City of Shadows

by Ariana Franklin

And Busse was going to kill him. Schmidt had no doubt about it; he just didn’t know what for. It hadn’t come in a revelation; the knowledge had accreted like the freezing slush gathering along the edge of the windshield. Something had happened back there in the Alex; Busse had stopped to consider. He’d thought of taking reinforcements, of turning up at the killing ground in force, and then he hadn’t. Instead of putting Schmidt under arrest and leaving him behind, he’d taken Schmidt along with him.

  Which was illogical.

  But Busse was a logical man. The eyes looking out from the glasses were those of Death playing chess. There was nothing left of the father and husband who’d lived downstairs, the knobbly-kneed, lederhosen-wearing, hiking accountant. Unlikable but understandable, that man had gone, and the creed of the Nazis that anything— anything—could be achieved if you were ruthless enough, had infused the thing that had taken his place.

  When Busse had looked at him back there in the Alex corridor, Schmidt had seen himself reflected in those glasses—expendable.

  Busse was going to kill him.

  “Already we can hear the first blare of the trumpets from beyond the Brandenburg Gate.. . .”

  The lights of oncoming vehicles appeared and were gone in the same second.

  “You’re missing the parade,” Schmidt said. “Shame.”

  Suburbs. Houses, petering out to become more and more infrequent.

  “And here they come!” shouted the radio announcer. “Magnificent . . .”

  Think, think. You’re a detective. Detect.

  If Willi Ritte had been sitting on the hood of the Mercedes looking inward, he would have seen Schmidt’s face go blank and his jaw slacken. And Willi would have read the signs.

  I am Busse. I have read the Anastasia file and it worries me; Anderson may be an impostor, but my impulsive, intuitive, little Führer has adopted her cause, though, thank God, he has not yet declared for her in public.

  “For a moment we return you to the studio for the announcement of the new chancellor’s cabinet, which met at five o’clock this afternoon.. . .”

  So if R.G. of Munich kills her, no harm done. Sorry, my Führer, she’s dead as mutton. Just as well under the circumstances.

  But if Major Günsche of SA Intelligence kills her . . .

  Schmidt’s eyes opened. That’s when it had changed. That’s when Busse had sat up and taken notice—when he’d realized who it was had taken the women.

  Trees flashing past, white phantoms in the lights of the car, a glimpse of a lake, and then it was gone, air cold on the ears and smelling of pine and water. They were near Grünewald.

  Think. Eisenmenger told you. He told you twice: Röhm has become too powerful, and therefore, like all threats to Herr Hitler, must be dealt with. He’s a queer anyway, and our Adolf loathes queers.

  Röhm’s bum-boy, Busse had said of Major Günsche of the SA. And if Schmidt had heard loathing, he’d heard it then.

  The Gestapo hadn’t been able to dispose quietly of R.G. of Munich because Röhm had been protecting him; Röhm, the too-powerful, Röhm, the homosexual whom Hitler was finding to be a threat to his own position.

  But we can dispose of him now, mein Führer. And Röhm with him. I, Busse, of your Secret State Police, am in a position to rid you of them both, because Röhm’s bum-boy has killed your pet, the grand duchess. Günsche is a homicidal maniac, out of control; he has a long record of killing, and Röhm has countenanced it.

  The radio droned with the announcer’s voice: “. . . Vice Chancellor, Herr Franz von Papen; Reichs Minister of the Interior, Herr Wilhelm Frick; Reichs Minister of Agriculture, Herr Alfred Hugenberg; Reichs Minister for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda, Herr Joseph Goebbels . . .”

  Yes, thought Schmidt, the death of Anastasia by one of Röhm’s henchmen would be news all over the world. It would infuriate Hitler. It would certainly provide the excuse to topple Röhm.

  But for that, Anna needed to be the real Anastasia. Adolf wouldn’t care too much about the death of an impostor—which publication of Schmidt’s file could prove that she was.

  That’s why he’s brought me along, Schmidt thought. It’s why he hasn’t got men with him and why he’s hurrying. He’ll let Günsche kill Anna. But if Esther’s still alive, Busse can threaten to kill her as well, unless I give him the file. And when I have, he’s going to kill both of us, the two living creatures who can validate the truth of it.

  “. . . in charge of military production, Herr Einwen Braun . . .”

