The Sleepwalkers (34 page)

“What are you saying? You want to back out, Kai?”

“I’m saying I don’t believe in martyrdom.” Kai lit another Juno, his sharp blue eyes glued to the cage. “A man’s first responsibility is to himself. And then to his family. You can’t help anyone if you’re dead.”

“There’s a certain truth to that.”

“Be serious, Inspektor. If I remember right, you have two sons.”

Way below the belt. Okay. Maybe this was risky. Willi gripped the iron rail. Maybe it was suicide. Maybe his sons would have to grow up without a father, as he had. But one thing was certain: he could never live with himself if he didn’t do everything humanly possible to expose what had happened at Sachsenhausen.

Kai turned. The chimp who wanted a cigarette was happily picking bugs off his friend’s head now, popping them into his mouth. “I don’t want to back out, Inspektor. I just wanted to make sure you didn’t.”

Monday the twenty-seventh a bitter wind blew, bringing sharp little ice crystals stinging through the air. Willi treated Kai to a swank dinner at the Hotel Excelsior. Willi’s last meal in Germany. At least . . . for a while. He kept picturing Helga Meckel beneath the Ishtar Gate. People’s minds change. Times change. And tyrants far more powerful than Hitler had fallen to the sword of justice.

“What’s the matter, Kai?” Willi said, digging into a stuffed quail with wine sauce. “You’re awfully quiet tonight.”

The kid pushed aside his plate of braised kidneys. “I went to the Nollendorfer Palast last night.”

Willi pictured the New Year’s Day crowds there: the tough types, the girlie types. The college kids with big bow ties. Gunther asking if he had to dance. Poor Gunther. How miserable he was going to be in the Gestapo.

“The whole club was boarded up. Hitler’s face plastered all over.”

And poor Kai. How miserable he was going to be in the Third Reich.

“You can take off with me, you know, if you like. Paris is a super city.”

“I’m afraid I’m a little too German for Paris, Inspektor.”

“How will you live then, in the New Germany? You’ve already
dropped out of the SA. I don’t suppose that leaves you in good standing.”

The kid’s sculpted face lit strangely. “Until this nightmare’s over, we’re retreating to the forest.”

Willi frowned at him.

“It’s true. Me and the boys have it all worked out. Found a place deep in the woods, where no one will know we exist.”

“You aren’t serious. But . . . what will you eat? How will you survive?”

“In thatched huts, like our ancestors did. Eat what we hunt: wild boar, rabbit. And when we can, plunder the townsfolk.”

Kai had a seriously irrational look, Willi saw. An almost mad resignation, as if he knew well he was talking nonsense, but just didn’t care. It was almost the same look Gustave had the last time Willi had seen him, as if he knew he was a goner. It frightened Willi. He excused himself. “I need to use the men’s room, Kai.”

In the mirror he studied the long Semitic features and shiny dark eyes proclaiming as loudly as any sign on Potsdamer Platz that here was no real German. Wherever else he went on this planet, that’s all he’d ever be. German. But here, never.

As he returned from the men’s room, his feet stopped short. Standing over their table was a paunchy figure in a brown SA uniform, his battle-scarred face looking none too pleased. Willi ducked into the shadows. Ernst Roehm. Why did he imagine the Excelsior’d be safe, he chided himself. Adolescent delusions of invulnerabilty, as Ava would say? Or had he just thought Nazis were too low-class to eat in a place like this? Probably doesn’t pay his bill. Beneath Roehm’s figure Kai looked pale, gesticulating as if trying to explain himself. No doubt the SA führer didn’t appreciate his boys running off. But when Kai whispered something in his ear, it was Roehm who lost his pallor. His hand went up in a Hitler salute and he left. Willi returned to the table, proud of his kid.

“What’d you tell him, that you had syphilis or something?”

“Worse.” Kai smirked. “That I work for Himmler now.”

Huddled among the barren acacias along the Spree Embankment, nearly as frozen as the river below, they spotted the linen truck rambling over the bridge at 8:47. But where were Kai’s boys? Without them the plan was botched. Improvise, pal, he commanded himself. Improvise. When the truck came to a halt for the traffic light, he straightened his back and walked to the driver’s side. “Slide over.” He aimed his pistol. No need to let them know it wasn’t loaded. The uniformed laundrymen held up their hands. “What’s this, a joke? You gonna steal a load of tablecloths?”

“Shut up. Do as I say and you won’t get hurt.”

