Garden of Beasts (25 page)

He recognized the song that the Hitler Youth had sung yesterday as they lowered the flag at the Olympic Village. The red, the white and the black hooked cross.

Ach, surely you know….

“Oh, Paul, you can really get me out of the country, without papers?”

“Yes. But I’ll be leaving soon. Tomorrow night, I hope. Or the night after.”

“How?”

“Leave the details to me. Are you willing to leave immediately?”

After a moment of silence: “I can do that. Yes.”

She took his hand, stroked his palm and interlaced her fingers with his. This was by far the most intimate moment between them tonight.

He gripped her tightly, stretched his arm out and struck something hard under the pillow. He touched it and, from the size and feel, realized that it was the volume of Goethe’s poems that he’d given her earlier.

“You won’t—”

“Shhhh,” he whispered. And stroked her hair.

Paul Schumann knew that there are times for lovers’ words to end.

IV

S
IX TO
F
IVE
A
GAINST

Sunday, 26 July, to Monday, 27 July, 1936

Chapter Twenty

He had been in his office at the Alex for an hour, since 5
A
.
M
., painstakingly writing out the English-language telegram that he had composed in his mind as he lay sleepless in bed beside peaceful Heidi, fragrant with the powder she dusted on before retiring.

Willi Kohl now looked over his handiwork:

I AM BEING SENIOR DETECTIVE INSPECTOR WILLI

KOHL OF THE KRIMINALPOLIZEI (CRIMINAL POLICE) IN

BERLIN STOP WE SEEK INFORMATION REGARD AMERI

CAN POSSIBLY FROM NEW YORK PRESENTLY IN BERLIN

PAUL SCHUMANN IN CONNECTION OF HOMICIDE STOP

ARRIVED WITH AMERICAN OLYMPIC TEAM STOP PLEASE

TO REMIT ME INFORMATION ABOUT THIS MAN AT KRIM

INALPOLIZEI HEADQUARTERS ALEXANDERPLATZ

BERLIN TO DIRECTION OF INSPECTOR WILLI KOHL

STOP MOST URGENT STOP THANKING YOU REGARDS

He’d struggled hard with the wording. The department had translators but none worked on Sunday and he wanted to send the telegram immediately. It would be earlier in America; he wasn’t sure about the time zones and he guessed the hour to be about midnight overseas but he hoped that the law enforcers there would keep the same long shifts as police in most countries.

Kohl read the telegram once again and decided that, though flawed, it was good enough. On a separate sheet of paper he wrote instructions to send it to the International Olympic Committee, the New York City Police Department and the Federal Bureau of Investigation. He walked down to the telegraph office. He was disappointed to find that no one was as yet on duty. Angrily, he returned to his desk.

After a few hours’ sleep, Janssen was presently en route back to the Olympic Village to see if he could pick up any more leads there. What else could Kohl himself do? Nothing occurred to him, except hounding the medical examiner for the autopsy and FPE for the fingerprint analysis. But they, of course, were not in their offices yet either and might not come in at all on Sunday.

He felt the frustration acutely.

His eyes dropped down to the hard-worked-on telegram.

“Ach, this is absurd.” He would wait no longer. How difficult could it be to man a Teletype machine? Kohl rose and hurried back to the department, figuring he would do the best he could to transmit the telegram to the United States himself. And if, because of his clumsy fingers, it ended up being sent by mistake to a hundred different places in America, well, so much the better.

She had returned to her own room not long before, around 6
A.M.
, and was now back in his, wearing a dark blue housedress, pins holding her hair flat to her head, a little blush on her cheeks. Paul stood in the doorway, wiping the remnants of the shaving froth from his face. He put the cover on his safety razor and dropped it into his stained canvas bag.

Käthe had brought coffee and toast, along with some pale margarine, cheese, dried sausage and soupy marmalade. She walked through the low, dusty light streaming into the front window of his living room and set the tray on the table near the kitchen.

“There,” she announced, nodding at the tray. “No need for you to come to the breakfast room.” She looked at him once quickly. Then away. “I have chores.”

“So, you still game?” he asked in English.

“What is ‘game’?”

He kissed her. “It means what I asked you last night. Are you still willing to come with me?”

She ordered the china on the tray, which had seemed to him already perfectly ordered. “I’m game. Are you?”

He shrugged. “I wouldn’t have let you change your mind. It would be
Kakfif.
Out of the question.”

She laughed. Then a frown. “One thing I wish to say.”

“Yeah?”

