Entering Heydrich’s study in the Lower Castle at Jungfern-Breschan I had the distinct feeling that I was in a smaller, more intimate version of the Leader’s own study at the Reich Chancellery, and this would have been typical of Heydrich. Not that there was very much that was small or intimate about that room. The ceiling was about four metres high and there were marble relief columns on the walls, a fireplace as big as a Mercedes, and enough green carpet on the floor for a decent game of golf. The refectory-style desk had more glass protecting its smooth oak surface than a good-sized shop window. On this were a marble-urn lamp, a couple of telephones, a leather blotter, an ink-stand, and a brass model of a plane – quite possibly the same Siebel Fh 104 he used to fly himself to and from Berlin. In the arched window was a bronze bust of the Leader, and behind a throne-sized desk chair was a green silk wall-hanging with a gold German eagle holding onto a laurel wreath enclosing a swastika, as if it was something worth stealing.
Heydrich put down his fountain pen and leaned back in the chair.
‘That girl back at your hotel,’ he said. ‘Arianne Tauber. Have you called her to tell her you won’t be coming to see her tonight?’
‘Not yet, sir.’
‘Then don’t. Have Klein drive you into Prague. I think I will be safe enough tonight, don’t you?’
‘If you say so sir.’
‘Oh no. In future it’s for you to say so. That was rather the point of your appointment. But I’m sure you’ll get the hang of it. Meet me at Pecek Palace tomorrow morning at ten o’ clock. I have a meeting there to coordinate the arrest of this Moravek fellow.’
‘Very well, sir. And thank you.’
I may even have clicked my heels and bowed my head. Working for Heydrich was like being friendly with a vicious tom cat while you were looking around for the nearest mouse hole.
Arianne was pleased to see me, of course, although not as pleased as I was to see her, in our bed, alone, naked and willing to use her body to help divert my thoughts from Heydrich, Jungfern-Breschan, the Three Kings and Pecek Palace. I told her nothing of my worries. Where Heydrich was concerned, it was best to know very little, as I was beginning to discover myself. What did I tell her as, exhausted by our love-making, we lay intertwined like two primitive figures carved from the same piece of antler-horn? Only that my duties kept me out of Prague, in Jungfern-Breschan, otherwise I should certainly have visited her at the Imperial Hotel before now.
‘That’s all right,’ she said. ‘Really, I’m quite happy here on my own. You’ve no idea how nice it is just to sit and read a book, or to walk around the city by myself.’
‘I do,’ I muttered. ‘I can imagine, anyway.’
‘I left a message for my brother. And there are plenty of other Germans in Prague I can talk to. As a matter of fact, this hotel is full of Germans. There’s a very beautiful girl in a suite on the same floor as us who’s having an affair with some SS general. And she’s a Jew. Doesn’t that sound romantic?’
‘Romantic? It sounds dangerous.’
Arianne shrugged that off. ‘Her name is Betty Kipsdorf and she’s utterly sweet.’
‘What’s his name?’
‘The general? Konrad something. He’s more than twice her age but she says you really wouldn’t know it.’ She laughed. ‘On account of the fact that he used to be a gymnastics teacher.’
I said I didn’t know who that could be. And I didn’t. I wasn’t exactly on first-name terms with any SS generals, even the ones I knew.
‘He’s very vigorous, apparently. For a general. Me, I always say that if you want a job done and done properly it’s a captain you want. Not some effete flamingo with clockwork heels.’
Flamingos were what the ranks called officers of the General Staff, a reference to the red stripes on their trouser legs.
‘What do you know about flamingos?’
‘You’d be surprised who we get through the doors of the Jockey Bar.’
‘No. But I’m still surprised that you’d prefer a captain to one of them.’
‘And perhaps a little suspicious.’
‘That’s probably no fault of yours.’
‘We’d get on like a house on fire if you weren’t a cop, don’t you think so, Parsifal?’
‘These are the times we live in, I’m afraid. All sorts of things make me suspicious, angel. Two aces in a row. Double-sixes. A sure thing for the state lottery. A kind word or a compliment. Venus rising from the sea. I’m the kind of Fritz who’s apt to look for a maker’s mark on the scallop shell.’
‘I might get insulted if I knew what any of that was about. After all, there’s a little part of you that’s still in me.’
‘Now it’s my turn to get insulted.’
‘Don’t be, Gunther. I enjoyed it, a lot. I think that maybe you underestimate yourself.’
‘Perhaps. I might even call it an occupational hazard except that, so far, it’s helped to keep me alive.’
‘Is staying alive so very important to you?’
‘No. Then again I’ve seen the alternatives, and at close quarters. In Russia. Or twenty years ago, back in the trenches.’
