CHAPTER 20

Berlin, Thursday-Friday, February 15-16, 1934

Just before midnight, I walked into the dimly lit American Bar and scanned the corners looking for Colonel Schulz-Horn. I saw a Tyrolean hat and a leather trench coat framing a pale white face in the darkest corner, and I walked toward it. As I edged closer to the table, a soft voice, unlike the one I had heard on the telephone, called out, “Herr Brown, over here please.”

I sat down, and the man took off his Tyrolean hat, exposing a shaved head. He had a nasty-looking dueling scar on his left cheek, which made him look fierce, until he smiled. There were two full snifters on the table. He raised his and said, “Prost!” The schnapps had more bite to it than Gunther’s.

Seeing Colonel Schulz-Horn in civilian clothes almost made me forget that he was one of the most decorated German officers of the war, feared—but respected—by all who fought him.

“Nice to meet you, Colonel,” I said. “I was at Belloy-en-Santerre in the Somme in 1916 with the French Foreign Legion.”

“I know, Mr. Brown. Stanley admires you for your war service.” He barked a laugh and then went on. “Stanley said to me that you’re the toughest Creole on earth.”

“That distinction belongs to Stanley, Colonel.”

He sipped at his schnapps and said, “The battle of Belloy-en-Santerre. A monument to the true stupidity of war. We Germans lost miserably and managed to kill an American poet in the French Foreign Legion, your Alan Seeger.” He paused, then he said something about having a rendezvous with death or debt or something that sounded like that and knocked back more schnapps. He looked real emotional anyway.

“Stanley told me you play great jazz piano,” I said. “Must be rare for a German officer these days.”

“You may be surprised, but you have admirers among my officer friends, an Urby Brown fan club, so to speak. We used to sneak off to your nightclub in mufti or in disguise. We heard you play with Stanley, Louis Armstrong and other greats.”

“Isn’t jazz illegal here? I thought Hitler banned it as—”

“A Jewish-Negro conspiracy against Aryan racial purity,” he said, completing the dictum. “We’re not all little Hitlers,” he continued. “Ja, my group of officer friends sits through Lohengrin and screams ‘Bravo’ at the finale with the other super patriots. But, we prefer Armstrong, Stanley Bontemps, and”—he raised his snifter—“Urby Brown with our schnapps.”

Except for the two of us and the bartender, the bar was empty. Still, I had the feeling that we were being spied on. The colonel read my thoughts.

“You are right to be careful in this madhouse,” Schulz-Horn whispered. “Stanley said that you are looking for Corsican bandits, a big black American poet, and a rich and fair Aryan American maiden, if I may paraphrase him.”

“That about sums it up,” I said.

“I have checked with some trusted friends in the Abwehr, our intelligence agency, and there is no trace of any large black American poet, such as described by Stanley, in Berlin, or indeed in Germany. That is formal.”

Schulz-Horn’s words confirmed my suspicions. Regardless of what Daphne said in her note, Baby wasn’t likely to be involved in any ransom scheme, except out of loyalty to his Uncle Hambone. That only left the Corsicans holding Daphne in Berlin.

As if reading my thoughts, he said, “There are no recent arrivals of gaudily dressed Corsican bandits either. The only noteworthy arrival that definitely interests you is of a certain Miss Daphne Robinson. She stayed at this very hotel Monday and Tuesday night in its most luxurious suite. Her hotel bill was paid for by General Count René D’Uribé-Lebrun.” He stopped and looked at me expectantly. He could see that I was surprised. He continued, “She was driven here from Paris by some puppets of our Deputy Führer and number three leader, Rudolf Hess, whom he has placed in our Paris embassy. She was chaperoned by Elsa Herbst, the head of the household of our beloved number two man, the war hero and one-man band, Hermann Goering.

“Where’s Daphne now?”

