A Good German

by Joseph Kanon

  “Frigging Scotland Yard, isn’t it?” Danny said, frankly admiring. “You’re a caution, Gunther. No mistake.”

  “But what isn’t obvious is the money,” Jake said.

  “Always with you the money,” Gunther said.

  “Because it was there. Let’s say he did have a pass to the compound, that he saw an American. He still picked up ten thousand dollars. You only make that kind of money in the market. So, all right, an American in the market. Who’s also at the conference? Most of those guys were just flown in. They’re not allowed out. You don’t see any of them here.” He waved his hand toward the noisy room.

  “That is to their credit,” Gunther said dryly. “Nevertheless, he was in Potsdam. And so was an American bullet.”

  “Yes,” Jake said.

  “And who is at the conference? We can except Herr Truman.”

  “Washington people. State Department. Aides,” Jake said, ticking them off.

  “Not at the meeting. In Babelsberg.”

  “Everybody,” Jake said, thinking of Brian’s requisition list. The last blowout of the war. “Cooks. Bartenders. Guards. They’ve even got somebody to mow the lawn. Everybody except press.”

  “A wide net,” Gunther said glumly. “So we eliminate. Not everybody can authorize. First you will find out who issued his papers. Then after—” He drifted off, back to his own list.

  “That still doesn’t tell me what he was selling.”

  “Or buying,” Danny said casually.

  “What did you say?” Gunther said, wide awake, putting his hand on Danny’s arm.

  “Well, any transaction, there’s two sides, isn’t there?”

  Gunther said nothing for a second, then patted his arm. “Thank you, my friend. A simple point. Yes, two sides.”

  “I mean,” Danny said, encouraged, “he’d have dollars, wouldn’t he? An American. What—”

  “It wasn’t dollars,” Jake said. “Marks. Occupation marks.”

  “Oh. You might have said. Russian or American?”

  “I thought they were the same.” Engraving plates, handed over.

  “They’re worth the same, of course, but now the look- Here.” Danny picked up one of Sikorsky’s dropped notes. “Now, this is Russian. See the little dash before the serial number? You won’t see that on the American ones.” Somebody in the Treasury Department, careful after all. Jake wondered if Muller knew.

  “You sure?”

  “Things like that, you notice,” Danny said. “I thought it was fake, see, so I asked. Doesn’t make any difference, really, just something to keep track, I reckon.”

  “Who has the money?” Gunther asked Jake.

  “I’ve got one of the bills. Not on me.” Back in the drawer of the frilly pink vanity, next to the still of Viktor Staal.

  “Then look,” Gunther said.

  “But they circulate back and forth, don’t they?”

  Gunther nodded. “It might be suggestive, however.” He turned to Danny, raising his glass. “Well, my friend. To your good eye. Most helpful.”

  “On the house, Gunther, on the house,” Danny said, clinking glasses, pleased with himself.

  “But if he was buying, what was he buying?” Jake said insistently.

  “That’s an interesting question,” Gunther said as Danny poured another drink. “More difficult.”

  “Why?”

  “Because whatever it was, he never got it. He still had the money,” Gunther said, repeating an earlier point to a slow pupil.

  Jake felt a door close. How could you trace what was never exchanged? “Now what?”

  “Now we find out who he was. What would he buy? Has Teitel spoken to Frankfurt?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Then we wait,” Gunther said, sitting back, his eyes drooping. “A little patience.”

  “So we do nothing.”

  Gunther opened one eye. “No. You will play the policeman. Find out who authorized his pass. I’m retired. I’m going to have a brandy.”

  Jake put his drink down, ready to leave. The room was even more crowded, the bar almost invisible behind a wall of people, and the noise was rising now with the smoke, covering the band. “Sleepy Time Down South,” the clarinet again, peppier, straining to be heard. A girl squealed somewhere, then laughed. He took a breath, claustrophobic. But no one else seemed to mind. They were all young, some as young as Danny, who was tapping the table in time to the music. He’d never taken Lena dancing in her blue dress. The clubs by then had become shadowy, dimmed by the Nazis, taking notes in the audience during the comedy sketches. No longer fun, just something to show the tourists, who wanted to see the Femina with the telephones on the tables. Nobody had been young then, not like this, and it only came once.

