Conspiracy of Blood and Smoke

  Gretchen’s head was whirling. “Do you like it?” She wished she could snatch the words back as soon as they came out, but Birgit just laughed.

  “Most of the time it’s ghastly dull, but the pay’s decent. I could only find work a few days a week as a telephone switchboard operator at Wertheim’s, so I need the extra money. Working for this Ring is better than how I started out—I used to walk the Friedrichstrasse and the Kurfürstendamm with the other independent girls. After a customer gave me a black eye, I decided I wouldn’t mind sharing a cut of my earnings in exchange for some protection, so I offered my services to Schweigen.”

  She dragged on her cigarette, then blew out the smoke in a steady stream. As they walked, Gretchen watched the wind carry the smoke away. “What’s Schweigen?”

  “The name of our Ring.” Birgit sounded proud. It was an appropriate name, Gretchen thought, for it meant to keep silent, and she imagined such an organization depended upon its members’ discretion to survive.

  “Friedrich has worked hard to make our Ring one of the most well run in Berlin, and to make sure we’re connected throughout northern Germany,” Birgit went on. “We belong to a parent group called the Norddeutscher Ring and have brother Rings in Dresden and Hamburg. If I wanted to, I could move to either of those cities and find a job, because those Rings would be expected to take care of me. See how well organized Friedrich is? Ah, we’re here. This is his apartment.”

  She pointed at a brick building on their left, then caught sight of something in the distance and stiffened. Gretchen followed the line of her gaze. At the far end of the street, a car had appeared. Up and down the avenue, men stopped walking, their shoulders tense, their heads swiveling as they watched the car drive past. Along the sidewalk, children continued hurrying to school, laughing, oblivious to the red automobile careering down the road. Its tires rumbled over the cobblestones, sounding loud in the sudden silence.

  The car slammed to a stop a few yards from Gretchen and Birgit. Automatically, Gretchen shrank against the wall of the nearest building. What was happening?

  The car doors sprang open. Men scrambled out, about five or six of them. They wore the brown uniforms of the SA. In their hands, they clutched truncheons.

  Had they found her? Gretchen scanned the street, searching for a place to hide, blood roaring in her ears. Some of the factory men pulled on the children’s hands, pointing at the tenements and shouting to go inside. Others remained frozen on the sidewalk, staring at the SA men. Beside her, Gretchen heard Birgit curse under her breath.

  The SA men strode to the nearest shop. As she watched, they raised their truncheons high, then smashed them down on the darkened shop’s windows. The glass shattered.

  “Break everything in sight!” one of the men shouted.

  Comprehension flashed through Gretchen’s mind. It was a Strafexpedition, an excursion made by National Socialists into a Jewish or Communist neighborhood to punish the people who lived there. She’d heard Reinhard and his old comrades laugh about them too often to doubt what would happen next.

  The SA men were going to rip the street—and everyone in it—apart.

  Gretchen raced up the front steps of Friedrich’s building and tried to open the door. Locked. Next to her, Birgit knocked on the door again and again, whimpering.

  “Let us in!” Gretchen shouted. “Friedrich, please!”

  She looked back. Along the avenue, children and men ran to their apartments. The SA fellows had finished smashing the first shop’s windows and had started on the next one. “Communist swine!” they shouted.

  Birgit pummeled the door with her fists. Another moment and the SA might notice them, two girls alone in the street. Gretchen couldn’t imagine what they would do to her and Birgit. Whenever Reinhard and his friends had started talking about the girls they found during their Strafexpeditions, one of the boys would interrupt and tell her to leave, saying some things weren’t fit for her ears.

  “Stop! These are our homes, our businesses! Please!” A lone man walked toward the SA fellows, his hands outstretched in supplication. The street was almost empty now, the other residents hidden inside their apartments.

  “Friedrich!” Gretchen pounded on the front door. “Let us in!”

  Behind her, someone screamed. The SA fellows had surrounded the man in a circle, lashing him with their truncheons. Through the kicking legs, Gretchen could see him crumpling to his knees, his arms wrapped protectively around his head.

  The door opened so unexpectedly that she fell inside. Hands gripped her arms and held her upright. She looked up into Friedrich’s furious eyes. He let her go and yanked Birgit inside, then slammed the door shut. He turned and headed up the stairs.

