The Sleepwalkers (3 page)

“It’s an extraordinary thing I’ve seen.” He motioned Willi to sit. “Had you told me about it the day before, I wouldn’t have believed it possible. But there it is.” Hoffnung relit his pipe.

Willi saw the pathologist’s hand was trembling. Really trembling.

“Let’s begin with the externals.” The smoke seemed to relax Hoffnung. “That gray smock the girl was wearing is standard issue at Prussian state mental asylums. Numerous scratches on the scalp indicate her head had indeed been clean-shaven, a practice at several of those institutions. Other than that, there were
neither major internal nor external injuries. She was very much alive when she went into that water. And didn’t drown. Managed to keep herself afloat fifteen or twenty minutes before she succumbed to hypothermia. Six, maybe seven hours before we pulled her out. I’d say she was one very determined young lady. Sure as hell wanted to live.”

“Those legs, Doctor—”

“Well, as I said. I’d never have believed such a thing possible. In both cases the fibula, the bone that runs from knee to ankle, had been surgically removed and replanted in the opposite direction, grafted in place with some highly advanced techniques I am wholly unfamiliar with. For years doctors have been hypothesizing about the possibility of bone transplants, but as far as I know, none has ever been successfully performed. Until now.”

“Bone transplant?” Willi, who thought he’d heard it all, was dumbfounded. “But—why?”

“I don’t know. To see if it could be done, I suppose. I only report what I saw.”

“How long ago might this transplant have occurred?”

“Six months, at most. The grafts were completely healed. The legs completely healthy—except of course that she never could have walked on them. Hobbled, perhaps. With crutches.”

“Hobbled.” Willi was trying to grasp this. “You mean the surgery crippled her?”

“Yes.” The doctor lowered his eyes. “That’s precisely what I mean.”

Willi felt his throat tighten. “The girl had been healthy? Her legs were healthy? And she was . . . experimented on? Deliberately disabled?”

Hoffnung stared out the window. “Almost beyond belief, I know. We all assume doctors are guardians of life. Implicitly trustworthy. Even ancient civilizations revered their medicine men. But here, today, in Berlin in 1932, we have a surgeon who appears to have had no qualms about using a human as a guinea pig.”

He turned to Willi with pained dismay. “Inspektor, whoever
did this was a genius. A madman. But with exceptional talent. Surely one of the top orthopedic surgeons alive.”

Closing the door to Pathology, Willi ran straight into Gunther. At least a foot taller, though probably half Willi’s weight, this towering beanpole with a long Prussian nose and virulently infectious smile had come to Willi straight from the top tiers of the Police Academy in Charlottenburg. A country bumpkin from up north, all Berlin to him seemed a fairy tale. Oh, he stuck his foot in his mouth on occasion, no easy task considering he wore a 14 shoe. But he was smart. Efficient. Tenacious as a battering ram. And totally in awe of Willi. They got along supremely. Willi’d been planning to take the boy out to Spandau. But the autopsy report changed that.

“Gunther—”

“Yes! Good morning, sir!”

“Regarding the case from yesterday . . . I need some information.”

“Jawohl.”
Gunther smiled, instantly ready with a notebook.

“I want the name of every top orthopedic surgeon in Germany, in the Berlin area especially.”

“Orthopedic surgeons. Got it.”

“The name of every American and Canadian female missing in Berlin over the past year.”

“Okay.”

“I want you to check with every Prussian state mental asylum if any female patients between the ages of twenty-three to twenty-six have gone missing in the past year. And find out which of those institutions shave their patients’ heads.”

“Shave heads. Okay. What else, sir?”

“I need you to dig up whatever you can about bone transplants. See which doctors have written about it, lectured on it, whatever.”

“Bone transplants. Yes, sir. What else, sir?”

“That’s all. No. Wait. Better go to Hoffnung’s office. Tell him I want you to see the girl.”

“Go to Hoffnung. See girl.” Gunther kept writing.

“Look at her closely, lad. Listen to what the doctor tells you. And ask yourself, Gunther, ask yourself, what kind of world is this we live in?”

Willi drove alone in an unmarked police car back to where the Mermaid had surfaced. First stop: Kroneberg Strasse 17. The Institute for Modern Living. Stepping through a medieval-looking iron gate, he approached the large, white stucco house and pressed the front bell. Eventually slow, heavy footsteps approached. When the dark oak door finally opened, he was relieved not to have brought along Gunther.

