As with so many matters nowadays the ultimate question they'd been wrestling with was that of trust.
Would the man deliver them to salvation, or would they be betrayed and pay for that gullibility with their lives?
Tink, tink, tink...
Kurt Fischer, the older of the two blond-haired brothers, said, "Stop making that noise."
Hans had been tapping the knife on the plate that had held an apple core and some rinds from cheese, the remnants of their pathetic breakfast. He continued the tink for a moment more and then set the utensil down.
Five years separated the brothers but there were other gulfs far wider between them.
Hans said, "He could denounce us for money. He could denounce us because he's drunk on National Socialism. He could denounce us because it's Sunday and he simply takes a fancy to denounce someone."
This was certainly true.
"And, as I keep saying, what's the hurry? Why today? I would like to see Ilsa again. You remember her, don't you? Oh, she is as beautiful as Marlene Dietrich."
"You are making a joke, aren't you?" Kurt replied, exasperated. "We're concerned for our lives and you're pining away for a big-titted girl you've known for less than a month."
"We can leave tomorrow. Or why not after the Olympics? People will leave the Games early, toss away their day tickets. We can get in for the afternoon events."
This was the crux of the matter, most likely: the Olympics. For a handsome youth like Hans, there would be many Ilsas in his life; she was not particularly pretty or bright (though she did seem particularly loose by National Socialist standards). But what troubled Hans the most about their escape from Germany was missing the Games.
Kurt sighed in frustration. His brother was nineteen, an age at which many men held responsible positions in the army or a trade. But his brother had always been impulsive and a dreamer, and a bit lazy, as well.
What to do? Kurt thought, taking up the debate with himself. He chewed on a piece of dry bread. They'd had no butter for a week. In fact, they had little of any food left. But Kurt hated to go outside. Ironically, he felt more vulnerable there--when in fact it was probably far more dangerous to be in the apartment, which was undoubtedly watched from time to time by the Gestapo or the SD.
Reflecting again: It all came down to trust. Should they or should they not?
"What was that?" Hans asked, lifting an eyebrow.
Kurt shook his head. He hadn't realized he'd spoken out loud. The question had been addressed to the only two people in the world who would have answered honestly and with sound judgment. Their parents. But Albrecht and Lotte Fischer were not present. Social Democrats, pacifists, the couple had attended a worldwide peace conference in London two months ago. But just before they returned, they'd learned from a friend that their names were on a Gestapo list. The secret police were planning to arrest them at Tempelhof when they arrived. Albrecht made two attempts to slip into the country and get his sons out, once through France and once through the Czech Sudetenland. He was refused entry both times, nearly arrested the second.
Ensconced in London, taken in by like-minded professors and working part-time as translators and teachers, the distraught parents had managed to get several messages to the boys, urging them to leave. But their passports had been lifted and their identity cards stamped. Not only were they the children of pacifists and ardent Socis, but the Gestapo had files on the boys themselves, it seemed. They held their parents' political beliefs, and the police had noted their attendance at the forbidden swing and jazz clubs, where American Negro music was played and girls smoked and the punch was spiked with Russian vodka. They had friends who were activists.
Hardly subversive. But it was merely a matter of time until they were arrested. Or they starved. Kurt had been dismissed from his job. Hans had completed his mandatory six-month Labor Service stint and was back home now. He'd been drummed out of university--the Gestapo had seen to that, as well--and, like his brother, he too was unemployed. Their future might very well see them becoming beggars on Alexander Plaza or Oranienburger Square.
And so the question of trust had arisen. Albrecht Fischer managed to contact a former colleague, Gerhard Unger, from the University of Berlin. A pacifist and Soci himself, Unger had quit his job teaching not long after the National Socialists had come to power and returned to his family confectionary company. He often traveled over borders and, being firmly anti-Hitler, was more than happy to help smuggle the boys out of Germany in one of his company's trucks. Every Sunday morning Unger made a run to Holland to deliver his candy and pick up ingredients. It was felt that with all the visitors coming into the country for the Olympics the border guards would be preoccupied and pay no attention to a commercial truck leaving the country on a regular run.
