Children of Wrath

by Paul Grossman

  Gunther grabbed Willi by the collar. “I can’t swim!”

  “Never mind. We’re right offshore. Just hold my—” Willi couldn’t finish before they were dunked in ice-cold water.

  Amid a clatter of tearing planks and floating debris, Gunther’s grip grew implacable, his arms and legs, his whole torso, clenching like a gorilla on Willi’s back. Blazing terror seized Willi when he realized he couldn’t free his arms. The harder he tried, the harder Gunther clung to him. They were both going under.

  Gunther, don’t, Willi could only scream beneath the surface. We’re so close to shore. But no matter how loudly he tried to convey this, his head remained pushed down. He couldn’t breathe. His lungs were beginning to ache. He fought and raged, but Gunther was too terrified, and far too strong.

  He thought about the boys waiting to be rescued.

  And Vicki. What would she go through to lose both husband and son? He couldn’t do that to her.

  One more time. One more—an arm flailed underwater, free.

  He started punching, hard, like a jackhammer, but it didn’t stop the downward pressure. The exertion was depleting him. His lungs grew hotter, desperate to be filled. In another second, he knew, he’d have to gasp, suck in water, and die. One last frenzied effort, though, produced a sudden doubling over and the desired release of pressure. He’d located Gunther’s testicles. In a moment he was bursting through the surface, inhaling in a frenzy of rebirth.

  Gunther, though, was thrashing frantically only inches away. Unless he simply left him there to drown, Willi saw no choice but to knock him out with a hard blow to the nose. After dragging his big body cross-chest to the edge, and then by the arms up the embankment, he sat next to him in the weeds, dripping wet, shivering. Unable to fully catch his breath, as if in a dream, he dimly observed two red police boats race in from the west and spin themselves into position. Aiming at the warehouse with fixed machine guns, they opened fire. Simultaneously, a Reichswehr armored truck came rumbling down the street, mounted with artillery. When Willi saw the giant black vehicle halt and turn its cannon, his whole being shook from its torpor. They couldn’t do that. He had to stop them! Before he so much as lifted a leg, though, there was a terrific burst and the very earth trembled. The first floor of 146 Maybach Ufer began crumbling to dust.

  Along with Willi’s last shred of hope.

  He collapsed facedown, letting out a wail of agony.

  When the firefighters had the flames out, he was the first to enter the building with them. Room by room, they found no survivors. Just six charred bodies on the first floor and two more on the second. No children among them. When he realized Erich and Heinz must still be alive, Willi nearly passed out.

  An hour later, in the back of a Red Cross van with a blanket over his shoulders, he was alone, drinking coffee, Gunther already off to the hospital for observation. From all the equipment inside the warehouse, including a massive chemical-distillation apparatus, it had grown clear that they’d uncovered one of the largest illegal narcotics-manufacturing operations in Europe. Nothing to do with the Kinderfresser case, though. Wherever those two boys were, it hadn’t been here.

  “Inspektor.” It was Ruta, sticking her head in the truck, panting, she was so out of breath. “I hurried as fast as I could. The queerest boy came up to the office, wearing lipstick and mascara! He insisted he had to see you. Said I should get you to meet him on the double at the foot of Berolina. To tell you that they’d seen her again—the Shepherdess.”

  Thirty-one

  Willi’s clothes were barely dry as he leaped between streetcars and in front of trucks, practically over a baby carriage, face unshaven, hair uncombed. Not that he gave a damn what he looked like. Only one thought pounded in his brain, raged in his bloodstream. Impelling his legs. Those boys. Needing him.

  Far to the right, the clock on the Police Presidium sounded eleven fifteen, each chime, fingers on his throat. Straight ahead, towering over the rubble of the old Grand Hotel, big copper Berolina thrust her sword, readying for protective custody now in a halo of scaffolding. Since her arrival on the Alexanderplatz, she’d witnessed years of peace and war. Defeat. Revolution. Prosperity and depression. What pages of history might turn while she sat in a warehouse awaiting the New Alex? Willi could scarcely care.

  Kai at least was where he’d said he’d be—beneath her giant toes, gold earring dangling as he looked around intently. When he spotted Willi, he stamped out his cigarette and jerked a ring-laden finger in the direction of the streetcars.

  “The kids that saw her are over at the Linden Passage.”

