Prussian Blue

  I found Gerdy Troost standing inside the main entrance in an arched doorway as big as a U-Bahn tunnel. Above the doorway was a large red eagle holding a wreath that displayed a swastika. She was wrapped in a thick white fur that must have troubled the tenderhearted, animal-loving Hitler, and smoking a cigarette that would have troubled him even more. On her head was a white beret and over her arm a cream-colored ostrich leather handbag. Being that I am a shallow sort of fellow who always appreciated the scent of expensive perfume and the sight of a perfectly straight stocking seam, the fashionably groomed Gerdy reminded me strongly of why I was keen to return to Berlin.

  We went and sat in my car to get out of the cutting east wind and to talk for a few moments in private and, for no good reason I could think of, other than my most recent brush with death in the Schlossberg Caves, I kissed her almost as soon as my car door was shut. Gerdy tasted of white wine, lipstick, and the cigarette that was still burning between the fingers of her white-gloved hand. She felt slight in my arms, like a child, and almost breakable, and I had to remind myself that it had taken a lot of strength and courage to do what she was doing, that this was a woman who—by her own account anyway—had contradicted Hitler, and that wasn’t something you did without pause for thought. The thin and very bony back I could feel against the palm of my hand must have been made of iron.

  “You’re full of surprises, do you know that?” she said. “I certainly wasn’t expecting that, Gunther.”

  “Neither was I. I think the absence of any SS guards on duty here probably went to my head. Either that or I’m just pleased to see you again.”

  “You’re just nervous,” she said. “It’s not every day you enter a conspiracy to bring down the second-most powerful man in Germany. And not that I’m complaining, mind. But it’s been a while since anyone held me like that.”

  “I’m not surprised, given the company you keep and the place where you sleep.”

  “You don’t know the half of it. I had to sneak out the back door and collect my own car from the garage. But the Leader’s full of plans tonight, which makes him very exhausting. Of course, he doesn’t get up until midday, so it’s all right for him. But everyone else at the Berghof is now operating on half as much sleep as before.”

  I almost felt sorry for them.

  “Did you catch your murderer?” she asked.

  In view of Colonel Rattenhuber’s warning I thought it best I didn’t tell her too much about what had gone down in Homburg; even at this late stage when we were about to present the evidence of Martin Bormann’s corruption in Obersalzberg to his brother, Albert, I thought the less she knew about what had happened, the better. So I just nodded and changed the subject quickly. “When the Leader was talking about his plans, did he say anything about Poland?”

  “Only that the British and the French have failed to secure an alliance with the Soviet Union against Germany, and that if he could, he would form one himself, with the Russians against the Poles. So that doesn’t look good for peace, does it?”

  “Stalin would never make an alliance with Hitler,” I said.

  “That’s what people probably said about Sparta’s deal with the Persian emperor Darius.” Gerdy took a long puff of her cigarette and then tossed it out the window.

  “I don’t know. Was Darius planning to betray the Poles, too?”

  “Everyone hates the Poles,” she averred. “Don’t they?”

  “I don’t hate them. At least no more than I hate anyone else. I agree, that’s not saying much. Not these days.”

  “Don’t you want Danzig back?”

  “Not particularly. It wasn’t mine to begin with. Besides, that’s not the real issue here. The real issue is that Hitler just wants a real issue to make trouble, so he can expand our borders to include the rest of Europe. It’s what Germany always wants. Hitler. The Kaiser. There’s not much difference. It’s the same old chestnut.”

  “I can see we’re not going to agree about that, anyway.”

  “Probably not.”

  “So. Are you ready to do this?”

  “I think so. But you were right, of course. I am nervous.”

  “You should be. What we’re doing is not to be done lightly.”

  “You don’t hear me whistling.”

  “We’re about to walk in that building and give Albert Bormann the most dangerous weapon there is. Knowledge.”

  “I know.” But still I hesitated. The Chancellery looked like it was recent, so, changing the subject again, I said, “Is that one of your late husband’s buildings, or Speer’s?”