“I give opinions quite often.” She looked down. “And quite strongly. Michael called me a cyclone. I want to say, regarding the subject of sports: I could learn to like them too.”

Paul shook his head. “I’d rather you didn’t.”

“No?”

“Then I’ll feel I had to like poetry.”

She pressed her head to his chest. He believed she was smiling.

“You will like America,” he said. “But if you don’t, when all this blows over you can come back. You aren’t necessarily leaving the country forever.”

“Ah, my wise writer-man. You think this will—the expression?—will blow over?”

“Yes, I do. I think they won’t be in power much longer.” He looked at the clock. The time was nearly seven-thirty. “Now I have to meet my associate.”

“On Sunday morning? Ach, I finally understand your secret.”

He looked at her with a cautious smile.

“You’re writing about priests who play sports!” She laughed. “That’s your big story!” Then her smile faded. “And why must you leave so quickly if you are writing about sports or the cubic meters of concrete used for the stadium?”

“I don’t
have
to leave quickly. I have some important meetings back in the United States.” Paul drank his coffee quickly and ate one piece of toast and sausage. “You finish what’s left. I’m not hungry now.”

“Well, hurry back to me. I will pack. But only one bag, I think. If I take too many, perhaps a ghost will try to hide in one.” A laugh. “Ach, I am sounding like someone out of a story by our macabre friend E.T.A. Hoffmann.”

He kissed her and left the boardinghouse, stepped out into the morning, already hot, already painting a damp coat on the skin. With a glance up and down the empty street, he made his way north, over the canal, and into the Tiergarten, the Garden of Beasts.

Paul found Reggie Morgan sitting on a bench in front of the very pond where Käthe Richter’s lover had been beaten to death three years ago.

Even at this early hour, dozens of people were here. A number of walkers and bicyclists. Morgan’s jacket was off and his shirt sleeves partly rolled up.

Paul sat down beside him. Morgan flicked an envelope inside his jacket pocket. “Got the greenbacks okay,” he whispered in English.

They reverted to German. “They cashed a check on Saturday night?” Paul asked, laughing. “I’m living in a whole new world.”

“You think Webber will show up?” Morgan asked skeptically.

“Oh, yes. If there’s money involved he’ll be here. But I’m not sure how helpful he’ll be. I looked over Wilhelm Street last night. There are dozens of guards, hundreds maybe. It’d be far too risky to do the job there. We’ll have to see what Otto says. Maybe he’s found another location.”

They sat in silence for a moment.

Paul watched him look around the park. Morgan seemed wistful. He said, “I will miss this country very much.” For a moment the man’s face lost its keenness and the dark eyes were sad. “There are good people here. I find them kinder than the Parisians, more open than the Londoners. And they spend far more time enjoying life than New Yorkers. If we had time I’d take you to the Lustgarten and Luna Park. And I love to walk here, in the Tiergarten. I enjoy watching birds.” The thin man seemed embarrassed at this. “A foolish diversion.”

Paul laughed to himself, thinking of the model airplanes sitting on his bookshelf in Brooklyn. Foolishness is in the eye of the beholder.

“So you’ll leave?” Paul asked.

“I can’t stay. I’ve been here far too long. Every day there’s another chance of a mistake, some carelessness that will tip them off to me. And after what we’re about to do they’ll look very closely at every foreigner who’s had business here recently. But after life returns to normal and the National Socialists are gone I can return.”

“What will you do when you come back?”

Morgan brightened. “I would like to be a diplomat. That’s why I am in this business. After what I saw in the trenches…” He nodded at a bullet scar on his arm. “After that, I decided I was going to do whatever I could to stop war. The diplomatic corps made sense. I wrote the Senator about it. He suggested Berlin. A country in flux, he called it. So here I am. I hope to be a liaison officer in a few years. Then ambassador or a consul. Like our Ambassador Dodd here. He’s a genius, a true statesman. I won’t be posted
here,
of course, not at first. Too important a country. I could start out in Holland. Or maybe Spain, well, after their civil war is over, of course. If there’s any Spain left. Franco’s as bad as Hitler. It’ll be brutal. But, yes, I would like to come back here when sanity returns.”

A moment later Paul spotted Otto Webber coming down the path, walking slowly, a bit unsteadily and squinting against the powerful sunlight.

“There he is now.”

“Him? He looks like a
Bürgermeister.
And one who spent the evening in his cups. We’re relying on
him?
”

Webber approached the bench and sat down, breathing hard. “Hot, hot day. I didn’t know it could be this hot in the morning. I’m rarely up at this hour. But neither are the dung-shirts so we can meet without much concern. You are Mr. John Dillinger’s associate?”

