Children of Wrath (29 page)

In one glance Willi took in the operation.

Cows were entering by the dozens, getting clubbed, hoisted, and joining their brethren on the conveyor belt. Men in hip-high leather boots made quick slashes with silver blades that opened their throats. Showered in red spray, these men barely had time to finish one slash before the next throat arrived. The floor was ankle-deep in blood. It poured like waterfalls down drainage grates, collected for things such as sausages. Relieved of their agony, the cows shuttled on to teams of men in high rubber gloves, where they were unseamed, stripped of organs, and hustled down to the skinners, who denuded them of hide and fat. Without a second’s pause they were rushed into the slicing machines—the huge, relentless jaws of death—where ribs were crushed and flesh rendered into sides. The place was so noisy you couldn’t hear what was happening two feet away. Things moved so quickly a worker barely had time to focus on anything but his task.

Which was why no one even noticed Willi was there.

“Slaughterhouse, beer hall, bordello, bed,” Willi remembered Gruber telling him. “That’s all there is for these men, Kraus.”

As the cow Willi’d come in with hurtled to its destiny, the gate reopened and allowed not just another one in, but Axel too. Now it was Willi’s turn to face fate. There was no point seeking help. He was going to have to take this guy down as surely as these animals were going. Axel’s manic frenzy had not subsided. If anything, he looked more crazed, jumping around the cow as it received its flying head blow.

By the time it crash-landed, Axel had homed in on Willi and raised his hatchet, unconcerned whether anyone was watching. An image of Freksa sliced in two flashed through Willi’s brain as he tucked his shoulder and rolled, the hatchet landing an inch from his face. His jacket and his pants, he realized, were drenched in blood. But not, thank God, his own.

Plus he’d gotten where he needed to be: behind Axel.

He stood a chance.

Backing up, facing his adversary, Willi lured him with a smirk, his eyes casting about for something to seize the advantage with. When a piercing whistle filled his ears, he could have shouted for joy. At last. Someone must have realized what was happening and sounded an alarm. But no. As he inched back farther, his shoes squeaking with blood, he realized the machinery was all turning off, the workers leaving.

That was no alarm. It was lunch.

The smirk now drew across Axel’s face.

He lifted his ax and charged.

Willi grabbed two big metal hooks stationary on the overhead conveyor belt and leaped, coiling his legs and releasing them full force into Axel’s chest. It knocked him back, and he slipped on the slimy floor, toppling. As Willi jumped to seize the opportunity, his own feet flew out from under him—and they both were down.

As if from the dead, Axel got up first, covered in blood and gore, slowly approaching with his hatchet. Willi looked up at his furious face, readying to make a split-second choice which way to roll. As Axel lunged, though, his feet slid again, and like one of the stunned cows, he collapsed, right atop Willi. In seconds his bloody hands were trying to seize Willi’s throat.

Struggling to repel the grip, Willi managed to keep breathing, but the leviathan arms were implacable. Gradually he grew aware Axel’s eyes were boring into his now—and that they were locked in a struggle with only one conclusion. In another few seconds it would come, Willi knew—unless he could think of something. Axel’s grip was beginning to close Willi’s windpipe.

From the depths of his being, he summoned one last hope.

“Worthless monster,” he forced raspy words past Axel’s fingers. “Cut off my head and put it on a tree, did you?”

What was the only thing Axel had ever feared?

“You’re going to the cellar. And if you cry, I’m gonna carve the skin right off your body and eat you for—”

Axel froze, stunned to hear his long-dead father summoned—and with such precision. In a flash of confusion his grip eased long enough for Willi to get in a swift blow to Axel’s throat, which sent the beast backward, gasping.

Quickly refilling his own desperate lungs, Willi glanced about furiously. Several bloodstained mallets leaned against the wall. He twisted, bolting out from under Axel, and reached with all his might, managing to grab one and push himself off the floor.

