Zoo Stationee

by David Downing

  Of course, McKinley’s suspicions would have made him doubly careful. Which meant there was a good chance he had hidden the letter. But where? If he hadn’t stashed it in his room, where could he have hidden it? Just about anywhere in Berlin, Russell thought, looking out at the Konigstrasse. McKinley had probably stolen an idea from one of the detective novels he read endlessly.

  He got off outside the Alexanderplatz branch of Wertheim and walked under the railway bridge and into the square itself. The station and another department store, Tietz, occupied the northern side, the huge drab mass of the police praesidium—the Alex, as all Berliners called it—the southern side. Russell walked past entrances 4, 3, and 2—the latter housing the morgue where McKinley’s body was presumably residing—and in through the doors of 1, the all-purpose entrance.

  The whole Berlin detective force, around 1,800 strong, worked out of this building, and Russell imagined some of them were still waiting for their offices to be discovered. He was gestured toward one of several staircases, and then spent about ten minutes pacing down a succession of identical-looking corridors in search of Room 456. The windows overlooking the inner courtyard were all barred, suggesting a penchant on the part of guests for throwing themselves out, which Russell found less than comforting. Eventually he was intercepted by a surprisingly helpful detective, who took him down the right flight of stairs and turned him into the right corridor.

  Kriminalinspektor Oehm’s office looked like a work in progress. There were files everywhere—piled on the desk, floor, windowsill, and filing cabinets. Oehm, a chubby man with a florid face, abundant fair hair and sharp-looking blue eyes, seemed unconcerned by the chaos, but his companion, a redhead with unusually pale skin, kept looking around himself in apparent disbelief. He was not introduced, but even without the telltale leather coat Russell would have assumed Gestapo.

  Oehm invited him to sit down. “We’ve been trying to contact you since yesterday morning,” he said.

  “I’ve been out of town,” Russell said.

  “So your fiancée told us.”

  Russell said nothing. He hoped Effi had behaved herself.

  “Where exactly were you?” the Gestapo man asked.

  “Poland. Cracow to be precise. I’m working on a series of articles on Germany’s neighbors,” he volunteered.

  “You know why we wish to talk to you?” Oehm said.

  “I assume it’s about Tyler McKinley.”

  “Correct. You were surprised by the news?”

  “That he committed suicide. Yes, I was.”

  Oehm shrugged. “He must have had his reasons.”

  “Perhaps. Are you certain he killed himself?”

  “Absolutely. There is no doubt. We have several witnesses. Reliable witnesses. A police officer, for one.”

  “Then he must have,” Russell agreed. He still couldn’t see why they—whoever, exactly, they were—had needed to kill McKinley, and he didn’t suppose he would ever find out. It didn’t much matter, really. His knowing certainly wouldn’t help McKinley.

  “There is one possible reason for his action,” Oehm said. “I do not wish to speak ill of the dead, but . . . well, we have good reason to believe that your friend had become involved with political elements hostile to the state, that he may have become part of a plot against the state involving forged official documents—documents, that is to say, which have been fabricated to create a misleading and slanderous impression of activities inside the Reich.”

  “What sort of activities?” Russell asked innocently.

  “That is not your concern,” the Gestapo man said.

  “And he wasn’t my friend,” Russell added. “I liked him, but we hardly ever saw each other for more than a chat on the stairs. A drink every month or so, perhaps. Nothing more.”

  “Ah. . . .”

  “And if he was involved in this plot, why would that lead him to kill himself?” Russell asked.

  “Perhaps it all got to be too much for him, and he couldn’t think of any other way out,” Oehm suggested.

  “He didn’t give you anything to keep for him?” the Gestapo man asked.

  “No, he didn’t.”

  “You are sure about that.”

  “One hundred percent.”

  The Gestapo man looked skeptical, but said nothing.

  “One more thing,” Oehm said. “Herr McKinley’s sister will be arriving in Berlin on Wednesday. To take the body home. . . .”

  “How’s she getting here so quickly?” Russell asked.

  “She is apparently flying across the Atlantic. The Americans have these new flying-boats—Clippers I believe they’re called—and though they’re not yet in public service, there are frequent trials. Proving flights, they call them. . . .”

  “Yes, yes,” the Gestapo man murmured, but Oehm ignored him.

  “I am a flyer myself,” he told Russell. “Weekends only, of course.”

  “We all need hobbies,” Russell agreed. “But how has McKinley’s sister wangled a flight on one these. . . .”

  “Clippers. I imagine Senator McKinley used his influence to get his niece a place on one of them.”

  “Senator McKinley?”

  “Tyler McKinley’s uncle.” Oehm noticed the surprise in Russell’s face. “You did not know his uncle was a US Senator?”

  “Like I said, we weren’t exactly friends.” He could understand why McKinley had kept quiet about it—the boy would have hated anyone thinking he owed anything to family connections. But he was amazed that none of his fellow American journalists had spilled the beans. They must have assumed Russell knew.