  “Aaah” A long-drawn-out expulsion of breath from Busse made Schmidt look at him. “Excellent, excellent.” The man was smiling and tapping the wheel. “My brother-in-law,” he said. “The Führer has just appointed him.”

  “He married the nun?” Schmidt was momentarily diverted by the incongruous.

  “My other sister,” Busse said.

  “A high-placed brother-in-law,” Schmidt said. “Useful.”

  “We get on well,” Busse said. “The Führer approves of happy families.”

  “That’s nice.”

  Busse was slowing down, reaching out to turn off the radio. On their right was the cold, black water of the Havel. “It’s somewhere along here. Put the top down. There’s a flashlight in the glove compartment.”

  Schmidt struggled with the hood’s snaps. His detective memory clicked away, frantically sorting through old records.

  “There’s a turn along here,” Busse said. “On the left. And a name, I can’t remember, like a Wandervogel name, but it is not for Wandervogel.”

  “I bet it fucking isn’t,” Schmidt said.

  Several wooden fingerposts indicated footpaths, hiking tracks, bridleways meandering into the trees and darkness; one or two pointed to where various Wandervogel groups had built a cabin. Schmidt stood up in the car, holding on to the windshield with one hand, playing the flashlight beam on them as they crawled past. “ ‘Berlin Falcons’ Camp.’ That one?”

  “No, it was another name ...something. Keep a lookout for the Audi.”

  “Here’s another one, slow up. ‘Graf von Wartenburg’s Young Wolves’?”

  “No.”

  “Snotty little bastards, they were. We used to fight ’em.” Why am I saying things like this? Because I can’t bear whatever’s coming. “Slow down. ‘Black Riders’?”

  “That’s it.” They’d almost gone past. Busse swung the wheel, and they bumped over the verge and onto a track that stretched ahead, gray in the headlights before Busse switched them off. He got out of the car, carefully transferring the Luger into its holster.

  Without lights and the noise of the engine, the darkness and silence of the forest fell on them; the only thing to be heard was emptiness stretching hopelessly far, beyond exploration. Nobody had been in it, nobody would ever be in it.

  “Go ahead—and be quiet.” Busse’s voice was tense.

  Schmidt began walking, shining the light toward the ground, trying to protect the beam with his other hand so that it didn’t show too far ahead of them.

  “What’s that?” Busse was beside him, bending down, examining the ground like a good little Wandervogel looking for tracks.

  Schmidt didn’t join him. He was being sapped by a sense of unreality, the sheer fatuity of what they were doing. He was in a forest, and she was somewhere else, being hurt. The heavy shadow of an owl swept overhead, emitting on his behalf the shriek lodged in his throat. They’re dead. The sort of luck we need doesn’t happen. She’s dead. He was lost in the nothingness she would leave behind. His head pounded with the memory of voices that had told him to take her away from Germany.

  “A vehicle has been along here,” Busse said. “Recently. Look.” And there was a tire print in the snow, its serrations only just beginning to blur from flakes coming through the canopy of branches overhead.

  God, if you let me get her back ...Let me get her back. Help me, Lord, to use what knowledge I have to get her back. Compared to her, Germany was dust that he’d shake from his heels,
and happy for the chance to do it.

  Busse was grabbing the flashlight out of his hand. “Hurry.” He went ahead at a jog, aiming the beam just before him so that light off the snow on the track reflected back on his lower legs, and Schmidt followed a gleaming pair of jackboots.

  A mile. Maybe more, maybe less. He was getting tired. They should have brought the car. Busse kept up an unwavering pace. Fitful snow touched his face in icy dabs. She didn’t have a coat.

  After a while Schmidt ceased thinking. Fatigue and pounding jackboots became routine. When the jackboots stopped, he was cross. “What?”

  Busse had extinguished the light. Cloud came and went, letting the moon switch the scene in front of them on and off, like a flip-page peep show. The track had widened and spawned another one leading from it to the left. A wooden barrier intended to bar the way stood open, decorated with boards that continued along a barbed-wire fence stretching into the woods on either side. FORBIDDEN ENTRY, KEEP OUT, DANGER, ELECTRIC FENCE—posters with skulls and crossbones hung at regular intervals. More effective were the small corpses scattered untidily along its length—birds, a deer calf, a fox in midsnarl.

