The Sleepwalkers (23 page)

There was a snap of snare drums.

A crash of cymbals.

Willi’s throat tightened. His ears filled with pounding leather on pavement. Not ten feet ahead, two close-knit files of storm troopers rounded the corner in rank after rank of brown uniforms, leather chest straps, bloodred armbands. People scrambled to get out of the way, but a slight, stooped man wasn’t quick enough and got pushed aside. His hat toppled into the gutter. As he bent to pick it up, a storm trooper kicked him in the ass, and he fell along with his hat.
“Germany, awaken!”
the whole column started bleating.

Willi made a move to help the poor fellow, but as he opened the car door, he saw what had to be thirty men on bicycles racing down Hardenburger Strasse. All wore worker’s caps and thrust their fists high in the Communist salute. The Red Brigade! Like a swarm of bees they fell upon the Nazis, pelting them with a venomous hail of bricks and bottles. Willi saw several Brownshirts topple, their steaming blood rinsing the sidewalk. Pedestrians screamed as they ducked into stores and under parked vehicles.

It became a scene from an expressionist movie. Bicycles flying. Store windows shattering. Mannequins standing there exposed in bras and girdles. Brass knuckles pounding. Truncheons flying. Whistles. Police. A water cannon opening. Nazis and Communists washed from their feet. People running. Holding heads. Red blood dripping.

A sudden opening in traffic.

Flooring it, Willi slipped down Kant Strasse just as the riot squads descended. He could still hear sirens and breaking glass several blocks away on the Ku-damm, where the well-dressed crowds were doing their damnedest to keep enjoying life.

The big red clock on the Police Presidium read two forty-five as he stepped inside, his brain still echoing with the pounding of boots. The shattering of glass. That painful last look his cousin took of Berlin. Pressing the button for the elevator, he realized his hand was trembling. It was more than nerves. He felt shattered inside, as if someone had hit him with a truncheon. What had all his efforts achieved? Gustave—or should he say Gershon—was locked downstairs in a cell. But so what? The man could tell him nothing. He knew for certain the Black Stag Inn was a transfer point, but he could arrest everyone there and still not find Sachsenhausen.

Where was the goddamn elevator?

As if drawn by anger, the rickety old cage descended. Stepping into it, Willi told himself that he ought to go see Paula’s mother. But as he pictured the old lady scrubbing on her knees, a cold
dread spread through him. Bullets he could face. Barbed wire and minefields. A mother’s wrath though? He closed the cage door and hit the button for six.

She’d have every right to try to strangle the life out of him. He should never have let Paula go. As the elevator yanked up, he had the most horrible image of her strapped to a gurney, being wheeled into an operating room, still looking for him, wondering how this could have happened.

Only once before, when Vicki died, had he felt as inadequate.

On the sixth floor he was hit by a harsh cigar smell. It brought to mind those complaints from Oranienburg. That stench, he reminded himself. The odor got stronger as he neared his office, irritating his throat when he opened the door. Ruta’s eyes flashed at him. From his inner office he noticed clouds of smoke rolling out, as if it were on fire.

“The Kommissar,” she stammered, “would like to have a word with you.”

Horthstaler was occupying Willi’s chair, feet up on the desk, a huge stogie plugged in his meaty lips. Okay. But why was pale-faced Junior Detektiv Thurmann, with his black, pencil-line mustache, sitting on his couch, grinning ever so smugly?

“At last.” The Kommissar cast a gray gaze Willi’s way. “You find time to return from driving your relatives around Berlin.” He sat up with a grunt, the blood rushing from his beefy cheeks. “How very conscientious of you.”

Why did Willi feel he’d just been blindfolded and pushed against a wall?

“I am not here on happy business.” Horthstaler removed the cigar from his lips, pretending to study it. “So allow me to speak plainly. Your investigation of the Bulgarian princess has proven an unfortunate failure. Reichs President Hindenburg is most disappointed in you, Kraus.”

Through a terrible plummeting feeling Willi had to fight an urge to laugh.

Reichs President Hindenburg could barely remember his own
name, much less that of a Kripo Inspektor. Willi recalled the article in
Der Stürmer
. And that Horthstaler now was a card-carrying Nazi. Obviously they were angling him for a swift boot in the ass. Their famous Jew Inspektor.

