Prussian Blue Page 19

  “Not from in here,” I said calmly. “From the roof.”

  “No! From the Villa Bechstein? Tell it to your grandmother. I don’t fucking believe it. You mean he wasn’t in the woods above the Berghof after all?”

  “There’s spent brass all over the roof,” I said. “And I already measured the angles of trajectory from the terrace. The shooter was down here all right. It’s my theory that having shot Flex, he dumped the rifle down the chimney before making his escape. This chimney. I noticed the flap on the fireplace wouldn’t open earlier. And so I decided to check it out. Look, sir, when we spoke last night I gained the impression that a degree of urgency was going to be necessary with this inquiry. Not to mention a certain amount of discretion. I’m afraid I took you at your word, otherwise I’d have summoned a local chimney sweep and risked the whole town finding out what happened up here yesterday morning.”

  “Well, is it there? The rifle?”

  “I don’t honestly know, sir. Really, I was just playing a hunch I had. I might pull that fireplace out right now and find out for sure but for the funny idea I have that you might put a hole in me with that police pistol in your hand.”

  Bormann made the Walther safe and then slipped it back into his coat pocket. With the automatic he was a bigger thug than even I had supposed. “There,” he said. “You’re quite safe for the moment.”

  Meanwhile Rudolf Hess had appeared behind his shoulder and regarded me with the kind of staring blue eyes that must sometimes have made even Hitler a bit nervous. The dark wave of hair on top of his square head was standing so high it looked as if it were concealing a pair of horns; either that or he’d been standing a little too close to the lightning conductor in Frankenstein’s castle laboratory.

  “What the hell is going on here?” he asked Bormann.

  “It would seem that Criminal Commissar Gunther is about to search the chimney for a murder weapon,” said Bormann. “Well, go on, then,” he told me. “Get on with it. But you’d better be right, Gunther, or you’ll be on the next train back to Berlin.”

  “Murder weapon?” said Hess. “Who’s been murdered? What’s this all about, Commissar?”

  Bormann ignored him and it certainly wasn’t up to me to say who was dead or why. Instead, I knelt down in front of the fireplace and, almost hoping that I could be on the first train back to Berlin, I tugged hard at the fireplace and dislodged an object that came tumbling onto the floor in a cloud of soot and gravel. Only it wasn’t a rifle but a leather binoculars case, covered with soot. I laid the case on the bedspread, which did little to endear me to Winkelhof.

  “That doesn’t look like a rifle,” said Bormann.

  “No, sir, but a pair of field glasses might help you to find your target. Assuming you actually cared who you were shooting at.”

  With five shots fired at the Berghof terrace I still wasn’t a hundred percent sure that the shooter had only intended to hit Karl Flex. I knelt down again and pushed my arm up the chimney. A few moments later I was holding a rifle up for the inspection of everyone in the room. It was a Mannlicher M95, a short-barreled carbine manufactured for the Austrian army with a telescopic sight mounted slightly to the left so the rifle could be fed by an en-bloc stripper clip.

  “It would seem you know your business after all, Commissar,” said Bormann.

  I worked the bolt and a spent brass cartridge popped out of the carbine’s breech. I picked it up; it was the same as the others I’d found already.

  “I apologize,” he added. “But what the hell’s that on the end of the barrel?” Bormann took a closer look. “It would appear to be a Mahle oil filter.”

  “It’s a little trick I’ve seen here before,” explained Kaspel. “The local poachers fit them to their rifles. You need to make a thread on the end of the barrel but it’s something almost anyone with access to a workshop can do. An oil filter makes a very effective sound suppressor. Like the mute on a trumpet. Just the thing when you’re stalking deer inside the Leader’s Territory and you don’t want to get caught by the RSD.”

  Bormann frowned. “What poachers? I thought that was all sorted when we erected the fucking fence.”

  “There’s no point in getting into that now,” I said. “It would certainly explain why no one heard the shots.” Seeing Bormann’s eyebrows sliding up his forehead, I added, “That’s right, sir. There was more than one shot fired. We found four bullets in the woodwork of the first-level balcony above the Berghof terrace.”