  “Back in a sec,” Danny said, standing up. “Goes through you, don’t it? Keep an eye on Gunther-he goes right out when he naps.”

  Jake watched the slick head move through the crowd. How many nights did Gunther sit here, finally oblivious even to the smell? The couples on the floor had taken on a kind of blur. This is probably what he saw, people bouncing through a haze, the music almost an echo. It occurred to Jake that he was probably a little drunk himself. Another dream song, “I’ll Get By.” There was the dress again, leaning against the soldier. The overweight blonde.

  He narrowed his eyes. If you blocked out the rest, the dress would come into focus as it had been, without the bulges and damp spots, moving with her. He remembered the Press Club party when he’d sat watching across a different room, the dress finally turning, her eyes laughing at him in secret, a quick flash like the sequins.

  The blonde turned, the dress hidden now by the uniform, only the shoulder visible, shimmering with sequins. Jake blinked. Not drunk, not a trick of the eye. The same dress.

  He stood up and began to cross the room, a swimmer, people sweeping past him like water. When the blonde looked up, her face alarmed, he saw what he must look like, a drunk plowing through the crowd with the crazed, determined steps of a sleepwalker. Her eyes darted away, anxious with fear. No, not fear, recognition. Not as plump as she’d been in the office, but still a big girl. Fraulein Schmidt. A poor typist, Goebbels’ spy.

  “Hannelore,” he said, going up to them.

  “Go away.” A rasp, nervous.

  “Where did you get the dress?” he said in German.

  The soldier had stopped dancing, annoyed. “Hey, buddy, get lost.”

  Jake grabbed her upper arm. “The dress. Where did you get it? Where is she?”

  She wrenched her arm out of his grip. “What dress? Go away.”

  “It’s hers. Where is she?”

  The soldier placed himself between them, holding Jake’s shoulder. “What’s the matter with you, you deaf or something? Blow.”

  “I know her,” Jake said, trying to get past him.

  “Yeah? Well, she doesn’t want to know you. Beat it,” the soldier said, shoving him.

  “Fuck off.” Jake pushed him aside, and the soldier staggered a little. Jake took her arm again. “Where?”

  “Leave me alone.” A wail loud enough to draw attention, people around them stopping in midstep. She reached for her soldier. “Steve!”

  The soldier grabbed Jake’s shoulder, spinning him around. “Blow or I’ll deck you, you fuck.”

  Jake swatted his hand away and moved toward her again. “I know it’s hers.”

  “Mine!” she screamed, moving away.

  His eyes were still on her so that he missed the punch, a hard jab to the stomach, making him double over, winded.

  “Now beat it.”

  Chairs scraped behind them. Jake’s mouth filled with the taste of sour whiskey. Without thinking, he lunged for the soldier, trying to push him away, but the soldier was waiting. He stepped aside, then smashed his fist into Jake’s face, sending him backward. Jake heard the shouts around him as he reached out to grab the air, a stunned weightlessness, going down, until he felt his head crack against the floor.
Another crash as the crowd moved back against a table, then everyone leaning over him, pushing away the soldier with his fist still raised. When Jake tried to lift his head, blood filling his mouth, he felt a surge of nausea and closed his eyes to hold it down. Don’t black out. The band stopped. More yelling. Some men were dragging the soldier away. Another soldier bent down.

  “You okay?” Then, to the crowd, “Give us some air, for Christ’s sake.” Jake tried to get up again, clenching his mouth against another taste of bile, dizzy. “Take it easy.”

  Faces bent over him. A girl with bright red lipstick. But not Hannelore.

  “Wait. Don’t let them go,” Jake said, trying to rise. “I have to—”

  The soldier held him down. “What are you, crazy?”

  “He started it,” someone said. “I saw it.”

  Then Gunther was there, alert, dabbing the corner of Jake’s mouth with a handkerchief. He reached up, pulling a bottle from the next table and pouring whiskey over the cloth.

  “Hey. Use your own fucking booze.”