“You may be thankful I resisted the most extreme action in your regards.” The Kommissar’s gaze turned affectionate, as one might look at a pet. “You’ve been with us a long time, Willi. Had some spectacular successes.”

Yes. Funny. A few months ago Horthstaler had used every opportunity to show off his close working relationship with the
Kinderfresser
catcher. The great star of the Berlin police.

“Your recent failures, however”—the gaze grew indifferent—“leave me no choice but to place you on administrative probation. Which gives you exactly ten days to find the Bulgarian princess—alive and well. In the meantime”—his fleshy lips tightened—“I am promoting Thurmann here as your deputy. In the event those ten days pass”—he flicked ash on Willi’s floor—“and you have not succeeded”—he leaned forward, sticking the cigar back in his mouth and puffing until it flared—“Thurmann will step into your position. In preparation, you will grant him immediate access to all files in your office.” Horthstaler sighed, smiling again at his faithful old bloodhound. “I suggest you take this situation seriously.”

Again, the urge to laugh.

“Should your position be terminated, you know”—the boss hoisted himself from Willi’s chair—“you forfeit not only any further possibility of civil service employment in this country.” He took his cigar and crushed it out on the glass frame of Willi’s Police Academy diploma. “But also the pension you’ve worked all these years to accumulate. So if I were you”—he patted Willi’s shoulder—“I’d find that princess.”

There seemed only one thing to be relieved about: they didn’t appear to know about Gustave. The moment the Kommissar left though, the junior Detektiv was on him. “Inspektor, I am most
anxious to see the files on the Bulgarian princess as well as the Mermaid case. Immediately.”

This was it then. Little waxy-faced Thurmann with his oh-so-trim black mustache would inform his cohorts—and case closed.

“Here they are, Detekiv.” Ruta enthusiastically handed him a large stack of files.

Willi felt a metaphorical knife plunge into his guts.

“I prepared everything for you in advance.”

The knife slowly turned.

“How efficient, Frau Garber.” Thurmann proudly smiled.

She gave Willi a glance. It took a second. But then he got it. She’d kept the most important files out. Given Thurmann only junk. Blessed woman!

As Thurmann disappeared, Willi felt like kissing her.

She didn’t give him a chance. “Some messages while you were out, Herr Inspektor-Detektiv.” She passed him two slips of paper, very businesslike. A small gleam in her eye though expressed it all. She’d do anything for him.

“Thank you.” He quickly nodded. “Thank you.”

The first message was from Fritz. He’d been released from the hospital and wanted Willi to contact him as soon as possible. The second was only a phone number.

“A most important-sounding lady.” Ruta shrugged. “Didn’t wish to give her name.”

“I can’t seem to keep them away.” He managed a smile.

“You’re a most admirable man, Herr Inspektor. Most admirable.”

A small shock went through him when he dialed the number and heard a butler announce he’d reached the Meckel residence. It magnified several times when the widow of the late SA general got on.

“Herr Inspektor,” she said, refraining from the least subtlety, “I’ve been waiting days to hear from you. Are you incompetent,
or simply not interested in knowing who murdered my husband?”

Willi wondered. If he hadn’t felt a fool before—

“On the contrary, Frau Meckel. It is of the utmost importance to me. If it pleases you, I shall come by immediately.”

“Here? Are you insane? It must be done someplace in public. Extremely public.”

On a tiny island in the River Spree—the very cradle of Berlin, where a medieval trading village had given birth to the city—there grew up in the 1800s a well-tended prodigy of the Age of Enlightenment. Museum Island was reared into one of the world’s premier Temples of Art, an unparalleled ensemble of galleries . . . the Altes Museum, the National Gallery, the Neues Museum, the Kaiser-Friedrich Museum. And in 1930 a final gracing touch—the antiquities collection at the Pergamon. It was here, beneath the towering Gate of Ishtar, that Willi suggested Frau Meckel meet him.

Footsteps echoed off the marble floors. The enormous hall swirled with people, but Willi felt quite comfortable. Alone. A shiver of awe made him feel almost holy as he approached the ancient edifice, once the main portal to imperial Babylon. The ruins of this magnificent gate had been dug up from the plains of Mesopotamia and rebuilt here by German archaeologists, brick by brick. Now its crenellated battlements soared toward the museum ceiling nearly fifty feet tall, all of it sheathed in deep blue tiling, ornamented with intricate patterns and bas-reliefs, jaw-droppingly beautiful at two and a half thousand years old. Willi could practically see the sandal-wearing ancients parading beneath it. According to the description at its base, Nebuchadrezzar II, builder of the Hanging Gardens, dedicated the gate in 562
B.C.
If Willi wasn’t mistaken, this same Nebuchadrezzar had razed the Temple in Jerusalem and carried away the Jews.