  “Neither. Alois Degano designed this place. In common with Speer, he has only one design in his head. If you asked him to redesign the Reichstag it would probably look like this.”

  I smiled. I always enjoyed hearing Gerdy’s scathingly candid opinions of her colleagues’ abilities.

  “Having said all that, this is probably the most important building in Germany,” she added. “Much more important than any building in Berlin, although it may not look like it. You’re looking at the place where all of the Leader’s executive orders are put into action. If Nazism has an administrative center, this is it.”

  “Hard to believe,” I said.

  “Berlin’s just for show. Big speeches and parades. Increasingly, this is the place where things get done.”

  “That’s depressing. Speaking as a Berliner, that is.”

  “Hitler has no love for our capital.”

  I wanted to tell her that Berlin had no great love for the Leader, but after giving her my thoughts on Danzig I thought it best to reserve my opinion in this matter at least; without Gerdy Troost I hadn’t a prayer of even seeing Albert Bormann.

  “Did you bring the ledgers?” she asked.

  “In my briefcase.”

  “Now, let me tell you what’s important, which is how to deal with Albert. He’s a modest, cultured sort of man, and a strict Lutheran. He’s meeting us because he trusts me and because I vouched for your honesty. I told him that you’re not in Heydrich’s pocket. That you’re old-school Kripo for whom justice still means something. Honesty and integrity count high with Albert. Very probably he’s checked you out himself. Albert’s not without his own resources. So, then; he hates his older brother, Martin, but that hatred certainly won’t extend to allowing you to speak badly of him without hard evidence. Martin exercises no such restraint in talking about Albert, however. Albert is everything that Martin is not. And yet they are noticeably brothers. Jekyll and Hyde, you might say. Martin calls Albert the Leader’s valet, or sometimes, ‘the man who holds Hitler’s coat.’ He’s even spread some rumors that Albert’s Hungarian-born wife is a Jew. It’s strange. When they’re together you would think they don’t even see each other. If Albert made a joke the only person not laughing would be Martin, and vice versa.”

  “What does Hitler have to say about that?”

  “Nothing. Hitler encourages rivalries. He believes it makes people try harder to gain his favor. And he’s right. Speer is the living embodiment of what constantly trying to please Hitler can do to a man. Hitler relies on Martin but he trusts and admires Albert. So don’t forget: Albert loves the Leader. Just like me.”

  “Why do Martin and Albert hate each other?”

  “I don’t know. But the curious thing is not why they hate each other—brothers are often this way—but why Martin hasn’t tried to get rid of Albert. No, not even to have him posted elsewhere. It’s almost as if Albert is holding something incriminating on Martin. Something that guarantees his place here in Berchtesgaden. Anyone else would have been sent away by now.”

  “It’s all one big happy family, right enough.”

  “Here, Gunther. Kiss me again, for courage. I liked it the first time. More than I thought I would.”

  I leaned across the front seat and kissed Gerdy fondly on the cheek. Both
of us knew that it wasn’t going to come to anything but sometimes those are the sweetest kisses of all. There was another reason I kissed her, too, and probably why she let me. Whatever she said about Albert Bormann, he was still Martin’s brother. Maybe they did hate each other; then again, maybe they’d made things up, the way people do when they’re blood relations. Stranger things have happened. Then, after she’d fixed her makeup in the rearview mirror and wiped my face with her breast-pocket handkerchief, we got out of the car and hurried toward the main entrance, where the eagle looked as if it was going to come alive, drop the swastika, and make a grab for Gerdy’s white fur coat, like something in a fairy tale. It certainly felt like we were walking into real danger. But a hungry eagle was probably the least hazardous thing we were likely to encounter in Stanggass. Albert Bormann may have hated his brother but he was an SS general who loved Adolf Hitler and that made him very dangerous indeed.