But could they trust him with their lives?
There was no apparent reason not to. Unger and Albrecht had been friends. They were like-minded. He hated the National Socialists.
Yet nowadays there were so many excuses for betrayal.
He could denounce us because it's Sunday....
And there was another reason behind Kurt Fischer's hesitation to leave. The young man was a pacifist and Social Democrat mostly because of his parents and his friends; he'd never been very active politically. Life to him had been hiking and girls and traveling and skiing. But now that the National Socialists were in power, he was surprised to find within him a strong desire to fight them, to enlighten people about their intolerance and evil. Perhaps, he debated, he should stay and work to bring them down.
But they were so powerful, so insidious. And so deadly.
Kurt looked at the clock on the mantelpiece. It had run down. He and Hans were always forgetting to wind it. This had been their father's job and the image of the still timepiece made Kurt's heart ache. He pulled his pocket watch out and checked the time. "We have to go now or call him and tell him we're not doing it."
Tink, tink, tink... The knife resumed its cymbal tapping on the plate.
Then long silence.
"I say we stay," Hans said. But he looked at his brother expectantly; there'd always been rivalry between the two, yet the younger would abide by any decision the older made.
But will I decide correctly?
Survival...
Kurt Fischer finally said, "We're going. Get your pack."
Tink, tink...
Kurt shouldered his knapsack and glared defiantly at his brother. But Hans's mood changed like spring weather. He suddenly laughed and gestured at their clothing. They were dressed in shorts, short-sleeved shirts and hiking boots. "Look at us: Paint us brown and we'd be Hitler Youth!"
Kurt couldn't help but smile. "Let's go, comrade," he said sarcastically, the term the same one used by Stormtroopers and Youth to refer to their fellows.
Refusing a last look around the apartment, for fear he'd start to cry, Kurt Fischer opened the door and they stepped into the corridor.
Across the hallway was stocky, apple-cheeked Mrs. Lutz, a War widow, scrubbing her doormat. The woman usually kept to herself but would sometimes stop by certain residents' apartments--only those who met her strict standards of neighborliness, whatever those might be--to deliver her miraculous foodstuffs. She considered the Fischers her friends and over the years had left presents of lung pudding, prune dumplings, head cheese, pickled cucumbers, garlic sausage and noodles with tripe. Just seeing her now, Kurt began to salivate.
"Ach, the Fischer brothers!"
"Good morning, Mrs. Lutz. You're hard at work early."
"It will be hot again, I've heard. Ach, for some rain."
"Oh, we don't want anything to interfere with the Olympics," Hans said with a hint of irony. "We're so looking forward to seeing them."
She laughed. "Silly people running and jumping in their undergarments! Who needs them when my poor plants are dying of thirst? Look at my John-go-to-bed-at-noons outside the door. And the begonias! Now, tell me, where are your parents? Still on that trip of
theirs?"
"In London, yes." Their parents' political difficulties were not common knowledge and the brothers were naturally reluctant to mention them to anyone.
"It's been several months. They better get home soon or they won't recognize you. Where are you off to now?"
"Hiking. In the Grunewald."
"Oh, it's lovely there. And much cooler than in the city." She returned to her diligent scrubbing.
As they walked down the stairs Kurt glanced at his brother and noticed that Hans had quickly grown sullen again.
"What's the matter?"
"You seem to think this city is the devil's playground. But it's not. There are millions of people like her." He nodded back up the stairs. "Good people, kind people. And we're leaving all of them behind. And to go to what? A place where we know no one, where we can hardly speak the language, where we have no jobs, a place we were at war with only twenty years ago? How well do you think we'll be received?"
Kurt had no rebuttal for this. His brother was one hundred percent correct. And there were probably a dozen more arguments to be made against their leaving.
