was there, too, because of his extensive knowledge of Switzerland, which must certainly have included the best jewelry stores in Zurich and Geneva, given the presence of a handsome gold Rolex on his wrist. Altogether bigger than the general, Eggen had the look of a successful surgeon or a masseur—the one who treated both Himmler and Schellenberg, perhaps. The two men made a token effort not to enjoy my predicament, but it was no good. They were soon laughing and making jokes at my expense. This was fine by me; I always seemed to have a seemingly endless amount of acute discomfort to go around.

“I’ve heard of an arranged marriage,” Schellenberg said. “I’ve even heard of a marriage of convenience. But I don’t think I’ve ever heard of a marriage of inconvenience. Have you, Hans?”

“I don’t think so, sir.”

“You won’t say that when you see her,” I said, trying to make the best of it. “She’s actually quite a beauty. You can ask General Nebe. He’s met the girl. Besides, I’ve every confidence she’ll turn me down, and then I won’t be able to go to Switzerland on this fool’s errand.”

“Oh, please don’t say that,” said Schellenberg. “It turns out that I have an important mission for you in Switzerland, myself.”

“You know, Gunther, it’s normal for a man to take his bride along on the honeymoon,” said Eggen.

“But a lot cheaper if you don’t,” added Schellenberg. “And in this case, probably advisable. Besides, I’ve arranged everything. On my personal assurance that there’s a mission vital to the SD in Switzerland, the Reichsführer has agreed to waive the usual rigorous requirements for an SD man’s marriage. So you’re allowed to travel to a neutral country. Just as soon as you are married you’re to pick up a new Mercedes from the factory in Genshagen and deliver it to the château of Paul Meyer-Schwertenbach on the Swiss-German border.”

“It’s a gift,” said Eggen. “A sweetener in an important-export contract.”

“From Export Drives GMBH, I suppose,” I said. “To the Swiss Wood Syndicate, whatever that is.”

“What do you know about those two companies?” Eggen’s tone had a hard edge.

“Not much. I suspect Captain Meyer must have mentioned those names to me in passing, last summer. You know? When I was keeping him amused after the IKPK conference.”

“Of course,” said Eggen. “Yes, it must have been then.”

“You can deliver the car after you’ve met with this actress in Zurich,” said Schellenberg. “The Reich Minister’s mission as a movie-maker must come first. I’m sure we’re all dying to see the film version of
Siebenkäs.
But Meyer’s very much looking forward to meeting you again. And to talking to you some more about your detective work.”

“I’m looking forward to that myself. I’d better make sure I bring my favorite cocktail shaker and my little white dog along for the ride. Not to mention Gunther’s famous monograph on shirtfront beer stains. I’m considered something of an expert on that subject.”

“The château of Wolfsberg is in Ermatingen,” explained Eggen without even acknowledging my attempt at humor. “That’s about an hour’s drive northeast of Zurich. It’s a charming place. Quite delightful. In Zurich you’ll stay at the Baur au Lac Hotel. It’s the best in the city. You should be very comfortable there. Now then: you’ll drive down from Genshagen and cross the border at Fort Reuenthal, in the Aargau canton. You’ll be met there by Sergeant Bleiker, a detective from the Zurich City Police, who’ll give you your visa and then escort you across the border. You’ll be wearing civilian clothes, of course. And please don’t take a gun. Not even a small one. The Swiss don’t like us carrying guns. In Zurich you’ll be met at your hotel by Police Inspector Albert Weisendanger, who will be in charge of your security; he’s your first point of contact if you have any problems.”

“Yes, I’d keep away from the German Embassy in Zurich if I were you,” said Schellenberg. “The foreign office staff there is more or less useless. The rest of them are Gestapo thugs who have nothing better to do than stick their noses in where they’re not wanted. But I wouldn’t be surprised if you find them on your tail. Them and the Swiss Security Service.”

“I thought Meyer worked for Swiss security,” I said.