Well, he thought with a tingle of pride, look who’s still around.

“Herr Inspektor Kraus, I presume?”

In her green loden cape, feathered hat, black purse firmly strapped around the forearm, Helga Meckel appeared an archetypal German Frau. A stout, blond materialization of hard work and good sense. Practicality and self-restraint.

Yet a completely unbridled anguish overflowed from her eyes.

“The reconstructed gateway to a lost civilization.” Her voice was sharp with irony. “A most appropriate setting you chose for our little meeting.”

“Is it?” Her forthrightness came as no surprise after their phone conversation. “In what way is that, Frau Meckel?”

Facing him, her fair blue gaze fractured into a thousand bitter shards. “Because, Herr Inspektor, that is what these men will make someday of Germany. Ruins. Which will need excavating. Should anyone care to remember us.”

Fumbling for a handkerchief she patted her forehead with it. “Forgive me. I’ve not been myself lately. If my attitude was improper earlier, it was only because it wasn’t easy for me to contact you.” She put the handkerchief away and snapped her handbag shut, offering him a weak smile. “None of this is easy for me.”

“I understand.”

“No . . . you don’t.” Her pale cheeks flamed. “I’m a good Nazi woman. Or I thought I was. But some injustices must be spoken out against.”

She seemed suddenly not to be able to breathe.

“Frau Meckel,” he urged, “then you must speak.”

Her pale lips trembled. “My husband”—her stout chin rose—“was a genius, Inspektor. It was he who first theorized about the possibilities of transplanting and grafting human bones. After what happened in the Great War . . . the millions of amputees . . . he felt he had to do something. To give back, not take away. It was those young ones, the up-and-comers.” She lowered her voice, darting her eyes around. “The ones with the SS.”

“Forgive me, Frau Meckel . . . your husband was a member of the Institute for Racial Hygiene, was he not?”

“A founding member! But his concern was with the decline in the German birthrate and the sharp increase in mental illnesses. Hermann never spoke of the Jewish question or ‘de-Aryanization,’ as the ones who took over called it. Let me assure the Herr Inspektor”—her eyes widened painfully—“all decent Germans condemn this Jew-baiting business.
Es geht alles vorüber,
we tell ourselves. This, too, will pass. Hitler’s bark is worse than his bite. We need him to keep the Communists out. But once he takes power, reason and logic will prevail.”

Her lips began quivering, the tears rushing to her eyes again. “Now I don’t think so.” She dove back into her purse and hid her face in the handkerchief. “I don’t think so at all.”

She looked around, ashamed to let anyone see her.

Willi felt like taking the poor widow in his arms and soothing the grief he knew only too well. But he stood back, hands clasped behind him.

Summoning herself, she managed to continue, her whisper changing to something fearful. “They killed Hermann because he refused to go along with their crimes.” Her eyes glazed over, cold and blue as the Babylonian tiles. “Oscar Schumann ordered it, I am certain. But only with the nod of Heydrich and Himmler.”

“What crimes, Frau Meckel?”

She turned her eyes skyward as if pleading not to have to say it. “Certain . . .” She hiccuped. “Experiments.”

Glancing about, her voice became frantic, a mothlike flutter. “The sterilizations started half a year ago, and then Schumann wanted to proceed with bone transplants. My husband was appalled. He terminated his association with the institute at once. They let him alone as long as he kept his mouth shut. After all, he was their mentor. But then this girl, this American managed to escape—” Her gaze flickered venomously. “And Schumann tried to pin it on Hermann. The only other one who could have performed such surgery. With Heydrich’s help he set up the whole
Bulgarian princess affair—and made sure to put you on the case. You, the famous Jew Inspektor, lured to chase the red herring—my poor Hermann. But in the end the joke was supposed to be on you. The princess, you see . . . well, let me be blunt, Inspektor . . . she’s one of them. Don’t ask me how, but I’ve learned in no uncertain terms that this Bulgarian Mata Hari has for some time now been cozy at home back in the royal palace in Sofia!”