Outside, they looked up and down the hot street. None of the few people out at this hour paid any attention to them. "Let's go," Kurt said and strode down the sidewalk, reflecting that, in a way, he'd been honest with Mrs. Lutz. They were going on a wander--only not to any rustic hostel in the fragrant woods west of Berlin but toward an uncertain new life in a wholly alien land.
He jumped when his phone buzzed.
Hoping it was the medical examiner on the Dresden Alley case, he grabbed the receiver. "Kohl here."
"Come see me, Willi."
Click.
A moment later, his heart beating solidly, he was walking up the hall to Friedrich Horcher's office.
What now? The chief of inspectors was at headquarters on a Sunday morning? Had Peter Krauss learned that Kohl had made up the story about Reinhard Heydrich and Gottburg (the man came from Halle) to save the witness, the baker Rosenbaum? Had someone overheard him make an improvident comment to Janssen? Had word come down from on high that the inspector inquiring about dead Jews in Gatow was to be reprimanded?
Kohl stepped into Horcher's office. "Sir?"
"Come in, Willi." He rose and closed the door, gestured Kohl to sit.
The inspector did so. He held the man's eye, as he'd told his sons to do whenever they looked at another human being with whom difficulty might arise.
There was silence as Horcher resumed his seat and rocked back and forth in the sumptuous leather chair, playing absently with the brilliant red armband on his left biceps. He was one of the few senior Kripo officials who actually wore one in the Alex.
"The Dresden Alley case... keeping you busy, is it?"
"An interesting one, this."
"I miss the days of investigating, Willi."
"Yes, sir."
Horcher meticulously ordered papers on his desk. "You will go to the Games?"
"I got my tickets a year ago."
"Did you? Your children are looking forward to it?"
"Indeed. My wife too."
"Ach, good, good." Horcher had not heard a single word of Kohl's. More silence for a moment. He stroked his waxed mustache, as he was accustomed to do when not playing with his crimson armband. Then: "Sometimes, Willi, it's necessary to do difficult things. Especially in our line of work, don't you think?" Horcher avoided his eyes when he said this. Through his concern, Kohl thought: This is why the man will not advance very far in the Party; he's actually troubled to deliver bad news.
"Yes, sir."
"People within our esteemed organization have been aware of you for some time."
Like Janssen, Horcher was incapable of being sardonic. "Esteemed" would be meant sincerely, though which organization he might be referring to was a mystery, given the incomprehensible hierarchy of the police. To his shock he learned the answer to this question when Horcher continued. "The SD has quite some file on you, wholly independent of the Gestapo's."
This chilled Kohl to his core. Everyone in government could count on a Gestapo file. It would be insulting not to have one. But the SD, the elite intelligence service for the SS? And its leader was none other than Reinhard Heydrich himself. So the story he'd spun to Krauss about Heydrich's hometown had returned. And all to save a Jew baker he didn't even know.
Breathing hard, palms staining his trousers with sweat, Willi Kohl numbly nodded, as the end of his career--and perhaps his life--began to unfold before him.
"Apparently there have been discussions about you at high levels."
"Yes, sir." He hoped his voice didn't quaver. He locked his eyes onto Horcher's, which tore themselves away after an electric few seconds and examined a Bakelite bust of Hitler on a table near the door.
"There is a matter that has come up. And unfortunately I can do nothing about it."
Of course there would be no help from Friedrich Horcher, who was not only merely Kripo, the lowest rung of the Sipo, but was a coward as well.
"Yes, sir, what might this matter be?"
"It is desired... it actually is ordered that you represent us at the ICPC in London this February."
Kohl nodded slowly, waiting for more. But, no, this seemed to be the entire volley of bad news.
The International Criminal Police Commission, founded in Vienna in the twenties, was a cooperative network of police forces throughout the world. They shared information about crime, criminals and law enforcement techniques via publications, telegram and radio. Germany was a member and Kohl had been delighted to learn that, though America was not, representatives from the FBI would be attending the conference, with an eye toward joining.
Horcher scanned his desktop, upon whose surface Hitler, Goring and Himmler also gazed down from their wooden frames on the wall.
