The Eye of the Abyss

Author:Marshall Browne
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
Published: 2011-04-07T16:00:00+00:00

21

ANOTHER NIGHT TO MAKE cold bones. Precisely at 6.30 pm Schmidt arrived at the nominated corner. Senior Detective Dressler wasn’t there, nor did a quick scan of the platz immediately discover him.

‘Herr Schmidt!’

Turning quickly, the auditor saw the huge figure standing in a dark embrasure of the cathedral. He crossed the pavement, and joined the detective in his shadowy hide. They shook hands.

‘Unwise to go to a café,’ the policeman said. He coughed and struggled for breath. ‘Lilli … was tried at a closed court yesterday, found guilty under the Nuremberg Laws, and committed to Ravensbruck concentration camp for two years. She has been taken there already.’ The heavy voice trembled in the dark. Instantly Schmidt felt a fresh heart-sickness. Two years! He stared across the platz to a string of brilliantly lit cafés. He’d nothing to offer but sympathetic silence. ‘My Gestapo contact says she will probably be assigned to secretarial work … I have my doubts about that, and, about the duration of the sentence … Our justice system is now corrupted.’ His strained breathing punctuated the gaps in his speech.

The auditor felt the cold rising up his legs, and the suppressed power of the father’s feelings. He said, ‘Can an appeal be made? A fine negotiated?’

‘No.’

A tramcar crossed the platz, scattering blue sparks as its wheels clashed through points. Schmidt visualised the Field-Marshal’s aides, their comparable clatter. It was bound for his own suburb. Better for him if he were on it?

‘What do you propose to do, Herr Dressler?’

The policeman stared implacably across the stone-cobbled void at the cafés as though getting their range. ‘I’m in contact with a Jew. An activist who’s put in place arrangements … With influential Nazis. God knows how! For substantial sums some Jews are released and given passports. It might be done for Lilli. The problem is the price. Two hundred thousand.’

Schmidt was amazed at the amount. He stared at Dressler’s massive profile.

The detective said, ‘I can’t get that kind of money.’

Schmidt considered the facts. Hands deep in their overcoat pockets, they were both stamping their feet, almost in slow motion. The giant detective towered over him. Schmidt thought: What an odd pair we must look. He trusted no-one was looking.

They were silent, stunned by the acuteness of the problem.

In that other world across the platz, beautifully-gowned women tossed perfect falls of hair, mimed exuberant dialogue, performed with body language as exaggerated as that of the quick-stepping waiters: a white shoulder lifted coquettishly here, a well-turned arm pointed imperiously there. Uniformed escorts danced attendance, hemmed them in with attentions. A blue haze of cigarette smoke seemed to romanticise the figures quarantined behind the distant thick glass.

Schmidt stared at the scene, the antithesis of his own deadly rendezvous. Suddenly he was thinking along concrete lines. ‘Are you sure this Jew is reliable?’

‘More reliable than most men you meet today.’

Schmidt continued his thinking, which was becoming complicated.

The detective said, ‘Nothing’s assured. But well-known Jews have escaped this way. I’ve hopes that it might be easier for … a secretary, an unknown person, and cost less.

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