  Streetcar? Willi hailed a cab. Obviously Kai had no idea about his son.

  He found out in the taxi.

  An enclosed shopping arcade that had seen better days, the Passage, with its grimy glass ceiling and many layers of cracked paint, attracted a backwash of sordid types to its array of “rare book” emporiums, “postcard” shops, and exhibits of “curiosities.” Its dingy corridors, warm at least in winter, were plying grounds for the youngest of Berlin’s myriad male prostitutes, the Doll Boys. Willi’s throat clenched when he saw them: nearly a dozen kids, ten, eleven, twelve years old, lined up outside the Anatomical Museum, all in some strange idea of a sailor’s suit with a cap and floppy tie, eyeing passersby for “trade.” How was it possible children were forced to survive this way? His chest hurt at the very sight of them. He wanted to rescue them all. But two boys needed him even more desperately.

  The ones who’d supposedly seen the Shepherdess, Milo and Dolf, had gone off, though, to turn some lunchtime “tricks.”

  Kai was furious. “I told them to wait.”

  “We all gotta eat,” a towheaded ten-year-old informed them.

  “Inspektor”—Kai’s blue eyes misted—“I’m so sorry for wasting your—”

  “Forget it.” Willi’s stomach twisted as he dug into his pocket and handed the newly named chief of the Red Apaches a five-mark note. “Just promise me, Kai, the minute they’re back—bring those kids to my office, okay? And don’t take a streetcar.”

  * * *

  At his desk, alone, leaning backward on his chair, the sensation of drowning overcame Willi. Of being dragged so far down he was going to explode. Down, down … he remembered how he’d nearly broken his neck this way, and as he pushed the chair back onto all fours, his body felt catapulted once more to the surface. Up, up … from his chest, through his throat, bursting from his mouth—a silent scream. Followed by a gush of anguish. How can I live without Erich? I’ll lose Vicki too. She’ll never forgive me. What are the bastards doing to those kids? Oh, God, if they’re hurting them …

  His teeth gritted as he clenched the chair. On the wall clock he saw it wasn’t yet noon. They could still be fine. Just scared to death. Those boys in Madga’s dungeon, he reminded himself, were making miraculous recoveries, though Lord knew the repercussions they’d suffer later on. He banged the desk, forcing himself to think. Think! He’d turned the city upside down looking for this fucking Tower.

  A lanky figure filled his doorway, top to bottom, shoulders hunched, head hung. When the chin lifted, Gunther’s eyes met Willi’s. Then the big kid stumbled into the office and dropped to his knees, a felled giant.

  “I faaaailed,” he let out in a protracted bray, his bony shoulders heaving. “I cracked under fire.”

  Willi took a deep breath. Not two hours ago he’d been locked in this kid’s death grip. Now he couldn’t dwell on it. Neither could Gunther. There wasn’t time.

  “It’s okay.” Willi put an arm around the shivering torso. “Listen to me, Gunther. Under circumstances like that, if you don’t crack, you’re not human. Thing is, after it’s over and you’re all cleaned up, you pull yourself together.”

  Gunther couldn’t manage. “I always thought I’d be so brave. But when that blood came spraying all over—I’d no idea it’d be that…”

  Willi took an even deeper breath. “It’s going to be okay, Gunther.” But he had to
get this kid on his feet. The clock was striking noon.

  “And then in the water, all I knew was I had to keep my head out. Please, forgive me. Please.”

  Willi finally couldn’t take another word. “For God’s sake, Gunther,” he said, loud enough for people outside the door to turn, “you’re killing me all over again.”

  When the clock chime finished at the same moment he did, a dead chasm of silence opened. Gunther looked at him, stunned. Willi’d never spoken to him like that, but his goodness had run dry. He was in too much pain himself, every minute a choking torture.

  “My son and my neighbor’s son are missing. Can you understand that? Are you going to help me find them? Because I don’t have time to baby you right now.”

  The kid pulled himself to his feet, wiping his eyes, his clothes every bit a mess as Willi’s.

  “Make yourself useful at least.” Willi winced at him. “Go have Ruta iron our jackets or something. Here, take mine.” He frantically started unbuttoning it, then slowed, feeling sorry suddenly, softening. “We can’t go around looking like we swam in a canal.”

  Gunther, sniffling, tried smiling.

