The Shadow Man (49 page)

The doctor turned toward Walter Robinson, who saw that he held Leroy Jefferson’s tongue in his hand. It had been sliced out at its roots.

By the time she was settled into her connecting flight from London to Berlin, Espy Martinez was snared by the inevitable tug of conflicting sensations: exhausted by erratic sleep and air travel, energized by the thought that she was doing something that might matter. She found her daydreams filled with successes; imagined headlines, envi-led the accolades from her officemates. She pictured herself and Walter Robinson linked by good fortune and public prosperity, and thought that high-profile triumph would allow her to force him upon her reluctant, antique

parents, creating an avenue where even their prejudice would have to take a backseat to accolades.

She did not really think of the Shadow Man as anything other than a device for advancement. Ambitions in love and career were all she could concentrate on, as the jet engines droned outside and she sliced through the dark European sky. That she was thousands of miles from her home, and from the case in hand, was lost on her. She saw nothing unique in her destination, only that there was a witness that needed to be interviewed and that he might provide her with a name, and that might be all that she and Walter Robinson needed.

As the lateness of the hour settled on her, she worked on her list of questions for the old man she had traveled to see. She did not understand that she was somehow stepping into the history of nightmare. Simon Winter would have, as would the rabbi and Frieda Kroner. Walter Robinson might have begun to comprehend this, but as her flight began its approach into Berlin’s airport, he was fighting nausea in a sterile autopsy chamber at the Dade County Medical Examiner’s Office, watching as the physician carefully documented each of the dozens of slices in Leroy Jefferson’s body, thinking, as each was noted on a form, that he could no longer underestimate the man he was hunting.

She exchanged some money at a kiosk inside the terminal and took a cab to the Hilton Hotel. She left instructions with the desk clerk that she should be awakened at eight in the morning, which was an hour before the police liaison from Bonn was scheduled to meet her.

For a moment, before crawling into bed, she looked out the window of her hotel room. What she saw was a modern city spread out under a night sky. She did not feel that far from home.

Timothy Schultz, the police liaison, was waiting for her in the lobby of the hotel. He was a thickset man, in his fifties, with close-cropped, military-style hair and a pleasant southern accent. As she exited the elevator, he rose from an overstuffed chair and advanced on her, hand extended. ‘Well, hell, Miss Martinez,’ he said, ‘it sure is nice to meet someone from the great State of Florida, even if it is the wrong end of it.’

‘Glad to meet you, Mr Schultz. Let me thank you again for all your help.’

‘No big deal. And anyway, most of the time I spend handling FBI queries about terrorists and international jewel thieves and all sorts of business scams. So, I got to admit, your request sure was a whole helluva lot more interesting than the usual thing come knocking over the telex. Wouldn’t have missed this for the world.’ ‘The daughter said she would translate for me….’ ‘Well, then I’ll just sort of back her up.’ Espy Martinez nodded, her mouth open slightly, as if to ask something, but the police liaison anticipated it.

‘I know, I know. I know what y’all are thinking. You’re thinking how is it this good old boy from Pensacola lands over here, and he sure doesn’t sound like he can talk one word of the lingo, ain’t that right, Miss Martinez?’ ‘Well, the thought crossed my mind.’ ‘Not too complicated. My grandparents were both German immigrants and I grew up in their house, ‘cause my daddy ran out on us when I was still little. The old folks kept up the language, and so I learned it young. There you have it’

They started to walk across the lobby. ‘You want me to give you the scenic tour, Miss rtinez? Or are you in a hurry to talk to this old guy

before his daughter gets him to change his mind?’ ‘Mr Schultz, tourism isn’t what I’m here for.’ He nodded and shrugged. ‘I’m thinking you’re gonna get a different kind of tour,’ he said.

They drove through the city, and despite Espy Martinez’s quiet attempts to focus on the upcoming interview, the police liaison kept up a steady travelogue, pointing out the sights of the city. Where the wall once stood, parks, buildings, and a river flowed past the windshield. She found herself looking up occasionally when something he said spurred some memory. He drove her past the Iranische Strasse address of the Jewish Bureau of Investigation, but the building had been replaced by a modern office complex. Schultz explained to her that Berlin, like many European cities, had more lives than the proverbial cat; centuries of building had made it old and venerable, only to have the war turn it into a bombed-out world of rubble. The fifty years since the war had been filled with rebuilding, but hampered by the years spent divided between East and West. The result was an odd hodgepodge of architectures and ages. He laughed, and asked her to envision Miami fifty years earlier.

