Prussian Blue Read online

  I could almost hear the voice of Friedrich Korsch now, seated in the front of the Mercedes 770K as we’d reached the outskirts of Nuremberg—effectively, the capital of Nazism in Germany—and he’d mentioned a good hotel, which was where I most wanted to be right now, with a comfortable bed, a hot bath, some eyedrops, and a good dinner . . .

  1939

  “The Deutscher Hof,” said Korsch. “Remember that, sir?”

  “Of course.”

  “That’s a nice hotel. Best I’ve stayed in, anyway. Always reminds me a bit of the Adlon.”

  Korsch and I had stayed at the Deutscher Hof—rumored to be Hitler’s favorite hotel—on a trip to Nuremberg the previous September, when we’d been investigating a possible lead in a serial murder case. For a while we had suspected that Julius Streicher, the political leader of Franconia, might be the culprit and we had gone to Nuremberg to speak to the local police chief, Benno Martin. Streicher was Germany’s leading Jew-baiter and the publisher of Der Stürmer, a magazine so crudely anti-Semitic that even a majority of Nazis shunned it.

  I caught Korsch’s eye in the side mirror mounted on the huge spare tire beside his door and nodded.

  “How could I forget?” I said. “That was the night we first clapped eyes on Streicher. Totally blue with drink he was, but still boozing it up with a couple of stroke maidens like he was the Holy Roman Emperor himself. For a while I quite fancied him for it. The murders, I mean.”

  “Hard to believe a man like that is still a gauleiter.”

  “There’s a lot that’s hard to believe right now,” I murmured, thinking about the war that was probably just down the road; surely it wouldn’t be long before the French and the British called Hitler’s bluff and mobilized their armies. Rumor had it that Poland was next on Hitler’s list for annexation, or whatever the diplomatic word is after Munich for invading someone else’s country.

  “Not for much longer,” said Neumann. “Confidentially, Streicher’s been under investigation since November, accused of stealing Jewish property seized after Kristallnacht, which was rightly the property of the state. Not to mention the fact that he’s been libeling Göring’s daughter, Edda.”

  “Libeling?” said Korsch.

  “He alleged in his newspaper that she was conceived by artificial insemination.”

  I laughed. “Yes, I can see how that would piss Göring off. How it would piss any man off.”

  “General Heydrich expects him be stripped of all his Party offices by the end of the year.”

  “Well, that’s a relief,” I said. “Where are you from, Neumann?”

  “Barmen.” He shook his head. “It’s all right. Franconia is a mystery to me, too.”

  “It’s wizard country,” I said. “Stay on the path, that’s what they always say there. Don’t go into the woods. And don’t ever talk to strangers.”

  “Damn right,” said Korsch.

  After a moment I said, “Confidentially, you say. I suppose that means it’s all going to be done in secret and then swept under the carpet, just like the Weisthor affair.”

  “I believe Streicher is still protected by Hitler,” said Neumann. “So yes, I imagine you’re probably right, Commissar Gunther. But nothing’s perfect, is it?”

  “You noticed that, too, eh?”

  “Speaking of secrets,” said Neumann. “I suppose we’d better discuss how you’re going to keep the general informed of what you’re up to when you’re in Obersalzberg, without alerting Martin Bormann.”

  “I’ve been wondering about that.”

  “While you’re down there, I’ll be based a few kilometers across the German border, in Salzburg. As a matter of fact, I do quite a lot of confidential work for the general in Austria. Close to Berchtesgaden is a little place called St. Leonhard. It’s virtually on the border. And in St. Leonhard there’s a discreet guest house called the Schorn Ziegler, which has a very good restaurant. Real home cooking. I’ll be staying there. If you have anything to report or if you need anything from Heydrich’s office in Berlin, that will be where you can find me. Failing that you can always find me at Gestapo headquarters in Salzburg. That’s easy to find, too. Just look for the old Franciscan monastery on Mozartplatz.”

  “I take it the monks are no longer there. Or did they all join the SS?”

  “What’s the difference?” said Korsch.

  “Regrettably, they were thrown out of there last year.” Neumann looked sheepish for a moment. “After the annexation, there were a lot of things that happened that could have been handled differently, better.” He shrugged. “Me, I’m just an electrical engineer. I leave politics in the hands of the politicians.”