  SIXTY-NINE

  April 1939

  Albert Bormann stood up to greet Gerdy Troost and when he came around the desk to kiss her, I saw that he was several centimeters taller than his older brother, although not as tall as me. His features were finer, too, although maybe that was more to do with how he looked after himself; he looked fit and his waistband was probably a couple of sizes smaller than Martin’s. All that tea and chocolate cake in the tea house were bound to take their toll. Albert Bormann was wearing the uniform of an SS general and a Party armband, and although it was past two a.m. his white shirt looked as immaculate as his light brown neatly combed hair. The red Party armband gave me pause for thought, although not as much as the Coburg Badge on his left breast pocket; and given what I now knew about Martin’s contempt for his brother, I had the sudden idea that the reason I’d been given the same badge was, perhaps, to devalue it; probably if Martin Bormann awarded enough of them, the Coburg Badge his brother wore would cease to be “the party’s highest civilian honor.” It looked like just the kind of spiteful thing that one brother would do to another.

  When he and Gerdy had finished embracing each other, he helped her off with her coat, hung it up behind the door, and bowed very politely in my direction as she made the introductions. The office was large but simply furnished: on the desk next to an Erika five-tab and a rather loathsome book by Theodor Fritsch was a small photograph of the Leader, and on a wall a cuckoo clock. Outside the window you could hear the Nazi flag snapping in the breeze like someone shaking out a damp towel.

  He drew up an easy chair in front of the fire for Gerdy, invited me to sit with them, and came straight to the point.

  “You report to Heydrich, do you not?” asked Bormann.

  “That’s right, sir. Reluctantly.”

  “Why do you say so?”

  “I’m just not the thumbscrew type, I guess.”

  “Really? Tell me about yourself, Commissar Gunther.”

  “I’m nobody. Which is the way my superiors seem to like it.”

  “Nevertheless you are a commissar. That’s a little more than just nobody.”

  “You would think so, wouldn’t you? But these days rank doesn’t count for much. Not since Munich. All kinds of important people are treated like nobodies now.”

  “So you don’t think the Sudetenland belonged to Germany?”

  “It does now. And that’s all that seems to matter. Otherwise we’d be at war with England and France.”

  “Perhaps. But you were telling me about yourself. Not the situation in Europe. For example: Why should I trust you?”

  “It’s a good question. Well, sir, I resigned from Kripo in 1932. I was a member of the SPD, and I’d have been sacked before very long, anyway—for my politics, not my investigative record. You’ll remember how the National Socialist Party used to think that to be SPD was almost as bad as being a communist. Which I never was. After I left the Alex I worked at the Adlon Hotel for a bit before setting up on my own as a private detective. I was doing all right at it, too, until late last year, when Heydrich drafted me back into Kripo.”

  “Why did he do that?”

  “There had been a series of brutal murders of young girls in Berlin that were allegedly committed by Jews. Heydrich wanted the case investigated by someone who wasn’t a Nazi Party member and consequently had no racial ax to grind, as it were. He wanted the true culprit caught and not someone who’d been framed to suit the requirements of prevailing anti-Semitic propaganda. I believe the general felt that my previous record in the Murder Commission meant I was the best man for the job.”

  “In other words, he thought you were an honest cop.”

  “For what that’s worth these days, yes, sir.”

  “In the present circumstances, it’s worth quite a lot. And did you catch the true culprit? I mean, the person who’d murdered these girls?”

  “Yes, sir. I did.”

  “And because he still thinks you’re a good detective he sent you down here to investigate the murder of Karl Flex, is that right? Because my brother had asked him to send his best detective.”

  I nodded. Albert Bormann’s voice was almost the same as his brother’s except for one thing: there was no rough edge in it, just courtesy. Gerdy had been right: it was indeed like meeting Dr. Jekyll after one had first met Mr. Hyde. I wondered that two brothers could look so similar and yet be so different.

  “But you don’t like working for Kripo now any more than you like Heydrich. Is that fair?”

  “That’s exactly right, sir. As I already said, I don’t like his methods.”

  “Nor my brother’s, if Gerdy is to be believed.”

  “That’s right.”

