The Berlin Assignment (43 page)

Geissler took the letter back. “Mountains,” he said. “Forests. No people. A cabin in the wild.” He shook his head with wonder.

“It's like that there. No doubt of it,” the consul confirmed amiably. Geissler stared with deep abstraction at a button on the consul's coat. Hanbury began to describe his own part of the country: the prairies. No mountains, no forests, no grizzlies there, he admitted, but you could go for a whole day on a dirt road without seeing a soul. Peace to observe hawks soar and swoop in their hunt for gophers. Geissler looked as if he was hallucinating.

The consul gently changed the subject. He said he needed Geissler's professional advice. A friend of the consul, a professor, had asked him to locate a book that was needed to fill a gap in a university collection. “University?” asked Geissler suspiciously. The consul's country with its vitality, wide open spaces, wild mountains, secret rivers and animals that hunted other animals, could not possibly possess anything as anaemic as a university. “That was my question too,” the consul said smoothly. “Why would a university look for a book? They're supposed to have
all
the books. Of course, even a good university collection might have difficulty competing with your store.” Hanbury watched Geissler think about
this. He heard steps. Sabine was coming to the front. “
Guten Tag, Frau Schwartz
,” he said, breaking the silence. “
Guten Tag, Herr Hanbury
,” Frau Schwartz said back. “You're early.”

Geissler wished to hear more about hawks, and eagles too, and bisons and big mountain cats and he didn't wish Frau Schwartz to take the consul off for lunch. He placed his left hand firmly on Hanbury's forearm. “What century?” he asked urgently. “This one. The modern history department,” the consul said. “A special project.” He turned to Sabine. “I'm looking for a book. Perhaps Herr Geissler has it in his cellar.” “Then you two should look for it,” she said. “I can't leave for half an hour.”

Geissler watched Frau Schwartz return to the store's recesses. His grasp of the consul's arm loosened with relief. “Come,” he ordered. Descending the protesting stairs, he muttered the word
evil
several times. It was his designation for the current century. When they stood in the cellar, Geissler gestured towards the thousands of books piled up.

Hanbury assumed he was being invited to make his interest more precise. The project in the university, he said, was about totalitarianism. Why does it get started? How does it sink roots? What carries it forward? How is it made appealing to the masses? There's lots of material on the Bolsheviks, Stalin, Ulbricht, Honecker, Franco, Mussolini. And Hitler, of course. But parts of the Nazi record are thin. The most powerful Nazi rites and insignia were kept secret. The consul said he had been told that only a select group of Nazis had access to the most powerful party symbols. It was widely known that these symbols – hieroglyphic pictures, sigils with religious meaning, runes with mystic significance – existed, but what they were and how they exerted power was known only to a very few. Apart from the swastika itself, a few of the symbols were on the
Totenkopfring
– the Death Head Ring – worn by members of the SS. But there were many more. The book he had been asked to find, the consul added, described all the secret Nazi symbols and associated
rites. The little volume had apparently had a printing run of a few hundred copies only, exclusively for the leading Nazis, so even in its day it was rare. No copy was known to have survived the war. Despite that, the consul wondered, might
Bücher Geissler
be a place worth looking?

Hanbury and Schwartz had rehearsed the details of this potent Nazi publication during a lengthy session over beer. Yet, much of what the consul said to Geissler was improvised, especially when he described the morbid impact of secret Nazi rites. Even as he was speaking, Hanbury wondered where the things he was saying came from. He knew little about bigots, zealots, anti-Semites, political maniacs, or other cults. Sardonically he thought, I've learned to imitate Irving Heywood – make things up as you go along.

“No,” Geissler said brusquely. It wasn't clear whether he knew he didn't have the book, or whether he refused to look. “Books like that should be burned.”

“That's the purpose of the study,” the consul continued soothingly, “to get rid of what books like that stand for. The right wing isn't dead. Fascists could come out of hiding. To fight them we need to know their language, understand their religion. We've got problems with the right wing in my country too. War criminals in hiding, neo-nazi cells, anti-Semitism, denials of the Holocaust. Things like that. It's important to recognize the right wing early on, before they've done their damage. How do you counteract the spell they put on ordinary people? Understanding their symbols, their secret language, it's vital. That's what the study is about. The book, if it exists, could be important.”