  “Come,” he said.

  Closed doors lined the second-floor corridor. Friedrich opened the nearest one and ushered her and Birgit inside. The parlor was crammed with furniture: an overstuffed flowered sofa, chairs upholstered in pink velvet, a heavy wooden table. Warmth hit Gretchen in the face. She hadn’t felt such heat in days.

  “Were you hurt?” Friedrich asked. The concern in his voice surprised Gretchen, and she could only shake her head. “Good,” he went on. “Sit down, both of you.”

  She and Birgit sank onto the sofa. From the entryway opposite, three little girls peered into the room.

  “Papa,” the smallest said, “aren’t we going to be late for school?”

  “There’s some trouble outside.” He smiled at her. “We’ll wait for it to end before you leave. Back to your bedroom, all of you, and tell Mama to wait, too.” He glanced at Gretchen. “I prefer not to involve my family in my business affairs.”

  “Of course.” She didn’t know what else to say. It was so difficult to reconcile this image of Iron Fist Friedrich as a family man with the tough criminal. “There’s a man being beaten outside,” she said. “Perhaps you and your men . . .” She faltered under his unblinking gaze.

  “Perhaps my men and I could rescue him?” He sounded sarcastic as he dropped into a chair. “Yes, we might fight the SA off this time. But they’d only come back with more men and more weapons. I stick my neck out for my people and nobody else, Fräulein.”

  Gretchen’s disgust must have shown on her face because he snapped, “Do you imagine this is how I want to live? How any of my men prefer to support their families? We do what we must to survive.” He sighed. “Once I was in the army, but after the war ended . . .”

  He said nothing more but Gretchen understood, for she’d heard Hitler complain about the military’s pitiful circumstances often enough. Scores of demobilized soldiers have been released from the army, unskilled except in fighting, desperate for work, he’d shouted. As much as she hated to agree with him, she knew he was right on this point: After Germany had surrendered in the Great War and her military had been capped at 100,000 troops, thousands of ex-soldiers had returned home without any job prospects.

  “That’s why you joined the Ringverein,” Gretchen said to Friedrich. “To provide for your family.”

  He looked her hard in the face, then nodded, as if she’d passed a test. “Yes. Now I want to hear more about our Fräulein Junge’s murder. I’ve already spoken to Herr Cohen about it, the other night in the car, which is why he’s making himself useful at the bar this morning,” he said to Gretchen, surprising her again. She wouldn’t have imagined that a top criminal would feel the need to explain himself to anyone.

  “I don’t know any more about it than Herr Cohen does,” she told Friedrich.

  “On the contrary.” He gave her a grim smile. “You spent years within the Nazis’ inner circle. You know how they work. Your insights could prove invaluable.” He turned to Birgit. “Tell me about the night Fräulein Junge died. Every detail.” He sat back in his chair, steepling his fingers.

  “It was an ordinary night.” Birgit’s voice shook a little. She bit her lip, but pushed on. “We were walking along the Tauentzienstrasse, waiting for customers, when a gray Mercedes pulled up. It was
Monika’s favorite customer’s car. I wanted to peek inside and see him, but I didn’t dare. One time I tried, but all I could see were scarlet-colored seats before Monika scolded me off. This time, a man got out of the backseat and said her name. She turned around and asked who he was. He didn’t say anything; just shot her in the head. We all ran to her, but she was already dead.”

  Something rustled in the back of Gretchen’s mind. A gray Mercedes with a scarlet interior was highly unusual; she knew that much from having to listen to Hitler’s endless monologues about cars over the years. Why did that automobile sound familiar? Party men tended to drive black cars, except for Hitler during their years together, of course, when he’d been chauffeured in a red Mercedes—

  Hitler. The recollection hit her like a punch to the chest. She knew who owned that car. She’d listened, bored, as Hitler had raved about the marvelous motorcar he’d bought as a gift. Almost two years had passed, but she remembered how jealous his comments had made her feel. The Müllers had been loyal to Uncle Dolf for years, and all he’d ever bought them were chocolates, tea, and cheap trinkets.

