by Phillip Rock
“Is it proper for a lady to ask a man to dance?”
“I’m not sure,” he said. “You could ask and see what happens.”
“Very well, I shall. May I have this dance, Herr Rilke?”
“Only if you call me Martin.”
“Very well, Martin.”
He set his glass on the table and took her hand. “It will be a pleasure—at least for me. I have to warn you, I’m not as good a dancer as your last partner.”
“Kurt? Oh, he’s not very good. His lips move when he dances. He counts the cadence—one-two-three, one-two-three. I don’t like to dance with Kurt at all—although all the girls are mad about him. He’s very handsome, but he knows it. He’s very conceited. Don’t you hate conceited people, Herr—Martin?”
“Yes.” He held her stiffly, unwilling to press her body against his own. She was aware of his reluctance.
“You can hold me closer. It’s allowed these days.”
“Sorry. I’m not used to dancing.”
“You’re doing very nicely. You simply need to relax more.”
He found that difficult to do. He was thinking of the first time he had danced with Ivy—in London—Ivy in her nurse’s uniform of blue and red. The music had been a tango and he had held her tightly, her body fitting so neatly against him. He had thought it miraculous at the time, as though God had made them for each other. Two pieces of the same entity.
“That’s better,” she said. “And you lied. You’re very good.”
“I think you’re just being polite. How old are you, Amelia? Eighteen?”
“I’ll be nineteen in a short while.”
“Going to school?”
“I was at a finishing school in Zürich, but I hated it. All of the girls were snobs. What I really want to do is go to Heidelberg or the Sorbonne and study chemistry, but Father refuses to send me. He’s terribly old-fashioned. To Father, a good education for a girl consists of learning to play the piano—but not too well—and learning to sew and embroider—very well.”
The music ended and then swung into a fast two-step. Martin smiled at her in apology. “That’s a bit more than I can manage.”
“Then we shall sit this one out. I wanted the chance to talk to you anyway. Would you get me a glass of punch? We can talk on the balcony.”
She was waiting on the balcony, leaning against the stone balustrade and gazing into the garden below. He handed her the glass of punch.
“Thank you very much.” She looked at him somberly. “I was deeply touched by your concern for Father’s safety. How brave of you to go on that adventure.”
“It was hardly an adventure, Amelia. Merely a bus ride at high noon.”
“I disagree. Anything could happen in Berlin these days.”
“That’s really my point, but your father doesn’t see it quite the same way.”
“But he’s so used to threats. If he reacted strongly to every one of them, he would spend his days hiding in his room behind armed guards and machine guns.”
“He could at least have bodyguards.”
“How many of them? One or a hundred? Besides, he feels that bodyguards would only give satisfaction to his enemies by offering visible proof that he’s afraid of them. He’s not afraid. He has only contempt for those who consider him a traitor to the Volk. But neither is he foolish. Leon, Father’s driver, was a soldier and keeps a revolver under the front seat—and the police follow Papa in Berlin and Weimar at a discreet distance. What more can be done? There has been violence in the past and no doubt there will be more violence in the future, but one simply cannot wilt under it in fear.”
He smiled gently and touched the side of her cheek—the skin soft as down. “Spoken very bravely.”
“I’m my father’s daughter, that is why.” She looked away from him, at the moon-drenched garden below. “How long will you be staying in Berlin?”
“I’m not sure. I have no specific plans at the moment, although I would like to get down to Essen.”
“I understand that would be difficult. And Father said it was dangerous. The French and Belgian soldiers are quick to start shooting.”
“I know, but that’s my job.”
“It must be exciting to be a journalist. I might consider it as a profession. Much grander than being a chemist. Perhaps I could talk Papa into letting me go to Oxford. Do you think he would approve?”
“You’d have to ask him.”
“He would only say no.” She sighed. “We have nightingales in the garden. I love hearing them sing. Do you like birds?”
“Very much.”
“Are you married?”
He laughed. “Your thoughts skip around like a dervish. No, I’m not married. I was. My wife was killed during the war.”
