Garden of Beasts by Jeffery Deaver
"Yes, it's fine."
"Good. But be careful, Paul. They'd have shot you for that. No questions asked, no arrest. They'd have executed you on the spot."
Paul lowered his voice. "What did your contact at the information ministry find about Ernst?"
Morgan frowned. "Something odd is going on. He said there are hushed meetings all over Wilhelm Street. Usually it's half deserted on a Saturday but the SS and SD are everywhere. He's going to need more time. We're to call him in an hour or so." He looked at his watch. "But for now, our man with the rifle is up the street. He closed his shop today because we are coming in. But he lives nearby. He's waiting for us. I'll call him now." He rose and looked around. Of the divey bars and restaurants here, only one, the Edelweiss Cafe, advertised a public telephone.
"I'll be back in a moment."
As Morgan crossed the street, Paul's eyes followed him and he saw one of the disabled veterans ease close to the patio of the restaurant, begging for a handout. A burly waiter stepped to the railing and shooed him away.
A middle-aged man, who'd been sitting several benches away, rose and sat next to Paul. He offered a grimace, which revealed dusky teeth, and grumbled, "Did you see that? A crime how some people treat heroes."
"Yes, it is." What should he do? Paul wondered. It might be more suspicious to stand up and leave. He hoped the man would fall silent.
But the German eyed him closely and continued. "You're of an age. You fought."
This was not a question and Paul assumed it would have taken extraordinary circumstances for a German in his twenties to have avoided combat during the War.
"Yes, of course." His mind was racing.
"At which battle did you get that?" A nod toward the scar on Paul's chin.
That battle had involved no military action whatsoever; the enemy had been a sadistic button man named Morris Starble, who inflicted the scar with a knife in the Hell's Kitchen tavern behind which Starble died five minutes later.
The man looked at him expectantly. Paul had to say something so he mentioned a battle he was intimately familiar with: "St. Mihiel." For four days in September of 1918 Paul and his fellow soldiers in the First Infantry Division, IV Corps, slogged through driving rain and soupy mud to assault eight-foot-deep German trenches protected by wire obstacles and machine-gun nests.
"Yes, yes! I was there!" The beaming man shook Paul's hand warmly. "What a coincidence this is! My Comrade!"
Good choice, Paul thought bitterly. What were the odds that this would happen? But he tried to look pleasantly surprised at this happenstance. The German continued to his brother-in-arms: "So you were part of Detachment C! That rain! I have never seen so much rain before or since. Where were you?"
"At the west face of the salient."
"I faced the Second French Colonial Corps."
"We had the Americans against us," Paul said, searching fast through two-decade-old memories.
"Ah, Colonel George Patton! What a mad and brilliant man he was. He would send troops racing all over the battlefield. And his tanks! They would suddenly appear as if by magic. We never knew where he was going to strike next. No infantryman ever troubled me. But tanks..." He shook his head, grimacing.
"Yes, that was quite a battle."
"If that's your only wound you were lucky."
"God was looking out for me, that's true." Paul asked, "And you were wounded?"
"A bit of shrapnel in my calf. I carry it to this day. I show my nephew the wound. It is shaped like an hourglass. He touches the shiny scar and laughs with delight. Ah, what a time that was." He sipped from a flask. "Many people lost friends at St. Mihiel. I did not. Mine had all died before then." He fell silent and offered the flask to Paul, who shook his head.
Morgan stepped out of the cafe and gestured.
"I must go," Paul said to the man. "A pleasure meeting a fellow veteran and sharing these words."
"Yes."
"Good day, sir. Hail Hitler."
"Ach, yes. Hail Hitler."
Paul joined Morgan, who said, "He can meet us now."
"You didn't tell him anything about why I need the gun?"
"No, not the truth, at least. He thinks you're German and you want it to kill a crime boss in Frankfurt who cheated you."