Before him stood a naked woman, at least seventy, suntanned head to toe like burned toast, breasts sagging.

“Guten Morgen,”
she said with an inquisitive glow in her eyes. “How might I be of service?”

“I’d . . . I’d like to speak with Frau Geschlecht if I may.”

“Frau Geschlecht’s in gymnastics now. She won’t be finished until half ten. Might I help you? I’m Fräulein Meyer.”

“Yes. How do you do, Fräulein.”

“You may come in of course. Everyone’s welcome here, regardless of race, income, age, or physical condition.”

“How nice.”

“But you’ll have to take off all your clothes. Gawkers who refuse to disrobe are not permitted.” She smiled.

Willi heard some kind of strange drumming coming from inside.

“I’m not here to gawk, Fräulein, I assure you.”

He showed her his Kripo badge.

Her face, if not her body, registered appropriate alarm. “Oh, dear. My. Yes. Then you must come in. Frau Geschl-e-e-echt,” she yodeled into an open doorway.

Willi followed her uninvited, then froze at the sight.

In a large room with a wooden floor and not a stick of furniture, a dozen mostly elderly women, hair pulled tightly into “Gretchen” braids, danced completely naked, thrusting arms and legs about like nymphs in a magic spring, while a naked man who had to be ninety kept rhythm on a tom-tom.

“Beauty! Health! Movement!” they chanted.

“Frau Geschlecht!” Fräulein Meyer shrieked above it all. “There is a Kripo man to see you for goodness’ sake. An Inspektor-Detektiv!”

The tom-tom halted. The dancers turned in unison. One of the women stepped forward with a sagging chin held proudly, graciously high as she walked.

From magazines such as
Berliner Illustrierte,
Willi was familiar with the nudist movement sweeping Germany. Everyone from good middle-of-the-road burghers to socialist health-food fanatics seemed to have joined the cult of the naked body. Curative gymnastics, hydrotherapy, colonic cleansing, sun worship, sour-milk diets, electrical-wave treatments, were thought to bring about an exalted state of tranquillity, health, and beauty. A new awareness that the naked body radiated perfection. It was as if the whole German nation, Willi thought, desperate to rid itself of the past, were trying to start all over again—from scratch. And Germans, whatever else they were or weren’t, did what they did to the ultimate.

Dramatic though her entry may have been, Frau Geschlecht had little information to offer that wasn’t already in the police report. She had been on the third-floor solarium holding a yoga position, she reiterated, as unconcerned with her lack of clothing as Adam or Eve, when through the window she spotted what looked like another naked body. At first she thought it might be someone from the institute gone for a morning dip. But the longer she held the position, the clearer it became that the body wasn’t moving. After she’d phoned the Spandau police, Schmidt
and the others arrived. She’d pointed out the spot on the shoreline and that was that.

“You’ve been a great service.” Willi smiled and put away his notebook.

“Please do come again.” She offered to let him kiss her hand. “We have introductory lectures every Wednesday and Sunday at seven.”

He retreated from the naked paradise with little more than unsightly images to shake from his head.

Outside, sunshine had broken through the morning clouds. The tall, round Citadel tower rose against the medieval town. Far to the right he could see the S-Bahn station, and across from it a large café with an outdoor beer garden. Perhaps I should snoop around in there, he thought. But over the inn’s front door he noticed the red flag and white circle branded with its fierce black swastika. Hitler was said to have designed the banner himself. And Spandau, Willi remembered, was a Nazi bastion.

He turned to the river. A long, white pleasure boat was working hard to cruise against the strong, gray currents. It hit him. Of course. The boat was traveling the same route the Mermaid had, in the opposite direction. He jogged the steps down to the pier and inquired when the next one was.

“But where would you wish to go,
mein Herr
? We have
two
boats,” he was none too pleasantly advised. “As it says right on this sign: the northern route or the southern. To Wannsee, or Palace Oranienburg. Each ten marks.”

He looked at his watch. It would have to be Oranienburg at noon. But before investing three hours on a boat ride, he knew, he ought to check in at work.

Next to a news kiosk stood a yellow phone booth.

