Children of Wrath (15 page)

“It’s the missing boys.” The kid’s mascaraed eyes fluttered shut. When they opened, it was evident he’d decided to give this a chance.

Willi’s chest expanded. His hunch had been right.

“That stuff about the Gypsies.” The kid drew his plucked blond eyebrows together, inhaling deeply. “It’s all bullshit. They didn’t do it.”

Now Willi’s heart leaped into a back flip. “Why don’t you sit down and tell me all about it. No rush. Nobody has to know. In fact, let’s have an understanding to keep this strictly
entrez nous,
okay? Between us. What’s your name anyway?”

“Kai.”

“Kai, pleased to meet you. Detektiv Kraus here. Willi Kraus.”

Taking a bench near the Altes Museum, fronted by its eighteen Doric columns, Willi found himself having to ignore the many stares that came their way and his own desire to wipe the lipstick off this boy’s face. He quickly learned that Kai was from a rural village originally and had lived on his own since he was seven. Never been to school a day since. But that didn’t mean he was stupid. Or uneducated. Pals taught him all he needed, reading, writing, arithmetic.

Willi never ceased to be amazed how these children survived.

Nowhere in Europe was it tougher to be a kid than in Germany. In the countryside especially, obedience to
Mutter und Vater
was absolute. Kids were expected to meet the needs of adults and not vice versa, to earn their daily bread through hard work and plenty of it. When times got rough, more than a few were just dumped as excess baggage, pawned off to a friend or relative or a traveling salesman. Sooner or later most made their way to the City You Haven’t Lived Until You’ve Seen. More were on the streets of Berlin every day. In train stations. Hotels. Parks. You felt horrible for them, but what could you do? The government had to take more comprehensive action.

Willi looked around. Overhead, white flowers danced in the linden trees. To their left, the gargantuan dome of the cathedral, with its five generations of Hohenzollerns interred in the crypt, took up half the sky. Straight ahead, the great gilt halls of the Imperial Palace loomed dark and unoccupied. Since the abdication eleven years ago, no one had any idea what to do with it, whether to make it a museum or just blow it up. Willi shuddered, remembering what Fritz had said—that after just this short time with democracy, plenty of Germans wanted nothing more than for the kaiser to move back in.

“All right now, Kai, please tell me … what’s this all about?”

The boy’s mascaraed eyes tightened, then flared up with an explosive light. “For nearly a year now all over Berlin—in Wedding, Pankow, Friedrichshain, Kruezberg—Wild Boys have been disappearing. A pair here, a pair there. Week after week. Month after month. A few days ago gang leaders from all over Berlin finally got together. When they calculated the losses, it came to over forty.”

Willi’s throat clenched so tight it hurt.

“None older than fourteen. Most around eight or nine.”

My God. Erich’s age.

“We’ve gone to the cops till we’re blue in the face.” Kai’s pink lips pursed bitterly. “That Freksa guy especially. But he says the sight of us makes him sick. That Gypsy thing he came up with is pure crap.”

“How do you know?”

“Because”—Kai’s eyes flamed—“since he captured the so-called murderers, four more kids have disappeared.”

Willi’s stomach soured. “Can you give me their names?” he asked, pulling out his notebook. An awful lot of people had begun to mill around the park, he noticed.

Kai shook his head no.

“How about where they disappeared from?”

The kid had no knowledge.

“No one’s seen or heard anything, in all this time?”

Kai shrugged helplessly. “Not that I’m aware of. Only that it’s happened to kids both when they’re alone and in pairs. They take off somewhere and never come back.”

By now it had grown impossible to ignore a rising tide of noise behind them. Thousands of people were suddenly pouring into the Lustgarten, breaking out in song: “Arise, ye workers from your slumbers! Arise, ye prisoners of want!”

Waving red flags, bearing banners—
DOWN WITH THE BRÜNING DICTATORSHIP
—rank after rank of Communists marched in, clenching fists high. Germany had the largest Marxist movement outside Russia, and like the homeless, their numbers were swelling each month of the economic downfall. Vicki’s father ranted about the day they ever came to power, saying the country would be destroyed and the Jews would suffer more than anyone else. But plenty of people, sometimes even Fritz, were convinced it was almost inevitable the red flag would someday fly over the Reichstag.

