The Night of Shooting Stars

by Ben Pastor

  “You’re rambling.”

  “Quite the opposite. If I hadn’t learned that, long before spying for the jealous Frau Rüdiger, Gustav Kugler had done dirty work for the State, I would have never associated him with Niemeyer’s death. But in the old days Kugler also associated with Grimm, who told me so himself. Kugler led to Grimm; Grimm led to you. From the start, General Nebe, Grimm and I were pitched against each other. If Grimm won the day – well, accidents happen; in the fifth year of war, lieutenant colonels are just as expendable as everyone else is. Alternatively, Grimm could be charged with killing me: a superb excuse to remove an assassin who might grow troublesome. After all, he unquestioningly eliminated Niemeyer because the head of the Kripo judged it necessary: it was office work, routine. Much as on the Russian front, I’m sure Grimm felt nothing while shooting Niemeyer.” Bora heard himself speak as if someone else were explaining things through him with more clarity than he could.

  “As long as I stuck to the four suspects, although I did not conceal my doubts about such a ready-made list, the investigation must have seemed to Grimm as merely pro forma. He might have resented me because I was an outsider, not part of the police force, but he was otherwise at ease. Day by day, his anxiety grew in proportion to the time I spent looking elsewhere for a culprit. My linking his old pal Kugler to Niemeyer, and to the murders he carried out for the authorities during the Weimar days, alarmed him. He must have started to wonder what would happen to him if I solved the case. Towards the end he knew he’d been found out, a realization that fuelled his anger. If I proposed a solution that implicated him, directly or indirectly, or if the Gestapo started meddling because of the way I led the investigation, he was done for. No wonder that he had the bright idea today of driving into the open country to dispose of me. Grimm might have been an old fox, but I’m a young one.”

  Nebe sat motionless, like a photograph of himself, devoid of any depth. “You realize that one of you two has to die.”

  “That, Group Leader, has already been taken care of.” Bora’s battered knuckles came into view when he took out and placed Grimm’s badge on the desk. “If you need it, the rest of him is scattered along the tracks east of the railway crossing.” Next to the badge, he placed a map that had been folded and refolded, on which the spot was marked in blue ink.

  A long pause ensued, during which Nebe stared into space, and although Bora was sitting across from him, it was not Bora he contemplated. Small spasms ran through his ugly, seamed face, the face of a labourer in the employ of justice and death. It was like spying on him as private emotions succeeded one another, forcing the muscles of his cheeks and brow to reveal at last the man behind them. As for Bora, he trusted he was unreadable as usual, even by an SS Group Leader. A small advantage, but an advantage where none other existed.

  Eventually, with some effort, Nebe slowly said, “That is … good.”

  It was one of those instances when a word meant not even remotely what it had been created to signify. Tonight nothing around them, nothing about them, was good.

  Goodness was as far from this room as the airstrips from which swarms of enemy bombers took off to hammer Berlin. It was, in fact, the end of everything both men – each in his own way – had believed in.

  Nebe opened a desk drawer, stretched his right hand towards Grimm’s badge, and put it away; after tossing a cursory glance at it, he did the same with the map. This was probably the one office in Berlin where there were no listening devices; still Bora wouldn’t say anything more, until Nebe spoke.

  “And did you learn the motive for Niemeyer’s death?”

  “I learned the real motive, General Nebe. During our first meeting, when you disparaged ‘young colonels’, it was not to me that you were referring. I could sense it. As for Doctor Goerdeler, who has known my family for years, he would not have recommended me to you, as I believe he did, if he had not seen in you a counterpart to his political feelings. A former mayor in disgrace and an SS Group Leader do not bump into each other by accident, especially these days.”

  Twice Nebe unsealed his mouth, as if in need of a deep intake of air. Bora, who had met him only once before tonight, had the impression that he’d aged years within minutes.

  “I cannot let you depart from Berlin, Colonel. You understand that.”

  “With your permission, it was clear to me the day you summoned me here.”

  “And …?”