The two men continued up the street for six or seven blocks, the neighborhood growing even shabbier, until they came to a pawnbroker's shop. Musical instruments, suitcases, razors, jewelry, dolls, hundreds of other items filled the grimy, iron-barred windows. A "Closed" sign was on the door. They waited only a few minutes in the vestibule before a short, balding man showed up. He nodded to Morgan, ignored Paul, looked around then let them inside. He glanced back, closed and locked the door, then pulled the shade.
They walked farther into the musty, dust-filled shop. "Come this way." The shopkeeper led them through two thick doors, which he closed and bolted, then down a long stairway into a damp basement, lit only by two small yellow bulbs. When his eyes grew accustomed to the dim light Paul noted that there were two dozen rifles in racks against the wall.
He handed Paul a rifle with a telescopic sight on it. "It's a Mauser Karabiner. A 7.92-millimeter. This one breaks down easily so you can carry it in a suitcase. Look at the scope. The best optics in the world."
The man clicked a switch and lights illuminated a tunnel, perhaps one hundred feet long, at the end of which were sandbags and, pinned to one, a paper target.
"This is completely soundproofed. It is a supply tunnel that was dug through the ground years ago."
Paul took the rifle in his hands. Felt the smooth wood of the sanded and varnished stock. Smelled the aroma of oil and creosote and the leather of the sling. He rarely used rifles in his job and the combination of sweet scents and solid wood and metal took him back in time. He could smell the mud of the trenches, the shit, kerosene fumes. And the stink of death, like wet, rotting cardboard.
"These are special bullets too, which are hollowed out at the tip, as you can see. They are more likely to cause death than standard cartridges."
Paul dry-fired the gun several times to get a feel for the trigger. He pressed bullets into the magazine then sat down at a bench, resting the rifle on a block of wood covered with cloth. He began to fire. The report was earsplitting but he hardly noticed. Paul just stared through the scope, concentrating on the black dots of the target. He made a few adjustments to the scope and then slowly fired the remaining twenty rounds in the box of ammunition.
"Good," he said, shouting because his hearing was numb. "A good weapon." Nodding, he handed the rifle back to the pawnbroker, who took it apart, cleaned it and packed the gun and ammunition into a battered fiber-board suitcase.
Morgan took the case and handed an envelope to the shopkeeper, who shut the lights out in the range and led them upstairs. A look out the door, a nod that all was clear and soon they were outside again, strolling down the street. Paul heard a metallic voice filling the street. He laughed. "You can't escape it." Across the street, at a tram stop, was a speaker, from which a man's voice droned on and on--yet more information about public health. "Don't they ever stop?"
"No, they don't," Morgan said. "When we look back, that will be the National Socialist contribution to culture: ugly buildings, bad bronze sculpture and endless speeches...." He nodded at the suitcase holding the Mauser. "Now let's go back to the square and call my contact. See if he's found enough information to let you put this fine piece of German machinery to use."
The dusty DKW turned onto November 1923 Square and, unable to find a place to park on the hectic street, narrowly avoided a vendor selling questionable fruit as it drove halfway over the curb.
"Ach, here we are, Janssen," Willi Kohl said, wiping his face. "Your pistol is convenient."
"Yes, sir."
"Then let's go hunting."
They climbed out.
The purpose of the inspector's diversion after they left the U.S. dormitory was to interview the taxi drivers stationed outsi
After dividing the taxis up between them, and speaking to two dozen drivers, Janssen found one who'd had a story that did indeed interest Kohl. The fare had left the Olympics not long before with a suitcase and an old brown satchel. He was a burly man with a faint accent. His hair did not seem on the long side or to have a red tint but it was slicked straight back and dark, though that, Kohl reasoned, might have been due to oil or lotion. He said he had been wearing not a suit but light-colored casual clothing, though the driver couldn't describe it in detail.
The man had got out at Lutzow Plaza and vanished into the crowds. This was one of the busiest, most congested intersections in the city; there were few hopes of picking up the suspect's trail there. However, the cabdriver added that the man had asked directions to November 1923 Square and wondered if he could walk to it from Lutzow Plaza.
"Did he ask anything more about the square? Anything specific? His business? Comrades he was hoping to meet? Anything?"
