Garden of Beasts (21 page)

“His schedule at Wilhelm Street. When he arrives for work, when he leaves, what kind of car he drives, where he parks, will he be there tomorrow, Monday or Tuesday, what routes he takes, any cafés he favors in the area.”

“One can find out anything, given enough time. And egg.”

“Egg?”

He tapped his pocket. “Money. I must be honest, Mr. John Dillinger. We are not talking about palming off three-day-old canal trout from the Landwehr as fresh from the Havel. This is a matter that will require me to retire for a time. There will be serious repercussions and I will have to go underground. There will be—”

“Otto, just give me a number.”

“Very dangerous… Besides, what is money to you Americans? You have your FDR.” In English he said, “You’re rolling on dough.”

“
In
dough,” Paul corrected. “A number?”

“A thousand U.S. dollars.”

“What?”

“Not marks. They say the Inflation’s over but nobody who’s lived through that time believes it. Why, in 1928 a liter of petrol cost five hundred thousand marks. And in—”

Paul shook his head. “That’s a lot of money.”

“But it’s really not—if I get you your information. And I guarantee I will. You pay me only half up front.”

Paul pointed to Webber’s pocket, where the marks resided. “
That’s
your down payment.”

“But—”

“You get paid the rest when and if the information pans out. And if I get approval.”

“I’ll have expenses.”

Paul slipped him the remaining hundred. “There.”

“Hardly enough but I’ll make do.” Then Webber looked over Paul closely. “I’m curious.”

“About what?”

“About
you,
Mr. John Dillinger. What’s your tale?”

“There is no tale.”

“Ach, there’s
always
a tale. Go ahead, tell Otto your story. We’re in business together now. That’s closer than being in bed. And remember, he sees all, the truth and the lies. You seem an unlikely candidate for this job. Though perhaps that is why you were chosen to visit our fair city. Because you seem unlikely. How did you get into this noble profession of yours?”

Paul said nothing for a moment, then: “My grandfather came to America years ago. He’d fought in the Franco-Prussian War and wanted no more fighting. He started a printing company.”

“What was his name?”

“Wolfgang. He said printing ink was in his veins and claimed that his ancestors had lived in Mainz and worked with Gutenberg.”

“A grandfather’s stories,” Webber said, nodding. “Mine said he was Bismarck’s cousin.”

“His company was on the Lower East Side of New York in the German-American area of the city. In 1904 there was a tragedy—over a thousand people from there were killed in an excursion ship fire in the East River.
The General Slocum.”

“Ach, what a sad thing.”

“My grandfather was on the boat. He and my grandmother weren’t killed but he was badly burned saving people and he couldn’t work any longer. Then most of the German community moved to Yorkville, farther north in Manhattan. People were too sad to stay in Little Germany. His business was going to fail, with Grandpapa being so sick and fewer people around to order printing. So my father took over. He didn’t want to be a printer; he wanted to play baseball. You know baseball?”

“Ach, of course.”

“But there was no choice. He had a wife and my sister and my brother and me to feed—my grandparents now too. But he, we would say, rose to the occasion. He did his duty. He moved to Brooklyn, added English-language printing and expanded the company. Made it very successful. My brother couldn’t go into the army during the War and they ran the shop together when I was in France. After I got back I joined them and we built the place up real nice.” He laughed. “Now I don’t know if you heard about this, but our country had this thing called Prohibition. You know—”

“Yes, yes, of course. I read the crime shockers, remember. Illegal to drink liquor! Madness!”

“My father’s plant was right on the river in Brooklyn. It had a dock and a large warehouse for storing paper and the finished jobs. One of the gangs wanted to take it over and use it to store whisky they’d smuggle in from the harbor. My father said no. A couple of thugs came to see him one day. They beat up my brother and, when my father still resisted, they put his arms in our big letterpress.”

“Oh, no, my friend.”

Paul continued. “He was mangled badly. He died a few days later. And my brother and mother sold the plant to them the next day for a hundred dollars.”

“So you were out of work and you fell in with a difficult crowd?” Webber nodded.