“First, let me tell you that she created a sensation at a reception at the Chancellery last night. The gossip is that Hitler is smitten with her, but there is always such talk when our leader meets a nubile blonde Aryan maiden. It is the Nazi dream that Hitler will marry such a one and found a new dynasty to begin the ‘Thousand Year Reich.’ I’m afraid that your Daphne Robinson will have to stand in a lengthening queue. I trust that she has not come to Germany under the illusion that she will be Hitler’s ‘Chosen One’ right away?”

“I doubt it,” I said. I remembered how we had been together at LaPérouse. She wanted me, not Hitler, I was sure of that. Or else she was as great an actress as Sarah Bernhardt.

The colonel sipped more schnapps and said, “I have a secret to tell you that has been very closely guarded by the Abwehr. Daphne Robinson is not really a Robinson. She’s a Hohenzollern, the illegitimate daughter of Kaiser Wilhelm II by her so-called grandmother, who is, in fact, her mother. Her so-called father—Stanley said you call him ‘Robinson III’—is in fact, I think you say, her ‘half-brother.’” Jean Fletcher’s “sources” had been right again.

“I’m sorry to tell you, Colonel, but that secret’s leaked out from your Abwehr. An American journalist in Paris told it to me.” It was his turn to look astonished.

“Scheisse!” he said. I understood what he meant.

“Do you think that Daphne suspects it? I mean, that her father’s her half-brother?” I asked.

Schulz-Horn laughed.

“That would be too straightforward, Mr. Brown. I don’t believe that she could even imagine it. Hitler himself does not know it, at this juncture. But Robinson III has known it from the beginning and has helped his mother play a cruel masquerade. He and his—and Daphne’s—mother have kept it secret from her husband. Otherwise, he would have divorced her. At least, that is what Daphne’s mother claimed when she threw herself on the mercy of the Kaiser.”

“Where’s Daphne now?” I repeated. “I have to take her back to her father . . . her brother . . . to finish with this business. Then, I’m through as a private investigator. It’s back to music for me. Stanley and I plan to reopen Urby’s Masked Ball.”

Schulz-Horn clapped his hands.

“Tell me when and I’ll be there. I miss the old ‘Urby’s.’” Then he remembered my question and went on, “Daphne Hohenzollern is staying in Goering’s residence, at the personal request of Herr Hitler, while he ponders whether to add her to the roster of finalists in the ‘Bride of Hitler’ sweepstakes. That means that the girl is under the great Goering’s thumb. He can make or break her because his house führerin, Elsa Herbst, attended to Daphne’s birth in the Kaiser’s private clinic in Bavaria. She knows that the Kaiser fathered her.” The colonel fiddled with the feather on his Tyrolean hat before going on. “Lance Corporal Hitler has a deep hatred of the Hohenzollerns, especially Kaiser Wilhelm II, whom he blames, along with the Jews, for Germany’s defeat and most of Germany’s current ills. If Goering lets slip that the girl is the Kaiser’s daughter, she may be in great danger.”

“How can I get her back to France? Fast?”

“It won’t be easy, but I have a plan. It’s dangerous and, if it fails, Goering and Hitler’s revenge will be terrible.”

“Colonel, I’m being paid good money to bring Daphne out of Germany. Thank you for offering to help, but . . . ”

He stopped me with a wave of his hand.

“I promised Stanley that I would help you. I owe it to him. It’s a long story that I will tell you some other time. But I must help you . . . there is only one way to save the girl and, unfortunately, it involves danger. I and my men understand that; we are soldiers. Let us say no more about it, please.”

“Does Daphne’s . . . brother know how much danger she’s in?”

“Deep down, he is a great admirer of all things German, and there are many Abwehr files documenting his . . . cooperation . . . over the years. I don’t believe he knows the full extent of Hitler’s hatred of all things Hohenzollern.”

“He would still have had to send me to bring Daphne back because he knows that his father will cut him loose if he sets foot here.”

Schulz-Horn chuckled, as if at some private joke.