  Busse’s head went up. “Do you hear it?”

  Schmidt could hear only the pounding in his ears. He listened harder—there was the silence of the forest. And then, frail as the snow, a far-off tapping like a woodpecker, somewhere behind and to their left.

  “Woodpecker?”

  Busse of the Wandervogel shook his head. “Digging,” he said. He began following the track to the left, past the open barrier, having to stop every now and then when the moon went in and put them in an avenue of blackness.

  The smell of pine was becoming laced with something sourer. They bring them down here, Schmidt thought. The dead and the soon-to-be-dead are brought down here.

  The regular hit of a pick crunching into hard earth was recognizable now, the familiar sound of war when men dug trenches. And graves.

  Somebody began playing the flute. Frail and sweet, it weaved in and out of the pick’s metronome like Pan playing to the dryads.

  Light ahead.

  The noise of the pick stopped. He’d heard them.

  But the fluting went on, unencumbered now. Not a flute, a voice.

  They moved forward until they were behind trees on the edge of a large clearing of packed earth. There was a hut on the far side. The Audi was parked ten yards off, facing away from them, engine running quietly, its headlights on full beam, illuminating a scene like a stage set. Four people stood on it, not one of them moving.

  A stormtrooper, waist-deep in a small trench, had shouldered his pick and was staring up at Esther and Anna, who stood above him, on the edge. At the other side of the trench, facing the two women across it, stood a big man in an SA officer’s uniform, pointing a revolver at them.

  Esther had her arms crossed on her breast, clutching her shoulders in an effort to keep warm, a pose that, curiously, gave her the appearance of someone who’d just stepped out into a chilly dawn to hear the birdsong.

  Anna was out of sight on the other side of Esther, but the voice was hers. The other three were listening to her.

  In a surge of gratitude, Schmidt thought, That’s what delayed him; he had to pick up one of his boys for a gravedigger.

  A peace descended on him and with it thankfulness that he’d been allowed to live for this—to have Hannelore’s murderer in his sights and at his mercy. The man hadn’t heard them; he stood like a statue, expressionless, the barrel of the revolver in his large hand pointing at the two women. Tall but not exceptionally tall, not fat, it was more an effect of mass, of concentrated muscle beneath the gray uniform.

  For Schmidt it was as if the two of them had been carrying on a correspondence, and here the anonymous letter writer stood, everything Schmidt had dreamed: big, blank-faced—and vulnerable.

  He nudged Busse beside him, whispering, “Shoot him in the leg.” He could still get the bastard back for trial.

  Busse nudged him in turn—with the Luger. “Move,” he said.

  With the gun in Schmidt’s back, they walked forward, past the Audi and onto the stage set of its lights.

  “Major Günsche?” asked Busse pleasantly. As the man turned, he shot him.

  Günsche dropped.

  Schmidt stumbled forward. Oh, Christ, not so quick, not so easy, not after all these years. Not at somebody else’s hand, my job.

  It was like a grief. The Minotaur lay on the edge of the pit, its eyes open and uncaring, not even knowing it was dead.

  Busse had come up behind him. “Join your friends, please,” he said. To the stormtrooper he said, “Keep digging. There are more to go in.”

  The stormtrooper was young. His cap hung down the back of his neck from its chin strap; his close-cropped, fair hair was shiny with sweat. He looked up at Busse with his mouth open, then at Günsche’s body, up again.

  “Dig,” Busse said. “I order you to dig.”

  The boy was used to orders—he raised the pick from his shoulder and brought it down, and the metronome started up again. Günsche’s revolver lay on the edge of the trench where it had fallen from his hand.

  “No,” Busse said.

  Schmidt stopped looking at it. Busse picked it up. “Join your friends, please.”

  Schmidt walked around the trench to the women, unbuttoning his coat and then his jacket. Esther smiled at him, closing her eyes, as if she’d been expecting him.

  “In a line,” Busse said.

  Schmidt positioned himself between the two women. He put his coat around Esther. “I’m sorry, sweetheart.”

  She took his hand.

  Anna was addressing Busse across the grave. “Have you come to kill me, too?”

  The stormtrooper stopped digging, looking at her. They all looked at her.

