The Seventh Secret

by Irving Wallace

  Momentarily, standing on the sidewalk under a tree, Kirvov tried to get his bearings. The north end of Stresemann Strasse was blocked by a wall, obviously the Berlin Wall that enclosed the Frontier Zone. Kirvov started to stroll toward the end of the street, constantly glancing over his shoulder to see whether Evelyn Hoffmann had departed from her Café yet.

  At the Hervis Hotel, Kirvov crossed over to the opposite side of the street near an empty lot, actually a deep depression where the basement of a building had once stood, a building that had long ago been destroyed in the war. The lot was now weed-covered and unkempt. Kirvov began to walk back to the Café Evelyn Hoffmann had entered.

  There was a series of what seemed to be small shops.

  There was the Modellbau, a store that sold model kits of autos and airplanes, then Kuchler, an auto-radio specialist, then the Gesamtdeutsches Institut, a historical archive that resembled a library inside, then Pizzera Selva, a neighborhood pizza parlor, next a hairdresser, then Café Wolf, with a tobacco shop and used bookstore on the corner.

  There were windows on either side of the Café's front entrance, and two rows of planter boxes before the windows. Kirvov glanced inside, could make out a bar and bar stools, some circular tables, a jukebox. He could see a waitress in a sweatshirt and blue jeans serving a couple at one table. He could see another couple toward the back. He did not see Evelyn Hoffmann.

  Even though she could not know who he was, Kirvov determined not to continue searching inside and risk becoming obvious. Nor did he wish to linger in front of the Café. Directly across the street there was the concrete island with the bus stop, Askanischer Platz. To the right of the island was a street called Bernberger Strasse.

  Leaving the Café, Kirvov recrossed the street and stationed himself on Askanischer Platz, keeping an eye on the Café Wolf as he waited for Evelyn Hoffmann to emerge for her ultimate destination. Once on the island, Kirvov felt too conspicuous, and strode to the corner of Bernberger Strasse. There he smoked and casually watched for any movement out of the Café Wolf.

  For a half hour or more there was no activity. The day was beginning to wane, and soon it would be nightfall. Kirvov continued to keep the Café entrance under surveillance. At last one of the couples he had observed inside left. Soon after, another couple left.

  Kirvov waited restlessly for the appearance of Evelyn Hoffmann.

  A young man left the Café Wolf. Possibly the bar-tender. Maybe not. Then the waitress, a sweater over her sweatshirt, still in her jeans, stepped outside to water the plants, then went back inside. Soon she emerged and departed.

  But no Evelyn Hoffmann.

  Kirvov began to feel foolish. There was not a shred of evidence that the Hoffmann woman would lead him to anything useful, except that she had apparently had some connection with Klara Fiebig, who had not recognized the Hitler painting anyway.

  It was early evening now, and Kirvov became alert when he saw the lights inside the café go out.

  Definitely the Café Wolf was closed. Yet Evelyn Hoffmann, whom he had seen go into it, had never come out of it.

  Surprising and inexplicable.

  Kirvov tried to explain this unusual happening to himself. Perhaps Evelyn Hoffmann had left by another door in the rear. Perhaps she owned the café or was married to the proprietor and lived upstairs.

  All likely, yet somehow unlikely. That was Kirvov's gut feeling. She would have had no reason to leave by some unobserved door. Somehow, from her dress, her manner, she was too well-off and sophisticated to own a café like this or dwell on its premises.

  But still she had gone in and not come out.

  That was a mystery that deserved explanation.

  Tired of standing alone in the darkness with nothing to see, Kirvov started back to his car. One more side-long glance at the café. Absolutely closed, shut down, darkened. And Evelyn Hoffmann inexplicably inside.

  Kirvov had to report this to someone, and puzzle it out. Emily Ashcroft and Rex Foster, who were as involved as he was, for their own reasons, were the obvious choices to consult. Kirvov knew that he must go to the Bristol Kempinski at once and find them.

  "There is something I must talk over with you," Kirvov said.

  He had intercepted Emily Ashcroft, Foster, and Tovah as they were leaving the Kempinski.

  "Then join us right now," Emily had replied. "It's an early dinner tonight. I have to get out to the Führerbunker again in the morning. Oberstadt has a night shift coming in tonight and I want to see how well they did."

