Children of Wrath (20 page)

The anger seemed to penetrate at least one defensive perimeter because Freksa’s foggy eyes turned toward him and appeared for a moment to focus through their haze. “How come you never told me you were
rückwärtige,
Kraus?”

Willi blinked. Freksa’d never addressed him so personally. It took him by surprise. He’d never mentioned he’d been
rückwärtige
—behind enemy lines—because in the two years since they’d been in the same unit, when might he have brought up such a topic? Freksa’d never shown him anything but malice. Willi wasn’t even sure how Freksa’d found out about his war record, unless, of course—Dr. Weiss.

“Those were the only guys we had any respect for.” Freksa’s eyes seemed actually to take Willi in for an instant. “Not even the fliers got our admiration like the ones who went behind.”

Willi didn’t know what to say. He longed to get Freksa out of the rain, which was pouring over the brims of their hats like waterfalls, but he sensed he oughtn’t disturb the guy, the way you’re not supposed to wake a sleepwalker. “So, then, you were there” was all he could think of.

Freksa’s reply would have seemed insane to most. Up and down, from the side of his mouth, he emitted a sharp wailing-siren sound, coupled with a fast-clicking tongue. But anyone who’d fought in the front lines knew exactly what it was. And it sent a chill right through Willi.

Of all the great horrors in the World War—flamethrowers, tanks, rapid-fire machine guns—the ones that epitomized the heights to which the twentieth century had elevated man’s inhumanity to man were chemical weapons. Over a million soldiers had suffered the very best modern science could produce: chlorine, bromine, phosgene, chloropicrin. Really suffered.

Freksa was sounding the alarm for incoming gas.

Right there in the pouring rain, he tore open his coat and unbuttoned his shirt, revealing his whole upper chest. The skin looked like a big plate of whipped cream. A grotesque meringue of pink and white scars that could only have been caused by one thing: the most widely used chemical of the war. A vicious blistering agent named for its tangy smell. Mustard gas.

“These are
my
medals, Kraus.”

Willi inhaled. It was a gruesome honor, to say the least. And maybe why Freksa was still a bachelor at forty.

“Perhaps we understand each other more than we realize, Hans,” Willi said, hardly noticing he’d used Freksa’s first name. “Please, though, cover up if you don’t want to catch pneumonia.”

Freksa started buttoning his shirt absentmindedly. “Ironic, huh? I became a cop because the uniforms reminded me of bellboys. But I never even wore a police uniform.” He was getting the buttons seriously mixed up. “Because I became a detective, I don’t have to tell you. Tops in the field. Till I messed up in politics.”

“Here, let me help.” Willi reached.

Freksa let him redo the buttons.

“I felt important being one of them,” he mumbled in a half whisper, like an adolescent before a judge. “Part of a historic movement. But I was a detective long before I was a Nazi. And when they forced me to trump up a case—”

He grabbed Willi’s hand, stopping him.

“Can you imagine the shame when I had to put on that show for the press?” Freksa seemed to be asking for Willi’s sympathy. “After all those years of honest detective work? Not that I cared about those goddamn Gyspy scum.”

He lost whatever he might have gotten. Willi pulled away.

Freksa yanked the coat around himself. “But
Der Kinderfresse
r was still out there, and those sons of bitches didn’t care. I asked that little freak Goebbels—what do I do if there are more killings? He says—lie again! Bigger and better next time. The bigger the lie, the more they believe.”

Freksa shook his head. “Christ, I hated you for stopping me. But as much as I did”—his whole torso jerked with a sudden dam break of emotion—“I was so goddamn happy too. Because now I knew we’d catch that motherfucker.”

Gradually, Willi got the implication. “We?”

Freksa leaned in with a fractured smile, his eyes aglow now with flickering blue lights. “Come on, Kraus. Don’t tell me you never thought of it. You and me … a team? There’d be no stopping us!”

Sixteen

Willi wasn’t so deluded as to believe in miracles. But Freksa’s idea of partnership was Mephistophelian.

“We’d have to keep it incognito, of course. I couldn’t be seen with you. Or share credit in any way. I’d still have to act as though I thought you were a pig. But you’d be the brains, Kraus, really.” Freksa let himself be led across the road. “The thinking will be all yours; I’ll just do what you tell me. I’ve already begun.”

