If the Dead Rise Not (31 page)

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.”

 

 

I
READ HER LETTER ON THE TRAIN TO WÜRZBURG.

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.