“No, he works for Swiss Army Intelligence. His boss, a fellow called Masson, likes to operate independently of the Swiss Security Service. Doesn’t trust them. A bit like us here in Department Six, and the Abwehr.” He paused for a moment and then added, with a smile, “And the Gestapo. And the SS. And the people in the Party Chancellery office. Not forgetting Kaltenbrunner. We certainly don’t trust him.”

Eggen laughed. “You can’t trust anyone these days.”

“What a coincidence,” I said. “That’s exactly what I hear, too.”

“In fact,” said Schellenberg, “the whole of Switzerland is a hotbed of intrigue. A spies’ paradise. The Swiss may look harmless enough but they’re not to be underestimated. Especially their intelligence services. And let’s not forget that as a neutral country there are also the Americans, the Russians, and the British secret services to take into account. They are all highly effective. The Americans in particular. There’s a new man in charge. Name of Allen Dulles. He’s the OSS station chief in Bern, but he likes to get around. Academic type but highly effective. And he’s very fond of luxury hotels when he’s not at his home in Herrengasse.”

“Yes, Switzerland is fascinating,” said Eggen. “Like a very complex watch mechanism. On the surface, everything is quite simple and easy to understand. It’s only when you look inside the case that you see how it’s beyond any normal understanding. You’ll have lots of money, of course. The Ministry of Economic Affairs will be sharing your expenses with the Ministry of Truth. So I want plenty of receipts, Gunther.”

“The best hotels. A beautiful actress. A new Mercedes. Plenty of money and no guns. I don’t mind telling you, after Yugoslavia, it all sounds delightful.”

“Yes, Yugoslavia,” said Schellenberg. “You were going to tell me about what happened down there.”

But before I could say a word he’d launched into an anecdote that seemed to reveal the younger man’s almost naïve ambition—I don’t suppose he could have been much more than thirty.

“Three years ago,” he said, “I had this idea that not having a doctorate in law might hold me back in my career in the SD. Anyway, I was thinking of trying for my own doctorate in law at the university here in Berlin, and I considered doing my dissertation on the government in Yugoslavia.”

“It’s lucky you didn’t pursue that,” I said. “Because there is no government in Yugoslavia. At least none that any German lawyer would recognize by that name.” I told him—with several examples—how I thought the country was in total chaos. “The place is one giant killing zone. Like something from the Thirty Years’ War.”

“Surely it can’t be as gloomy as that,” Eggen said.

“Actually, I think the situation’s probably a lot worse than gloomy. And I certainly don’t know what else to compare it to when you have Croatian priests cutting the throats of Serbian children. Babies murdered by the hundreds. For the sheer hell of it.”

“But why?” asked Schellenberg. “What’s the reason for such ferocity?”

“If you ask me,” I said, “it’s partly our fault. They’ve learned from our example in the east. But historically and culturally, it’s the fault of the Roman Catholic Church and Italian fascists.”

Schellenberg, who had recently returned from Italy to report to Himmler on the deteriorating fortunes of Benito Mussolini, confessed he was feeling gloomy about the Italians, too:

“Italy presents an awful warning for Germany,” he said. “After twenty years of fascism, the country that produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance is in a state of total collapse. In Venice even the gondolas aren’t working. Imagine that. I tried to buy an inlaid musical box for my wife and couldn’t find one. Switzerland looks so much better off, as you’ll see for yourself. Five hundred years of democracy and neutrality have worked very well for them. And they’ll work for us, too. The country might have no natural resources other than water, but it manages to produce a lot more than just cuckoo clocks. Everything works in Switzerland. The same things that used to work in Germany, I might add. The trains, the roads, the banks. And no one in Switzerland lies awake at night and worries about what’s going to happen when Ivan shows up at the front door. They worry about us invading them, it’s true. But between you and me, I see it as of vital importance to keep them out of the war. So does Himmler. So does everyone, except Hitler. He still entertains hopes of bringing them into the war on our side.”

We were all silent for a moment after that mention of the leader’s name.