  Before Willi could even get off his jacket, a powerful odor of whiskey washed through the room, followed by Fritz, who flew in, ripped off his cape, and tossed it at Gunther as if the kid were a valet. Gunther just stood there looking at it.

  “I’m such a moron.” Fritz crashed in a chair, his blue eyes swimming in a flood of alcohol. “For getting you in trouble like that with Vicki. Really. How awful of me. And of course now, I can’t even imagine what you must be going through. Poor Erich!” Clutching his heart, Fritz dug in his pocket and pulled out a cigarette case. “I’m just so grief-stricken I don’t know what to say.” He lit up.

  “Please, Fritz.”

  “I know; I know. Now’s not the time for my guilt.” Fritz exhaled understandingly, pulling tobacco from his tongue. “But, listen, I’m gonna make it up to you. I’m gonna help you find those kids, okay? You saved my ass at Passchendaele and Cambrai and Soissons and at Rheims and—”

  The name of each battle went off like a fuse in Willi’s head until he just exploded.

  “Would you shut the hell up?” He jumped to his feet and stared red-faced at his old war buddy. Fritz wasn’t as sloshed as he could get, but halfway. “You think I want to hear about Passchendaele and Cambrai? My son’s been in the hands of a psychopath for twenty hours. I’ve got to save him.”

  Seeing the expressions on both Fritz’s and Gunther’s faces, Willi told himself to take his own advice and shut up, but he couldn’t.

  “From the moment Erich was born”—his chest heaved—“Vicki and I did everything we could to see that he was nurtured and loved to grow up healthy, secure. And then in a matter of days, out of nowhere.” His voice cracked. “Such wounds. First the goddamn neighbors and now…” He swallowed. “Every second those boys are— Oh my God, if they’re even—”

  He fell to his desk, burying his head, seized by a fit of weeping, his whole body wracked with it, shoulders spasming, eyes and nose erupting. Every corpuscle trembling for his son.

  Outwardly, he blamed everyone except himself. But deep in his core he had no illusions where the fault lay. He always thrust himself up—in his own mind—as such a loving parent, inwardly criticizing people such as Otto’s brother-in-law for their warped expectations and soul-crushing cruelties. But if he really loved him so much, Erich would be safe now, wouldn’t he?

  A firm hand gripped his shoulder. Fritz hunched next to him.

  “Willi, in my own stupid way I’ve been trying to tell you—there’s this letter.”

  Fritz was pulling something from his jacket, waving it like a parent might a rattle.

  “You know my friend, the baroness—of course you do, she was at the Admirals-Palast that night we saw Josephine Baker—anyway, her sister is married to the director of the Prussian Academy of Science on Unter den Linden, a Dr. Siegfried Sonnenfeldt. At least six months ago—as I heard the story—this Sonnenfeldt received a letter from Moscow, from a Dr. Vyrzhikovsky, or something like that, director of the Soviet Academy of Scientists. Fellow claimed a colleague in Leningrad had knowledge of a German scientist, in Berlin, committing monstrous crimes. I just came from Sonnenfeldt now and he told me it was true. He forwarded Vyrzhikovsky’s cover letter in German along with the original Russian letter to a detective here at the Police Presidium months ago, but never heard back. Sonnenfeldt’s secretary, though, had made a copy of the cover letter—and let me borrow it.”

  Fritz pulled it from the envelope and read:

  Sehr geehrte Herr Dr. Sonnenfeldt—

  As a fellow scientist, I am passing on an urgent missive from my colleague, the esteemed head of the Physiological Department at the Institute of Experimental Medicine in Leningrad, which it is imperative you get to an appropriate police detective as soon as possible. As I know there’s no shortage of Russian émigrés there, I will not take the time to translate. Suffice it to say that, should the terrible claims made by this Doktor Spiegel at his tower in Berlin prove more than delusional, they would constitute a crime unprecedented in the annals of scientific history.

  “I don’t get it.” Willi was by now sitting up, wiping his face. “What’s this letter from Leningrad supposed to contain?”

  “Sonnenfeldt had no idea. It’s in Russian.”

  Willi sighed, ready to dismiss it all as another of Fritz’s drunken rants, only—the Tower.

  “Well, then, whom did Sonnenfeldt say he passed this letter on to here?”

  “You won’t believe it, Willi: Hans Freksa.”

