‘Doctor Ploetz, you say?’
‘Yes.’ Lüdtke leaned back in his chair and folded his hands behind his head as if he was about to surrender. ‘I hear Prague’s very nice at this time of year. I’ve often fancied going there with the wife. She collects glass, you know. And there’s a lot of glass in Prague.’
‘That should keep the Nazis happy. They like smashing glass. Here, maybe you should go instead of me.’
‘Oh no.’ Lüdtke smiled. ‘I wouldn’t know what to say to a man as important as the Reichsprotector of Bohemia. My God, I should be surprised if he even knew I existed.’
‘Any man who can persuade Berlin detectives to wear women’s clothes in order to catch a murderer is certain to have been noticed upstairs.’
‘It’s kind of you to say so, Bernie. But of course I had lots of help. Remember Georg Heuser?’
‘Yes.’
‘Georg Heuser was one of my best detectives on the S-Bahn murder case. Good man, is Georg. Of course, he lacks your subtlety and experience, but he’s a promising young policeman. And of more use here than where he is now.’
‘And where is that?’
‘In a Special Action Group somewhere in the Ukraine.’
I didn’t reply. Suddenly going to Prague didn’t seem so bad after all. Not when they were still sending ‘good’ men to Special Action Groups in the Ukraine. Just thinking about Georg Heuser and what he was probably going through in Minsk, or Pinsk, or Dnipropetrovsk, or any one of a hundred Jew towns where innocent people were being murdered in their thousands, made me feel that I was much better off than I realized. And all talk of an S-Bahn murderer seemed laughable when one of our own investigating detectives now seemed likely to chalk up more victims in twenty-four hours than Paul Ogorzow had managed in one murderous year.
Lüdtke played with the rocker blotter on his desk for a moment as if trying to measure something.
‘You hear stories,’ he said, finally. ‘About what is happening out east. In Ukraine and Latvia, for example. The Police Battalions. Special Action Groups and what have you. You were there, Bernie. What is the truth about what’s happening? Is it true what they’re saying? That people are being murdered? Men, women and children. Because they’re Jews?’
I nodded.
‘My God,’ he said.
‘I think you once said that whenever I came in here it was like rain coming in at the eaves. Now you know why. Since I came home there hasn’t been a day when I didn’t feel ashamed. And the nights are worse.’
‘My God.’
‘That’s the third time you’ve mentioned God, Friedrich-Wilhelm. And I’ve been thinking that there must be a God because after all, the Leader is always mentioning Him and it’s inconceivable he could be wrong about that. But what we’ve done to the Jews, and what we’re still doing to the Jews, and, I think, what we seem intent on doing to the Jews for a good while longer, well, He’s not going to forgive that in a hurry. Perhaps not ever. In fact, I’ve a very terrible feeling that whatever we do to them He’s going to do to us. Only it’ll be worse. Much worse. It’ll be much worse because He’s going to get the fucking Russians to do it.’
‘I hear Prague is very nice at this time of year. I’ve often wanted to go there.’ Arianne shook her head. ‘I really can’t imagine why I haven’t been already. After all, Prague is only a couple of hours on the train from Dresden. And my Mama’s a German-speaking Czech from Teplitz. Did I tell you that? She moved to Dresden when she met my Papa. Not that she ever really thought of herself as a Czech. Nobody does in Teplitz. At least that’s what my Mama says.’ She paused. ‘Maybe I could go and see my brother. His unit is stationed near Prague.’
