The Seventh Secret (40 page)

Seated, Kirvov accepted the menu from a waiter. He was not hungry, but he knew that he had to order something. Glancing at the list of desserts, he settled on sour cherries and cream, and placed his order.

Smoking, he reflected on what had taken place earlier in the afternoon. The meeting with Klara Fiebig had been fruitless. Yet, leaving her apartment, he had been suspicious. He wondered whether she had been lying. There was no way to find out unless, in a panic about his visit, she left the apartment to meet someone else. He had decided to sit and wait in his Opel, parked on Knesebeckstrasse, and keep an eye on Klara's building.

After two hours or more, his vigil had seemed useless. Three people had entered the apartment building—an elderly man carrying a shopping bag, a good-looking older woman, a boy with some schoolbooks in hand. No one had emerged from the building. Obviously, Klara Fiebig had found no reason to panic and leave. Finally, Kirvov had made up his mind that his suspicions about her had been senseless. He had reached a blind alley.

About to start his car and drive away, he had paused when he had seen the entrance door of the apartment building open and two women emerge. One was Klara Fiebig holding the arm of the handsome older woman he had seen enter the building earlier. Klara spoke to the older woman, and the older woman nodded, and then they kissed. Klara had gone back inside the building, and the older woman proceeded down the street. In his rearview mirror, Kirvov considered the receding figure of the older woman. She had come here to visit Klara. Perhaps she had been summoned by Klara. A tenuous lead, but still a lead.

Kirvov had made a U-turn and, at a distance, had followed her to the Kurfûrstendamm, and then crept along, honked at by other drivers for his slowness, until he had seen her go inside the restaurant.

Now, spooning his cherries and fresh cream, he was waiting for her to emerge from inside. To what end he did not know, but still he had nowhere else to go. So he ate and he waited, and finally he smoked.

At least forty more minutes had passed, and Kirvov had just paid his bill, when his patience was rewarded. There she was, the handsome older woman, starting down the Café aisle, followed by a big erect grizzly bear of a man, a healthy specimen for one in his sixties or seventies. Watching them come near, then pass him, Kirvov saw someone in a purple dress, a middle-aged female, rise from another table and reach out to get the big man's attention.

"Wolfgang," the female greeted him. "How are you?"

The big man named Wolfgang stopped and shook her hand. "Ursula. It's been a long time." The handsome older woman, who had preceded him, halted and turned, distracted. For an instant the big man hesitated, and then he introduced the two women. -My dear, this is Ursula Schleiter. Ursula, please meet Evelyn Hoffmann." A waiter intervened, noisily setting down some plates, and Kirvov lost the rest of the conversation.

Then he saw the big man named Wolfgang leading Evelyn Hoffmann out of the café. On the sidewalk of the Ku'damm, they exchanged a few words and parted, going in different directions.

Quickly Kirvov rose and decided to follow Evelyn Hoffmann once more. Probably an exercise in futility. Still, she was the one tie to Klara Fiebig.

On the Ku'damm, well behind her, he did not have far to go. Evelyn Hoffmann's immediate destination was the corner bus stop across the street. She queued up with the others waiting for a bus, and in a few minutes a yellow double-decker bus, with the number 29 above its windshield, rolled to a halt. Kirvov watched until he saw the Hoffmann woman step into the bus, and then he whirled around and hastily made for his parked car.

Driving on the Ku'damm once more, Kirvov kept the bus in view all the way along the busy boulevard to Breitscheidplatz, watching to observe whether Evelyn Hoffmann left the bus, and saw that she didn't. Falling directly behind the bus, he slowed his car at every stop to confirm that Evelyn Hoffmann was still aboard, and remained satisfied that she was.

Staying close to the bus, he marked a whole series of new signs blur past—Tauentzienstrasse, Kleiststrasse, Liitzowplatz Landwehrkanal. Going through this unfamiliar territory, he noted they were fifteen minutes away from their start, and there was no doubt that she was still on the bus.

Since the bus was slowing down, Kirvov put his foot lightly on his own brakes and also slowed. The bus came to a halt on Schöneberger Strasse, and Kirvov came to a halt behind it. Automatically, he bent to see if anyone was leaving the bus. Two people were exiting. One of them was Evelyn Hoffmann.

As the bus pulled away, Kirvov watched Evelyn Hoffmann walk to a curb, glance to her left, then cross a broad street, and with familiarity cross another. She stood momentarily before a modest Café
 
one shop from the corner, and then she opened the front door and went inside. Kirvov, who had been idling his car on Schöneberger Strasse, cruised toward the Café . He turned left at the corner and drove past it slowly. The name above read CAFÉ
 
WOLF. It was near the corner of Stresemann Strasse and Anhalter Strasse.

Kirvov sought a place to park on Stresemann Strasse, and observed several empty spaces. He slipped into one, parking diagonally against the curbing, shut off his motor, and left the car.

Momentarily, standing on the sidewalk under a tree, Kirvov tried to get his bearings. The north end of Stresemann Strasse was blocked by a wall, obviously the Berlin Wall that enclosed the Frontier Zone. Kirvov started to stroll toward the end of the street, constantly glancing over his shoulder to see whether Evelyn Hoffmann had departed from her Café
 
yet.

At the Hervis Hotel, Kirvov crossed over to the opposite side of the street near an empty lot, actually a deep depression where the basement of a building had once stood, a building that had long ago been destroyed in the war. The lot was now weed-covered and unkempt. Kirvov began to walk back to the Café
 
Evelyn Hoffmann had entered.

There was a series of what seemed to be small shops.

