The Good German (60 page)

“You know they parade tomorrow, all the Allies. So we meet here,” he said, putting his finger on Unter den Linden. “In the Russian zone?”

“Herr Geismar, even the Russians won’t shoot you in front of the American army.” He shrugged. “Very well.” He moved his finger left, past the Brandenburg Gate. “The reviewing stand will be here, inside the British zone.” “Just.”

“It doesn’t matter, as long as the army is there. So, opposite the reviewing stand. Stay in the crowd.”

“If I’m that protected, why would I go away with him?” “Well, he might have a gun in your back. Discreet, but persuasive. That’s what I would do. ‘Come quietly,’” he said in a policeman’s voice. “They usually do.”

“If that’s the way the Russians play it.”

“They will. I’m going to suggest it to them.” He turned from the map. “The problem is, we don’t know. I would feel better if we knew who to expect. Now we wait until the last minute—his surprise. You can set the trap, but a surprise is never safe. Logic is safe.”

“I know, follow the points. Find anything in the
persilscheins
?” Jake said, glancing at the table.

“No, nothing,” Gunther said glumly. “But there must be some point we’re missing. There is always a logic to a crime.”

“If we had the time to look for it. I’m out of leads. My last one died

with Sikorsky.“

Gunther shook his head. “No, something else. There must be. I was thinking, you know, about Potsdam, that day in the market.”

“We know that was him.”

“Yes, but why then? It must be a point, the when. Something happened to make him strike then. Why not before? If we knew that—”

“You don’t give up, do you?” Jake said, impatient.

“That’s the way you solve a case, logic, not like this. Traps. Guns.” He waved his hand toward the bookshelf. “Wild West in Berlin. You know, we can still—”

“What? Wait for him to pick me off while you work it out? It’s too late for that now. We have to finish it before he tries again.”

“That’s the logic of war, Herr Geismar, not a police case.” Gunther moved away from the map.

“Well, I didn’t start it. Christ, all I wanted was a story.”

“Still, it’s as you say,” Gunther said, picking up his funeral tie from the table. “Once you begin, nothing matters but the finish.” He began threading it under his shirt collar, not bothering with a mirror. “Let’s hope you wink.”

“I’ve got a good deputy and the U.S. Army behind me. We’ll win. And after—”

Gunther grunted. “Yes, after.” He looked down at the tie, straightening the ends. “Then you have the peace.”

The afternoon at the flat was claustrophobic, and dinner worse. Lena had found some cabbage to go with the Bration corned beef, and it sat on the plate, sodden, while they picked around it. Only Erich ate with any enthusiasm, his sharp Renate eyes moving from one sullen face to another, but even he was quiet, used perhaps to wordless meals. Emil had brightened earlier at the news that he’d be turned over tomorrow, then lapsed into an aggrieved sulk, spending most of the day lying on the couch with his arm over his eyes, like a prisoner with no yard privileges. The ersatz coffee was weak and bitter, merely an excuse to linger at the table, not worth drinking. They were all relieved when Rosen turned up, grateful for any sound louder than a tense clinking spoon.

“Look what Dorothee found for you,” he said to Erich, handing him a half-eaten bar of chocolate and smiling as the boy tore off the foil. “Not all at once.”

“You’re good to him,” Lena said. “Is she better?”

“Her mouth is still swollen,” he said. A slap two nights before from a drunken soldier. “Too swollen for chocolate, anyway.”

“Can I see her?” Erich said.

“It’s all right?” Rosen said to Lena and then, when she nodded, “Well, but remember, you must pretend she looks the same. Thank her for the chocolate and just say, Tm sorry you have a toothache.‘”

“I know, don’t notice the bruise.”

“That’s right,” Rosen said softly. “Don’t notice the bruise.”

“Can I do anything?” Lena said.

“She’s all right, just swollen. My assistant will fix her up,” he said, handing Erich the bag. “We won’t be long.”

“And that’s the life you give her,” Emil said to Jake when they’d gone. “Whores and Jews.”

“Be quiet,” Lena said. “You’ve no right to say such things.”

“No right? You’re my wife. Rosen,” he said dismissively. “How they stick together.”

“Stop it. Such talk. He doesn’t know about the boy.”

“They always know each other.”

Lena glanced at him, dismayed, then stood up and began to clear. “Our last evening,” she said, stacking the plates. “And how pleasant you make it. I wanted to have a nice dinner.”

“With my wife and her lover. Very nice.”