“Dillinger?” Morgan asked.

“I am Otto Webber.” He shook Morgan’s hand vigorously. “You are?”

“I’ll keep my name to myself if you don’t mind.”

“Ach, me, yes, that’s fine.” Webber examined Morgan closely. “Say, I have some nice trousers, several pair. I can sell them to you cheap. Yes, yes, very cheap. The best quality. From England. I can have one of my girls alter them to fit you perfectly. Ingrid is available. And very talented. Quite pretty too. A real pearl.”

Morgan glanced down at his gray flannel slacks. “No. I don’t need any clothes.”

“Champagne? Stockings?”

“Otto,” Paul said. “I think the only transaction we’re interested in involves what we were talking about yesterday.”

“Ach, yes, Mr. John Dillinger. Except I have some news you may not like. All of my contacts report that a veil of silence has descended on Wilhelm Street. Something has made them cautious. Security has become higher than ever. And all this in the last day. There is no information anyone has about this person you were mentioning.”

Paul’s face twisted in disappointment.

Morgan muttered, “I spent half of last night coming up with the money.”

“Good,” Webber said brightly. “Dollars, correct?”

“My friend,” the slim American added caustically, “you don’t get paid if we don’t get results.”

“But the situation is not hopeless. I can still be of some assistance.”

“Go on,” Morgan said impatiently. He looked down again at his slacks, brushing at a smudge.

The German continued. “I can’t tell you where the chicken is but what would you say if I can get you into the henhouse and you could find out for yourself?”

“The—”

He lowered his voice. “I can get you into the Chancellory. Ernst is the envy of all the ministers. Everyone tries to snuggle close to the Little Man and get offices in the building but the best that most of them can do is to find space nearby. That Ernst abides there is a source of anguish to many.”

Paul scoffed. “I looked it over last night. There’re guards everywhere. You couldn’t get me in there.”

“Ah, but I am of a different opinion, my friend.”

“How the hell can you do it?” Paul had lapsed into English. He repeated the question in German.

“We have the Little Man to thank. He is obsessed with architecture. He has been renovating the Chancellory since he came to power. Laborers are there seven days a week. I will provide a workman’s outfit, a forged identification card and the two passes that will get you into the building. One of my contacts is doing the plastering there and he has access to all the documentation.”

Morgan considered this and nodded, now less cynical about the idea.

“My friend tells me that Hitler wishes rugs in all the offices on the important floors. That will include Ernst’s. The carpet suppliers are measuring the offices. Some have been measured, some have not. We will hope Ernst’s has not. In the event it has been, you can make some excuse about having to measure again. The pass I will give you is from a company that is known for, among other things, its fine carpeting. I will also provide a meter stick and a notebook.”

“How do you know you can trust this man?” Paul asked.

“Because he’s been using cheap plaster and pocketing the difference between its cost and what the state is paying him. That’s a death offense when you’re building Hitler’s seat of power. So I have some leverage with him; he wouldn’t lie to me. Besides, he thinks only that we’re running some scam to undercut the price of carpets. Of course, I did promise him a bit of egg.”

“Egg?” Morgan asked.

It was for Paul to interpret. “Money.”

Whose bread I eat is whose song I sing….

“Take it out of the thousand dollars.”

“I wish to point out that I don’t
have
the thousand dollars.”

Morgan shook his head, reached into his pocket and counted out a hundred.

“That’s fine. See, I’m not greedy.”

Morgan rolled his eyes at Paul. “Not greedy? Why, he’s like Göring.”

“Ach, I take that as a compliment, sir. Our air minister is a very resourceful businessman.” Webber turned to Paul. “Now, there will be some officials in the building, even on Sunday. But my man tells me they will be senior people and will be mostly in the Leader’s portion of the building, to the left, which you will not be allowed near. To the right are the lower-level-officials’ offices—that’s where Ernst’s is. They, and their secretaries and aides, will most likely not be there. You should have some time to browse through his office and, with luck, find his calendar or a memo or notation about his appointments in the next few days.”

“This is not bad,” Morgan said.

Webber said, “It will take me an hour or so to put everything in place. I will pick up the coveralls and your papers and a truck. I’ll meet you by that statue there, the woman with the large bosom, at ten
A
.
M
. And I’ll bring some pants for
you,
” he added to Morgan. “Twenty marks. Such a good price.” He smiled then said to Paul, “Your friend here eyes me with a very particular look, Mr. John Dillinger. I don’t believe he trusts me.”