The Good German (34 page)

“I don’t believe it.”

“When did you first see the Horch? On the Avus, you said. Soon after you left Gelferstrasse.”

“That doesn’t mean anything. Try this point. Nobody started shooting until we met Shaeffer.”

“Away from the crowd. And if you had both been shot? An incident. No longer just you.”

“But why—”

“Because you are dangerous to someone, of course. A detective is.”

“I don’t believe it,” Jake said, his voice less sure than before.

Gunther picked up a hairbrush and ran it back over his temples. “Have it your way. But I suggest you move. If they know Gelferstrasse, they may know the other. I take it this is where the lady friend lives, the good Lena? It’s one thing to put yourself in danger—”

Jake cut him off. “Do you really believe this?”

Gunther shrugged. “A precaution.”

“Why should Lena be in any danger?”

“Why was a Russian looking for her? You didn’t find it interesting, that point? The Russian at Professor Brandt’s asks for her, not for the son.”

“To find the son,” Jake said, watching Gunther’s face.

“Then why not ask for him?”

“All right, why not? Another obvious point?”

Gunther shook his head. “More a possibility. But it suggests itself.” He looked up at Jake. “They already know where he is.”

Jake said nothing, waiting for more, but Gunther turned away, taking the coffee cup with him into the other room. “Is it time?” he said to Bernie.

“You sober? Hold out your hands.”

Gunther stretched one arm out—a mild trembling. “So I’m on trial now,” he said.

“We want a credible witness, not a drunk.”

“I’m a policeman. I’ve been in a courtroom before.”

“Not this kind.”

Jake had followed them, brooding. “That doesn’t make sense,” he said to Gunther.

“Not yet. As I say, a possibility.” He put down the cup. “But I would move her. I would hide her.”

Jake glanced at him, disturbed. “I still want to talk to Shaeffer,” he said. “He’s the one they shot. And he couldn’t wait to get out of there. Even wounded, it’s all he cared about.” He paused. “Anyway, where could we go? It’s not easy to move in Berlin.”

“No. Unless you have to. I moved Marthe fourteen times,” Gunther said, looking down at the floor. “Fourteen. I remember every time. You don’t forget. Güntzelstrasse. Blücherstrasse. Every time. Will they ask me about that?” he said to Bernie.

“No,” Bernie said, “just the last time.”

“With the
greifer
,” he said, nodding. “A coffee. We thought it was safe. She had papers. Safe.”

Jake looked at him, surprised. A U-boat trail, Gunther helping. “I thought you divorced her,” he said.

“She divorced me. It was better.” He looked up. “You think I abandoned her? Marthe? She was my wife. I did what I could. Flats. Papers. For a policeman, not so difficult. But not enough. The
greifer

saw her. By chance, just like that. So it was all for nothing. Every move.“ He stopped and turned to Bernie. ”Forgive me, I’m not

myself.“

“You going to be sick?”

Gunther smiled weakly. “Not sick. A little—” His voice trailed off, suddenly frail. “Perhaps one drink. For the nerves.”

“Nothing doing,” Bernie said.

But Jake glanced at him, his body shrunken in the old suit, eyes uneasy, and walked over to the table and poured out a finger of brandy. Gunther drank it back in one gulp, like medicine, then stood for a second letting it work its way through him.

“Don’t worry,” he said to Bernie. “I won’t forget anything.”

“Let’s hope not.” He reached into his pockets and pulled out a mint. “Here, chew this. The Russians’U smell it on you a mile off.”

“The Russians?” Jake said.

“It’s a Russian trial. To show us they can do it too, not just string people up. Especially when we help catch them. Come on, we’ll be late.”

“Can I get in? I’d like to see this. See Renate.”

“The press slots were gone days ago. Everybody wants to see this one.”

Jake looked at him, feeling like Gunther asking for a drink.

“All right,” Bernie said. “We’ll put you on the prosecution team. You can keep an eye on our friend here. Which is getting to be a job.” He glanced at Gunther. “No more.”

Gunther handed the glass back to Jake. “Thank you.” And then, as a kind of return favor, “I’ll talk to Willi for you.”

“Willi?”

“It’s a type I know well. He’ll talk to me.”

“I mean, why him?” Jake said, intrigued to see Gunther still working, behind everything.

