Garden of Beasts (18 page)

“Your fault, sir?”

“Ach, the subtleties of our job, Janssen… I wished to give nothing away about our purpose and so I said we wished to see this man about a matter of ‘state security,’ which we say far too readily nowadays. My words suggested that the crime wasn’t the murder of an innocent victim but perhaps an offense against the government—which, of course, was at war with their country less than twenty years ago. Many of those athletes undoubtedly lost relatives, even fathers, to the Kaiser’s army, and might feel a patriotic interest in protecting such a man. And now it is too late to retract what I so carelessly said.”

When they reached the street in front of the village, Janssen turned toward where they had parked the DKW. But Kohl asked, “Where are you going?”

“Aren’t we returning to Berlin?”

“Not yet. We’ve been denied our passenger manifest. But destruction of evidence implies a reason to destroy it, and that reason might logically be found near the point of its loss. So we’ll make some inquiries. We must continue our trail the hard way, by using our poor feet…. Ach, that food smells good, doesn’t it? They’re cooking well for the athletes. I remember when I used to swim daily. Years ago. Why, then I could eat whatever I wanted and never gain a gram. Those days are long behind me, I’m afraid. To the right here, Janssen, to the right.”

Reinhard Ernst dropped his phone into its cradle and closed his eyes. He leaned back in the heavy chair in his Chancellory office. For the first time in several days he felt content—no, he felt joyous. A sense of victory swept through him, as keen as when he and his sixty-seven surviving men successfully defended the northwestern redoubt against three hundred Allied troops near Verdun. That had earned him the Iron Cross, first-class—and an admiring look from Wilhelm II (only the Kaiser’s withered arm had prevented him from pinning the decoration on Ernst’s chest himself)—but this success today, which would be greeted with no public accolades, of course, was far sweeter.

One of the greatest problems he’d faced in rebuilding the German navy was the section in the Versailles treaty that forbade Germany to have submarines and limited the number of warships to six battleships, six light cruisers, twelve destroyers and twelve torpedo boats.

Absurd, of course, even for basic defense.

But last year Ernst had engineered a coup. He and brash Ambassador-at-Large Joachim von Ribbentrop had negotiated the Anglo-German Naval Treaty, which allowed submarine construction and lifted the limitation on Germany’s surface navy to 35 percent of the size of England’s. But the most important part of the pact had never been tested until now. It had been Ernst’s brainstorm to have Ribbentrop negotiate the percentage not in terms of
number
of ships, as had been the measure at Versailles, but in
tonnage.

Germany now had the legal right to build even
more
ships than Britain had, as long as the total tonnage never exceeded the magic 35 percent. Moreover, it had been the goal all along of Ernst and Erich Raeder, commander in chief of the navy, to create lighter, more mobile and deadlier fighting vessels, rather than behemoth battleships that made up the bulk of the British war fleet—ships that were vulnerable to attack by aircraft and submarines.

The only question had been: Would England claim a foul when they reviewed the shipyard construction reports and realized that the German navy would be far bigger than expected?

The caller on the other end of the line, though, a German diplomatic aide in London, had just reported that the British government had reviewed the figures and approved them without a second thought.

What a success this was!

He drafted a note to the Leader to give him the good news and had a runner deliver it in person.

Just as the clock on the wall was striking four, a bald, middle-aged man wearing a brown tweed jacket and ribbed slacks stepped into Ernst’s office. “Colonel, I just—”

Ernst shook his head and touched his lips, silencing Doctor-professor Ludwig Keitel. The colonel spun around and glanced out the window. “What a delightful afternoon it is.”

Keitel frowned; it was one of the hottest days of the year, close to thirty-four degrees, and the wind was filled with grit. But he remained silent, an eyebrow raised.

Ernst pointed toward the door. Keitel nodded and together they stepped into the hallway outside and then left the Chancellory. Turning north on Wilhelm Street they continued to Under the Lindens and turned west, chatting only of the weather, the Olympics, a new American movie that was supposed to open soon. Like the Leader, both men admired the American actress Greta Garbo. Her film
Anna Karenina
had just been approved for release in Germany, despite its Russian setting and questionable morality. Discussing her recent films, they entered the Tiergarten just past the Brandenburg Gate.

