Prague Fatale (41 page)

‘Captain Kluckholn was just here,’ he said.

‘What did he want?’

He handed me a sheet of paper.

‘It’s a list of Kuttner’s personal effects,’ he said. ‘Apparently these are available for our inspection in Major Ploetz’s office.’

I glanced over the list.

Kahlo handed me a brown envelope and, smiling, shook his head.

‘He’s also given us two tickets each for the circus next Wednesday evening.’

‘The circus? What the hell for?’

Kahlo nodded. ‘Prague’s Crown Circus. I hear it’s very good. Everyone’s invited. Even me. It’s an outing for the SD and the SS and the Gestapo. Isn’t that nice? Mr and Mrs Heydrich are going. And so are Mr and Mrs Frank. Apparently your lady friend, Fräulein Tauber, is also invited. Whoever she is. I didn’t even know you had a lady friend here in Prague.’

‘I don’t. Not any more. Right now she’s on a train back to Berlin.’

‘God, I wish I was.’

‘Me too.’

‘Now I understand why you wanted to get away last night. At the time I thought you were headed for the Pension Matzky.’

‘You know about that, do you?’

‘More than you might think. A mate of mine in the local
vice squad had to interview the girls. Heydrich set the place up even before he became Reichsprotector.’

‘He never struck me as the type to pimp for his fellow officers.’

‘Oh, he’s not. The place is a honey trap. It’s equipped with listening devices so that he can eavesdrop on important Czechos or the top brass when they come down from Berlin. My mate reckons he’s blackmailing half of the General Staff. Apparently he’s got a similar place planned in Berlin. In Geisebrechtstrasse. If I were you, sir, I’d keep away from both.’

‘Thanks for the tip. I think I will.’

‘Don’t mention it.’

‘Anything else?’

There was a second envelope in Kahlo’s hand. He handed it over. In the envelope was a letter from Geert Vranken’s father in the Netherlands, thanking me for contacting his daughter-in-law – she was too upset to write herself – and for informing them of his son’s ‘accident’; he also asked me to keep him informed of exactly when and where his son’s remains were eventually interred.

‘News from home?’

‘Not exactly.’ I put the letter and the circus tickets in my pocket. ‘Who’s our next witness?’

‘Brigadier Bernard Voss.’

‘Remind me who he is.’

‘In charge of the SS Officer School at Beneschau. And everything you’d expect from the commandant of an officer training school: a real stiff prick. Very probably you could use some uglier words than that. Especially if you’re a Czech. In November 1939 some students from the local university organized a demonstration during which Frank’s driver was injured. He shouldn’t have been there at all, but that’s another
story. Anyway, twelve hundred students were arrested and Voss commanded the firing squads that shot several of them. As an example to the rest.’

I pulled a face. It was easy to despise a man who’d done something like that. I knew because I’d done something like that myself.

‘And Voss once met Hitler,’ added Kahlo, ‘which is not so unusual in this house. However, when you talk to him it seems to have been the most important day in his life.’

It was easy to believe this after just ten minutes in Voss’s company. Hitler he regarded as the modern equivalent of Martin Luther; and maybe he wasn’t so far wrong: Luther was another hugely deluded German I regarded with more than a little distaste.

Fortunately for my inquiry it seemed Voss was just as happy to talk about the incident at Beneschau involving Kuttner and Jacobi as he was about the day he met Hitler.

‘Captain Kuttner was a highly intelligent young officer and I was surprised that he should have said what he did. However, I was not at all surprised that Colonel Jacobi should have answered him in that way. But then, that’s Jacobi for you.’

‘Where was General Heydrich when this happened?’

‘In the dining hall at Beneschau we have a long refectory-style table. I was right next to Jacobi. But Heydrich was at the opposite end of the table.’

‘Why didn’t he sit next to you, sir? Surely that would have been customary.’

Voss shrugged. ‘The General was late. Delayed by some official business.’

His voice was about as thick as a recently tarred road.

‘Why weren’t you surprised that Jacobi should have said what he said?’

Voss shrugged again. He wasn’t as tall as he should have been; these days you don’t have to look commanding to be in command. But he did look tough for a man of almost fifty, which is about the number of stitches it must have taken to sew up the
Schmisse
on his left cheek, and you couldn’t argue with an Iron Cross first class or the courageous even foolhardy way he smoked, like every cigarette was his last.

‘It’s no secret that he and I don’t agree on a number of issues. Still there was no excuse for young Kuttner to be insubordinate like that. That was a surprise. I always thought him a very polite, courteous young man. Always. Ever since I first met him several years ago.’

‘So you knew him before he came to Prague?’

‘Oh yes. He was a cadet-officer at the SS Junker School in Bad Tolz when I was the commander there.’

‘When was that?’

‘When I was the commander at Bad Tolz? Let’s see now. July 1935 until November 1938. Kuttner was one of the best young officers that was ever produced there. He graduated at the top of his class. As you might have expected. After all, he was a law graduate of some brilliance. And great things were expected of Kuttner. He was certainly being groomed for one of the top jobs in the SS. Yes, it’s true he had important connections. But he had considerable ability of his own. If only things hadn’t gone wrong for him in Latvia he’d have been a major by now. With an important desk job in Berlin.’

Voss shook his head.

‘Of course, he’s not the first SS officer that this sort of thing has happened to. I know because I keep up with a lot of the young men who passed through my hands at Bad Tolz. Men like Kuttner. The work is too much to expect anyone to
carry out without it having some effects on morale and character. They’re only flesh and blood, after all.’

It was odd how the same did not seem to apply to the victims of ‘the work’ that Voss described.