“What Papa Robinson doesn’t know is that his son doesn’t have to set foot in Germany. He has direct access to a man named Himmler who is the head of the SS, which is even more powerful than the Abwehr. He just has to go into the German consulate in New York to contact Himmler by coded telegraph. Mr. Brown, I believe that this so-called kidnapping of Miss Daphne Hohenzollern is the work of amateurs. Judging from what my sources told me about her behavior at the reception, she threw herself at the Führer as if she were on a mission to kidnap him. I think that the girl might be behind her own kidnapping, to extract money from her brother to pursue a fantasy of becoming Hitler’s bride.”

“Daphne isn’t like that,” I said.

Schulz-Horn said simply, “My information is that she is not being held here against her will. She was brought here by Elsa Herbst and two of Rudolf Hess’s stooges, not by any black or Corsican men or other figments of her imagination. So she has been lying, which speaks for itself.”

I chewed on that for a while. If Schulz-Horn was right, it threw a monkey wrench into my theories about who had masterminded Daphne’s kidnapping.

“Why is Robinson in bed with the Nazis?” I asked, wondering, for the first time, if he could be involved in Daphne’s kidnapping. Jean Fletcher had passed on information about his Nazi ties culled from her “sources,” but I knew that Schulz-Horn would give me hard facts.

“When he met Hitler, together with his mother and Daphne at the end of the 1920s, there was a mutual ‘coup-de-foudre’ between him and Hitler. Hitler is attracted to his financial wizardry, even his Aryan looks, I suppose. Hitler may even, as you say, ‘have a crush’ on him. Anyway he once promised him that, when America falls from the tree, like a rotten apple, he will make Robinson the leader of the United States. Of course, Robinson likes the idea. He knows he has no chance of being elected president, but being appointed Führer by the Führer of Führers? Robinson craves power more than money, like so many rich men.”

I was astonished at the colonel’s wild-sounding claims and at his having access to such information.

“You are wondering if I am the head of the Abwehr, not so?”

“Something like that,” I answered.

“If I told you, I would have to kill you.”

I stared at him hard and we both laughed.

“Trust me,” he said. “I know what I’m talking about.”

“Colonel, from what little I’ve seen of Germany, it’s not near as developed as America was when I left there in 1914. I don’t see Hitler setting up an American Führer anytime soon.”

Schulz-Horn clapped his hands, and a waiter came over to take his order for two more snifters of schnapps. Schulz-Horn leaned forward and whispered to me, “You’re going to need another drink before you hear what I am going to tell you.” The drinks came, and I knocked back some schnapps and waited for him to go on.

“A very persistent rumor has it that the SS leader Himmler and Robinson and Goebbels, the propaganda chief, have hatched a plot to foment an uprising of the blacks in the United States, which, of course, will be crushed by your police and, if necessary, your armed forces.”

“They’re lunatics if that’s their plot,” I said.

“Crazier things have happened,” he replied. “After all, who would have believed that a failed Austrian Katzenjammer Kid would now be Reichskanzler of Germany?”

I lifted my glass. “Touché,” I said.

“My sources claim that top Nazi leaders are convinced that, with the right financing and training by Nazi agents, the blacks could sustain a guerrilla war and force martial law to be imposed in America for a long time. This would stretch your armed forces and buy Germany time to make military alliances with countries like Japan, Italy, and, why not Russia and France? Once Germany has isolated the United States with an angry black guerrilla presence inside it—armed, trained, and commanded by Nazi secret agents—England will fall from the tree into our basket like a golden apple, and then we complete the conquest of Europe.” Schulz-Horn looked horrified by that outcome.

“Then we enslave resources—rich lands in Asia, Africa, and else-where—which supply us and our allies with raw materials to build our planes and tanks with petrol to fuel them and with foodstuffs to feed our armies. Then we launch an all-out attack on the American mainland. As we speak, Goering is building up Hitler’s praetorian guard, the Gestapo and, worst of all, a mighty air force, the Luftwaffe.” His face reddened and he whispered urgently, “Hitler intends to wage total world war, Mr. Brown, as soon as he strangles the real Germany. It will make the last one seem like hopscotch games played during a school recess.”

