Almost all the other buildings in Elssholzstrasse had been knocked out, so the Control Council headquarters stood even larger now. A massive hulk of Prussian stone, its grim streetfront must have seemed an appropriate way station in the old court days, when the judges inside, party members all, had sentenced their victims to worse prisons. The main entrance, however, around the driveway into Kleist Park, presented a lighter face, tall windowed doors flanked by carved floating angels who looked down across what had been a formal lawn bordered with hedges toward two symmetrical colonnades at the other end, an unexpected piece of Paris. The whole place was noisy with activity-cars crunching on the gravel, a work party repairing the roof, banging tiles-like a country house getting ready for a big weekend party. Four bright new Allied flags had been hung over the entrance; 82nd Airborne guards in white spats and shiny helmets were posted at the doorway. Even the dusty grounds were being tidied up, raked by a detachment of German POWs, the letters stenciled on their backs, while a handful of bored GIs kept watch, standing around idly and taking the sun. Jake followed a group of husky Russian women in uniform through the chandeliered hall and up a grand marble staircase, an opera house entrance. He was met, surprisingly, by Muller himself.
“I thought you might like a look around,” Muller said, heading them down the corridor. “We’re still trying to get things in shape. Place took a fair amount of damage.”
“Maybe not enough, given what it was.”
“Well, we have to use what we can. Biggest place we could find. Over four hundred rooms, they say, although I don’t know who’s counting. Maybe they threw in a closet or two. Of course, only part of it’s usable. This is where the council will sit.” He opened the door to a large chamber, already converted to a meeting room with long tables arranged in a square. In each corner, near their respective flags, were desks with shorthand typewriters for recording secretaries. A stack of ashtrays and notepads sat on one table, waiting to be distributed.
“Nobody’s been here yet,” Muller said. “You’re the first, if that means anything to you.”
Jake looked around the empty room, feeling he was back at the Cecilienhof, counting chimneys. “No press section?”
“No press section. We don’t want to encourage speeches-hard to resist with the press around. Give them an audience, they can’t help themselves. We want working sessions.”
“Nice and private.”
“No.” He nodded to the recording desks. “There’ll be minutes. The council will meet once a quarter,” he continued. “The Coordinating Committee once a month, the subcommittees-well, all the time. There’s a lot to do.”
Jake fingered the stack of notepads. “All organized.” ‹›“On paper,” Muller said, leaning against the table, his back to the window, so that his silver hair developed a halo of light. “Actually, nobody knows how it’s going to work. Until we do it. We’re making it up as we go along. Nobody planned on this, running the country.” He noticed Jake’s raised eyebrows. “Not this way. They trained a few people, somewhere down in Virginia-to help the Germans with the transition,” he said, drawing out the word. “Transition. I don’t know what they expected. The last war, I suppose. Get a peace treaty, hand the country over to the good guys, and go home. But not this time. There wasn’t anybody to hand it over to. Twelve years. Even the mailmen were Nazis. And the country-you’ve seen it, it’s just shot to hell. Nobody expected them to fight to the end. Why would they? You don’t expect a whole country to commit suicide.“
“They had a little help from bomber command.”
Muller nodded. “I don’t say they didn’t ask for it. But now it’s flat and we’ve got it. No food, nothing running-Berlin HQ has got its hands full just fixing the water mains.” He took a breath and looked directly at Jake. “We’ve got twenty million people to feed in our zone alone. The ones who aren’t starving are stealing bicycles just to get around. We’ve got a winter coming with no coal. Epidemics, if we’re not lucky, which we probably won’t be. DPs-” He waved his hand as if, overwhelmed, he’d run out of words. “We didn’t sign on for any of this,” he said, his voice as tired as his eyes, “but we’ve got it anyway. So there’s a lot to do.” He glanced at the room. “Seen enough?”
Jake nodded. “Thanks for the look. And the speech,” he added easily. “You wouldn’t be trying to tell me something, by any chance.”
Muller smiled patiently, Judge Hardy again. “Maybe just a little. I’ve been regular army all my life-we’re used to protecting our flanks. People who write about MG, maybe they should have some idea what we’re up against. A little perspective. We’re not all-well, come on, I’ll give you what you came for.”
“How did you end up here, anyway?” Jake said, following him out into the long hall.
“Like everyone else-they don’t need us in the field now, so we’ve got to serve our time out somewhere. I didn’t volunteer, if that’s what you mean. Tactical units don’t have much use for MG, think we’re just office boys. I wasn’t any different. Nobody’s going to get a promotion for fixing sewer lines. But nobody’s getting promoted in the field now either-the war’s over, they tell me-and I have a while to go before they pension me off. So. We’re long on old farts here. The civilians, that’s something else. Most of the time it’s some lawyer who sat out the war in Omaha and now wants a commission so he can call himself captain-they won’t sign on for the lower ranks. They get it too, the rank. What the rest of us had to work years for. It rubs a little, if you let it.”
“But you don’t.”
“I did. But it’s like anything else-the work takes over. You serve your country,” he said flatly, without a hint of irony. “I didn’t ask for it, but you know what? I think we’re doing one helluva job here, given everything. Or does that sound like another speech to you?“
“No.” Jake smiled. “It sounds like they ought to promote you.” “They won’t,” Muller said evenly, then stopped and faced him. “You know, this is probably my last post. I wouldn’t want to see-any mess. If you’re going to start flinging mud around, I’d appreciate a little early warning.”
“I’m not-”
“I know, you’re just curious. So are we. A man’s been killed. And the truth is, we have no way of finding out what happened. We don’t have Scotland Yard here, just some MPs arresting drunks. So we may never know. But if there’s anything that might, well, be a problem for us, that we do need to know.”
“What makes you think there is?”
“I don’t. But that’s what you’re fishing for, isn’t it?” He started walking again. “Look, all I’m asking is you meet me halfway on this. I don’t have to release any information. If you hadn’t been there at Potsdam-but you were, and you knew him. So now I’ve got a situation. I can’t pretend it didn’t happen. But I don’t have to open this up to a lot of speculation either. I’m releasing it to you, not anybody else. If you do turn up something, okay, you’ve got yourself a story.”
