Field Gray (11 page)

I washed my arm and put my clothes back on and took the two guns back to the Seventh Street Precinct Station on Bülowplatz. Back in the detectives’ room, Heller hailed my arrival with a verbal pat on the back.

“Well done, Gunther,” he said.

“Thanks, sir.”

Meanwhile, other cops were already gathering boxes of photo files to take over to the State Hospital for Sergeant Willig to look at when he came out of surgery. And after a while, I said, “You know, that’s going to take a while. I mean, before he’s conscious again. By then the killers will be out of the city. Maybe on their way to Moscow.”

“Got a better idea?”

“I might. Look, sir, instead of showing Sergeant Willig a picture of every Red who’s ever been arrested in this city, let’s just pull a few.”

“Like who? There are hundreds of these bastards.”

“The chances are the attack was probably orchestrated from K.L. House,” I said. “So how about we pull the records of just seventy-six Reds? Because that’s how many Reds were arrested when we raided K.L. last January. Let’s stick to those faces for now.”

“Yes, you’re right,” agreed Heller. He snatched up the telephone. “Get me the State Hospital.” He pointed at another detective. “Get onto IA. Find out who was on that raid. And tell the records boys in ED to find the arrest files and to meet us at the hospital.”

Twenty minutes later we were on our way to the State Hospital in Friedrichshain.

They were just wheeling Willig into the operating theater when we arrived bearing the K.L. House arrest files. The wounded man had already received an injection, but in spite of the opposition of the doctors, who were anxious to operate as quickly as possible, Willig understood immediately the urgency of what was being asked of him. And it took the sergeant no time at all to pick out one of his attackers.

“Him, for sure,” he croaked. “That one pulled the trigger on Captain Anlauf, for sure.”

“Erich Ziemer,” said Heller, and handed me the charge sheet.

“The other one was about the same age and build and coloring as this bastard. They might even have been brothers, they looked so alike. But he’s not here. I’m certain of it.”

“All right,” said Heller. He spoke some words of encouragement to the sergeant before his doctors took the patient away.

“I recognize this man Ziemer,” I said. “Back in May, I saw Ziemer in a car with three other men. They were outside K.L. House, and according to Sergeant Adolf Bauer, who was on patrol in Bülowplatz, one of those others was Heinz Neumann.”

“The Reichstag deputy?”

I nodded.

“And the other two?”

“One of them I don’t know. Perhaps Bauer will remember it.”

“Yes, perhaps.”

He paused expectantly. “And the Red that you do know?”

I told him about the day I had saved the life of Erich Mielke from a troop of SA intent on killing him.

“He was the fourth man in that car. And it’s true what Sergeant Willig says. He looks a lot like Erich Ziemer.”

“So. You believe that we’re looking for two Erichs, yes?”

I nodded again.

“Gunther? I’d hate to be known around the Alex as the man who saved the life of a cop killer.”

“I hadn’t really thought about that, sir.”

“Then perhaps you should. And from this moment on, my advice to you is this: that you make no further mention of exactly how you came to be acquainted with this Erich Mielke until he is safely in custody. Especially now. This is the kind of story the Nazis love to use to beat those of us in the police force who still count ourselves as democrats, is it not?”

“Yes, sir.”

We drove west and north of the Ring to Biesenthaler Strasse, which was the address on Erich Ziemer’s charge sheet. It was a dreary-looking building off Christiana Strasse and within snorting distance of the Löwen Brewery and the distinctive smell of hops that was always in the air over that part of Berlin.

Ziemer had rented a big gloomy room in a big gloomy house that was owned by an old man with a face like the Turin Shroud. He was unhappy to be roused from his bed at such an early hour, but hardly surprised that we were asking questions about his tenant, who was not in his room and, it seemed, was unlikely to be returning to it; but we asked to see the room anyway.

Up against the window was a dilapidated leather sofa that was the size and color of a slumbering hippo. On the dampish wall was a print of Alexander von Humboldt with a botanical specimen on an open book. The landlord, Herr Karpf, scratched his beard and shrugged and told us that Ziemer had disappeared like fog the previous day owing three weeks’ rent—taking his belongings, not to mention a silver and ivory tankard worth several hundred marks. It was difficult to imagine Herr Karpf owning anything valuable, but we promised to do our best to recover it.