She held a plate for a second, stung, then dropped it on the stack. “You’re right,” she said. “It’s no place for a child here. I’ll take him to Hannelore’s tonight.”

“You can’t get back before the curfew,” Jake said.

“I’ll stay there. It’s no place for me either. You can listen to this nonsense. I’m tired.”

“You’re leaving?” Emil said, caught off-guard.

“Why not? With you like this. I’ll say goodbye here. I’m sorry for you. So hurt and angry—there’s no need to end this way. We should be happy for each other. You’ll go to the Americans. That’s the life you want. And I’ll—”

“You’ll stay with the whores.”

“Yes, I stay with the whores,” she said.

“You’ve got a nerve,” Jake said.

“It’s all right,” Lena said, shaking her head. “He doesn’t mean it. I know him.” She moved toward him. “Don’t I?” She lifted her hand to

place it on his head, then looked at him and dropped it. “So angry. Look at your glasses, smeared again.” She took them off and wiped them on her skirt, familiar. “There, now you can see.”

“I see very well. How it is. What you’ve done,” he said to Jake.

“Yes, what he’s done,” she said, her voice resigned, almost wistful. “Saved your life. Now he’s giving you a chance for a new one. Do you see that?” She lifted her hand again, this time resting it on his shoulder. “Don’t be like this. You remember in the war—how many times?—we wondered if we would survive. That’s all that mattered then. And we have. So maybe we survived for this—a new life for both.”

“Not all of us survived.”

She moved her hand away. “No, not all.”

“It’s convenient for you, maybe, that Peter’s gone. In your new life.”

Only her eyes reacted, a quick wince.

Jake glared at him. “Listen, you bastard—”

Lena waved her hand, stopping him. “We’ve said enough.” She looked down at Emil. “My god, to say that to me.”

Emil said nothing, staring at the table.

Lena went over to the bureau, opened a drawer, and pulled out a snapshot.

“I have something for you,” she said, carrying it over. “I found it with my things.”

Emil held the picture in front of him, blinking, his shoulders sinking as he studied it, everything softening, even his eyes.

“Look at you,” he said quietly.

“And you,” Lena said over his shoulder, so intimate that for a second Jake felt he was no longer in the room. “Would you like it?”

Emil looked up at her, then pushed the photograph away and stood, holding her eyes for another minute before he turned and without a word crossed the floor and closed the bedroom door behind him.

Jake picked up the picture. A young couple, arms around each other on a ski slope, goggles pushed up over their knit caps, smiles as broad and white as the snow behind them, so young they must be someone else.

“When was this?” he said.

“When we were happy.” She took the picture from him and glanced at it again. “So that’s your murderer.” She put it down. “I’ll get Erich. You can do the dishes.”

“Don’t look for me. I will see you,” Gunther had said, and in fact when Jake and Emil arrived at the parade he was nowhere in sight, hidden somewhere in the crowd of uniforms that bunched around the Brandenburg Gate and then straggled out through the wasteland of the Tiergarten on the Charlottenburger Chausee. The Allies had won even the weather—the humid, overcast sky had turned bright and cloudless for the parade, with a breeze strong enough to flap the marching rows of flags. Posters of Stalin, Churchill, and Truman hung from the arch, and through the columns Jake could see the troops and armored vehicles beginning to flow toward them down the Linden, thousands of them, with more crammed along the pavement to cheer. There were only a handful of civilians—grim-faced curiosity seekers, small bands of apathetic DPs with nowhere else to go, and the usual packs of children, for whom any event was a distraction. The rest of Berlin had stayed home. Along the gray avenue of charred tree stumps and ruins, the Allies were celebrating themselves.

When Jake got to the reviewing stand the first bands had already passed, an overture of blaring horns. He thought of the other parades here, five years ago, the trees of the Linden shaking from the heavy thud of boots back from Poland. This was looser and more colorful, the French almost playful in their red pompoms, the British marching so casually they seemed already demobilized, shuffling home. The spit and polish had been left to the 82nd Airborne, wearing shiny helmets and white gloves under shoulder straps, but with the music and scattered applause the effect was more theatrical than military, show soldiers. Even the reviewing stand, with bunting and microphones for speeches later, rose up from the street like a stage, filled with generals in uniforms so elaborate they looked like bassos ready to burst into song.

