“I’m sorry, sir, but I can’t say what that is.”
“I respect that. I like a man who can keep his mouth shut. Pity there aren’t more like you, Gunther. I used to think you were Heydrich’s man. But I think I know different now. He was a master of case-based reasoning and mental reservation. Rather like a Jesuit. For him the end always justified the means. I don’t expect you ever had much choice but to work for him. But I have a different approach. I couldn’t ever trust a man I’d coerced to work for me.”
“I’ll remember you said that, General.”
“Please do. You know, your lecture at last year’s IKPK conference impressed me. As a matter of fact, there was something you said that I even wrote down. About how being a detective is a little like the traffic-control tower that stands in the center of Berlin’s Potsdamer Platz: not only do its lights have to control traffic from five different directions, it also tells the time and, in bad weather, provides much needed shelter for a traffic policeman. That’s a pretty good analogy for what I do in this office, too.”
“Have you seen Potsdamer Platz lately? There’s hardly any traffic at all. No one has petrol to waste driving around Berlin.”
No one except Goebbels, it seemed.
“You impress me, Gunther. As a matter of fact, you also made an impression on Captain Meyer-Schwertenbach. You remember? The Swiss fellow you met at the conference? He said he thought you were a man who could be trusted. And so do I. It occurs to me now that you can do me a small service when you’re in Zagreb.”
“I was afraid of that.”
“Oh, it’s nothing much. And you don’t have to do this if you don’t want to. You can call it a favor, if you like. I just need a man to deliver something — someone I can rely on. Believe me, that’s in rather short supply around here, what with Kaltenbrunner’s spies everywhere. You wouldn’t believe how paranoid that man is. But before I tell you what I want you to do, let me first tell you about the situation in Zagreb, which is what you came here to ask about. The situation is bloody awful, and likely to get even worse if — as seems likely — the fucking Italians capitulate this side of Christmas. As usual it’ll be us who has to go and tidy up after them. Just like in Greece. But I think you’ll be all right to go there for the present. With regard to going anywhere else, like Banja Luka, it’s really impossible to say from here how safe it will be. You could seek advice from the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, of course — Haj Amin al-Husseini. He’s living just up the road from here in a very nice house on Goethestrasse that’s costing von Ribbentrop seventy-five thousand reichsmarks a month.”
“What’s he got to do with Yugoslavia?”
“There are lots of Muslims in Yugoslavia. Himmler’s made Haj Amin a general in the SS, so that he can organize the establishment of a Bosnian Islamic Waffen-SS division. There’s a whole bunch of them undergoing training right now in France and Brandenburg. And Goebbels has had him give several radio broadcasts in Arab countries calling on Muslims to kill Jews.”
“From Radio House? On Masurenallee?”
“No, he’s got his own transmitter in the house. It all sounds insane, I know.”
“I sometimes wonder just how insane things are going to get before it all ends.”
“More insane than I hope you can know. But as far as Yugoslavia is concerned, you’d probably do better to get an appraisal of the situation in the country at large from my man on the ground down there, a fellow named Koob. Sturmbannführer Emil Koob. He’s more of a Bulgarian expert, really, but good on the Balkans in general. I want you to take some American dollars to him, that’s all. We’re in the process of setting up a wireless communication system in Zagreb: called I-Netz, it can communicate with the Wannsee Institute. In the event of the Balkans being overrun by the Allies, we want some people who will be able to function behind enemy lines. I’ll send Koob a signal to expect you. You’ll find him at the Esplanade Hotel. It’s the only decent place to stay in Zagreb. Now, that’s some foreign intelligence which is really worth having. Think you can handle that?”
“No problem. And thanks for the tip about the hotel.”
“Look, come and speak to me when you’re back in Berlin. I’d like an appraisal of the latest situation in Croatia myself. Will you do that?”
“Certainly, sir.”
Before I left, Schellenberg gave me a briefcase in which was a small parcel he informed me was full of money. And then I was on my way again.
At the Bendlerblock I went to find Eugen Dorfmüller, a judge who, like me, was one of the temporaries recruited to the War Crimes Bureau. Dorfmüller had considerable experience investigating war crimes in Yugoslavia. He was about the same age as me and perhaps just as cynical.
“It’s a simple missing persons inquiry,” I told him. “With any luck, I can be there and back in no time at all. I just want some advice on how far I’m sticking my neck out by going there. I don’t like sticking it out unless I have to. On account of the fact that my head’s attached to it. Which is important when I nod.”
“Advice? My advice is this. If you go to Croatia, try and keep away from the Ustaše. Nasty lot. Cruel.”
“I’m looking for a priest, so hopefully I won’t need to have too much contact with them.”
“A priest, eh? You’ll find plenty of those in Croatia. It’s a very Catholic country.” He shook his head. “I don’t know much about Banja Luka. But it’s mostly SS who are down there now. A volunteer Waffen-SS division called the Prinz Eugen commanded by a highly decorated Romanian-German general called Artur Phleps. He’s a bit of a bastard, quite frankly, even by the standards of the SS. You’d do well to stay away from them, too. But I don’t have to tell you about that, of course. You were in Smolensk, weren’t you? The Katyn Forest massacre, wasn’t it? Christ, investigating a Russian mass murder down there — well, that was like the donkey calling the ass ‘big ears.’”
“It was kind of ridiculous.”
“Actually, it’s good you’re going down there to Croatia,” he said. “I want you to confirm a decision the bureau made at the beginning of the year, which is to stop investigating war crimes in Yugoslavia.”
“Why did we stop?”
“Because there were so many it hardly seemed to matter. By the way, here’s an interesting thing I discovered only just the other day. All the bureau’s files on war crimes in Yugoslavia have gone missing. All the depositions I took, all my case notes, all my observations, everything. Hundreds of pages of documents, all gone. It’s like I was never there. Be careful. It’s not just files that can go missing in Yugoslavia, Bernie. It’s men, too. Especially men like you. My advice to you when you’re down there is this: to say nothing at all about the fact that you are currently on attachment to the War Crimes Bureau. Do this job for the Ministry of Truth — whatever it is — and get yourself back here as quickly as possible and then forget you even heard the name of Croatia.”
My last port of call was the ministry, to return Joey’s magnificent car and to make a bid to hang on to it for the evening. I liked having a car again. Having a car makes it so easy to get around. You just turn the engine over and then aim the sights at the end of the bonnet where you want to go.
At the Ministry of Truth a secretary told me that Joey had gone to his city mansion, at the corner of Hermann-Göring-Strasse. It was a short drive away from Wilhelmplatz and anyone from Berlin could have found the place with his eyes closed: formerly the palace of the marshals of the Prussian royal court, the old building had been demolished and replaced with an expensive new house designed by Albert Speer. I was thinking of having Speer around myself to see what he could do with my place on Fasanenstrasse. Goebbels had the whole of the Tiergarten round his town house and quite a bit of it on the walls; I’ve never seen so much oak paneling. A butler with a face like a melted elephant led me to a cozy little room with a tapestry as big as a battlefield and an uninterrupted view of prelapsarian Berlin; just grass and above the trees in the distance, the golden lady on top of the Victory Column. A lot of people said she was the only girl in Berlin who Goebbels hadn’t been able to get his leg over.