"No, Inspector. Nothing. I told him that it would be a long, long hike to the square. And he thanked me and got out. That was all. I was not looking at his face," he explained. "Only at the road."
Blindness, of course, Kohl had thought sourly.
They had returned to headquarters and picked up printed handbills of the Dresden Alley victim. They then had raced here, to the monument in honor of the failed putsch in 1923 (only the National Socialists could turn such an embarrassing defeat into an unqualified victory). While Lutzow Plaza was too large to search effectively, this was a far smaller square and could be more easily canvassed.
Kohl now looked over the people here: beggars, vendors, hookers, shoppers, unemployed men and women in small cafes. He inhaled the air, pungent, ripe with the scent of trash, and asked, "Do you sense our quarry nearby, Janssen?"
"I..." The assistant seemed uncomfortable with this comment.
"It's a feeling," Kohl said, scanning the street as he stood in the shadow of a courageous, defiant bronze Hitler. "I myself don't believe in the occult. Do you?"
"Not really, sir. I'm not religious, if that's what you mean."
"Well, I haven't given up on religion completely. Heidi would not approve. But what I'm speaking of is the illusion of the spiritual based on our perceptions and experience. And I have such a feeling now. He's near."
"Yes, sir," the inspector candidate said. "Why do you think so?"
An appropriate query, Kohl thought. He believed young detectives should always question their mentors. He explained: because this neighborhood was part of Berlin North. Here you could find large numbers of War wounded and poor and unemployed and closet Communists and Socis and anti-Party Edelweiss Pirate gangs, petty thieves and supporters of labor who'd gone to ground after the unions were outlawed. It was populated by those Germans who sorely missed the early days: not Weimar, of course (no one liked the Republic), but the glory of Prussia, of Bismarck, of Wilhelm, of the Second Empire. Which meant few members of the Party and its sympathizers. Few denouncers, therefore, ready to run squealing to the Gestapo or the local Stormtrooper garrison.
"Whatever business he's up to, it's in places like this that he'll find support and comrades. Stand back somewhat, Janssen. It is always easier to spot a person on the lookout for a suspect, such as us, than to spot that suspect himself."
The young man moved into the shadows of a fishmonger's store, whose stinking bins were mostly empty. Gamy eels, carp and sickly canal trout were all he had for sale. The officers studied the streets for a few moments, looking for their quarry.
"Now let us think, Janssen. He got out of the taxi with his suitcase--and the incriminating satchel--at Lutzow Plaza. He did not have the car drive him directly here from the Olympics possibly because he dropped his bags off where he is now staying and came here for some other purpose. Why? To meet someone? To deliver something, perhaps the satchel? Or to collect something or someone? He has been to the Olympic Village, Dresden Alley, the Summer Garden, Rosenthaler Street, Lutzow Plaza and now here? What ties these settings together? I wonder."
"Shall we survey all the stores and shops?"
"I think we must. But I will tell you, Janssen, the food-deprivation concern is now serious. I am actually feeling light-headed. We will first query the cafes and, at the same time, get some sustenance for ourselves."
Inside his shoes Kohl's toes flexed against the pain. The lamb's wool had migrated and his feet were stinging once again. He nodded to the closest restaurant, the one he'd parked in front of, the Edelweiss Cafe, and they stepped inside.
It was a dingy place. Kohl noted the averted eyes that typically greeted the appearance of an official. When they were through looking over the patrons on the off-chance that their Manny's New York suspect might be here, Kohl displayed his ID to a waiter, who snapped instantly to attention. "Hail Hitler. How may I assist?"
In this smoky dive, Kohl doubted anyone had even heard of the position of maitre d', so he asked for the manager.
"Mr. Grolle, yes, sir. I will get him at once. Please, sit at this table, sirs. And if you wish some coffee and something to eat, please let me know."
"I will have a coffee and apple strudel. Perhaps a double-size piece. And my colleague?" He lifted an eyebrow at Janssen.
"Just a Coca-Cola."
"Whipped cream with the strudel?" the manager asked.
