Chapter I:
I hate missing foreigners. There ain't nothing worse than that. And it don't matter if the son of a bitch is from a decent race or a subhuman. Missing foreigner is a missing foreigner and they make certain people nervous. The wrong kind of people. That's how this bloody case began. I got the call on an almost pleasant Saturday morning. Some pert miss from Potsdam trying too hard to sound like a Berliner chirped into the receiver, "Hold for the Reichsführer-SS, Hauptsturmführer." Now, no one called me an "SS-Captain" since the War, so for a horrifying second I thought it was That Reichsführer. Then I remembered that crazed chicken farmer was long dead and relaxed. It took a minute or three for the most recent son of a bitch to call himself that title to come on the line and greet me with his usual fingernails on the chalkboard voice, "Hansi, d'you still have a car?" It was a reasonable question. Ever since the most recent Awakening, there were some requisitions for redistribution and an old timer like me could have fallen afoul of the revolutionary zeal of our younger, uh, colleagues.
"Still have a car, Reichsführer."
"Ah, splendid, come up and see me at the Wannsee, would ya?"
He then hung up without waiting for my response. Not that I could have turned down the third most powerful man in the Empire. Well, third by my count. Some pegged him as high as second and others as low as tenth. Regardless, I shaved and then realized that since they addressed me as an SS-Captain and not as Inspector and I was going to see the Reichsführer they might expect me to show up in my summer SS whites rather than plainclothes. Luckily I still fit into them, even though the last time I wore it was for The Eternal Führer's 70th Birthday Ceremony. The drive to Wannsee was uneventful. No bodies hung from lampposts and the worst thing I saw was some haggard old Brownshirt with cabbage on his collar tabs wearing a cap with donkey ears on a corner with a sign accusing him of stealing from the true workers of the German race. A pair of no-necks in Hitler Youth gear were guarding him. Not that he would have gone anywhere. Probably had a wife and a brood of kids. If he wasn't punished, they would have been. So he took the abuse. We all did.
Wannsee might have been nice once. Located in the good part of Berlin, I bet it was splendid in its heyday. But I could never get into it before the War, and then spent the War mostly in Vienna, so I only got familiar with the place after the War, when it already had an aging feel to it. Now, twenty years after the war, it looked a bit run down. Only reason our current Reichsführer held residence there was because Heydrich held residence there right after the War, and what Heydrich had, Daluege wanted. They only made me wait in the lobby for thirty minutes before letting me inside the inner office of the newest great man of SS. He did not age well. Not that I particularly did as well, but at least I could walk into a bar in East Berlin and walk out with a snapper without showing my badge to scare their panties off. Daluege, not so much. Come to think of it, his secretary did look a little too nice for a place like this. Must be nice being the boss. Maybe one day I'll find out what it feels like.
"You're from Riga, ain't you, Hansi?"
I acknowledged that which he surely must have known from the file placed on his desk. "Born there, Reichsführer, in the Bad Old Days. Got out and returned to the Reich like a decent German in the '30s."
"Uh-huh. Well, we got a missing persons out there - a Frenchman - and I don't trust the local assholes. Go on out there, with bushy tailed assistant we dug up for you, and find the frog quick as you can. He wasn't some volunteer-worker you see, he was an aristocrat and somebody's cousin over at the French State government."
I ain't been in Riga since the War. Hell, I haven't been East of Berlin since the War. And I ain't never done a missing persons cases in my whole life, been a burglary dick since they took the harness off me. Well, scratch that. Once, right after the War, when I was still in Vienna I had to find a pair of missing Norwegian sailors who were late coming back to their ship. I found them passed out drunk a whore house and brought them home to mama. Doubt that counts as a real missing persons case. And now, I was being asked by the third most powerful man in the Empire to find a foreigner in a strange city. The best part, he referred to the foreigner in the past tense. My asshole puckered. But I merely nodded. Though my poker face is the shits, for Daluege noticed and gave a sloppy smile.
"You're not big enough for me do this much to get you into trouble, Hansi. Relax. I just want our French... friends to know we're sending a Berlin detective to look into it, to tide things over."
I returned that sloppy smile and nodded again. I didn't believe a single word he said.
Out I went into the waiting office. Where my bushy tailed assistant waited in a SS-Second Lieutenant's uniform so crisp you could cut yourself on his pant leg creases. A(dolf) G(ermanicus) Ernst Funke was his name and he had the file on our missing person: Marcel Lefebre, D.O.B. January 11, 1910. Last seen ordering breakfast at "Metropolis" Hotel in beautiful downtown Riga. Belonged to all the right political organizations. Sat out the war like a good little bitch in scenic Vichy. Had some civilian medals. But did not marry. Red flag number one. Went to Riga by himself. Red flag number two. Was heard speaking good Latvian. Red flag number three. This was somehow getting worse. I needed time to think. And I'm not good at thinking on my feet. I wanted to look the file over and maybe call a smarter detective than me to arrange a meet in a bar and pick his brain, but no such luck. Bushy Tail already got us tickets to fly out to Riga in the afternoon. I had just enough time to get back to my place, pack up my shit and meet him at the airport. On the way over to the airport I ran different scenarios, each more confusing than the other. Too many unknowns. I had to get more information.
