The Lady from Zagreb (34 page)

L
ife moves at the speed of light when there’s gun smoke still hanging in the air over a dead body. In just a few seconds a gun changes time forever and everything else that follows. Why had I left it there? It was all my fault. And I could see no way on earth of making this better now.

“Good,” she said. “And you needn’t worry. He’s certainly not my father.”

“You don’t understand,” I said. “I’m sorry. Look, I know I told you that your father was dead, but he’s not. Or at least he wasn’t. This is Father Ladislaus. This is the man I gave your letter to, in Jasenovac.”

“It’s
you
who doesn’t understand,” she said. “Oh, I don’t doubt that he’s who you say he is. That this man—Antun Djurkovic—was Father Ladislaus, better known now as Colonel Dragan. But I can assure you he was not my father. I know that because I also know that this is the man who killed my father. Not to mention God knows how many others in Yugoslavia since.”

“Thousands,” I muttered, still uncomprehending.

“So you have met him,” she said.

“Yes. When I was in Croatia I went to a concentration camp where he and another priest were killing Serbs for the pleasure of it. I told you he was dead because I thought it best you didn’t need to know what a monster he was. No one should have to know something like that.”

“That was kind of you. Kinder to me than I’ve been to you, perhaps. Fetch me a drink, will you, Gunther? A brandy, I think. I owe the truth to you, at least.”

I poured us both a drink and then sat down on the sofa and waited patiently for the truth to come out of her. She swallowed the brandy in one gulp, wiped a tear from her eye, and then lit another cigarette. I noticed a tiny fleck of blood on the hem of her dress.

“Believe me, Gunther, I’ve wanted to kill this man for a long, long time. Dreamed of killing him. Many times and in many different ways. But now that he’s dead, I’m surprised to find that I’m not nearly as happy about it as I’d imagined I would be. Why is that, do you think?”

“It’s a hell of a thing killing a man,” I said. “It always seems like the bullets go through two people: the person who gets shot and the person who does the shooting. I know what you’re feeling. But if you’re in any doubt about what you did, angel, then let me assure you that this person badly needed to be shot, like a rabid dog or a crazy pig. You can’t hear them yet but there are ten thousand bells ringing in heaven for the death of this man and lamentations only in the darkest corner of hell that one of theirs got what he richly deserved.”

“I’m just sorry it was so quick. I always wanted him to suffer more for what he did. I mean, I think he was dead after the first shot, but I kept on firing. I’m not sure how.”

“That’s an automatic pistol for you. It seems to have a mind of its own, and no mistake. Sometimes God or the devil just takes over a trigger and there’s nothing you can do about it. The number of times I wanted to fire just the one shot and ended up firing two or three. It’s the difference between life and death.”

I sipped the brandy and let her walk up to the explanation in her own way.

“Have you got a handkerchief?” she asked.

I handed her mine. She blew her nose and, laughing nervously, apologized for the loud noise it made. “Sorry.”

“Forget about it. And take your time, angel.”

“He wasn’t my father.”

“I understand that. Although I’m not sure how.”

“Last night, in Munich, you asked me if I’d had anything to do with the death of the lady in the lake and I told you everything about her except for one thing. Her name. You remember when we sat in this room and I told you my real name was Dragica Djurkovic? Well, it’s not, it’s Sofia Brankovic. Dragica Djurkovic is the lady who was in the lake. You understand? Everything I told you about how she came to be there is true. I mean about it being an accident. It was. Dragica and I were friends. Good friends, for a while. But the fact is that Dragica Djurkovic was this man’s daughter.”

“I see.”

“No, you don’t. Not yet. In 1930 my real father, Vladimir Brankovic, was assassinated by the man you see lying on the floor—Antun Dragan Djurkovic. My father was murdered because he was a prominent Serb politician. Almost no one but my mother knew who’d done this and, fearing for our lives, my mother and I fled Croatia to Switzerland, where I became Dalia Dresner. We started a new life and tried not to pay too much attention to what was happening back in Yugoslavia. Which was easy enough in Zurich. Swiss neutrality isn’t just political, it’s temperamental, too. After a while, news reached us that Djurkovic had repented what he’d done and become a Franciscan monk in Banja Luka, but since he’d been an army chaplain during the Great War, my mother said that his repentance wouldn’t last longer than a short summer and that the leopard couldn’t change his spots. She was right, of course.