  “But I am explaining to that man there that I do not die,” Anna said, almost querulously, pointing to the body as if it had committed a breach of etiquette. “Not before, not in the House of Special Purpose, not all these years. Always they try to kill me, always I do not die.”

  Busse stared at her. Schmidt, with his jacket ready to put around her shoulders, couldn’t move.

  She was resuming a story she’d been telling. “Mama said it. She said, ‘You will not die, little one.’ But I did not believe her then. Only now, when I know. Then I was afraid the new men who come will kill us.. . . Some of them are Magyars, but all have been sent by the Cheka. We hate them worse than the other guards. Their leader, Yurovsky, he is Russian Jew, cold, cold man. My father says he is sinister but do not worry because friends smuggle news in to us that the Bolsheviks are weak from civil war. An American and British force has landed at Murmansk. We will be rescued.”

  Ekaterinburg. She was talking about Ekaterinburg.

  “It is a warm night when they come for us, I remember....July.... Yurovsky tell us to get dressed. You are being transferred. Get dressed. And I do not want to put on my bodice. No, Mama, it is so uncomfortable where Demidova has sewn the jewels in it, but Mama says, ‘Never mind, little one, you must.’ ”

  It was a pretty voice. Schmidt had mainly heard it using monosyllables, and none too graciously. In prolonged speech it was like a syrinx, fresh and tripping. His arm was touching hers, and he felt it shivering, but her eyes were directed calmly at Busse opposite, holding him as spellbound as the rest. She wasn’t seeing him; she was watching some other drama being played out in front of her. And making everyone else watch it with her.

  “So we go downstairs. Papa first, with his military cap on. He is carrying Alexei, who has not walked since the last attack. Alexei is sleepy and has his arms tight around Papa’s neck. We all follow. I have Jemmy in my arms.. . .” She blinked for a moment. “Do I tell you Jemmy is my spaniel?”

  The stormtrooper, still standing in the grave with the pick on his shoulder, nodded; yes, she’d told him. Busse gave a slow, wondering shake of his head.

  “Demidova is carrying the pillows
, one for Mama’s back, the other has more jewels sewn in it. We are taken to a room, a bit like a cellar but not a cellar. It is smelly. Wait, they say. Transport is coming. Papa says they must bring us chairs: ‘ The czarina should not have to stand while she waits.’ So they bring chairs, and Mama sits down. Papa lays little Alexei across two of the chairs and sits to hold him.”

  Anna unclasped her hands, to tap her mouth thoughtfully. “I get this right. I tell no one before. And you will see why I survive, why I survive always, no matter what you do. I, yes, I stand behind Mama’s chair, and Olga, Tatiana . . . yes, that’s right, all four of us girls in a line behind Mama. And Dr. Botkin and Trupp, they are to our left, I think. Kharitonov and Demidova stand together.”

  Anna smiled. “Demidova is clutching the pillow with the jewels, tight, so tight I think, Oh, no, they will suspect.”

  She stopped smiling, her eyes widening.

  “Yurovsky is coming back. Behind him come men with guns, all the guards, all with guns. Even then I think they are the guards for our journey. But Yurovsky says, ‘Your relatives have try to save you. Now we must shoot you.’ And he shoots Papa as he try to stand up, straight in the head. And then all is shooting, shooting and noisy.”

  Slowly, Anna’s hands went to her ears to cover them.

  “Mama falls forward ...plop, like that. I do not see what happen to Olga and Tatiana and Marie. The bullets hit my chest, and I fall back— oh, such pain; even still my breasts are marked with scars where the jewels push into my skin. But is Demidova I see, she is running around and screaming, and the bullets going puff into the pillow and feathers coming out, and they are chasing after, poking her with bayonets. And Jemmy is barking, and he stops, and it is quiet, but I think I hear Alexei

  moan once before it is quiet again.”

  It was quiet in the forest, too, except for the hum of the Audi’s engine.

  Anna took her hands from her ears; she held them out as if she were displaying stigmata. “So they kill me,” she said. “But I do not die. I do not die in the House of Special Purpose. What happened, I do not know. Maybe one of the guards still is loyal to us. Maybe he sees me alive and pushes me off the cart that takes my family away. When I am better, I am with Gypsies. They find the jewels, perhaps. They do not kill me either.”