To avoid being swallowed by this revolutionary mob, Willi and Kai had no choice but to abandon their bench and back off toward the cathedral, where they paused in the afternoon shadows.

“There’s really not much more to say.” The boy shrugged. “I’m just glad someone on the police force finally knows the truth.”

This kid had an affable personality, Willi thought. A good head on his shoulders, under all the makeup. But what sort of future could possibly be in store for him?

“Well, I’m not assigned to the case, as I told you.” Willi handed him a card. “But if you ever get any information at all…”

“Thanks, Detektiv. You know where to find me, I expect.”

Kai’s pink lips broke into a smile as he gave an ironic shrug, causing his earring to dance. “Anyway, I’m going in to have a few words with The Man Upstairs, if they don’t bar me at the door. I really do appreciate your talking to me.” He took a step away, then turned. “Oh, by the way, I doubt this’ll help, but I have heard talk, Sergeant. Sounds kind of crazy, but some kids don’t think a man’s doing it. They say it’s a woman. At the leaders’ meeting I heard stuff about a red-haired lady kids in Neukoln were calling the Shepherdess.”

Willi’s head nearly exploded. Where had he heard that name?

*   *   *

After Kai disappeared, Willi just stood there. Nearly forty? It seemed inconceivable. How could one man could kill so many children?

Or one woman.

Despite the shouts of a thousand Communists he felt very much alone suddenly. As if he needed someone to talk to. A bit of support. He hated disturbing him, but even though it was after six, the deputy president, Willi knew, would probably still be at his desk.

At the Police Presidium he took the main elevator up to the administrative offices. The secretary was gone but he could hear a voice in the doctor’s office. Willi popped his head in and saw Weiss alone, on the phone. Disappointed, he was about to leave when the doctor looked up and emphatically motioned Willi to come in and sit.

“Yes, of course I realize it’s only propaganda.” Weiss’s eyes rolled as he put his hand over the receiver and mouthed to Willi,
My lawyer
. “But I can’t let it go on, Freytag. I’ve got to fight back.”

On Weiss’s desk, Willi noticed a newspaper with stiff, angry letters slashed across the masthead:
DER ANGRIFF!

The Attack.

Beneath it, filling half the front page, a cartoon of a donkey on an ice pond, its four legs comically splayed. The face on the beast had an unmistakable and grotesque likeness to Dr. Weiss’s. An article following was titled “Isidore on Thin Ice.” By Joseph Goebbels.

Willi looked up and saw the anger and hurt glistening behind the doctor’s spectacles, so prominently featured on the beaklike nose of the cartoon. This Goebbels was clearly getting to him, Willi could see. And it made him furious because he worshipped Weiss.

“Twice a week, issue after issue, he uses me for target practice.” Weiss flipped open the paper as if showing it to his lawyer. “He’s called me Isidore so many times people think it’s my real name.”

On the page now open Willi spied a photograph of a man at a podium he was sure he recognized. That scrawny frame leaning into the microphone, those fierce black eyes. It was the same guy in Freksa’s office, the lame one who liked to scream. And that twisted insignia on his armband. The same he’d seen on those brown troops shouting at the Gypsies. The same on Freksa’s lapel.

He tilted his head to read the caption:
Dr. Goebbels addresses a rally of the National Socialist Workers Party
.

So this was Goebbels.

And these were the infamous Nazis, who lived to start street fights with the Communists and blamed all Germany’s troubles on the Jews. It all came together. No wonder they were picking on Weiss, one of the most prominent Jews in Berlin.

“I know the man’s no fool.” The doctor was clearly getting irritated with his lawyer. “He’s got a Ph.D. in philosophy. The philosophy of hell! But I don’t care if I do lose.” He broke a pencil in two. “This time I’m taking the son of a bitch to court.”

Willi squirmed. Obviously this was not the moment to come seeking support.

“Stay, stay,” Weiss said, motioning him.

But Willi whispered he’d just dropped by to say hello and would come again another time, when Herr Deputy President was less engaged.

On the street Willi realized how depressing this was. Not only had Freksa framed six innocent men, but he was part of a racist, reactionary movement scheming to undermine the Berlin police and destroy the republic.

Evening had fallen. Darkness lay ahead. Willi wasn’t sure what to do. Only that it had to be something. He breathed out a sigh of despair, feeling suddenly as if the weight of all Germany, all Europe, had fallen on his shoulders, when in a flash the streetlights blinked on, casting the whole Alex in an incandescent glow. And like lightning in his own brain he remembered where he’d heard that name: the Shepherdess.

