Garden of Beasts (10 page)

Krauss gave no reaction to the reference to his own ethnic origins. Another look at the corpse. “I will make inquiries about this, Willi. I will have my people make contact with the A-men in the area.”

Kohl said, “I am encouraged by the thought of using National Socialist informants. They’re very good at it. And there are
so
many of them.”

“Indeed.”

Bless him, Janssen too looked impatiently at his watch, grimaced and said, “We’re very late for that meeting, sir.”

“Yes, yes, we are.” Kohl started back up the alley. But he paused and called to Krauss, “One question?”

“Yes, Willi?”

“What kind of hat does Air Minister Göring wear?”

“You are asking… ?” Krauss frowned.

“Göring. What kind of hat?”

“Oh, I have no idea,” he replied, looking momentarily stricken, as if this were knowledge that every good Gestapo officer should be versed in. “Why?”

“No matter.”

“Hail Hitler.”

“Hail.”

As they hurried back to the DKW, Kohl said breathlessly, “Give the film to one of the Schupo officers and have him rush it to headquarters. I want the pictures immediately.”

“Yes, sir.” The young man diverted his course and handed the film to an officer, gave him the instructions, then caught up with Kohl, who called to a Schupo, “When the coroner’s men get here, tell them that I want the autopsy report as soon as possible. I want to know about diseases our friend here might have had. The clap and consumption in particular. And how advanced. And the contents of his stomach. Tattoos, broken bones, surgical scars, as well.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Remember to tell them it’s urgent.”

So busy was the coroner these days that it might take eight or ten hours for the body even to be picked up; the autopsy could take several days.

Kohl winced in pain as he hurried to the DKW; the lamb’s wool in his shoes had shifted. “What’s the fastest route to the Summer Garden? Never mind, we’ll figure it out.” He looked around. “There!” he shouted, pointing to a newsstand. “Go buy every newspaper they have.”

“Yes, sir, but why?”

Willi Kohl dropped into the driver’s seat and pushed the ignition button. His voice was breathless but still managed to convey his impatience. “Because we need a picture of Göring in a hat. Why else?”

Chapter Seven

Standing on the street corner, holding a limp
Berlin Journal,
Paul studied the Summer Garden café: women who drank their coffees with gloved hands, men who would down their beers in large gulps and tap their mustaches with pressed linen napkins to lift away the foam. People enjoying the afternoon sun, smoking.

Paul Schumann remained perfectly still, looking, looking, looking.

Out of kilter…

Just like setting type, plucking the metal letters from a California job case and assembling words and sentences. “Mind your
p
’s and
q
’s,” his father would call constantly—those particular letters easy to confuse because the piece of type was the exact reverse of the printed letter.

He was now looking over the Summer Garden just as carefully. He’d missed the Stormtrooper watching him from the phone booth outside Dresden Alley—an inexcusable mistake for a button man. He wasn’t going to let that happen again.

After a few minutes, he sensed no immediate danger but, he reflected, how could he tell? Maybe the people he was watching were nothing more than they seemed: normal joes eating meals and going about their errands on a hot, lazy Saturday afternoon, with no interest in anyone else on the street.

But maybe they were as suspicious and murderously loyal to the Nazis as the man on the
Manhattan,
Heinsler.

I love the Führer…

He tossed the paper into a bin then crossed the street and entered the restaurant.

“Please,” he said to the captain, “a table for three.”

“Anywhere, anywhere,” the harried man said.

Paul took a table inside. A casual glance around him. No one paid any attention to him.

Or appeared to.

A waiter sailed past. “You wish to order?”

“A beer for now.”

“Which beer?” He started to name brands Paul had never heard of.

He said, “The first. A large.”

The waiter walked toward the bar and returned a moment later with a tall pilsner glass. Paul drank thirstily but found he disliked the taste. It was almost sweet, fruity. He pushed it aside and lit a cigarette, having shaken the Chesterfield out of the pack below the tabletop so no one could see the American label. He glanced up to see Reginald Morgan strolling casually into the restaurant. Looking around, he noticed Paul and walked up to him, saying in German, “My friend, so good to see you again.”

They shook hands and he sat down across the table.

Morgan’s face was damp and he wiped it with his handkerchief. His eyes were troubled. “It was close. The Schupo pulled up just as I got away.”

“Anyone see you?”

“I don’t think so. I left by the far end of the alley.”

“Is it safe to stay here?” Paul asked, looking around. “Should we leave?”

“No. It would be more suspicious at this time of day to arrive at a restaurant then leave quickly without eating. Not like New York. Berliners won’t be rushed when it comes to meals. Offices close down for two hours so people can have a proper lunch. Of course, they also eat two breakfasts.” He patted his stomach. “Now you can see why I was happy to be posted here.” Looking around casually, Morgan said, “Here.” He pushed a thick book toward Paul. “See, I remembered to return it.” The German words on the cover were
Mein Kampf,
which Paul translated as “My Struggle.” Hitler’s name was on it. He’d written a book? Paul wondered.

