The spiritualist stood with his hands linked behind his back, not replying to Hessen but maintaining his theatrical silence.
Hessen approached the psychic and put his arm across his back. ‘Ringel has the ability to predict the future, which is extremely valuable, especially if you’re prone to the odd wager as I am.’
The spiritualist now spoke. ‘I have more than once foretold of events yet to occur.’
Hessen said, ‘My question to you is this: what should I do with this Jewess?’
‘This is the girl you told me about?’
‘Indeed she is.’
The clairvoyant approached Monika. His expression remained sombre, almost poised on mournful. He began to move his hands through the air, circling his fingers slowly around Monika’s head. She flinched a little. To her, the moment felt both frightening and utterly silly at the same time.
‘My feeling,’ Ringel replied after half-a-minute, ‘is that you should do whatever will bring about this girl’s safe return home. That, my dear friend, will bring about the best outcome for you too. Now if I may, I would like to say one thing in private to this young lady.’
‘You may,’ Hessen said, oddly compliant towards the spiritualist.
Ringel now walked behind Monika and gently cupped his hands to her ear. ‘Tell no one, but I am on your side.’
She glanced into his eyes.
‘I was once a Jew too,’ he whispered.
34
Early the next morning, Arno woke to the sound of a telephone ringing. He went along the hall of Käthe and Thomas’ apartment and got to the phone before anyone else might. It was Herr Goldstein with important news: they had decided to accept Arno’s offer of the painting. They had already informed the kidnappers, who had since contacted them with further instructions.
Arno told Monika’s father that it was the best decision. He ended the call quickly before either Thomas or his sister could hear. Without letting them know, he left their apartment and took a meandering route back to his own building, trying to lose the ghost that might or might not be following. He needed a change of clothes and a break from all this thinking.
It was only nine in the morning, but he drank a bottle of beer as he sat gazing out of his window. Sometime around mid-morning, he heard a tapping sound on his attic hatch. He looked up. It startled him to think that someone had been waiting for his return.
He thought about not answering. He took a swig of beer and swallowed silently.
The tapping came again. Something in its less-than-insistent rhythm told him it was not who he might expect. Curiosity took him to the hatch. He drew it back and was shocked to see the face of Erich Ostwald looking up at him.
There was no time for alarm. Arno asked the visitor up. Once inside, Erich made the heil salute, which Arno returned hastily. Erich was wearing his party uniform, a brown shirt, black tie and boots. He took off his cylindrical cap and loosened his tie. The two men stood in the middle of the attic floor. Erich looked pained, glancing around him as if he’d already forgotten his reason for coming.
‘Herr Ostwald,’ Arno started up. He’d always used Erich’s first name in the past, but with the Nazi stood inside his attic wearing his uniform, that no longer seemed appropriate. ‘I’m pleased to see the party is developing into a mighty machine. When the next elections come, we are sure too…’
‘Forget about all that,’ Erich interrupted. He was impatient, agitated. He rubbed his face. ‘I can’t stay for long.’
‘What is it?’
‘I’m still not sure if I should do this.’
A ray of sunlight came blazing through the attic window. Erich paced left and right, as if to avoid being caught by the light.
‘What?’ Arno repeated.
‘I came to tell you, I know about Monika. I know what she means to you and I know what you will do to help her.’
Arno stuttered a response. ‘I don’t know anybody by that name.’
‘Don’t bother lying to me. We don’t have time for that.’
Arno shook his head, unsure how to proceed.
Erich went on. ‘I know you’re not who you’re pretending to be. An art dealer?’ – He gave a disbelieving chuckle – ‘It’s not very likely, is it?’
Arno began to sense danger. Erich Ostwald had seen through him – or was this some sort of bluff? A test? He took a step back. Erich had the edgy look of someone who intended to make a point.
‘What do you want?’ Arno said, trying to sound confident.
‘The exchange for Monika is happening tomorrow night.’
‘I’m sorry, but I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
‘Admit it, damn it, the Jewish girl is important to you, isn’t she?’
