‘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?’