Finally, looking around for tails or surveillance, Keitel spoke. “What is this about, Reinhard?”

“There is madness among us, Doctor.” Ernst sighed.

“No, are you making a joke?” asked the professor sardonically.

“Yesterday the Leader asked me for a report on the Waltham Study.”

Keitel took a moment to digest this information. “The Leader? Himself?”

“I was hoping he would forget it. He has been wholly preoccupied with the Olympics. But apparently not.” He showed Keitel Hitler’s note and then related the story of how the Leader had learned of the study. “Thanks to the man of many titles and more kilos.”

“Fat Hermann,” Keitel said loudly, sighing angrily.

“Sssh,” Ernst said. “Speak through flowers.” A common expression nowadays, meaning: Say only good things when mentioning Party officials by name in public.

Keitel shrugged. In a softer voice he continued, “Why should he care about us?”

Ernst had neither the time nor the energy to discuss the machinations of the National Socialist government to a man whose life was essentially academic.

“Well, my friend,” Keitel said, “what are we going to do?”

“I’ve decided that we go on the offensive. We hit back hard. We’ll give him a report—by Monday. A detailed report.”

“Two days?” Keitel scoffed. “We have only raw data and even that’s very limited. Can’t you tell him that in a few months we’ll have better analysis? We could—”

“No, Doctor,” Ernst said, laughing. If one could not speak through flowers, a whisper would do. “One does not tell the Leader to wait a few months. Or a few days or minutes. No, it’s best for us to do this now. A lightning strike. That’s what we must do. Göring will continue his intriguing and may meddle enough so that the Leader digs deeper, doesn’t like what be sees and stops the study altogether. The file he stole was some of Freud’s writings. That’s what he mentioned in the meeting yesterday. I think the phrase was ‘Jew mind-doctor.’ You should have seen the Leader’s face. I thought I was on my way to Oranienburg.”

“Freud was brilliant,” Keitel whispered. “The ideas are important.”

“We can use his
ideas.
And those of the other psychologists. But—”

“Freud is a psycho
analyst.”

Ach, academics, Ernst thought. Worse than politicians. “But we won’t attribute them in our study.”

“That’s intellectually dishonest,” Keitel said sullenly. “Moral integrity is important.”

“Under these circumstances, no, it’s not” was Ernst’s firm response. “We’re not going to publish the work in some university journal. That’s not what this is about.”

“Fine, fine,” Keitel said impatiently. “That still doesn’t address my concern. Not enough data.”

“I know. I’ve decided we must find more volunteers. A dozen. It will be the biggest group yet—to impress the Leader and make him ignore Göring.”

The doctor-professor scoffed. “We won’t have time. By Monday morning? No, no, we can’t.”

“Yes, we can. We have to. Our work is too important to lose in this skir mish. We’ll have another session at the college tomorrow afternoon. I’ll write up our magnificent vision of the new German army for the Leader. In my best diplomatic prose. I know the right turn of phrase.” He looked around. Another whisper: “We’ll cut the air minister’s fat legs out from underneath him.”

“I suppose we can try,” Keitel said uncertainly.

“No, we
will
do it,” Ernst said. “There is no such thing as ‘trying.’ Either one succeeds or one does not.” He realized he was sounding like an officer lecturing a subordinate. He smiled wistfully and added, “I’m no happier about it than you, Ludwig. This weekend I had hoped to relax. Spend some time with my grandson. We were going to carve a boat together. But there’ll be time for recreation later.” The colonel added, “After we’re dead.”

Keitel said nothing but Ernst felt the doctor-professor’s head turn uncertainly toward him.

“I am joking, my friend,” the colonel said. “I am joking. Now, let me tell you some marvelous news about our new navy.”

Chapter Thirteen

The greened bronze of Hitler, standing tall above fallen but noble troops, in November 1923 Square, was impressive but it was located in a neighborhood very different from the others Paul Schumann had seen in Berlin. Papers blew in the dusty wind and there was a sour smell of garbage in the air. Hawkers sold cheap merchandise and fruit, and an artist at a rickety cart would draw your portrait for a few pfennigs. Aging unlicensed prostitutes and young pimps lounged in doorways. Men missing limbs and rigged with bizarre leather and metal prosthetic braces limped or wheeled up and down the sidewalks, begging. One had a sign pinned to his chest:
I gave my legs for my country. What can you give me?

