The Sleepwalkers (31 page)

Ava, sitting on the couch with an embroidered shawl around her shoulders, looked distinctly less happy to see Willi. “Hello,” she said coldly, switching on the radio. “We certainly weren’t expecting you.”

“Your timing was extraordinary, Willi,” Max blurted, beside himself with nervousness. Webs of veins popped from his temples. “You told me to pull out just in the nick of time. I managed to liquidate everything, house, furniture, the business—at a very reasonable price, all things considered. God only knows what Jewish property will go for tomorrow.”

A gong sounded over the radio. “The new chancellor will address the nation.” A moment’s silence, then . . . a tense, hard voice.

“Germans! For fifteen years a corrupt republic has hung like a noose around our necks. Millions unemployed. Millions homeless. But now at last—I have grasped the reins of power!”

“Such arrogance,” Max stammered.

“No longer will the international financiers and the international Bolsheviks and the international cabal of Jewish lice suck the blood of the German people. The day of reckoning is at hand. I am your Führer!”

Pulling the shawl more tightly around her, Ava turned to her father. “I think that shoots down your once-he’s-in-office theory.”

“My God, if anything he’s more hysterical.” The veins in Max’s forehead pumped. “I wouldn’t put it past those fiends to seal up the borders, trap us all like flies in a jar. I say we go. Better today than tomorrow.”

Willi agreed to purchase tickets for the overnight train to Paris.

Before he left, Ava stopped him, her dark eyes imploring. “Later then?”

“Yes, of course.” Willi squeezed her hand. There was suddenly so much he wanted to say to her. But no time.

At the Zoo Station the ticket queue ran down the block. He could feel the fear, the despair in the air, the disbelief that this had actually happened. The Nazis—in power! The tension was only worse later when he met Max and Ava on the platform. Mountains of luggage left barely enough room for all the people trying to say good-bye to all the people leaving. A crowd gathered to bid farewell to Kurt Weil and Lotte Lenya. Vicki Baum; Erich Mendelsohn, architect par excellence of the Weimar Republic; and the great Marlene Dietrich herself were already aboard. Willi waited until he’d got Max and Ava seated before he told them he wasn’t going.

“I see.” Ava blanched. “More crucial things, huh?” Willi lowered his head. If only he could make her understand. “What if they do close the border, Willi? What then?”

“I’m a decorated war hero, remember. I’ve slipped across no-man’s-lands.”

“You’re not a kid anymore.” Her dark eyes flashed. “You’re a father for God’s sake. Those boys need you.”

“I need them,” Willi sighed. “And you, too.” He hugged her quickly, dashing from the train. He’d come too far to give up now. Call me an idiot, he thought minutes later climbing into the BMW. But there’s no way I’m leaving without that evidence. Once the world sees what happened at Sachsenhausen, they’ll chase Hitler from office. From civilization.

But approaching the Ku-damm from Hardenburger Strasse, a strange glow reflected off the buildings. Traffic came to a standstill. People were getting out of their cars. Willi turned off his motor. With every step toward the intersection his discomfort mounted. Crashing cymbals reached his ears. Smoke began to
irritate his nostrils. At the corner he had to stand tippy-toe. His whole body went cold. As far as the eye could see, all the way down the great boulevard, an endless stream of Brownshirts were marching toward the city center in a vast torchlight parade. A conquering army. Flags unfurled. Drums pounding. All the neon advertisements of the Ku-damm couldn’t hold a candle to this surging river of fire.

He barely shut his eyes that night. The only thing he could think of was getting those boxes out of the Reichstag. Fritz said his editor, Kreisler, had spoken to one of the Ullstein brothers. The company would risk publishing the story—if it proved verifiable. The boxes could even be stashed in an Ullstein warehouse. If only they could transport them.

First thing in the morning Willi and Fritz set out by streetcar in hopes of finding this Socialist MP at his home in Berlin-North. Fritz was in a buoyant mood, convinced that things were not as bad as they appeared. Numerous sources had bolstered his suspicion that a secret alliance between von Papen’s Conservatives and Hugenberg’s Nationalists would fence Hitler in, make him lose face, take the wind out of his sails, and, when the time was ripe, pull the plug on him. “Von Schleicher got fifty-eight days. I give Hitler forty-two. Six weeks. No more. You can bet your money on it. I already have—ten thousand marks!”

