The Sleepwalkers (11 page)

“Willi. You mustn’t. You absolutely mustn’t. These people aren’t human.”

“Yes, they are, Ruta. All too human.”

The massive Hotel Kaiserhof on Wilhelm Platz was just down the block from the Reichs Chancellery, much older and far gloomier than the glittering Adlon, but unquestionably among the most formidable Berlin hostelries. The moment Willi entered the brass revolving doors he recalled that the upper floors had recently been rented to the Nazi Party—as their headquarters. Was it any wonder he felt cast back to his army days, penetrating enemy lines? The lobby was positively swarming with Nazis, SA Brownshirts mainly, but a whole horde of Blackshirts, too. Black being the uniform of the
Schutzstaffel
—the SS—originally Hitler’s bodyguard but more recently evolved into the Party’s intelligence-gathering unit. In its near civil war with the Communist Red Front, the Blackshirts provided the who, what, and where the Brownshirts went to battle with.

Icy prongs stabbed his neck as he made his way into this crowd. He felt as if his nose had grown several inches and he were wearing a tall yellow dunce cap. After several steps across the red carpet though, he began to notice brown and black shirts alike stepping aside for him. Why? He couldn’t understand—until finally he got it. To face Ernst Roehm, a real soldier’s soldier, he’d pinned his Iron Cross to the upper right of chest of his jacket, a transparent tactic no doubt. But he figured he could use all the help he could get. Now the ornate medal was working the miracle of Moses, parting the sea, earning him nods, salutes even. Why not? He deserved it.

A week before the great spring offensive of 1918 he’d led a squad of five men, including Fritz Hohenzollern, deep behind French lines to survey enemy artillery and troop positions. After more than a week sending reports back via carrier pigeon, they were discovered and found themselves trapped in a farmhouse, battling it out with a whole French company. Willi had stayed behind to cover his men while they made it back to no-man’s-land. Three days later the entire German army was astonished to hear that he’d turned up alive, too, on the German side of the lines. In the Great War, many won medals for bravery. Many even won the Iron Cross. But few earned the highest of all honors: an Iron Cross, First Class.

All at once the crowd in the Kaiserhof stiffened.

Out of the elevator came a small gang of men, everyone quickly parting to let them through. Willi’s blood got cold. Unmistakable among them was the blimpish figure of Hermann Göring, the number two Nazi in Germany. Despite his reputation as a fearless World War flying ace, he looked absurd in wide-thighed uniform trousers, belly hanging like the
Graf Zeppelin
over his belt. On the far side, furiously limping with one short leg, was Josef Goebbels, the brilliant propagandist. To his left, the handsome Nazi Party secretary Gregor Strasser. And in the center, pushing aside his famous lock of hair, twisting his square mustache
every conceivable direction, Adolf Hitler himself, screaming at the top of his famous lungs. “It is betrayal of the highest order, Strasser! You cannot talk your way out of it!”

“On the contrary,
mein Führer,
” Strasser defended himself. “I think only of the Party. And how to save it from bankruptcy and ruin.”

“You dare! You dare!” Hitler stopped short and raised his fist as if about to strike him. “Von Schleicher offers you vice chancellorship and you tell him you’ll consider it? Any idiot can see he’s trying to undermine our unity. Destroy everything I have worked a decade for: One people. One party.
One
Führer!”

Flamboyantly turning his back, the enraged Führer resumed his rapid stride across the lobby, his short tie flying behind him. As he neared, the jagged bolts of hysteria grew in his eyes. The man’s soul, Willi thought, as Germany’s savior raced past like a runaway horse, is as twisted as his swastika.

“If the Party falls apart”—Hitler turned to yell to Göring and Goebbels, both racing to keep up with him—“I’ll put an end to it all in one second.” He aimed a finger at his head. “You’ll see. But before I do”—he glared back at Strasser—“I’ll crush him like a cockroach!”

As ostentatiously as they entered, the top Nazis vanished through the revolving doors.

This little drama was quickly followed up by the surprise Willi got when entering the Apollo Room, smallest of the Kaiserhof’s many banquet halls, where it seemed as though he’d walked straight into a Roman orgy.

Or Greek.

