The Lady from Zagreb by Philip Kerr Page A

spring open, and climbed a white marble staircase to the third floor, where, at the end of a well-polished landing, I found a frosted-glass door open and a smallish, thickly bearded man standing with his hand outstretched toward me. He was smiling broadly and there was a touch of the fairy king about him. We shook hands. He was wearing a tailored, cream-colored linen suit and a pair of horn-rimmed glasses that were on a length of gold chain around his neck. In a waiting room behind him was a luscious-looking redhead who was draped in a beige, wraparound summer dress, and on her head was a wide-brimmed straw hat you could have used as a beach parasol. She was reading a magazine and smoking with a little amber holder that was the same incandescent shade as her hair. There was a full set of Malle Courier luggage with leather and brass trim by her chair, and I supposed she was traveling somewhere; she looked much too fresh to have come from somewhere else. The man was as friendly as a kitten but the redhead stayed put on the leather chesterfield and she was not introduced nor did she look at me. It was as if she didn’t exist. Perhaps she was another client for another lawyer. Either way, she was keeping herself to herself, which suited her a lot better than it suited me.
    “I’m Gunther,” I said.
    Heckholz brought his heels together silently and he bowed.
    “Herr Gunther,” he said, “it’s good of you to come here at such short notice. I am Heinrich Heckholz.”
    “There were five good reasons to come, Herr Doctor. Or perhaps a hundred, depending on how you look at it.”
    “Surely you’re forgetting the pancakes. Will you join me?”
    “I’ve been thinking about nothing else since midnight.”
    We went along a corridor floored with white boards and lined with law books and box files, all of which carried the same little drawing of Justitia that appeared on his letterhead. He led me into a small kitchen where the mixture was already made, and immediately he put on a clean white apron and set about making the pancakes, but I felt him sizing me up out of the corner of his eye.
    “Have you just finished your shift?”
    “Yes. I came straight here.”
    “Somehow I thought you’d be wearing your uniform,” he said.
    “Only in the field,” I said, “or on ceremonial occasions.”
    “In which case I wonder how you ever find the time to take it off. Berlin has more ceremonial occasions than imperial Rome, I fancy. The Nazis do like a good show.”
    “You’ve got that right.”
    He’d heated some cherry sauce in a small copper saucepan that he poured generously onto the finished pancakes and we carried Meissen plates into a meeting room. There was a round Biedermeier table and four matching chairs; on the yellow-papered wall was a portrait of Hitler, and on a sideboard in the window a large pot of white orchids. Through another open door on a white-wood floor was a partners desk, a large filing cabinet, and a safe. On the desk I spied a bronze head of the leader. Heckholz didn’t look like he was taking any chances with appearances. A third door was partly open, and I had half an idea that behind it was a room and that there was someone in that room; someone wearing the same perfume as the redhead in the waiting room.
    Heckholz handed me a napkin and we ate the pancakes in silence. They were predictably delicious.
    “I’d offer you an excellent schnapps with that but it’s a little early, even for me.”
    I nodded, but it was just as well he didn’t twist my arm as it’s never too early for a glass of schnapps, especially when you’ve just finished work for the day.
    He saw me looking at the picture on the wall and shrugged. “That’s good for business,” he said. “If not necessarily good for the digestion.” He shook his head. “Our leader has a very hungry look. Doubtless a result of his many years of struggle in my hometown of Vienna. Poor man. He almost looks as if he has been forbidden any