The Imperial Goering was probably the only airport in the world where the SS-only line was just as busy as the one for the military personnel and the civilian scum. Come to think of it, the non-Germanic Union line might have moved faster than ours. So much for the benefits of being in The Elite. Me and Bushy Tail stood there like idiots for thirty minutes as the fat pile in a shiny Air Force uniform, flanked by a pair of giants inspected people's identification cards, racial certificates, passports and medical records. It made wistful for the dark rumors that floated up every half-decade about how SS should take over airport security and tell the Air Force to take a hike. The closest anyone came to prying that nut was Heydrich and even he couldn't get Goering to budge. Five Reichsführers later, the Fat Old Bastard was still alive and still had his Air Force running things they shouldn't. Not even the Second Awakening managed to shake his grip. When, during the darkest days, middle class women were afraid to be seen wearing fur coats in public for fear they would be denounced for exhibiting values incompatible with the True German National Workers' Spirit, the world's richest fat man still hunted stag on his preserve in Viking gear, while paying lip service to The Struggle. No one could touch him. Not the SS. Not the baying mob. Not even The Eternal Führer's Shield Maiden, or so it was said. Me, personally, I was waiting for the bastard to peg out. One will get you twenty his fair haired boy would piss away daddy's empire within a couple of years and end up persona non-grata within half a decade. That's how it usually went. For every A.G. Himmler there are half dozen Bormanns, Goebbelses and Hesses, who snorted, drank and whored their way into an early grave or irrelevancy. The fat pile who checked my passport lit up when he saw the word "Riga" on my ticket. He wasn't even surly to me afterwards. Must have fought on the Eastern Front during the War. "Riga" was a magic word for them, a talisman evoking images of cheap booze, fast girls and hot dice. A bull in Wedding once told me how he got a call at a drunk and disorderly in a bar. Shows up, finds a corporal stretchered out on the floor with remains of a mug of beer on his skull. Nobody saw nothing of course. He shakes down locals. Finds out a lance- was telling wonderful tales about Riga and this here corporal told him Riga wasn't shit and that Paris was way better. So he got glassed for running his dick licker. Gendarmes got the lance- and the army was gonna give him a court martial for assaulting a brother soldier, when the judge heard the Riga-Paris story and dismissed the case. Turns out the judge was an Eastern Front veteran and did his medical leave at Riga. That's the power Riga had on them bastards who fought in the frozen wastelands of Russia. But not to me. I spent my war chasing gasoline thieves in Austria and bless me for it. To me Riga was just the city where I was born. And to which I was now returning.
Bushy Tail got me the telefax case notes the local assholes collected on our missing frog and I read them on the long flight, in lieu of getting drunk. The Frenchie was last seen eating a second breakfast, which is a thing I guess, by a waiter who noted that our missing man ate suspiciously. I have no idea how a man can eat suspiciously, but this is what happens when dumb people want to feel important, they start adding things to their eye witness report. Made me skip everything the else the waiter said. The second breakfast was at noon. No one noticed our frog is missing until seven, when his minder from the Propaganda Ministry Eva Elsa Miller noted he did not arrive at the theater. She called the Ministry and they notified everyone and their mother. Being a foreigner, from a nation friendly to us, and being a politically connected foreigner, no one goes into his room until they find two witnesses, an official from the French consulate and an SS-Major to conduct the search in the morning. SS-Major even. What a waste. That ain't sour grapes either. The fact I finished the War as an SS-Captain was a big surprise to me as it was to everyone in Vienna. Unlike in the States and the English Empire, we don't hand out high ranks to make ourselves feel important. Well, at least we don't in the police. The guy who ran all of Europol during the War was only an SS-Captain. And here we have a full SS-Major going in to check up on a missing foreigner who may gotten stuck in an 18 year old barmaid the night before. The results of the search were attached and were a masterclass of non-cooperation on the part of the local SS when asked to send results to Berlin. I'd blame it on the times and all the nonsense it unleashed, but Hell ten years ago, this kind of bullshit happened as well. SS really did go to shit when Heydrich died.