Reaching the sheltered walk on the far side they finally got out of the rain.

“What do you mean, Hans?” Willi shook himself off. It’d be a miracle if they didn’t both catch pneumonia. “You’ve already begun?”

As they trudged back across the bridge toward the U-Bahn, Freksa explained with mounting pride how Dr. Weiss had mentioned Willi’s theories about the peddlers’ market. So the other day, at that stinking rat lair off Landsberger Allee, Freksa’d gone around passing out his card, letting it be known he was offering fifty marks to anyone who had information regarding the big, bald fellow who—

Willi stopped short.

Now he was the one in shock. He couldn’t believe Freksa’d done that. In a single morning he’d compromised everything. From countless hours behind binoculars Willi knew damned well everyone in the market was terrified of the Ox. Now Freksa’d not only tipped the brute off, but sent him stampeding for cover. No wonder the Ox had vanished.

Freksa was convinced, though, his offer had paid off. Someone’d called in already claiming to have information worth far more than fifty marks, he boasted.

“We’re meeting tonight, just the two of us. And you’ll never guess where.” Freksa tilted up his chin, his long, pale face still wet with rain, a slight smile on his lips. “You were right, Kraus. The
Central-Viehof
. Slaughterhouse Seven. Eleven p.m. The section once used by Kleist-Rosenthaler.”

Willi’s whole back tensed. “You can’t be serious. Don’t do it, for God’s sake. The slaughterhouse? Alone at night?”

“Awww.” Freksa stretched his neck and brayed. “How touching, Kraus. You’re worried about me?” He patted his trench-coat pocket. “I never travel alone.”

*   *   *

The rain had eased but lightning still cracked the sky as Willi made it home to Beckmann Strasse, shaking out his hat before entering the lobby. On the staircase up, he ran into Otto Winkelmann coming down.

“Hey,
Mensch
. How are you doing?” Willi hadn’t seen him since that morning on the landing.

“Yes, yes. Much better. You remember my brother-in-law, Klemper? He’s gotten me in at his firm.”

“Well, congratulations!”

“Naturally it’s not what I’d prefer.” Otto’s head shook severely. “A clerk in the mailroom. Plus, I had to make certain other involuntary adjustments, I can assure you. But at least I’ll be able to pay my bills, yes?” He seemed both immensely relieved and in a hurry. “So bye-bye, Willi.” He waved as though he wasn’t sure when they’d see each other again. “Felix is taking me to fill out some paperwork.”

Probably making him join a union, Willi figured. A mailroom clerk. How sad.

Vicki was in the kitchen making salad.

“Thank heavens.” Her eyes glistened when she saw him. “I was afraid you might have gotten washed away.”

She shook her bangs back and lifted her face, waiting for his kiss.

He came around from behind instead, nibbling her neck.

“Daddy’s biting Mommy!” Stefan shouted from the hallway.

“Because I’m Nosferatu.” Willi made his fingers into claws and started chasing him. Erich joined and the three of them had a screaming rumble before Vicki put a stop to it.

That night, when the kids were in bed and he and Vicki were listening to Furtwängler conducting Brahms’s Seventh, she caught him staring into space.

“Kathe asked about Passover,” she said softly, as if not to disturb anyone. “I told her I had to check with— Willi?”

“What? You needn’t check, Vic. Of course we’ll have them.”

“I mean now … what’s wrong? Is it that awful Freksa again?”

Not the way she thought.

Nothing he’d said had been able to dissuade Freksa from going to the
Viehof
tonight. And the more Willi’d considered it, the less he liked it. The guy wasn’t in his right mind. What harm could there be in a little covert backup? But what was he supposed to say to Vicki, lie to her straight-faced? He picked up a newspaper and tried to read, only the words wouldn’t form in his head.

“Sweetheart.” He finally threw the paper aside, figuring a half-truth was better than none. “I’m really concerned about a colleague. I know you hate when I go out at night—”

“Oh, Willi.”

“Sometimes I put myself in your shoes and I think, God, if anything ever happened to her…”

But the idea of Freksa out there alone unnerved him.