“I’m very sorry.”
“She was a nurse with the British Army. She died at Passchendaele.”
Amelia turned her eyes to the moon-tipped trees. “That name is a chill on the heart. Here as in England. My cousin Helmuth was killed there, too. He was twenty. He taught me how to ski.”
The orchestra was playing a fox-trot and she put her glass of punch on the balustrade and smiled at Martin. “May I have one more dance with you?”
She could have dozens, he was thinking as they moved briskly across the floor. But as soon as the tune ended and another began, a tall young man with dark hair asked politely if he might cut in and Martin had to force himself to be gracious about it.
The party ended just before midnight, the guests streaming out into the night to the waiting lines of limousines and taxis. Martin caught a quick glimpse of Amelia, but as she was surrounded by young men he didn’t say goodbye to her. He was in a solemn mood as he shared a taxi with Jacob back to the hotel.
Jacob, humming softly as they rode, removed a cigarette from a silver case. “Rather a nice gathering, don’t you think?”
“Yes,” Martin murmured.
“Care to stop off at the Adlon for a nightcap?”
“I don’t think so. Not tonight.”
Jacob lit his cigarette with a small lighter and blew a lazy stream of smoke. “We’ve been friends for a long time, Martin. I was watching you dance with Amelia. She isn’t Ivy, dear chap, she only resembles her. I hope you’re aware of the difference.”
MARTIN ORDERED HIS nightcap from Room Service and sat on his bed to drink it—three fingers of neat scotch. He then lit a cigar, the last of Uncle Paul’s superb ones, and made a brief entry in his journal in his neat, swift-flowing Pitman.
Hotel Bristol—Observations and reflections.
Jacob was quite right. There is very much a difference, but one can’t be blamed for taking advantage of the opportunity to indulge, even for the briefest of time, in make-believe. Closing my eyes it was Ivy. Seeing Amelia from a distance was to see Ivy. Beautiful yet awful feeling. Milton would have understood. His poem to his dead wife … Methought I saw my late espoused saint brought to me like Alcestis from the grave … But O as to embrace me she inclined, I waked, she fled, and day brought back my night.
THE CITY NEVER slept, it simply paused for a few brief hours as though worn down by the events of the day before. Dawn brought it to life again in a rattle of streetcars and the plodding, iron-shod clop of horses hauling wagons across the Mühldamm, the river dark and oily in the half-light. By the first true light of the sun, trains rumbled into the Bahnhof Friedrichstrasse, disgorging their torrents of businessmen, clerks, and secretaries who could still afford the price of a ticket. There was hot coffee or a bowl of steaming pea soup to be bought at Aschinger’s, and then a check of the day’s value of the mark scrawled on the blackboards in front of the banks. An even three hundred thousand to the American dollar on this first day of June.
“My God!” a portly businessman cried out as he studied the figures in front of the Dresdener Bank. “We are all ruined!” His voice carried a tone of almost giddy excitement. The figures had lost all meaning. “Three hundred thousand marks—my God!”
&
nbsp; The figures had a reality for the wasted shells of people inching painfully from the shelters where they had spent the night. The very young and the very old. Starved and bewildered. Hopeless. Lost.
Erich Lieventhal read his newspaper and drank his morning cup of coffee—good Brazilian coffee poured from a silver pot. He, too, read the figures, the exchange rate in dollars, pounds, francs. He drank his coffee slowly, as though savoring it for all those millions in Germany on that morning whose coffee was ground from acorns or brewed from turnips.
He read only the newspapers at breakfast. The other papers—the diplomatic correspondence and the reports from the other ministries, the cables from Paris, London, and Washington, the papers stamped Secret—a torrent of paper—would be waiting for him when he got to his office in the chancellery building.
The tone of the newspapers was bitter. But then, all Germany was bitter. It was understandable. He felt no anger toward their bitterness. They simply did not understand. How could they? Defeat was strange enough. Humiliation was beyond comprehension. Demands for money to pay the cost of the war. Demands for coal, timber, iron ore, barges, railroad locomotives and cars. And now the French and Belgians squatting in Essen, Düsseldorf, Krefeld … marching into the Ruhr like so many bailiffs come to foreclose on a poor man’s house. Bismarck and the great Moltke were rolling in their graves, pounding their tombs with blind fists of rage.