There was the Modellbau, a store that sold model kits of autos and airplanes, then Kuchler, an auto-radio specialist, then the Gesamtdeutsches Institut, a historical archive that resembled a library inside, then Pizzera Selva, a neighborhood pizza parlor, next a hairdresser, then Café Wolf, with a tobacco shop and used bookstore on the corner.

There were windows on either side of the Café's front entrance, and two rows of planter boxes before the windows. Kirvov glanced inside, could make out a bar and bar stools, some circular tables, a jukebox. He could see a waitress in a sweatshirt and blue jeans serving a couple at one table. He could see another couple toward the back. He did not see Evelyn Hoffmann.

Even though she could not know who he was, Kirvov determined not to continue searching inside and risk becoming obvious. Nor did he wish to linger in front of the Café. Directly across the street there was the concrete island with the bus stop, Askanischer Platz. To the right of the island was a street called Bernberger Strasse.

Leaving the Café, Kirvov recrossed the street and stationed himself on Askanischer Platz, keeping an eye on the Café Wolf as he waited for Evelyn Hoffmann to emerge for her ultimate destination. Once on the island, Kirvov felt too conspicuous, and strode to the corner of Bernberger Strasse. There he smoked and casually watched for any movement out of the Café Wolf.

For a half hour or more there was no activity. The day was beginning to wane, and soon it would be nightfall. Kirvov continued to keep the Café entrance under surveillance. At last one of the couples he had observed inside left. Soon after, another couple left.

Kirvov waited restlessly for the appearance of Evelyn Hoffmann.

A young man left the Café Wolf. Possibly the bar-tender. Maybe not. Then the waitress, a sweater over her sweatshirt, still in her jeans, stepped outside to water the plants, then went back inside. Soon she emerged and departed.

But no Evelyn Hoffmann.

Kirvov began to feel foolish. There was not a shred of evidence that the Hoffmann woman would lead him to anything useful, except that she had apparently had some connection with Klara Fiebig, who had not recognized the Hitler painting anyway.

It was early evening now, and Kirvov became alert when he saw the lights inside the café go out.

Definitely the Café Wolf was closed. Yet Evelyn Hoffmann, whom he had seen go into it, had never come out of it.

Surprising and inexplicable.

Kirvov tried to explain this unusual happening to himself. Perhaps Evelyn Hoffmann had left by another door in the rear. Perhaps she owned the café or was married to the proprietor and lived upstairs.

All likely, yet somehow unlikely. That was Kirvov's gut feeling. She would have had no reason to leave by some unobserved door. Somehow, from her dress, her manner, she was too well-off and sophisticated to own a café like this or dwell on its premises.

But still she had gone in and not come out.

That was a mystery that deserved explanation.

Tired of standing alone in the darkness with nothing to see, Kirvov started back to his car. One more side-long glance at the café. Absolutely closed, shut down, darkened. And Evelyn Hoffmann inexplicably inside.

Kirvov had to report this to someone, and puzzle it out. Emily Ashcroft and Rex Foster, who were as involved as he was, for their own reasons, were the obvious choices to consult. Kirvov knew that he must go to the Bristol Kempinski at once and find them.

"T
here is something I must talk over with you," Kirvov said.

He had intercepted Emily Ashcroft, Foster, and Tovah as they were leaving the Kempinski.

"Then join us right now," Emily had replied. "It's an early dinner tonight. I have to get out to the
Führerbunker
again in the morning. Oberstadt has a night shift coming in tonight and I want to see how well they did."

Tired as he was, Kirvov had gone along, and now he sat with the others at a table that gave them privacy because it was set off by wood dividers from tables occupied by other dinner guests. They were in the second-floor restaurant of the Café Kranzler on the corner of the Kurfbrstendamm and Joachimstaler Strasse.

A waitress had appeared, and they all consulted their menus and ordered hurriedly.

Once the waitress went off, Foster turned to Kirvov. "Nicholas, what's on your mind?"

"Well . . ." Kirvov was briefly reticent. "This may not be serious or useful to any of you. It is just a strange incident that I felt you should hear about."

They were attentive as Kirvov began to recount his multiple adventures during the day. There had been his pursuit of the art galleries, and his coming across the one that had acquired and sold the Hitler painting. There had been his call on Klara Fiebig, and her insistence that she had never seen the painting.

"Do you think she was lying?" Emily asked.

"I think so," said Kirvov. "At least I thought so when I left her, because I hung around outside to see whether she might leave to contact someone to report I had called on her."

"Did she leave?" Emily inquired.

"No. But someone called on her, because later she saw that person out."

Kirvov described that person, a rather stately, well-groomed woman in her sixties or seventies named Evelyn Hoffmann. Anyway, she had some connection with Klara Fiebig. So Kirvov had followed her to Mampes Gute Stube, a restaurant on the Ku'damm. After an interval she had emerged with a big man called Wolfgang. The pair had separated, and the Hoffmann lady had taken a bus to an area near the Wall, with Kirvov shadowing her. She had gone into a place called Café Wolf on Stresemann Strasse.

"I hung around for hours, waiting for her to leave to see where she went next," concluded Kirvov. "But she never left. The place closed down and she never came out. That's the mystery."

"Could she have a room there?" Tovah asked.

"I doubt if she would live in a place like that," said Kirvov. "She's too grand for it."

"Have you any explanation?" Emily asked.

"None. I hoped one of you might have one."

Emily gave a helpless shrug. "I certainly don't. The whole thing is like Alice going down the rabbit hole."

Foster addressed himself to Kirvov. "You said this Café Wolf is somewhere in the area of the Wall?"

"Stresemann Strasse. It runs right into the Wall about a block away."

"With the mound of the
Führerbunker
just on the other side," said Foster.

"Maybe it's all my own foolishness. Do you think Evelyn Hoffmann is worth pursuing further?"