City of Shadows (27 page)

Esther left Alexanderplatz
police headquarters feeling cleaner than she had for some months. Like a Roman Catholic after confession. Schmidt hadn’t exactly given her absolution, but it had been noticeable
that his more penetrating questions had been kept until his sergeant had left the room.

No point in trying to save my face, Inspector; that was lost years ago. Just find Olga and Natalya’s killer. Save Anna.

Last night the apartment had seemed extra dark without Natalya’s bright, dyed-blond presence. She’d stood at the window for a long time, menaced by hopelessness, watching the street’s gathering shadows. How could one be pinpointed among so many? Especially one that knew so much about them—
“I can authenticate you”
—when all they knew about
it
was its bigness.

But on this clear blue morning, things were better. An intuitive man was on the job with fingerprint experts, all science to help him. A clever man, a nice man, a very nice man. With a picture of a pretty wife on his desk. Leave it to him.

Leave him.

Esther walked briskly; there was more cleansing to do yet—like find
ing a new and better way to earn a living. Natalya’s death had been a watershed. If she—if all of them—hadn’t been involved in a sleazy con
spiracy, it wouldn’t have happened.

In the Tiergarten, tourists were taking pictures of one another and of Berliners passing by with currency piled in baskets and trolleys. One or two Americans were buying bags of hot chestnuts from a man with a glowing fire bucket, handing over a dollar and photographing the re
sultant mountain of change, laughing.

Esther dawdled to watch them. She envied them cameras that had probably cost them, in their currency, little more than they were paying for the chestnuts. Cameras were magical to her. She must get her Leica back from the pawnbroker—she’d suffered a greater pang pawning that than anything else. If she could wish any artifact back from the past, it was the beloved box Brownie her father had given her on her tenth birthday.

Don’t think about it, don’t think about it.

She lingered a while longer. One of the vacationers handed his cam
era to the chestnut seller, asking the man to take a picture of him and his wife.

Now, that was an idea. Maybe there was a living to be made in tak
ing photographs of tourists.

Well, perhaps. She wasn’t ever going to be anybody’s wife—and damned if she’d be somebody’s kept woman much longer.

She stopped dawdling and set off for Nick’s house to tell him so— and ask him to get her camera back.

Willi came back
into the office after seeing Solomonova off the prem
ises. Schmidt said, “What do you think, Sergeant?”

“Funny woman,” Willi said. “Most kikes say ‘sir.’ I reckon there was money there one time. Two-faced, I mean
really.
One side she’s the Queen of bloody Sheba, other side she could be Scarface Sara from Stein
platz. I reckon that kike quack of yours could have a field day with her.”

“We’re referring to that distinguished Viennese psychoanalyst Dr. Sigmund Freud, are we, Willi?”

“Yeah, him.” Willi had been introduced to the theories of Freud when Schmidt had once tried to explain something of them in connec
tion with a case of patricide; ever since, Willi had added deviousness to the sins he attributed to the Jewish race.

“Funny woman,” Schmidt agreed.

But she’s right, he thought. That Natalya had been murdered by a random killer wandering Charlottenburg was to lean too heavily on co
incidence.
“I can authenticate you.”
And now the death of the Olga woman would have to be investigated. There was no doubt Anna An
derson was at the center of this particular maze. Trace the trail she’d made and they’d find the man who wanted to kill her. The trick would be to find which path led to her: the grand-duchess way or via her true identity. What
was
her true identity?

Eisenmenger was in the canteen, examining a sausage through his monocle as if he’d found it stuck to his shoe. “Cheka, old boy? Are we talking about the All-Russian Extraordinary Commission for Combat
ing Counterrevolution and Sabotage?”

“Is that what it stands for?” Usually he couldn’t be bothered to humor Eisenmenger; like most officers in the Political Section, the man
had been recruited from upper-class Junker military intelligence—a type Schmidt had loathed in the army.

“You might say so. You might also say that it stands for cutting the guts out of anybody who doesn’t agree with it.”

“Would it have agents operating in Berlin?”

“Has agents operating everywhere, old boy.” He cut into the sausage and peered at its interior. “I hope this dog had a pedigree.”

Schmidt sat down next to him. “Suppose a Romanov was running around loose in Berlin. Would the Cheka be interested in assassinat
ing it?”

“Depends which Romanov.”

“Somebody pretending to be one of the royal children, maybe. Es
caped the massacre.”

“Grand Duchess Anastasia, for instance?” Eisenmenger inclined his chin at Schmidt in satisfaction at preempting him. “One’s heard the ru
mors. The Russki community is becoming exercised on the subject. Have you met her?”

“What I want to know is,
if
the Reds thought it was her, would they consider her a danger? Say”—he waggled his hand—“maybe that our government wanted to use her as a bargaining chip or a rallying point or some damn thing.”

“A valuable pawn in the great game of chess against Bolshevism, you mean.” Eisenmenger always sounded sarcastic, whether he meant to or not.

“Yes, that’s what I mean.”

“No.”

“You’re sure?”

“Old boy, we wouldn’t waste our time, and the Bolshies know it. They know that we know that Czarism is dead. The great people of Russia may be dying in the thousands under Communism, but they did that anyway under the czars. Dying is what they’re good at. National pas
time.”

“So the Bolshies wouldn’t assassinate somebody they believed to be the grand duchess.”

“That, old boy, is what I am trying to convey. Not planning a coup, is
she? Not intending to storm Moscow at the head of a Tartar army or

anything?”

Schmidt grinned. “Not as far as I know.”

“There you are, then.”

As Schmidt got up, Eisenmenger said, “
Is
she the grand duchess?”