“To keep the figures neat. The little details. What’s the English? Dot the
i’s
and cross the
t’s
.”

“Still a cop.”

Gunther shrugged. “It pays to be neat. Not overlook anything.”

“What else did I overlook?”

“Not overlook—ignore, perhaps. Sometimes when it’s not pleasant, we don’t want to see.”

“Such as?” “The car.”

“The Horch
again
? What’s so important about the Horch?” “No, Herr Brandt’s car. That week—to drive into Berlin, how was it possible? The city was burning, at war. And yet he comes to get his wife. How was that allowed?” “It was an SS car.”

“Yes, his. You think the SS was offering lifts? While the city was falling? Either he was one of them or he was their prisoner. But they stop to collect the father, so not a prisoner. One of them. A mission for the SS—what kind? Even the SS didn’t send cars for relatives those last days.”

“His father said they were picking up files.” “And they risk coming to Berlin. What files, I wonder.” “That’s easy to find out,” Bernie said. “They surrendered in the west. There’ll be a record somewhere. One thing we’ve got plenty of is files.”

“More folders,” Gunther said, looking at the stack Bernie had brought with him for the trial. “For all the bad Germans. Let’s see what they say about Herr Brandt.”

“What makes you think he’s in them?” Jake said. “What do you save when a city’s on fire? You save yourself.” “He was trying to save his wife.”

“But he didn’t,” Gunther said, then looked away, somewhere else. “Of course, sometimes it’s not possible.” He picked up his jacket and put it on, ready to go. “That last week—you weren’t here. Fires. Russians in the streets. We thought it was the end of the world.” He looked back at Jake. “But it wasn’t. Now there’s this. The reckoning.”

The courtroom had an improvised look to it, as if the Russians had set up a stage without knowing where the props went. Their de-Nazification program had run to group executions, not trials, but the
greifer
was a special case, so they’d taken over a room near the old police headquarters in the Alex, built a raised platform of raw wooden boards for the judges’ bench, and assigned the press haphazard rows of folding chairs that squeaked and scraped the floor as reporters leaned forward to hear. The prosecution attorneys and their Allied advisers were crammed together at one table, a lopsided stacking of cards against the defense lawyer and his one assistant, who sat by themselves at another. Along the wall, female Soviet soldiers made transcripts with steno machines, handing them to two civilian girls for translation.

The trial was in German, but the judges, three senior officers shuffling papers and trying not to look bored, evidently understood only a little, so the lawyers, also in uniform, occasionally switched to Russian, afraid to let their points drift away to the steno keys unheard. There was a heavy chair for witnesses, a Soviet flag, and not much else. It was the format of an inquisition, starker even than the rough-and-ready frontier courtrooms of Karl May, not a robe in sight. People were frisked at the door.

Renate stood behind a cagelike railing of new plywood next to the bench, facing the room, as if her expression during the testimony would be recorded as a kind of evidence. Behind her stood two soldiers with machine guns, gazing stolidly at her back. Bernie said she had changed, but she was recognizably the same—thinner, with the hollowed-out look you saw everywhere in Berlin, but still Renate. Only her dark hair was different, cropped close and turned a premature, indeterminate pale. She was dressed in a loose gray prison shift, belted, her collarbones sticking out, and the face he remembered as pretty and animated seemed rearranged—beaten, perhaps, or somehow disfigured by her life. But there were the eyes, sharp and knowing, glancing defiantly around the crowd as if she were even now looking for news items. The same way, Jake thought, she must have hunted for Jews.

She spotted him instantly, raising her eyebrows in surprise, then dropping them in bewilderment. A friend sitting at the table of her accusers. Did she think he was there to testify against her? What would he have said? A girl with a quick smile who liked to take chances, bold enough to cadge a cigarette from a Nazi on a train platform. A sharp eye, trained for snatching prey in the street. How could she have done it? But that was always the question—how could any of them have done it? He wanted suddenly to signal some absurd reassurance. I remember who you were. Not a monster, not then. How can I judge? But who could? Three Russian soldiers on a makeshift platform, whose fleshy faces seemed to ask no questions at all.