At Bulowplatz, though, it felt as if they stepped directly from the streetcar onto the set of a Fritz Lang horror movie. The large Communist Party headquarters across the square, draped in giant banners of Lenin’s face, was completely surrounded by thousands of screaming Nazis.
“Reds, out! Reds, out!”
People inside were getting grabbed by their hair, thrown from the door, and forced to run a gauntlet of swinging truncheons, staggering away with bloody heads. There was a terrible crash. An upper-floor window shattered, and two Brownshirts dangled a screaming man six stories over the sidewalk. Willi’s heart stopped.
They couldn’t. They wouldn’t. But like Romans in the Colosseum, the crowd roared, thumbing him down, and the victim fell with a hideous shriek, flapping his arms against fate.

Fritz and Willi practically ran down the block. At Eckelmann’s no one answered the buzzer. The charwoman told them he’d gone underground, like all the Socialist MPs, the ones with brains anyhow. They stood there helplessly.

“Come on,” Fritz said. “Let’s take a cab back.”

In the taxi he thoughtfully stroked his dueling scar. “I know it looks bad, but it’s only temporary, you’ll see. Once the Communists are smashed”—he turned to Willi—“all this madness will recede. I stake my life on it.” When they reached Alexanderplatz though, he refused to let Willi leave until they’d hugged. “Take care, brother, huh?” Fritz had tears in his eyes. Willi’s throat ached. There wasn’t a more outspoken anti-Nazi in Germany than Fritz. They both were in the same boat now.

As Willi climbed from the cab, everything seemed the same. Crowds still poured in and out of Tietz. The long, yellow streetcars rushed by. But crossing Dircksen Strasse toward the Police Presidium, he saw a swastika already flying over Entrance Six. Over all the entrances.

“You shouldn’t have come.” Ruta stared when he walked in.

Willi wondered why he had. Pride? Stubbornness? Sheer stupidity?

“It’s too awful even to describe,” she whispered, mechanically turning her coffee mill. “They’ve purged the whole force . . . every officer who’s not a Nazi, sacked. Inaugurated a whole new secret police. Oh, Willi . . . why did you come back?”

“Well, well. Look at what the wind blew in. I didn’t think you’d have the gall.”

It was Thurmann, his pencil-line mustache slanted in a smirk. “I predicted right, huh, Kraus? You won your little battle.” A shiny new Inspektor-Detektiv badge hung on his chest. “But we won the war.” His smirk lengthened into a sneer. “Now pack up and get out before I give you what you’ve got coming. And as for
you, Granny”—he glared at Ruta—“better watch your step. It’s a new day, in case you hadn’t noticed. Now hurry with that coffee.”

While Willi was packing, Gunther walked in, head hung low. He was wearing a light gray uniform, his upper arm banded with a swastika. “I’m
Geheime Staatspolizei
now.” His voice trembled. “Secret police.
Gestapo,
for short.” Willi turned away. “Please understand, boss: my life, my family, everything’s here. I don’t speak other languages.”

Willi went on packing. Could he honestly say he’d do any differently in Gunther’s shoes?

Gunther swallowed, his Adam’s apple sliding all the way down his long white throat. “I can’t escape. But you’re going to have to.”

“I’m not going anywhere.”

“You’re going to have to.” The kid’s blue eyes bore into him suddenly. “If you want to see your sons grow up.” Willi stopped packing. Gunther’s cheeks flinched. “All Nazis in prison have received pardons. A personal order from Hitler himself. The Sachsenhausen doctors are already out. I’d be arrested if they knew I was telling you but . . . your name is on . . . a death list!” Gunther looked skyward, his voice cracking. “Oh, God, Chief, how could they get away with this? There’s no justice at all. You taught me everything. Now what am I going to use it for?”

Willi spent the rest of the afternoon in the Café Rippa, pretending to read a newspaper. He absolutely couldn’t think. He knew he had to, but it was as if his mind had stalled out in midtraffic. He drank coffee and sat there. Drank coffee and sat there. Not until evening did a painful jolt jump-start his brain. His name on a death list meant no more sleeping at home.

He drove by to pick up what he could. On Nuremberger Strasse several women were in front of his building arguing. “Get your hands off that!” “I had it first!” It was his dining room table, he realized. Looking up, he saw his windows were open. All the lights on. Storm troopers were tossing his books out, his photographs.
The picture of his grandfather came crashing to the pavement. He backed away. Returning to his car, his body and mind cleaved in two. Half of him could simply not accept that this was happening. The other half drove off like mad.