  Willi threw his hands up. “Then God knows where it’s buried by now. There’re more records in this building than the National Archives.”

  “I’ll find it.” Gunther stepped up, flinging Fritz’s cape back to him. “If it came by mail, it had to have gone through Central Records, and it so happens I’m on rather good terms with one of the girls down there.”

  Fritz threw the cape over his shoulders and began buttoning it. “And if it’s in Russian, you’ll need a top translator. Madame Grzenskya—I’m certain you’ve met her at some of our parties—was former lady-in-waiting to the czarina.”

  Willi simply sat there thinking: great, guys. Use your masculine charms. Screw them till they scream if you must. Just get me what I need. Fast.

  He took a deep breath and watched them disappear.

  * * *

  A few minutes later when two kids appeared in the doorway, one thicker than the other, he practically flew from his desk, until he realized it wasn’t Heinz and Erich but the Doll Boys, Milo and Dolf, being pushed along by Kai. Wild-haired, almost feral-looking, with round, sharp eyes, they clearly were not happy about being here.

  “Satisfied you ruined our lunch?” The skinny one fearlessly sneered at Willi. “And me with a real millionaire on Motz Strasse until this one comes pounding at the door.”

  Willi couldn’t help but admire the kid’s spunk. And feeling sorry for him too, knowing no millionaires lived on Motz Strasse. He reached in his pocket anyway, getting the point. Kai stopped him.

  “He gets compensated before he undoes a button.” The chief smacked his subordinate’s head. “The way he was taught. Now tell him what happened, Dolf. Unless you don’t want the bitch to get caught.”

  Begrudgingly, Dolf seemed to acknowledge the point. “All right.” He shifted from foot to foot. “Here’s how it went, Inspektor. Me and Milo were coming back from our favorite bakery on Koch Strasse when all of a sudden this ice cream truck pulls up. We may be little, but we ain’t ignorant. We know what happened, and sure enough it’s the redhead behind the wheel, all right, with the bad skin, all dressed in white like we heard. Asks real sweet if we’d like some ice cream—free of charge—’cause she’s got to get rid of what she’s got left before she brings her truck back. ‘Screw you, bitch,’ Milo yells, then we both start screaming, ‘Child-Eater! Child-Eater!’

  “S
he speeds away, but there’s a delivery truck coming—so we grab rides on the running boards, clinging real close so she don’t spot us. After maybe ten blocks, though, the truck makes a left, so we gotta jump unless we want to lose her.”

  Willi by now couldn’t help wondering if he was the one being taken for a ride, if a couple of hungry kids here weren’t just on the make.

  “Luckily there’s a streetcar going the same direction, so we hop on her and ride between wagons—all the way to Landsberger Allee.”

  Willi straightened. Landsberger Allee. “And then?”

  “And then we lose her.”

  Lose her? Willi’s throat dried.

  Little Milo, though, shook his head. “I didn’t lose her. I saw where she went.”

  “Where, Milo? Where did she go?”

  “That big place with the walls, where they kill all the animals.”

  * * *

  “But this is from one of the most famous scientists in the world.” Madame Grzenskya removed the old-fashioned glasses from her rouged face. “The head of the Physiological Department at the Institute of Experimental Medicine in Leningrad is none other than Ivan Petrovich Pavlov.”

  Pavlov, Willi thought. The guy who used dogs in experiments.

  “Can you read it for us please, Madame…”

  Squinting as she held the jeweled glasses, then widening her eyes and squinting more, Grzenskya began with what she obviously took to be an appropriate dramatic flourish.

  “‘A most disturbing letter’”—she modulated her voice importantly—“‘arrived at my office earlier this week, which I quickly tossed in the fire.’” She reenacted. “‘A fate that befalls all unwelcome correspondence I receive—especially from so-called animal lovers. As if I am not an animal lover! I am a lover of the highest of all animals, and what I do, I do in service of him.’”

  Could no one, Willi thought, squirming in his chair—even a Nobel Prize winner—stick to the point?

  “‘Days after it went up in flame, however, this message continued to burn in my mind. I didn’t want to believe such a man could really be a scientist, but his detailed knowledge of my work made his expertise indisputable. He called himself Dr. Spiegel, gave no first name; the return address merely Tower Labs, Water Street, Berlin.’”