  “That’s the trouble,” I said. “I have an awful feeling that the politicians are even worse at handling politics than the rest of us.”

  “Drink?” Neumann lifted the armrest to reveal a small cocktail cabinet.

  “No,” I said, taking hold of the red leather rope on the back of the seat in front of me, as if it might help me to hold on to that resolve. “I do believe I’m going to need a clear head when I get to Obersalzberg.”

  “You don’t mind if I do,” he said, lifting a small crystal decanter clear of its purple-velvet-lined cocoon. “The general keeps an excellent brandy in his car. I think it’s almost as old as I am.”

  “Go ahead. I look forward to reading the taster’s notes.”

  I lowered the window a centimeter and lit a cigarette, if only to chase off the faintly intoxicating smell of hot oil and warm rubber and expensive alcohol and male body odor that filled the elegant interior of the big Mercedes. Icy fog shrouded the road ahead, dissolving other headlamps and rear lamps like something soluble at the bottom of your glass. Small forgotten towns came and went in a blur as the fallen angel’s car tunneled its rumbling way south through the uncertain dark. Yawning and blinking and registering what was always twenty meters behind us, I sank deeper into my seat and listened to the sharp-toothed wind as it whistled a melancholy banshee tune beside the freezing-cold glass of the window. There’s nothing like an extended road trip at night to steal thoughts from your past and your future both, to make you think that coming is no different from going, and to persuade you that a hoped-for long journey’s end is merely another bloody beginning.

  NINE

  April 1939

  It was almost midnight when we reached Berchtesgaden in the southeast corner of Bavaria. In the dark, it looked like a typical Alpine valley town with several tall church spires, a high castle, and many colorful wall murals, although most of these were of recent origin and illustrated a childish devotion to one man that bordered on idolatry. Living in the capital of Germany, I suppose I ought to have been used to a bit of apple polishing and arse groveling, but for Berliners a hero always comes with a dirty mark on his white vest, and it’s unlikely that any of my fellow citizens would ever have decorated the outside wall of his home with anything more than a kitsch name board or a street number. I wasn’t sure why Adolf Hitler had chosen a cozy little tourist town as his unofficial capital—which is what it was—but he’d been visiting Berchtesgaden since 1923, and in the summer it was impossible to open a German newspaper without seeing several pictures of our avuncular Leader with local children. He was always seen hand in hand with children—the more German-looking, the better—almost as if someone (Goebbels, probably) had decided being seen with them might make him seem like less of a belligerent monster. For me, the opposite impression always prevailed. Anyone who’d read the Brothers Grimm could have told you that big bad wolves and wizards, wicked witches and greedy giants had always enjoyed the taste of a hot pie stuffed with the succulent meat of small boys and girls who were dumb enough to go off with them. I wondered about some of those little girls in pigtails and dirndls who were taken to meet Hitler as a birthday treat, I really did.

  We’d arrived in Berchtesgaden with a river to t
he left and the town on our right, and almost immediately the Mercedes turned east to cross a small bridge over the Ache and head up a winding, snowy mountain road toward Obersalzberg. Looming above us in the moonlight was the Göll massif, which rises to a height of more than two thousand meters and straddles the border between Austria and Germany like an enormous thundercloud. A few minutes later we came upon our first security checkpoint, and while we were expected, nevertheless we were obliged to wait while the semi-frozen SS guard telephoned his headquarters for our permission to proceed any farther. After Berlin’s poor excuse for an atmosphere, the cold air through the open window of the car tasted as pure as glacier melt. Already I felt healthier. Maybe that was why Hitler liked the place so much; he wanted to live forever. Our permission came through and we drove on for a few kilometers until, just short of another sentry gate, which marked the boundary of the so-called Prohibited Area, we pulled into the driveway of the Villa Bechstein, a three-story Alpine-style chalet, and stopped next to another giant Mercedes-Benz.

  “This is where you and Criminal Assistant Korsch will be staying,” Neumann told me. “But it’s also as far as the rest of us can go, Commissar. From here on you’re in the hands of the RSD. Another staff car will take you to the deputy chief of staff.”