  “Four?” said Bormann. “Are you sure?”

  “Yes. Of course, we still haven’t found the fifth one—the one that killed Karl Flex. My guess is that it was lost forever when the Berghof terrace was cleaned up by your men, sir.”

  “I demand that someone tell me what’s going on,” said Hess. Clasping his hands in front of his belt buckle and then folding his arms again, as if nervous, he looked as if he was about to make his usual shrill, high priest’s speech at the Berlin Sportpalast. “Now, please.” He stamped his jackboots one after the other impatiently and for a moment I actually thought he was going to scream or even throw his Party tiepin on the floor.

  Bormann turned to Hess and explained, reluctantly, what had happened to Karl Flex.

  “But this is terrible,” said Hess. “Does Hitler know?”

  “No,” said Bormann. “I don’t think that would be a good idea. Not yet. Not until the culprit is in custody.”

  “Why?”

  Bormann grimaced; clearly he was not accustomed to being questioned like this, even by the man who was nominally his boss. I took another look at the carbine while they argued and tried to pretend that none of this was happening. But it seemed as if I was about to discover who was going to win the bratwürst contest.

  “Because I think it would almost certainly interfere with his future enjoyment of the Berghof,” said Bormann. “That’s why.”

  “I insist that he be told as soon as possible,” argued Hess. “I’m certain he’d want to know. The Leader takes all such matters very seriously.”

  “And you think I don’t?” With a face as red as a pig’s head in a pork-butcher’s window, Bormann pointed at me. “According to General Heydrich, this man Gunther is the top criminal commissar in the Berlin Murder Commission. I’ve no reason to doubt that. He’s been sent here to clear up this matter as soon as possible. All that can be done right now is being done. Please take a minute to think about this, my dear Hess. Quite apart from the fact that it might spoil his birthday if you told him about Flex’s death, Hitler might never come to Obersalzberg again. To this—his favorite place in the world. Surely you, as a Bavarian, could not wish such a thing ever to happen. Besides, it’s not as if we’ve uncovered an attempt to kill Hitler himself. I’m quite sure that this was a matter entirely unrelated to the Leader. Wouldn’t you agree, Commissar?”

  “Yes, sir, I would. From what I’ve learned so far I’m confident that this has nothing to do with Hitler.”

  I laid the carbine on the bedspread, next to the binoculars. It was also covered in soot and I thought it was unlikely that the firearm would yield any fingerprints. I was more interested in the serial number. And in the Mahle oil filter. Given what Kaspel had said, we were clearly looking for someone who owned or had access to a lathe. Quietly I asked Korsch to fetch my camera from my room, so that I might add some pictures of the carbine to my portfolio.

  Hess’s narrow mouth turned petulant, like a schoolboy who had been punished unjustly. “With all due respect to the commissar, this is not a matter for Kripo, but for the Gestapo. It may be that there is some conspiracy here. After all, it’s only a few months since that Swiss, Maurice Bavaud, came here with the express purpose of killing the Leader. It may be that this is connected with that earlier incident in some way. It could even be that the murderer mistakenly believed he was shooting at Hitler, in which case he may try again, when Hitler is actual
ly here. At the very least the Leader’s Territory should now be extended to the foot of Salzbergerstrasse, where it crosses the River Ache.”

  “Nonsense,” said Bormann. “I assure you, dear Hess, that nothing of the kind has happened here. Besides, we’ll certainly have caught the culprit before the Leader’s birthday. Isn’t that so, Gunther?”

  I hardly wanted to disagree with Bormann, especially as Hess was beginning to sound like a complete spinner. Already Bormann looked like the safer choice of top Nazi with whom to ally myself. “Yes, sir,” I said.

  But Hess wasn’t about to let this matter go. His eagle-eyed devotion to Adolf Hitler was absolute and it seemed that he could not countenance the very idea of keeping the Leader in the dark about anything at all, and Bormann was obliged to accompany him to his apartments upstairs, where they continued their discussion, in private. But everyone in the Villa Bechstein could hear them talking.