  But for this man, who’d fled from Germany after the disastrous shoot-out in which Papa had been killed and who at the time had only recently returned to the country, Uncle Dolf had bought a car. A wonderful machine, Hitler had said, the only one made of its kind with a gray exterior and scarlet seats. It had been exhibited at a motor show in Berlin, and he’d had to have it for one of his most trusted men.

  “It’s Minister Göring’s car,” Gretchen breathed. According to Daniel’s journalist friend, Herr Delmer, Göring had begun infiltrating the Berlin police force with SA and SS troops. She struggled to pull together the scraps she knew about him. He was the new Minister of the Interior, so all of Prussia’s police divisions fell under his jurisdiction. After Hitler, he was the most influential National Socialist in the country.

  Friedrich shot her a sharp look. “Hermann Göring was Fräulein Junge’s customer? You can’t be serious! The fellow’s one of the top Nazis. Besides, it’s common knowledge that he’s romancing an actress in Weimar.” He sucked in a breath. “Maybe he had Fräulein Junge killed to keep her a secret.”

  “That can’t be,” Gretchen said as a picture rose in her mind: having tea in the back garden of Göring’s fine villa in the Obermenzing suburb when she was a little girl. His wife, Karin, lying in a lawn chair, sickly, yet still lovely. Göring smoothing her hair back from her fine-boned face, his tone gentle as he asked if she needed a blanket or another cup of tea. He had loved her with a devotion Gretchen hadn’t seen in many other men. “He wouldn’t cheat on Frau Göring when she was alive, and I can’t imagine him cheating on this woman in Weimar. Unless he’s changed completely since I knew him.”

  Friedrich jumped to his feet and walked the room. Beside Gretchen, Birgit dabbed at her eyes with a handkerchief.

  “I don’t understand,” Friedrich burst out. “If Göring was seeing Fräulein Junge, why kill her? Why go to the trouble of sending someone else to shoot her in the street from a car that could be tied to him?”

  “Hitler likes his subordinates to be upstanding family men.” Gretchen fumbled for reasons. “Perhaps Göring had Fräulein Junge murdered to maintain his reputation.”

  “Then strangle her in an alley!” Friedrich shouted. “Dump her body in a canal! Don’t shoot her in the head in full view of her friends!”

  He kicked a chair across the room. It crashed into the wall and fell onto its side. Gretchen couldn’t move. She had seen that kind of rage before—from both her brother and Hitler. She knew how unpredictable it could be.

  But Friedrich braced his hand on the wall and hung his head. “I beg your pardon,” he said at last. “Fräulein Junge was under my protection, and I failed her. I keep thinking of her, bleeding to death in the street like an animal.” He rubbed his eyes, clearly exhausted.

  His words pushed a button in Gretchen’s brain. He was right; the murderers had disposed of Fräulein Junge as though she were no more than a dog. But they’d killed her clumsily, driving to the scene in Göring’s personal automobile and shooting her in front of dozens of witnesses.

  That didn’t speak of callousness, but desperation.

  “Göring must have wanted her eliminated immediately,” Gretchen said. “So he sent a man to kill her where he knew she would be at that hour of the night. If he was afraid of their relationship being exposed, he would have had her killed discreetly. But he needed her dead right away. Which means she must have known something,” Gretchen realized. “And he wanted her silenced before she could tell anyone.”

  Friedrich raised his head, his dark eyes locking on hers. “I think you’re right.” His tone was so deceptively soft that the hairs on the back of Gretchen’s neck rose. “Let’s get Göring into our territory and find out for certain. Our Ring’s annual ball is in four nights’ time. That spoiled, overgrown child won’t be able to resist an invitation, especially since he must know that the top members of the police force always come. We’ll ply him with drink until he’s ready to tell us anything.” Friedrich’s grin was quick and angry. “Let’s see how he likes being on our turf, for a change.”

  20

  THE NEXT THREE DAYS SETTLED INTO A STRANGE new rhythm. During the day, Ringverein men drifted in and out of the hideout like shadows, dropping off payments and loot to one of the fellows who hung about the parlor, tallying numbers in a ledger or playing dice if there was nothing to do. Gretchen realized that no one seemed to live at the hideout. It was a place for them to store the Ring’s earnings and stolen goods or congregate for meetings. Every night, a different man took turns sleeping in one of the bedrooms, presumably to watch over the Ring’s money and her and Daniel.

