‘But surely Party loyalty has to count for something, sir,’ said Bohme. ‘What about that?’
‘What about it? A promising young SS officer is dead. Yes, that’s what he was, gentlemen, in spite of your own reservations. He was murdered and by someone in this house, I shouldn’t wonder. Oh, we can pretend that it might have been some poor Czecho who killed him, but we all of us know that it would take the Scarlet Pimpernel to get past all these guards and to walk into my house and shoot Captain Kuttner. Besides, I flatter myself that if a Czecho did take the trouble to penetrate our security, he would prefer to shoot me instead of my own adjutant. No, gentlemen, this was an inside job, I’m convinced of it and Gunther’s the right man – my man – to find out who did it.’ He paused for a moment. ‘And as for Party loyalty, that’s my job, not yours, Colonel Bohme. I’ll say who is loyal and who isn’t.’
I’d heard enough, for the moment. I stood up and closed the door to the Morning Room.
‘Hardly a ringing endorsement,’ said Kahlo. ‘Was it, sir?’
‘From Heydrich?’ I shrugged. ‘Don’t knock it. That’s as good as it gets.’
I sat down at the piano and fingered a few notes, experimentally. ‘All the same, I get the feeling I’m being played. And played well.’
‘We’re all being played,’ said Kahlo. ‘You, me, even Heydrich. There’s only one man in Europe who has his mitts on the keyboard. And that’s the GROFAZ.’
The GROFAZ was a derogatory name for Hitler.
‘Maybe. All right. Who’s next on our list? I have a sudden desire to ruffle some more feathers.’
‘General Frank, sir.’
‘He’s the one with the new wife, right? The wife who’s a Czech.’
‘That’s right, sir. And believe me, she’s tip-top. A real sweet-heart. Twenty-eight years old, tall, blond, and clever.’
‘Frank must have some hidden qualities.’
‘Yes sir.’
‘Or better still some hidden vices. Let’s find out which it is.’
‘Did you know Captain Kuttner very well, General Frank?’
‘Not very well. But well enough. Ploetz, Pomme, and Kluckholn and Kuttner—’ Frank smiled. ‘It sounds like an old Berlin tailor’s shop. Well, they all sort of merge into one, really. That’s what you want from an adjutant, I suppose. Me, I wouldn’t know, I don’t have an adjutant myself. I seem to manage quite well without one, let alone four. But if I did have an adjutant I should want him to be as anonymous as those three are. They are efficient, of course. Heydrich can tolerate nothing less. And being efficient, they stay out of the limelight.
‘I knew Kuttner slightly before his Prague posting. When he was at the Ministry of the Interior. He helped me in some administrative way, for which I was grateful, so when he turned up here I tried to help him out. Consequently he shared a few confidences with me. Which is why I know what I’m talking about.
‘Kuttner was the latest addition to Heydrich’s stable of aides-de-camp. And that meant that he and Heydrich’s third adjutant, Kluckholn, were never likely to get on very well, since the first principle of doing the job well is, I imagine, to make your superior redundant. So Kluckholn resented Kuttner. And feared him, I shouldn’t wonder. Well, that’s understandable; Kuttner was a clever man. Much cleverer than Kluckholn. He was a brilliant lawyer before he went east in June. Kuttner, on the other hand, felt that Kluckholn tried to keep him in his place. Or even to put him down.’
For a moment I picture the two men arguing in the garden the previous evening. Was that what I had witnessed? Kluckholn trying to put Kuttner in his place? Kuttner resisting it? Or something more intimate perhaps.
‘Was Heydrich aware of this rivalry?’
‘Of course. There’s not much that Heydrich’s not aware of, I’ll say that for him. But he likes to encourage rivalry. Heydrich believes it persuades people to try harder. So it wouldn’t have bothered him in the least that these two were vying with each other for his favour. It’s a trick he’s learned from the Leader, no doubt.’
‘No doubt.’
General Karl Hermann Frank looked almost ten years older than his forty-three years. His face was lined and furrowed and there were bags under his eyes, as if he was another Nazi who didn’t sleep very well. He was a heavy smoker, with two of the fingers on the hand holding his cigarette looking like he’d dipped them in gravy, and teeth that resembled the ivory keys on an old piano. It was difficult to see what a beautiful 28-year-old woman saw in this thin, stiff-looking man. Power, perhaps? Hitler might have passed him over to succeed von Neurath but, as SS and Police Leader of Bohemia and Moravia, Frank was effectively the second most important man in the Protectorate. More interesting than that, perhaps, was why a beautiful Czech physician should have married a man who, by his own admission, hated Czechs so much. The hatred I’d heard him articulate about the Czechos the day before was still ringing in my ears. What, I wondered, did Mr and Mrs Frank talk about after dinner? The failure of the Czech banks? Czech-language sentences that didn’t use any vowels? UVOD? The Three Kings?
‘Sir, when you say there was no love lost between Captains Kluckholn and Kuttner, do you mean to say they hated each other?’
‘There was a certain amount of hatred, yes. That’s only natural. However, if you’re looking for a man who really hated Captain Kuttner – hated him enough to kill him, perhaps – then Obersturmbannführer Walter Jacobi is your man.’
‘He’s the SD Colonel who’s interested in magic and the occult, isn’t he?’
‘That’s right. And in particular, Ariosophy. Don’t ask me to explain it in any detail. I believe it is some occult nonsense that’s to do with being German. For me, reading the Leader’s book is enough. But Jacobi wanted more. He was forever badgering me to become more interested in Ariosophy until I told him to fuck off. I wasn’t the only one who thought his interest in this stuff to be laughable. Kuttner, whose father was a Protestant pastor and no stranger to religious nonsense himself, thought that Ariosophy was complete rubbish, and said so.’
‘To Colonel Jacobi’s face?’
‘Most certainly to his face. That’s what made it so very entertaining for the rest of us. It happened when they were both at the SS officer school in Prague. That was last Sunday, the 29th of September. The day after Heydrich arrived here in Prague. The school asked him to come to a lunch in his honour and, naturally, his adjutants accompanied him. Someone, not Kuttner, had asked Colonel Jacobi about the death’s head ring he was wearing – a gift from Himmler, apparently. One thing led to another and before very long Jacobi was talking balls about Wotan and sun worship and the masons. In the middle of this, Captain Kuttner burst out laughing and said he thought all of that German folk stuff was “complete poppycock”. His exact words. For a moment or two there was an embarrassed silence and then Voss – he’s the officer in charge at Beneschau and one of the guests here at the Lower Castle, and, I might add, an idiot – Voss tried to change the subject. But Kuttner wasn’t having any of it and said some other stuff and that’s when Jacobi said it.’
Frank frowned for a moment.
‘Said what?’
‘I’m trying to think of his exact words. Yes. He said something like “If it wasn’t for the fact that you are wearing an SS uniform, Captain Kuttner, I would cheerfully kill you now, and in front of all these people.”’
‘You’re quite sure about that, sir?’
‘Oh, yes. Quite sure. I’m sure Voss will confirm it. Come to think of it, he didn’t say “kill”, he said “shoot”.’