“But if I don’t-”
“Then you don’t guess out loud. No mystery body. No unsolved anything. You might get some mileage out of that in the papers. But all we’d get is a lot of questions we can’t answer. That just eats time. We can’t afford that. There’s too much to do. All I’m asking is a little discretion.”
“And tell you in advance what I’m going to say.”
“I didn’t say you couldn’t say it. Just tell me if it’s coming.”
“So you can deny it?”
“No,” Muller said, deadpan. “So I can duck.” He stopped at a door paned with translucent glass. “Here we are. Jeanie should have the copies by now.”
Jeanie was a pretty WAC whose red fingernails seemed too long for serious typing. She was putting carbon sheets into two beige folders and threw Muller a smile that Jake, amused, guessed was more than secretarial. Muller, however, was all business.
“Got those reports?”
She handed him one of the folders, then a message slip. “The general wants you at ten.”
“Come on, then,” he said to Jake, leading him into a plain office with an American flag in the corner. Muller belonged to the clean desk school-the only things on the empty surface were a pen set and a framed picture of a young soldier.
“Your boy?” Jake asked.
Muller nodded. “He was hit on Guadalcanal.”
“I‘ m sorry.
“No, not killed. Wounded. At least he’s out of it now.” Then, avoiding any more intimacy, he opened the folder, took out two carbon flimsies, and pushed them across the desk to Jake. “Service record. Casualty report.”
“You’re calling it a casualty?”
“It’s what we call the report,” Muller said, slightly annoyed. “It’s just a form. Anyway, now you know what we know.”
Jake skimmed the first sheet, a spare listing of dates and assignments. Patrick Tully. Natick, Mass. A little older than the boy in the picture on the desk. The casualty report Jake could have written himself. “Not much, is it?” he said.
“No.”
“What isn’t here? Any trouble before that didn’t make it into the record?”
“Not that I know of. Service record’s clean, no flags. A distinguished member of the United States Armed Forces. That’s what we’re going to write to his mother, anyway.”
“Yes,” Jake said. A person, not a number, a kid with a family, not as lucky as young Muller. “What about the money?”
“She’ll get that too, with his effects. APO money order. It was his, as far as we know. Let’s hope she thinks he saved his back pay.”
“How much was there? It doesn’t say.”
Muller looked at him, then nodded. “Fifty-six thousand marks. They convert at ten to one. So roughly five thousand dollars. That’s what the Russians gave us, anyway. They say some of it blew away.”
“So figure twice that. That’s a lot of back pay.”
“Maybe he was good at cards,” Muller said.
“What brings in that kind of money? On the black market.”
“Watches, mostly. If it ticks, the Russians’ll buy it. A Mickey Mouse can go for five hundred bucks.”
“That’s still a lot of watches.”
“That depends how long he was doing it. If he was doing it. Look, on the record? There is no black market. Sometimes supply depots come up a little short. Things disappear. One of the facts of wartime. The Germans are hungry. They’ll buy food any way they can. It’s about food. Naturally, we’re doing what we can to stop it.”
“And off the record?”
“Off the record, everybody does it. How do you stop a kid in a candy store? Want to do some quick arithmetic? A GFs allowed a carton of cigarettes a week at the PX. A nickel a pack, fifty cents a carton. On the street, it’s worth a hundred dollars-that’s five thousand dollars a year. Add in some chocolate, four bottles of liquor a month, another five thousand dollars. A package of food from home? Maybe some tuna fish, a can of soup? More. Lots more. It adds up. A guy can make a year’s salary just from his rations. You try stopping that. Officially, there’s no fraternization either. So how do we explain all the VD?”
Jake glanced down at the sheet. “He’d only been in Germany since May.”
“What do you want me to say? Some of our boys are more enterprising than others. You don’t have to be a big operator to make money in Germany. Last month our troops were paid about a million dollars. They sent three million home.” He paused. “Off the record.”
Jake stared, staggered by the figure. “I didn’t think the Germans had that much money.”
“The Germans. They’re selling silverware for a stick of margarine. Whatever they’ve got left. The Russians have the money.”
Jake thought of the ragtag guards at the Chancellery, the peasants wheeling carts through Potsdamerplatz, as primitive as a muddy village. “The Russians have that kind of money?” he said dubiously. “Since when?”
Muller looked at him. “Since we gave it to them.” He hesitated. How far off the record are we? “
‘Farther every minute.“
Muller sat back. “I’m going to hold you to that. You see, the original plan was to issue occupation marks. Something all the forces could use here and the locals would accept, not gum up the works with four different currencies. Fine. So the Treasury made up the engraving plates and, like idiots, gave a set to the Russians. Same money. Of course, the idea was they’d keep a strict accounting of theirs, since it would have to be convertible to hard currency-dollars, pounds, whatever. Instead they just started the presses and kept going. Nobody knows how much they made. Most of their troops hadn’t been paid in three years. They got it all in occupation marks. The hitch is, they can’t take them home-the Russians won’t convert them-and now you’ve got a whole army with more money than they’ve ever seen before in their lives and one place to spend it. Here. So they buy watches and whatever else they can carry home. At any price. It’s Monopoly money to them. And meanwhile, since the currency has to be honored, our boys take the marks they get and send them home as dollars and the Treasury has one hell of a drain on its hands. We yell and scream, of course, but I’d lay you even money-in dollars-that we’re never going to see one ruble for those plates. The Russians say their marks just circulate in Germany, keeping the local wheels going-the Germans’ tab. And we have a small problem explaining why so many are flooding back home, since there is no black market-so we pay. We’re paying, in fact, for the Russian occupation here. But nobody wants to touch that story.“ He smiled. ”And neither do you.“
“I’m not even sure I understand it.”
“Nobody understands money. Except what’s in his pocket. Which is lucky for the Treasury. If we’d pulled a stunt like that, they’d court-martial us out of here in no time.”
“So what are you going to do about it?”