Zhukov was the gaudiest, both sides of his chest lined with medals that ran all the way to his hips. Next to him, Patton’s plain battle jacket and few ribbons had a kind of defiant simplicity. But the drama was in the positioning. Zhukov, front and center, would take a step forward only to find Patton moving up with him, so that by the time he reached the railing, finally upstaged, they had become a bobbing vaudeville turn of generals. The press responded, snapping pictures from their own viewing stand, and Jake saw that even General Clay, usually somber, was trying to suppress a smile, almost winking at Muller, who answered with a tolerant roll of his eyes, silver-haired Judge Hardy still, suffering fools. For a second Jake wished he were just covering it all for
Collier’s
— the noisy air, the absurd jockeying, the backdrop curtain of the burned-out Reichstag in the distance. An interview with Patton maybe, who would remember him and was always good copy. Instead, anxious, he was searching the crowd for a face. What he thought, as more troops marched by, was that he had never seen so many guns in his life and that Gunther had been wrong, he didn’t feel protected at all. Any one of them, milling around, waiting to make a move.

“We’re going to watch the parade?” Emil said, puzzled.

“We’re meeting somebody,” Jake said, glancing at his watch. “It won’t be long.”

“Who?”

“The man who got you out of Kransberg.”

“Tully? You said he was dead.”

“His partner.”

“So it’s another trick. No Americans.”

“I told you, I need you as bait. Then we’ll go see your pals.”

“And the files?”

“It’s a package deal. They get you both.”

“You won’t do that.” You re sure.

“You can’t. Think what it will mean for Lena, a trial.”

“Wonderful how you’re always thinking of her. Listen, you’re getting out with your life. That’s more than you can say for the workers at Camp Dora.”

Emil’s eyes narrowed behind his glasses. “Then go to hell,” he said, turning to go.

Jake grabbed his arm. “Try it and I’ll shoot you in the foot. I’d enjoy it, but you wouldn’t.” They looked at each other for a moment, stalemated, then Jake dropped his hand. “Now watch the parade.”

Jake scanned the crowd. Not a single familiar face. But why would it be someone he knew? On the stand Zhukov had leaned farther against the railing, ready to take the salute from his lancer unit. More stage uniforms, a pounding thud of jackboots, swords actually drawn and raised, flashing in the light, but no longer comic, Goebbels’ old warning, the scourge from the east. A small huddle of DPs turned and started away from the crowd, looking back at the swords, and Jake saw in the cowed hunch of their shoulders that it was really a Russian show, all of it, the rest of the Allies harmless extras. The message wasn’t victory but the crushing boots. No one can stop us. It was a parade out of the next war. Smiles faded on the stand. What happens when it’s over, he’d wondered. Another.

It was then, watching the Russians, that he felt the poke in the small of his back.

“Quite a show.”

He whirled around, hand on his holster.

“Steady,” Brian said, surprised by the abrupt movement. “Hello again,” he said to Emil. “No uniform this time, eh?”

“What are you doing here?” Jake said. Brian? But he’d already had Emil once.

“What do you mean? Everybody’s here. Nothing like a parade. Just look at old Zhukov. Bloody Gilbert and Sullivan. Coming to the press stand?”

“Not now, Brian. Scram.”

But Brian’s eyes were fixed over Jake’s shoulder at the lancers. “Be in Hamburg before Christmas by the looks of them.”

“I mean it. I’ll see you later.” He glanced to either side of him, expecting Gunther to arrive, everything happening too soon.

“You might let me wait out the swords. You don’t want to get in the way of that.” He turned, peering at Jake. “What is it? What are you doing now? ”

“Nothing. Just scram,” Jake said, still looking nervously to the side.

Brian stared at him, then Emil. “Three’s a crowd? Right. I’m off. Save you a place?”

“Yeah, save me a place.”

“If young Ron lets the rope down. I’ve known headwaiters with better manners. Christ, here come the pipers.” He looked again at Jake. “Watch yourself.”

He pushed his way through to the front, hesitating as the last of the Russians passed, then sprinted across the sudden gap to the viewing stands. Jake lost him as he picked his way through the crowd to the back

stairs of the press stand, then saw him reappear on top, talking to Ron. Why not Ron? Who’d left the dinner table at Gelferstrasse that night to play poker but could have gone to the Grunewald. Who now had the perfect vantage point to spot Jake in the crowd, waiting for the right moment, a nod of the head to close the trap. But neither he nor Brian was looking in Jake’s direction, busy with themselves. Jake checked his watch. Where was Gunther? Only a few minutes to the agreed time—he had to be in place somewhere nearby. Then why hadn’t he come forward when Brian approached them? What if it had been him, smoothly leading them away without even a snap of the spring?