The Seventh Secret (28 page)

"What's in it?"

"We shall see." He was studiously reviewing the clippings, slowly shaking his head. "Mostly false alarms. As late as 1950, American MPs zeroed in on a German male nurse in a Frankfurt-am-Main hospital, a man named Heinrich Noll, who very much resembled Hitler. They interrogated him, found out he wasn't Hitler, and re-leased him. In 1951, datelined Vienna, we have this story. Hitler was supposed to have died in 1944 in a bombing attempt on his life, and Martin Bormann re-placed Hitler with a double named Strasser. No first name given. No solid source for the story, so you can write that one off. The last flurry in 1969, when a retired German coal miner, Albert Pankla by name, was detained and released for the three-hundredth time because he looked just like Hitler. Apparently, there is not a thing—wait, here's a slip of paper with a notation I almost overlooked."

Nitz read the notation, and wrinkled his brow. "What does it say?" asked Tovah hopefully.

"I don't understand it. Someone noted here, 'On the matter of Hitler doubles, see the file on Manfred' "

"Who's he?"

"I haven't the faintest idea. But I intend to find out." He came to his feet. "There's a refrigerator over there with Cokes, Miss Levine. Have one. I'll be right back."

Tovah had no patience for a soft drink. She waited again, a trifle crestfallen, but still curious about what Peter Nitz would return with.

He returned with a single long clipping, scanning it as he reached his desk. "Of more recent vintage. A roundup of some of the older restaurants and nightclubs in West Berlin that have existed since the twenties. Manfred Müller was the most popular entertainer at one of these. Müller bore an uncanny resemblance to Hitler and used to regale audiences in the Führer s time with his stage imitations of Hitler. One day, he did not appear. He was never seen again. No idea what happened. Maybe he retired."

"I wonder if Manfred Müller is still around?"

"The article doesn't say. It does mention the restaurant nightclub where he used to appear. It used to be called the Lowendorff Club. It is now called Lowendorff's Kneipe. Why don't you look in there and find someone who can tell you about Müller. A longshot, yet worth chasing down. Let me give you the address."

I
t was really a middle-class beer garden, Tovah saw.

Once inside the outdoor enclosure, a surround and roof of vine-covered trellises that gave it some isolation from the street, she saw a scattering of tables at which young people huddled together over their soft drinks, beers, whiskies. Above the entrance to the indoor part of the club there stood a neon sign, not yet lit for evening, that read in large letters, LOWENDORFF'S, and beneath in smaller letters, FRCHSTUCK/KNEIPE.

Tovah intercepted a waiter coming away from a table and introduced herself as a journalist who wanted to interview the proprietor.

"You mean Herr Bree, Fred Bree," said the waiter, impressed. "He's inside. Come along. I'll get him for you."

Tovah followed the waiter out of the sunlight into the darkened beer hall. Here the tables were more formally aligned, none occupied by customers at this mid-afternoon hour. Beyond that was a waxed floor—Tovah guessed it was for dancing as well as entertainment—and toward the rear there were members of a five-piece orchestra getting ready to rehearse. Talking to them was a wiry young man in shirtsleeves and Bavarian lederhosen held up with red suspenders.

Inside the hall, at the farthest rim of tables, the waiter held out his arm to stop Tovah and said, "Wait." He scurried over to the wiry young man in the lederhosen who had been talking to the musicians, and whispered to him, pointing back toward the entrance. The wiry young man pivoted to locate Tovah, nodded a greeting, and came up the aisle toward her.

"I'm Fred Bree," he said. "You wish to speak to me?"

"My name is Tovah Levine. I'm from the Jerusalem Post, and I'm doing a series of articles on the kind of entertainment there used to be in Berlin before the war. We have many readers who emigrated from Berlin, and they are interested in these nostalgic pieces. I was told that a Herr Lowendorff once ran this club."

"Walter Lowendorff—yes, he made this club very popular in the 1930s," said Bree.

"I'm told he had an act here that was a special attraction. A one-man show starring the mimic, Manfred Müller. I was hoping to find out more about this Müller."

"Manfred Müller," mouthed Bree. "Has a familiar ring, but I really don't know anything about him. I wasn't born then. That kind of knowledge would have only been known to Herr Lowendorff or to my father. This neighborhood was severely damaged by the Allied bombings in the last months of the Second World War. After the war, Lowendorff had no heart to rebuild the club. So he sold it to my father, who already owned several Kneipen. After my father died in 1975, I inherited the club and have managed it ever since."

"So you would know nothing about Manfred Müller?"

"I repeat, my father might have known, but he is no longer here. Of course, Walter Lowendorff might recall something of his old acts." The young proprietor brightened. "Why don't you ask Lowendorff himself?"

Tovah, whose spirits had been low, felt a surge of hope. "You mean the original Lowendorff is still around?"

"Indestructible," Bree said with a grin. "Really an ancient party, quite creaky in the joints, somewhat short on memory, but he still remembers to drop in on his old club for a daily beer." He took Tovah by the arm. "Let's go out to the garden and see if he's arrived yet...

They emerged into the trellis-covered beer garden, and Bree ran his eyes over the various customers at the tables. "Not here yet." Bree consulted his wristwatch. "He usually comes by at three. So there's ten minutes or so to go. Why don't you take a table, Fräulein
 
Levine, and wait for him? Let me treat you to a beer. I'll keep a lookout for him and bring him over to you."

"Thank you, Herr Bree."

The proprietor led Tovah to a vacant table, snapped his fingers for a waiter, ordered her a draft beer, and then wandered off to consort with his other patrons.

