Garden of Beasts (14 page)

“Of course not,” Paul said, exasperated.

Webber sighed loudly, genuinely disappointed. “I follow American crime. Many of us do, here in Germany. We are always reading crime shockers—novels, you understand? Many are set in America. I followed with great interest the fate of John Dillinger. He was betrayed by a woman in a red dress and shot down in an alley after they’d been to the cinema. I think it was good he saw the film
before
they killed him. He died with that small pleasure within him. Though it would have been better yet had he seen the film, gotten drunk, bedded the woman and
then
been shot. That would have been a perfect death. Yes, I think that, despite what you say, you are a real mobster, Mr. John Dillinger. Liesl! Beautiful Liesl! More beer here! My friend is buying two more.”

Webber’s stein was empty; Paul’s was three-quarters full. He called to Liesl, “No, not for me. For him only.”

As she disappeared toward the bar she tossed Paul another adoring look, the brightness in her eyes, the slim figure reminding him of Marion. He wondered how she was, what she was doing at the moment, which would be six or seven hours earlier in America. Call me, she’d said in their last conversation, thinking he was bound for Detroit on business. Paul had learned you could actually place a telephone call across the Atlantic Ocean but it cost almost $50 a minute. Besides, no competent button man would think of leaving such evidence of his whereabouts.

He looked over the Nazis in the audience: some SS or soldiers in their immaculate black or gray uniforms, some businessmen. Most were tipsy, some were well into their afternoon drunks. All smiled gamely but seemed bored as they watched a very unsexy sex show.

When the waitress arrived she did indeed have two beers. She set one in front of Webber, whom she otherwise ignored, and said to Paul, “You may pay for your friend’s but yours is a present from me.” She took his hand and placed it around the handle of the stein. “Twenty-five pfennigs.”

“Thank you,” he said, reflecting that the extra marks from the fiver would probably have bought him a keg. He gave her a mark this time.

She shivered with pleasure, as if he’d slipped her a diamond ring. Liesl kissed his forehead. “Please enjoy.” And headed off again.

“Ach, you got the familiar discount. Me, I have to pay fifty. Of course, most foreigners pay a mark seventy-five.”

Webber drained a third of the stein. He wiped the residue from his mustache with the back of his arm and pulled out a pack of cigars. “These are vile but I rather like them.” He offered the pack to Paul, who shook his head. “They are cabbage leaves soaked in tobacco water and nicotine. It’s hard now to find real cigars.”

“What line are you in?” Paul asked. “Aside from being a wine importer.”

Webber laughed and squinted a coy gaze at Paul. He worked to inhale the acrid smoke and then said thoughtfully, “Many different things. Much of what I do is to acquire and sell hard-to-find items. Military goods are in demand lately. Not weapons, of course. But insignias, canteens, belts, boots, uniforms. Everyone here loves uniforms. When husbands are at work, their women go out and buy them uniforms, even if they have no rank or any affiliation. Children wear them. Infants! Medals, bars, ribbons, epaulets, collar tabs. And I sell them to the government for our real soldiers too. We have conscription again. Our army is swelling. They need uniforms, and cloth is hard to come by. I have people from whom I acquire uniforms and then I alter them somewhat and sell them to the army.”

“You steal them from one government source and sell them back to another.”

“Ach, Mr. John Dillinger, you are very funny.” He looked across the room. “One moment… Hans, come here. Hans!”

A man dressed in a tuxedo appeared. He looked suspiciously at Paul but Webber assured him that they were friends and then said, “I have come into possession of some butter. Would you like it?”

“How much?”

“How much butter or how much the price?”

“Both, naturally.”

“Ten kilos. Seventy-five marks.”

“If it’s like last time, you mean you have
six
kilos of butter mixed with four kilos of coal oil, lard, water and yellow dye. That is too much to pay for six kilos of butter.”

“Then trade me two cases of French champagne.”

“One case.”

“Ten kilos for one case?” Webber looked indignant.

“Six kilos, as I explained.”

“Eighteen bottles.”

With a dismissing shrug the maître d’ said, “Add more dye and I’ll agree. A dozen patrons refused to eat your white butter last month. And who could blame them?”

After he had left, Paul finished his beer and shook a Chesterfield out of the pack, once again keeping it below the level of the table so that no one could see the American brand. It took him four tries to light the cigarette; the cheap matches the club provided kept breaking.

Webber nodded at them. “I didn’t supply those, my friend. Don’t blame me.”

Paul inhaled long on the Chesterfield and then asked, “Why did you help me, Otto?”

“Because, of course, you were in need.”

“You do good deeds, do you?” Paul raised an eyebrow.