The old Nazi lived in tract housing outside the center of the city. It had a determined suburban feel to it, slightly alien, as if a poor model of an American concept. There was an insistent uniformity to the houses: white stucco, with dark slate roofs, trim gardens and shrubs, uncluttered streets. There was an orderliness to it all that made her feel uncomfortable.

Schultz noticed this, and said, ‘You got to remember, Miss Martinez. The Germans like things lined up and at attention. Everything in its place.’ He pulled to a stop in front of one of the homes. ‘Here we go,’ he said. ‘Should be interesting.’

They were a few feet from the front door when it cracked open slowly, and she saw a striking woman standing hesitantly in the portal.

‘Miss Wilmschmidt?’

The woman nodded. There was an awkward moment when she did not open the door, but then, as if still doubtful about what she was allowing to happen, the woman swung the door wide and gestured for them to enter. She was tall, in her mid-thirties, but thin-waisted, like a fashion model, with a wave of reddish-brown hair gently littered with gray, which only made her seem more elegant. She wore fashionable eyeglasses that hung from a retaining strap down onto an expensive white silk shirt. Her clothes, though, reflected her attitude: a chocolate skirt and dark stockings, a black blazer. Despite her stylishness, she had a spinster librarian’s quality to her, a cold, tight, angry attitude. As Espy Martinez and the police liaison stepped into the small house, the woman said: ‘I wish you were not here, Miss Martinez. I wish that this was not happening.’

‘I’m sorry to intrude,’ Martinez answered. ‘I appreciate whatever help your father—’

‘He is sick. I do not know the word in English. He cannot breathe. Because of the smoking. I do not know what you would call it.’

‘Emphysema?’

“Perhaps that is it. He is not supposed to become excited. That you understand.’

‘Of course. We’ll try to keep this short.’

‘That would be good. I am supposed to return to the bank this afternoon. That is where I work.’

‘I’ll try to be brief.’

The daughter nodded, although clearly she did not believe this. At the same moment, there was a burst in

German, which echoed from the rear of the house: ‘Maria! Bring sie herein!’

The woman hesitated. ‘Already he is too excited,’ she said.

‘Bring sie herein.1’

Maria Wilmschmidt swung her hand halfheartedly in the direction of the voice. Espy Martinez heard a series of painful coughs as they maneuvered through the narrow central corridor of the small, two-bedroom house.

The old Nazi lay in pajamas and dark dressing gown on a single, wooden-frame bed inside a still, cramped room. A sole window, framed by thick white curtains, allowed some gray daylight to enter the room. There were no pictures on the walls. The only other furniture was a beaten brown bureau and a bedside table littered with vials of pills and a water jug. A tall oxygen tank with a pale green mask stood next to the bed. In a corner a television set played soundlessly. The old man had been watching reruns of American television shows. In one corner, as if thrown there, was a pile of magazines and paperback books.

‘Mr Wilmschmidt, I am Espy Martinez …’

She could see the blue tinge to his nose and the red flush of his cheeks caused by blood vessels starved for air. He wheezed harshly as he waved her into the room. She saw that he had large hands, with long, aristocratic fingers, though they were stained yellow at the nails. She realized that he had once been a large, thick man, but no longer; the disease that robbed him of air had gnawed away at his body as well, so that flaps of flaccid skin hung from his bones, giving her the impression that he was someone who was being devoured from within by his own illness.

‘Maria, bring Stuhle fur die Gdste!’ Bring chairs for the guests! He coughed.

As the daughter responded, Espy Martinez thought him a man who never asked, only ordered. In a moment the daughter returned with three steel folding chairs, which she arranged by the bed.

Martinez sat down, nodded toward the daughter fof translation, and said: ‘Mr Wilmschmidt, I am investigating several murders that have been committed by a man once known here in Berlin as the Shadow Man. We do not know his current identity, so we are searching for anyone who might have known him and who can tell us about him.’

The daughter dutifully translated.