Beneath a scaled replica of the Fountain of Apollo, backed by a roaring fireplace, thirty or so mostly young, strapping, blond Aryan exemplars, many naked from the waist up, caroused around a long banquet table decked with pine boughs and glowing red candles. Each held a hefty arm around the shoulder of the man to his right, the other clasping a giant beer stein as they swayed back and forth and sang along with an accordion:

Bier hier! Bier hier!

Oder ich fall um!

Willi had never seen such a collection of hypermasculine beefcake, as if a whole herd of stud bulls had been corralled at one table: giant square torsos, arms the size of tree trunks, rippled, rock-hard, brainless creatures, lacking only rings in their noses. Yet some of them, he noticed, were cozily snuggling on a neighbor’s lap, or running fingers through the blond hair of the stud bull beside him.

Bier hier! Bier hier!

Oder ich fall um!

Seated as if on a throne in the center was the short, dumpy figure of Ernst Roehm, absolute master of the SA. He looked like a neighborhood butcher, Willi thought—cropped hair parted razor-sharp down the middle, a block face with a squashed-up pug nose. His relationship to the Nazis went back to a time when he was more powerful than Hitler, the only Party leader, it was said, who addressed the Führer with the familiar
du
instead of
Sie
. Hitler depended on him, an absolute genius at organization, like a third arm. But a year ago a Communist paper, whose editor had since disappeared, published a most explicit packet of his personal correspondence, and Roehm’s homosexuality became front-page news. Not that he’d ever tried to hide it, but it left the SA commander with a distinct lack of friends in the Nazi brass, according to Fritz’s sources. And now Roehm was as dependent on the Führer as the Führer was on him.

The man may have given up the army to become a political soldier, but he remained a soldier to the bone, and the moment he spotted the Iron Cross, First Class, on Willi’s chest, he rose. “Herr Inspektor-Detektiv. How excellent you could make it. I hope you’re hungry.”

“
Nein
. I can only stay a moment.”

Willi’s attention had by now been drawn to perhaps the most ironic surprise of the evening. Directly next to the SA leader, Roehm’s brutal hand stroking his blond head, sat the chief of the Red Apaches—Kai, sans makeup and gold earring, transformed into a rather sinister-looking Nazi, his normally merry blue eyes sharp and distant now as a wolf’s. So this was his new “position.” Why be surprised? He’d simply graduated from the world of childhood gangs into the big league. Yet there was a real sting of betrayal. Kai liked him. They’d helped each other. More than once. For a second, the eighteen-year-old’s sharp Prussian gaze took him in and, with a secret glow, seemed to say,
Isn’t this ridiculous? Me, a Nazi!
Then he looked away as if he’d never seen Willi in his life.

Roehm had meanwhile taken Willi’s refusal to sit as well as could be expected.
“Ach so.”
Roehm assumed an amused tolerance. “Let us speak over there then, in the corner.

“I know of course what this is in reference to, Herr Inspektor-Detektiv,” the SA leader added as they stood face-to-face. He was truly ugly, a good foot shorter than Willi, his face badly scarred from bullet wounds and burns. “And you will have my one hundred percent cooperation.”

Willi also recalled von Schleicher saying the brute was a man one could do business with. He certainly spoke more like a company executive than the usual shrieking Nazi.

“When I assumed command of the
Sturmabteilung
”—Roehm folded his arms thoughtfully—“in 1930 . . . we had roughly seventy-seven thousand members. One single year and we tripled our strength. This year we doubled it again. The problems for any organization with such rapid growth are numerous, I assure you. The task of absorbing so many tens of thousands each month, keeping them in line. We’ve had outbreaks of poor discipline; I’ll admit it. We’ve suffered a lack of capable leaders. But I have never tolerated disobedience of any sort, and certainly not criminal activity. Cohesion and discipline are of paramount importance to me. If there is even one rotten apple, it must be purged.”

Roehm stopped to catch his breath, casting a fierce glance at Willi. “All levels of our Party agree that power in Germany can only be attained legally and with the support of the army. General von . . . that is
Chancellor
von Schleicher has made an urgent request that I offer you my assistance.” Roehm paused. “Of course, I am not fond of Jews.”

“No less than I am of Nazis, I’m sure.”

Roehm lifted his battle-scarred chin. “Then I must ask you, Herr Inspektor-Detektiv, what exactly do you need from me in regards to your investigation of General Meckel?”

“First off, that you ensure the safety of my officers and I as we conduct it.”