It was as if he’d stepped through the curtain behind which Hitler had swept all the trash and undesirables of Berlin.

Paul walked through a rusty iron gate and sat facing the statue of Hitler on one of the benches, a half dozen of which were occupied.

He noticed a bronze plaque and read it, learning that the monument was dedicated to the Beer Hall Putsch, in the fall of 1923, when, according to the turgid prose set in metal, the noble visionaries of National Socialism heroically took on the corrupt Weimar state and tried to wrest the country out of the hands of the stabbers-in-the-back (the German language, Paul knew, was very keen on combining as many words as possible into one).

He soon grew bored with the lengthy, breathless accolades for Hitler and Göring and sat back, wiped his face. The sun was lowering but it was still bright and mercilessly hot. He’d been sitting for only a minute or two when Reggie Morgan crossed the street, stepped through the gate and joined Paul.

“You found the place all right, I see.” Again speaking his flawless German. He laughed, nodding at the statue, and lowered his voice. “Glorious, hmm? The truth is a bunch of drunks tried to take over Munich and got swatted like flies. At the first gunshot Hitler dove to the ground and he only survived because he pulled a body of a ‘comrade’ on top of him.” Then he looked Paul over. “You look different. Your hair. Clothes.” Then he focused on the sticking plaster. “What happened to you?”

He explained about the fight with the Stormtroopers.

Morgan frowned. “Was it about Dresden Alley? Were they looking for you?”

“No. They were beating these people who ran a bookshop. I didn’t want to get involved but I couldn’t let them die. I’ve changed clothes. My hair too. But I’ll need to steer clear of Brownshirts.”

Morgan nodded. “I don’t think there’s a huge danger. They won’t go to the SS or Gestapo about the matter—they prefer to mete out revenge by themselves. But the ones you tangled with will stay close to Rosenthaler Street. They never go far afield. You’re not hurt otherwise? Your shooting hand is all right?”

“Yes, it’s fine.”

“Good. But be careful, Paul. They’d have shot you for that. No questions asked, no arrest. They’d have executed you on the spot.”

Paul lowered his voice. “What did your contact at the information ministry find about Ernst?”

Morgan frowned. “Something odd is going on. He said there are hushed meetings all over Wilhelm Street. Usually it’s half deserted on a Saturday but the SS and SD are everywhere. He’s going to need more time. We’re to call him in an hour or so.” He looked at his watch. “But for now, our man with the rifle is up the street. He closed his shop today because we are coming in. But he lives nearby. He’s waiting for us. I’ll call him now.” He rose and looked around. Of the divey bars and restaurants here, only one, the Edelweiss Café, advertised a public telephone.

“I’ll be back in a moment.”

As Morgan crossed the street, Paul’s eyes followed him and he saw one of the disabled veterans ease close to the patio of the restaurant, begging for a handout. A burly waiter stepped to the railing and shooed him away.

A middle-aged man, who’d been sitting several benches away, rose and sat next to Paul. He offered a grimace, which revealed dusky teeth, and grumbled, “Did you see that? A crime how some people treat heroes.”

“Yes, it is.” What should he do? Paul wondered. It might be more suspicious to stand up and leave. He hoped the man would fall silent.

But the German eyed him closely and continued. “You’re of an age. You fought.”

This was not a question and Paul assumed it would have taken extraordinary circumstances for a German in his twenties to have avoided combat during the War.

“Yes, of course.” His mind was racing.

“At which battle did you get that?” A nod toward the scar on Paul’s chin.

That
battle had involved no military action whatsoever; the enemy had been a sadistic button man named Morris Starble, who inflicted the scar with a knife in the Hell’s Kitchen tavern behind which Starble died five minutes later.

The man looked at him expectantly. Paul had to say something so he mentioned a battle he was intimately familiar with: “St. Mihiel.” For four days in September of 1918 Paul and his fellow soldiers in the First Infantry Division, IV Corps, slogged through driving rain and soupy mud to assault eight-foot-deep German trenches protected by wire obstacles and machine-gun nests.