  We got out of the car and found ourselves surrounded by five bandbox RSD officers who inspected our credentials carefully and then invited me but not Korsch to climb into the second Mercedes. The wind was getting up and there was a strong smell of wood smoke coming from the villa’s chimneys that made me yearn for the sight of a roaring fire and a cup of hot coffee with someone warm holding it.

  “If you don’t mind, gentlemen,” I said, “I’d like a few minutes to wash my hands. And unpack.”

  “There’s no time for that,” announced one of the RSD officers. “The Boss doesn’t like to be kept waiting. And he’s already been waiting all evening for your arrival up at the Kehlstein House.”

  “The Boss?” For a moment I wondered just who it was that I was about to meet.

  “Martin Bormann,” said another.

  “And what’s the Kehlstein House?”

  “The Kehlstein is the northernmost peak on the Göll massif. Not the highest, and the house—well, you’ll see.” One of the officers had opened the door of the Mercedes while another had taken charge of my bag and was carrying it into the villa. And minutes later I was heading farther up the magic mountain with three men from the RSD.

  “Captain Kaspel, isn’t it?” I asked.

  “Yes,” said the man now sitting next to me. He pointed to the man seated alongside my new driver. “And this is my superior, Major Högl. Major Högl is the deputy head of the RSD in Obersalzberg.”

  “Major.”

  We stopped to negotiate another checkpoint, after which Högl finally turned and spoke to me. “We’re now in the Prohibited Area, better known among everyone who works here as the Leader’s Territory. An FG1 level of security is only fully operational when the Leader is actually here, however, but given the special circumstances, we thought it best to step things up to FG1, for the time being anyway.”

  Kaspel was, I knew, from Berlin, but there was no mistaking Högl’s Bavarian accent or his pompous manner. I’d seen it before, of course; anyone who comes into contact with a god often enough starts to believe in his own self-importance.

  “What special circumstances are those, Major?”

  “The murder, of course. This is why you’re here, isn’t it? To investigate a homicide? That’s what you’re good at, I’m told by General Heydrich.”

  “He’s never wrong about very much,” I said. “Care to give me a small advance on what’s happened?”

  “That would not be appropriate,” Högl said stiffly. “Really, it’s up to the deputy chief of staff what you’re told.”

  “By the way, who’s the chief of staff around here? With all these deputies sometimes it’s a little hard to keep up with who’s who in Nazi Germany.”

  “The deputy of the Leader. Rudolf Hess. As a matter of fact he’s going to be staying at the Villa Bechstein when he gets here from Munich the day after tomorrow. But if you see him you can call him sir, or General.”

  “That’s a relief. Deputy of the Leader is a little bit of a mouthful.”

  I lit a cigarette and yawned. It was safer than making a joke.

  “But to all intents and purposes it’s Martin Bormann who runs the show up here,” said Kaspel.

  I folded my arms across my chest and pulled hard on my cigarette, which seemed to bother Högl. He waved the smoke back at me.

  “Just to let you know, smoking is not permitted anywhere on the Kehlstein,” said Högl. “The Leader has a very keen nose for tobacco and doesn’t care for it in the least.”

  “Even when he’s not here?”

  “Even when he’s not here.”

  “That really is a keen sense of smell.”

  Finally we reached the top of the road, where an impressive sight awaited me. In a large stone-clad entranceway at the bottom of an almost sheer mountain slope was a pair of arched bronze doors as big as an African elephant, and they opened as we pulled up to them. Of course, like any German, I knew the legend, that the Emperor Friedrich Barbarossa (although some said it was Charlemagne) was asleep inside these mountains awaiting the great battle that would herald the end of the world, but I hadn’t ever thought to discover he was expecting visitors. This was another joke I kept to myself. I couldn’t have felt more intimidated if I’d been summoned to meet the troll king to discuss his daughter’s unfortunate condition.

  The open doors revealed a long, perfectly straight tunnel which might easily have admitted the passage of the big Mercedes but I was told we had to get out and walk.

  “Only the Leader is permitted to drive to the end of this tunnel,” explained Högl. “For everyone else, it’s the shoemaker’s penny.”