There was a police call box on Oskar Platz, near the hospital, and from there we telephoned the Alex, where another officer had been looking for a crime sheet and an address for Erich Mielke, but so far without success.

“That’s that, then,” said Heller.

“No,” I said. “There’s one more chance. Drive south, to the Electricity Works on Volta Strasse.”

Heller’s car was a neat little cream-colored DKW cabriolet with a small two-cylinder, six-hundred-cc engine, but it had front-wheel drive and held on to the corners like a welded bracket, so we were there in no time at all. On Brunnen Strasse, opposite Volta Strasse, I told him to turn left on Lortzing Strasse and pull up.

“Give me ten minutes,” I said, and, stepping over the DKW’s little door, I walked quickly in the direction of a lofty-looking apartment building that was all red and yellow brick with window-box balconies and a mansard roof that resembled a small Moroccan fortress.

Elisabeth’s shapeless landlady, Frau Bayer, was only a little surprised to see me at this early hour, as I had got into the habit of visiting the dressmaker whenever I came off duty. She knew I was a policeman, which was normally enough to silence her grumbling at being got out of bed. Most Berliners were always respectful of the law, except when they were communists or Nazis. And when it wasn’t enough to silence her grumbling, I slipped a few marks into her dressing-gown pocket by way of compensation.

The apartment was a warren of shabby rooms full of old cherrywood furniture, Chinese screens, and tasseled lampshades. As always, I waited in the living room for Frau Bayer to fetch her lodger; and as always when she saw me, Elisabeth smiled a sleepy but happy smile and took me by the hand to lead me to her room, where a proper welcome awaited me; only this time I stayed put on the living room sofa.

“What’s the matter?” she said. “Is something wrong?”

“It’s Erich,” I said. “He’s in trouble.”

“What kind of trouble?”

“Serious trouble. Two policemen were shot and killed last night.”

“And you think Erich might have something to do with it?”

“It looks that way.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes. Look, Elisabeth, I don’t have much time. His best chance is if I find him before anyone else does. I can tell him what to say and, more importantly, what not to say. Do you see?”

She nodded and tried to stifle a yawn.

“So what do you want from me?”

“An address.”

“You mean you want me to betray him, don’t you?”

“That’s one way of looking at it, yes. I can’t deny that. But another way is this: that perhaps I can persuade him to make a clean breast of it. Which is the only thing that can save his life now.”

“They wouldn’t behead him, would they?”

“For killing a policeman? Yes, I think they would. One of the cops who was killed was a widower with three daughters who are now orphaned. The Republic would have no choice but to make an example of him, or else risk courting a storm of criticism in the newspapers. The Nazis would just love that. But if I am the arresting officer, I might be able to talk him into naming some names. If others in the KPD put him up to it, then he has to say so. He’s young and impressionable, and that will help his case.”

She pulled a face. “Don’t ask me to turn him in, Bernie. I’ve known that boy for half his life. I helped bring him up.”

“I am asking it. I give you my word I will do what I said and that I will speak up for him in court. All I’m asking for is an address, Elisabeth.”

She sat down in a chair and clasped her hands tightly and closed her eyes, almost as if she were uttering a silent prayer. Perhaps she was.

“I knew something like this would happen,” she said. “That’s why I’ve never ever told him that you and I have been seeing each other. Because he would have been cross. And I’m beginning to understand why.”

“I won’t tell him that it was you who gave me an address, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

“That’s not what I’m worried about,” she whispered.

“What, then?”

She stood up abruptly. “I’m worried about Erich, of course,” she said loudly. “I’m worried about what’s going to happen to him.”

I nodded. “Look, forget it. We’ll have to find him some other way. Sorry I bothered you.”

“He lives with his father, Emil,” she said dully. “Stettiner Strasse, number twenty-five. The top flat.”

“Thanks.”

I waited for her to say something else, and when she didn’t I knelt down in front of her and tried to take her hand to give it a comforting squeeze, but she pulled it away. At the same time, she avoided my eye as if it had been hanging out of its socket.