  Tired as he was, Kirvov had gone along, and now he sat with the others at a table that gave them privacy because it was set off by wood dividers from tables occupied by other dinner guests. They were in the second-floor restaurant of the Café Kranzler on the corner of the Kurfbrstendamm and Joachimstaler Strasse.

  A waitress had appeared, and they all consulted their menus and ordered hurriedly.

  Once the waitress went off, Foster turned to Kirvov. "Nicholas, what's on your mind?"

  "Well . . ." Kirvov was briefly reticent. "This may not be serious or useful to any of you. It is just a strange incident that I felt you should hear about."

  They were attentive as Kirvov began to recount his multiple adventures during the day. There had been his pursuit of the art galleries, and his coming across the one that had acquired and sold the Hitler painting. There had been his call on Klara Fiebig, and her insistence that she had never seen the painting.

  "Do you think she was lying?" Emily asked.

  "I think so," said Kirvov. "At least I thought so when I left her, because I hung around outside to see whether she might leave to contact someone to report I had called on her."

  "Did she leave?" Emily inquired.

  "No. But someone called on her, because later she saw that person out."

  Kirvov described that person, a rather stately, well-groomed woman in her sixties or seventies named Evelyn Hoffmann. Anyway, she had some connection with Klara Fiebig. So Kirvov had followed her to Mampes Gute Stube, a restaurant on the Ku'damm. After an interval she had emerged with a big man called Wolfgang. The pair had separated, and the Hoffmann lady had taken a bus to an area near the Wall, with Kirvov shadowing her. She had gone into a place called Café Wolf on Stresemann Strasse.

  "I hung around for hours, waiting for her to leave to see where she went next," concluded Kirvov. "But she never left. The place closed down and she never came out. That's the mystery."

  "Could she have a room there?" Tovah asked.

  "I doubt if she would live in a place like that," said Kirvov. "She's too grand for it."

  "Have you any explanation?" Emily asked.

  "None. I hoped one of you might have one."

  Emily gave a helpless shrug. "I certainly don't. The whole thing is like Alice going down the rabbit hole."

  Foster addressed himself to Kirvov. "You said this Café Wolf is somewhere in the area of the Wall?"

  "Stresemann Strasse. It runs right into the Wall about a block away."

  "With the mound of the Führerbunker just on the other side," said Foster.

  "Maybe it's all my own foolishness. Do you think Evelyn Hoffmann is worth pursuing further?"

  "It may be a waste of time," Foster said. "Time is what we don't have much of. Let's sleep on it."

  Emily nodded her agreement.

  Emily and Foster were in their suite after dinner, and both were readying for bed, when the telephone rang.

  Emily picked up the receiver. The caller was Kirvov and he sounded agitated.

  "I'm very upset," he was saying. "I'm back in my room at the Palace. I had to call you."

  "What's wrong, Nicholas?" Emily wanted to know. "My Hitler painting. It's missing. I'm afraid it's been stolen."

  "What do you mean?" said Emily. "Where was the painting?"

  "I left it in the trunk of my car when I joined you at the Kempinski. I had a rented Opel, and I put the painting inside the trunk. I locked the trunk and I also locked the car doors."r />
  "Where did you park the car?" Emily asked.

  "There was a place, so I parked in the street. When we were through with dinner and I left you, I went to my car. The doors were still locked. After I drove back to the Palace, I opened the trunk to take out the painting, to take it up to my room, but it was gone. Someone had stolen it."

  "But who else would know about the painting besides ourselves, the art dealer, and the young lady you saw, Klara Fiebig?" Emily said. "That's all, isn't it?"

  "Nobody else, I believe—"

  "Somebody else," Emily interrupted. "I left out one name. Evelyn Hoffmann. She could have known."

  "Yes," Kirvov admitted. "She could have."

  "You were wondering earlier about pursuing Evelyn Hoffmann," said Emily. "We thought it might be a waste of time. I've changed my mind. I think she's well worth looking into." She was lost in thought a few seconds. "Nicholas, in the light of this new development—well, you've come this far. Now go all the way. Why don't you station yourself near the Café Wolf early in the morning and see if the Hoffmann lady materializes again?" She hesitated a moment more, then added, "In fact, Nicholas, since Rex has permission to join in on my dig . . ." She addressed herself to Foster. "Rex, can you replace me at the Führerbunker tomorrow?"