"But of course," Willi Kohl said in a surprised voice, as if it were a sacrilege to serve it without.
As they were walking back from the gun dealer toward the Edelweiss Cafe, where Morgan would call his contact at the information ministry, Paul asked, "What will he get us? About Ernst's whereabouts?"
"He told me that Goebbels insists on knowing where all the senior officials will be appearing in public. He then decides if it is important to have a filming crew or a photographer present to record the event." He gave a sour laugh. "You go to see, say, Mutiny on the Bounty, and you don't even get a Mickey Mouse cartoon until twenty minutes of tedious reels of Hitler coddling babies and Goring parading in his ridiculous uniforms before a thousand Labor Service workers."
"And Ernst will be on that list?"
"That's what I'm hoping. I hear the colonel doesn't have much patience for propaganda, and he detests Goebbels as much as Goring, but he has learned to play the game. One does not succeed in the government in this day and age without playing the game."
As they approached the Edelweiss Cafe, Paul noticed a cheap black car sitting on the curb beside the statue of Hitler, in front of the restaurant. Detroit still seemed to have one up on the German auto industry. While he'd seen some beautiful Mercedes and BMW models, most of the cars in Berlin were like this one, boxy and battered. When he returned to the United States, and had the ten G's, he'd get the car of his dreams, a shiny black Lincoln. Marion would look swell in a car like that.
Paul was suddenly very thirsty. He decided he'd get a table while Morgan made his call. The cafe seemed to specialize in pastry and coffee but on a hot day like this, those had no appeal to him. Nope, he decided; he'd continue his education in the fine art of German beer making.
Chapter Fourteen
Sitting at a rickety table at the Eidelweiss Cafe, Willi Kohl finished his strudel and coffee. Much better, he thought. His hands had actually been shaking from the hunger. It wasn't healthy to go without food for so long.
Neither the manager nor anyone else had seen a man fitting the suspect's description. But Kohl hoped someone in this unfortunate area had seen the victim from the Dresden Alley shooting. "Janssen, do you have the pictures of our poor, dead man?"
"In the DKW, sir."
"Well, fetch them."
"Yes, sir."
The young man finished his Coca-Cola and walked to the car.
Kohl followed him out the door, absently tapping the pistol in his pocket. He wiped his brow and looked up the street to his right toward the sound of yet another siren. He heard the DKW door slam and he turned back, glancing toward Janssen. As he did, the inspector noticed a fast movement just beyond his assistant, to Kohl's left.
It appeared that a man in a dark suit, carrying a fiberboard musical instrument case or suitcase, had turned and stepped quickly into the courtyard of a large, decrepit apartment building next door to the Edelweiss Cafe. There was something unnatural about the abruptness with which the man had veered off the sidewalk. It struck him as somewhat odd as well that a man in a suit would be going into such a shabby place.
"Janssen," Kohl called, "did you see that?"
"What?"
"That man going into the courtyard?"
The young officer shrugged. "Not clearly. I just saw some men on the sidewalk. Out of the corner of my eye."
"Men?"
"Two, I believe."
Kohl's instincts took over. "We must look into this!"
The apartment building was attached to the structure on the right and, looking down the alley, the inspector could see that there were no side doors. "There'll be a service entrance in the back, like at the Summer Garden. Cover it again. I'll go through the front. Assume that both men are armed and desperate. Keep your pistol in your hand. Now run! You can beat them if you hurry."
The inspector candidate sprinted down the alley. Kohl too armed himself. He slowly approached the courtyard.
Trapped.
Just like at Malone's apartment.
Paul and Reggie Morgan stood, panting from the brief sprint, in a gloomy courtyard, filled with trash and a dozen browning juniper bushes. Two teenage boys in dusty clothes tossed rocks at pigeons.
"Not the same police?" gasped Morgan. "From the Summer Garden? Impossible."
"The same." Paul wasn't sure they'd been spotted, but the younger officer, in the green suit, had glanced their way just as Paul had pulled Morgan into the courtyard. They had to assume they'd been seen.
"How did they find us?"