“What did you choose in the end, Herr General?” I asked politely, to break the silence. “For your doctorate.”

“Oh, I decided not to bother with getting one. Originally I thought I should have a doctorate in law because half of the senior officers in the SD have one. Men like Ohlendorf, Jost, Pohl. Even some of the officers in my own department, like Martin Sandberger. Then we invaded Russia and several of those officers went off to command SD forces tasked with murdering Jews in Ukraine and Poland. And I thought, what’s the point in having a law doctorate if, like Sandberger, you just end up murdering fifteen thousand Jews and communists in Estonia? What’s the point of a doctorate in law if that’s where it takes you?”

Eggen looked at me. “You’re not a lawyer, too, are you, Gunther?”

“No,” I said. “I already have a good pair of gloves at home to keep my hands warm in winter.”

Eggen frowned.

“What I mean is, you won’t catch me with my hands in someone else’s pockets. It’s a joke.”

They both smiled without much amusement. Then again, they were both lawyers.

T
he next morning I got up early, left my SD uniform at home, and went shopping.

Before the war, Rochstrasse, a few blocks away from the Alex, had been filled with Jews. I still remembered the several bakers’ shops there and the delicious smell of babka, bagels, and bialys
that used to fill the street. As a young beat copper I’d often gone into one of those shops for breakfast, or for a quick snack and a chat; they loved to talk, those bakers, and sometimes I think that’s where I learned my sense of humor. What I wouldn’t have given for a fresh bialy now—like a bagel, except that the hole was filled with caramelized onions and zucchini. There was still an early morning market on Rochstrasse where fruits and vegetables were sold, but I wasn’t looking for oranges any more than I was looking for bialys. Not that I would have found any oranges there, either: these days, root vegetables were pretty much all there was to be had, even at five in the morning. I was looking for something that was almost as hard to find as a bialy or an orange. I was looking for good quality jewelery.

On Münzstrasse, at number 11, was a six-story redbrick building with a bay window at the corner of every floor. It was only a year or two since the ground-floor shop had been occupied by a Jewish-owned jewelry store. That was now closed, of course, and boarded up, but on the top floor was a man who I knew helped some Jews who were living underground somewhere in Berlin, and from whom it was possible to buy bits of decent jewelry at good prices that might help a family to survive. This man wasn’t Jewish himself but an ex-communist who’d spent some time in Dachau and had learned the hard way how to hate the Nazis. Which was how I knew him, of course. His name was Manfred Buch.

After an exchange of pleasantries I gave him a cigarette and he showed me a small velvet tray of rings and let me take my time.

“Have you asked her yet?”

“No.”

“Then if you don’t make a sale with this little lady, you bring the
Schmuck
back to me. No questions asked.”

“Thanks, Manny.”

“For you this is no problem. Look, the fact is, I can sell this stuff three times over. Most of the
Schmuck
you’ll find in the fancy shops like Margraf is poor quality and expensive. What you’re looking at here is the last of the good stuff. At least for now. Most quality merchandise has been sold already or is being held back until after the winter, when it’s generally assumed things are going to get much worse.”

“From what I’ve heard that’s a fair assessment.”

“And of course you can be quite sure that whatever you buy is going to help people who are in real need. Not profiteers and gangsters. That is, if you can tell the difference between them and our beloved leaders.”

“What about this one?”

“That’s a nice band. Good quality gold. Eighteen carat. Nice and thick. She’ll love you for the rest of her life if you give her that one. And if she doesn’t, you can always get her drunk and while she’s asleep, put a little soap on her finger and I guarantee you’ll sell it for twice what I’m asking.”

“There’s an inscription inside. In Hebrew script.”

“Is she anti-Semitic?”

“No.”

“Then you should think of that as a guarantee of absolute quality. No Jew would put a cheap ring on her finger.”

“Yes, but what does it mean?”

Manfred took the ring, put a glass to his eye, and scrutinized the inscription.

“It’s from the book of Jeremiah. It says, ‘For I know the thoughts that I think toward you.’”