  "Glad to," said Foster. "But where are you going to be?"

  "I'm going to keep Nicholas company on Stresemann Strasse. I want to have a look at this Evelyn Hoffmann. Presuming she reappears. I think she will. Then we may finally be on to something."

  Chapter Ten

  The day started at Stresemann Strasse with three of them, and it ended there with only one of them. It started at nine o'clock on a sunny morning, after they had learned that the Café Wolf opened for business then. They had arrived just before that, Nicholas Kirvov at the wheel of the rented Opel, Emily beside him, and Tovah in the rear seat. They parked on Stresemann Strasse, less than a half block from the Café Wolf, on the opposite side of the street.

  Momentarily, they were alerted by the arrival of two persons at the Café door. Kirvov immediately recognized them as the young waitress and the bartender. The waitress unlocked the front door to let them in. Kirvov shook his head. "Employees," he said.

  For a brief time, Emily continued to watch the Café entrance. "You're the only one who has seen Evelyn Hoffmann," she reminded Kirvov. "Neither Tovah nor I have any idea of what she really looks like. So we're depending on you, Nicholas."

  "Trust me," Kirvov said. "I will be on the alert. This is an important matter to me, too."

  After turning on the car radio, at low volume, to a music station to divert Emily and Tovah, Kirvov devoted his entire attention to gazing through the car window at the entrance of the Café Wolf.

  An hour and a half passed, and Kirvov saw no one resembling their quarry leaving the Café Wolf, although four patrons were seen to enter. At the two-hour mark, all four customers had departed separately and been accounted for.

  Emily began fretting about how Rex Foster was doing at the excavation site, where the digging into the mound was to have begun, yet she refused to leave to join Foster.

  "I want to see this Evelyn Hoffmann," Emily stated with determination.

  Restlessly she picked through her purse, intending to apply fresh lipstick. Suddenly, Kirvov spoke up. "You want to see Evelyn Hoffmann? You can see her now. Look. "

  Emily bolted upright, and, leaned against Kirvov to stare out the window. In the rear, Tovah was also staring out her window.

  They could all make out the impressive brown-haired woman, perhaps five feet six, slender, posture erect, moving with a healthy stride, neatly attired in a powder-blue suit, crossing the street to the concrete island that was Askanischer Platz.

  "Evelyn Hoffmann," Kirvov whispered. "I guess she's going to the bus stop on Schöneberger Strasse." She had disappeared from sight now, and Kirvov quickly opened the car door and stepped out. "Let me make sure," he called back.

  He strolled up the street to Askanischer Platz, casually looked off to his right, and then busied himself lighting a cigarette. A yellow double-decker appeared and headed for the bus stop. Kirvov dropped his cigarette, ground it out with his shoe, and took a few steps toward Schöneberger Strasse.

  Briefly out of view of the women in the car, he almost instantly reappeared and came swiftly back to them. He jumped into the driver's seat, turning on the ignition. "She's on the bus, all right," he announced, backing up. "We're going to tag along behind her."

  Kirvov began reversing the general route he had taken in pursuit of bus 29 yesterday. He stayed behind it, braking when it stopped to release passengers, and resuming his pursuit each time the bus moved again. When they attained the Kurfûrstendamm, Kirvov fell back slightly, allowing two other autos to slide in between him and the bus.

  After a short ride up the crowded thoroughfare, Kirvov spoke once more. "She'll get off at the next corner, if she's going where I think she is going."

  He slowed, double-parking, and narrowed his eyes as the bus stopped once more. A half dozen persons came out of the bus. One of them was Evelyn Hoffmann.

  Emily and Tovah watched, quietly fascinated.

  Kirvov put the car in gear. "She'll walk up Knesebeckstrasse," Kirvov predicted. "She'll go to the third floor of an apartment building in the middle of the block to see our Klara Fiebig. Let's park and find out whether I'm right."

  Hastily parking near Steinplatz, Kirvov stepped out onto the sidewalk and raced back to the corner, peering up Knesebeckstrasse intently. When Emily and Tovah caught up with him, he gestured off. "I was right. I just saw her go into an apartment building. Let me check it out, just to be positive it is the same building. Wait for me here."