“That’s the ten o’clock meeting. General Clay wants to limit the amount a man can send home to his actual pay. It’ll be a headache for the APO, just keeping track, and it won’t solve everything, but at least it’ll stop the worst of the bleeding. Of course they can still send goods home, but the money will stay here, where it belongs. Ultimately, the only thing that’s going to work is a new currency, but don’t hold your breath. How fast do you think the Russians would agree to that?”
“I mean, what are you doing on the ground? How do you police it?”
“Well, it’s a problem. MP raids the worst spots from time to time, but that’s just a little finger in the dike. Berlin’s an open city-people go where they want-but it’s just administered in zones. So we can’t patrol Zoo Station, that’s the Brits. Alexanderplatz is in the Russian zone.“
“Like Potsdam.” ‹›Muller looked up at him. “Like Potsdam. There’s nothing we can do there.“ ‹›“What about off the street? This much money-somebody must be running things.“
“You mean gangs? Professionals? That I don’t know. And I’d doubt it. You hear rumors about the DPs, but people like to blame the DPs for everything. Nobody polices them. The kind of thing you’re talking about, you’d have to go back to Bavaria or Frankfurt, where there’s still something to steal. Warehouses. Big hoardings. It happens, and I suppose Frankfurt must have somebody on it, if you’re interested. But Berlin? It’s been picked pretty clean. What you’ve got here is a lot of small money that adds up.”
“That’s a fair description of the numbers racket too.” A reluctant smile. “I guess.” Muller paused, spreading his hands on the desk. “Look. A soldier sells a watch. Maybe he shouldn’t, and maybe you don’t think we’re doing enough to stop him. But I’ll tell you this-I’ve seen lots of men die in the last few years. Ripped up, holding their guts in. Good men. Kids. Nobody thought they were criminals then. Now they’re picking up a few bucks. Maybe it’s wrong, but you know what? I’m still a soldier. I think they’re worth two million a month.” ‹›“So do I,” Jake said slowly. “I just don’t like to see them get shot. It doesn’t seem right. For a watch.” Muller looked at him, disconcerted, then lowered his head. “No. Well. Is there anything else?”
“Lots, but you’ve got a meeting to get to,” Jake said, standing up. “I don’t want to wear out my welcome.”
“Any time,” Muller said pleasantly, also getting up, relieved. “That’s what we’re here for.”
“No, you’re not. I appreciate the time.” Jake folded the flimsies into his pocket. “And these. Oh, one more thing. Can I see the body?” “The body?” Muller said, literally taking a step back in surprise. “I thought you had seen it. Isn’t that why we’re here? It’s-gone. It was shipped back to Frankfurt.” “That was fast. No autopsy?”
“No,” Muller said, slightly puzzled. “Why would there be an autopsy? We know how he died. Should there have been one?”
Jake shrugged. “At least a coroner’s report.” He caught Muller’s expression. “I know. You’re not Scotland Yard. It’s just a little skimpy, that’s all,” he said, patting the sheets in his pocket. “It might have helped to examine it. I wish you’d waited.”
Muller looked at him, then sighed. “You know what I wish, Geismar? I wish you’d never gone to Potsdam.”
Jeanie was arranging her set of carbons when he came out. She looked up and smiled without stopping, like a casino dealer, shuffling the third sheet to the bottom, then tossing the folder into an out box for filing. “All set?”
Jake smiled back. The army never changed, a world run in duplicate. He wondered if there was another girl to do the filing to save those wonderful nails. “For now,” he said, still smiling, but she took it as a pass, arching her eyebrows and shooting him a look.
“We’re here nine to five,” she said, a dismissal.
“That’s good to know,” he said, playing along. “Colonel keep you pretty busy? ”
“All the live-long day. Stairs are down the hall to your right.”
“Thanks,” he said, lifting his fingers to his forehead in a salute.
On the entrance steps he was blinded by the light and shaded his eyes to get his bearing. The sun, already hot, was streaming in from the east, filtering through the dust that hung over the ruins beyond the graceful colonnades. The work party, bent over their rakes, had got rid of their shirts but not, Jake noticed, their initials, P on one trouser leg, W on the other. The war had branded everybody, even Tully, now just some initials on a carbon flimsy.
He stood for a minute, his mind full of engraving plates and watch prices, all of which led him nowhere. Which was probably where Muller wanted him to go. He smiled to himself, thinking of Jeanie- two brush-offs in one morning, one more direct than the other. It was Muller who’d taken the circular way around, leaving him back on the steps not even sure he’d been through a revolving door. Except something nagged, a missing crossword piece that would leap to the eye if you looked at it long enough. He told the driver he wanted to walk.
“Walk?” the soldier said, amazed. “You mean back?”
“No meet me at Zoo Station in about an hour. You know where that is?“
The soldier nodded. “Sure. It’s a hike from here.”
“I know. I like to walk. Helps me think.” Explaining himself. He made a mental note to ask Ron for his own jeep.
But the soldier, like Jeanie, had been around. “I get it. You sure you don’t want me to drop you? I mean, I don’t care, it’s your business.”
Everybody does it, Jake thought as he headed across the battered park; a lot of small money that adds up. So whom had Tully done business with? A gun-happy Russian? A DP with nothing to lose? Anybody. Five thousand dollars, more. People got killed every day in Chicago for less, just for skimming a numbers collection. Life would be even cheaper than that here. But why come in the first place? Because the Russians were here, flush with cash. Not porcelain knickknacks and old silver to trade. Cash. Honey for bears. Everybody does it.
