by Joseph Kanon
“But Russians—”
“I told you, I’ll talk to Shaeffer. If anybody can get him, he can. He wants him. He’s been waiting for this.”
“And you don’t, is that it? You don’t want him?”
“It’s not that simple.”
She reached over. “You can’t leave him there. Not with the Russians. I won’t.”
“A few weeks ago you thought he was dead.”
“But he’s not. So now it’s this. You were the detective, looking everywhere. So you found him. I thought that’s what you wanted.”
“It was.”
“But not now?”
“Not if it’s dangerous for you.”
“I’m not afraid of that. I want it to be over. What kind of life do you think it will be for us, knowing he’s there? With them. I want it to be over. Not this prison—you don’t even want me to leave the flat. Talk to your friend. Tell him I want to do it. I want to get him out.”
“So you can leave him? He won’t thank you for that.”
She lowered her head. “No, he won’t thank me for that. But he’ll be free.”
“And that’s the only reason?”
She looked over at him, then reached across, touching his face with her finger. “What a little boy you are. After everything that’s happened, to be jealous. Emil’s my family—it’s different, not the way it is with you. Don’t you know that?”
“I thought I did.”
“Thought. And then, like that, a schoolboy again. You remember Frau Hinkel?”
“Yes, two lines.”
“She said I had to choose. But I did. Even before the war. I chose you. How silly you are, not to know that.”
“I still don’t want you taking chances with Shaeffer.”
“Maybe that’s my choice too. Mine.”
He met her stare, then looked away. “Let me talk to him. Maybe he doesn’t need you anyway, now that we know where Emil is.”
“Then what?”
“Then we wait. We don’t go into the east. We don’t go to Burgstrasse. They’ll move him for sure if they think we know. And we don’t volunteer. Understand?”
“But you’ll tell me if they do want—”
He nodded, cutting her off, then snatched her hand. “I don’t want anything to happen to you.”
“Well, do you know something? Neither do I,” she said, making light of it, then rubbed his hand. “Not now.” She tilted her head, alert. “Was that him? Let me check.” She slid her hand away and hurried to the bedroom.
Jake sat watching her go, uneasy. Another bargain he shouldn’t have made. But nothing risky, whatever Shaeffer said. And then what? Three of them.
She came back into the room with her finger to her lips, half closing the door.
“He’s asleep, but restless. We’ll have to be quiet.”
“He’s going to stay in there?”
“We’ll move him later, when he’s really asleep.”
She came over to him and kissed his forehead, then began unbuttoning his shirt.
“What are you doing?”
“I want to see you. Not the uniform.”
“Lena, we have to talk about this.”
“No, we’ve already talked. It’s decided. Now we’re going to pretend—the children are asleep, but there’s the couch, if we’re quiet. Let’s see how quiet we can be.”
“You’re just trying to change the subject.”
“Ssh.” She kissed him. “Not a sound.”
He smiled at her. “Wait till you hear the couch.”
“Then we’ll go slowly. It’s nice slow.”
She was right. The quiet itself became exciting, each touch furtive, as if the creak of a spring would give them away. When he slipped inside her, he moved so slowly that it seemed something only they knew, a secret between them, betrayed by the gasp of breath in his ear. Then the gentle rocking, an endless, sweet tease, until finally it ended as it began, the same rhythm, so that not even the shuddering disturbed the room around them. She kept him in her afterward, stroking his back, and for a few minutes he felt no difference between making love and simply being there, the one drifting into the other.
But the couch was cramped and awkward, its lumps poking into the usual forgetting, the unconsciousness of sex, and instead of drifting, his mind began to dart away. Had it been like this with them? Another couple using the couch so they wouldn’t wake their boy? Uncannily, as if he’d spoken, she reached up to touch his face.
“I chose you,” she said.
“Yes,” he said, kissing her, then withdrew and sat up next to her, restless. “Do you think he heard?”
She shook her head, dreamy. “Cover me. I just want to lie here for a minute. How can you get up?”
“I don’t know. Do you want a drink?” he said, going over to pour one.
“Look at you,” she said, watching him, then stirred, lifting herself up. “Jake? The boy—I noticed. I thought all the Jews—you know,” she said, nodding at his penis, as self-conscious as Renate had been, even lying there still wet with him.
“She didn’t have it done. She wanted him to be German.”
Lena sat up, troubled, holding the dress to cover herself. “She wanted that? Even after—”
He took a drink. “To protect him, Lena.”
“Yes,” she said dully, shaking her head. “My god, what it must have been like for her.”
He looked down at the story on the table with its missing piece. “You said it yourself—you do anything for your child.” He took the glass again, then stopped it halfway to his lips and put it down in a rush. “Of course.”
“Of course what?”
“Nothing,” he said, moving over to his clothes. “Something I just thought of.”
“Where are you going?” she said, watching him dress.
“I don’t know why I didn’t see it. A reporter’s supposed to know when something’s missing. You read the story and you can feel it’s not there.” He looked up, finally aware of her. “Just a hunch. I’ll be back.”
“At this hour?”
“Don’t wait up.” He bent over and kissed her forehead. “And don’t open the door.”