  “I deeply resent it, since I had every intention of going back to my regiment. In my selfishness, I blame my predicament on you and your confederates.” Confederates, not colleagues. It was not the SS or the Criminal Police that Bora meant. Nebe understood perfectly, and was shocked. In his place, a civilian would have run a nervous finger around his shirt collar to loosen it. “I may be flattering myself, but I think that you knew I’d solve Niemeyer’s murder. That was not what you wanted of me, but you couldn’t be more direct. It’d be high treason.”

  Nebe mechanically drew back in his armchair. He gave the strange impression of being equally about to shout and about to fall into a stony silence.

  “When it comes to selfishness …” He began the sentence and then stopped, but only for one bitter moment. “When it comes to selfishness, that isn’t something my confederates and I lack.” He slowly pushed the indelible pencil aside. “Did you find the letter?”

  “Yes.”

  “Where?”

  “Forgive me for quoting you, but that is the one question you may not ask.”

  “Goerdeler said you’d find it. Give it to me.”

  “I do not have it on me.”

  “Give me the letter. It’s not safe to leave it anywhere.”

  Bora’s boyhood insolence came back from an unexpected, deep and desperate place. “For the moment it’s safe where it is, General Nebe.”

  What time was it? Bora had lost all notion of time. Suddenly he had a primitive, animal desire to sleep. Across from him Nebe sat back, avoiding the glare of the desk lamp, sunk in semi-darkness. To Bora, familiar with interrogation techniques, that avoidance of the light indicated a shift in the balance between them, a subtle recapturing of the upper hand.

  “What about your unreliable colleague?”

  No names, and Salomon was Bora’s superior in rank – yet Nebe could mean no one else. Bora had not anticipated the question, but wouldn’t lie outright.

  “Of all the competencies useful for this assignment, those linked to my Abwehr training served me best: I can be without scruples, and if needed I will kill in cold blood.”

  Nebe scowled. The words were not wasted on him. With his chin, he pointed at Bora’s left hip, where he wore his holster. “Lay your sidearm on the desk, Colonel.”

  Bora did so, turning its grip towards Nebe. Next to the P38, he placed the extra magazine. At any moment, Nebe could pick up the phone and have him arrested. He only hoped it would not happen before he’d said all he had to say.

  “The reason for picking me is that I was judged safe, and a disposable lure. You were biding your time until a drastic change in the government of the Fatherland would make Niemeyer’s death irrelevant. All along you contemplated, as you still do, the success of your enterprise. In that case, Niemeyer’s elimination will appear timely and beneficial. He callously tried to profit from his silence; alternatively, he would vindicate himself in death, exposing a bona fide plot against the Führer. He had to be stopped, and was deservedly brought down. Speaking as a soldier, his was a brilliant strategy, which only another genius could frustrate. Yours was a major retaliation in lieu of minor retaliation: as above, so below. In the event of failure, General Nebe, the Niemeyer case will be the least of your problems.” Bora watched Nebe’s hand move within reach of the telephone, only to remove an invisible speck of dust from it. “Your confederates, barring perhaps Count von Heldorff, neither know nor would approve of your method of handling possible traitors: I’m sure Ergard Dietz and Heldorff’s girlfriend followed Niemeyer’s fate. Yet Doctor Goerdeler
and others – forgive me if I mention no one else, I am a soldier in our New Germany – agreed with you that I could be useful in Berlin this week, drawing attention to myself, scuttling as I did from one end of town to the other. Plainclothesmen, hotel detectives, even the chauffeur of a retired general kept an eye on me. It was when I began to understand and draw close to the truth that I became not only expendable, but potentially dangerous, in case the Gestapo got to me first. And if I hadn’t prevailed on Grimm at the railway crossing, I’d have vanished without a trace.”

  Only Nebe’s forearms and bony hands emerged from the twilight on the other side of the desk. “Yet you don’t have all the details.”

  “Well, I don’t know where Niemeyer’s riches went. The money is gone from his German accounts. Either our spendthrift Count von Heldorff secured it, or the Reich did. I don’t know if Bubi Kupinsky, the sole member of the foursome who was not directly involved in the plot, escaped with his life or went the way of the lawyer and the blonde. I can’t be sure whether Gustav Kugler was eliminated by Grimm, in the old Weimar way, or died for work-related reasons.”