He drank some more coffee. He knew all that, and there was nothing on God’s earth to be done about it. Not yet. One needed to be patient. Passive resistance. That was the order sent to the Ruhr. Even after the massacre of some eleven Krupp workers at Easter. Passive resistance. Not a bucket of coal to be dug. Not a tree cut down. Not a wheel to turn.
Three hundred thousand marks to the dollar bill. One million, five hundred thousand to the English pound. The savings of every worker in the reich wiped out. Gone. One egg worth more than the nest egg of a lifetime’s work. But it was the price that must be paid. The Allies must be made to see—to realize—that the Treaty of Versailles had not been carved in stone. That it was no more than a scrap of paper and that every word on it was an iron nail in the German heart.
All this he knew as he sipped the last of his coffee, dabbed his lips with a crisp linen napkin, and stood up from the table. He removed a gold watch from a faultlessly tailored waistcoat, snapped open the cover with a thumbnail, and glanced at the time: 7:13.
He walked serenely through the marble hall to the foyer and then down the three broad marble steps to the drive, where his car stood waiting, Leon Hofer opening the left rear door.
One needed to remain calm and have faith. Prosperity would return when the trade routes were open—when German goods moved into open markets. Good money would replace the worthless. The war indemnities could then be paid—if the Allies still insisted that they be paid—over a more reasonable length of time. They could be paid in coin and not in the swollen bellies of starving children. Time. It was the key to it all.
The sun tinted the Quadriga atop the Brandenburg Tor. There was traffic on Wilhelmstrasse and the Linden, but less every day as fuel became an increasing problem. Some cars and trucks were running on coal gas and carried a huge rubberized balloon on their roofs. In the Tiergarten, children gathered twigs for fuel and the police chased them away before they could damage the trees.
7:20
Time. Well, they would have to give them time. President Harding, Prime Minister Baldwin … the rapacious Poincaré … Mussolini in Italy. They would have to find the time or Europe would be dragged under by the weight of starved corpses. Vengeful politicians, generals, and sea lords had hammered the fatherland to the cross of Versailles. Now the businessmen must plan the resurrection.
7:23
“Schwachkopf!” The chauffeur swore as the lone driver of a six-passenger touring Benz with an open top cut in front of him.
Blame? There was no one to blame. The Kaiser, perhaps. The old regime, paying for the war by printing more money instead of increasing taxes. That might have worked if they had won. But they had not won. The Volk had cried out for war in 1914 and they had got one without paying a pfennig for it. They were paying for it now.
“Idiot!” Leon Hofer cried out as the car in front suddenly, for no reason he could see, stopped. He had to slam his foot on the brakes to keep from crashing into it. His forehead struck the windshield—not very hard, just hard enough to knock off his cap.
The sudden stop sent Lieventhal sprawling from the seat. Neither he nor his chauffeur saw the car with four young men in it come streaking out of Behrenstrasse and skid into a broadside collision with the Opel that always trailed them. They did not even hear the splatter of pistol shots as the two policemen in the Opel died. Erich Lieventhal knew nothing as he started to pick himself up from the floor. He did not hear the rapid footsteps of running men, nor see the hand at the open window on the driver’s side toss in the grenade with the wooden handle. The grenade landed on the back seat beside him and he could only stare at it in that split second before it exploded in his face.
It was exactly 7:25.
THE TELEPHONE WOKE him. It was Wolf von Dix.
“Martin? Your information was terribly correct. They killed Lieventhal—twenty minutes ago on Wilhelmstrasse.”
He felt numb. The true horror would sink in later. Now he could merely mumble a few meaningless words before hanging up the receiver.