Geissler was staring at the consul's jacket button again. He seemed far away, on a distant continent perhaps. In the half light, slightly stooped, wearing a khaki shirt, the bookseller almost looked like an explorer. Hanbury knew Geissler had longed to be one in his youth. Von Helmholtz told him that. Hanbury once casually mentioned to the Chief
of Protocol that he had been in the cellar of
Bücher Geissler
and was fascinated. Von Helmholtz replied he knew the Geissler family before the war.

“Not many people find their way to
that
store,” the Chief of Protocol had added. “Even fewer get to know poor Ludwig. If you are going to visit places like
Bücher Geissler
, you'll soon know us better than we know ourselves. And when that happens we'll be forced to keep you.” The Chief of Protocol had sent the consul a fleeting smile.

“It was mostly a social call,” Hanbury had said. “I know someone who works there. Herr Geissler then showed me his old books.”

“I haven't seen Ludwig for years. I thought the business was wound up.” Von Helmholtz told Hanbury that before the war, because their families had close contact, he had been invited to the great Geissler villa several times. Ludwig was the youngest of three brothers.

“Were they Nazis?” Hanbury had asked, having seen dusty cabinets in the
Bücher Geissler
cellar full of Nazi publications.

“Winfried, the father, was. Of course, in those days many people were. The two older sons were enthusiastic about Germany's world domination prospects. Both were killed at Stalingrad. But Ludwig didn't want to fight. He didn't want to sell books either. The black sheep in the family. He wanted to explore. At one of the family parties he took me into a wild part of the garden which he pretended was a jungle.” Von Helmholtz smiled as he recollected the thicket of Forsythia and Lilac bushes. “Ludwig had clipped the shrubs in one spot and created a little clearing. He told me he was going to retrace the journeys of Livingstone and Stanley. He was five or six years older and I was impressed. It started my own interest in geography. Later, when Ludwig was old enough to travel he asked his father for permission, but Winfried would have none of it. He wanted
Ludwig to join the army and accused him of lacking patriotism. It was difficult for Ludwig. In the end he had no choice. He was drafted. By then the two older brothers were already dead. Ludwig was assigned to the African Corps. I wondered at the time whether Winfried intervened. Maybe having lost two sons, he wanted to make a gesture to the one he had left – a nod in the direction of Ludwig's dream. Ludwig came back from Africa with one arm gone. A story made the rounds in Wannsee that Winfried cried, not out of grief that Ludwig was an invalid, but out of joy. He had proof that all three sons achieved military honour.”

The consul and the Chief of Protocol were on the fringes of a huge reception and were making their way slowly to the exit.

“Did Winfried have a
special
link to the Nazis?” Hanbury had asked.

“Oh, I think so. The tradition of the family had always been to sell enlightened literature, but Winfried turned the store into an outlet for Nazi propaganda. I don't know what happened to all that material.”

“It's in the cellar. I suppose they put all the Nazi stuff there when the war ended. I've seen it.”

“Poor Ludwig. An eccentric child in a Nazi family, denied his African dream, sent there to fight, returns handicapped, has to live off a family business he hated as a child and now owns the literary remnants of the Nazis who destroyed his boyhood aspirations. Enough to turn him into a troubled man.”

“He seems wretched.”

“What did you do to get him to take you into the cellar?”

“Nothing. We talked about his cousin who panned for gold in the Yukon. It excited him.”

The Chief of Protocol was running out of time. A prime minister's motorcade was waiting. “Likely you rekindled a dream,” von Helmholtz had said. “You must tell me about the Yukon one day. Most of us dream about such places.”

And now, in the cellar, Geissler looked as von Helmholtz said he did in the days when he could still hope to become an explorer. The distant, glassy stare seemed focussed on what might have been – a life dedicated to crossing continents. Hanbury waited patiently for the reverie to end. He looked around at the books piled up and under tables in dangerously leaning towers and strewn haphazardly on metal shelves. The cellar was a turbulent sea of books, too wild to cross in places. A hundred years of German literary output. Prominent in one corner were the cases of Nazi publications. Hanbury had noticed them the first time, but Geissler had directed him away.