Now he and Axel faced each other again, both struggling to regain their breathing. But Willi had the advantage. He carefully wielded the heavy instrument, angling for a strategic blow. Axel warily staggered back, accidentally elbowing one of the control panels and turning the machinery on, ignoring the rise of mechanical clatter as he readied for interception. There’d be just one chance, Willi knew; it’d have to be a deathblow or his own head would end up pulp. Axel’s massive hands were ready, his eyes bulging, black with hate. Axel moved a leg back to brace himself, but his foot stepped into one of the chain loops used for hoisting cows, setting it off automatically. A terrible cry arose from his throat as his massive body flipped upside down and he went hurtling down the conveyor belt, dangling by one leg.

Willi’s throat was still afire. He was unable to fully keep his balance. Stumbling for the control panel, he couldn’t focus on all the tiny switch signals. Which had Axel hit?

“For God’s sake!” Axel reached his gigantic arms out.

He was shuttling straight for the jaws of death.

Desperately Willi searched for the main plug.

Axel wept. “No, Daddy. No!”

Willi found it, yanking with all his might.

And the giant saw ground to a halt.

But not before a hideous shriek preceeded the definitive crunching of ribs.

Twenty-four

Vibrations surged through Willi’s body.

He sat up, pushing back his shoulders, trying to concentrate. But the edges of everything were hazy. Those two men across the table had strange ethereal glows, like beings from another world come to assist him. He couldn’t have been more grateful if they actually had been.

Eberhard and Rollmann, both hydraulic engineers, were poring over maps of the infrastructure beneath Bone Alley, the main lines, sewer lines, holding tanks, storm canals. On the far side of the room Gunther’s voice throbbed with barely subdued enthusiasm as he coordinated plans with the assistant from the
Viehof
Direktor’s office, a gangly brunette named Trudi. Gerd Woerner, of the
Abend Zeitung,
was pacing back and forth taking notes, every so often glancing outside.

Willi glanced outside too.

From the third-floor office of the
Viehof
pump house, in one direction you could see the giant
Entlandungbahnhof,
the complex of disembarkation platforms and inspection ramps where from every corner of Europe livestock arrived hourly by freight car—and on the other, the acres of facilities where they got turned into meat and by-product. Thaer Strasse below was crowded with late-day traffic. Trucks jostling for parking spots. Agents rushing to conclude deals. Everything back to normal, it seemed.

Except Willi. He was still in shock, he knew.

Floating in a strange amniotic-like sac.

Just hours ago, although it felt like months … years … seconds … he’d been rammed by a truck, nearly strangled to death. And witnessed a man sawed in two. Plenty of people would never recover from such a day. He at least had practice. From years at the front he knew the rubbery sensations following such trauma, and how to keep going despite the drag they placed on the soul. How to keep centered on all the other feelings that made the going worth it.

What choice was there? The mission had to be accomplished.

And for that to happen he had to keep pumping as determinedly as those five huge generators below.

“This could be it, then.” Eberhard, who managed the
Viehof
water system, pointed at the area map. Rollmann, a chief engineer from municipal water, seemed to agree. Woerner, the reporter, leaned over to look where Eberhard was pointing.

Willi looked too. Had they finally found the entrance to this thing?

His mind was reeling through time.

*   *   *

Seconds after Axel went through the jaws of death, a white light had flashed through Willi’s eyes. Not divine revelation—but a camera bulb. Woerner of all people, from the
Abend Zeitung
. The one who’d shouted out in front of everyone, “How many more kids have to die, Kraus?” He’d gotten a call about a crazy chase through the
Viehof
and hurried over. Noticed a van and an Opel all smashed up outside. His eyes had grown huge as he took in Willi covered head to toe in blood, and Axel—hanging there. “God Almighty.”

Willi’d had no choice but to try to enlist him. “Nothing’s to stop you from running straight to press with this, Woerner. But you’d be compromising a major case. And there’s more to the story. A lot more, promise. I’ll give you the scoop, only—you’ve got to help me out first.”

“Bribery aside, Willi, for you—sure.”

Willi had Woerner summon Gunther,
schnell
—and bring all the men from Bone Alley. Then Willi’d had Woerner find him a place to wash and a set of fresh clothes.

“You’re the only one I’d do this for, Kraus,” the reporter’d said, standing guard while Willi showered in the slaughterhouse locker room. “Freksa, Horthstaler, any of them over in Homicide, I’d have been out of here so fast with those photos they wouldn’t have seen me leave. You have any idea what they’re worth? Death of the
Kinderfesser
!”