“But what—”
“Ssh, not now.” He held his finger to his lips. “You’ll wake Erich. I’ll be back.”
He raced out of the building, then up the side street where he’d stashed the jeep, fumbling in the dark with the ignition. There was only a glimmer of moon in the narrow streets off the square, but when he got up to the broad Charlottenburger Chausee there was an open field of light, pale white and unexpectedly beautiful. Now, when he had no time to look at it, the blunt, unlovely city had turned graceful, making him stop in surprise, its secret self, maybe there all the time, when everything else was dark. It occurred to him, fancifully, that it was finally lighting the way for him, like Hansel’s white pebbles, down the wide, empty street, then up Schloss Strasse, making good time, and still there when he needed it most, picking his way through the trail in the rubble, all easy going, so that he knew he must be right. Not even a shadow at young Willi’s lookout post, just the pointing, friendly light. When Professor Brandt opened the door, he no longer had any doubts at all.
“I’ve come for the files,” he said.
“How did you know?” Professor Brandt said as Jake started to read.
They were sitting at a table with a single lamp, a pool of light just wide enough for the pages but not their faces, so that his voice seemed disembodied.
“He told them at Kransberg you were dead,” Jake said absently, trying to concentrate. “What possible reason could he have, unless he didn’t want them to find you? Didn’t want to take the chance—”
“That I would tell them,” he said. “I see. He thought that.”
“Maybe he thought they’d search.” He turned a page, a report from Mittelwerks in Nordhausen, another piece missing from the Document Center. Not cross-referenced, never handed over—the missing part of the story,
like Renate’s child. “Why did he leave them with you?”
“He didn’t know how bad it was in Berlin, how far the Russians had come. Not just the east, almost a circle. Only Spandau was open, but for how long? A rumor, that’s all. Who knew? It was possible he wouldn’t get out—I thought so myself. If they were captured—”
“So he hid them with you. In case. Did you read them?”
“Later, yes. I thought he had died, you see. I wanted to know.”
“But you didn’t destroy them?”
“No. I thought, someday it’s important. They’ll lie, all of them. ‘We had nothing to do with it.’ Even now they—I thought, someone has to answer for this. It’s important to know.”
“But you didn’t turn them over, either.”
“Then you told me he was living. I couldn’t. He’s my son, you understand. Still.”
He paused, causing Jake to look up. In his dressing gown he seemed frail, no longer held together by the formal suit, but the scrawny neck was erect, as if the old high collar were still in place. “Was it wrong? I don’t know, Herr Geismar. Maybe I kept them for you. Maybe they answer to you.” He turned away. “And now it’s done—you have them. So take them, please. I don’t want them in my house anymore. You’ll excuse me, I’m tired.”
“Wait. I need your help. My German isn’t good enough.”
“For that? Your German is adequate. The problem, maybe, is believing what you read. It’s just what it says. Simple German.” He made a small grimace. “The language of Schiller.”
“Not the abbreviations. They’re all technical. Here’s von Braun, requesting special workers. French, is that right?”
“Yes, French prisoners. The SS supplied the list from the camps—engineering students, machinists. Von Braun made his selection from that. The construction workers, it didn’t matter, one shovel’s as good as another. But the precision work—” He looked over to the word Jake was pointing at. “Die cutter.”
“So he was there.”
“Of course he was there. They all went there, to inspect, to supervise. It was their factory, you understand, the scientists. They saw it, Herr Geismar. Not space, all those dreams. They saw this. You see the other letter, from Lechter, where he says the disciplinary measures are having an unfortunate effect? The workers don’t like to see men hanging—it slows production. Exact words. His solution? Hang them off-site. Yes, and Lechter complains that on the last visit some of his colleagues were taken to an area where cholera had broken out. Couldn’t this be prevented in the future? Visitors should be taken to safe areas only. To risk the health—” He stopped, clearing his throat. “Would you like some water?” he said, getting up, an obvious excuse to leave the table.
Jake turned another page, hearing the water run behind him. A memo requesting a transfer back to Peenemünde for a Dr. Jaeger, proof that he’d been there, a carbon for the files, evidence for Bernie. Just paper. Was anyone not compromised? Drinking brandy at Kransberg, waiting for visas. But how much had Tully known? He realized for the first time, a Gunther point, that no one had actually seen the files but Professor Brandt. Tully must have left the center as frustrated as Jake had been, all the way to Berlin for an incomplete story.
“Here’s Emil,” he said, turning to a page filled with figures.
“Yes,” Professor Brandt said over his shoulder, “the estimates. The estimates.” He shuffled back to his chair.
“But of what? What’s this?” Jake pointed to one of the sets of numbers.
“Calories,” Professor Brandt said quietly, not looking, clearly familiar with the paper.
“Eleven hundred,” Jake said, stuck on the math. “That’s calories?” He looked over at the old man. “Tell me.”