“About eight years later I was at a party given by my future husband in Zurich, and it was there I met Djurkovic’s real daughter, Dragica. We’d been friends at school in Zagreb, but for a while we didn’t even recognize each other. She was living under the name Stepinac, and it turned out that she’d come to live in Geneva with her grandmother to get away from her father, whom she hated because he used to beat her mother and had tried to rape her. With my own acting career taking off, I made the decision that I would befriend her again and try to help her. And we had a great deal in common; we liked the same books, the same music, the same movies, we shared the same taste in clothes—we even looked a bit like each other. Then her grandmother died and Dragica started drinking heavily. Several times I paid for her to go to a clinic and dry out. But when news of her father’s activities in the Ustaše started to reach Switzerland, her drinking got worse. I could hardly blame her for that. He’d left his monastery and was rumored to be part of a murder squad that was now killing thousands of Jews and Serbs. Which is how our argument came about. Dragica had arranged to travel back to Yugoslavia, and the night before she was to leave she came to the house in Küsnacht and explained that she was going back to try to persuade him to change his ways. I’m not sure how she thought she was going to do this, but anyway we argued about it and because she was drunk, she tried to hit me, but I hit her instead and she fell and hit her head and was killed. And Stefan and I hid her body in the lake.

“Time passed and eventually the body was found, of course. Stefan and I held our breath for a while and waited but it was soon clear that no one was ever going to find out who she was. Everyone in Zurich thought Dragica had gone back to Yugoslavia, and because of the war, it was impossible to prove that she hadn’t. No one had even supposed she was missing. Meanwhile we started to hear some more about Colonel Dragan’s atrocities in Croatia and, being good Yugoslavs, we—Stefan and I—we decided to try to do something about it. Stefan is a Serb and quite a patriot, you know, and has long wanted to do something to help his country. But with me, it was always just revenge. I’m a Serb, too, and vengeance runs deep with us.

“The plan was that I would take advantage of my new friendship with Goebbels, who was clearly obsessed with me. It seemed there was nothing he wouldn’t do for his latest starlet. Hardly anyone in Berlin knew my real name was Sofia Brankovic. All they seemed to care about was that I wasn’t Jewish. Goebbels took my word for it and organized my Lesser Aryan certificate himself. And then I asked him if he could help me find my father. Which is where you come in. I’m sorry about that. I’m not sorry that I met you, Bernie, but that I lied to you. The plan was that I would pretend to be Dragica. We were the same age. Both from Zagreb. And Dragica was just as pretty as me—I mean she could easily have been a film star herself. After you had found the colonel, we would get Goebbels to organize an invitation from the foreign office for him to come to Berlin in the hope that he might be reconciled to his long-lost daughter, Dragica. The letter encouraged him to do just that. And the plan was that when he did turn up in Berlin, we’d meet somewhere nice and private—the kind of place where you might organize a private reunion—and while we were talking there, Stefan would kill him.

“But then you came back from Croatia and told us that Colonel Dragan had been killed. The detail you provided seemed to be quite convincing. There’s not much news coming out of Yugoslavia right now to contradict what you said. Either way it was clear that Dragan wasn’t going to be arriving in Berlin for some kind of family reunion anytime soon. I was relieved, frankly. If Dragica’s death taught me one thing, it was that I can’t stand to have that kind of thing on my conscience. And now this.

“When the doorbell rang I thought it was you, of course. But it was him. For a minute he just stood there and then he started crying. I let him embrace me, which was loathsome. It seems he really did think I might be Dragica. After all, she’d been just a child when last he’d seen her so he really wasn’t to know I wasn’t her. But there was no time to give it very much thought. I knew that if I didn’t kill him right away, then I’d never do it. Not just that, but I might never get a better chance to do it. I remembered you’d left your gun on the back of the chair in my bedroom. So I asked him to wait down here in the drawing room and then went upstairs to fetch it. And the minute I came back into the drawing room, I saw that picture and started shooting. Then you turned up.”

“So I see. You did a good job. From the look of the body, every one of the bullets in the magazine must have hit him. If I had a goldfish, I’d give it to you, little girl.”