  A sharp, cauterizing sting, as surprising as the first punch. Jake winced.

  “Heroics,” Gunther said, wiping Jake’s mouth. “Can you move your head?”

  Jake nodded, another sharp pain, then seized Gunther’s arm and pulled himself up. “Don’t let them get away,” he said, looking around wildly and starting for the door.

  A dozen hands grabbed him, pinning his arms. “Sit the fuck down. You want the MPs in here?” He was pushed into a chair. Someone Motioned to the band to start playing.

  “It was her dress,” Jake said to Gunther, who looked at him dumbly.

  “He with you?” the soldier said to Gunther. “We don’t want any trouble here.”

  “You don’t understand,” Jake said, standing.

  The soldier grabbed him again. “No, you don’t. It’s over, verstehe? You make one move and I’ll fucking deck you too.”

  “I’ll take him home,” Gunther said calmly, moving the soldier’s hand away. “No more trouble.”

  He clutched Jake’s arm and forced him to walk slowly toward the door. People stared as they squeezed past the tables.

  “I have to find her,” Jake said.

  Outside, the same parked cars and drivers, the street black. Jake looked in both directions, everything swallowed up in the dark.

  “Now, my friend, what happened?”

  Jake felt the back of his head, a trickle of blood. “There isn’t time. Go back. I’ll be all right.” He went over to one of the drivers. “You see a blonde in a blue dress?”

  The driver looked at him suspiciously.

  “Come on, it’s important. Big girl with a soldier.”

  “What’s it to you?”

  “Tell him,” Gunther barked, suddenly a cop.

  The driver jerked his thumb east, toward the Memorial Church.

  Gunther held him. “They’re gone,” he said simply. “It’s not safe.”

  But Jake had already thrown off his hand and started to run. He could hear Gunther call out behind him, then even that died away, covered by the ragged sound of his own breathing.

  Clouds had covered what little moon there was, so that the dark seemed tangible, like a fog you could brush away. They’d been gone only a few minutes, not long enough to vanish, but there was no one in the street. What if the driver was lying? He ran faster, then rammed his foot into a stray brick lying on the pavement. The pain shot up through him, joining the dull ache in his head, and he stopped, holding his stomach to catch his breath. They couldn’t be far. They’d stick to the Ku’damm, hoping for the lights of a cellar bar. The side streets would be impossible, clogged with unseen rubble. Assuming they went this way at all.

  Up ahead, a tiny light flickered in a doorway. Jake started again, limping slightly, his sore foot slowing him like a brake.

  “Hello, Tommy.” A soft voice called out where the light had been, then another flicker, a flashlight shining up under the whore’s chin, bathing her tired face in a ghost’s light.

  “Did you see a couple go by?” he said in German. “A blond girl.”

  “Come with me. Why not? Fifty marks.”

  “Did you?” he said, insistent.

  “Go to hell.” She snapped off the flashlight, saving batteries, and disappeared in the dark.

  He could make out the jagged edges of the bombed church against the sky as a truck swept around the intersection. The old heart of the west end, flashing with theater lights, now just dark shadows. He remembered London in the blackout, buses appearing out of nowhere, headlights dimmed to slits like crocodile eyes. He had always hated it, the blindness, stumbling over curbs, but the ruins here made it worse, disturbing, twisted shapes in a nightmare. A jeep swung out of the broad Tauentzienstrasse, lighting up the sidewalk for a second. A pack of soldiers coming out of a bar, and there, beyond them, holding a flashlight, a tall soldier with a fleshy blonde.

  Jake picked up his pace, ignoring the pain in his foot. They were heading toward Wittenbergplatz, the way he used to go home, down past the KaDeWe windows. Don’t lose her now. They had walked, so it couldn’t be far. Maybe another club. Hannelore Schmidt, Goebbels’ spy, who didn’t want to be recognized, arm in arm with the new order. He wondered what she’d put on her fragebogen. Not the calls to Nanny Wendt. Where had she got the dress? Ransacking the old flat in Pariserstrasse. Maybe a trade for food coupons. She’d know something. Not a pointless search through Bernie’s files, a real connection.