Tovah, sipping her foaming beer, noted when fifteen minutes had passed, and began to have her doubts that anything would come of this, but then she saw Bree returning with an elderly, doddering man in tow.

Helping the ancient into a chair at Tovah's table, Bree performed the introductions. "Fräulein
 
Levine, this is the renowned Walter Lowendorff. I've already filled him in on your mission. You two get together, while I send over another beer."

Tovah considered the wrinkled old man with some misgivings. His eyes were rheumy, and he looked off at the people at the other tables blankly, an idiot smile pressed into his prune face.

He showed no awareness of Tovah until his beer was set before him. Then at last, after licking at the foam, he focused on Tovah.

"I am writing about some of the more memorable acts and entertainers in Berlin in the 1930s," Tovah began. "I'm told you sponsored some of the best."

"Yes, it is true," said Lowendorff. "The best."

He sucked on his beer, attentive to Tovah over his glass stein.

"I'm particularly interested in one act you had that became famous," said Tovah, struggling uphill. "I understand you had a great success with Manfred Müller, a mimic who did sensational imitations of Hitler."

"Ah, Müller, Müller," said Lowendorff, the foam clinging to his lips as he put down his beer. "The best, the very best."

"I want to know more about him," said Tovah, "I understand he could have doubled for Adolf Hitler."

Either the beer or the recollection of Müller appeared to revive clarity in the old man. "Looked exactly like Hitler," Lowendorff remembered. "Spitting image from the lock of brown hair on his forehead to the fanatical blue eyes to brush mustache. Absolutely Hitler. Also a funny mimic. He could do Hitler to perfection, but satiric, very satiric. Not cruel. Just humorous. The moment he tried out for me, I hired him."

Lowendorfi's mind drifted off, and he returned to sucking his beer as he visited the past.

Tovah tried to bring him into the present once more. "You hired Manfred Müller. He did his act here. He was a success."

"Huge success. Every night standing room only. Spectators of every class came from everywhere. Manfred would do little blackouts of Hitler's movements. He would do Hitler in the Munich beer hall giving orders. He would do Hitler in his prison cell dictating Mein Kampf to Hess. Hitler ordering the burning of the Reichstag. Outrageous stuff, but to tickle the ribs. Business was never better."

"But then he stopped," Tovah prodded. "I know that he gave up his act when he was still on top. Why did he quit?"

The old man tried to comprehend what Tovah was saying. "Quit, quit? No, no, he did not quit. Manfred Müller was on top of the world, yes. All Berlin was talking about him, until they made him quit."

"Who made him quit?"

"Why, the Hitler gang, of course. One night, after his act, they were waiting for him. Four strong-arm men from the Göring Gestapo—or was it Himmler's then?—I forget. They grabbed him, stuffed him into a car, and drove him away. That was in spring, 1936. The last I ever saw of Manfred Müller."

Tovah was at the edge of her chair. "But what happened to him?"

"Never heard of him again. Poof, into thin air. Maybe shot for his audacity. Maybe not. Maybe just shut up."

Or maybe, just maybe, something else, Tovah thought. A man who looked like Hitler, who could imitate Hitler to perfection, might be useful for something else.

"If he lived, could he still be alive?" Tovah wondered.

"Could be, could be. He was a young person, early thirties, maybe a little more, when he was picked up."

Tovah persisted. "Can you think of anyone who might know what happened to him?"

"No, nobody—except . . Lowendorff trembled a little at his effort to reach back into some recess of memory.

"Except," Tovah prompted him.

Lowendorff apparently made some discovery in his exploration of the past. "Anneliese Raab. She was Leni Riefenstahl's assistant in the photography of the Berlin Olympics. She knew Hitler himself, Anneliese Raab did, through Riefenstahl. Anneliese was about eighteen years old. She would come to my club often to laugh over the antics of Manfred Müller. Maybe she told Hitler about Müller's imitations. Maybe Hitler told her what he did with Müller. Yes, yes, do see Fräulein
 
Raab."

"You know her address?"

"Everyone will tell you where to find her. She is still famous. Yes, yes, Anneliese Raab is the one who might know what happened to our Hitler mimic."

"O
f course I know what happened to Manfred Müller," Anneliese Raab said, as she walked with a springy step through the corridor of the Eden apartment building adjacent to the Palace Hotel at Europa Center. Anneliese admitted proudly that she owned the expensive penthouse they had just left, as well as the apartment that they were about to visit which she had converted into her private projection room. " Müller was an absolutely marvelous performer," she assured Tovah.

Anneliese Raab, a short, compact woman wearing a blond, curly wig and a gray tailored suit, had not been difficult for Tovah to find, since she was well-known in the city, and she had cordially invited Tovah for the interview.

No sooner had Tovah stated the reason for her visit, than Anneliese had telephoned someone in her projection room, and mysteriously asked Tovah to join her in viewing a reel or two of the 1936 Berlin Olympics film that she had assisted Leni Riefenstahl in producing.

"Well, what happened to Manfred Müller after the Gestapo picked him up at the Lowendorff Club that night in 1936?"

Anneliese looked at Tovah with amusement. "Why, he became Adolf Hitler's double, of course. Come, -I will show you."

Excited by the unexpected revelation, Tovah Levine followed the German filmmaker into the small, beautifully decorated projection room, with its tiers of maroon leather folding seats.

Anneliese settled herself in a seat next to a control panel and beckoned Tovah to sit down beside her. Anneliese pressed a button beside a microphone and spoke to someone in the projection room above them. "Ready when you are."

"I need five minutes to get the reel on," the disembodied voice from the projection room announced.

Anneliese pulled back and half-turned toward Tovah. "So we have five minutes for explanations. I will tell you what I know."