Arno’s eyes flickered. He thought of the note he’d written to Monika. Had it been a risk too far? Had Erich seen it and now come to warn him off? Yet it hardly seemed enough to warrant a personal visit.
‘The night of the Bavarian dancers,’ Arno said. ‘I confess, she caught my eye.’
‘Don’t lie to me, damn it!’ Erich slapped the attic wall with the flat of his hand. ‘There’s no time for that.’
‘I don’t know what you want me to say,’ Arno cowered. He’d never seen Erich so agitated.
‘I know that you have a relationship with the girl. I also know you intend to offer a painting in place of the ransom.’
‘That’s not true,’ Arno protested.
Erich paused. He seemed to be unsure what to say next. He laid his cap on Arno’s bed and said eventually, ‘Arno, I know you’ve been working for the Prussian Police. Don’t try to deny it. There’s no point in trying to keep it a secret from me.’
Arno was dazzled by Erich’s words. He felt suddenly defeated, as if all he had been working to achieve was about to collapse around him. There was nothing to be said in response. He picked up his half-drunk bottle of beer, ready to drink from it, ready also to use it as a weapon if the moment required.
Erich spoke on, undeterred. ‘I’ve come to tell you that Hessen has accepted the offer of the painting, but he’s not happy about it. He wants the cash. It’s only his personal psychic who has persuaded him to accept the painting.’
‘Hessen has a psychic?’
‘It’s sounds irregular, but Hessen has a lot of faith in his closest associates. This man, named Ringel, he’s a performer. He does mind-reading tricks and tells people’s fortunes. He’s very popular with the party because they all think the future belongs to them. Ringel tells them what they want to hear.’
‘But what’s all this got to do with Monika?’
‘Simply that Hessen has massive debts and most of them are with Ringel.’
‘Hessen is in debt to his psychic?’
‘Exactly so. Ringel makes a small fortune from his shows and private séances. Hessen, on the other hand, has debts up to his eyeballs. Gambling, expensive clothing, his own personal racehorse. He comes from noble lineage, you see, and he likes to live the part. The trouble is, his eyes are bigger than his bank balance.’
‘Is that why Hessen took Monika in the first place, because he’s broke?’
‘Exactly so. He’s an anti-Semite of the worst kind – hateful and opportunistic.’
‘I still don’t understand how she got there.’
‘The day the police approached you, they also persuaded her to go with them. They intentionally separated you both in order to recruit you. The way they saw it, if they could find a motivation, something to galvanise you, you’d be more willing to work for them. Except that they had an additional purpose for Monika – at least one of them did. The woman, Hannah Baumer, she handed Monika over to Hessen.’
‘Hannah Baumer is working for the party?’
‘There are plenty who work for both – when the opportunity suits. Hannah Baumer is just one of many. She was the one who took Monika.’
Arno began to feel the atmosphere shifting. Erich was revealing more than he expected. It didn’t make any
sense. ‘How do you know all this?’ Arno asked.
Erich’s eyes shifted, first to the bottle of beer in Arno’s hand, then to the army of empty bottles still languishing in the corner of the room. What was he thinking?
‘Who do you think I am?’ Erich asked a moment later.
‘I don’t know – I mean – I’m not sure.’
‘A party member? A Nazi? Is that what you see?’
‘Yes. You’re wearing the uniform.’
‘The uniform? I may wear a uniform but it doesn’t fit me. I’m still your old friend. And the journey you have been on, I have taken it before you. I’m not with the party any longer. I haven’t been for two years. I’m an informant now. I’ve been working to report on Hannah Baumer and anyone else who is exploiting their position in the police.’
‘You’re not a party member?’ Arno said. ‘Are you telling me you’re working for the same people as me?’
‘I’m watching the likes of Hannah Baumer, so the answer is yes and no.’
‘But I thought you were in charge of Vendetta.’
‘Vendetta? No-one is in charge of. Vendetta is a ghost. Vendetta is a silhouette.’