“You’re Intelligence. You tell me.” God Almighty, he thought, if even Eisenmenger was prepared to be hoodwinked, Anna Anderson has a good career ahead of her. Automatically he wrapped one of his sausages in a napkin, just in case Hannelore hadn’t had time to begin her black-market activities.

Eisenmenger watched him. “I thought that lovely wife of yours was pregnant.”

“She is.”

“Then see that the baby doesn’t come out snarling. This dog didn’t die happy.”

Back in his office, Schmidt said, “Sergeant, I want you to fetch the file on this Olga Ratzel from Inspector Bolle. Ask politely. And after that I’ve got a nice job for you, right up your alley. Go to Dalldorf and interview Clara Peuthert. Ask around, see who she’s been talking to, get a description, find out who’s been hanging around there. If they want to keep you in, don’t you let ’em.”

“Thank you kindly, boss. And where are you going?”

“Me? I’m taking a stroll down to the Landwehr Canal.”

For a city
threaded with canals, Berlin had never quite come to terms with them. Rivers, yes. The rich had built beautiful houses on the river islands, lakes provided weekends of pleasure for bathers and picnick
ers, but architecturally the canals led a stern, almost secret life of their own along waterfronts that, with their angular and dirty warehouses, had not been integrated into the townscape.

On the Herkulesbrücke, men with time on their hands—plenty of those nowadays—leaned on its parapet watching a dredger do its stuff, water pouring off its pail as the crane lifted it. At their backs, pedestrians crossed to and from the Lützowplatz intent on other business,
while below them, quietly chugging, disregarded barges supplied their city with its necessary coal, stone, lime, gravel, and clay.

He didn’t quite know why he’d come; it would have been more sen
sible to go with Willi and get a sniff of the man who’d been hanging around the asylum. Or examine the Olga Ratzel file. Or put Potrovskov to the inquisition. Instead he was leaning on a bridge inhaling the smell of canal silt. But he loathed the pain in mental asylums. And, according to Solomonova, the inquiry into the Ratzel death hadn’t got anywhere. And it probably wasn’t a good idea to interview Prince Nick while he wanted to thumbscrew the bastard for maneuvering women like chess pieces and getting one of them killed.

Anyway, the thing about canals, he decided, was that bad men could push people into them. And this one was where the woman at the cen
ter of his case had suffered a reverse baptism—her identity, if not her sins, washed out of her.

He roused himself and went down the steps to the concrete canal path along which, among flaking buildings and shops, stood a small po
lice station. A smart little launch with
polizei
painted on its cabin was moored to a landing stage, its fenders gently bumping against the canal wall from the wash of more barges going by. The station itself, however, was reminiscent of a stable and probably had been one in the days of horse-drawn shipping.

Behind the table that served as a reception desk was a long, rectangu
lar room, at the end of which uniformed men were sitting around a stove, their collars undone, smoking their pipes, lucky bastards. Probably to
bacco they’d confiscated off some unfortunate, smuggling bargeman.

He raised his hat to the desk sergeant, showed his warrant card, and explained his mission, without much hope. The written record of Anna Anderson’s salvation would be extant somewhere, but what he wanted was living memory. Cooperation wasn’t too likely either; canal and river police led a life apart and frequently resented having their more inter
esting cases transferred to a stuck-up
Geheimpolizistkommissar.
This case, he presumed, hadn’t been overly interesting, since they’d been left to deal with it.

The sergeant was not encouraging. “Jumper,” he said without tone. “Get a lot of jumpers here, especial nowadays. Drop in like raindrops.”

“This was a woman,” Schmidt said helpfully.
“Nearly always is.”
“Didn’t have a name, refused to say who she was.”
“Often don’t.”
“Frau Unbekkant, they called her at the hospital she was taken to.

Sometime in 1920.” “February,” said the sergeant gloomily. “Youngish, blue eyes—
What?
” “It was February. Not sure of the date. Let’s have a look.” Marveling, Schmidt watched him lumber over to a cupboard, choose

a key from a ring attached to his belt, open the cupboard, and select one of the black ledgers lining its shelves. He brought it back to the table, blowing the dust off it, sat down, and, licking his thumb, began turning pages. He swiveled the incident book around so that Schmidt could see it.

A date, 18 February 1920, had been carefully inscribed at the top of the right-hand page. A busy day on the canal, that. Two drunks had been arrested in the morning for fighting on the towpath, a dredger pro
peller had got fouled on a tree branch, a bargeman’s child had fallen in and been fished out, two of the station’s policemen had been required to help riot police during a workers’ demonstration in the Tiergarten and a counterdemonstration by Right-wing militia that had got out of hand, an old-clothes man had been charged with peddling along the bank without a license, someone had been fishing for eels—also with
out a license—more drunks had been restrained as the night went on.

And at 2345 hours . . .

“Unknown young woman, about 20 years, jumped off Herculesbrücke, saved by Sergeant Hallman patrolling the canal bank at the time. Sgt Hallman successfully administered artificial resuscitation. She was admit
ted to the Elizabeth Hospital in Lützowstrasse. No papers or money found on her person. She refused to give her name or make a statement.”

The sergeant said, “Be written up proper in the official report to

headquarters, but that’s the gist.” “Is Sergeant Hallman still around?” Schmidt asked. “Retired.” “Does anyone remember the incident. Do you?”

“Off duty that night, I reckon.”

Schmidt nodded; it had been too much to expect.

“But Gustl probably remembers,” continued the amazing sergeant. “You could ask him. Hey, Gustl.” He escorted Schmidt to the group around the stove. The seating was varied—an old chintz settee, lop
sided armchairs—but comfortable. Schmidt took the arm of the settee, and introductions were made.

River Policeman August Schulz
did
remember the incident—a feat Schmidt found curious; after all, it had been nearly three years ago, and, if the desk sergeant could be believed, female suicide was a local industry.