The park gates opened onto lower Potsdamerstrasse and a small stream of military trucks and civilians on rickety bicycles, all that was left of the traffic that used to roar by to the center. On foot Berlin was a different city, not the spectacle he’d seen from a touring jeep but something grittier, a wreck in closeup. He had loved walking in the city, exploring the miles of flat, irregular streets as if just the physical touch of shoe leather made it personal, brought him into its life. Sundays in the Grunewald. Afternoons wandering through districts where the other journalists never went, Prenzlauer or the tenement streets in Wedding, just to see what they were like, his eyes gliding from building to building, oblivious to curbs. Now he had to step carefully, skirting clumps of broken cement and picking his way through plaster and glass that crunched underfoot. The city had become a trail hike, full of obstacles and sharp things hidden under stones. Steel rods twisted into spiky shapes, still black from fire. The familiar rotting smell. At the corner of Pallasstrasse, the remains of the Sportpalast, where bicycles used to whiz by in the rac-ing oval and Hitler promised the faithful a thousand years. Only the giant flak tower was standing, like the ones at the zoo, too sturdy even for boombs. A soldier was propped against the wall with one hand, talking to a girl and fondling her hair, the oldest black market in the world. Across tile street, a few other girls in thin dresses leaned against a standing wall, gesturing to convoy trucks. At ten o’clock in the morning.
The side streets were clogged with debris, so he kept to the main roads, turning left on Bulowstrasse for the long walk up to the zoo. This was a part of town he’d known well, the elevated station hulking over Nollendorfplatz, with its ring of bars. A movie marquee had slid down to the pavement nearly intact, as if the building had been whipped out from under it, like the magic trick with a tablecloth. A few people were out, one of them pushing a baby carriage filled with household goods, and Jake realized that the dazed, plodding movement he’d seen from the jeep two days ago was the new pace of the city, as careful as his own. Nobody walked quickly over rubble. Why would anyone come to Berlin? Had Tully been before? There must be traveling orders, something to check. The army ran in duplicate.
More blocks of collapsed buildings, more groups of women in headscarves and old uniform pants, cleaning bricks. A woman in heels stepped out of one building, smartly dressed, as if she were heading up the street as usual for some shopping at KaDeWe. Instead she wobbled over some broken plaster to a waiting army car and straightened her nylons as she pulled her legs in, a different kind of excursion. And KaDeWe, in any case, was gone, ripped through by bombs and sagging into Wittenbergplatz, not even a window mannequin left. They used to meet here sometimes, by the wurst stands on the food floor, where you were likely to run into anybody, then leave separately for Jake’s flat across the square. Taking different sides so that Jake could see her through the crowd as he waited at the stoplight, watching to see that no one followed. No one did. A game to make it more exciting, getting away with something. Then up the stairs where she’d be waiting, a ring to make sure Hal was out, and inside, sometimes grabbing each other even before the door clicked shut. The flat would be gone now too, like the afternoons, a memory.
Except it wasn’t. Jake looked across the street, shading his eyes again. A piece of the building had been knocked out, but the rest was there, with his corner flat still facing west onto the square. He took a step, elated, then stopped. What would he say? ‘I used to live here and I want to see it again’? He imagined another Frau Dzuris, looking puzzled and hoping for chocolate. A woman came to the window, opening it wider to the air, and for an instant he stopped breathing, straining to see. Why couldn’t it be? But it wasn’t Lena, wasn’t anything like
Lena. A truck went by, blocking the view, and when it passed, the broad back was turned to the window so that he couldn’t see her face, but of course he’d know, just the movement of her arm at the window, even from across the square. He dropped his hand, feeling foolish. A friend of the landlord’s, no doubt, eager to snap up the flat when Hal finally left. Someone who wouldn’t know him, might not even believe he’d been there at all. Why should she? The past had been wiped out with the streets. But the flat was there, real, a kind of proof that everything else had happened too. If he looked long enough, maybe the rest of the square would come back with it, busy, the way it all used to be.
He turned away and caught a glimpse of himself in a broken shard of plate glass from the store window. Nothing was the way it used to be, not even him. Would she recognize him now? He stared at the reflection. Not a stranger, but not the man she had known either. A lived-in face, older, with two deep lines bracketing his mouth. Dark hair thinning back from the temples. A face he saw every day shaving, without noticing it had changed. He imagined her looking at him, smoothing away lines with her fingers to find him. But faces didn’t come back either. They got cluttered with assignments and frantic telegrams, squint“ lines from seeing too much. They’d been kids. Only four years, and look at all the marks. His face was still there, like the flat, but scarred now too, not the one he’d had before. But the war had changed everybody. At least he was here, not dead or turned into a set of initials. POWs. DPs.
He stopped, a tiny, nagging jolt. Initials. He took out the carbon sheets and scanned them again. That was it. He put the top sheet under, glanced over the second, then automatically shuffled for the third and stopped, empty-handed. But Jeanie had had three carbons. He squinted, trying to remember. Yes, three, like a stacked deck. He stood for another minute thinking, then put the sheets away and started up the street again toward the zoo, where small amounts of money were being made. ‹›The driver took him back to Bernie’s office, a small room in the old Luftwaffe building crammed with files and stacks of questionnaires that spilled off the couch and rose in piles on the floor, a mare’s nest of paper. How did he find anything? The desk was worse. More stacks and loose clippings, stale coffee cups, even an abandoned tie-everything, in fact, but Bernie, who was out again. Jake flipped open one of the files, a buff-colored fragebogen like one Lena might have filled out, a life on six typed pages. But this was Herr Gephardt, whose spotless record deserved, he claimed, a work permit.
“Don’t touch anything,” said a soldier at the door. “He’ll know. Believe it or not.”
“Any idea when he’ll be back? I keep missing him.”
“You the guy from yesterday? He said you might be by. Try the Document Center. He’s usually there. Wasserkafersteig,” he said, breaking it into syllables.
“Where?”
The soldier smiled. “Mouthful, huh? If you hold on a sec, I’ll take you-I was just going myself. I can find it, I just can’t spell it.”
They drove west past the press camp to the U-bahn station at Krumme Lanke, where a handful of soldiers and civilians huddled in a miniature version of the Reichstag market, then turned right down a quiet street. At the far end Jake could see the trees of the Grunewald. He thought of the old summer Sundays, with hikers in shorts heading out to the beaches where the Havel widened into the series of bays Berlin called lakes. Today, in the same hot sun, there were only a few people gathering fallen branches and loading them into carts. An axe chipped away at a broad stump.
