He couldn’t just sit there doing nothing. He couldn’t let the morning pass without attempting to find her, at least to know if she was okay. He went from his room out into the corridor where the walls glowed golden with the rising sun. At first, he thought he could simply find the room where Monika was being kept, but with no bearings inside the building he had little clue where to begin. By guesswork, he was able to make his way back to the hall where the Bavarian party had taken place and then through the entrance where they’d brought Monika. Ahead of him ran a long corridor lined with doors on both sides. If he tried the handle of every single one, sooner or later he might find her, but there was more chance of waking a tired Nazi and getting pistol-whipped with that strategy, so he decided against making his presence known.
He went along the corridor, stepping slowly and lightly, trying to keep the floorboards from creaking. Every time he put his foot down, the board he was treading on or else the board he was lifting from gave a low whining sound. He imagined the brown-shirted men asleep behind each of the doors, deeply submerged in their drunken dreams, snoring, snuffling and turning over in their bedsheets as the floorboards half-woke them. Like a row of toy soldiers being turned over by a child.
Arno was glad to be awake even if he felt as sick as he did. With the new light of dawn, and being the first one in the building to wake, he felt like he had advantage on his side. The simple question was: where were they keeping Monika?
It was the oddest sort of building. So many doors, most of them without numbers or any other indication of what they were being used for. At the end of the corridor, he came to a stairway. He chose to go up. As he went, he felt a desperate urge to call out. If Monika could hear him she would surely respond.
At the top of the stairs, he came to a small landing narrowly squeezed with five doors. One was a cupboard with a boiler inside. Another was a storeroom with an enormous chest of drawers, several industrial-sized bags of flour and about twenty trays of eggs stacked into piles. A lancet-shaped window gave a view over an inner courtyard, above which the sky was milky-blue with light.
Back on the landing, with only the descending staircase to return down, he suddenly realised he was not alone. The same moaning floorboards he had walked a few moments before were making the same groans. Then he heard footsteps coming up the stairs towards him.
He thought about hiding in the storeroom. He even thought he could fit into one of the drawers of the big chest. But there was no use in it. His only option was to pretend he was lost.
He went back to the top of the staircase and looked down. To his relief, it was the old maid coming towards him. She was carrying a stack of plates cleaned up from the party the night before. She didn’t look up, she simply remained absorbed in transporting her ceramic cargo. When she reached the top, Arno put out his hands and offered to take the plates from her. Almost unconsciously, barely recognising his presence, she handed the plates over, then looked up and caught his eye.
‘I need to know which room the girl is in,’ he said immediately.
The woman looked at him vacantly, her eyes never once blinking. He saw that her blindness was confined to just one eye, which was clouded and warped like a glass marble.
He said again, ‘Can you tell me which room the girl is staying in? There is a Jewish girl being kept here. Which room is it?’
The woman attempted to squeeze past him on the landing; he realised she was leading him to somewhere so he could set down the plates. Eventually she turned and spoke. ‘It’s none of my business which room she is in. I don’t see why it’s any of your business either.’
Arno realised he was petitioning her too desperately. He let his body relax, slouched a little and gave a smile. ‘I’m just someone who likes a pretty girl,’ he said, trying to sound indifferent, playing the cad. ‘Now, why don’t you tell me which room she is in, so I can pay her a compliment.’
The woman shook her head and began to sort the white plates into smaller piles.
‘It’s very important that I speak to her,’ Arno said.
The woman said nothing.
‘What’s the matter with you?’ he said. ‘Don’t you realise you’re supposed to do as you’re told? Don’t you realise I’m more important than you?’
The woman paused, shook her head, then turned to face him. ‘Be serious,’ she said. ‘You are just being silly now. You’re not even one of them. I can tell by the way you’re sneaking about. They wouldn’t do that. Why are you up here, at this time in the morning?’
Arno found himself lost for words. He felt like he wanted to strangle the old woman; another part of him wanted to put his hands together in prayer and apologise.
‘Then perhaps you could give her a message,’ he said rather desperately. ‘Let me write something down. Would you give it to her?’
