by Ben Pastor
“This is the Frohnau Buddhist Centre, Colonel. They will take you in. See that you don’t stick your nose out before the end of the war,” Bora said, coolly. In fact, he was so angry he could hardly contain himself.
The gate noiselessly opened from within. Salomon wiggled like a fish, the moment Bora stepped back; in the wink of an eye, he was safely past the threshold; he even forgot to take his suitcase. When Bora tossed it after him, he suggested, “Maybe, depending on how things develop … in a few days, I could …”
“Colonel, I have someone posted outside, ready to shoot you if you try to leave before the end of the war.”
It was a spur-of-the-moment fiction, but Salomon completely believed it. He started uphill in the gloom, stumbling along the path that rose to the solemn Buddhistische Haus.
Bora exchanged a few formal words with the gatekeeping monk, thanking the abbot for agreeing to his request when he’d called him up earlier, and then returned to the car.
He didn’t have to try hard to remember the motto of the House, knowing all too well what it said: What we are doing, anybody shall be able to see. What we are saying, anybody shall be able to hear. What we are thinking, anybody shall be able to know.
None of it had been true of him, for years. All of it seemed to be true (or about to be true) of the conspirators. He only hoped he would not have to regret letting Salomon live. Sometimes an imperfect solution is preferable.
Suddenly, just for one moment, he felt too exhausted to face the rest of the night. But there was no time, not even to sit here and close his eyes.
Who knows where Emmy went, he wondered. Somewhere safe, I hope, where she can await the end of the war. I am already forgetting her. My body has already forgotten hers, because it had no time to grow used to it. We were two thirsty people offering each other a drink. You don’t recall the cup, nor its contents. All you know is that, afterwards, you feel no more thirst.
KRIPO HEADQUARTERS, MONDAY, 17 JULY, 0:55 A.M.
Somewhere on the way back, Bora tossed Salomon’s goodluck hat into the night. Returning by a direct route through Wittenau and Reinickedorf, he reached Alexanderplatz with no time to spare. It hadn’t rained here. He turned into Dircksenstrasse. Leaving the car, he felt a sharp sense of failure, as if he hadn’t solved the case.
Everything sank into a vast sea of disillusionment. Here it is, he told himself. My generation, sworn to sacrifice, sees its beliefs fall one by one, and even though failure does not belong to it alone, it has to share in the immense failure of New Germany.
It was unbearable. He had to shake himself out of his anguish and believe that something could still survive the disaster. “In a few days …” the hopeful and imprudent Salomon had said, once he knew his life would be spared. The attempt would take place any time now. What if it succeeded? After all, Niemeyer had been silenced before he could blackmail or betray anyone. The thing could succeed. All the same, Bora felt great sadness for the men who secretly laboured to change that world. What does it say about us, if the way out passes through high treason and contemplates the loss of human lives?
Eight hours after the Dolantin had entered his system, he ached but was lucid again. He would not let exhaustion interfere with his penultimate task in Berlin. His horizon did not stretch beyond this. He was so focused on what he would say that he only dimly perceived the circuit of halls, corridors and stairs he went through to reach Nebe’s office.
Despite the late hour, Nebe was reading a stapled document, or pretending to do so. With a small gesture of the left hand, without raising his eyes, he invited Bora to approach. To Bora’s weary eyes, the milky glass shade of the desk lamp had a green tinge, soft like a sea-froth medusa; you’d expect it to be soft to the touch. Palm up, so as not to show the bruises on his knuckles, Bora laid the folder on his end of the desk.
Nebe underlined a sentence in the document. Still looking down, he pointed at the folder with his pen. “On the phone you mentioned a final report. Is this your final report?”
“It is.”
Not having been invited to sit down, Bora stood. It was all right by him – his knee ached less when he didn’t have to bend it. Nebe did not urge him to sit. It was probably his way of forcing subordinates to speak up for themselves, to take full responsibility for what they said. Consequently, the opening sentence Bora had prepared was nothing like the words that came out of his mouth now.