Professor Brandt took a sip of water. “Per day. At eleven hundred calories per day, how long would a man survive? Depending on the original body weight. You see the series on the left. If it fell—to nine hundred, say—the factors average out to sixty. Sixty days—two months. But of course it’s not exact. The variables are not in the numbers. In the men. Some more, some less. They die at their own speed. But it’s useful, the average. You can calculate how many calories it would take to extend it, say, for another month. But they never extended it. The work in the first month, before they weakened, was actually more productive than any extension. The table near the bottom demonstrates that. There was no point in keeping them alive unless they were specialists. The numbers prove it.” He looked up. “He was right. I checked the math. The second page shows how much to increase rations for skilled workers. I think, you know, that he was using this to persuade them to allow more food, but I can’t be sure. The others died to the formula. An average only, but accurate. He based them on actual numbers from the previous month. Not a difficult exercise.”
He interrupted himself for another sip, then continued, a teacher working through a long blackboard proof. “The others also. Simple. Time of assembly, units per twenty-four-hour period. You don’t have to look, I remember them all. Optimum number of workers per line. Sometimes they had too many. The assembly was complicated—better to have one skilled set of hands than three men who didn’t know what they were doing. He proves this somewhere. You would think, common sense, but evidently they liked to see this. In numbers. These were the kinds of problems they had him working on.”
Jake looked at the paper, not saying anything, letting Professor Brandt collect himself as he drank the last of the water.
“He must have done other work, not just this.”
“Yes, of course. It’s a great achievement, technically. You can see that. The mathematics involved, the engineering. Every German can be proud.” He shook his head. “Dreams of space. This is what they were worth. Eleven hundred calories a day.”
Jake flicked through the remaining pages, then closed the folder and stared at it. Not just Emil, most of the team.
“You’re surprised?” Professor Brandt said quietly. “Your old friend?”
Jake said nothing. Just numbers on paper. Finally he looked up at Professor Brandt, the simple, inadequate question. “What happened to everybody?”
“You want to know that?” Professor Brandt said, nodding, then paused. “I don’t know. I asked too. Who were these children? Our children? And what’s my answer? I don’t know.” He glanced away, toward the stuffed bookshelves. “My whole life I thought it was something apart, science. Everything else is lies, but not that. So beautiful, numbers. Always true. If you understand them, they explain the world. I thought that.” He looked back at Jake. “I don’t know,” he said, exhaling it, a gasp. “Even the numbers they ruined. Now they don’t explain anything.”
He reached over and picked up the folder. “You said you were his friend. What will you do with this?”
“You’re his father. What would you do?”
Professor Brandt brought it closer to his chest, so that involuntarily Jake started to reach out his hand. A few pieces of paper, the only proof Bernie would ever have.
“Don’t be alarmed,” Professor Brandt said. “It’s just that—I want you to take it. If I see him again, I don’t want to say I gave it up. You took it.”
Jake gripped the file and pulled it firmly out of the old man’s hands. “Does it really make any difference?”
“I don’t know. But I can say it, I didn’t give them away, him and his friends. I can say that.”
“All right.” Jake hesitated. “It’s the right thing, you know.”
“Yes, the right thing,” Professor Brandt said faintly.
He drew himself up, erect, then moved away from the light, just a voice again.
“And you’ll tell Lena? That it wasn’t me?” He paused. “If she stops coming, you see, there’s no one.”
He didn’t have to tell her anything. She was asleep on the bed, clothed, the boy next to her. He closed the door and sank down on the lumpy couch to read through the file again, even more dismayed than before, time enough now to see the picture fill u
p with its grisly details, each one a kind of indictment. Valuable to Bernie, but to who else? Is that what Tully intended to sell? But why would Sikorsky want it? The simple answer was that he didn’t—he wanted the scientists, busily making their deals with Breimer, each page in the file a pointing finger that they thought had gone away. Valuable to them.
He lay back with his arm over his eyes, thinking about Tully, a business in persilscheins before Kransberg, selling releases at Bensheim, sometimes selling them twice. Crooks followed a pattern—what worked once worked again. And these were better than persilscheins, as valuable as a ticket out. Deplorable things might have happened, but there was nothing to involve them but pieces of paper, something worth paying for.
When he awoke, it was light and Lena was at the table, staring straight ahead, the closed file in front of her.
“Did you read it?” he said, sitting up.
“Yes.” She pushed the file aside. “You made notes. Are you going to write about this?”
“They’re points to verify at the Document Center. To prove it all fits.”
“Prove to whom?” she said vacantly, then stood up. “Do you want some coffee?”
He watched her light the gas ring and measure out the coffee, going through the ordinary motions of the morning ritual as if nothing had happened.
“Did you understand them? I can explain.”
“No, don’t explain anything. I don’t want to know.”
“You have to know.”
She turned away to face the stove. “Go wash. The coffee will be ready in a minute.”
He got up and went over to the table, glancing down at the folder, caught off balance by her reaction.
“Lena, we need to talk about this. What’s in here—”
“Yes, I know. Terrible things. You’re just like the Russians. ‘Look at the film. See how terrible you are, all you people. What you did in the war.’ I don’t want to look anymore. The war’s over.”
“This isn’t the war. Read it. They starved people to death, watched them die. That’s not the war, that’s something else.”
“Stop it,” she said, raising her hands to her ears. “I don’t want to hear it. Emil didn’t do those things.”