‘Probably,’ she said. ‘That girl is not to be toyed with, mind you. Do you understand?’
‘I would never do that,’ Arno said. ‘Never.’
As the woman tidied around the kitchen, he found a scrap of paper and hurriedly wrote out a note. It was a coded attempt at reassurance, written in the guise of a romantic admission.
Dear girl,
Have we met before? In a dream or a hotel perhaps? Then it was a more honest time. If the rest of them teased you, I wanted to protect you. Please realise, I cannot express myself fully in just a few words. Only to say, art and life meet in your aspect.
Yours,
A familiar admirer
He folded the note in two, and then in two again. He gave the slip of paper to the maid, knowing perfectly well that it would be read, certainly by the old lady and probably by several Nazis too. He hoped they would tease him for it; if they did, then he knew his coded words had gone undetected.
31
Tired yet renewed, Arno accepted the offer of a car back to the centre of Berlin. He went immediately to a telephone booth at the Adlon Hotel and rang the Goldstein household. A housemaid took a message: they should meet him at Café Bauer on Friedrichstrasse at two o’clock that afternoon. He had important news of Monika.
At Café Bauer, Arno found a table and waited with his eyes fixed on the entrance. He smoked half a cigarette but stubbed it out because it was making him feel sick. He smiled to himself – what a state he was in! Always with the Goldsteins, he managed to turn up looking like a shipwreck.
A waiter approached. Arno feared he was about to be ejected from the premises as he had been before. Instead, the waiter, apparently recognising a patron, politely took an order for a drink and shuffled off with an obedient nod.
The Goldsteins were late. What he planned to say to them when they arrived he had no idea – it was a question he would worry about when the moment came. His only intention was to convince them not to pay the ransom or do anything that involved the police. He felt sure he could get Monika safely home. Exactly how and when, that would all depend.
It was quarter-past the hour. He kept an eye out for any SA brutes or anyone who might have cause to follow him. He’d initially thought it was safer to meet in public rather than go directly to the Goldstein house. But now he was here, he realised he was just as exposed, if not more so. And why had he come to the same café as Hessen frequented? What stupidity! Still – he reassured himself – this was the way he did things. Courage and stupidity were only a fine-line apart, like brothers-in-arms. He retrieved his stubbed-out cigarette from the ashtray and lit it again.
At the same moment, he saw Herr and Frau Goldstein arrive through the entrance, dipping their heads beneath the heavy green curtain and looking around furtively. Their faces carried the grave look of prolonged worry and their bodies had a stooping gait as if ten years had passed.
Arno stood up to and gave a discreet wave to bring them over. The couple wove slowly through the maze of chairs towards him. What were they expecting from him? He suddenly realised he better have something significant to tell them, otherwise they may never trust him again.
/> ‘You have news?’ Herr Goldstein said cautiously as he pulled out a chair for his wife to sit on. ‘May I ask: how?’
‘You remember I said I had links with the secret police?’ Arno replied, struggling to remember the story he had told them before.
‘So you have information directly from them?’ Herr Goldstein sat down. With a flick of his hand, he brought over a nearby waiter and ordered two coffees. He was in a more robust state than Arno had interpreted.
‘I’m certain I know where Monika is,’ Arno said, trying to get to the heart of things.
Herr Goldstein remained expressionless. Frau Goldstein bowed her head a little, perhaps afraid of what Arno was going to say next.
How odd, Arno suddenly thought, that he should be sat in this café again, at almost the exact same table where he met his sister several days before, with his words once again urging the couple opposite to the edge of their seats.
And as with that conversation, he spoke now in a splurge of truths and falsehoods.
‘She’s being kept in a warehouse on the outskirts of the city. Just as you thought, she was taken by a gang of criminals.’
Frau Goldstein responded with a tiny moan of agony.
‘Is she healthy?’ her husband said. ‘Please tell us she is well.’
‘Yes, she is alive and well, I believe. The police know where she is, but they are not willing to do anything until they are ready.’
‘Ready for what?’