“No, that’s not what happened,” Paul said softly. “I went to the police. They weren’t interested in helping find these particular killers. You understand?”

“Are you asking if I know about corrupt police?” Webber laughed hard.

“So I found my old army Colt, my pistol. I learned who the killers were. I followed them for a week straight. I learned everything about them. And I touched them off.”

“You—?”

He realized that he’d translated the phrase literally; it would have no meaning in German. “We say ‘touching off.’ I put a bullet into the backs of their heads.”

“Ach, yes,” Webber whispered, unsmiling now. “‘Snuffing,’ we’d say.”

“Yes. Well, I also knew whom they worked for, the bootlegger who’d ordered my father tortured. I touched him off too.”

Webber fell silent. Paul realized he’d never told the story to anyone.

“You got your company back?”

“Oh, no, the place had been raided by the feds, the government, before that and confiscated. As for me, I disappeared underground in Hell’s Kitchen in Manhattan. And I got ready to die.”

“To die?”

“I’d killed a very important man. This mob leader. I knew that his associates or someone else would come to find me and kill me. I’d covered my tracks very well, the police wouldn’t get me. But the gangs knew I was the one. I didn’t want to lead anybody to my family—my brother’d started his own printing company by then—so instead of going back into business with him I took a job in a gym, sparring and cleaning up in exchange for a room.”

“And you waited to die. But I can’t help but notice that you’re still extremely alive, Mr. John Dillinger. How did that transpire?”

“Some other men—”

“Gang leaders.”

“—heard what I’d done. They hadn’t been happy with the man I’d killed, the way he’d done business, like torturing my father and killing policemen. They thought criminals should be professionals. Gentlemen.”

“Like me,” Webber said, thumping his chest.

“They heard how I’d killed the gangster and his men. It had been clean, with no evidence left behind. And no one innocent was hurt. They asked me to do the same to another man, another very bad man. I didn’t want to but I found out what he’d done. He’d killed a witness and the man’s family, even his two children. So I agreed. And I touched him off too. They paid me a lot of money. Then I killed someone else. I saved up the money they paid me and bought a small gym. I was going to quit. But do you know what it means to get into a rut?”

“Indeed I do.”

“Well, this rut has been my life for years….” Paul fell silent. “So that’s my story. All truth, no lies.”

Finally Webber asked, “It bothers you? Doing this for a living?”

Paul was silent for a moment. “It should bother me more, I think. I felt worse touching off your boys during the war. In New York, I only touch off other killers. The bad ones. The ones who do what those men did to my father.” He laughed. “I say that I’m only correcting God’s mistakes.”

“I like that, Mr. John Dillinger.” Webber nodded. “God’s mistakes. Oh, we’ve got a few of those around here, yes, we do.” He finished his beer. “Now, it’s Saturday. A difficult time to get information. Meet me tomorrow morning at the Tiergarten. There is a small lake at the end of Stern Alley. On the south side. What time would be good for you?”

“Early. Say eight.”

“Ach, very well,” Webber said, frowning. “That
is
early. But I will be on the moment.”

“There’s one more thing I need,” Paul said.

“What? Whisky? Tobacco? I can even find some cocaine. There’s not much left in town. Yet I—”

“It’s not for me. It’s for a woman. A present.”

Webber grinned broadly. “Ach, Mr. John Dillinger, good for you! In Berlin only a short time and already your heart has spoken. Or perhaps the voice is from another part of your body. Well, how would your friend like a nice garter belt with stockings to match? From France, of course. A bustier in red and black? Or is she more modest? A cashmere sweater. Perhaps some Belgian chocolates. Or some lace. Perfume is always good. And for you, of course, my friend, a very special price.”

Chapter Sixteen

Busy times.

There were dozens of matters that might have been occupying the mind of the huge, sweating man who, late this Saturday afternoon, sat in his appropriately spacious office within the recently completed 400,000-square-foot air ministry building at 81–85 Wilhelm Street, bigger even than the Chancellory and Hitler’s apartments combined.

