Circles of Time (40 page)

“I could use three fingers of scotch—make that four fingers.”

It was an elegant, old-fashioned place—the only entertainment a string quartet playing Mozart. The restaurant was nearly deserted and they stood at the bar.

Werner splashed seltzer into a snifter of brandy. “I'm not unaware of the paradox, Martin. To be truthful, I'm both attracted and repelled by such women. What was unthinkable behavior before the war is now taken for granted. Those gaudy whores on the street—on Unter den Linden! And the police barely glancing at them. German womanhood rutting in an alley for the price of a meal. These are times when I feel I'm Dante strolling through hell.”

“These are bad times, Werner, but they'll get better. Some kind of order will come out of this mess, you'll see.”

“The eternal optimist.” He drank a little of the brandy and seltzer and then placed a hand against his stomach. “Nice, but painful. They left me with a small, raw stomach. Those surgeons really gutted me, Martin. They even cut my rectum out. I shit through a hole in my side. Did you know that?”

Martin shook his head and took a drink of whiskey. “I'm sorry.”

“No need to be. You didn't toss a grenade at my belly. When I was in hospital—that is to say, after I had been in hospital some time—a new surgeon was brought in to see me. A Dr. Kuebler. He told me he didn't believe in half measures. That if I wanted to live, he must do, in his words, some drastic pruning. I wasn't happy at the idea, but he was correct. He pruned away the rot—and I lived.”

I
T HAD BEEN
an oddly disturbing evening and Martin was glad to be back at the hotel. He flopped wearily on the bed and studied the baroque designs on the ceiling, a bas-relief of cherubs, wood nymphs, and grape leaves. The cherubs and leaves spinning a bit as the whiskey went to his head. He sat up and then went into the bathroom and splashed cold water on his face. A bit drunk, he realized, but not sleepy. Thoughts whirled. Lieventhal's daughter's face … the writhings of the naked girls on the stage … Werner's thinly veiled despair. He groaned and dunked his head under the tap.

He dried himself off with a towel and then stripped. The suit was a mess, but the hotel valet could sponge and press it in the morning. He emptied the pockets, removing his cigar case, lighter, wallet, and a few coins. Werner's handkerchief was a damp wad; he unfolded it and spread it over the porcelain rim of the sink. Something was caught in the folds, a tiny dot of gold and enamel, a lapel pin of some sort stuck in the cloth. He plucked it out and held it between two fingers, staring at it. A well-crafted piece of jewelry, smaller than a shirt stud. A circle of plain yellow gold with an emblem in the center delicately enameled in red. He had seen the emblem before, but couldn't remember where. An ancient symbol, of course, old as time, and yet … where? The memory eluded him.

When he went into the bedroom to get his pajamas, he placed the pin on the dresser, the
backenkreuz
, the tiny red swastika.

P
AUL WAS TIRED
but elated. He celebrated by ordering a gargantuan lunch, washing it down with a bottle of superb Moselle.

“Five point two million,” he chuckled, cutting into a thick slice of roast pork. “I tell you, Martin, there was no fight in them. I would have gone to eight—hell,
ten
million if it came to that.” He chewed slowly, relishing it, then washed the mouthful down with wine. “Old Theodor made a long speech about corporate integrity and rambled on and on about the history of Rilkewerke and crap like that, but the others knew where the bread was buttered. Joining the cartel didn't bother them a bit.” He gave Martin a puzzled look. “How come you're not eating?”

“I don't feel very hungry.” He dabbed at his vegetable salad. “So it wasn't just a matter of buying patents.”

“That was part of it. Own the patents, control the product. They jumped way ahead of us in the last year of the war in research on certain types of electron tubes, high-frequency alternators, generators, electric motors, and a host of other things. We may produce
more
in the States, but they produce
better
over here. So … I own the patents and they'll produce and then sell to me at a price I set. It's a good deal all around.”

“No one's producing anything at the moment, Uncle Paul. Or haven't you noticed?”

Paul dismissed the remark with an airy wave of his fork. “To be successful in business, Martin, one ignores the present and eyes the future. I'm looking down the road.”

“And seeing what?”

“A big, basically sound country. Germany may have lost two million men in the war, but they didn't dent or scratch one factory, one mine, or one inch of their soil. This inflation is mostly deliberate. It's a ploy to bring the Allies to their senses and ease the reparation demands. It's going to take Washington, London, and Paris to end this craziness—and they'll do it. You'll see.” He downed the last of the wine, belched slightly, and took out a cigar. “I'm heading back to the States tomorrow—booked passage on the
Berengaria
from Cherbourg. Would you like to spend a few days in Paris with me before I sail?”

“I'm going down to Bavaria with Werner.”

“Oh? I was getting the impression you couldn't wait to get out of the fatherland.”

“I'd rather be in England, but, as my old editor on the
Express
would have said, this is where the story is.”

“Getting back into harness?”

“I think so. Once a reporter, always a reporter, I guess.”

“For INA?”

“Possibly. But not as a bureau chief. I can't chain myself to a desk.”

Paul lit his cigar and blew a satisfied stream of smoke toward the ceiling. “I'll be seeing Kingsford in New York. Can I tell him you're back on the payroll?”

“Sure.”

“I'll see to it you get a raise. Just leave it to your uncle Paul.”

Stories abounded in the streets of Berlin, a cavalcade of arrogant wealth and harrowing poverty and despair. The mark now stood at two hundred and fifty thousand to the U.S. dollar—the current rate posted in front of every bank, written in chalk on a small blackboard so that the figures could be erased as they changed, almost hourly. A story in every face—the angry eyes of ex-soldiers, the bewildered gaze of the elderly, the wizened faces of the starving young. But he knew as an editor that no one cared to read about it.