‘They have a separate operation going on. It’s an investigation into a plot to overthrow the government. They can’t jeopardise the investigation at such a sensitive stage.’
Herr and Frau Goldstein swapped glances. ‘What operation? Why would it have anything do with Monika?’
Arno felt his throat going dry. Already his lies had taken him into a cul-de-sac. What is it they say about telling the truth? That you don’t have to remember anything if you stick to the facts.
‘What is our daughter involved with?’ Monika’s mother said.
He searched around for an explanation, one that didn’t involve himself. ‘The police believe that the kidnappers and the political agitators are one and the same. They think Monika was a chance opportunity. The criminals picked her up – somewhere – at random – and now they want to exploit the situation.’
This, at least, was the closet thing to a truth he’d said all afternoon.
‘They’ve told us where they want the money dropped,’ Frau Goldstein said, glancing to her husband for permission to offer the information.
‘You’ve had another letter?’
‘It was a telephone call. It came yesterday,’ Herr Goldstein confirmed.
‘Where did they say?’
‘In Kreuzberg. Where the elevated train passes over Wiener Strasse.’
‘Do you mean at Kottbusser Tor, where the station sits above the road?’
‘I believe so.’ Herr Goldstein began rubbing the back of his knuckles with this thumb. It was obvious that Monika’s father was uncomfortable with sharing too much information.
Arno nodded. Kottbusser Tor was an overground station raised up on stilts. It was only a short walk from his home at Hallesches. The various roads that met at the intersection passed through the rail arches beneath Kottbusser. He tried to work out why Hessen would want to arrange the drop-off point there, of all places in the city. Then it struck him. They could bring Monika by train from either east or west. And there were at least four roads that led off the junction if they used a motorcar. If memory served him, there was also a tram line, as well a forest of iron archways to disappear into. And if they needed more options, the Landwehr Canal was only a stone’s throw away. In consideration, it was a perfect location to make an exchange like that. It could happen in an instant, with the perpetrators able to vanish in ten different directions all at once.
‘When will it take place?’ Arno asked.
Herr Goldstein continued to show reluctance. ‘Must we tell you everything? My understanding was that you brought us here because you knew something.’
‘You’re under no obligation to tell me anything,’ Arno said. ‘But I believe I have a way of getting Monika back. Except, I must know all the details if I’m going to help you.’
‘Eight o’clock on Friday evening,’ Herr Goldstein said abruptly. ‘As the second letter said, they want the money paid in used one-hundred mark notes. It should be delivered by me, alone, in a car going exactly twenty kilometres-per-hour. I must drive on for half-a-mile, then turn around and return. Monika will be waiting for me to pick up. That’s what the letter said.’
‘We have arranged to borrow a car from a family acquaintance,’ Frau Goldstein said. ‘The letter stated it must be brown, so we are following the instructions.’
‘So you’re going to pay the money?’
‘What choice do we have?’
‘Can you afford it?’
‘If we beg and borrow, we can raise nearly half.’
‘Only half?’
‘We hope that will be enough. It will ruin us, but that cannot be worse than seeing our daughter harmed.’
Arno grew worried. Hessen was unlikely to accept half. He might even interpret it as an insult. ‘Whatever you do, don’t pay the ransom,’ he said eagerly. ‘Don’t pay a single mark. Even if Monika is returned, which you cannot be sure of, you will have nothing left afterwards. Don’t pay it. I have an alternative plan that will cost you nothing.’
‘Your promises are bold,’ Herr Goldstein said, interlinking his fingers. He’d just taken a sip of the creamy coffee, leaving a pencil line of white on his top lip, which he licked away discreetly. ‘But I fear they are meaningless. Why should we believe you? You’ve really told us nothing today, and in return, we have given you everything we have. It’s time for us to be leaving now. Please, young man, do not contact us again.’
Herr Goldstein looked at his wife, and between them they seemed to come to an agreement.
Arno realised he had to say something concrete and meaningful to keep them in their seats. It was only half an idea, but it was all he had.