The forest trees reached with menacing fingers as he raced along the dark, winding road to Fritz’s. Here and there villas glistened in the night. He felt like screaming from the depths of his lungs, if that would help. But he turned with grim silence into Fritz’s long driveway. At the crest of the hill the glass house was dark. He hit the brakes, his breath stopping. Two black sedans were parked in front. His fingers clutched the wheel. My God. Fritz was being pushed from the door by half a dozen storm troopers, his face white as a ghost, eyes blazing black with fear. He’d rescued Fritz many times. But those thugs had submachine guns. He could only pray they didn’t spot him, too. He heard Fritz this morning. “It’s only temporary, Willi, I stake my life on it.” Just as Fritz was about to get shoved into a car, Willi’s old war pal looked up and his eyes met Willi’s.
Run, you goddamn fool,
they cried.

Willi let the car roll backward. “Hey, you!” A series of shots rang out. A loud bang scrapped the roof. He shifted like mad and hit the gas. More shots came as he shifted into second and sped into the darkness. Car doors slammed, a motor roared, screeching tires sped across gravel.

They were after him.

If he could just clear the forest, he could outrace the bastards, he knew. But the roads through Grunewald were so narrow and winding, pitch-black, completely unfamiliar to him. Through the rearview mirror he could see headlights, far enough behind that he’d still have a chance to shake them off, but keeping a steady pace. He made a hard right at the first street he came to, then a left. The headlights followed. Spotting a clearing he slammed on the brakes and skidded into a U-turn. Racing back, he caught a glimpse of the Nazis’ angry faces. He cringed as they fired madly, managing to knock out one of his headlights. He’d gained half a block. They skidded into the same U-turn and resumed the
chase. Down a deep slope and up a bend, he was at once blinded by oncoming lights. If that was the other Nazis, he was dead, he thought, swerving to the right as far as possible. When the car blew by, he could see again. Darkness, that is. Pitch-black. Guided by a single headlight, he hit the gas and sped ahead as fast as he dared.

This can’t be happening, his mind kept repeating. He wasn’t really being chased through Berlin by criminals who’d become the cops. Another rapid burst of gunfire sent him flying right out of his body, hovering above the forest. He could actually see the BMW racing from the black sedan. He, the Inspektor-Detektiv who’d tracked and hunted society’s most vicious criminals, a hunted criminal himself now. How utterly childish he’d been to believe that justice was a man’s due in life! From his bird’s-eye view he watched himself losing his way in the gloom. He hated the forest. The more desperately he fought to free himself from it, the more confused, the more enervated, he became until hopelessness began darkening his vision, making him feel as if he were drowning.

A bright light pulled him back. On the roadside, an illuminated sign with a long arrow pointing like the arm of God itself:
Entrance—Avus Speedway.
Air filled his lungs again as he tore onto the empty highway. Smashing his foot into the gas as far as it would go, the BMW roared. Although he could see the black sedan following, now it only made him laugh. Once the little silver sports coupe leapt into racing mode—100-110-120—there was no keeping up.

Back in the city he didn’t know where to go. He was homeless in his hometown. Neon flickered on empty streets, Berlin eerily dead this second night of Nazi rule. Aimlessly he drove for hours, eventually recalling that card in his wallet, his throat so tense when he got to the villa on Tiergarten Strasse he could barely get a word out. “You said if I ever needed—”

“For heaven’s sake.” Sylvie hurried him in, her blue eyes flashing surprise and comprehension both. The news about Fritz hit her hard. “Oh, God, no. You don’t think they’ll—?”

“For years he called them gangsters, Sylvie. Swine, animals, vicious apes.”

“Poor Fritz.” She fell to the couch. “Such a big mouth.” She stared blankly for a long time, then crumpled into Willi’s arms, crying. “Thank God at least you’re safe,” she sighed finally, squeezing his arm. “No one’ll think to look for you here. Stay as
long as you want.”
Forever,
her wounded voice seemed to say. “I’ll fix some tea and run a nice hot bath for you. How’s that sound?” He saw pity in her eyes, as if she was trying to compensate for her fellow Aryans stomping around out there. A bath was more than he could resist.

Submerged in hot water, his every muscle aching, he flinched when Sylvie entered without knocking, her blond hair loose around her neck. Wordlessly she knelt at the tub and started soaping his chest with a cloth. “I never realized what a strong man you are. Such broad shoulders.”