  That was just the way I liked it: two very important Nazis arguing loudly about their positions in the government’s odious pecking order. It wasn’t about to get any better than that on Hitler’s mountain.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  October 1956

  I changed trains in Chaumont and boarded another headed north for Nancy, which is over a hundred kilometers from the German border, although the realization had now dawned that I wasn’t sure where exactly the border was, not anymore. I knew where the old French-German border was but not the new one, not since the war. After the defeat of Germany in 1945, France had treated the Saar as a French Protectorate and an important resource for economic exploitation. Then, in the referendum of October 1955, the dominantly German Sarrois had voted by an overwhelming majority to reject the idea of an independent Saarland—which would still have suited the French—a result that was generally interpreted as the region’s rejection of France and an indication of its strong support for joining the Federal Republic of Germany. But I had no idea if the French recognized this result, which would mean they had finally ceded control of the Saar to the FRG. Knowing the French, and the historic significance our two countries had attached to this much-disputed territory, it seemed unlikely they would let it go so easily. Given the bitterness of the ongoing French-Algerian war, and France’s obvious reluctance to leave North Africa to rule itself, I could hardly imagine the Franzis were just going to walk out of a region of even greater industrial importance such as the Saar. The fact was, even if I got as far as Saarbrücken, I had no idea if being there would really make me any safer from arrest. There would still be plenty of French policemen around to make my life as a fugitive hazardous. I had to hope that as a French-speaking German native, I might at least be a little more anonymous. Anonymous enough to get me to the true Federal Republic. But even Nancy began to seem like a long way off when, just as the train was pulling out of the picturesque town of Neufchâteau, about halfway to my chosen destination, some uniformed French police got on and started checking identity cards.

  I walked slowly to the opposite end of the train, where I lit a Camel and considered my options. I thought I had just a few minutes before they would reach me, whereupon I would be arrested and probably taken back to a jail cell in Dijon. And there I would soon find myself at the mercy of some Stasi poisoner. Of course, the police might have been looking for someone else, but my detective’s nose told me this was unlikely. There’s nothing police like more than a nationwide manhunt. It gets everyone excited and gives the local cops an excuse to neglect their paperwork in order to try to put one over on the big-city boys. My only hope now seemed to be that the Nancy train would stop or slow down long enough for me to jump off. But even a glance out the window told me that while this was good country for growing grapes, it was a poor place to hide; there was very little cover and, along the bank of the river Meuse, everything looked as flat and featureless as the French economy. Things would have been easier in Germany where there is a more established tradition of hiking and wandering the countryside. But the French are not given to walking anywhere except to the local bakery and the tabac. With some dogs on my tail, the police would certainly catch me in a matter of hours. A few minutes of reflection persuaded me that my best chance—if I had the nerve for it—was to hide from the police in plain sight. It wasn’t much of a plan but there are times when a poor plan looks like a better choice than a good one—when a crooked log makes a straight fire. We’ve got a word for that, but it’s a very long one and most people run out of breath before they finish it. I was running out of breath myself.

  So I waited until the train was about to enter a small copse of plane trees, reached up above my head, braced myself, and then pulled the emergency brake. As the train shuddered to a screeching halt I threw open a door in the carriage with a loud bang and then hid inside the nearest lavatory. I waited there for several minutes, like a real Sitzpinkler, until I heard some shouts down on the track outside that were enough to tell me that the police truly believed that a passenger had taken fright at their presence and jumped off the train. Then I left the lavatory and walked slowly back to those carriages where I had seen the police already conducting an identity check. None of the other passengers paid much attention to me; they were all too busy looking out of the windows at the police, who were running alongside the train or looking underneath it for a wanted felon. From time to time I stopped and looked outside myself and asked people what was happening. Someone told me that the police were looking for an Algerian terrorist from the FLN; someone else assured me that they were looking for a man who’d murdered his wife, and grinned when I pulled a face and asked if this still counted as a crime in France. Nobody mentioned the Blue Train murderer, which gave me hope that I might yet pass through this part of France undetected.