They were only minutes into the trial before Jake realized they hadn’t come to establish guilt, just the sentence. And was there any doubt? The Germans had kept records of her activity, more columns of numbers. As the prosecution read out its indictments, Jake watched her lower her head, as if she too were overwhelmed by the sweep of it, all the snatches, one by one, until finally there were enough to fill boxcars. So many. Had she known them all, or just guessed, smelling fear when it walked into one of her Cafés? Each number a face-to-face moment, real to her, not anonymous like a pilot opening the bomb bay.

The method was as Bernie had described—the sighting, the hurried call, the nod of her head to make the arrest, her colleagues bundling people into cars as she walked away. Why hadn’t she kept walking? Instead she’d gone back to the collection center, her room there its own kind of short leash, but still not a prison. Why not just keep walking away? Gunther had moved his wife fourteen times. But he had had papers and friends prepared to help. No U-boat could survive alone. Where, after all, would she have gone?

The Russian prosecutor then switched, oddly, to a detailed account of Renate’s own capture, the manhunt that finally ran her to ground in a basement in Wedding. For a moment Jake thought the Soviets were simply congratulating themselves for the press, now busily taking notes. Then he noticed Bernie in a lawyer’s huddle, heard Gunther mentioned by name as the hunter, and saw that it was something more—the old DA’s ploy, establishing your witness, the good guy in the neat jacket and tie. He needn’t have bothered. The story, with its breathless chase, seemed lost on the first judge, who shifted in his seat and lit a cigarette. The Russian next to him leaned over and whispered. The judge, annoyed, put it out and gazed at the window, where a standing fan was lazily moving the stuffy air. Apparently an unexpected western custom. Jake wondered how long it would take to call a recess.

He’d assumed from the buildup that Gunther would be the star witness. Who else was there? The records supplied the mechanics of the crime, but its victims were dead, no longer able to accuse. Gunther had actually seen her do it. And a DA always started with the police, to weight his case at the beginning. The first person called, however, was a Frau Gersh, a more theatrical choice, a frail woman who had to be helped to the witness chair on crutches. The prosecutor began, solicitously, with her feet.

“From frostbite. On the death march,” she said, halting but matter-of-fact. “They made us leave the camp so the Russians wouldn’t find out. We had to walk in the snow. If you fell, they shot you.”

“But you were fortunate.”

“No, I fell. They shot me. Here,” she said, pointing to her hip. “They thought I was dead, so they left me. But I couldn’t move. In the snow. So the feet.”

She spoke simply, her voice low, so that chairs creaked as people strained forward to hear. Then she looked over at Renate.

“The camp where she sent me,” she said, louder, spitting it out.

“I didn’t know,” Renate said, shaking her head. “I didn’t know.”

The judge glared at her, startled to hear her speak but unsure what to do about it. No one seemed to know what the rules were supposed to be, least of all the defense attorney, who could only silence her with a wave of his hand and nod at the judge, an uneasy apology.

“She did!” the woman said, forceful now. “She knew.”

“Frau Gersh,” the prosecutor said deliberately, as if the outburst hadn’t happened, “do you recognize the prisoner?”

“Of course. The
greifer
.”

“She was known to you personally?”

“No. But I know that face. She came for me, with the men.”

“That was the first time you saw her?”

“No. She talked to me at the shoe repair. I should have known, but I didn’t. Then, that same afternoon—”

“The shoe repair?” one of the judges said, confusing the past with the crutches now on display.

“One of her contacts,” the prosecutor said. “People in hiding wore out their shoes—from all the walking, to keep moving. So Fräulein Naumann made friends with the shoe men. ‘Who’s been in today? Any strangers?’ She found many this way. This particular shop—” He made a show of checking his notes. “In Schöneberg. Hauptstrasse. That’s correct?”

“Yes, Hauptstrasse,” Frau Gersh said.

Jake looked at Renate. Clever, if that’s what you were after, collecting items from cobblers. All her news-gathering tricks, offered to murderers.

“So she talked to you there?”

“Yes, you know, the weather, the raids. Just to talk. I didn’t like it—I had to be careful—so I left.”

“And went home?”

“No, I had to be careful. I walked to Viktoria Park, then here and there. But when I got back, she was there. With the men. The others—good German people, helping me—were already gone. She sent them away too.”

“I must point out,” the defense lawyer said, “that at this time, 1944, it was against the law for German citizens to hide Jews. This was an illegal act.”