“As a soldier, Group Leader, I can be stolid. It’s one of those potentially negative qualities that turn into assets under fire. As a counter-intelligence officer, I have developed other skills, some of which are morally ambiguous but very useful. Whether you sought the soldier or the operative in me, from the start I confronted the question I wasn’t allowed to ask: why would a professional, the professional among the German police, entrust me with a murder case? I had nothing to offer that his team of detectives does not possess tenfold.”
Nebe’s pen (Bakelite government-issue, nothing fancy) drew a straight, thin line under the typed text in front of him. “Well, did you answer the question?”
“Possibly.” Palm up, Bora slid the folder towards Nebe with the tips of his fingers, until its cardboard edge touched the sheet in front of the lieutenant general. “The murder case of a celebrated and controversial man is in itself a predicament. Given the victim’s political connections, it made sense to call an outsider to investigate, guaranteeing a neutrality of sorts. The time allotted for this inquiry seemed pitifully limited, but then there were four providential, credible suspects already on the table.” Bora watched Nebe move the folder aside so that he could continue working on the stapled document, flipping the page and underlining a new sentence. “One of them, Ida Rüdiger, was difficult to implicate, due to her connections with the Propaganda Ministry. Fortunately, I didn’t discard her altogether, because as a jilted lover she actually played a relevant role through her private investigator, a fellow by the name of Gustav Kugler. Two other suspects, Eppner the watchmaker and Glantz the book publisher, both under arrest at this time, had good reasons of their own to hate Niemeyer. Both concealed weapons at home; the publisher eventually confessed to the murder. The fourth suspect, Kupinsky, is a disabled drifter. Possibly manipulated to slander our own General Fritsch eleven years ago” – Nebe, irritated, glanced up at him – “and recently engaged by the Gestapo to spy on his neighbours, he harboured no apparent enmity towards Walter Niemeyer, but like the other three he had access to the house. An embarrassment of riches for an amateur investigator otherwise short on time and real evidence. As late as this morning, Inspector Florian Grimm reproached me for lacking a culprit, and it’s true that for nearly a week I groped in the dark. Today, though, I felt that I had the solution in my hand, and told him that much.”
The only sign that Nebe was marginally interested was that he lay down the pen without replacing its cap.
Bora shifted his weight onto the hale right leg. “Tonight, however, when I started drafting my official report, it occurred to me that something – an element, a significant element – was still missing from the picture. You would never countenance a weak or partial solution! I came close to panic, I admit. It’s understandable, I’m just a soldier, not a detective. Worse, thanks to my family’s involvement in publishing, I grew up with a high tolerance for imaginative scenarios – hardly an asset for an investigator. So I thought: Niemeyer had as many enemies as he had friends. What if he fell victim not to a single culprit, but to group retaliation? It was within the realm of possibility, and I had a ready-made cast of characters. I envisioned Ida Rüdiger spying on her lover’s routine; Eppner’s unfaithful wife leaving the back door open; Kupinsky the gardener hiding a weapon in the yard; Glantz the ruined publisher firing the fatal shots. A plot of bloody retribution, where all are guilty and no one is, which reminded me of a British novel published by Goldmann ten years ago in my hometown, Leipzig – Der rote Kimono, whose original title was, if I’m not mistaken, Murder on the Orient Express. Does that
mean that the solution had been provided to me from the beginning? Yes and no. Things did not go exactly as I described, Group Leader, but near enough. Somehow, it was group retaliation.”
Bora hoped for a sign of acknowledgement, even just a wave of impatience, but Nebe’s reaction did not go beyond replacing the cap on his fountain pen.