“Just go,” she said. “Go and do your duty.”

It was almost dawn on the street outside Elisabeth’s apartment building, but I felt that something important had happened between us: that something had changed, perhaps forever. I stepped into Heller’s car and told him the address. From my expression I guess he knew better than to ask how I had come by it.

We sped north up Swinemünder Strasse onto Bellermann Strasse and then Christiana Strasse. Twenty-five Stettiner Strasse was a gray tenement building around a central courtyard that would have probably collapsed in on itself but for several large support timbers. Although it could just as easily have been moss or mold, a green rug was hanging out of an open window on one of the upper floors, and it was the only spot of color in that ghastly sarcophagus of raw brick and loose cobblestones. Even though this was fast becoming a bright summer’s morning, no sun ever reached the lower levels of the tenements on Stettiner Strasse: Nosferatu could have spent the whole day quite comfortably in the twilight world of a ground-floor Stettiner Strasse apartment.

We pulled on a bell for several minutes before a gray-haired head appeared out of a dirty window.

“Yes?”

“Police,” said Heller. “Open up.”

“What’s the matter?”

“As if you don’t know,” I said. “Open up, or we’ll kick the door in.”

“All right.”

The head disappeared, and a minute or so later we heard the door open and we ran upstairs as if we actually believed there was a chance we might still apprehend Erich Mielke. In truth, neither of us thought there was much hope of that happening. Not in Gesundbrunnen. It was the kind of area where children were taught how to stay one step ahead of the cops before they learned long division.

At the top of the stairs, a man wearing trousers and a pajama jacket admitted us to a little flat that was a shrine to the class struggle. Every wall was hung with KPD posters, notices of strikes and demonstrations, and cheap portraits of Rosa Luxemburg, Karl Liebknecht, Marx, and Lenin. Unlike any of them, the man standing in front of us at least looked like a worker. He was around fifty, stocky and short, with a bull neck, a receding hairline, and an advancing waist. He stared at us suspiciously with small, close-set eyes that were like diacritical marks inside a naught. Short of wearing a towel and a silk dressing gown, he couldn’t have looked any more rough and pugnacious.

“So what does the Berlin polenta want with me?”

“We’re looking for a Herr Erich Mielke,” said Heller. His punctiliousness was typical. You didn’t get to be a counselor in the Berlin police without paying attention to detail, especially when you were also a Jew. That was probably the ex-lawyer in him. That was the part of Heller I didn’t care for—the punctilious lawyer. The stocky little man in the pajama jacket didn’t seem to like it either.

“He’s not here,” he said, barely concealing a smirk of pleasure.

“And who are you?”

“His father.”

“When did you last see your son?”

“A few days ago. So what’s he supposed to have done? Hit a policeman?”

“No,” said Heller. “On this occasion, it seems that he’s shot and killed at least one.”

“That’s too bad.” But the man’s tone seemed to suggest he didn’t think that it was too bad at all.

By now the resemblance between father and son was all too obvious to me, and I turned and walked into the kitchen just in case the temptation to hit him grew too strong for me.

“You won’t find him in there, either.”

I put my hand on the gas ring. It was still warm. A pile of half-smoked cigarettes lay in an ashtray as if put there by someone who was feeling nervous about something. No one in Gesundbrunnen would have wasted tobacco like that. I pictured a man sitting in a chair by the window. A man who’d been trying to occupy his mind with a book, perhaps, while he waited for a car to come and take him and Ziemer to a KPD safe house. I picked up the book that lay on the kitchen table. It was
All Quiet on the Western Front
.

“Do you know where your son might be now?” asked Heller.

“I haven’t a clue. Frankly, he could be anywhere. Never tells me anything about where he’s been or where he’s going. Well, you know what young men are like.”

I came back into the room and stood behind him. “You KPD?”

He looked over his shoulder and smiled. “It’s not illegal, is it? Yet?”

“Perhaps you were in Bülowplatz yourself last night.” While I spoke, I turned the pages of the book.

He shook his head. “Me? No. I was here all night.”

“Are you sure? After all, there were several hundred of your comrades there, including your son. Maybe as many as a thousand. Surely you wouldn’t have missed something as fun-packed as that?”