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“Yes.”
“I’m sure I can make it,” Müller said.
“Then I look forward to seeing you there,” Kramer said. “And once again, my dear Johnny, my most warm congratulations on your promotion.”
I am your “dear Johnny,” Müller thought, because it has occurred to you that the only way a Hessian peasant policeman like myself could get himself promoted is because I have powerful friends. I was not your "dear Johnny” before I went to Morocco.
“I wonder if I might use your phone before I go,” Müller said.
“Of course,” Kramer said.
“Could you have me put through to Helmut von Heurten-Mitnitz in the Foreign Ministry?” Müller asked. “I think he might wish to attend the Baron’s interment, and I’m sure he didn’t know about it either.”
Kramer nodded at Geehr, who picked up the telephone and placed the call.
Calling von Heurten-Mitnitz from Kramer’s office, Müller decided, served to buttress Kramer’s notion that he had highly placed friends. But perhaps more important, the funeral would permit von Heurten-Mitnitz to talk to Fulmar’s father under unsuspicious circumstances. If Müller placed the call anywhere else, there might have been questions.
But there would be no questions if the call was made from the office of the commander of the Hessian Region of the SS-SD.
Chapter FOUR
The Autounion roadster turned out to be a sporty yellow convertible. Müller drove it up the Autobahn as far as Giessen, and then along the tranquil Lahn River to the ancient university town of Marburg.
Under other circumstances, he thought, it would have been a very pleasant way for him to go home, at the wheel of a fancy car, and with the corded silver epaulets of a Standartenführer on his shoulders.
He had been a lowly Wachtmann, an ordinary police patrolman, when he had left Kreis Marburg to go to Prussia. And he was thrilled then to be appointed a Kriminalinspektor, Grade Three. With a little luck and hard work, he’d thought at the time, he might make it to Kriminalinspektor, Grade One, or even Deputy Inspector.
It had never occurred to him then that he would g
o into the SS-SD, or that he would rise to Obersturmbannführer if he did. It was quite as difficult to believe that he was now a Standartenführer as it was to accept that he was engaged in treasonous activities against the German State.
Giessen had been bombed, probably as an alternate target when fog obscured Frankfurt am Main. But after he left Giessen, there was no sign of war damage, or, for that matter, of the war itself. Everything was in fact just about as he remembered it. There were fewer Christmas decorations than he expected, and there were Winterhilfe posters splattered all over, even on trees, appealing for warm clothing, both for bombed-out civilians and for the troops in Russia. But otherwise time seemed to have stopped.
As he turned off the main road onto Frankfurterstrasse, he allowed himself to dwell on the notion that there were men from Marburg at Stalingrad right now, doomed to surrender and probably death.
He drove past a barracks compound and pulled the yellow roadster onto the cobblestones before a three-story, turn-of-the-century building that housed both the headquarters of the Kreis Polizei for Marburg and the regional office of the SS-SD. He got out of the car and walked into the building. There was a small Christmas tree sitting on a table in the lobby.
The Scharführer on duty, visibly startled at the visit of so senior an officer on Christmas Eve, popped to attention. He didn’t at first recognize Müller, but Müller knew who he was. His name was Otto Zeiman. When Müller first joined the police as an Unterwachtmann, Zeiman had been his corporal. He, too, had joined the SS-SD and had risen to Scharführer.
"Heil Hitler! ” Zeiman said. “How may I help the Standartenführer?”
“How are you, Otto?” Müller asked, offering the older man his hand. “It’s nice to see you again.”
“The Standartenführer is kind to remember me,” Zeiman said, beaming happily at him.
“When no one’s around, Otto, it’s Johnny, like always.”
The older man colored with pleasure. He would never, Müller knew, call him by anything but his rank, but the gesture had cost nothing, and it was always valuable for a man like Zeiman to think of himself as a special friend.
"Hauptsturmführer Peis is the officer on duty,” Zeiman said. “Shall I tell him you’re here?”
Peis, the SD officer-in-charge in Marburg and another face from a long time ago, was like Zeiman a professional, not a political, although Müller, who had checked his dossier in Berlin before leaving, had learned that Peis’s devotion to the National Socialist cause had recently become almost fervent. That was something to keep in mind.
“The boss is working on Christmas Eve?” Müller asked, and then, before Zeiman could reply, added,“Please, Otto.”
Wilhelm Peis, in what looked like a brand-new uniform, came into the foyer a moment later, gave the straight-armed salute, said “Heil Hitler!,” and asked how he could be of service to the Herr Standartenführer.
He was surprised to see Müller, period, and even more surprised to see that he was now a Standartenführer. The approach he decided to take with him was, consequently, formal. As Standartenführer, Müller might resent any intimacy.