I felt a tremendous sense of relief that I’d not been part of something as awful as a daughter killing her own father. I almost felt decent again. And it was now clear to me where the true path to my own future lay. Perhaps I could do something noble for a change.

“Would you have stopped me?” she asked.

“Probably not. He had it coming with a trumpet fanfare and a red carpet.”

“Oh, dear,” she sighed. “They chop people’s heads off in Germany, don’t they? For murder?”

I didn’t answer. For a brief second I remembered Gormann the strangler and the awful moment when the men with black top hats had slid him, kicking and screaming, under the blade of the falling ax. If I never did anything else with my life, I was going to prevent that from happening to Dalia. Even if that meant putting my own neck under the blade. What else was a Teutonic knight supposed to do, anyway? If I’d had a sword I’d have knelt and given her an oath of loyalty.

“Will they chop off my little head for it, do you think? Like that poor girl in February? Sophie Scholl, wasn’t it? I can’t imagine the Pog is going to be very pleased. Or Hitler. Or von Ribbentrop. Or Goebbels, for that matter. They’re going to put me to death for this, aren’t they?”

“Nothing is going to happen to your little head, do you hear? I’m not going to let anything like that happen. Trust me, angel. You’re going to be fine. But if you’re to keep your head on your shoulders you’re going to have to make sure you don’t lose it, first. That means you’re going to have to do exactly what I tell you. Without argument.”

She smiled. “My Teutonic knight to the rescue.” She shook her head. “Help, Defend, Heal. But I think he’s a little beyond healing, don’t you think?”

“Yes, he is.”

Then she began to cry. I sat beside her on the piano stool and put my arm around her.

“But I can still help and defend you, can’t I?”

“I’m scared,” she said.

“No need to be. Everything is going to be fine. I promise.”

“Even you can’t help me now, Bernie Gunther.”

“Yes, I can, if you’ll listen. When Goebbels told me that Dragan was in Berlin, we agreed that I should take you to a safe house. Somewhere that only he knew about, and that he would call me there, when things were safe—when we’d had time to get Dragan out of the way. That’s why I came here. To tell you. That’s where I’m going to go when we’ve finished our conversation.”

“Am I coming with you?”

“No, angel. You can’t come with me this time. What I want you to do is get in that lovely big Mercedes and drive all the way home to Switzerland. Right now. You know the road. You know how long it will take. Maybe ten or twelve hours. Only this time you’re not going to stop in Munich. You’re going to keep going until you’re safely across the border. And you’re never coming back. Never, do you hear? Not while the Nazis are still in power. You’re going to go to Zurich Polytechnic and you’re going to study mathematics, just like you’d planned. Don’t worry about the cops in Zurich. I seriously doubt they’ll reopen the lady in the lake case. And even if they do, they couldn’t find their hands in their coat pockets.”

“What about you?”

“I’m staying here, in Berlin, like I said.”

“Why don’t you come with me?”

“Because someone has to stay here in Berlin and lie to our diminutive minister of Truth. I have to call him up from his cottage and say you’re there. If I don’t, he’s liable to send someone around here. And we don’t want that. Not until tomorrow, anyway.”

“Suppose he wants to speak to me? On the telephone?”

“I’ll tell him you’re asleep. Don’t worry, since I started working for him I’m getting to be quite an accomplished liar. Besides, the Swiss aren’t about to let me back in your country. Not after the way I behaved last time.”

“No, Bernie, no.”

“You’ve got to listen to me, Dalia. Once I’ve spoken to Goebbels, I figure I can stall him until tomorrow morning. By which time, you’ll be safely home. As soon as you’re there in Küsnacht, I want you to call this number.” I handed her the business card that Goebbels had given me with the cottage’s number written on the back. “Ring the number just twice and then hang up. That way I’ll know you’re safe.” I grinned. “After that I can relax.”

“What about us?”

“Us? Look, angel, I thought I told you before. I’m a married man. Or had you forgotten? It’s time I went back to my beloved wife. She’ll be wondering where I am.”

I could see she didn’t believe that; I was having a hard job believing it myself.

“Bernie, they’ll send you to a concentration camp. Or worse.”