The missing frog's room contained: two suits, one three piece and one two. Neither the color nor the style were referenced. But the inside of pockets of one of the suits (feel free to guess which one, because the assholes did not write it down) was catalogued: a pair of crumpled up trolley tickets and a train pass. Unhelpfully the trolley lines were not referenced. The train pass however was to Gauja. That was not helpful either, however, considering Gauja is the longest river in Latvia and more than a dozen places are named after it. There was no report on the man's underwear or shirts, so either our frog wore nothing underneath his two suits or the local SS were assholes that didn't write down a full report or our Frenchie took his underclothes with him. The last possibility raised all kinds of interesting questions, so I immediately stop thinking about it and moved on to the rest of the report. There were three receipts. One for a 25 mark art print titled "Bathing Hannah" - a charcoal drawing. Here whoever made the report made an effort to point out one could not see anything improper of the young woman bathing in a river to either signal his disappointment of seeing a receipt for "Bathing Hannah" and then finding a painting where you don't see any sweater bunnies, never mind the bearded clam, or to signal his approving prudishness of the said non-nudity. The second receipt was for an untitled Russian icon worth 90 marks. The compiler of the report merely noted it looked new but did indeed look Russian. Have no idea what that means or is supposed to mean. The third receipt was for a chest "carved with Renaissance themes." Five marks. The dimensions made this thing as big as an old ice box, but there were no other details given, except a note the chest was not found in the room. Next came a deck of cards, with a note regarding it being old. Last came a ring found on the bed stand: a woman's ring with a man's gemstone. Translating from dumbshit to German I thought what our report compiler meant was that the gemstone was too large for the ring. But who knows. Lastly, the report noted the frog had a mustache but was otherwise clean shaven and his shaving kit contained a stolid German safety razor. The report was done at noon two days ago. Shit. That meant our frog was missing for three days. No wonder Reichsführer referred to him in past tense. Our frog was dead.
***
When we landed, Bushy Tail got us a car that wasn't a total piece of shit and for a wonder got us rooms in the same hotel as where the Frenchie disappeared. "Metropolis" was a classy joint. After a quick shower and a light meal, I told Bushy Tail to get the car. He was a bit confused, thinking we were going to re-interview the witnesses of the hotel. I humored Bushy Tail. It's important to get along even with those beneath you on a case that is already coming up pear shaped. You never know when even an utter nobody will be asked to snitch on you in the worst way possible as opposed to the regular snitching I had no doubt he was doing to Berlin about my competence and actions. The waiter was an even bigger waste of space than I first thought and it was painful to watch him try to remember details that obviously never happened. We just about reached a point in the conversation where the waiter was quite ready to testify he saw the suspicious frog pass out "White Rose" leaflets and try to promote Judaism, when he did drop an actual piece of information: seems our frog had a breakfast companion for the last three days - a British Lady, now out of town, as she was part of the tour group that was going to visit all of the Baltic pit stops of our Empire. The British Lady, however, was scheduled to return to Riga in an eight days, by which point I had hoped to find the frog's corpse. Still, I told Bushy Tail to write down her name. And then we went off to the HQ of the Riga SS, well, of the Riga General-SS. Gestapo and SD had their offices somewhere else in Riga. I wasn't interested at them at the moment. SS-Major Kleisterkamp deigned to see us in his office after making us cool our heels for only five minutes, which is a new record for me. Kleisterkamp was about the size of a trash can and immediately got on my bad side by having a pipe in his mouth that obviously contained no tobacco or any leaf for that matter. The old rules about SS not smoking while in uniform waxed and waned depending on the zeal of the Reichsführer and the current one did not give a shit. So the man could have smoked, but clearly did not and yet still had a pipe. Either he was a recovering smoker or an asshole who thought he was Commissioner Maigret or worse - Sherlock Holmes. Five minutes of listening to him talk about possible motives clearly marked him as an asshole. Still, he did do a couple of things right. Two days ago, he phoned all the barber shops to be on the lookout for the frog, sent the frog's picture out and sent a cop car down the routes of the two trolleys our frog may or may not have used. He even took the trouble to track the trolley tickets numbers and use them to identify when and where the tickets were sold. Unfortunately for him, both were sold right outside the hotel where the frog was staying and both were bought the day before he was last seen at breakfast. As for the train pass, they sent a query to the rural gendarme at that station (there was a station called Gauja). Lastly, our Riga's Maigret actually did bother to check out the local houses of ill repute, but found nothing but decent tourists getting their jollies. Naturally I did not communicate I was pleased with anything he had done, because he was an asshole with a pipe who did not smoke. But Bushy Tail made polite noises. I asked to see the missing man's belongings and was taken over to what passes for a crime laboratory in this part of the world.