“Pathetic, isn’t it?” the soldier said. “They chop down the trees when nobody’s looking. There won’t be anything left by winter.” A winter with no coal, according to Muller.
At the edge of the woods, they turned up a narrow street of suburban villas, one of which had been turned into a fortress with a high barbed-wire double fence, floodlights, and patrolling sentries.
“They’re not taking any chances,” Jake said.
“DPs camp out in the woods. Once it’s dark-”
“What’s in there, gold?”
“Better. For us, anyway. Party records.”
He showed a pass at the door, then led Jake to a sign-in ledger in the entrance hall. Another guard was inspecting the briefcase of a soldier on his way out. Neither spoke. The council headquarters had had the busy shoe-clicking hum of a government office. This was quieter, the locked-in hush of a bank. One more ID check took them into a room lined with filing cabinets.
“Christ. Fort Knox,” Jake said.
“Bernie’ll be down in the vault,” the soldier said, smiling. “Counting the bars. This way.”
“Where’d you get it all?” Jake said, looking at the cabinets.
“All over. The party kept everything right to the end-membership applications, court records. Guess they never thought they’d lose. Then they couldn’t destroy them fast enough.” He spread his hand toward the cabinets as they walked. “We got the SS files too, even Himmler’s personal one. The big haul, though, that’s downstairs. Index cards. The central party registry in Munich kept duplicates of all the local cards-every single Nazi. Eight million and counting. Sent them to a paper mill in Bavaria finally, to pulp them, but before the owner could get around to it, the Seventh Army arrived. So, voila. Now we’ve got them. Here we go.” He went down a staircase to the basement. “Teitel, you here? I found your guy.”
Bernie was bent over a broad table whose littered surface was a mirror image of the mess in his office. The room, an alcoved cellar that might once have held wine, was now walled from floor to ceiling with wooden drawers, like card catalogues in a library. When he looked up, his eyes were confused, as if he had no idea who Jake was.
“Sorry to barge in like this,” Jake said. “I know you’re busy. But I need your help.”
“Oh, Geismar. Right. You’re looking for a friend. I’m sorry, I forgot all about it.” He picked up a pen, ready to work.
“Don’t forget to sign him out,” the driver said to Bernie, drifting back up the stairs.
“What was the name?” ‹›“Brandt. But I need something else.” Bernie looked up, his pen still poised to write. Jake pulled out a chair.
“A soldier was killed in Potsdam yesterday-well, killed the day before. He washed up on the conference grounds yesterday. Hear about it?”
Bernie shook his head, waiting. ‹›“No, I guess not,” Jake said, “not down here. Anyway, I was there, so I got interested. He had some money on him, a lot, five thousand, maybe closer to ten. I thought that was interesting too, but apparently I’m the only one. MG just gave me the brush this morning-polite, but a brush. This one came with a lecture. Happens all the time. Black market’s a nickel-and-dime game, no big players. Nobody gets excited when a Russian shoots one of our men, just when they do anything else. So go away, please. Now I’m even more interested. Then I hear the body’s already been shipped back to Frankfurt. That’s a little too efficient, especially for MG. Following me so far?“
“Who was the brush?”
“Muller,” Jake said.
Bernie frowned. “Fred Muller? He’s a good man. Old army.”
“I know. So they say keep a lid on it and he keeps a lid on it. Look, I don’t blame him. He’s a time-server and he doesn’t want any trouble. He probably thinks I’m a pain in the ass.”
“Probably.”
“But why keep a lid on it? He promises me an exclusive and gives me a casualty report. But not all of it. There’s a sheet missing.” Jake paused. “The kind of thing the DA’s office used to pull.”
Bernie smiled. “So why come to me?”
“Because you were a DA. I’ve never met one yet who stopped being a DA. Something’s funny here. You can feel it in your gut.”
Bernie looked over at him. “I don’t feel anything yet.”
“No? Try this. Muller wants me to think it’s a GI making a few bucks on the side. Okay, not nice, but nothing special, either. But he wasn’t just a GI. PSD, that’s Public Safety Division, isn’t it?”
“That’s what it says on the charts,” Bernie said slowly.
“Well, that’s what it says on the casualty report too. PSD. He was one of you. Ever met a police department that couldn’t be bothered when a cop got shot? That’s one organization takes care of its own.”
Bernie looked at him again, then reached over for his coffee cup. “We’re not exactly a police department, you know,” he said carefully. “It’s not the same.”
“But you run the MPs, you run the local police, you’re responsible for law and order. Such as it is.”
“I don’t run anything. You’re asking the wrong guy. I’m Special Branch. I just-”
“Chase rats, I know. But you’re still in the department. You must know people. Anyway, you’re the only one I know. So.”
Bernie took another sip of coffee. “Berlin PSD?” ‹›“No, he flew in from Frankfurt. Another interesting point, by the way.“
“Then no wonder Fred sent him back. Put it in somebody else’s in-box. It’s the MG way.” He paused. “Look, I don’t have time for this, whatever it is. You want somebody over in CID. Criminal Investigation.” Jake shook his head. “CID’s army, not Military Government. Knife fights. This is being handled by Public Safety.” He took the sheets out of his pocket. “Here, see for yourself.”
Bernie put his hand up in a stop sign. “No, I mean it. I don’t have the time.”
“Somebody else’s in-box,” Jake said.
Bernie put down the cup and sighed. “What are you looking for, anyway?”
“Why nobody wants to know. The way the story’s supposed to go is the Russians loot, we just liberate a few souvenirs. I’ve told it that way myself. And Public Safety? The last place you’d expect to find a bad apple. Wrong barrel. But my guess is that he had something going, not just a couple of cartons of cigarettes, and I’ll bet it’s Muller’s guess too. The difference is, he doesn’t want to know and this time I do. So would a DA. Man’s dead.”
Bernie ran his hand through the tight waves of his hair and stood up, as if the chair had been confining him. He moved a folder onto a pile, then walked over to another, pretending to be busy. “I’m not a DA here,” he said finally. “I’m MG too. Maybe Fred’s right, you know. The guy closed his own case. Maybe we’re all better off.”