They pulled the truck out of the streetlights and into the shadows. Willi made the laundrymen remove their uniforms, then Kai tied them up and gagged them with napkins from the back. “Good thing you’re loaded with clean ones, heh buddy?”

If Kai’s boys didn’t show, what was he going to do with these two? Willi wondered. Stuff them in a laundry bag? But just as he was slipping into his dark blue laundryman’s smock, he heard the clip-clip-clop of horses’ hooves. A pair of Red Apaches pulled up in an old black hearse. Willi had them lift his captives into two pine coffins in the back and drape a tablecloth over each. “At the stroke of midnight you’ll be freed,” he promised. “Unharmed.” And I’ll be in Poland, he added silently. “Don’t forget their taxi fare home.” He gave the boys cash. As the hearse clomped off, he and Kai scrambled back into the truck. It was two minutes after nine. They were late.

The guard at the security gate looked confused. “What happened to Rudi and Heinz?”

Kai played his role to perfection, reciting his lines as if he were with the German National Theater. “You’re aware, I’m sure,” he whispered as darkly as any great Faust, “that they’re both with the secret police now. I believe tonight they’re out reeducating
some of our Red brothers up in Berlin-North, if you understand me.”

Willi saw the guard tense, clearly appalled but too afraid to show it, a vivid illustration of just how effective Nazi terror was. Even a hint.
“Ach so.”
He offered an unhappy smile. When Kai shouted, “Heil Hitler!” the gate quickly lifted.

The huge gray Reichstag loomed dark and stoic, its glass dome reflecting the silver of the moon. All Willi’s hopes, all his fears, seemed mirrored in that light. They swung around to the southwest corner and pulled up to Service Entrance Three. Ringing the bell they waited for the night watchman, who let them in without apparently caring they weren’t the usual team. Wheeling two dollies piled high with laundry bags, they proceded down the long hall, passing a granite staircase to the first floor before reaching the linen supply. Willi opened the door with the key hooked to his uniform smock. When they got inside, he checked his watch. It was 9:05.

“Dump this stuff, Kai.” Willi started pushing bags off the dolly. He still had to find the key that opened the storeroom, locate the boxes, and get them hidden in sacks before reloading them onto the truck. They couldn’t arouse suspicion they were taking too much time in here. “What’s that?” Willi froze.

“I didn’t hear anything.”

Willi had. Breaking glass. Upstairs.

They practically ran the empty dollies down a long aisle stacked with linens until they reached the rear corridor. Across the darkness they spotted a door.
Members’ Storeroom
. Good. But holding the flashlight while Willi fumbled with the master keys, Kai trembled so violently the strobe-light effect seemed to speed up motion like an old-time movie. Get a grip of yourself, Willi wanted to shout. One of these has got to work. It’s the law. Besides, we’re okay. It’s only 9:08. Except, what’s that burning smell—is somebody cooking upstairs? Trying the fifth key, the bolt slid back. Amen. The moment he pushed the door, two fierce bangs rang overhead. Willi turned. No mistaking gunshots. In the
glare of the flashlight he saw dark fingers of smoke creeping toward them.

“Wait here,” he whispered, determined to find out what the hell was happening. Like an Olympic sprinter he tore down the hall, pausing at the granite stairs. It was completely dark. Clinging to the wall, he crept up, praying the night watchman didn’t appear. Then halfway up, he stopped. Someone was running around up there. One, or many? He couldn’t tell. All he heard were echoes. Frantic feet. Then nothing. The smell of smoke though was truly appalling. Reaching the top step, he froze, astonished. The carved wood ceilings ahead were glowing red. Down the hallway was crazy laughter. And dark shadows dancing across the plenary chamber walls. Was it one man—or many? He couldn’t tell. But someone was setting the place ablaze. Arson!

“Stop!” he heard an all too familiar voice command from behind. His throat twisted. Disaster. His stomach clenched into a knot. “Hands in the air.”

Obeying, he slowly turned, noticing a long, black Luger aimed at him, and the pasty face of Herbert Thurmann approaching up the steps.

“Well, well, well.” His pencil-line mustache arched with real delight. “I knew you were up to no good, Kraus.” As he neared, his smile lengthened with glee. “From the moment I spotted you outside the Police Presidium when you waylaid your secretary, I’ve been following you. Very careless of you not to notice.”

The black Opel, Willi remembered.

“Losing your touch there, huh, Jew boy? You should have left Germany while you had the chance.” Thurmann’s whole pasty face glistened in triumph. What fun he was having. Like a cat oblivious of all but the joy of tormenting its catch. He paid not the least attention to the shadowy figure Willi noticed to their left, rushing around in the Reichstag restaurant. “Now the game is up for you.” For all you subhumans, Thurmann seemed to be saying.