He took a taxi to the INA office in Neu Konigstrasse on the other side of the river. Only the bureau chief was in, a tall, stoop-shouldered, gloomy-faced man by the name of Wolf von Dix who had taught German at the University of London in 1914 and had left England at the eleventh hour to report the war for the
Frankfurter Zeitung.
His dispatches on the horrors of the western front had been as heavily censored by the German military as Martin's had been by the Allied.

Dix swung his long legs off the top of the desk, polished his monocle with his tie, and then popped it back into place.

“Well, Martin, of all people. What brings you to Berlin? On a Cook's tour?”

“No, just slumming.” He reached down into the chief's ever-open humidor of cigars and took one. “How are you, Dix?”

“Fine. Thanking God I'm working for a company that pays its salaries in dollars.”

“Where are Kurt and Emil?”

“In the Ruhr. Trying to get through the French army blockades. That ass Poincaré. Thank the Lord the British and Americans viewed with alarm, as the saying goes, or this country would have exploded. Things are bad enough without having the French marching through Essen.” He took a cigar for himself and clipped off the tip with a silver cutter.

“Why did you quit, Martin? I was stunned when I heard the news. Did Kingsford ride you too hard for stories of girls in bathing suits?”

“No, nothing like that. I just got sick of being cooped up in Fleet Street. But I'm back with the firm now, unofficially at the moment. A common, everyday, grind-out-the-wordage hack.”

“Hardly that, old fellow. I read your Iraq story in the
Daily Post.
Very Beau Gestian. No wonder you couldn't lock yourself back into an office after dashing about in the desert like Rudolph Valentino. You're a romantic at heart, dear Martin. I suppose that's what makes you such a good journalist.”

Martin reached into his pocket, took out the little lapel pin, and handed it to Dix.

“What can you tell me about this?”

The chief held it up to his monocled eye. “Nice bit of workmanship. Real gold. Swastika emblem.”

“I've seen the design before, but I can't recall where.”

“Common enough in Berlin during the Kapp putsch. Were you here then?”

“Sure … now I remember. The Ehrhardt Brigade.”

“Most of the Freikorps troops who came down from Estonia had a swastika painted on the sides of their trucks. I never knew why and neither did they. Just something they picked up the way troops will, I guess. Never saw the design worked into an expensive piece of jewelry, though. Did you find it in a pawnshop?”

“No. A person I know had it in his pocket.”

Dix handed the pin back. “This person—he wouldn't happen to come from Bavaria, would he? Munich or Nürnberg?”

“Munich—Bad Isar, to be precise.”

Dix let his monocle fall into his palm and gave it another polish with his tie. “The Thule Society used the swastika as a symbol at one time, and so does the National Socialist German Workers' party. You may have seen their two-page rag being peddled on the streets—the
Volkischer Beobachter.
They bought it from the Thule Society as a house organ. It comes out once or twice a week and people buy it for toilet paper.”

“What is this National Socialist whatever?”

Dix shrugged as he replaced his monocle. “I don't know for certain. All we get out of Bavaria is unconfirmed chaos. There must be a hundred political parties down there, all with impressive-sounding names. All I know about the National Socialists is that they have about three thousand members—give or take a couple of thousand—and that they must have some money, though God knows how they get it.”

“Is there anything in the morgue I could read?”

“Maybe. I don't know. Anna keeps that in order, and only she knows how obscure items are filed.” He glanced at the wall clock. “The girls will be back from lunch in a few minutes. Have a glass of schnapps and bide your time.”

The female typists and clerks trooped in, chattering noisily, happy as only people could be who had the good fortune to be working for an American company. A middle-aged woman with iron-gray hair nodded respectfully to Martin as she headed for her desk.

“Anna,” Dix called out. “Is there anything in the files on the National Socialist German Workers' party—in Bavaria?”

The woman paused by her desk, frowning. “We have copies of the
Volkischer Beobachter
, Herr Dix. And—I'm pretty sure—one or two items on the party leaders. I filed them under Eckart, D., and Hitler, A. Do you want them?”

“Do you?” Dix asked.

“If it's no bother,” Martin said.

T
HE
J
UNKERS MONOPLANE
rose swiftly from the old military airfield at Tempelhof, banked low over the Berlin slums, and then headed south, rising to five thousand feet. The sun glinted sharply off its silver and black metal wings.

“I love to fly,” Werner said happily, shouting over the engine noise. “I wish to God I'd had sense enough to go into the flying service. So clean in the clouds. The great tonic of air!”

Martin looked through the window. A green and golden blanket of woods and fields far below. “It's a long way down.”

“Shot down, you mean? By a Camel or Spad! What a glorious way to die! A ball of bright flame, scattering one's ashes in death! That's how gods die—in flaming chariots pulled by winged horses. For four years I was rooted in the mud where men die like crushed lizards. No—no—I wish I had left the infantry and flown in a squadron with Richthofen—Boelcke—Immelmann! I know Hermann Goering, by the way—last leader of the Richthofen circus, winner of the Pour le Mérite, the Blue Max. A wonderful fellow. He flew our first company plane for several months right after the war. Our pilot today, Rudi, he flew Gothas and made three trips over England. Never saw anything but cloud and couldn't find London—dropped all his bombs in the Channel. But he can tell some stories! That took guts, I can tell you.”

It was too difficult to carry on a conversation against the hammering throb of the engine. The plane climbed, rocking on the thermals rising from the slopes of the Erzgebirge. And then they were soaring over the dark forests of northern Bavaria, the Danube, and then the river Isar flowing from the great barrier of the Alps and threading its way through the old city of Munich.

A car and driver were waiting at the airfield to take them southward in the gathering dusk, past the city and along a narrow road that climbed into fir-shrouded hills.

“Nearly home,” Werner said, lowering the window and breathing deeply. “One could get drunk on this air.”