  The men themselves were quiet and polite. They all had nicknames—Bloody Hans, Muscles Gebhard—and they dressed in cheap pinstripe suits and bowler hats, like down-at-the-heel clerks, or in black sweaters, trousers, and hobnailed boots, like street toughs.

  Despite her frustration at having to wait so long before the gangsters’ ball, especially with the Enabling Act looming on the horizon, Gretchen found herself fascinated by the Ringverein men, for they were so unlike what she had expected. The ones who worked as bouncers, bartenders, and porters at the establishments under the Ring’s protection seemed proud to have respectable jobs, boasting to her that they earned steady wages.

  Some of the men who worked as thieves and safecrackers asked her to demonstrate her lock-picking skills, and once she’d broken into the parlor, they’d burst into a round of applause, saying it was a pity she wasn’t a man and could join them properly. Daniel had watched from the sofa, his eyebrow raised, looking as though he was struggling not to laugh.

  Gretchen had smiled, but the wooden floors she walked on felt like shifting sand. These criminals stole and ran insurance scams and kept their gazes on her face, not her body. They talked about blackmail schemes and discussed the funeral expenses and pension plan for a fallen comrade’s widow and children. This Berlin was a city of smoked glass, where every reflection seemed distorted. The kindest people she’d met were criminals and prostitutes. Nothing made sense anymore.

  She didn’t have much time to puzzle it over, though, for she was kept busy running to the bakery for poppy-seed cakes or rye bread, or to the delicatessen down the street for liverwurst and salami. Friedrich liked the kitchen to be well stocked, she was told, for any of his men who might stop by and be hungry.

  Daniel had chores, too: cleaning the bar in the mornings before it opened, mopping the floors or unloading casks of beer. The work must have felt endless, as he had to do everything one-handed, but when she asked him about it, he merely shrugged, looking exhausted.

  At night, they went to a bar in the central part of the city, close to the National Socialist Party’s elegant new Berlin headquarters on the Vossstrasse. Lots of Party men went there for a drink, and Friedrich thought Gretchen and Daniel might pick up gossip about the SA men who’d ta
ken Fräulein Junge’s lockbox from the rooming house. He sent a couple of his newest recruits to accompany them, explaining that the National Socialists might recognize his more experienced men—after all, the Schweigen Ring and the Party had been bitter enemies for over a decade.

  Gretchen hated going to the bar. Every minute she sat on a stool, sipping a beer and chatting up the SA fellows leaning over their drinks, she feared might be her last free one, even though on a rational level she knew that it was highly unlikely any of these men would know her face. When she’d been Hitler’s pet, she’d been well known among his followers in her hometown, but the Berlin and Munich National Socialists had always revolved on separate axes. Still she couldn’t stop the knots from tying in her stomach or her eyes from straying to the front door, half expecting to see Hitler there. Foolish, she knew, for as chancellor he probably didn’t have the time or inclination for evenings at bars, especially since he didn’t like to drink alcohol.

  They learned nothing from the barroom fellows except idle chatter: Chancellor Hitler had declared that the Reichstag fire was a Communist conspiracy and was giving daily speeches, warning of the international “red menace”; the Party had shut down the Karl Liebknecht House, Berlin’s Communist headquarters, and flown swastika flags from the building. A few boasted to Daniel about what they’d done on the night of the fire: they’d been ordered to arrest Communist Party members, dragging hundreds of men from their homes and driving them to SA barracks to beat them. Daniel had grinned and clapped them on the back, saying he wished he could have seen it, but later, he’d sat in the little bedroom with Gretchen, holding his head in his hands, saying that the thought of all those innocent men kidnapped from their beds made him sick.

  Gretchen wished she knew how to comfort him. Once she would have wrapped her arms around him, but now she sat at his side, murmuring platitudes. Soon enough, if they were lucky, they would establish his innocence or get out of the country. Either way, they would probably leave each other’s lives, so Daniel could find a new home where he could be happy. As for her, she didn’t see how she could ever be happy again. With or without him, her future yawned wide like an empty hole. So she found herself uncertain what to say or how to help him.