“Except for one thing. What if he wasn’t acting solo? A man comes to Berlin to make a deal and ends up dead. So who was he coming to see?”
“A Russian, you said.” He moved another pile.
“Must have been. But who set it up? He’s operating all by himself? There have to be some other apples in that barrel. Chances are, he had friends. It’s a friendly kind of business.”
“Friends in Public Safety?” Bernie said, looking up.
“Somewhere. That’s the way it used to work in Chicago.”
“That’s Chicago,” Bernie said, waving his hand. ‹›“And Berlin. It’s always the same, more or less. Here’s a big city with no police and a lot of money floating around. Put out that kind of cheese and the usual mice come out. And pretty soon somebody has to organize it, to make sure he gets a little more. It’s always the same. The only question is whether Patrick Tully was one of the mice or one of the rats who took a little more.“
“Who?”
“Patrick Tully. The victim.” Jake handed over the sheet to Bernie. “Twenty-three. Afraid of flying. So why come to Berlin? Who was he coming to see?”
Bernie stared at the paper, then at Jake.
“That’s the report,” Jake said. “Half of it, anyway. Maybe the other half can tell me.”
“I can tell you,” Bernie said evenly, his body finally still. “He was coming to see me.”
“What?” A word to fill time, too surprised to say anything else. For a second neither of them spoke. Bernie looked again at the sheet.
“Yesterday,” he said quietly, thinking aloud. “That’s why I canceled you. He never showed. I told Mike to keep an eye out. That’s probably who he thought you were. Why he brought you here-we’re off-limits to press.”
“Tully was coming to see you?” Jake said, still taking it in. “Want to tell me why? ”
“I have no idea.” He glanced up. “That isn’t a brush. I don’t know.”
“You didn’t ask?”
Bernie shrugged. “People come through from Frankfurt all the time. Somebody from PSD requests a meeting, what am I supposed to say? No? Half the time they’re just looking for an excuse to come to Berlin. Everybody wants to see it, but you’re supposed to have a reason for being here. So they liaise and fart around in meetings nobody has time for and then go home.”
“With five thousand dollars.”
“He didn’t get it from me, if that’s what you’re asking,” he said irritably. “He didn’t show, or do you want Mike to verify that?”
“Keep your shirt on. Fm just trying to figure this out. You didn’t know him?”
“Not from Adam. PSD out of Frankfurt, that’s all. Never worked with him on a case. I don’t even know if he was Special Branch. I suppose I could find out.” A crack in the door. Still a DA after all.
“But what did you think he wanted? Just like that, out of the blue.”
Bernie sat down, ruffling his hair again. “A face meeting with Frankfurt? Out of the blue? It could have been anything. Grief, usually. The last time it was Legal complaining about my methods,” he said, giving the word an edge. “They like to do that personally, bring you in line. Frankfurt thinks I’m a loose cannon. Not that I give a shit.”
“Why a loose cannon?”
Bernie smiled slightly. “I’ve been known to break a regulation. Once or twice.”
“So break another one,” Jake said, looking at him.
“Because you have a gut feeling? I don’t know you from Adam either.”
“No. But somebody comes to see you, makes a stop along the way, and gets shot. Now two of us are interested.”
Bernie met his eyes, then looked away. “You know, I didn’t come to Germany to catch crooked soldiers.”
Jake nodded, not saying anything, waiting for Bernie to pop up again. Instead, he stopped squirming and leaned forward, like a negotiator at the Cecilienhof, finally down to business.
“What do you want?”
“The other sheet. There’s nothing here.” Jake pointed at the report. “Not even ballistics. There must be someone you could ask. Quietly, just nosing around.”
Bernie nodded.
“Then a call to Frankfurt. Naturally you’d be curious, someone doesn’t show. So who was he, what did he want? Scuttlebutt. There should be talk all over the place now, somebody comes back in a box. Oh, did you know him? What the hell happened?”
“You trying to tell me how to do this?”
“Any rumors,” Jake went on. “Maybe something valuable’s gone missing. Some liberated souvenirs. It’s a long shot, but you never know. And a picture would be nice.”
“For publication?” Bernie said, wary.
“No, for me. There must be one in his file there, if you can get hold of it without upsetting the horses. I’m not sure how, but maybe something will come to you.” “Maybe something will.”
“Traveling orders. Who authorized the trip? What for? You’d want to know. He was coming to see you.”
“Yes,” Bernie said, thoughtful again, then sprang up and began moving around the room, jiggling change in his pocket. “And what’s all this supposed to get you?”
“Not much. It’s not much to ask, either. Just what you’d want to know if you’d never talked to me. If an appointment turned up dead.”
“So what else?”
“I need a partner. I can’t work this alone.”
Bernie held up his hand. “Forget it.”
“Not you. A name. Who covers the black market for Public Safety? Who’d know the snitches, the people out on the street? If Tully had something big to sell, who would he have gone to see? He sure as hell didn’t come to Berlin to stand on a corner. I need someone who knows the players.”
“I can’t help you with that.”
“Can’t?”
“There isn’t anybody like that. Not that I’ve ever heard of. ‘Covers’ it. Like a beat? You’re still back in Chicago.”
“You could ask,” Jake said, getting up now too, Bernie’s restlessness contagious.
“No, I couldn’t. I’m in Public Safety. Technically. You don’t shit where you sleep. Not for long, anyway. Nobody else will either, once they know what you’re after. Tully was PSD too. You think he had friends. Where do you think he had them? I have things to do here, not play cops and robbers with my own department. You do that one alone.” He looked up with a hint of a smile. “We’ll see how good you are.”
“But you’ll make the call. You’ll do that.”
“Yeah, I’ll make the call,” he said, busying himself again with the folder pile. “I hate it when people don’t show up.” He stopped and looked directly at Jake, his eyes friendly. “I’ll call. Now how about clearing out of here and letting me get back to work.”
Jake walked over to the card catalogues and fingered the brass pulls on the drawers. “Catching real criminals,” he said. “In here.”