It seemed appropriate.

That night I arranged to meet Kirsten at Kempinski’s on the Kurfürstendamm. Unusually, in spite of being Aryanized and there being little on the menu, the place still managed to feel like a decent restaurant. I’d decided to ask her to marry me without mentioning anything of what Goebbels had told me; she was a nice girl and I figured she deserved to think that I was asking her for all the right reasons, instead of a desire to keep her out of the hands of the Gestapo. I was just about to put the question to her when the rise and fall of air-raid warning sirens sent us running to the nearest shelter; and it was down there I finally got around to proposing marriage.

“I know I’m not exactly a catch,” I said as the walls vibrated around us and dust fell off the ceiling into our hair. “You could almost certainly find someone younger. With better prospects. But I’m honest. As far as that goes, these days. And it’s just possible that I’ll make you a good husband. Because I love you, Kirsten. I love you very much.”

I threw that bit about love in because, generally speaking, it’s what a girl wants to hear when a man asks her to marry him. But it wasn’t true and we both knew it. I’m a much better liar than I am an actor.

“I assume that your proposal has something to do with this,” she said.

She opened her handbag and showed me a buff-colored envelope she’d received that very morning. It had no stamp, just a postmark, and was quite obviously from the Gestapo.

I took the letter out of the envelope, noted the address on Burgstrasse, and nodded. I knew the address, of course. It was part of the old Berlin stock exchange. And the official letter was a formal summons to explain her “antisocial” comments to a commissar Hartmut Zander. My only worry now was that she might think I’d engineered the whole thing in order to persuade her to marry me. It was the kind of dirty trick that many Gestapo men were wont to pull, just to get a peek at a nice girl’s underwear.

“It’s very sweet of you, Bernie,” she said, “but you don’t have to do this. I couldn’t let you.”

“Listen, you have to trust me on this, angel, I knew nothing about that letter. But now that I’ve seen it, here’s what I think. You’re in a tight spot. There’s no doubt about it. I’d come with you but I’m not allowed. You’re not even allowed a lawyer present at the interview. But marry me and I think I can make all this go away. In fact I’m certain of it. After that you don’t ever have to see me again if you don’t want to. I’ll forget about the ring I have in my pocket and the loud evening I had planned after we got married. We’ll just call it a marriage of convenience and leave it at that. It’ll be like a business arrangement. We’ll meet for a coffee in a year’s time and have a good laugh about it. You can divorce me quietly and everything will be like it was before.”

“Why are you doing this, Bernie?”

“Let’s say that lately my own lack of nobility has begun to get me down. Yes, let’s say that. I have an urgent need to do something good for someone else. In recent weeks I’ve seen one too many bad things, and the plain fact of the matter is I like you a lot, Kirsten, and I don’t want to see anything bad happen to you. It’s as simple as that, really.”

“Could something bad happen to me?”

“If what you told me is true, then they’ll give you a rough ride. Oh, not that rough. Just a verbal battering. And you even might talk your way out of it. Some do. Maybe you’re the type to give as good as you get. Don’t admit anything. That’s the best way to handle these Gestapo commissars. Then again it’s equally possible you’ll go to pieces, in which case you might end up in prison for a short spell. Say, six months. Ordinarily that’s not so bad. But lately things have got much tougher in the cement. Even on the outside food is short. In Brandenburg it’s several hundred calories less than that. Skinny little thing like you might find that hard going. At the very least you might lose your job. And jobs are difficult to get when you lose them on account of the Gestapo. It might be awkward getting another.”

She nodded quietly. “The ring, Bernie. Could I see it, please?”

“Sure.” I felt inside my vest pocket, polished it on my trouser leg, and then handed it over.

She looked at it for a moment, smiled a charming sort of smile, and then put it carefully on the finger of her left hand.

The next day we were married and, during the simple ceremony, Kirsten moved the ring onto the finger of her right hand, as if she really meant it, like a proper German wife. It was a small but important gesture and one that did not go unnoticed by me.