“Thank you. But there was no hurry.”

Paul stubbed out the cigarette in the ashtray but, when it was cool, slipped it into his pocket, ever careful not to leave traces that might place him somewhere.

Morgan leaned forward, smiling as if whispering a bawdy joke. “Inside the book’s a hundred marks. And the address of the place you’ll be staying, a boardinghouse. It’s near Lützow Plaza, south of the Tiergarten. I wrote down directions too.”

“Is it on the ground floor?”

“The apartment? I don’t know. I didn’t ask. You’re thinking of escape routes?”

Specifically he was thinking of Malone’s binge-nest with its sealed doors and windows and a welcoming party of armed sailors. “That’s right.”

“Well, have a look at it. Maybe you can swap if there’s a problem. The landlady seems agreeable. Her name is Käthe Richter.”

“Is she a Nazi?”

Morgan said softly, “Don’t use that word here. It will give you away. ‘Nazi’ is Bavarian slang for ‘simpleton.’ The proper abbreviation is ‘Nazo,’ but you don’t hear that much either. Say ‘National Socialist.’ Some people use the initials, NSDAP. Or you can refer to the ‘Party.’ And say it reverently…. Regarding Miss Richter, she doesn’t seem to have any sympathies one way or the other.” Nodding at the beer, Morgan asked, “You don’t care for that?”

“Piss water.”

Morgan laughed. “It’s wheat beer. Children drink it. Why did you order it?”

“There were a thousand kinds. I’d never heard of any of them.”

“I’ll order for us.”

When the waiter arrived he said, “Please, bring us two Pschorr ales. And sausage and bread. With cabbage and pickled cucumbers. Butter if you have any today.”

“Yes, sir.” He took away Paul’s glass.

Morgan continued. “In the book there’s also a Russian passport with your picture in it and some rubles, about a hundred dollars’ worth. In an emergency make your way to the Swiss border. The Germans’ll be happy to get another Russian out of their country and they’ll let you pass. They won’t take the rubles because they won’t be allowed to spend them. The Swiss won’t care that you’re a Bolshevik and will be delighted to let you in to spend the money. Go to Zurich and get a message to the U.S. embassy. Gordon will get you out. Now, after Dresden Alley we must be extremely careful. Like I said, something is clearly going on in town. There are far more patrols on the street than usual: Stormtroopers, which is not particularly odd—they have nothing to do with their time but march and patrol—but SS and Gestapo too.”

“They are… ?”

“SS… Did you see the two out on the patio? In the black uniforms?”

“Yes.”

“They were originally Hitler’s guard detail. Now they’re another private army. Mostly they wear black but some of the uniforms are gray. The Gestapo is the secret police force, plainclothes. They’re small in number but very dangerous. Their jurisdiction is political crimes mostly. But in Germany now anything can be a political crime. You spit on the sidewalk, it’s an offense to the honor of the Leader so off you go to Moabit Prison or a concentration camp.”

The Pschorr beers and food arrived and Paul drank down half of the brew at once. It was earthy and rich. “Now, that’s good.”

“You like it? After I got here I realized I could never drink American beer again. To be able to brew beer, it takes years of learning. It’s as respected as a university degree. Berlin is the brewing capital of Europe but they make the best in Munich, down in Bavaria.”

Paul ate hungrily. But beer and food were not the first things on his mind. “We have to move fast,” he whispered. In his profession every hour you were near the site of the touch-off increased the risk of getting caught. “I need information and I need a weapon.”

Morgan nodded. “My contact should be here any minute. He has details about… the man you’re here to visit. Then this afternoon we’ll go to a pawnshop. The owner has a good rifle for you.”

“Rifle?” Paul frowned.

Morgan was troubled. “You can’t shoot a rifle?”

“Yes, I can shoot one. I was infantry. But I always work up close.”

“Close? That’s easier for you?”

“It’s not a question of easy. It’s more efficient.”

“Well, believe me, Paul, it may be possible, though very difficult, to get close enough to your target to kill him with a pistol. But there are so many Brownshirts and SS and Gestapo hovering about that you’d without doubt be caught. And I guarantee that your death would be lengthy and unpleasant. But there’s another reason to use a rifle—he has to be killed in public.”

“Why?” Paul asked.

“The Senator said that everybody in the German government and the Party knows how crucial Ernst is to rearming. It’s important to make certain that whoever replaces him knows they’ll be in danger too if they take up where he left off. If Ernst dies in private, Hitler would cover it up, claim he’d been killed in an accident or died of some illness.”

“Then I’ll do it in public,” Paul said. “With a rifle. But I’ll need to sight-in the gun, get a feel for it, find a good killing field, examine it ahead of time, see what the breezes are like, the light, the routes to and from the place.”