‘What do you mean?’
Erich paced in a circle, talking as he unravelled his explanation. ‘Vendetta is an invention by the upper ranks of the party. All I have been doing is to put my weight behind it. That’s been my means of establishing a role in the party.’
‘Then what is Vendetta?’
‘There’s plenty of dissatisfaction in the SA. It stirs and seethes underneath everything. The party runs on that energy. Vendetta is a way of keeping it in check. Despite their optimism, life isn’t easy for these men. Half of them are out or work. The other half are rampant. They have a revolutionary mood about them and they’re growing restless with all the political games. It’s too slow-moving for them. They’re afraid the Communists will beat them to the Reichstag. The whole point of Vendetta is to appease their restlessness. Hitler decided long ago that the ballot-box is the only way to real power, but a lot of men don’t agree with him.’
‘So Vendetta is a foil?’
‘There’s no threat from Vendetta. Not for the Reichstag at least. All the work that goes into it is simply to pretend that it exists.’
‘Then why are the police still worried about it?’
‘It suits the party to have the threat out there, alive, as it were. As for me, I could have let the cat out of the bag, but then my position would be in danger if I did.’
‘But you’re telling me now.’
‘I have a feeling my position in the party will be coming to an end soon. It’s the right time for me to pass on what I know. Besides, you are dear to me. I haven’t forgotten how we worked together those few years ago. And if I can help you protect Monika, then I will.’
Arno nodded. He looked at Erich warmly. He suddenly wanted to grasp and embrace him.
‘I must go now,’ Erich said, ‘I hope it wasn’t a mistake coming here.’ Then, as he picked up his cap and fixed it on his head, he said, ‘Just make sure you are there tomorrow night. Hessen will need all the persuasion we can give him.’
35
It was Friday night. Arno left his attic at seven o’clock and traversed the city on foot. The evening around him seemed to be brewing with a trembling excitement. He made his way the short distance to Kreuzberg, where the bars were dingy and the prostitutes seemed bound to the streets like shackled slaves. As he approached the elevated U-Bahn Station, he saw a loan figure stood beneath a street lamp smoking a cigarette, under the shadowy eaves of the iron structure.
Arno hung back, not sure if or how to approach. Then the stranger tossed his cigarette onto the cobbled ground and moved away into the city. For a moment the station was deserted. The archways and iron girders that held the track above the ground led off in both directions as far as the eye could see. Arno kept to the shadows of a doorway beneath a nearby apartment block and waited for a signal. A train came along the elevated track and slowed as it entered the station, like an animal burrowing into earth. A few moments later, a trickle of passengers came down the stairway and spread out into the night, like pearls dropped onto a floor, rolling away in every direction. Across the street, a small baroque-style clock tower told the time: it was ten minutes before eight.
Arno had risen early, not long after dawn, and made his way to Lassner’s gallery. The Caravaggio painting, stored there for safekeeping all week, had to be handed over to the Goldsteins in preparation for the exchange. Lassner had received word and prepared the painting by wrapping it in a bundle of white sheets.
Arno took the painting and transported it to a corner of the Tiergarten. He’d taken care not to have any direct contact with Monika’s parents since he spoke to them last. As agreed, he left the object beneath a thicket of witch hazel, just off the main thoroughfare of the park, under the watchful eye of a withered, half-dead birch tree. A nearby fountain with a statue of Apollo marked the spot. The Goldsteins would send someone to collect the package at exactly nine o’clock in the morning. Arno left the park from the opposite entrance he had entered, and sure he had not been seen, went to a hotel restaurant to buy himself breakfast.
Over his plate of ham and sweet breads, he took a moment to track down his thoughts. Almost without meaning to, just as a boat gets caught on an irresistible current, his mind tacked back to the same image, time after time. He saw the hotel room from just two weeks before, where he and Monika lay together in their blissful cocoon, a den of ignorance from which they would soon be snatched. He hadn’t any means of judging the course of things since then, except to admit that without the thought of reuniting with her, his resolve may have crumbled away a long time ago.