“That’s right, real criminals. Careful of the merchandise. That’s the most valuable thing in Berlin.”
“I heard about the paper mill. Some break.”
“Maybe God figured he owed us one. Finally,” he said, a gravelly voice.
“Mind if I have a look? See what they’re like?” Jake said, pulling open a drawer before Bernie could answer. The Bs were near the back, a row of Brandts. Helga, Helmut, no Helene. He pulled his hand away, feeling relieved and ashamed at the same time. How could he have thought there would be? But how could you be sure who anyone was anymore? He remembered that first night, looking down on the old woman in the garden, wondering. What did you do? Were you one of them? The girls on Potsdamerstrasse, the bicycles going past KaDeWe, the woman in his old flat-everyone in Berlin had become a suspect. Who were you before? But Bernie knew. It was all here in black-and-white, typed on cards. His fingers flipped again. Perhaps he was a special case, the professor had said. Berthold. Dieter. There- Emil. Not a special case. But maybe a different Emil Brandt. He took out the card. No, his address. Her address. 1938. All the time Jake had known him. His eyes went down the card. A party decoration. For what? An SS appointment, in 1944. SS. Emil. A nice man who saw numbers in his head.
He looked up to find Bernie standing next to him.
“Your friend?”
“No. Her husband. Christ.”
“You didn’t know?”
Jake shook his head. “It says he was decorated. It doesn’t say why.”
“That would be in his party file. These are the registry cards. You want me to find out?” Chasing rats.
Jake shook his head again. “Just where he is.”
“You mean if she’s with him,” Bernie said, studying his face.
“Yes. If she’s with him.” But he’d never imagined them together. Just Lena, opening the door, the surprised look in her eyes, throwing her arms around his neck. He put the card back and closed the drawer.
“What was her name?”
“Helene Brandt. She used to live in Pariserstrasse. I’ll write it down for you.” He went over to the desk for a piece of paper. “Can I give you a few others?” he said, writing. “I want to track down the old office staff. For a story. I know you’re busy-”
Bernie spread his hands, a what-else-is-new gesture, then took the list. “I’ll put Mike on it. It’ll give him something to do. They’d have to be in Berlin, you know.”
“Yes,” Jake said. “Let me know what Frankfurt says.”
“Get going before I change my mind,” Bernie said, retreating behind the desk.
“But you’ll make the call.”
Bernie looked up. “You could get to be a real pain, you know that?”
Jake went back up the stairs and through the quiet archive room. Records of everything, just lying here waiting, millions of due bills. Maybe Emil had been decorated as part of a group, a ceremony with families, applauded for their services to the state. Doing what? Teaching mathematics? Now filed away in one of these cabinets, to make another case for the prosecution.
“Sign out, please.” The indifferent guard, chewing gum.
Jake scribbled in the ledger, then stepped outside into the click of a photograph.
“Well, look who’s here.” Liz was bent on one knee, shooting up at the doorway and the tall blond soldier who stood posing in front of it. Last night’s date. Jake stepped aside as she took another. The soldier pulled back his shoulders. Cool eyes, an illustrator’s jaw, the kind of Aryan looks Emil’s group would have liked.
“Okay,” Liz said, finished. “Jake, meet Joe Shaeffer. Like the pen.
J“ oe -
“I know who you are,” the soldier said, shaking hands. “Pleasure.” He turned to Liz. “Five minutes,” he said, then nodded stiffly at Jake and went inside.
“Something for your personal collection?” Jake said, pointing to the camera.
“It was. ”
“How was the jazz?”
“Wouldn’t you like to know. What’s it like inside? Anything interesting?”
He thought of the files, every one a story, then realized she meant anything to photograph. “Like a library,” he said.
“Great.” A grimace. “Still, some trophy, huh? You know they got it all in a paper mill,” she said, her voice as excited as the driver’s. Jake looked at her. The war had become a kind of scavenger hunt. Rockets at Nordhausen. Engineers at Zeiss. Now even pieces of paper, decorations and promotions. The magazine spread would show tall Joe opening a file.
“Yeah, I heard,” he said, moving away. “Watch yourself in there. Lots of dark corners.”
“Aren’t you funny.”
He grinned and was about to start down the steps when he heard his name shouted inside. “Geismar!” A second shout, followed by Bernie in a mad dash, almost colliding with Liz, another piece of Gelferstrasse china. “Good. I caught you.”
Jake smiled. “You know Liz? You share a bathroom.”
Bernie barely managed a confused nod to her, then grabbed Jake’s arm. “I need to talk to you.” His face was flushed from the exertion of the run. “This list.”
“That was fast,” Jake said easily, then saw Bernie’s eyes, holding him as firmly as the hand on his arm. “What?”
“Come here,” Bernie said, moving them down the stairs, out of earshot. “Naumann,” he said, holding the list up. “Renate Naumann. How do you know her? ”
“Renate? She worked for me at Columbia. They all did.”
“That’s the first I’ve heard of it.”
Jake looked at him, bewildered. “Off the books. I used her as a stringer. She had a great eye.”
Bernie made a face, as if Jake had told a bad joke, then looked away. “Great eye. Yes,” he said, his voice filled with disgust.
“You know her?” Jake said, still puzzled.
Bernie nodded.
“I thought she’d be dead. You know where she is?”
“She’s in jail.”
Bernie looked around, then took Jake’s arm again and began walking out past the sentries. “I hate this fucking barbed wire. It gives me the willies.” When they reached the jeep, Bernie leaned against it, his energy finally spent.
“What do you mean, jail?” Jake said.
“Some friends you’ve got.” Bernie took out a cigarette. “She was a greifer. You know greifer?”
“Grabber. Catcher. Of what?” Jews.
“That’s impossible. She was-”
“A Jew. I know. A Jew to catch Jews. They thought of everything. Even that.”
“But she-” Jake started, but Bernie held up his hand.