“Natürlich.”

“We will want to search Meckel’s residence. The SA guards posted there will have to stand down.”

“Very well. Let me know in advance, and it will be done.”

“I want every scrap of information you have on Dr. Meckel, including his file from the Charité Hospital archives that went missing.”

“You shall have it.”

“And I want Meckel completely in the dark about this.”

“In the dark he shall be, Herr Inspektor-Detektiv. Completely in the dark.”

Soft candlelight filled the dining room when Willi entered his apartment. Paula had dinner waiting. She took his coat and hung it up like a perfect bride.

“It’s nearly ten, you know. But don’t tell me: an Inspektor’s job is never done.”

It had been two years since he’d come home to a meal. To a woman. He could hardly control his excitement.

“Don’t,” she said, pushing his face off her neck. “I’m starving, Willi. Let’s eat, please.”

She was wearing those damned black gloves again, he noticed. What was with those things? Another of her fetishes? Seeing the dreamy-eyed look though as she placed the food on the table, he opted not to make an issue of it. He’d had enough posturing for one night.

Paula was a most decent cook. Not like Vicki, of course.
Vicki had gone to Paris for cooking classes. But Paula had taken the few things he’d had around, added some fresh fish, and made a fine bouillabaisse. He was proud of her. More than that. He was falling in love with her.

“Paula, don’t go back to work. I’ll take care of you.”

She turned her head, looking at her plate, her tight-waved hair glistening in the candlelight. “For God’s sake, Willi. Don’t rush. There’s no need to.”

“Don’t go back to work.”

He lifted her chin.

Their eyes met.

“You think I’m crying because I’ll miss those purple boots? Now eat the damn soup before it gets cold.”

Over dessert she brought up Gina Mancuso again. “I can’t stop thinking about her. When I’m sleeping. When I’m awake. It’s like a ghost haunting me. Telling me to go after Gustave.” She dropped her fork. “This girl was really something, Willi. A tower of strength. I don’t mean physically, but inside. A real fighter. Maybe it was her American spirit; I don’t know. I remember once when she argued for a raise. She wasn’t afraid to confront the big shots, like we were. But where did it land her, huh? In the river.”

Willi had been thinking about what had landed Gina Mancuso in the river, too. All this time he’d been assuming it was somebody else. That she had been murdered. But now he found himself pondering, if whoever had operated on those legs wanted her dead—why not just bury her? Or make her steak tartare? Why throw her in a river and take even the slightest chance she might be discovered?

Paula’s words rang through his brain:
a real fighter. Tower of strength.
If that was true . . . perhaps she
hadn’t
been thrown in. He recalled the strange smile of tranquillity, triumph even, on her dead, blue lips. Perhaps she’d gone into that water of her own free will. Perhaps . . . she’d escaped. If so, then after she’d been found, the surgeon who disfigured her would have no choice but
to try to pin the deed on some other qualified candidate . . . a comrade, no doubt.

It was snowing the next morning, big, fluffy flakes that melted as soon as they hit the sidewalk. The streetcar tracks glistened against the gray cobblestones. All the little dachshunds had on winter sweaters. At the Zoo Station, Willi found himself staring once again at the headlines. This time they felt like a sword between his shoulders:
Doctor Suicide! Meckel, Famed Orthopedist, Shoots Self in Head!

For a moment he just stood there with the morning crowds rushing by, his eyes shut tight. So this was how Ernst Roehm did business. He’d kept Meckel in the dark all right. All Willi could see was that hideous battle-scarred face. With a shiver that seemed to penetrate his very marrow, he realized that now every step he took was behind enemy lines. By the time he’d made it to the office a quiet determination had seized him. He closed the door and picked up the phone. “Ava,” he said when he reached his sister-in-law. “I’m going to ask you to do something terribly important. I can’t explain it now, but it’s essential that you do exactly as I—Ava, what is it? You’re crying?”

There was a long painful moment before she was able to speak.

God forbid . . . not one of the boys.

“I lost my job, Willi.”

“What? Fritz fired you?”

“No, not Fritz. Ullstein Press. They’re letting go of half the Jews on their staff.”

“But that’s absurd. The Ullsteins are Jewish.”

“They think the Nazis are growing too powerful. They’re tripping over themselves trying to keep low and stay out of their crosshairs.”