  At the very end of the train I sat down and started to read the early edition of the France-Soir I’d bought in Chaumont. I hoped that in the time it would take the driver to reset the brake, and the police to conduct a search of the area surrounding the tracks, I might recover some of my nerve, but I found BLUE TRAIN MURDER occupying a whole column of page five, which did little for my confidence. Reading it, I could almost feel the noose tightening around my neck, especially since the memory of a noose around my neck was all too vivid. The suspect’s Citroën had been found in the town of Gevrey-Chambertin and he was believed to be on the run somewhere in Burgundy. My nerves were stretched to breaking, however, when two or three policemen got back on the train. It seemed the others were making their way back to Neufchâteau to collect a search party. To my relief, the policemen on the train had given up any thought of checking more identities. Instead, the train drove off at half speed with the cops looking out the windows, hoping to spot a man making a run for it across the open fields. After a while one of them even came and sat beside me and asked me for a match. I handed him a box and let him light his cigarette before I asked him what all the excitement was about. He told me they were hunting for the Blue Train murderer and that as soon they were back in Nancy, they were going to organize the local police to conduct an extensive search of the area around Chaumont.

  “How do you know he’s in this area?” I asked coolly.

  “We had a tip he was in Dijon after his car was found a short way south of there. And a man answering his description was seen near the station.

  “He must have been on this train. It’s obvious he saw us get on and decided to make a run for it. But we’ll catch him soon enough. He’s German, you see. There’s no way a German can hide in France. Not since the war. Someone’s bound to give him away sooner or later. Nobody likes Germans.”

  I nodded firmly, as if such a thing were quite irrefutable.

  In Nancy I marched swiftly away from the main railway station, confident only that I would not be taking any more French trains for a while. For no reason I could think of except that I was dog tired and emotionally exhausted—I could certainly have used a tube of Pervitin now—I found my heart poking through the
ribs of my chest: for the first time in a long time I thought of my late mother, which necessitated a brief halt in a telephone kiosk where I applied some more collyrium to my eyes. After that I walked a short distance east, through quiet streets to an impressively baroque church called Saint Sebastian, and there I was at last able to relax. I even managed to doze off for a while. Nobody looks at a man who’s in a church with his eyes closed; not the faithful at prayer, nor the nuns cleaning the place, nor the priests taking confession; even God leaves you alone in a church. Perhaps God most of all.

  I stayed in the church of Saint Sebastian for a full hour before I felt confident enough to venture outside again, by which time it was late afternoon. I’d thought about taking a bus but that seemed as potentially hazardous as a train, and I was merely putting off the moment when I would surely have to find a more private means of transport. Another car required too much paperwork and I was thinking about a small motorcycle or a scooter; but on Rue des 4 Églises I saw a shop full of secondhand bicycles. A bicycle was surely the least suspicious mode of transport available; after all, children, schoolteachers, and priests, even policemen, ride bicycles. A bicycle implied that you were not in a hurry, and there is nothing that arouses suspicion less than someone who is not in a hurry. So I purchased an old green Lapierre with good tires, some lights, and a luggage rack, onto which I tied my bag. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d ridden a bike—probably when I was a beat copper—and, in spite of the old saying that you never forget how, I almost did and nearly spilled myself into the path of a delivery van, which provided me with a very useful private lesson in the nicer points of the French language. I steadied myself beside the machine, mounted it a second time, and was just about to start pedaling away from Nancy for good when I saw the central covered market next door to the bicycle shop and had an idea how to render myself even more inconspicuous. I went inside and within just a few minutes I had also bought several strings of onions. The stall owner gave me a suspicious sort of look as if to say, What could you want with so many? and even in France, onion soup didn’t seem to be much of an answer, so I offered no explanation, just my money, which, for the French, is usually all the explanation required, especially near the end of a long working day. And, with the strings hanging on my handlebars, I was soon cycling east, across the Meurthe River toward the open countryside of Moselle, like a real Onion Johnny. At the very least, if a cop did stop me I thought the onions might be used as a means of explaining my red eyes.