“Yes, yes! I was there!” The beaming man shook Paul’s hand warmly. “What a coincidence this is! My Comrade!”

Good choice, Paul thought bitterly. What were the odds that this would happen? But he tried to look pleasantly surprised at this happenstance. The German continued to his brother-in-arms: “So you were part of Detachment C! That rain! I have never seen so much rain before or since. Where were you?”

“At the west face of the salient.”

“I faced the Second French Colonial Corps.”

“We had the Americans against us,” Paul said, searching fast through two-decade-old memories.

“Ah, Colonel George Patton! What a mad and brilliant man he was. He would send troops racing all over the battlefield. And his tanks! They would suddenly appear as if by magic. We never knew where he was going to strike next. No infantryman ever troubled me. But tanks…” He shook his head, grimacing.

“Yes, that was quite a battle.”

“If that’s your only wound you were lucky.”

“God was looking out for me, that’s true.” Paul asked, “And you were wounded?”

“A bit of shrapnel in my calf. I carry it to this day. I show my nephew the wound. It is shaped like an hourglass. He touches the shiny scar and laughs with delight. Ah, what a time that was.” He sipped from a flask. “Many people lost friends at St. Mihiel. I did not. Mine had all died before then.” He fell silent and offered the flask to Paul, who shook his head.

Morgan stepped out of the café and gestured.

“I must go,” Paul said to the man. “A pleasure meeting a fellow veteran and sharing these words.”

“Yes.”

“Good day, sir. Hail Hitler.”

“Ach, yes. Hail Hitler.”

Paul joined Morgan, who said, “He can meet us now.”

“You didn’t tell him anything about why I need the gun?”

“No, not the truth, at least. He thinks you’re German and you want it to kill a crime boss in Frankfurt who cheated you.”

The two men continued up the street for six or seven blocks, the neighborhood growing even shabbier, until they came to a pawnbroker’s shop. Musical instruments, suitcases, razors, jewelry, dolls, hundreds of other items filled the grimy, iron-barred windows. A “Closed” sign was on the door. They waited only a few minutes in the vestibule before a short, balding man showed up. He nodded to Morgan, ignored Paul, looked around then let them inside. He glanced back, closed and locked the door, then pulled the shade.

They walked farther into the musty, dust-filled shop. “Come this way.” The shopkeeper led them through two thick doors, which he closed and bolted, then down a long stairway into a damp basement, lit only by two small yellow bulbs. When his eyes grew accustomed to the dim light Paul noted that there were two dozen rifles in racks against the wall.

He handed Paul a rifle with a telescopic sight on it. “It’s a Mauser Karabiner. A 7.92-millimeter. This one breaks down easily so you can carry it in a suitcase. Look at the scope. The best optics in the world.”

The man clicked a switch and lights illuminated a tunnel, perhaps one hundred feet long, at the end of which were sandbags and, pinned to one, a paper target.

“This is completely soundproofed. It is a supply tunnel that was dug through the ground years ago.”

Paul took the rifle in his hands. Felt the smooth wood of the sanded and varnished stock. Smelled the aroma of oil and creosote and the leather of the sling. He rarely used rifles in his job and the combination of sweet scents and solid wood and metal took him back in time. He could smell the mud of the trenches, the shit, kerosene fumes. And the stink of death, like wet, rotting cardboard.

“These are special bullets too, which are hollowed out at the tip, as you can see. They are more likely to cause death than standard cartridges.”

Paul dry-fired the gun several times to get a feel for the trigger. He pressed bullets into the magazine then sat down at a bench, resting the rifle on a block of wood covered with cloth. He began to fire. The report was earsplitting but he hardly noticed. Paul just stared through the scope, concentrating on the black dots of the target. He made a few adjustments to the scope and then slowly fired the remaining twenty rounds in the box of ammunition.

“Good,” he said, shouting because his hearing was numb. “A good weapon.” Nodding, he handed the rifle back to the pawnbroker, who took it apart, cleaned it and packed the gun and ammunition into a battered fiber-board suitcase.