Webber stroked his mustache. “All right, let us be honest: In these days one must look much harder for opportunities than in the past.”

“And I’m an opportunity.”

“Who can say, Mr. John Dillinger? Perhaps no, perhaps yes. If no, then I’ve wasted nothing but an hour drinking beer with a new friend and that is no waste at all. If yes, then perhaps we can both profit.” He rose, walked to the window and looked out past a thick curtain. “I think it is safe for you to leave…. Whatever you are doing in our vibrant city, I may be just the man for you. I know many people here, people in important places—no, not the men at the top. I mean the people it is best to know for those in our line of work.”

“What people?”

“The
little
people, well placed. Did you hear the joke about the town in Bavaria that replaced its weathervane with a civil servant? Why? Because civil servants know better than anyone which way the wind is blowing. Ha!” He laughed hard. Then his face grew solemn again and he finished the stein of beer. “In truth, I’m dying here. Dying of boredom. I miss the old days. So, leave a message or come see me. I’m usually here. In this room or at the bar.” He wrote the address down on a napkin and pushed it forward.

Glancing at the square of paper, Paul memorized the address and pushed the paper back.

Webber watched him. “Ah, you’re quite the savvy sportswriter, aren’t you?”

They walked to the door. Paul shook his hand. “Thank you, Otto.”

Outside, Webber said, “Now, my friend, farewell. I hope to see you again.” Then he scowled. “And for me? A quest for yellow dye. Ach, this is what my life has become. Lard and yellow dye.”

Chapter Nine

Reinhard Ernst, sitting in his spacious office in the Chancellory, looked over the carelessly formed characters in the note once again.

Col. Ernst:

I await the report you have agreed to prepare on your Waltham Study. I have devoted some time to review it on Monday.

Adolf Hitler

He cleaned his wire-rimmed glasses, replaced them. He wondered what the careless lettering revealed of the writer. The signature was particularly distinctive. The “Adolf ” was a compressed lightning bolt; “Hitler” was somewhat more legible but it sloped curiously, and severely, downward to the right.

Ernst spun around in his chair and stared out the window. He felt just like an army commander who knew that the enemy was approaching, about to attack, but not knowing when he would strike, what his tactics would be, how strong was his force, where he would establish the lines of assault, where the flanking maneuver would come.

Aware too that the battle would be decisive and the fate of his army— indeed, of the whole nation—was at stake.

He wasn’t exaggerating the gravity of his dilemma. Because Ernst knew something about Germany that few others sensed or would admit out loud: that Hitler would not be in power long.

The Leader’s enemies, both within the country and without, were too many. He was Caesar, he was Macbeth, he was Richard. As his madness played itself out he would be ousted, murdered, or even die by his own hand (so astonishingly manic were his rages), and others would step into the immense vacuum after his demise. And not Göring either; greed of soul and greed of body were in a footrace to bring him down. Ernst’s own feeling was that, with the two leaders gone (and Goebbels pining away for his lost love, Hitler), the National Socialists would wither, and a centrist Prussian statesman would emerge—another Bismarck, imperial perhaps but reasonable and a brilliant statesman.

And Ernst might even have a hand in that transformation. For, short of a bullet or bomb, the only sure threat to Adolf Hitler and the Party was the German army.

In June of ’34, Hitler and Göring murdered or arrested much of the Stormtrooper leadership during the so-called Night of the Long Knives. The purge was felt necessary largely to appease the regular army, which had become jealous of the huge Brownshirt militia. Hitler had regarded the horde of thugs on one side and the German military—the direct heirs of the nineteenth century’s Hohenzollern battalions—on the other, and without a moment’s hesitation chose the latter. Two months later, upon President Hindenburg’s death, Hitler took two steps to solidify his position. First, he declared himself the unrestricted leader of the nation. Second—and far more important—he required the German armed forces to pledge a personal oath of loyalty to him.

De Tocqueville had said that there would never be a revolution in Germany for the police would not allow it. No, Hitler wasn’t concerned about a popular uprising; his only fear was the army.

And it was a new, enlightened military that Ernst had devoted his life to since the end of the War. An army that would protect Germany and its citizens from all threats, perhaps ultimately even from Hitler himself.

Yet, he reflected, Hitler was not gone yet, and Ernst couldn’t afford to ignore the author of this note, which was as troubling to him as the distant rumble of armor approaching through the night.

Col. Ernst: I await the report….

He had hoped that the intrigue Göring set in motion would fade away, but this piece of onionskin paper meant that it would not. He understood that he had to act quickly to prepare for and repel the attack.

After a difficult debate, the colonel came to a decision. He pocketed the letter, rose from his desk and left his office, telling his secretary that he would return within a half hour.