  “As I was saying,” Oehm continued, “his sister will arrange for the body to be sent home and collect her brother’s effects. I was hoping you could be here when we talk to her, as an interpreter and someone who knew her brother.”

  “I can do that.”

  “Her plane from Lisbon arrives around eleven. So, if you could be here at one?”

  “I will be. Is that all?”

  “Yes, Herr Russell, that is all.” Oehm smiled at him. The Gestapo man gave him the merest of nods.

  Russell retraced his steps to the main entrance. As he emerged into the open air he took a deep breath in and blew it out again. One thing was certain—they hadn’t found the letter.

  He crossed the square and walked into a café underneath the Stadtbahn tracks which he occasionally patronized. After ordering a couple of frankfurters and a kartoffelsalad he perched on a stool by the window, cleared a hole in the condensation, and looked out. No one had followed him in, but was anyone loitering outside? He couldn’t see anyone obvious, but that didn’t mean much. He would have to make sure by going through Tietz, pulling a variation of the same trick he and McKinley had pulled in the Neukölln KaDeWe. But it would have to look like an accident. He didn’t want them thinking he’d lost them on purpose.

  The food tasted bad, which was unusual. It was the taste in his mouth, Russell thought. Fear.

  He crossed the road and walked into Tietz, heading for the rank of telephone booths that he remembered outside the store’s ground floor tea room. Ensconced in the first booth, he looked back along the aisle he had just walked. No one looked furtive. He dialed Effi’s number.

  She answered on the second ring. “You’re back. I had the police. . . .”

  “I know. I’ve just come from the Alex. I’m sorry you got. . . .”

  “Oh, it was no problem. They didn’t break anything. I was just worried about you. Are you really upset? You didn’t know him that well, did you?”

  “No, I didn’t. I feel sad, though. He was a nice enough man.”

  “Are you coming over?”

  “Yes, but it’ll be a few hours. Say around six. I have to see someone.”

  “Okay.”

  “I’ll see you then.”

  “I love you.”

  “I love you, too.”

  He replaced the receiver and scanned the aisle again. Still nothing. A taxi, he decided. From this side of the station, where there were often only two or three waiting.

  He was in luck—there was only one. “Friedrichstrasse S
tation,” he told the driver, and watched through the rear window as they swung round beneath the railway and headed down Kaiser Wilhelmstrasse. There was no sign of pursuit. At Friedrichstrasse he hurried down the steps to the U-bahn platform, reaching it as a Grenzallee train pulled in. He stepped aboard, standing beside the doors until they closed, but no one else emerged through the platform gates.

  The train pulled out and he sunk into the nearest seat. Should he be waiting for darkness? he wondered. Or would that be even riskier? He had no real idea, and felt shaken by how important such a decision could be.

  Neukölln was the line’s penultimate stop. Russell climbed up to the street, where the loudspeakers were broadcasting Hitler’s long-awaited speech to the Reichstag. A small crowd had gathered around the one outside KaDeWe, faces overcast as the sky. The Führer’s tone was calm and reasonable, which suggested he was just warming up.

  Russell walked on, following a trail of street names familiar from the week before. It was a good thing he recognized these, because the area seemed utterly different by daylight, its workshops and factories bursting with noisy activity, its cobbled streets full of rumbling lorries. Most of the workplaces were broadcasting the speech to their employees, and Hitler’s words seeped out through doors and over walls, a promise here, a threat there, a piece of self-congratulation sandwiched in between. Stopping for a moment on a bridge across the Neukollner-Schiffahrtkanal, Russell heard fragments of the speech tossed around on the breeze, like the puffs of windstrewn smoke belching from the myriad chimneys.

  Schönlankerstrasse was empty, the block door wide open. He walked in and knocked on Theresa Jürissen’s door. There was no answer. He knocked again with the same result, and was wondering what to do when footsteps sounded on the stairs. It was her.

  Her face registered alarm, and then anger. Without speaking, she opened her door and gestured him in. Marietta was sitting exactly where she had been on his last visit, still drawing, still oblivious. “What do you want?” Theresa asked, the moment the door was closed behind her.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I know this is dangerous for you, but not coming might have been more dangerous.” He told her about McKinley’s death. “Could the police connect you?” he asked. “Did you ever write to him?”

  “No,” she said. “Never.”

  “What about the document you told us about?”

  “I sent it, but that’s all. I gave no name or address.”

  Russell sighed in relief. “When did you send it?”

  “Last week. Thursday afternoon.”

  McKinley had received it. He must have. Russell explained why he had asked. “They haven’t found it,” he told her. “He must have hidden it somewhere.”

  “There’s nothing to connect me,” she said. “Except you,” she added, the look of alarm back on her face.

  “They won’t hear about you from me,” Russell promised her, hoping he could live up to such an assurance.

  “Thank you,” she said doubtfully, as if she wasn’t that sure either. “And their secret will stay secret,” she added, as much to herself as to him.

  “Looks like it.”

  She nodded, her view of the world confirmed.

  “I’ll be going,” he said.