I was stunned at the madness of the plot. The idea of the Nazis getting colored Americans, despite Jim Crow and other sufferings inflicted on us, to take up arms against the United States was too crazy to be believed. But then, I had been away for a long time.

As Schulz-Horn talked on, the craziness of the plot did not bowl me over as much as the thought that Daphne, and her brother, might have staged her kidnapping. That slammed into my head like a blackjack.

“There’s one more thing that my Abwehr friends have divulged to me as a ‘rumor’ to pay attention to,” Schulz-Horn continued. “The story goes that there is an agent in the United States named Bruno Richard Hauptmann who, with the assistance of your Barnet Robinson III, is to channel funds to and lead the black uprising that I have described. Have you heard of the baby Lindbergh kidnapping and murder?”

I recalled my conversations with Jean and Robinson. “Yes.”

“You know that Lindbergh has shown much sympathy for Germany.”

“A friend has told me that, yes.”

“The rumor has it that the kidnapping and murder of baby Lindbergh are a warning shot across Lindbergh’s bows from the Abwehr. He must show support for the Nazi cause or his wife, Anne Morrow Lindbergh, will die next. The Abwehr and some prominent Nazi supporters in America had wanted Lindbergh to become an active opponent of Roosevelt, even a Presidential candidate in 1936. But Robinson III told the Abwehr that, a year ago, America amended its Constitution in a way to make Lindbergh too young to be eligible in 1936 . . . by 15 days, I was told. So their aim now is for Lindbergh to be elected President in 1940. By which time Hitler’s armies will be marching through Europe and Lindbergh will be using your armed forces to crush the black rebellion and round up American and foreign Jews. After President Lindbergh’s programmed assassination, his Vice-President, Robinson III, becomes Führer of the USA. I admit it must all sound crazy to you, but there are some crazy people running Germany now.”

“I know that Barnet Robinson and Lindbergh are neighbors in New Jersey, near Princeton.”

“Rumors from very high places indicate that Barnet Robinson was instrumental in financing the ‘ransom’ paid to Hauptmann and that Hauptmann killed baby Lindbergh on direct orders from the Abwehr. Robinson helped to finance the ransom because Himmler ordered him to do it.”

“Barnet Robinson’s making no secret of his role in funding the ransom,” I said. “And I still don’t see what the Abwehr stands to gain by having one of its agents murder the baby.”

“As I said, it’s to make Lindbergh toe the line. Have some more schnapps, Mr. Brown. Now, I will give you the ‘pièce de résistance.’”

I finished my schnapps and waited.

“The key to the plot is that the Abwehr and Robinson are searching for a black man to be charged with the kidnapping and murder of the Lindbergh baby to fan the hatred already directed against black people. They also want to avoid the kind of hostility that Germany would face were Hauptmann’s and the Abwehr’s rumored role in the affair to come to light.”

Having escaped from the race war already directed against colored people in the South, I knew that the Klan and its sympathizers would have a field day if Baby Lindbergh’s murderer turned out to be colored.

Schulz-Horn said, “Robinson helped Lindbergh to pay the ransom with US gold dollar certificates, which the Abwehr had amassed to finance the black uprising. Then Roosevelt came along and made it illegal to hold such certificates.” He smiled and continued, “I understand from Stanley that Robinson has paid you a part of your private investigator fees in gold dollar certificates and that you have turned them over to Stanley for safekeeping. I told Stanley to burn them right away. They have all been marked, and you could end up as the perfect scapegoat that the Nazis and their supporters, like Barnet Robinson, have been looking for.”