Down one hall, down another, past the ubiquitous construction work in the old, dusty building. Workers, busy even on the weekend, were everywhere. Building was
the
metaphor for the new Germany—a nation rising from the ashes of Versailles, being reconstructed according to Hitler’s often-quoted philosophy of “bringing-into-line” with National Socialism every citizen and institution in the country.

Down another hallway, under a stern portrait of the Leader in three-quarter view, looking slightly upward, as if at his vision for the nation.

Ernst stepped outside into the gritty wind, hot from the broiling afternoon sun.

“Hail, Colonel.”

Ernst nodded to the two guards, armed with bayonet-mounted Mausers. He was amused at their greeting. It was customary for anyone near cabinet rank to be addressed by his full title. But “Mr. Plenipotentiary” was laughably cumbersome.

Down Wilhelm Street, past Voss Street then Prince Albrecht Street, with a glance to his right at No. 8—Gestapo headquarters in the old hotel and arts-and-crafts school. Continuing south to his favorite café, he ordered a coffee. He sat for only a moment and then walked to the phone kiosk. He called a number, dropped some pfennigs into the slot and was connected.

A woman’s voice answered. “Good day.”

“Please, Dame Keitel?”

“No, sir. I am the housekeeper.”

“Is Doctor-professor Keitel available? This is Reinhard Ernst.”

“One moment, please.”

A moment later a man’s soft voice came through the line. “Good day, Colonel. Though a hot one.”

“Indeed, Ludwig…. We need to meet. Today. An urgent matter has come up about the study. You can make yourself available?”

“Urgent?”

“Extremely so. Can you come to my office? I’m awaiting word on some matters from England. So I must be at my desk. Four
P.M.
would be convenient?”

“Yes, of course.”

They rang off and Ernst returned to his coffee.

What ridiculous measures he needed to resort to simply to find a phone not monitored by Göring’s minions. I have seen war from the inside and from the out, he thought. The battlefield is horrible, yes, inconceivably horrible. But how much purer and cleaner, even angelic, is war, compared with a struggle where your enemies are beside, not facing, you.

On the fifteen-mile ride from downtown Berlin to the Olympic Village, along a wide, perfectly smooth highway, the taxi driver whistled happily and told Paul Schumann that he was anticipating many well-paying fares during the Olympics.

Suddenly the man grew silent as some ponderous classical music poured from a radio; the Opel was equipped with two, one to dispatch the driver and one for public transmissions. “Beethoven,” the driver commented. “It precedes all official broadcasts. We will listen.” A moment later the music faded and a raw, passionate voice began speaking.

“In the first place, it is not acceptable to treat this question of infection frivolously; it must be understood that good health would depend and does depend on finding ways to treat not only the symptoms of the disease, but the source of the illness, as well. Look at the tainted waters of a stagnant pond, a breeding ground for germs. But a fast-moving river does not offer the same climate for such danger. Our campaign will continue to locate and drain these stagnant pools, thereby offering germs and the mosquitoes and flies that carry them no place to multiply. Moreover—”

Paul listened for a moment longer but the repetitious rambling bored him. He tuned out the meaningless sound and looked at the sun-baked landscape, the houses, the inns, as the pretty suburbs west of the city gave way to more sparse areas. The driver turned off the Hamburg highway and pulled up in front of the Olympic Village’s main entrance. Paul paid the man, who thanked him by lifting an eyebrow but said nothing, remaining fixed on the words streaming from the radio. He considered asking the driver to wait but decided it would be wiser to find someone else to take him back to town.

The village was hot in the afternoon sun. The wind smelled salty, like ocean air, but it was dry as alum and carried a fine grit. Paul displayed his pass and continued down the perfectly laid sidewalk, past rows of narrow trees perfectly spaced, rising straight from round disks of mulch in the perfect, green grass. The German flag snapped smartly in the hot wind: red and white and black.

Ach, surely you know…

At the American dorms he bypassed the reception area, with its German soldier, and slipped into his room through the back door. He changed his outfit, burying the green jacket in a basket full of dirty laundry, there being no sewers handy, and putting on cream-colored flannels, a tennis shirt and a light cable-knit sweater. He brushed his hair differently—to the side. The makeup had worn off but there was nothing he could do about that now. As he stepped out the door with his suitcase and satchel a voice called, “Hey, Paul.”

He glanced up to see Jesse Owens, dressed in gymnasium clothes, returning to the dorm. Owens asked, “What’re you doing?”

“Heading into town. Get some work done.”

“Naw, Paul. We were hoping you’d stay around. You missed an all-right ceremony last night. You’ve gotta see the food they got here. It’s swell.”