“Of course. You’re the expert. Whatever you want.”

Paul finished his meal. “After what happened in the alley, I need to go to ground. I want to get my things from the Olympic Village and move to the boardinghouse as soon as possible. Is the room ready now?”

Morgan told him that it was.

Paul sipped more beer then pulled Hitler’s book toward him, rested it in his lap, flipped through it, found the passport, money and address. He took out the slip of paper on which was jotted the information on the boardinghouse. Dropping the book in his briefcase, he memorized the address and directions, casually wiped the note in beer spilled on the table and kneaded it in his strong hands until it was a wad of pulp. He slipped this into his pocket with the cigarette butts for later disposal.

Morgan lifted an eyebrow.

They told me you were good.

Paul nodded toward his satchel, whispering, “
My Struggle.
Hitler’s book. What exactly is it?”

“Somebody called it a collection of 160,000 grammatical errors. It’s supposedly Hitler’s philosophy but basically it’s impenetrable nonsense. But you might want to keep it.” Morgan smiled. “Berlin is a city of shortages and at the moment toilet tissue is hard to find.”

A brief laugh. Then Paul asked, “This man we’re about to meet… why can we trust him?”

“In Germany now trust is a curious thing. The risk is so grave and so prevalent that it’s not enough to trust someone just because they believe in your cause. In my contact’s case, his brother was a union organizer murdered by Stormtroopers, so he sympathizes with us. But I am not willing to risk my life on that alone. So I have paid him a great deal of money. There is an expression here: ‘Whose bread I eat is whose song I sing.’ Well, Max eats a great deal of my bread. And he’s in the precarious position of having already sold me some very helpful and, for him, compromising material. This is a perfect example of how trust works here: You must either bribe someone or threaten him, and I prefer to do both simultaneously.”

The door opened and Morgan squinted in recognition. “Ah, that’s he,” he whispered. A thin man in worker’s coveralls entered the restaurant, a small rucksack slung over his shoulder. He looked around, blinking to acclimate his vision to the dimness. Morgan waved his hand and the man joined them. He was clearly nervous, eyes darting from Paul to the other patrons to the waiters to the shadows in the corridors that led to the lavatory and the kitchen, then back to Paul.

“They” is everybody in Germany now….

He sat at the table, first with his back to the door, then switched seats so that he could see the rest of the restaurant.

“Good afternoon,” Morgan said.

“Hail Hitler.”

“Hail,” Paul replied.

“My friend here has asked that he be called Max. He has done work for the man you’ve come to see. Around his house. He delivers goods there and knows the housekeeper and gardener. He lives in the same town, Charlottenburg, west of here.”

Max declined food or beer and had only coffee, into which he poured sugar that left a dusty scum on the surface. He stirred vigorously.

“I need to know everything you can tell me about him,” Paul whispered.

“Yes, yes, I will.” But he fell silent and looked around again. He wore his suspicion like the lotion that plastered down his thinning hair. Paul found the uneasiness irritating, not to mention dangerous. Max opened the rucksack and offered a dark green folder to Paul. Sitting back so no one could see the contents, he opened it and found himself looking at a half dozen wrinkled photographs. They depicted a man in a business suit, which was tailored, the clothing of a meticulous, conscientious man. He was in his fifties and had a round head and short gray or white hair. He wore wire-rimmed glasses.

Paul asked, “These are definitely of him? What about doubles?”

“He doesn’t use doubles.” The man took a sip of coffee with shaking hands and looked around the restaurant again.

Paul finished studying them. He was going to tell Max to keep the photos and destroy them when he got home but the man seemed too nervous and the American imagined him panicking and leaving them on the tram or subway. He slipped the folder into his satchel, next to Hitler’s book; he’d dispose of them later.

“Now,” Paul said, leaning forward, “tell me about him. Everything you know.”

Max relayed what he knew about Reinhard Ernst: The colonel retained the discipline and air of a military man though he’d been out of the service for some years. He would rise early and work long, long hours, six or seven days a week. He exercised regularly and was an expert shot. He often carried a small automatic pistol. His office was on Wilhelm Street, in the Chancellory building, and he drove himself to and from the office, rarely accompanied by a guard. His car was an open-air Mercedes.

Paul was considering what the man had said. “This Chancellory? He’s there every day?”

“Usually, yes. Though sometimes he travels to shipyards or, recently, to Krupp’s works.”

“Who’s Krupp?”

“His companies make munitions and armor.”

“At the Chancellory, where would he park?”

“I don’t know, sir. I’ve never been there.”

“Can you find out where he’ll be in the next few days? When he might go to the office?”

“Yes, I’ll try.” A pause. “I don’t know if…” Max’s voice faded.

“What?” Paul asked.

“I know some things about his personal life too. About his wife, daughter-in-law, his grandson. Do you want to know that side of his life? Or would you rather not?”