  Kirvov was gone only a few minutes. When he returned, he nodded with satisfaction.

  "The same building," he stated. "She's visiting Klara Fiebig."

  "I wonder what's going on there," said Emily.

  "We'll find out yet," replied Kirvov. "Let's just hang around here. If it goes as before, she should leave there shortly. Soon as she does, we'll disperse, do some window shopping. Once she's on the Ku'damm, we'll follow her at a safe distance."

  "Do you know where she'll be going?" Tovah asked. "I have an idea," said Kirvov. "I can't be sure, but let's wait and see."

  The tiresome wait, heightened only by their expectations, lasted almost forty minutes.

  "I can see her again," Kirvov stated abruptly. "Let's separate. Let's give her a quarter of a block start on us, and then follow her."

  The two women hastily distanced themselves from Kirvov, as the Russian moved sideways a few yards to plant himself before the display window of a camera shop. Emily and Tovah moved farther away to become absorbed in another window featuring the latest French ready-to-wear fashions.

  Kirvov kept the corner in view, and when Evelyn Hoffmann appeared, he saw her hurrying toward the Kurfûrstendamm without bothering to so much as glance at the shop windows. Obviously she had some exact destination in mind. Once she was caught up in the flow of pedestrian traffic, Kirvov signaled to Emily and Tovah. Breathlessly, they reached him.

  "I can still see her," said Kirvov. "Let's go."

  Stringing out, with Kirvov in the lead, they pushed through the crowds of shoppers, tagging after Evelyn Hoffmann, always keeping her in sight.

  At the stoplight on the Ku'damm she halted, waited for the light to change to red, and with others crossed the avenue.

  Kirvov held up a hand as Emily and Tovah drew up alongside him.

  "I think I know where she's going," he said. He pointed down the street to a sign that said MAMPES GUTE STUBE. "The same restaurant I followed her to yester-day. Let's see if she goes in."

  They watched.

  Evelyn Hoffmann left the sidewalk and entered Mampes Gute Stube.

  "What do we do next?" Tovah wanted to know.

  "We post ourselves near the restaurant," Kirvov said. "She's probably gone inside to meet with the big fellow I saw her with yes
terday, the one called Wolfgang. I wonder who he is."

  "Let me find out," Tovah volunteered. "If they separate when they come out, you two can stick with her while I follow him."

  "Good idea," said Kirvov.

  "How long do we wait here?" Emily wanted to know. "Based on yesterday, I'd say they should come out in a half hour to an hour."

  "Then let's get off our feet," said Emily, nodding toward a small sidewalk café with a half dozen metal tables. "I'm hungry. We can have something to eat while we watch for them."

  They found a table at the small café, and ordered Käsetorte and Kaffee . By the time they had been served, and had eaten their snacks, a half hour had passed.

  Thirty-five minutes passed, and Kirvov was paying the bill, when Emily gripped his arm.

  "Nicholas, there she is, with a man, probably the same big one you mentioned. Can you see?"

  Kirvov peered across the vehicle traffic. He nodded. "Yes. The same as yesterday. Evelyn Hoffmann and her friend Wolfgang." He came to his feet. "My guess is they'll part company now. Tovah, you follow him. We'll catch up with you later at the Kempinski. Emily, she'll probably cross the Ku'damm and walk to the bus stop at the next corner. Anyway, I hope so. You follow her. That'll give me time to get to the car. I'll catch up with you, and then you can tell me if she's already on the bus."

  They watched Evelyn Hoffmann and Wolfgang en-gage in a short conversation on the sidewalk before Mampes Gute Stube. Then the Hoffmann woman and the man shook hands and parted company, starting away in opposite directions.

  "All right," said Kirvov urgently. "You know what to do.-

  He hurried off for his car.

  A few minutes later he was in the car, and cruising along the Ku'damm, trying to find Emily, when he saw her at a curb signaling him. He pulled up and pushed open the passenger door. Emily fell in beside him, her forefinger pointing straight ahead.

  "The bus,- Emily gasped. "You're right. She just took the bus, that one a block ahead of us.-