Hermann Göring could, for instance, resume work on the creation of the massive industrial empire that he was currently planning (and that would be named after him, of course). He could be drafting a memorandum to rural gendarmeries throughout the country, reminding them that the State Law for the Protection of Animals, which he himself had written, was to be strictly enforced and anyone caught hunting foxes with hounds would be severely punished.

Or there was the vital matter of his party for the Olympics, for which Göring was constructing his own village within the air ministry itself (he’d managed to get a look at the plans for Goebbels’s event and upped his own gala to outdo the mealworm by tens of thousands of marks). And, of course, there was the ever-vital matter of what he would wear to the party. He could even be meeting with his adjutants regarding his present mission within the Third Empire: building the finest air force in the world.

But what forty-three-year-old Hermann Göring was now preoccupied with was a pensioner widow twice his age, who lived in a small cottage outside Hamburg.

Not that the man whose titles included minister without portfolio, commissioner for air, commander in chief of the air force, Prussian minister president, air minister and hunting master of the empire was himself doing any of the legwork regarding Mrs. Ruby Kleinfeldt, of course. A dozen of his minions and Gestapo officers scurried about on Wilhelm Street and in Hamburg, digging through records and interviewing people.

Göring himself was staring out the window of his opulent office, eating a massive plate of spaghetti. This was Hitler’s favorite dish and Göring had watched the Leader picking at a bowl of it yesterday. Seeing the unconsumed portion triggered an itch within Göring that had festered into a fierce craving; so far he’d had three large helpings today.

What will we find about you? he silently asked the elderly woman, who knew nothing of the bustling inquiry about her. The investigation seemed absurdly digressive, considering the many vital projects currently on his calendar. Yet this one was vitally important because it could lead to the downfall of Reinhard Ernst.

Soldiering was at the core of Hermann Göring, who often recalled the happy days of the War, flying his all-white Fokker D-7 biplane over France and Belgium, engaging any Allied pilot foolish enough to be in the skies nearby (a confirmed twenty-two had paid for that mistake with their lives, though Göring remained convinced he’d killed many more). He might now be a behemoth who couldn’t even fit into the cockpit of his old plane, a man whose life was painkillers, food, money, art, power. But if you asked him who he was at heart, Göring’s answer would be: I am a soldier.

And a soldier who knew how best to turn his country into a nation of warriors once again—you showed your muscle. You didn’t negotiate, you didn’t pad around like a youth making for the bushes behind a barn to secretly puff away on his father’s pipe—the behavior of Colonel Reinhard Ernst.

The man had a woman’s touch about this business. Even the faggot Roehm, the head of the Stormtroopers killed by Göring and Hitler in the putsch two years ago, was a bulldog compared with Ernst. Secret arm’s-length deals with Krupp, nervously shifting resources from one shipyard to another, forcing their present “army,” such as it was, to train with wooden guns and artillery in small groups, so they wouldn’t draw attention. A dozen other such prissy tactics.

Why the hesitancy? Because, Göring believed, the man’s loyalty to National Socialist views was suspect. The Leader and Göring were not naive. They knew their support was not universal. You can win votes with fists and guns; you cannot win hearts. And many hearts within their country were not devoted to National Socialism, among them people at the top of the armed forces. Ernst could very well be intentionally dragging his Prussian heels to keep Hitler and Göring from having the one institution they needed desperately: a strong military. It was likely Ernst himself even hoped to accede to the throne if the two rulers were deposed.

Thanks to his soft voice, his reasonable manner, his smooth ways, his two fucking Iron Crosses and dozens of other decorations, Ernst was currently in Wolf’s favor (because it made him feel close to the Leader, Göring liked to use the nickname women sometimes referred to Hitler by, though the minister, of course, uttered the intimacy only in his thoughts).

Why, look at how the colonel had attacked Göring yesterday on the issue of the Me 109 fighter at the Olympics! The air minister had lain awake half the night, enraged over that exchange, picturing again and again Wolf turning his blue eyes to Ernst and agreeing!

Another burst of rage swept through him. “God in heaven!” Göring swept the spaghetti dish to the floor. It shattered.