Morgan took the case and handed an envelope to the shopkeeper, who shut the lights out in the range and led them upstairs. A look out the door, a nod that all was clear and soon they were outside again, strolling down the street. Paul heard a metallic voice filling the street. He laughed. “You can’t escape it.” Across the street, at a tram stop, was a speaker, from which a man’s voice droned on and on—yet more information about public health. “Don’t they ever stop?”

“No, they don’t,” Morgan said. “When we look back, that will be the National Socialist contribution to culture: ugly buildings, bad bronze sculpture and endless speeches….” He nodded at the suitcase holding the Mauser. “Now let’s go back to the square and call my contact. See if he’s found enough information to let you put this fine piece of German machinery to use.”

The dusty DKW turned onto November 1923 Square and, unable to find a place to park on the hectic street, narrowly avoided a vendor selling questionable fruit as it drove halfway over the curb.

“Ach, here we are, Janssen,” Willi Kohl said, wiping his face. “Your pistol is convenient.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Then let’s go hunting.”

They climbed out.

The purpose of the inspector’s diversion after they left the U.S. dormitory was to interview the taxi drivers stationed outside the Olympic Village. With typical National Socialist foresight, only cabdrivers who were multilingual were allowed to serve the village, which meant both that there was a limited number of them and that they would return to the village after dropping off fares. This, in turn, Kohl reasoned, meant that one of them might have driven their suspect somewhere.

After dividing the taxis up between them, and speaking to two dozen drivers, Janssen found one who’d had a story that did indeed interest Kohl. The fare had left the Olympics not long before with a suitcase and an old brown satchel. He was a burly man with a faint accent. His hair did not seem on the long side or to have a red tint but it was slicked straight back and dark, though that, Kohl reasoned, might have been due to oil or lotion. He said he had been wearing not a suit but light-colored casual clothing, though the driver couldn’t describe it in detail.

The man had got out at Lützow Plaza and vanished into the crowds. This was one of the busiest, most congested intersections in the city; there were few hopes of picking up the suspect’s trail there. However, the cabdriver added that the man had asked directions to November 1923 Square and wondered if he could walk to it from Lützow Plaza.

“Did he ask anything more about the square? Anything specific? His business? Comrades he was hoping to meet? Anything?”

“No, Inspector. Nothing. I told him that it would be a long, long hike to the square. And he thanked me and got out. That was all. I was not looking at his face,” he explained. “Only at the road.”

Blindness, of course, Kohl had thought sourly.

They had returned to headquarters and picked up printed handbills of the Dresden Alley victim. They then had raced here, to the monument in honor of the failed putsch in 1923 (only the National Socialists could turn such an embarrassing defeat into an unqualified victory). While Lützow Plaza was too large to search effectively, this was a far smaller square and could be more easily canvassed.

Kohl now looked over the people here: beggars, vendors, hookers, shoppers, unemployed men and women in small cafés. He inhaled the air, pungent, ripe with the scent of trash, and asked, “Do you sense our quarry nearby, Janssen?”

“I…” The assistant seemed uncomfortable with this comment.

“It’s a feeling,” Kohl said, scanning the street as he stood in the shadow of a courageous, defiant bronze Hitler. “I myself don’t believe in the occult. Do you?”

“Not really, sir. I’m not religious, if that’s what you mean.”

“Well, I haven’t given up on religion completely. Heidi would not approve. But what I’m speaking of is the
illusion
of the spiritual based on our perceptions and experience. And I have such a feeling now. He’s near.”

“Yes, sir,” the inspector candidate said. “Why do you think so?”

An appropriate query, Kohl thought. He believed young detectives should always question their mentors. He explained: because this neighborhood was part of Berlin North. Here you could find large numbers of War wounded and poor and unemployed and closet Communists and Socis and anti-Party Edelweiss Pirate gangs, petty thieves and supporters of labor who’d gone to ground after the unions were outlawed. It was populated by those Germans who sorely missed the early days: not Weimar, of course (
no
one liked the Republic), but the glory of Prussia, of Bismarck, of Wilhelm, of the Second Empire. Which meant few members of the Party and its sympathizers. Few denouncers, therefore, ready to run squealing to the Gestapo or the local Stormtrooper garrison.