The frog's three piece suit was charcoal black and in good shape. "Expensive" was not quite a word I would use to describe it, but it wasn't cheap. The two piece was obviously newer and even had that goofy fold at the bottom of the pant legs that is now all the rage per my daughter. "Trouser cuff" I believe is the word she used to describe it. Our frog was in his 50ies but still trying to be stylish. I approved. "Bathing Hannah" was too stylized to show any nudity and was as disappointing as I feared. The Russian icon did look newer than it should, given the subject matter, but there was a style to it as well. The fabled hermaphrodite ring did have a gemstone that was clearly meant for a man's ring, but the ring itself was designed for a woman. The underwear and shirts of the frog were there, so he left without them. They revealed him to be a man of style and taste. The "old" deck of cards were not playing cards, but rather Tarot. Our frog was a bit of a mystic. I reexamined the clothes again and found a slight yellowish stain on the "cuff" of the left pant leg.
"D'you have this looked over?" I casually asked the SS-Major, and knew I was in trouble as soon as the man blinked and struggled to smile.
They didn't test the clothes. Provincials. I let Bushy Tail handle the diplomatic way to tell SS-Major to chem test the frog's clothes. SS-Major Kleisterkamp gnawed on his pipe as I watched the gears in his head twist and turn. He was trying to make amends. That was liable to get hurty real quick like, so I was trying to get out of a bad situation when he asked me if I'd like to interview the Propaganda Ministry gal who raised the alarm about our frog going missing. Now I had to humor him and have him arrange it, figuring she went along with the same crew that went with the British Lady. Turns out our gal is local. I was thinking of a nice dinner and wanted to meet her outside the station, but SS-Major wanted to arrange the meet so they dragged the girly to us.
Age is a relative thing. Some days I wake up and feel all of my late forties. Some days I feel as old The Eternal Führer. And some days when I see an immature miniature blonde I feel twenty all over again. Propaganda Ministry Eva Elsa Miller made me feel twenty. Even Bushy Tail was smitten and I think he only gets hard on the orders of the SS and The Party for the Continuation of the Master Race. She wore a cheap blue dress that was as shiny as cat's balls. It was short and allowed me to look at her gams. The gams ended with a pair of shiny white lacquer shoes. Her hair was movie star blonde silk. The only false note she struck was her purse. It was clearly a promotional item handed out by the Sabena airline made to look like a Channel bag. Three years ago I would not have noticed, but having a teenage daughter changes a man. Eva Elsa was a fountain of useless information. I didn't care. I just smiled. She made every man in that office feel better merely by existing. That's the power of women, I tells you. And if you don't believe me just ask senior Party officials to name the most powerful person in the Empire, after The Eternal Führer of course. If they are lying sacks of shit or old or very scared, they'll name a couple of names of men. If they know what is going on, and you are talking to them one and one and they think no one is taping them, they'll name Miss von Ungern-Sternberg, the Shield Maiden of The Eternal Führer. But that bitch is an ugly tall redhead who killed more men than the guillotine. Eva Elsa Miller was a lovely petite blonde and although more than one boy must have murdered a sea of sperm into an old gym sock after meeting her, I doubt she ordered any man to his death or had anyone beaten by his children in the middle of a park for the edification of the German people. Anyway, Eva Elsa ran out of things to say and wanted to get on with her real life, but none of us wanted for her to leave so Bushy Tail, of all creatures small and large, started asking her about the items found in the missing man's room.
"Did Ms. Miller see Mr. Lefebre purchase 'Bathing Hannah?'"
Miss Miller had and talked at length about the stylized art she found repugnant, but that foreigners enjoyed. We all nodded sagely at that, while trying not to stare at her eyes, chest, rear or legs (depending on our tastes and desires). Bushy Tail asked about the icon next, and here Miss Miller once again waxed about the degenerate primitivism of the subhuman beliefs. We all nodded along and I realized I would have to plow a hooker that looked a bit like her just to get her out of my system before I returned to Berlin. Next Bushy Tail asked about the chest and here our blonde darling stumbled. She blinked and said she never seen it and got so nervous even Not Maigret picked up on it. Me, I didn't want to press hard on a lovely in front of all these assholes, and the chest could have been about a lot of things. So I thanked her for her time and watched her flee. Not Maigret gave me a look and pondered if there was more to the chest. I nodded along and said some platitudes and then reminded all we should wait for the chem test. That reminder of failure seemed to shut him up.
I decided to get the small blonde out of my system that night before I questioned her again, now that I knew we would meet up again. I was trying to find the best way to ditch Bushy Tail, change into plainclothes and go about town when a frantic SS Lance- rushed over to Bushy Tail, Kleisterkamp and I and said the hotel called. A young man had come in and asked the front desk to give our missing frog a call and tell him "Frikki" was waiting downstairs for him. I told the clerk to keep "Frikki" hanging about, had Bushy Tail grab the car and went out with him, unfortunately with the SS-Major in tow. Had I told Not Maigret to stay put, he'd have followed regardless. Still, I had hoped to get to the young man and quiz him before the Riga assholes.
.