  Bormann now listened patiently while Gerdy explained how I had amassed a considerable amount of evidence that showed his brother, Martin, was corrupt and operating numerous schemes under the aegis of the Obersalzberg Administration to profit himself. Bormann listened patiently and even made a few notes with a gold pencil in a leather notebook.

  “What kind of evidence have you found?” asked Bormann.

  “Mainly there’s this ledger, sir,” I said, handing it over. “Kept by Dr. Karl Flex, and which records a whole series of payments on rackets that he and several others were running on behalf of his master, Martin Bormann. Rackets that have been set up to take advantage of the Obersalzberg Administration.”

  “What sort of rackets?” asked Bormann.

  I told him about the rackets in Pervitin and Protargol. “But the most egregious one I’ve found so far is a scheme to give employees of OA deferment from military service. For approximately one hundred reichsmarks a year, virtually anyone can pretend to be employed by OA and thus avoid the call-up. On top of the local property empire that Martin Bormann has amassed, also corruptly, these payments are worth hundreds of thousands of reichsmarks per annum.”

  Albert Bormann let out a sigh and nodded as if it was something he’d always suspected. I watched him find a pair of reading glasses and turn the pages of the ledger for a while before he told me to continue.

  “There are also a couple of bankbooks for the Wegelin bank of St. Gallen in Switzerland,” I said. “One of these was in Flex’s own name and the other is in the name of Martin Bormann. These accounts show exactly how much money your brother has amassed, sir. Once a month Karl Flex drove to St. Gallen, where he deposited checks and large sums of cash into both of these two accounts. Smaller sums for himself. Massive ones for your brother.”

  “May I see these bankbooks, Commissar Gunther?”

  I handed them over and waited while Albert Bormann scrutinized the Wegelin bank passbooks.

  “Astonishing. But I see that my brother’s passbook has a second signatory: Max Amann.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Do you know who Max Amann is, Commissar Gunther?”

  “I believe he’s an associate of your brother, sir. A newspaper publisher and president of the Reich Media C
hamber. He’s also the Reich press leader. More than that I really don’t know.”

  “Yes, but none of those positions you mention is very important. Do you know what else he does?”

  “Not exactly, sir.”

  “Max Amann is the chairman of Centralverlag NSDAP.”

  I bit my lip hard, suddenly understanding that none of my evidence was worth a spit; not anymore. “Shit,” I said quietly.

  “That’s right, Commissar.”

  “I don’t understand,” said Gerdy. “I’ve never heard of Max Amann.”

  “Yes, you have,” said Bormann. “Do you remember meeting a man with one arm in Munich at the Braun Haus?”

  “That was him?”

  Bormann nodded.

  “I still don’t understand why he’s important,” she admitted.

  “Centralverlag is the Party’s publishing arm and in case you didn’t know it, they’re Hitler’s own publishers. In other words, Max Amann is the man who publishes Mein Kampf.”

  “Oh,” she said.

  “Now you’re getting it, Gerdy. And judging by the size of sums involved and the fact that Amann is also a signatory, I should say that the bulk of this money in Martin’s Wegelin bank account probably comes not from these illegal activities you describe but from the royalties on Hitler’s book. Which are considerable, as you can probably imagine. Does Hitler know that my brother has a Swiss bank account? Almost certainly. If there’s one thing the Leader is careful with it’s his own money. For some time I’ve been aware that my brother has absolute control not just of the Leader’s Reichsbank checkbook, but also of his Deutsche Bank checkbook. Clearly Hitler already trusts my brother with his royalty money, too.

  “Having said all that, is the Leader aware that Martin has been topping up some of the royalties from Mein Kampf in this Swiss account with money received from the corruption you’ve described here in Berchtesgaden? Not being a National Socialist yourself you will, doubtless, have your own quietly held opinion about that. Speaking for myself, I very much doubt that he does know. But I don’t think there’s any way of finding out for sure. Not without causing enormous embarrassment to the Leader. Which is perhaps why my brother’s done it. Do you see?”