The arrogance, the sadistic thrill, made Willi’s stomach sour.
What a sad turn. Not just for him, but for Ruta, who would surely be arrested, too, now. And for all those boxes downstairs. And his poor little Erich and Stefan, who would never see their father again.

All at once the restaurant burst into a swirling cauldron of flame, the arsonist’s work accomplished. An enormous crash of glass and silverware grabbed Thurmann’s attention. Willi seized the opportunity. Using his head, he rammed his nemesis square in the stomach, knocking him over and sending the Luger skidding across the polished floor. A sudden return blow to the solar plexus drained the air from his lungs, sending a black shroud over his eyes. Dimly he perceived Thurmann reaching backward for his pistol. This was it, he knew. The end. For one of them. And from deep within he summoned an energy he never knew existed.

Leaping on Thurmann, he grabbed the man’s throat, pressing both thumbs against his esophagus. Thurmann’s expression shifted from amusement to shock and then terror. With all his might he tore at the murderous thumbs, but Willi’s fury had turned implacable. This is for Paula! he thought, filled with a black bile of revenge, glad to see Thurmann’s pencil-line mustache contort in an agony of convulsions. And for Gina Mancuso and all those poor souls you tortured and killed at Sachsenhausen! Thurmann’s face was swelling, turning blue, the eyes, so arrogant and sanctimonious moments ago, rolling backward into his head. Willi had killed a man only once before in close combat, during the war, when he’d plunged a bayonet into a French soldier’s chest, sickening at the furious crunch of the rib cage. But this was different. This was justice.

This Nazi had to die.

And when the enemy hands trembled in a final rattle, his head falling motionless to one side, the eyes wide open, Willi was happy.

Rolling off him, he tried to catch his breath, until he realized it was smoke, not air, entering his lungs. The whole wall to his left had become a curtain of fire. Summoning himself, he staggered
back down the steps, astonished to find Kai slumped on one side, the whole hallway a tunnel of black smoke. He had to get them out. But not without that evidence! Yanking the kid to his feet, he pushed him into the storeroom, insanely shining the flashlight around in search of those boxes. Von Schleicher had promised a mountain of things down here, probably his only accurate assurance, Willi mused, morbidly recalling the general’s guarantee that “a year from now you won’t even remember Hitler’s name.” His heart leaped. There they were! Just a dozen yards across the room, stacked in two neat piles.

Revived by fresh air, Kai helped yank the dolly through the door. But no sooner had they got it into the storeroom than the entire ceiling flashed like the underside of a gas oven. Willi turned to see a shower of sparks fill the linen room, whole shelves of tablecloths combusting. Parts of the storeroom were catching fire now, too. They had to leave. Delay meant death. But how could he let everything he’d fought so hard for—he began coughing—that Paula died for, all the horror stories in those boxes, go up in smoke? He started toward them. “Papa!” he heard both his sons crying, but ignored it. “Willi, please”—it was Ava. His throat was burning. Cinders singeing. He paid no attention, only to those boxes ahead.

“For God’s sake, what are you doing?” He couldn’t believe it. Vicki! He not only heard her but saw her walking toward him right through the flames. Her short permed hair glowing in the light. Her almond eyes glittering. “Those eight hundred and fifty people are dead, Willi. Your father’s dead. I’m dead. Nothing you do can ever bring us back.”

Is that all this is? he longed to ask her. His whole career, his whole life—just one big unconscious effort to bring back the dead? But she vanished. And in her place his cousin Kurt stood waving at him brightly. “Come to Tel Aviv.” He was wearing a bathing suit. “The sunsets over the Mediterranean, Willi . . . magnificent. You’ll never miss Berlin. The food a little maybe.”

“Leave, Willi,” Vicki commanded. “Go. For the boys. For the future.”

The air was searing. Kai gasping for breath. The flames creeping nearer. His boxes of evidence were vanishing behind an impenetrable curtain of smoke. There wasn’t another second. He pictured that man falling from Communist headquarters, flapping his arms against gravity. Some things you couldn’t fight. Against hurricanes, against earthquakes, there was no justice. It was the most painful step he ever took. Tearing himself, as if leaving half his body, half his mind, half of God knew what else, he grabbed the boy and fled, leading him through a maze of hallways that were empty and black as his heart. Having memorized the floor plans, he at least knew the way out.