  Jake saw them crossing the street now, guided by the weaving flashlight, which picked up a group of DPs huddled in the square. She’d be safe with Steve, a handy man to have around in a fight. Jake touched the corner of his mouth, tender, still streaked with blood. They were across Wittenbergplatz.

  It was then he stopped, in front of the broken plate glass window, watching the tiny beam of light move toward the familiar heavy door. Almost a joke, there all along. His old flat, passed around the

  Columbia staff until finally Hal Reidy had left too. Had Hal given it to her, a farewell bonus? Or had she simply moved in, another spoil to pick up, like the French cognacs and Danish hams that flooded into the city that last year. The meek inherited after all, even Hannelore Schmidt. Now what? Race up the stairs for another punching session with Steve? Now he knew where she was. He could come back tomorrow, bring some coffee, a peace offering, and talk to her calmly. A light went on in his window. His window. He imagined Hannelore draped over his couch with her GI, Lena’s dress flung aside, sequins crumpled on the floor. Where did she get it?

  He crossed the square, warily circling the DPs, and went into his street. A walk he’d taken a million times. He pushed open the tall wooden door. Pitch dark, the hall light either gone out or stolen. In one corner he could hear the dripping of water in a bucket. But this was home, stairs he could climb with his eyes closed. He felt his way up the banister. A turn at the landing, then up to his floor, along the railing to the door. He knocked, not loud, a force of habit. The most terrifying sound in Germany, a knock on the door. Harder now. “Hannelore.” What if she refused to open? He tried the doorknob. Locked. His flat. He knocked again, then banged his open palm against the door, a steady pounding. “Hannelore!” Finally the sound of the lock clicking, the door opening a crack, then wider. A woman with frightened eyes standing with the light behind her. Not Hannelore, a gaunt woman with stringy hair, sickbed pale, another ruin. But over the dark circles her eyes widened.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, embarrassed, turning away.

  “Jacob,” she whispered.

  He glanced back, startled. Her voice. And now the face, familiar, was taking shape too, behind the pale skin. Not the way he’d imagined it. The same weightless feeling, falling into Ronny’s tables.

  “Lena. My god.” His voice also a whisper, as if sound would chase her away, a ghost not yet real.

  “Jacob.” She reached up her hand, touching the blood at the corner of his mouth, and he realized that he was
the ghost, wild-eyed and bloody, someone from another world. “You came back.”

  He took her hand from the streak of blood and moved it to his mouth, kissing it, grazing the fingers, not yet able to take in any more. Just the fingers, real. Alive.

  She moved them along his lips, a Braille touch, trying to make sense of the ridges.

  “You came back.”

  He nodded, too happy to say anything, weightless but not falling, rising now, a balloon, watching her eyes fill, still too startled to smile.

  “You’re hurt,” she said, touching him, but he took her fingers away, holding them as he shook his head.

  “No, no. It doesn’t matter. Lena, my god.” And then he reached out for her, drawing her to his chest, arms around her. He kissed the side of her face, moving his head with hers, kissing her everywhere, as if he were still afraid she’d evaporate unless he touched her. “Lena.” Just saying it. Holding her tightly, his face in her hair, feeling her against him, until suddenly she let go, slumping, a dead weight, and he realized she’d fainted. Contents — Previous Chapter / Next Chapter

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Jake carried her inside. There was a pillow on the couch where Hal used to flop-evidently her bed. Struggling under her weight, he moved past the bathroom to the bedroom door. No hands free to open it, so he kicked. The door was flung open by Steve, down to dog tags and boxer shorts, his socks still on. Behind him, Hannelore, in a slip, let out a squeak.

  Steve started toward him. “Boy, you don’t quit, do you?”

  “She passed out. Help me get her on the bed.”

  Steve looked at him, dumbfounded.

  “It’s all right. I’m an old friend. Ask her.” He cocked his head toward Hannelore. “Come on, give me a hand.”

  Steve stepped aside. “Who is he?” he said to Hannelore.

  “From before the war. No,” she said to Jake as he carried Lena in. “That’s my bed. She’s on the couch. A few days, she said, and now look.”