One of his orderlies, a veteran of the War, came running, stiff on his game leg.

“Sir?”

“Clean that up!”

“I’ll get a pail—”

“I didn’t say
mop
the floor. Just pick up the pieces. They’ll mop this evening.” Then the huge man glanced at his blousy shirt and saw tomato stains on it. His anger doubled. “I want a clean shirt,” he snapped. “The china is too small for the portions. Tell the cook to find bigger. The Leader has that Meissen set, the green and white. I want plates like those.”

“Yes, sir.” The man was bending down to the shards.

“No, my shirt first.”

“Yes, Air Minister.” The man scurried off. He returned a moment later, bearing a dark green shirt on a hanger.

“Not
that
one. I told you when you brought it to me last month that it makes me look like Mussolini.”

“That was the black one, sir. Which I’ve discarded. This is green.”

“Well, I want white. Get me a white shirt! A silk one!”

The man left then came back once more, with the correct color.

A moment later one of Göring’s senior aides stepped inside.

The minister took the shirt and set it aside; he was self-conscious of his weight and would never think of undressing in front of a subordinate. He felt another flash of rage, this time at Ernst’s slim physique. As the orderly picked up the shards of china, the senior aide said, “Air Minister, I think we have good news.”

“What?”

“Our agents in Hamburg have found some letters about Mrs. Kleinfeldt. They suggest that she is a Jew.”

“‘Suggest’?”

“
Prove,
Mr. Minister. They
prove
it.”

“Pure?”

“No. A half-breed. But from the mother’s side. So it’s indisputable.”

The Nuremberg Laws on Citizenship and Race, enacted last year, removed Jews’ German citizenship and made them “subjects,” as well as criminalized marriage or sex between Jews and Aryans. The law also defined exactly who was a Jew in the case of ancestral intermarriage. With two Jewish and two non-Jewish grandparents, Mrs. Kleinfeldt was a half-breed.

This was not as damning as it could be but the discovery delighted Göring because of the man who was Mrs. Kleinfeldt’s grandson: Doctor-professor Ludwig Keitel, Reinhard Ernst’s partner in the Waltham Study. Göring still didn’t know what this mysterious study was all about. But the facts were sufficiently damning: Ernst was working with a man descended from Jews and they were using the writings of the Jew mind-doctor Freud. And, most searing of all, Ernst had kept the study secret from the two most important people in the government, himself and Wolf.

Göring was surprised that Ernst had underestimated him. The colonel had assumed that the air minister wasn’t monitoring telephones in the cafés around Wilhelm Street. Didn’t the plenipotentiary know that in this paranoia-soaked district those were the very phones that yielded the most gold? He’d gotten the transcript of the call Ernst had made to Doctor-professor Keitel this morning, urgently requesting a meeting.

What happened in that meeting wasn’t important. What was critical was that Göring had learned the good professor’s name and had now found out that he had Yid blood in his veins. The consequences of all this? That largely depended on what Göring wished those consequences to be. Keitel, a part-Jew intellectual, would be sent to the camp at Oranienburg. There was no doubt about that. But Ernst? Göring decided it would be better to keep him visible. He’d be ousted from the top ranks of government but retained in some lackey position. Yes, by next week the man would be lucky to be employed scurrying after Defense Minister von Blomberg, carting the bald man’s briefcase.

Ebullient now, Göring took several more painkillers, shouted for another plate of spaghetti and rewarded himself for his successful intriguing by turning his attention back to his Olympic party. Wondering: Should he appear in the costume of a German hunter, an Arab sheik, or Robin Hood, complete with a quiver and a bow on his shoulder?

Sometimes it was next to impossible to make up one’s mind.

Reggie Morgan was troubled. “I don’t have the authority to approve a thousand dollars. Jesus Lord. A
thousand?
”

They were walking through the Tiergarten, past a Stormtrooper on a soapbox sweating fiercely as he hoarsely lectured a small group of people. Some clearly wished to be elsewhere, some looked back with disdain in their eyes. But some were mesmerized. Paul was reminded of Heinsler on the ship.