  “The truth is that none of you matter at all.”

  The indelible pencil on Nebe’s desk (a tool for sentencing without leave to appeal, for the reckoning of deaths that had already happened) was blunt. Bora noticed it out of the corner of his eye, and found meaning as well as comfort in the detail. “The most important element I don’t know, sir, is when you will act. Something went on, the day before yesterday, a dry run or a ‘go’ scrapped at the last minute, and I’ll wager there were other false starts. Admiral Canaris trained me well. I’m one of his boys, after all.”

  Bora’s sidearm, lying between them, became the focus of both men’s attention.

  “I should kill you now,” Nebe said.

  “You probably should.”

  Now Nina will never cast off her mourning clothes. The thought came oddly painlessly to Bora’s mind, as if it weren’t his life that was in such immediate danger. Yet Nebe imagines that I’m in such dire straits that I could risk it all, open fire on him and expose the plot. They sat across from each other, unmoving, staring at the gun. Still, it was precisely that quiet detachment, the exact opposite of resignation, which made Arthur Nebe lower his eyes, and in doing so notice the useless, blunt pencil. Irritated, he cleared his throat, as if the loss of a sharp tip and Bora’s composure placed a niggling obstacle in the way of his threat. He placed the P38 and magazine into his desk, out of reach.

  “If it were only up to me, I would have already had you shot.”

  This meant that others – Goerdeler, or Stauffenberg himself? – had opposed the idea. Understanding this mitigated Bora’s animosity a little.

  “The letter, Colonel.”

  “The letter is in the folder in front of you, General Nebe.”

  The folder was empty save for Niemeyer’s letter. Nebe scanned it carefully under a magnifying glass before tearing it to shreds. These, he lit with a match inside an empty inkpot. Before meeting Salomon, Bora had done the same in the sink of his hotel room with the Kugler material, Olbertz’s postmortem and his carefully typed final report.

  “However it goes, Colonel – and you are mistaken, the enterprise will succeed – you’ll share neither the remorse nor the glory of it.”

  He’d heard the same notion from Claus von Stauffenberg. Tight-lipped, Bora thought, I have remorse and merits of my own. Those of others do not belong to me. When Nebe stood up, Bora promptly surged from his chair, as always in the presence of a superior, despite his tiredness. He was perfectly aware that, whatever the lieutenant general promised, between the centre of Berlin and any one of the airports surrounding it, he could be put to death a hundred times. The tunnel still had no light at the end, or perhaps there was only a blind wall there.

  Nebe, in fact, was far from being done with him. His next words were the first tonight that Bora hadn’t expected. “Make sure you leave Colonel von Salomon’s documents here. We would not want anyone to think he was a deserter, or that you aided him in his attempt to become one.” He took in Bora’s surprise as if it were due to him. “Had you been drinking? My men thought so, by the way you ran around in circles tonight before you found the Buddhist Centre in Frohnau.” He gestured to him with his half-open hand, asking for the papers. “Your former commander died an hour ago. They will find him in the next few days in the woods, on the shores of the Hubertus lake. Officially, he will have shot himself in a bout of despondency over the deteriorating state of his nerves, medically certified since 1941. Unless of course any suspicion arises that he committed suicide after shooting the male prostitute – what’s his name, Kupinsky? – he met in that solitary place. Don’t look so crushed. It’s because you are one of Canaris’s boys that I had to take these precautions. As you say, you are and remain a soldier. That’s your limit.”

  Bora’s less than perfect plan had been to hide Salomon and hold on to his documents for an indefinite time, or until the situation cleared. Now, as he sorrowfully turned in the papers, he saw that the elastic band holding them together had frayed and snapped. “It’s a limit I thank God for every day of my life.”

  Nebe now had the upper hand. “By the way, did you come in the staff car? Good. I imagine you also brought back the Niemeyer boxes entrusted to you. Good. Leave the Olympia here. Hand in the keys.”