Wilhelmstrasse was cordoned off from the rear of the Adlon Hotel to the steps of the Ministry of Justice. A handful of overworked police were holding back the crowds and trying to shove the curious along. More police and army troops were arriving in trucks or double-timing in squad strength down the side streets. Martin, hastily dressed and unshaven, reached the barricade, where a young policeman refused to even look at his press card. He had to browbeat the man, acting more like a Junker officer than a journalist, in order to be let through the lines.
The effect of the grenade inside the closed car had been catastrophic. The bodies had been removed, but the blood-splattered evidence of violent death remained on ripped metal and shattered glass. The sight chilled and paralyzed with its mute horror. Martin could do no more than stare at it in a daze. Then, slowly, he took out notepad and pen. It was a story and it had to be written.
He was telephoning Dix from the lobby of the Adlon when he saw Jacob enter the hotel with one of the AP correspondents and head for the bar. He finished telling Dix what he had seen and followed them.
“Well,” Jacob said, his face grim, “I guess the local bobbies believe in the Black Knights of the Sky now.” He stirred the ice in his drink with his finger. “The bastards even dropped a note at the scene. Said they’d done it for the fatherland and the honor of the Second Reich.”
Martin signaled the bartender. “Did you see the note?”
“Briefly. I was damn near the first person on the scene. That bloody bomb went off practically below my window. Didn’t realize it was Lieventhal, of course, until I got down there and saw them take what was left of him out of the car.” He took a big swallow of whiskey. “Anyway, one of the local bobbies had the note in his hand and I got a glimpse of it before a detective whisked it from further view.”
The AP man shook his head. “It’s going to be like the war from here on in. You’ll see. Total government control—official communiqués and censorship.” He downed his drink and stepped away from the bar. “This country’s having a nervous breakdown. It’s like covering events in some loony bin.”
Martin watched the bartender fix his scotch and soda. Out of the corner of his eye he could see Jacob playing with the ice, turning it around and around in his glass.
“Ben has a point. Of all the people to kill. No sense to it. No sense at all.”
“I know,” Jacob said. “It’s the insanity that frightens me. I’m worried about Amelia. Those thugs had no political motive. They weren’t trying to foment a putsch or anything like that. They were simply out to punish. There co
uld be another group who feels this bunch didn’t go far enough—that the daughter needs punishing, too. That’s pagan philosophy, isn’t it? Slaughter thine enemy and the family of thine enemy—down to the last child!”
“I think that’s an unreasonable fear, Jacob.”
“Reason? How in the name of God does reason enter into this? That word no longer exists here.”
“Have you had a chance to see her yet?”
“No. I tried to get to the house, but it’s surrounded by troops and police. I’m sorry I went. Some of the men guarding the place were laughing and joking. I’ll bet half of them feel that the late Erich Lieventhal got exactly what he deserved.”
“A traitor to his country,” Martin said softly. He was thinking of Werner pacing the room—the painfully hidden rage. “And traitors must die.”
The AP correspondent had been wrong in one respect—the government had no ability to control the news; it was totally out of their hands. All during the long day reporters and foreign correspondents raced through the city following leads and hunches, solving the crime long before the police had done so. The killing had been so brazen, the eyewitnesses so numerous, that by the evening of the following day everyone in Germany who could read a newspaper knew that a secret, mystically patriotic society called the Black Knights of the Sky had murdered Lieventhal. An eyewitness had recognized one of the gunmen as a man he often drove in his taxi to the Mutter Engel, a café on Wilmersdorfer popular with ex-fliers. The eyewitness had mentioned that fact to a room full of reporters and there had been a mad stampede to the café. No exclusive story was possible, so they had pooled every scrap of information they had found.
It was considerable. The face and name of the one known killer was in every paper. The photograph taken from the man’s apartment was disconcerting. It showed a slender, handsome young man dressed in a leather flying coat standing beside a Fokker. Pinned to his uniform was the Iron Cross, First Class. A blond youth with a steady gaze. A hero who had risked his life time and time again over the fields of France. Leader of a Jagdgeschwader who had shot down twenty French and English planes in honest combat in the skies. A hero but a killer. For some papers it was a delicate line to tread.