Stood now with his shoulder pressed to the grimy upright of a doorway with the U-Bahn station ahead of him, his eyes looked left and right. Suddenly he felt a hand reach up and squeeze his left shoulder. He turned to find Erich pressed into the same doorway next to him. In a hushed voice, his friend said, ‘Follow me.’
The two men walked across the open concourse of the road junction where some eight streets fed off in all directions. They passed over a lattice of tram lines and beneath the dingy umbrella of the raised-up station. On the other side of the construction, a small metal door was ajar. Erich went first, leading Arno along a short passageway and into a room with a low ceiling. Two bulbs lit a square room, which was furnished with nothing more than a metal table and a rickety bench. Hessen was stood on the far side of the table, and beside him, two SA soldiers. Arno scoured the room for Monika. At first, he couldn’t see her anywhere, not until his eyes accustomed to the moon-white glare of the ceiling lights, at which her form appeared like an ominous black silhouette in the opposite corner. She was dressed all in black and had a shawl covering most of her head. He caught sight of the whites of her eyes and tried for as long as possible to hold her gaze – long enough, he hoped, to send her a private signal of his love.
Hessen now addressed the room with its six inhabitants present. His message was short and perfunctory. ‘Here it comes at last. Let us remain diligent in our purpose. Mistakes will be punished.’
Erich beckoned one of the Brownshirts to follow him and gestured for Arno to come too. As they returned along the corridor, Arno could hear a passing train grinding and squealing on its rails overhead. They emerged onto the street, at which Arno located the diminutive clock tower and read the time to be exactly eight. The passing train wobbled into the distance until there was silence all around. All he could hear was the faint strumming of a Spanish guitar in some apartment somewhere far-off.
Within the next minute, a pair of car headlamps came into view, approaching the junction at a steady pace. Travelling along the bullet-straight avenue of Skalitzer Strasse, the car seemed to take an interminable amount of time to reach them. Then, as it came closer, Arno could see one of the doors open and the edges of an object being probed into the outside air. Its edges were straight with round
ed corners: he knew it was the suitcase with the Caravaggio painting inside.
The car began to slow just a fraction and visibly lean towards the street’s edge. The suitcase was now extended almost entirely out of the door, and with an extra nudge, toppled from the ledge of the car. It tumbled over once, then skidded to a halt. The car drove on. Whoever was inside it remained invisible.
The Brownshirt stepped forward and grabbed the suitcase by its handle. Without pausing, the three men marched back through the doorway. Arno was last among them. He took the chance to glance behind him and watch the taillights of the motorcar continue along the street. In the room, the suitcase was lifted onto the metal table and its fasteners clicked open. The Brownshirt was told to stand outside as a lookout while the men inside examined the ransom package.
Inside the suitcase, the painting was still swaddled in its wrapping of bedsheets. There was a pause. Finally, Arno took it upon himself to step forward and examine the delivery. He unwrapped the layering of sheets and eventually came to the canvas inside. It lay face-down as he drew back the last cloth covering. When he turned the canvas over, he was astonished to see that the painting before him was not the Caravaggio he had expected but a different picture altogether. He paused in horror and let the image in front of him filter down through his comprehension.
He looked up at Erich, then at Hessen. He was suddenly lost in confusion. Without the Caravaggio, he had no clue what to do next.
The men around him waited for his response. He looked down at the painting again and tried to place it. Was it another fake sent over by the forger? Possibly, but why? It was the last thing he expected – or wanted.
‘Well?’ Hessen said.
Arno said nothing. His throat constricted like a fist.
Just then, he realised he’d seen the image before.
The painting was, he recognised, the prize possession of Mattias Lassnar, the very same work of art that Lassner had promised to set aside for his own retirement.
Vanished in Berlin: Kidnap suspense mystery set in 1930s Berlin (Berlin Tales Book 2) Page 18