Braunschweig.

Unable to penetrate the mystery of the “love cult” and thwarted by the good reverend himself—who never got him into Saturnalia as promised and was drunker every time Willi spoke to him—he’d basically dropped that trail and focused on the peddlers’ market instead. Now he grabbed a cab and told the driver to step on it.

The little chapel on Spandauer Strasse was dark, but a light was on in the rear apartment. When Willi knocked on the door he heard groaning. “Reverend?”

More groaning.

Stepping on a ledge and peering through a grimy window, he saw Braunschweig on the floor, face up with his arms over his head, pants halfway down to his knees. My God. He was drunker than ever, if that was possible. Willi called his name again, and this time Braunschweig pulled up his pants, then collapsed, motionless. After much concerted knocking and calling, he jumped again, crouched to his knees, but couldn’t get his legs firm enough to stand up.

Willi felt like kicking in the door. Somehow he had to get to this guy. He was thinking seriously about breaking the window when miraculously Braunschweig rose, walked over, and opened up the door, inviting Willi in as if nothing were wrong. “Hello there, Detective!” he said merrily, arching his bushy gray eyebrows before falling sideways, right back to the floor.

His limbs were rubber. He couldn’t sit. Even his fingers were too limp to clasp anything. Each time Willi helped him to a chair, Braunschweig slid right back to the floor. Finally Willi just crouched next to him.

“Listen to me, Reverend. What do you know about the Shepherdess?”

“The who?”

“Brigitta’s predecessor. You called her the Shepherdess.”

“Stay and have a drink with me.”

“You told me she brought animals, for rituals.”

“For who?”

“That it was a slaughterhouse over there. This is urgent, Braunschweig. Lives depend on it, for God’s sake.”

“Don’t lecture
me
about God. I’m the one who lectures around here. Our topic today will be, aw … don’t get all insulted, Kraus. Stay, have a drink.” The reverend was holding out his arms from the floor. “Tell me, how come she doesn’t she love me anymore?”

“The Shepherdess, Braunschweig. The Shepherdess.”

But the reverend had passed out. Willi looked around desperately. Filthy dishes. Open tins of food. Bottles, glasses everywhere. Total Depravity. He couldn’t take it.

“Damn it, Reverend—at least tell me how I can find your ex-wife!” he cried at the scarily bloated, red face.

It must have been the magic word because from the depths of his stupor Braunschweig replied, “Dawn, Kraus. Maybe I forgot to say. That’s why you never found her. Go before sunrise, Tuesdays. Fridays. Tell them at the door…”

The reverend teetered on the edge of blackness again, then somehow managed to spit out the strangest words Willi’d ever heard:
“Yasna Haptanghaiti.”

And that was it. Braunschweig was out.

Yasna Haptanghaiti?

Twelve

“Yasna Haptanghaiti,”
he said at the door, praying he’d gotten it right.

“Mazdaznan.”
The mustached man in a red turban held out his hand.

Finally. Willi was in.

That he could remember the tongue-twister was miracle enough. That the Reverend Braunschweig had gotten all this right seemed divine intervention. Four thirty in the morning, pitch-dark, the air crisp and chilly, and people were hurrying up the steps of the art nouveau mansion on Bleibtreu Strasse uttering the same crazy words and darting into the Divine Radiance Mission. Who could have imagined such a witching hour, in the heart of swank Charlottenburg.

Only a handful of candles lit the lobby, emitting a scent that made Willi vaguely nauseous. He gave his eyes a second to adjust. The shelves of crystals and mystical figurines looked familiar. But the last time he’d spied in the window he’d obviously missed that larger-than-life oil portrait on his left. Good grief. There was the High Priestess in all her glory, flying in a chariot along the banks of what was presumably the Nile, based on the Sphinx over her shoulder—a bosomy Teuton with Kewpie-doll lips and platinum hair oiled in marcel waves. The caption over her head blazed
HELGA—SENTINEL OF ANTIQUITY!
She made the Wurst King look modest. And in the corner, mounted on a marble pillar, an enormous bust straight out of a Norse myth: a woman warrior in winged helmet, long braids. A Valkyrie—with Helga’s face.