“You want to hear this?” He took a pull on his cigarette. “The first big roundup here was in ‘forty-two. February. After that, any Jew in Berlin was illegal, underground. U-boats. There were still thousands, if you can imagine it. Some had a place-if a gentile was protecting them. The others, they had to move around. Place to place. During the day, you had to keep moving, so the neighbors wouldn’t suspect. Wouldn’t report you,” he said, almost spitting the word. “Berlin’s a big city. You could stay lost in the crowd, if you kept moving. Unless somebody knew you. A greifer.”
“I don’t believe it.”
“No? Ask the Jews she caught. A few survived. A few. Or we wouldn’t have caught her. That’s when I had to break a few regulations.” He looked up. “It was worth it. To catch her? Worth it.” He moved away from the jeep, pacing in a small circle. “How it worked? Some covered the railway stations. Renate liked the cafes. Usually Kranzler’s or the Trumpf, over by the Memorial Church. The big one in Olivaerplatz, the Heil. A drink, you watch the people. Sometimes a Jew you actually knew, from the old days. Sometimes someone you just suspected, so some talk, a little fishing, a hint you were a U-boat yourself. Then snap. A visit to the ladies’ room for the telephone. They usually took them on the street, so it wouldn’t cause a disturbance in the cafe. Finish your drink, they’re just rounding up some Jews. Everyone but Renate. The next day, another cafe. She had a great eye, you see,” he said, glancing back at Jake.
“She said she could tell just by looking. Not even Streicher could do that-to him it was all cartoon noses. Renate was better than the Nazis, she didn’t need the star patches. Not with that eye. And, you know, people are foolish. So careful, day after day-can you imagine what that’s like? — and then the relief, a friendly face. If you can’t trust another Jew- A few even asked her out. A date, under those conditions. Just let me powder my nose in the ladies‘.’” He flicked the cigarette into the street.
“And then?” Jake said, helpless, wanting to know.
“The collection point. A Gestapo building, so disturbances didn’t matter anymore. Lots of screaming there. They put them on the trucks. Then out to the trains for the trip east. The neighbors told us the noise was terrible. They’d keep their windows closed until the trucks left.”
“Maybe she didn’t know,” Jake said quietly.
“She lived there. With the other catchers. They kept them on a short leash. Maybe a reminder-‘You could be next.’ But she wasn’t. She saved herself.” He paused. “I saw the room where she lived. It’s on the courtyard. She could see them loading the trucks. So maybe she closed her window too.” He looked harder at Jake. “She knew.”
The day seemed to have stopped around them, the empty street as still as the archives inside. Birdless trees. Sentries standing motionless in the sun.
“That’s-” Jake sputtered, then stopped, like a candle without air.
“The worst thing you ever heard?” Bernie prompted. “Stay in Germany. When you think you’ve heard the worst, there’s something more. Always something worse.”
Loaded into trucks while she watched. “How many?” Jake said.
“Does it matter?”
Jake shook his head. A girl with bright eyes and curly hair. But who was anybody anymore?
“Can I see her? Could you arrange that?”
“If you want. I should tell you, you won’t be the first. Your buddies were all over this one. A Nazi? Old news. But a Jew? That they went for. Ach” He waved his hand again, as if he were swatting the whole thing away like a gnat. “There’s a trial coming up. If you have the stomach fork.”
“Does she admit it?”
“There’s no question about this one,” Bernie said, looking at him. “We have witnesses.”
“But if they forced her-”
“She did it. That’s what matters, you know. She did it.” He took a breath. “The people she caught are dead. Nobody made excuses for them.”
“No.”
“So,” Bernie said, exhaling the word, case closed. “Not what you expected, is it?”
“No.”
“No,” Bernie said. “I’m sorry. It’s a lousy business, all of it. Stick to the black market.”
“I’d still like to see her.”
Bernie nodded. “Maybe she’ll tell you something. Why. I’ll never understand it.”
“We weren’t here. We don’t know what it was like.”
“I had family here,” Bernie snapped. “I know what it was like for them.”
Jake looked back at the quiet villa, through the high barbed wire that gave Bernie the willies. “What’ll happen to her?”
“Prison,” Bernie said flatly. “She’s a woman-they won’t hang her. Maybe it’s worse-she’ll have to live with it.”
“In a cell with the Nazis who made her do it.”
“She decided that herself when she became one of them. I said it was a lousy business. How do you think I feel-her greifer. Another Jew. Was I right? You tell me.”
Jake lowered his head. “I don’t know.”
“I don’t either,” Bernie said quietly, a tiny crack in his voice that left his face unguarded, for a second the boy again practicing Mendelssohn. “So you just do the job.”
“It was you who got her?”
“Personally? No. Gunther Behn. Our bloodhound.” He stopped, then grabbed Jake’s arm. “Wait a minute. It didn’t occur to me before. I kept thinking Public Safety. You’re looking for someone who knows the streets? Gunther’s ex-police. Every alley. You might try him. Assuming he’s willing. You have any expense money to throw around?”
“Maybe. Berlin police?”
“A detective. Good, when he’s sober.”
“How do you know him?”
“I told you, he helped me with the Naumann case.”
“I thought the police were Nazi.”
“They were. They’re not police anymore either. Not if they were lieutenant or higher.”
“So he’s out of a job. And you gave him a new one? I thought you weren’t supposed to work with them.”
“We’re not. He’s still out of a job. He just helped me out on this.” He looked up. “I broke a regulation.”
“You used a Nazi.”
Bernie lifted his face, a slight thrust of the jaw. “We caught her.”
“How much did you pay him?”
“Nothing. He had a special interest. Renate caught his wife.”
“He was married to a Jew? ”
“They divorced, so he could keep his job. Later-” He broke off, letting the pieces assemble themselves. Had he hidden her or just let her drift through the streets, waiting for the pounce? “You’re in Berlin. There’s always something worse.”
“And you think he might help?”
“That’s up to you. Take a bottle of brandy. He likes that. Maybe you can talk him into it.”
“He knows the black market?”
“Well, that’s the thing,” Bernie said, with the first trace of a smile. “He’s in it.” Contents — Previous Chapter / Next Chapter