Free The Lady from Zagreb by Philip Kerr Page B

the sound of the PA system already announcing a lost child to the unconcerned ears of those who were present at the villa: Frenchmen, Italians, Danes, Croatians, Romanians, Swedes, and Swiss. What was happening on the beach seemed a very long way from what I was there to talk about.
    “Feeling nervous?” Arthur Nebe smiled and clapped me on the shoulder.
    “Yes. I was just wishing I was over there, on that beach talking to some pretty girl.”
    “Did you get anywhere with that schoolteacher we saw at the Swedish Pavilion? What was her name?”
    “Kirsten? Yes. A little. I know where she works. And more importantly, where she lives. In Krumme Strasse. I even know that she goes swimming two nights a week at the local bathhouse.”
    “As always you make romance sound like a murder inquiry.” Nebe shook his head and smiled. “If you’ll permit me. You have a piece of toilet paper stuck to your chin.” He picked it off my face and let it flutter to the ground.
    “I wondered why people were looking at me so strangely on the S-Bahn. They were thinking, ‘Nobody else in this city seems to have any toilet paper, how come he does?’”
    “You need a cognac,” said Nebe, and took me back into the villa, where he found a drink for us both. “We both do. It’s a little early, I know, even for me. But the truth is I’m feeling a little nervous myself. I’ll be glad when this is over and I get back to some real work.”
    I wondered what that would amount to for a man like Arthur Nebe.
    “Strange, isn’t it?” he said. “After all we went through in Minsk. Crazy Ivans all over the place trying to kill you and it’s something like this that really squeezes your guts.”
    I glanced out the window where Reichsführer Himmler was now speaking to State Secretary Gutterer. Walter Schellenberg was talking to Kaltenbrunner and Gestapo Müller.
    “That’s hardly a surprise when you consider the guest list.”
    I took a large sip of the brandy.
    “Relax,” insisted Nebe. “If your speech goes down like shit we’ll just blame the whole thing on Leo Gutterer. It’s about time someone took that awful man down a peg.”
    “I thought you wanted me to fuck up, Arthur.”
    “Whatever gave you that idea?”
    “You did.”
    “I was joking, of course. Look, all I really want is never to be IKPK president again. Next year this is all going to be Kaltenbrunner’s problem. Not mine and not yours. You’ll be safely out of the way in the War Crimes Bureau and I’ll just be safely out of the way, I hope. Switzerland, if they’ll have me. Or Spain. I always wanted to go to Spain. Admiral Canaris loves it there. And by the way, just in case you were wondering, I’m still joking.”
    “A sense of humor. That’s nice. I think we need that just to get up in the morning.”
    Nebe threw back his cognac and then pulled a face. “Anyway, you’ll be fine. I’ve every confidence that you’re going to be the most interesting speaker of the day.”
    I nodded and glanced around. “It’s a beautiful house.”
    “Designed by Hitler’s favorite architect. Paul Baumgarten.”
    “I thought that was Speer.”
    “So did Speer, I think. But it seems he was wrong about that, too.”
    “Who owns it now?”
    “We do. The SS does. Although God knows why. We’ve got several houses around here. The Havel Institute. The Horticultural School.”
    “Since when were the SS interested in horticulture?”
    “I think it’s a home, for Jews,” said Nebe. “The forced laborers who work on the gardens round here.”
    “That sounds almost benign. And the Havel Institute?”
    “A radio HQ that directs spy and sabotage operations against the Soviet Union.” Nebe shrugged. “There are probably more houses that even I don’t know about. Frankly, the state has so many houses coming into public ownership that the Ministry of the Interior could open its own sales and lettings agency. Maybe I’ll do that instead of being a policeman.”
    “So