‘A new approach is needed to the work of evacuation and resettlement. A different solution to the Jewish problem. A better solution. And I’ve told Heydrich as much. Something is needed that takes into account the humanity of the men we ask to carry out these special actions.’

He sounded so reasonable I had to remind myself that he was talking about mass murder.

‘After Bad Tolz, when you next saw Kuttner again – which was when?’

‘At the luncheon where the incident we were talking about took place.’

‘When you saw him again, would you say that he’d changed?’

‘Oh yes. Very much. And the change was obvious. To me he looked a nervous wreck. Which is what he was, of course. But still highly articulate. And likeable. Yes, I still liked him. In spite of everything. It’s a great shame this has happened.’

After I finished with Brigadier Voss, Captain Kluckholn appeared in the Morning Room and explained that Major Thummel had to be back in Dresden that evening and, with their agreement, he had leapfrogged the list of witnesses ahead of Geschke, Bohme and Jacobi.

‘Is that all right with you, Gunther?’

‘Yes. But now that you’re here, Captain, I have a couple of quick questions I’d like to put to you.’

‘To me?’

‘To you, yes. Of course. And by the way thanks for the circus tickets.’

‘Don’t thank me. Thank the General.’

‘I will.’ I opened my cigarette case and offered him one.

Kluckholn shook his head. ‘Don’t smoke.’

‘Hermann, isn’t it?’ I lit my nail and whistled down the smoke.

He nodded.

‘Which adjutant are you? First, second, or third? I never can remember.’

‘Third.’

Kluckholn folded his hands at his back and waited politely. He was the tallest and most distinguished of Heydrich’s remaining three adjutants. He was also the leanest. His hair was dark and worn slightly longer than most other officers in the SD, which added an almost glamorous, film-starrish aspect to the way he looked. A uniform suited him and he knew it. There was a second-class Iron Cross ribbon worn from the second buttonhole on his tunic and the right angles on the flares of his riding breeches looked like they’d been put there by Pythagoras. The Spanish-cut top-shaft boots were polished like horse brass and had almost certainly been supplied by an expensive dressage company like König. I had half an idea that if Heydrich ever accused him of being improperly dressed, Kluckholn would have hanged himself with his own aiguillette.

‘Tell me, Hermann. The night before Captain Kuttner was found dead. What did you two argue about?’

‘I’m afraid you’re mistaken. We never argued.’

‘Oh, come on. I saw you in the front garden. While the Leader was on the radio telling us how wonderfully things were going for our armies in Russia, you two were at each other’s throats, like one of those stone sculptures on the front gate.’

‘I’m sorry to contradict you, Gunther. You may have seen what you assumed to be an argument but if you had been privy to our conversation you would have heard something quite different from an argument.’

‘So what was it?’

‘A gentlemanly discussion.’

‘Clenched fists. Gritted teeth. Face to face like a couple of boxers at a weigh-in. I think I recognize an argument when I see one.’

‘Are you calling me a liar, Captain Gunther?’

I let my lips tug at my cigarette for a long second before I answered him.

‘No, not at all. But all the same I’m still wondering if the gentlemanly conversation you had that was very different from an argument makes you a suspect in a murder. You hardly liked the man, after all.’

‘Who said so?’

‘You did. Yesterday afternoon when General Heydrich was biting everyone’s ears in the library. I couldn’t help but hear your handsome eulogy of Captain Kuttner. I would say I was eavesdropping except that I imagine your boss left the door open and meant me and some others in the house to hear exactly what was said. There’s not much he does that hasn’t got a damned good reason behind it. Incidentally, I’m not the only one who’s wondering if you were up to putting a bullet in adjutant number four. Some of the other officers aren’t exactly slow when it comes to casting aspersions on the characters of their fellow officers. Are they, Kurt?’

‘I’m afraid so. But it is disappointing, sir. I thought that among brother officers of the SS and the SD there would be a greater sense of honour and camaraderie. To be honest, there have been times in the last couple of days when this
room seemed more like the school principal’s office, the number of tales that have been told in here.’

‘So how about it, Hermann?’

Kluckholn shook his head. ‘Whatever you heard, Captain Gunther, I can assure you I did not murder Captain Kuttner. Perhaps my language was a little intemperate yesterday, in the library. But I had a better opinion of him than perhaps you heard me say.’

Kluckholn spoke as if his voice was being recorded on a gramophone disc.

I looked at Kahlo. ‘Kurt. Would you please close that door?’

Kahlo moved away from the piano and closed the door behind him quietly.

‘What are you hiding, Hermann?’

Kluckholn shook his head. ‘I can assure you, I’m not hiding anything.’

‘Sure you are, Hermann.’ I shrugged. ‘Everyone in this damned house is hiding something or other. Small secrets. Big secrets. Dirty secrets. And you’re no exception, Hermann.’

‘I would rather you did not call me Hermann in that familiar way. I prefer Kluckholn, or Captain Kluckholn. And your suggestion that I’m hiding something is not only nonsensical it is also insulting.’ Colouring with irritation and injured pride, Kluckholn moved toward the closed door. ‘And I am not going to remain here to endure your insinuations.’

‘Yes, you are, Hermann.’

I nodded at Kahlo, who quickly turned the key in the lock and then pocketed it.

Meanwhile Kluckholn looked as if I had just stood on his corn.

‘You really are a most vulgar, tiresome fellow, Gunther. Has anyone told you that?’

‘Many times. It must have something to do with all the vulgar murders I’ve investigated. Not to mention all the murders that I myself have been obliged to commit. Of course that hardly makes me unusual in this house. But like Captain Kuttner I found there was something about it I didn’t like. Which is the reason I’m here now, speaking to you instead of carrying on the good work out east with all the special action boys. By the way, how was it that you escaped that particular tour of duty, Hermann?’