  “Let me make sure there’s no one about,” she cautioned him. A few moments later she returned. “It’s all clear.”

  Russell smiled goodbye at a closing door and began the long walk back to the center of Neukölln. The Führer was well into his stride now, each torrent of words reinforced by the sound of his fist hammering at the lectern. By the time Russell reached KaDeWe the listening crowd had spilled into the street, all eyes raised to the crackling loudspeaker, as if Hitler would emerge genie-like from the mesh, a head spouting venom on a shimmering tail.

  IT WAS DARK BY THE TIME he reached Effi’s flat. She was wearing a dress he hadn’t seen before, deep red with a black lace collar. And she wanted to eat out, at a Chinese restaurant which had opened a few weeks earlier at the Halensee end of the Ku’damm.

  “I’ve been learning my lines,” she announced as they walked downstairs. “Would you hear me later?”

  It was a peace offering, Russell realized. “Love to,” he told her.

  They walked through to the Ku’damm and took a westbound tram. The wide pavements were crowded with home-going workers, the restaurants and cinemas gearing up for the evening as the shops closed down. Alighting at Lehninerplatz they found the Chinese restaurant already filling up. “Goering eats here,” Effi said, as if in explanation.

  “He eats everywhere,” Russell said. “And this is on me,” he added.

  Effi gave him a look.

  “I’ve sold a lot of work lately,” he explained.

  They were shown to their table, which stood beneath a huge scroll of dragons. Russell picked up the menu, hoping it was in German, but needn’t have bothered.

  “Let me order,” Effi said.

  “Include beer,” Russell insisted. He was still feeling tense, he realized. And maybe still a little in shock. Sitting there, half-listening as Effi questioned the waiter, he found himself imagining McKinley’s death—the moment of falling, of realization. Of terror. “How was your weekend?” he asked.

  “Miserable. You know I hate going to parties on my own. All the women I know were lining up to ask if you’d left me—none of them asked whether I’d left you—and all the men were trying to work out how available I was, without actually asking. Every conversation was fraught with significance. Every dance was a means to an end. I couldn’t just be for a single moment. When I go to something like that with you, I can just enjoy myself.” She sighed. “Anyway, the party went to about six, so I got to bed about seven, and the Kripo started hammering on the door at about nine. So I wasn’t in a good mood. And I was upset for you too. I know you liked him, even if he was a bit Rin Tin Tin-like. And I could just see it too. Zoo Station gets so crowded on a Saturday evening.” She watched a tray of food go by, and sniffed at the passing aroma. “And Zarah’s such a misery as well. She’s convinced there’s something wrong with Lothar. I tell her she’s jumping to conclusions, that he’s probably just a slow learner. She was herself, according to Muti. But she’s convinced there’s something wrong. She’s made an appointment with a specialist.”

  “When for?” Russell asked.

  “Oh, I don’t know. Next week sometime. I think she said Monday. Why?”

  “Just wondered.” The arrival of their drinks gave Russell a few seconds to think. He couldn’t say anything, he realized. And he probably didn’t need to. Zarah’s husband Jens was a Party official, and Russell couldn’t believe the Nazis would start killing their own children. And if he did say anything to Effi, and she said something to Zarah, then he might end up in a Gestapo cellar trying to explain where he’d gotten his information from.

  “You look worried,” Effi said.

  “I’ve heard a few rumors, that’s all. Just journalist talk probably. The word is that the government’s thinking of tightening up the Law on the Prevention of Hereditary Diseases. Sanctioning mercy killing when the parents agree.”

  She gave him an angry look. “There’s nothing wrong with Lothar,” she said. “And even if there was, Zarah would never agree to. . . . I can’t believe you think. . . .”

  “I don’t. But Jens is a Nazi, after all. He believes in all this purification of the race nonsense.”

  Effi snorted. “Maybe he does. But if he tried to take Lothar away from Zarah she’d never forgive him. And he knows it.”

  “Okay.”

  “And there’s nothing wrong with Lothar,” she insisted once more.

  HE READ THE FÜHRER’S SPEECH next morning on his way home for a change of clothes. The editorials were calling it “a major contribution to world peace,” and the speech certainly seemed accommodating by Hitler’s standards. There were friendly references to Poland and the non-aggression pact between the two countries. There was a marked absence of attacks on the Soviet Union. Only one passage chilled Russell to the bone, and that concerned the Jews, who were only likely to start a war in Hitler’s fren
zied imagination. If they did, “the result would not be the Bolshevization of the earth and victory for the Jews but the annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe.” Russell wondered how the Wiesners felt reading that, even if Hitler was not speaking about physical annihilation. At least he hoped he wasn’t. He remembered Albert’s words in the Friedrichshain park: “They’ll just kill us. . . . Who’s going to stop them?”

  Frau Heidegger had listened to the speech and found only grounds for optimism. “There’ll be an agreement with the Poles,” she said. “Like the one with the Czechs at Munich. And then there’ll be nothing more to fight over.”