I love the Führer and I’d do anything for him and the Party….

“The threat worked?” Morgan asked.

“Oh, yes. In fact, I think he respected me more for it.”

“And he can actually get us useful information?”

“If anybody can, he’s the one. I know his sort. It’s astonishing how resourceful some people can be when you wave money toward them.”

“Then let’s see if we can come up with some.”

They left the park and turned south at the Brandenburg Gate. Several blocks farther on they passed the ornate palace that would, when the repairs after the fire were finished, become the U.S. embassy.

“Look at it,” Morgan said. “Magnificent, isn’t it? Or it will be.”

Even though the building wasn’t officially the U.S. embassy yet, an American flag hung from the front. The sight stirred Paul, made him feel good, more at ease.

He thought of the Hitler Youth back at the Olympic Village.

And the black… the hooked cross. You would say swastika…. Ach, surely you know…. Surely you know….

Morgan turned down an alleyway and then another and, with a look behind them, unlocked the door. They entered the quiet, dark building and walked down several corridors until they came to a small door beside the kitchen. They stepped inside. The dim room was sparse: a desk, several chairs and a large radio, bigger than any Paul had ever seen. Morgan flipped on the unit and as the tubes warmed up it began to hum.

“They listen to all the overseas shortwave,” Morgan said, “so we’re going to transmit via relays to Amsterdam and then London and then be routed through a phone line to the States. It’ll take the Nazis a while to get the frequency,” the man said, pulling on earphones, “but they could get lucky so you have to assume they’re listening. Everything you say, keep that in mind.”

“Sure.”

“We’ll have to go fast. Ready?”

Paul nodded and took the set of headphones Morgan offered him, then plugged the thick jack into the socket he pointed to. A green light finally came to life on the front of the unit. Morgan stepped to a window, glanced out into the alleyway, let the curtain fall back. He pulled the microphone close to his mouth and pushed the button on the shaft. “I need a transatlantic connection to our friend in the south.” He repeated this then released the transmit button and said to Paul, “Bull Gordon’s ‘our friend in the south.’ Washington, you know. ‘Our friend in the north’ is the Senator.”

“Roger that,” said a young voice. It was Avery’s. “Be a minute. Hold on. Placing the call.”

“Howdy,” Paul said.

A pause. “Hey there,” Avery responded. “How’s life treating you?”

“Oh, just swell. Good to hear your voice.” Paul couldn’t believe that he’d said good-bye to him just yesterday. It seemed like months. “How’s your other half?”

“Staying out of trouble.”

“That’s hard to believe.” Paul wondered if Manielli had been mouthing off to any Dutch soldiers the same way he wisecracked in America.

“You’re on a speaker here,” came Manielli’s irritated voice. “Just to let you know.”

Paul laughed.

Then staticky silence.

“What time is it in Washington?” Paul asked Morgan.

“Lunchtime.”

“It’s Saturday. Where’s Gordon?”

“We don’t have to worry about that. They’ll find him.”

Through the headset a woman’s voice said, “One moment, please. Placing your call.”

A moment later Paul heard a phone ring. Then another woman’s voice answered, “Yes?”

Morgan said, “Your husband, please. Sorry to trouble you.”

“Hold the line.” As if she knew not to ask who was calling.

A moment later Gordon asked, “Hello?”

“It’s us, sir,” Morgan said.

“Go ahead.”

“Setback in the arrangements. We’ve had to approach somebody local for information.”

Gordon was silent for a moment. “Who is he? General terms.”

Morgan gestured to Paul, who said, “He knows somebody who can get us close to our customer.”

Morgan nodded at his choice of words and added, “My supplier has run out of product.”

The commander asked, “This man, he works for the other company?”

“No. Works for himself.”

“What other options do we have?”

Morgan said, “The only other choice is to sit and wait, hope for the best.”

“You trust him?”

After a moment Paul said, “Yes. He’s one of us.”

“Us?”

“Me,” Paul explained. “He’s in my line of work. We’ve, uhm, arranged for a certain level of trust.”