“Kommissar Horthstaler says you’re to call him at once, urgent.” The very constraint in Ruta’s voice conveyed her excitment.

“Urgent. Ah, well, yes. Then be so good as to connect me with the Kommissar, would you, my dear.”

Through the open phone-booth door Willi noticed the late-morning headlines:
Government Crumbles! Von Papen Forced to Resign!

“Kommissar Horthstaler—Kraus here.”

“Kraus, you are to go directly and at once to the Presidential Palace.”

“
Jawohl,
Herr Kommissar.” Willi was stunned. “May I ask why?”

“The Old Man wants to see you.”

“See me?”

“Von Hindenburg’s office was adamant. You are to get there immediately.”

“
Jawohl
. But . . . why would the president wish to see me?”

“How the hell should I know? Maybe he wants to appoint you chancellor.”

Had he not just read the headlines, Willi might have found this funny.

Almost universally referred to as the Old Man, General Paul von Hindenburg was not merely president but the symbolic father of Germany. At six feet five, 250 pounds, with a great barrel chest and huge walrus mustache, this veritable giant of a personage, eighty-five now, had led imperial Germany to her greatest victories in the World War. He had stood as a stalwart figure of national unity through the dark postwar years of the Red Revolution, the Counter-Revolution, the Kapp Putsch, the Beer Hall Putsch, the Great Inflation, and the murderous struggle between extreme left and right. There was no reason on earth Willi could imagine the fellow would wish to see him.

Waiting to be called into the Old Man’s office on the Wilhelm Strasse, Willi felt a confused whirlwind in his chest. On one hand, you had to respect a guy who could hold Germany together. On the other, Willi knew, Hindenburg had propagated
the entirely false idea of the November 1918 “stab in the back,” which had nurtured such intense bitterness. According to this myth, the German army had never been defeated in the Great War but was forced to withdraw in 1918 because of Communist revolution at home. Indeed, the German people, subject to the strictest censorship, hadn’t a clue they’d lost the war. They simply thought an armistice, an agreement, had finally been reached with the Allies. Not until the terms of that armistice were revealed did they discover they’d not only lost, but were guilty of starting the war—and responsible for paying their enemies for the damage they’d caused.

The Stab in the Back made sense to them.

But Willi had been there, among the advance shock troops in the great spring offensive of 1918, when a million German soldiers had left the trenches and stormed in for a coup de grâce. He had been there deep in France, farther than they’d ever got, only miles outside Paris, when it became clear the army had overextended itself. That they had far outpaced their supply lines. That the attack had sputtered out. And that now they’d made themselves vulnerable to counterattack. Which is exactly what happened. Three-quarters of a million fresh Americans moved in to join the British and the French, and the exhausted Germans could not withstand them. To say the German army had never lost a battle in the Great War was a lie. The German army had been completely defeated in France that autumn of 1918. Willi had been there.

He jumped like a marionette when his name was called. The president would see him now. Von Hindenburg was seated behind an ornate gilt desk the size of a billiard table, his head bowed low. Willi was reluctant to announce his presence, especially once he realized that the Reich president was not at prayer but sound asleep, snoring. Not knowing what else to do, he clicked his heels as loudly as possible, cleared his throat, and said, “Herr President!”

Thankfully the Old Man’s eyes fluttered open.

“Kripo Inspektor Kraus here.”

“
Ja, ja,
Kraus.” The president stroked his enormous mustache, glancing over his shoulder as if for a word of advice. “Now, what did I want you for?
Ach, ja!
King Boris. What a
Schweinerei
.” The Old Man embraced his massive stomach. “The king of Bulgaria’s daughter has gone missing, Kraus. From the Adlon of all places. You are to find her at once.”

“But, Your Excellency, may I remind you I serve the Homicide Kommission. We have a most excellent Missing Persons Department full of experts on—”

“Kvatch!”
The Old Man’s blue eyes narrowed. “Those
Idioten
couldn’t find an elephant in the Pariser Platz. No, we need you, Kraus. You! Our most famous Inspektor. King Boris is a friend of mine. A friend of Germany. Germany values its relationship with Bulgaria, from whom she purchases many raw materials she sorely needs. Am I making myself understood? I wish to assure King Boris that our best man is working to find his daughter. And you are our very best. So they tell me.”