“I keep telling you,” Willi’d gurgled from under the water, sensing it might be wise in the long run to have a journalist record whatever they found down there, “it wasn’t him. Just stick with me, Gerd. This one’s for the history books.”

The reporter’s voice darkened. “I’m almost afraid to know, Willi. Ten years on the beat in Berlin, I never saw such blood.”

Willi watched it swirl down the drain as he scrubbed his hair and ears and between his toes.

Meanwhile, Gunther proved his mettle, leading up a team in getting Slaughterhouse Two sealed off for an alleged “health inspection,” covering up the wrecked vehicles outside, giving a false report about the reasons for the chase through the
Viehof,
and hiding all traces of Axel’s remains. Willi ordered everything possible done to keep a lid on Axel’s death.

He damn well hadn’t wanted it. He’d needed Axel to help him snare Magda and Ilse. Even without the brother, he had a horrible suspicion those sick sisters could keep their operation going. And who was to say others weren’t involved in this mass-murder-for-money scheme? The Köhler siblings might be mere cogs in a wheel. All the more reason they had to be stopped. Fast.

Once these girls heard what happened to Axel, there’d be no finding them.

Their brother had unfortunately shielded his family even in death. Not a single piece of ID on him: no driver’s license, no address. Nothing with the name he’d taken after killing his father. In his pocket just a wad of blood-drenched bills and some keys. His van, of course—no license plates. Even in a city as controlled as Berlin, somehow, for a decade and a half, these three children of wrath had survived under the floorboards.

“Like rats.” Eberhard sighed, running his finger along the map, tugging Willi’s brain back to the attack plans. “Of course they have more than one entrance to the lair.”

Willi stared at the route Eberhard was showing, and then out the window at the
Viehof
. For the moment, there was nothing to do about Ilse, he conceded. In all this time he’d had only one real sighting of her. That tall, red-haired “nurse” with the pockmarked face was slippery as an eel. But Magda he’d seen with his own eyes. She was no eel. If cornered, she might well turn dangerous. But she wasn’t slithering away anywhere fast. Tonight, one way or another, they were grabbing her. Hopefully alive.

*   *   *

It proved a good thing that on their reconnaissance raid the other night Willi’d had Gunther render sketches of the layouts they’d found under Bone Alley. Comparing those now to
Viehof
blueprints and matching both with the municipal water plans, they’d come up with a rough idea of what was going on beneath that little street in the by-products zone. The distinct outlines of a two-level subterranean bunker. A cold sweat broke out on his forehead when Willi understood—the Köhler children had re-created, enlarged, and enhanced the underground dungeon of their childhood.

How to penetrate it as quickly as possible without giving Magda a chance to escape was the task at hand. Besides an apparent hidden driveway, there was at least one other way in and out, they knew—a connection to the city sewer lines—because several substantial burlap sacks full of bones had washed out through them as far as two kilometers away. If they could determine precisely where those sacks had entered the system, they’d have a back door into the Köhlers’ dark realm.

Berlin had nearly ten thousand kilometers of storm-water drainage, completely distinct from its waste disposal. The main storm canals were fed by subcanals, feeder lines, and thousands of individual surface shafts catching runoff from street gutters. In heavy rains, the system often backed up, Eberhard explained. Last October had been a dilly. Beginning on the twenty-fifth of that month, three days of storms had caused tree limbs, tires, and other large debris to accumulate at a bend in
Sturmwasser Kanal Fünf,
as he pointed out on the map, where the canal turned southwest to meet the Spree River. This backed up the entire line all the way from the substation under Frankfurter Allee, where the second set of bags turned up, beneath the construction site where the first bag appeared, right to the feeder lines under the
Central-Viehof
.

“If we look at this map here”—Eberhard opened up a yellowed plan of the area dating from 1852—“we can see that before the
Viehof
was even built, a small brewery occupied the site where Bone Alley is today. It’s highly possible that whoever rebuilt the basements of these buildings also opened the brewery cellar, which has entry ducts twenty-seven to twenty-nine directly on Feeder Line J to
Sturmwasser Kanal Fünf.
Feeder Line J was completely backed up the night of October twenty-eighth and flushed out the following morning.”