“My theory,” he forced himself to go on, “concerns a strongwilled Frau Rüdiger, morbidly jealous of her lover. She caters to the ladies of the Party, freely exhibiting their powerful spouses’ calling cards. One day she confides in a good client of hers, Frau von Heldorff, and asks for the name of a reputable private eye. Frau von Heldorff, on the advice of her husband, head of the Berlin police, suggests Gustav Kugler. Kugler, formerly a member of the SA and a former police officer, is actually someone whom Count von Heldorff wants to shadow his latest flame, a pretty blonde who coincidentally frequents Niemeyer’s home.” When Nebe reached for his pen, Bora feared he’d lost his audience. The head of the Kripo, however, simply returned the writing implement to its brass-and-marble holder. “Thus Kugler is serving two masters. For now, Group Leader, let me only add that the nameless blonde, whose migraines Niemeyer treats with hypnosis, reveals facts that mustn’t become public. Ida Rüdiger does not learn about the blonde from Kugler, but knows enough about Niemeyer’s other trysts, including the one with Gerd Eppner’s wife. I imagine she and the wronged watchmaker meet to commiserate; they plan their revenge, and eventually involve Glantz in their clever scheme, the unfortunate publisher ruined by the Weimar Prophet. Kupinsky is extraneous to the plot, although he is by chance able to provide logistical support. So far, so good. They can all contribute something, and once Ida dismisses Kugler, the field of action will be clear. Eppner, the former lieutenant in the Foot Guards, will supply the ammunition, and – more importantly – a copy of the key to Niemeyer’s back door, used by his wife to enter her love nest. Glantz, in contempt of all the laws of the Reich, keeps a military Drilling rifle at home, and firmly intends to kill the clairvoyant with it.”
“Guesswork.”
Or a working hypothesis. It took all Bora’s resolve not to. It took all Bora’s resolve not be disheartened by the flippant comment. “The first obstacle to the plan is how to transport a rifle to Villa Gerda undetected. Glantz takes care of it, by agreeing with Niemeyer – I saw the boxes ready in his office – that he’ll return the draught material for the stillborn Encyclopaedia of Myth, which is to be deposited in the garden shed. In fact, that’s how they intend to transport the weapon, piecemeal. It’ll be up to the publisher, a big-game hunter in happier days, to sneak into the property at night, reassemble the Drilling, and carry out the murder.”
“Glantz confessed that much.” It was the first, sneering signal of annoyance on Nebe’s part. For a moment, Bora feared dismissal.
“Under duress, General,” he nonetheless added, “and minus a couple of items. The first is that, unbeknownst to him, the phone lines of all those involved were tapped, at least after Ida hired Kugler. Inspector Grimm told me just the opposite, but I believe that’s how he learned of the plan, and of his old partner Kugler’s activity as well.”
Nebe could not possibly miss the implication of Bora’s statement. For an uncomfortably long time, the silence in the room had an intact, sealed quality. Never mind that right and left, above and below this muffled space, stretched the meanders of the vast police headquarters, with its archives, interrogation rooms, prisons in the cellar and Gestapo-run third floor. They were two men facing each other in the eye of the storm.
“Well? You’re wetting your lips, Colonel. Are you nervous?”
Bora looked up from the folder. “I’m beyond nervousness, sir. But fear does not prevent me from formally accusing Florian Grimm of Niemeyer’s murder.”
“‘Formally accusing Florian Grimm’ … Sit down.”
“I’d rather stand, General.”
“Sit down!”
It was an order, and Bora obeyed. Fear had an odour and a taste; Grimm reeked of it in the car; now Nebe wanted him to taste dread, and to feel powerless.
“Finish your report.”
Bora squared his achy shoulders. Thank God for pain and fatigue; buffering his panic, they anchored him to his body and allowed him to rally, whatever tonight’s outcome. He watched Nebe place the folder over the document he’d been underlining, face down, as if to deny or neutralize its contents.
“Like Gustav Kugler, Group Leader, before joining the Kripo Grimm was, as you know, in the SA and then in Count von Heldorff’s Berlin police. He is an old fox. Once he learns every point of the vengeful plan, including the weapon chosen by the aspiring murderers, he beats them to the punch. Child’s play, for one with his Eastern front experience. In his profession, he has ready access to an arsenal of the proper calibre, including Great War Mausers modified into twelve-gauges, and other shotguns seized in years past from gangsters and left-wingers. Well! No one is more surprised and terrified by the news of the murder than Glantz, about to ship the Drilling to Niemeyer’s garden shed. After he hears through the grapevine that the ammunition used is consistent with two out of three of the Drilling’s barrels, he suddenly loses heart. He stupidly repacks and sends the rifle to himself, poste restante, at Anhalt station. He may be a coward, yet he redeems himself in the end. When, under arrest here at Alex, he’s beaten up and then – against the wishes of the Criminal Police – hauled to the third floor and into the Gestapo’s custody, he takes the blame without involving his co-conspirators Rüdiger, Eppner and Kupinsky.”