‘I have an object in my possession that is worth twice what has been asked in the ransom. I would be willing to offer it as the payment. The kidnappers can do what they want with it – sell it, auction it – whatever they choose. I promise, Monika will be returned.’
‘An object?’
‘A painting. A very rare and valuable painting. It is mine to do as I wish.’
‘A painting? Why would you do that?’
‘Because to me the object is meaningless. Whereas Monika is very important. I can put it to good use.’
‘No. The kidnappers asked for money. They asked specifically for cash. Why would they accept a painting? It makes no sense.’
‘I believe they will accept it. I can persuade them – I mean, my contacts can persuade them. The painting is worth double. That should be reason enough.’
‘Where, may I ask, did you lay your hands on a rare painting?’
‘I am – well – let me say – a dealer in art. My uncle was a collector. A minor collector, but he introduced me to the field. It’s only for the money, you must understand. I’m not an art lover. Precious objects come to me without much of an outlay on my part. That is the benefit of having family connections and a little expertise.’
‘An art dealer?’ Herr Goldstein seemed barely convinced. ‘I thought you were studying? Mathematics and chemistry you told us.’
‘Quite so. Although I have changed. I am now studying the history of art in order to aid my collecting.’
‘No,’ Herr Goldstein said, ‘it’s too far-fetched. It’s not credible.’
Arno resorted to his speech about the painting’s provenance, listing the roll call of names, Cardinal di Ripetta, Guido Reni from the Bolognese School, Francesco Savelli and the Brigandi family. ‘Then finally, in recent months, the painting came into my possession.’
The Goldsteins took a moment to gaze at one a
nother. Arno watched them. He was impressed with the way they could look at each other for so long – it seemed like several minutes – without saying anything, apparently reading one another’s thoughts.
‘We will consider it,’ Herr Goldstein eventually announced, impressed with Arno’s description. ‘Today is Wednesday. We have until Friday evening to organise the payment. Where can you be reached?’
‘I have no telephone, but I will be staying with my sister. They have a line.’ Arno called a waiter over and asked for a pen and paper. He noted down the telephone number for Käthe and Thomas’ apartment.
Herr Goldstein pressed the paper in two and gave it to his wife, who slipped it into her purse. Within thirty seconds, Monika’s parents had left Café Bauer and vanished into the city.
For a while, Arno sat by himself. He finished Frau Goldstein’s coffee, of which she hadn’t touched a drop. In that instant, he was consumed by a sensation of great self-awareness, an intense feeling of self-possession, as if all the facts he could say about himself and all the circumstances that had convened to bring him to Café Bauer were at his fingertips, ready to be understood. Few thoughts had ever seemed so evident as that thought: that he was a free agent, able to do and say as he pleased, and nobody should ever have control over him again.
As he stepped out from the cool shadows of the café, he couldn’t help but smile to himself. He stopped for a moment and looked down along the thoroughfare. The air was fresh and smooth like white cotton, punctuated by swirling birds that swooped to land on high-up balconies. A chaotic scene of horse-carts and motorcars, market-stalls and businessmen spread out all the way up the street, all of them oblivious to one another, all of them locked into their own private concerns and obsessions. These people had no idea what was going on. They were so ignorant, in a way that they didn’t even understand.
He took out his packet of Trommler Gold cigarettes and lodged one in his mouth, then trotted down the steps to immerse himself in the town. For three-quarters of an hour he walked, not noticing the weight of his duty – to Monika, to her parents, to himself – not thinking either of his ultimate destination at Wiener Strasse, but enjoying himself as strangers are able to do, gazing onto the world and smiling at people with the thought that his smile could improve their lives. With the present turn of events, his task stretched before him with interminable excitement and a sort of lush horror all rolled into one. He knew that if he could fulfill this assignment, broker the transaction according to the terms he had designed, then his own reputation would soar to extraordinary heights. He was overcome with a heady sense of power, coloured by a lyrical chime of pleasure. He was going to make this happen, and once and for all he would show the world what he truly was.
Vanished in Berlin: Kidnap suspense mystery set in 1930s Berlin (Berlin Tales Book 2) Page 16