Kohl took several breaths to steady himself. He said, "It would be an honor."
"Honor?" Horcher scowled. Leaning forward, he said softly, "Generous of you."
Kohl understood his superior's scorn. Attendance at the conference would be a waste of time. Because the hue and cry of National Socialism was a self-reliant Germany, an alliance of international law enforcement organizations sharing information was the last thing Hitler wanted. There was a reason that "Gestapo" was an acronym for " secret state police."
Kohl was being sent as a figurehead, merely to keep up appearances. No one higher would dare go--for a National Socialist official to leave the country for two weeks meant he might not find his job awaiting him when he returned. But Kohl, since he was merely a worker bee, with no intent to rise in the Party ranks, could disappear for a fortnight and return with no loss--aside, of course, from the little matter that a dozen cases would be delayed, and rapists and killers might go free.
Which was not their concern, of course.
Horcher was relieved at the detective's reaction. He asked with animation, "When was your last holiday, Willi?"
"Heidi and I go to Wannsee and the Black Forest frequently."
"I mean abroad."
"Ah, well... some years now. France. And one trip to Brighton in England."
"You should take your wife with you to London."
The suggestion alone was enough to expiate Horcher's guilt; after a judicious moment he said to Kohl, "I'm told the ferry and train fares are quite reasonable at that time of year." Another pause. "Though we will, of course, provide for your travel and accommodations."
"Most generous."
"Again, I'm sorry you must bear this cross, Willi. But you'll eat and drink well. British beer is much better than what one hears. And you can see the Tower of London!"
"Yes, I would enjoy that."
"What a treat, the Tower of London," the chief of inspectors repeated enthusiastically. "Well, good day to you, Willi."
"Good day, sir."
Through the halls, eerie and gloomy, despite shafts of bright sunlight falling on the oak and marble, Kohl returned to his office, calming slowly f
rom the scare.
He sat heavily in his chair and glanced at the box of evidence and his notes regarding the Dresden Alley incident.
Then his eyes slid to a folder sitting next to it. He lifted the telephone receiver and placed a call to the operator in Gatow and asked to be connected to a private residence.
"Yes?" a young man's voice answered cautiously, unaccustomed perhaps to calls on Sunday morning.
"This is Gendarme Raul?" Kohl asked.
A pause. "Yes."
"I am Inspector Willi Kohl."
"Ah, yes, Inspector. Hail Hitler. You are telephoning me at home. On a Sunday."
Kohl chuckled. "Indeed I am. Forgive the interruption. I'm calling regarding the crime scene report from the shootings in Gatow and the other, the Polish workers."
"Forgive me, sir. I am inexperienced. The report, I'm sure, was shoddy compared to what you are used to. Certainly nothing of the quality you yourself could produce. I did the best I could."
"You mean the report is completed?"
Another hesitation, longer than the first. "Yes, sir. And it was submitted to Gendarmerie Commander Meyerhoff."
"I see. When was that?"
"Wednesday last, I believe. Yes. That is correct."
"Has he reviewed it?"
"I noticed a copy on his desk Friday evening, sir. I had also asked that one be sent to you. I'm surprised you haven't received it yet."
"Well, I will follow this matter up with your superior.... Tell me, Raul. Were you satisfied with your handling of the crime scene?"
"I believe I did a thorough job, sir."
"Did you reach any conclusions?" Kohl asked.
"I..."
"Speculation is perfectly acceptable at this stage of an investigation."
The young man said, "Robbery did not seem to be the motive?"
"You are asking me?"
"No, sir. I'm stating my conclusion. Well, speculation."
"Good. Their belongings were on them?"
"Their money was missing. But jewelry and other effects were not taken. Some of them appeared quite valuable. Though..."
"Go on."
"The items were on the victims when they were brought into our morgue. I'm sorry to say the effects have since disappeared."
"That does not interest, or surprise, me. Did you find any suggestion that they had enemies? Any of them?"