Nebe pursed his lips in a way that could conceal any number of reactions. “You spoke of two elements left out of Glantz’s confession – what is the second?”
“The most important thing, unknown however to the publisher: that Walter Niemeyer tried to profit from what the blonde said under hypnosis. He approached Count von Heldorff, and possibly others, asking for money or other benefits; or else he promised to divulge the dangerous content of his sessions with the girl. Understandably, from the Berlin police chief’s point of view, it’s enough to sign his death warrant. Once Niemeyer is dead, along with the solicitor he directed – in writing – to expose the truth in case he should meet with a violent demise, all could be well. But the letter to E. D. – Ergard Dietz – is never delivered. I suggest that Grimm found it inside a sealed envelope in Niemeyer’s home (he told me the safe was empty, which isn’t very likely). Once Heldorff read the copy, he immediately disposed of the lawyer and ordered Grimm to torch the villa, to destroy other possible repositories.” How wise the human body is, Bora thought. Pain chases off fear, and weariness chases off the pain. “The problem is, General, that although Count von Heldorff played a primary role in this incident, it was not on his direct orders that Niemeyer was killed.” Weighing his words, Bora was crazily tempted to drive his forefinger against the milky glass shade, sure that it would sink like a jellyfish. “I am sitting, worse luck, in front of the truly ingenious master of the game. It was on your orders, sir, it fell to Florian Grimm to execute Niemeyer. I can make my case.”
Nebe’s only response consisted of a small, brusque movement of his leg, which he attempted to conceal by shifting in his chair. The odourless, sterile atmosphere in the room thickened between them. The few items on the desk – penholder, an indelible pencil, the framed photo, a telephone – sat as if immersed in a syrup, and the yard of distance separating the two men threatened to solidify like glass. Silence was all it was, but it showed Bora what a “wall of silence” meant. When Nebe decided to speak through it, his tone was unruffled.
“Execute. You can make your case.” It wasn’t a question – there was no curiosity behind it. Like Bora’s words, it was a statement of fact. “You better had, Colonel.”
The last, harrowing hours were beginning to make themselves felt. Bora sat stiffly in order not to let himself slump; he’d have gladly stretched his smarting leg and rubbed his neck, but he could afford no sign of weakness before Arthur Nebe.
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“It’s been very difficult. The four suspects – it was nothing short of genius – were more than simple decoys. They actually fit into the scheme. Grimm … ah, Grimm was beyond suspicion. Why should I mistrust the jolly veteran policeman placed as a partner at my side? He discovered the body, after all. And what fun he had, telling of Niemeyer’s tawdry start as a self-styled Eastern Jew, and how the audience roared when he was exposed as being uncircumcised! That’s what the official post-mortem said, too. Had I not gained access to the extended autopsy report purged from the official file, I would have never caught on. The autoptic detail I should have paid attention to did not concern circumcision, but the bruise on his face which the Charité physicians mistook for an injury incurred by Niemeyer when he fell forwards. It could arouse suspicion: best leave it out of the official document. I’d seen how Grimm’s bulky ring tore the flesh when he struck Glantz, the day we ‘saved him’ from suicide. I suggest that Grimm punched Niemeyer, when Niemeyer surprised him in his house. I’ll go as far as to add that the recent contusions on the inspector’s hands may not have come from digging his family out after the bombs, but from working Glantz over under this roof, in good old police fashion, so that he’d say what he wanted him to say.”
“All this concerns Grimm, not the head of the Criminal Police.”
“Except that Grimm carried out someone’s orders. And for all that we’re unquestioningly disciplined in our New Germany, I kept wondering about that, until I understood what singled me out for this task in your eyes. A relevant, and for me alarming, fact: it was everything that you know about me, as a high-ranking SS officer and an acquaintance of Leipzig’s former mayor, Carl Friedrich Goerdeler. I am under no illusion about it, General Nebe: I have been more than once called to answer for my so-called political unreliability. This being the case, why would the head of the Criminal Police initiate an inquiry by telling his ersatz investigator that if he couldn’t solve the case before leaving Berlin, so be it? Was the Niemeyer case, then, not all that egregious? It couldn’t possibly be a desirable outcome, if it wasn’t solved!”