  Did this mean that Bora would not get out of Alex alive? Or did Nebe expect him to walk across the whole of Berlin at this hour of the night? Bora was too worn out and sickened to ask questions, but claimed a crumb of self-respect for himself.

  “I will leave the Niemeyer boxes here, General, but not the car. I’d rather drive myself back.”

  The proposal was midway between unprecedented arrogance and a legitimate request. Nebe evaluated the question with a frown, and then agreed.

  When they parted ways, Bora responded to Nebe’s stiff arm-raising with the army salute.

  “Soon one of the two greetings will prevail over the other,” the general grumbled, and pointed to the door. “They’ll come for you tomorrow.”

  Bora left, ready for anything. It could be a bullet in the back of the neck or a thank-you note, or an insult. Nothing of the kind followed. Despite the season, Berlin was almost cold now, just before dawn. The stars were still out, but before long the sky above the buildings and ruins would take on that pale, fleshy tinge, which in Spain had reminded him of naked women. He saw himself as he was then, climbing up from the river, up the steep side of Riscal Amargo, in days when believing had not yet been painful. Now both believing and not believing hurt. But he was accustomed to pain.

  He knew they would follow him. All the same, once he left the police headquarters and travelled across the city’s centre, he did not take a left on Potsdamer Strasse to reach the hotel but continued south-west towards Dahlem.

  Uncle Reinhardt-Thoma’s clinic loomed in the twilight of dawn. It would be days before it reopened under new management, but Bora was ready to wager that Wirth had already moved his things into the ground-floor office.

  Even though his knee hurt badly, he alighted quickly from the Olympia. Fatigued as he was, he acted automatically, but was aware of his every move. Meanwhile, the Kripo’s unmarked car slid silently along the shadows of Dohnenstieg and parked across the street with its headlights off. Bora used the key Olbertz had given him. The lock had not been changed, so he had no problem getting in.

  Crates and boxes of papers waiting to be filed away crowded the office floor. Bora set the torch in a corner, so that he’d have just enough light to work by. He began by pushing the heavy desk towards the oak panelling of the end wall; with his right foot, one at a time, he shoved and crowded the boxes all around it. All but one of the brand-new cotton curtains, folded and still partly wrapped, came to rest on the desk, along with folders from the drawers, two chairs and their stuffed pillows. Bora picked up a screwdriver – which had fallen when they’d moved around the furniture – from the floor a
nd stuck it in his belt. He then lifted out of his briefcase the water bottle he’d filled with petrol in the home of the old farmer-soldier. He’d stopped it up with the surgical gauze Ybarri had used on his knee, and already added to it the amber-like lumps of white phosphorus he’d found when he’d rummaged through the debris. He set briefcase and torch on the threshold of the front door. Standing there, he kindled the petrol-drenched fabric with Peter’s lighter, and tossed the bottle with all his might against the desk.

  He left shortly thereafter. He locked the front door and stuffed the remaining cotton drape under it, to keep the smoke from filtering out too soon. Before stepping down to the front yard, he broke the key inside the lock with a sharp blow of the screwdriver’s handle. Flames were rising inside when Bora walked back to the Olympia. He carelessly walked by the police car, where two plainclothesmen fretted, debating what they should do.

  He drove to the Leipziger Hof without even glancing in the rear-view mirror to see if he was being shadowed. Once in his room, he ordered a schnapps to gulp down a painkiller, which he immediately threw up. It went down better with a glass of water from the sink. He instantly fell asleep, still half-dressed; in his agitated slumber, he thought he heard – but perhaps it was the first air-raid warning – the wail of a fire engine speeding in the dark towards Dohnenstieg.

  17 JULY, 5:50 A.M.

  In the morning, he remembered nothing of the day before. It was a complete blackout. He knew he was in Berlin and why, but could not explain the bruises on his right hand or his contused, stiff knee. His scant luggage was ready, so he must be about to leave. A vague image floated into his mind, of being in the car with Florian Grimm somewhere. The rest was a painful void.