He smiled, and the full enormity of the trap that I had nearly walked into walloped me in the face like a knockout blow from a bunch of Jack Johnsons reflected in a funhouse mirror. By nailing me, Robinson and the Abwehr would be tossing J. Edgar Hoover and the yellow press the perfect scapegoat: a part-colored jazz musician who consorts with white women and kills the baby of an all-American Aryan hero. Unless Robinson III and his buddies had originally stuffed some gold certificates in the ransom satchel and intended to make Buster the patsy all along.

Schulz-Horn studied my face and put his hand on my shoulder and said, “Well?”

“Colonel, I sure would appreciate hearing how you plan to smuggle Daphne out of Germany,” I said.

“Here it is. Conveniently for us, one of my most trusted Regular Army, Reichswehr, officers is going to get married next week, and our circle of sworn ‘blood brothers’ and jazz lovers is going to throw a bachelor party for him Friday night, in Cologne. You and I are going to play at that party, and Daphne will be our guest. I will accompany you on piano, if you permit . . . ”

“What if Daphne doesn’t want to come along?” I asked.

“My informants at Goering’s residence tell me that she’s having second thoughts about her German adventure. Her fantasies of Nazi life involved a poetic, sensitive Adolf Hitler and not a swine like Goering who brings out the worst in everyone, even in a madman like Hitler. I think that if she cares for you as much as Stanley says, she will leave with you. If she resists, we have other means to bring her to Cologne as an unwilling guest. From Cologne, we can get you both safely into France.”

“I’m with you, Colonel.”

It was past midnight and Friday had already begun. I was excited that I’d have the chance to take Daphne back to France and settle up accounts with her, with Robinson III, and with the Count because I was growing more and more certain that they were in it together.

Schulz-Horn said, “I want you to write out a note asking her to meet you at the Tiergarten Zoo tomorrow at noon in front of the sign to the wild felines’ cages. We will have a car nearby. You will meet her there and reason with her. If she won’t leave with you, we will snatch her then and there and head for Cologne.” He passed me a gold-colored Parker fountain pen, and I wrote down the words that he dictated on a piece of Hotel Adlon notepaper. He took the note from me, put it inside an envelope from the hotel, and stuffed it into the pocket of his trench coat.

“You will snatch her in broad daylight if she resists?” I asked, doubtfully.

He smiled. “Nothing is impossible for the Reichswehr.” Schulz-Horn stood up and put his Tyrolean hat back on. He was of medium height, half a foot shorter than I was. He was a few years older than me. But there was something forceful and athletic in the way he held himself, and he had a natural air of command. He was not a man I would like to tangle with.

“I have a car waiting outside,” he said. “I’ll drop you off at the Universal. Try to get some sleep. Tomorrow . . . ”—he looked at his watch—“today is going to be a very long and busy day for us.”

I reckoned that neither of us would sleep much.

“I’m going to phone somebody to deliver my luggage to where we’re meeting Daphne. I don’t think it’s a good idea to go back to that hotel after we pick her up. I’m sure I’m being watched.”

“Good idea,” he said. “Daphne might not want to go back to stay under that swine Goering’s roof for another second. If she goes with us, she won’t have a chance to go back for her luggage. I’ll have my friends pick up some necessaries for her.”

Back in my hotel room, I packed my suitcases. On the way there, I told Gunther to deliver my suitcases to the friend I had told him about at eleven sharp. The friend was willing to help to arrange Gunther’s visa to America but wanted to look him over first before going to see the American Ambassador Dodd. I gave Gunther two hundred dollars and told him to start packing his own suitcases, in case he had to leave for America at a moment’s notice.

Gunther was excited at having the American money and the chance of escape that I was offering him. I was hoping that Jean’s friend or one of her acquaintances in the American diplomatic community could make Gunther’s dreams come true.

Gunther told me not to worry; he would deliver my luggage to my friend at 11:00 a.m. I told Gunther to knock on my door at 8:00 a.m. to wake me up.

My plans in place, I slept soundly, until Gunther’s insistent knocking on the door woke me up.