“The other details?” Geissler said, suddenly back from an imaginary safari. He jerked his head savagely towards the consul.

“A reference was found by the police in a handwritten bibliography when they moved in on a war criminal,” Hanbury said pleasantly, drawing on the script Schwartz had reviewed with him. “A major find. The items – numerous Nazi books and pamphlets – were being photo-reprinted in Taipei, from where they flooded back to neo-Nazi cells in the Americas, Western Europe and more recently Poland, Hungary and Russia. But the book on Nazi rites and decorations – the
Orden
book – though listed, wasn't in the Taipei reproductions.
Blutkreis – Totenkopf – Ehrenkreuz
was the title. Circle of Blood – Death Head – Cross of Honour. The printer was in Nuremberg – Weitling, is that possible? – the publisher was in Munich.”

“Adolf and Hartwig Weitling. Brothers. Nazi printers. Lehrman in Munich did the publishing.” Geissler turned and hobbled off. He had a painful way of walking, a shifting of weight from side to side, as if one leg was too short and had to be dragged up from behind. After some metres he stopped. “Come,” he ordered the consul, gesturing with his one arm to the far part of the cellar.

Because he went so awkwardly, Geissler sent several of the leaning towers tumbling. He stopped each time to stack them with his one hand into higher, still more precarious monuments. Hanbury tried to help, but couldn't get past the bent body. Geissler muttered darkly about disorder. Approaching the far end of the cellar, Geissler became more hectic. A panic seemed to seize him, as if the century's evil miasma was reaching out.

“It really is a treasure you have,” Hanbury said soothingly “Better than your cousin's in the Yukon.”

Geissler was breathing hard. The struggle was wearing him out. “No,” he said. “No.” His elbow went up high, as a shield, as he stumbled past the Nazi cabinets. A door at the far end opened inwards. The bookseller went through, waving his arm before him like a blind man. He grabbed a string, yanked it, lighting a bulb swinging from the ceiling. The room they entered was once used for storing coal. Wooden shelves, hastily knocked together from planks of different sizes, seemingly rummaged from rubble, lined the sooty walls. On these planks were still more books, two, sometimes three rows deep. Many of them had jackets decorated with swastikas, or eagles, or rifles with bayonets. Some of them sported the SS death head, the
Totenkopf
. “A bad room.
Verbotene Bücher
,” said Geissler, with apprehension about all his banned books. His forehead was lined with sweat.

“I'm causing you a lot of trouble,” Hanbury apologized. “Maybe I can look for the volume. You can go back up. I'll be very careful.”

“No,” Geissler resolutely said. “I know where.” In the scarce light, he inspected the titles. He swept a whole row violently onto the floor to get at the second row. A heap of books formed on the floor. The rampage continued. “
Lehrman Verlag
,” Geissler kept muttering. “
Lehrman Verlag
. The
Orden
book.”

Geissler intensified his destructive search and in the faint light Hanbury perused a few of the volumes.
Neuadel aus Blut und Boden
(Blood and Soil: The New Elite).
Rassenkunde des deutschen Volkes
(The Science of the Race of the German people).
Der Führer schützt das Reich
(The Führer Protects the Reich).
Geburt des Dritten Reiches
(The Birth of the Third Reich).
Heilige Runenmacht
(The Holy Power of the Runes).
Wir und die Juden im Lichte der Astrologie
(The Jews and Us: What Astrology Tells Us).
Luzifers Hofgesindel
(Lucifer's Court Servants). The intellectual underpinnings of the Third Reich were accumulating on the floor as if being prepared for the torch. From time to time the consul nudged a book aside with his shoe, or let the volume he was looking at drop, where it disappeared amongst the others.

Geissler suddenly cried with horror.
Das einzige Exemplar!
The only copy! He turned wildly towards the consul, shoved the thin volume at him as if he couldn't handle such corrosive poison and stumbled away bent over like a hunchback. Hanbury watched him scurry off. Before the stairs, with his one arm Geissler sent more towers flying, as if even with only half Samson's divine strength the whole temple of Godless evil could be sent tumbling.