The Sleepwalkers (36 page)

As was the Kaiserhof. The Fürstenhof. The Palace. The Excelsior.

Ernst Roehm, and his whole SA leadership, had, of course, been wiped out in the infamous Night of the Long Knives back in ’34, along with Kurt von Schleicher and his wife. Kai, Willi found out through some determined detective work, had been killed at Buchenwald with the rest of the Red Apaches. Gunther, the last week of the war, had been shot as a deserter.

Potsdamer Platz, once the wildly beating commercial heart of the city, was deceased, too, its arteries vacuous, its walls collapsed. The bare bones of Kempinski’s Haus Vaterland, once the “Jolliest Place in Berlin,” twirling and dancing with a pinwheel
of neon, twelve restaurants, fifty cabaret acts, the famous Haus Vaterland Girls, a web of mangled girders staring over nothing: just a sign marking the dividing line between the British and Russian sectors.

In the government district, the Imperial Palace lay gutted. The dome blown off the cathedral. The Brandenburg Gate a cinder. Not a tree stood in the Tiergarten. Not a blade of grass. Here and there a singed kaiser still sat on horseback overlooking his capital. In the West End, Tauentzien Strasse, the cinemas along Brietscheidplatz, the Romanisches Café, the Kaiser Wilhelm Church, the whole grand Ku-damm, all burned-out hulks. At Alexanderplatz, Wertheim was obliterated. Tietz, three-quarters debris, its trademark glass globe hanging over the once magnificent atrium. Nothing was left of the Police Presidium. Only a few lone doorways leading nowhere. His eyes burned when he noticed on the lintel above one,
Entrance Six.

The Reichstag, scene of the final battle between the Red Army and fanatic remnants of the SS, lay a shell-riddled corpse, decomposing. In its shadow, a black market thrived amid the few tree stumps still along the Spree Embankment. Where once he had stood and observed the comings and goings of a white linen truck, civilians with patched shoes and torn coats now hungrily hawked watches, silverware, valuable porcelain, for food and cigarettes from the occupying soldiers. Two young girls, hair neatly braided, ragged dresses washed clean, sat on the curb next to piles of old books they were selling for five pfennig each. As Willi strolled by, a dark set of hypnotic eyes leaped right off the cover of one, stopping him dead. My God, his throat clenched.

“Two for nine,” the girls chirped.

Staring at the strange Kabuki expression he’d once seen work such magic on crowds, he handed them a mark and took the book.

The Ten Secrets of Life,
by Gustave Spanknoebel, King of Mystics. Berlin, 1932. Clairvoyant Press. Gustave’s own, he recalled. The very feel of it, the smell, the rustle of the old paper, seemed to
peel away time, flipping color images before his eyes . . . Paula showing off her gorgeous legs in that tight pink gown. Gunther, suddenly turning from nowhere, hugging him. Fritz revving up his beautiful polished yacht. That little silver BMW. And Kai, gold earring glistening in the sun, surrounded by rushing streetcars, the swirling traffic, the crazy hustle of the Alex.

All vanished as old Berlin.

Little shivers pricked his spine as he turned the book over. The oddest sensation of lifting ever so slightly off the ground. In top hat and tails, wrapped in his long black cape, the Master loomed across the back cover demanding to know with those all-penetrating eyes, “Have you started living yet, dear friend? Or still just another sleepwalker?”

The Sleepwalkers
is fiction based on a great deal of fact. The details on the political machinations leading up to the Nazi seizure of power are accurate. The locales are real, except for the potter’s field and lunatic asylum at Oranienburg, which are made up. Sachsenhausen concentration camp opened in 1936, not 1932. The Nazi medical experiments on living humans—the bone transplants, sterilizations, live dissections, and more—all occurred, but a decade after this story takes place. The SS doctors are fictional, except for Josef Mengele, the Mad Doctor of Auschwitz, who did not join the Nazis until the late 1930s. Much of the character of the Great Gustave is based on the real Erik Hanussen, who hid his Jewish identity and became Hitler’s clairvoyant until he was gunned down, as depicted, shortly after the Nazi takeover. Ernst Roehm and Kurt von Schleicher are historical figures. Both met their fates in 1934, as the book states, during the bloody purge known as the Night of the Long Knives.