The old man nodded. ‘So, he kills still, even today,’ he replied.

‘Yes,’ Martinez said after listening to the translation.

‘1 am not surprised. Er hat sein Handwerk gut gelernt.’ He learned his trade well.

‘Who trained him?’

The old man hesitated, then smiled. ‘I did.’

There was a momentary pause, and the daughter gasped and spoke rapidly to her father in German: ‘You should not speak of this! Das bringt nichts Gutes!’ No good will come of it! ‘You did only what you were told, nothing more! You did what others did, you were no different! Why should you help these people? Das bringt nichts Gutes!’ she implored.

Espy Martinez glanced at Timothy Schultz, but he was listening intently for the old man’s reply.

‘Just because I did what I was ordered, do you think it means nothing?’

The daughter shook her head, but didn’t answer.

He turned to Espy Martinez: ‘My daughter is ashamed of the past and that makes her frightened. She worries

what the neighbors will think. She worries what her

employers at the bank will think. She worries what the

world will think. I do not have so much time that I worry at all. We did what we did! The world trembled and rose up against us! And so, we were defeated, but the ideas, they have never died, have they? Whether they were right or wrong, they still live, do they not? You Americans should understand this better than anyone else. Do you understand Miss Martinez?’

‘Of course,’ she replied, after hearing the translation.

‘Nichts verstehen Sie!’ You understand nothing!

The old man snorted, and this turned into a protracted cough.

‘You cannot understand,’ he said, with a small snarl that maneuvered on his face into a twisted grin. ‘I was a policeman! I did not make the laws, only enforced them. When the laws changed, I enforced the new laws. If the laws changed tomorrow, then I would change tomorrow.’

Espy Martinez didn’t reply, other than to think that he had already contradicted himself.

He coughed again and reached for the oxygen mask. There was a hissing sound as he turned on the bottle and drew in several long draughts.

He peered at Espy Martinez over the edge of the mask.

‘Der Schattenmann lebt also noch und bringt noch immer den Tod. So, the Shadow Man lives and still brings death. I knew this. Without you telling me this was so, I knew it. I have known this was true for years. I was the last of our group to see him, but I knew then that he would not die. Will it be you that kills him, Miss Martinez?’

‘No. I merely want to arrest him and prosecute him in a court of law….’

The old man shook his head violently. ‘There are no laws for the Shadow Man, Miss Martinez. For me, yes. For you, yes. But for him, no. Tell me again, Miss Martinez: Will it be you that kills him?’

‘No. It will be the State.’

The old man laughed. A brittle sound in the small room. ‘And so, it was the same with us.’

‘These are not the same things.’

He laughed again, mocking her. ‘Of course not.’

She stopped, eyeing the old man. ‘You said you would help me,’ she said after a momentary silence.

‘No. I told you I would tell you of the Shadow Man. I have been waiting all these years for someone to come to me and ask of him. I knew that this would happen before I died. I did not know who it would be. Sometimes I thought it would be some Jews, perhaps the ones that still hunt for the old ones. I thought it might perhaps be a policeman, like I was. Or maybe a journalist, or a student, or a scholar, someone who studies these great and evil things. Someone who wants to know about death. This is what I thought. This I expected, every day. When the telephone rang, I told myself, this will be the one. If there was a knock at the door, I thought, now they have finally found me and come to learn. Even as the years passed, Miss Martinez, I knew someone would come. I knew this.’

‘How did you know?’

‘Because a man like the Shadow Man cannot exist in silence.’

‘You taught him?’

Klaus Wilmschmidt stared hard at her. Then he slowly reached toward a bedside table, opened a drawer, and produced a long, thin, black-handled dagger, with a death’s-head skull adorning the tip of the grip. He held the blade gingerly, letting his finger slide down the steel.

‘This, this would be used for ceremonial purposes, Miss Martinez. A killer’s knife would be thicker, double-bladed, with a wider grip, so that you can turn it more easily.’

He stared at her.

‘Do you know how many ways there are to kill a man with a knife, Miss Martinez? Do you know that it is different from behind …’ He drew the blade slowly from right to left in the air in front of him.’… than it is from the front?’ He suddenly jabbed the knife upward, twisting as it slashed the space between them.