“I know it’s grand, but I gotta skip. I’m doing some interviews in town.”

Owens stepped closer then nodded at the cut and bruise on Paul’s face. Then the runner’s sharp eyes dropped down to the man’s knuckles, which were raw and red from the fight.

“Hope the rest of your interviews go better than the one this morning. Dangerous to be a sportswriter in Berlin, looks like.”

“I took a spill. Nothing serious.”

“Not for
you
maybe,” Owens said, amused. “But what about the fellow you landed on?”

Paul couldn’t help but smile. The runner was just a kid. But there was something worldly about him. Maybe growing up a Negro in the South and Midwest made you mature faster. Same with putting yourself through school on the heels of the Depression.

Like stumbling into his own line of work had changed Paul. Changed him real fast.

“What exactly
are
you doin’ here, Paul?” the runner whispered.

“Just my job,” he answered slowly. “Just doing my job. Say, what’s the wire on Stoller and Glickman? Hope they haven’t been sidelined.”

“Nope, they’re still scheduled,” Owens said, frowning, “but the rumors aren’t sounding good.”

“Good luck to them. And to you too, Jesse. Bring home some gold.”

“We’ll do our best. See you later?”

“Maybe.”

Paul shook his hand and walked off toward the entrance to the village, where a line of taxis waited.

“Hey, Paul.”

He turned to see the fastest man in the world saluting him, a grin on his face.

The poll of the vendors and bench-sitters along Rosenthaler Street had been futile (though Janssen confirmed that he’d learned some new curses when a flower seller found out he was troubling her only to ask questions, not to buy anything). There had been a shooting not far away, Kohl had learned, but that was an SS matter—perhaps about their jealously guarded “minor security matter”—and none of the elite guard would deign to speak to the Kripo about it.

Upon their return to headquarters, however, they found that a miracle had occurred. The photographs of the victim and of the fingerprints from Dresden Alley were on Willi Kohl’s desk.

“Look at this, Janssen,” Kohl said, gesturing at the glossy pictures, neatly assembled in a file.

He sat down at his battered desk in his office in the Alex, the Kripo’s massive, ancient building, nicknamed for the bustling square and surrounding neighborhood where it was located: Alexander Plaza. All the state buildings were being renovated except theirs, it seemed. The criminal police were housed in the same grimy building they’d been in for years. Kohl did not mind this, however, since it was some distance from Wilhelm Street, which at least gave some practical autonomy to the police, even if none now existed administratively.

Kohl was also fortunate to have an office of his own, a room that measured four meters by six and contained a desk, a table and three chairs. On the oak plain of the desk were a thousand pieces of paper, an ashtray, a pipe rack and a dozen framed photographs of his wife, children and parents.

He rocked forward in his creaking wooden chair and looked over the crime scene photographs and the ones of the fingerprints. “You’re talented, Janssen. These are quite good.”

“Thank you, sir.” The young man was looking down at them, nodding.

Kohl regarded him closely. The inspector himself had taken a traditional route up through the police ranks. The son of a Prussian farmer, young Willi had become fascinated with both Berlin and police work from the story-books he’d read growing up. At eighteen he’d come to the city and gotten a job as a uniformed Schupo officer, went through the basic training at the famed Berlin Police Institute and worked his way up to corporal and sergeant, receiving a college degree along the way. Then, with a wife and two children, he’d gone on to the institute’s Officers School and joined Kripo, rising over the years from detective-inspector assistant to senior detective-inspector.

His young protégé, on the other hand, had gone a different route, one that was far more common nowadays. Janssen had graduated from a good university several years ago, passed the qualifying exam in jurisprudence, then, after attending the police institute, he was accepted at this young age as a detective-inspector candidate, apprenticed to Kohl.

It was often hard to draw the inspector candidate out; Janssen was reserved. He was married to a solid, dark-haired woman who was now pregnant with their second child. The only time Janssen grew animated was when he talked about his family or about his passion for bicycling and hiking. Until all police were put on overtime because of the approaching Olympics, detectives worked only half days on Wednesday and Janssen would often change into his hiking shorts in a Kripo lavatory at noon and go off on a wander with his brother or his wife.

But whatever made him tick, the man was smart and ambitious and Kohl was very fortunate to have him. Over the past several years the Kripo had been hemorrhaging talented officers to the Gestapo, where the pay and opportunities were far better. When Hitler came to power the number of Kripo detectives around the country was twelve thousand. Now, it was down to eight thousand. And of those, many were former Gestapo investigators sent to the Kripo in exchange for the young officers who’d transferred out; in truth, they were largely drunks and incompetents.