  “I’m happy to stretch my legs a bit,” I said bravely. “It’s ten hours from Berlin. Besides, all pilgrimages should end on foot, don’t you think?”

  I finished my cigarette quickly, tossed it onto the road and followed Högl and his deputy down the length of the brightly lit marble tunnel. I ran my hand along the wall and glanced up at the cast-iron light fittings as we walked; everything was new and spotlessly clean. Even the U-Bahn station at Friedrichstrasse wasn’t as new or well made as this place.

  “Is this where the Leader lives?” I asked.

  “No, this is the way up to the tea house,” explained Kaspel.

  “The tea house? I can’t wait to see what the ballroom looks like. Not to mention the cocktail bar and the master bedroom.”

  “The Leader doesn’t drink,” said Kaspel.

  This information was enough to restore my faith in at least two of my bad habits. Maybe they weren’t such bad habits after all.

  At the end of the tunnel Högl looked up. “The tea house is one hundred and thirty meters above our heads,” he said, and then announced our presence into a microphone that was built into the wall.

  We were standing in a large, round, vaulted chamber, the sort of place where you might have expected to find a priceless sarcophagus, or perhaps a treasure belonging to at least forty thieves but instead there was a set of elevator doors, which could have been gold they were so brightly polished, but even as I was assuring myself that they were more probably brass, I began to feel uneasy in a way I’d never felt before. It was, perhaps, the first time I realized the true extent of Adolf Hitler’s apparent divinity: if this was a representative example of the way our chancellor lived, then Germany was in a lot more trouble than even I had realized.

  The elevator doors parted to reveal a mirrored car with a leather bench seat and its own RSD operator. We stepped inside and the brass doors closed again.

  “Powered by two engines,” said Högl. “One electric. And a backup
diesel engine that was taken from a U-boat.”

  “That should come in handy if there’s a flood.”

  “Please,” said Högl, “no comedians. The deputy chief of staff doesn’t have a sense of humor.”

  “Sorry.”

  I smiled nervously as the elevator car rose up the shaft. It was the smoothest elevator ride I’d ever taken, although I had the strong idea that it should have been traveling in the opposite direction. Then the doors opened and I was ushered through a doorway and what looked like a main dining room, down some steps, and straight into the presence of Martin Bormann.

  TEN

  April 1939

  He wasn’t tall and at first I didn’t see him. I was too busy staring in wonder at the Kehlstein reception hall, where everyone was waiting for me. It was a large round room, perfectly proportioned, made of gray granite blocks, with a coffered ceiling and a marble fireplace that was the size and color of an S-Bahn train. Above the fireplace was a Gobelin tapestry featuring a couple of bucolic lovers and on the floor was an expensive crimson Persian rug. In front of the red fireplace a circular table was surrounded by comfortable armchairs that made me feel tired just looking at them. There were no curtains on the big square windows that provided an unimpeded mountaintop view of a dark and stormy night. Light snow was dusting the glass and outside the window I could hear the lanyard shifting in the wind on a tin flagpole like the clapper in a tiny bell. It was a good night to be inside, especially on top of a mountain. A log the size of the Sudetenland was smoking in the grate and on the walls were several electric candelabra that looked as if they’d been placed there by a mad scientist’s faithful retainer. There was a mahogany grand piano and a small rectangular table and some more chairs, and in another doorway a man wearing a white SS mess jacket with a silver tray under his arm. It was a room with the kind of rarefied atmosphere in which some men might have thought they could decide the future of the world, but it made my ears feel as if someone had pulled a cork out of my skull, although that could as easily have been the sight of an open flask of Grassl on the table, prompting the sudden realization that I needed a drink that wasn’t tea. Only one of the five men around the table was in uniform but I knew he couldn’t be Bormann, as the man had only a colonel’s helping of cauliflower on his SS collar badge; he was also the one man who got to his feet and returned my Hitler salute, politely. The others, including the pugilistic-looking type who now took charge of things in the tea house, and whom I guessed was probably Martin Bormann, remained firmly seated. I didn’t blame any of them much for not wanting to get up to greet me—sudden movements like that at such high altitude can give you a nosebleed. Besides, the chairs really did look very comfortable and, after all, I was just a copper from Berlin.