*   *   *

Graveyard shift. In another few hours, waves of workers would begin pouring into the
Viehof
to prepare for the busy day ahead. But now, only lonely horse-drawn wagons clomped here and there, hauling trash. Willi drove past the empty administration buildings and vast glass market halls, which he could hear being hosed down inside. Even the acres of corrals filled with cows and sheep and pigs were quiet. All deep in one final sleep.

The storm had ended. The clouds, when they broke, allowed beams of moonlight to tumble down. At the end of the tunnel when he emerged at Slaughterhouse Row, all the long buildings and chimneys were cast in a silver pall. It was nearly eleven. Why would an informant want to meet in such a place? he kept asking himself. None of the answers came up reassuring.

At Slaughterhouse Five he pulled into the shadows and turned off the motor. His time behind enemy lines made stealth second nature. He navigated the rest of the way by foot without making so much as a crunch on the gravel. The night was dank, chilly. But the storm had chased away the stench, and for the time being the air was almost sweet. He halted at the sight of Slaughterhouse Seven. A lone Horch was parked out front. Next to it, the building entrance, he saw, was ever so slightly ajar. He went up to it and peeked through. It was dark as hell in there. Absolutely silent. He slipped inside.

Barely breathing, he stood a moment and let his eyes adjust. A shock of ammonia pinched his nose. It had to be twenty degrees colder in here, the two-story arcade and stone floors designed to keep temperatures down, he remembered Gruber telling him. For sanitary purposes.

The clouds opened, sending moonlight pouring through the grime-covered skylights, illuminating the interior like a photo from the kaiser’s time, filtered in rusty sepia. The place was huge. Blocks long. Subdivided into semi-enclosed zones for different types of animals. Some were leased long-term by companies whose names hung from signs: R. J. Hessen, Jinks-Escher. Since partitioning walls were only partial, everything was pretty much visible.

To Willi’s right he saw Plussgart & Son had dozens of thick chopping tables with sharp hatchets resting on each, and enough stray feathers missed by the cleaning crews to indicate it was a chicken abattoir. To his left, a far larger section leased by Goertner Brothers was filled with ramps and swinging gates through which obviously small quadrupeds were herded. Awaiting them were rows of wooden “cradles” that immobilized them for a swift blow to the head. A lineup of spikes and iron mallets stood against the wall. Running the length of the ceiling, long steel tracks contained numerous hooks, onto which the stunned creatures were evidently bound and yanked up by the legs, then sent down the line for a quick coup de grâce. All the throat-slitting scalpels hung in shiny rows. The slate floors were lined with graded gutters. Farther down, the skin- and fat-stripping areas had enormous vats on tracks, which allowed for easy disposal.

It was quite the assembly line.

Willi paused, listening. What was that? Had something just crashed in the distance? Or was it only the creaking of those hooks in the wind? He heard it again. Way at the other end of the building, a definite banging, like thunder. Could that be all it was, the storm returning? He picked up his pace, careful not to make a sound, then clouds blocked the moon and forced him to feel his way through darkness. No doubt, though, something was making a major commotion up there. It was growing in intensity as he neared, until all at once it exploded into the most hideous, bloodcurdling scream he’d heard since the battlefield.

My God.

He stopped, senses thrust to full throttle, ears poised like radio receivers, picking up nothing for what seemed eternity, then … running. A door slamming. A motor starting outside. A truck? It revved, then grew louder until it passed on the road outside and disappeared around the block.

His heart pounded wildly as he hurried ahead, not caring anymore about noise. At the far end of the building his shoulders were so tense it felt as if he’d taken a bullet. The area, he saw with a strange chill, continued to display the name Kleist-Rosenthaler.

He smelled it first. Sharp. Pungent. Then, scanning desperately, he spotted it: an enormous, almost machetelike cleaver dripping with still-steaming blood. At his feet, a gutter along the edge of the slate floor flowed red. His eyes followed until they froze in disbelief. A pair of hands, fingers downward, swung an inch off the floor.

He looked up.

Suspended upside down from two hooks, blond hair dangling in a pool of blood, eyes wide, tongue out, Freksa was strung up like a side of beef, practically split in two.

Book Three

WASTE NOT

Seventeen

BERLIN
JULY 1930

Distant screams filled the air.

Swept up by the excited crowds, Willi could barely keep a grip on the boys. It was peak summer. He’d been working relentlessly for months, and it was great taking a day off. But one couldn’t be too careful right now. Especially about kids.