by Joseph Kanon
“Yes, he was here. I was right.”
“And the files?”
“Tomorrow. Come on, we’ll go home. You got some sun.”
She looked down at her skin, red under the floodlights.
“Yes, you were right about that too,” she said with an edge.
“What’s the matter?” Jake said as the jeep started down the hill.
“Nothing. They’re so important, the files?”
“Tully thought so. He was here-I knew it.”
“More numbers, for Emil’s weapons. That’s what’s in themnumbers?”
“Not according to Shaeffer.”
“But Emil came for them. That’s what the policeman thinks. Not for me.”
“Maybe he came for both.”
“To make more weapons? The war was finished.”
“To trade. That’s what they have, the scientists-numbers to trade.”
“For what?”
Jake shrugged. “Their future.”
“To make weapons for someone else,” Lena said.
Jake turned left at the bottom of the hill, then jogged right toward the woods.
“Where are you going?”
“I want to see how it worked. How long it took.”
“What?”
“To dump the body.”
She said nothing, hunching into herself the way she had the last time in the woods, shivering from the rain. The Grunewald was dark, nothing visible beyond the arc of their headlights and a small patch of moon reflecting on Krumme Lanke. No one in the road, the thick trees hiding whoever might be there, small bands of DPs looking for shelter. No one to see them either. The body could have been slumped over like a drunk. Easy. Anywhere along here, not the center with its guards and lights; here, in the dark. Or on the beach itself. In minutes they were there, the water rippling with moonlight. The last thing Tully might have seen.
Danny had a shrewd eye for real estate. His building, an art nouveau block on one of the side streets off Savignyplatz, had once been elegant and would always be well located. The flat was on the first floor, its door wedged open by a suitcase and some pillowcases stuffed with clothes, last minute packing.
“Don’t worry, I’m leaving,” the girl said when she saw them. Almost pretty, with ankle-strap heels and lipstick, an annoyed expression twisting her face. “He said by ten. Vultures.” This to herself as she flung a skirt into the last bag.
“I’m sorry,” Lena said, embarrassed.
“Ha.”
Lena turned away and leaned against the wall to wait, not looking at Jake. Halfway down the hall a man carrying a rucksack was coming out of another flat. He squinted and then, recognizing them, walked over and took off his hat.
“Hello again. How are you feeling?”
“Oh, the doctor.”
“Yes. Rosen. You’re well?”
Lena nodded. “I never had the chance to thank you.”
He waved this off, then turned to Jake, the same old eyes in the young face. He glanced down at the suitcases.
“She’s living here?”
“Just for a while.”
Rosen looked again at Lena. “No recurrences? The medicine worked? No fever?”
“No,” she said with a polite smile, “just sunburn. What do I do for that?”
He lifted a scolding finger. “Wear a hat.”
The girl was glaring at them from the doorway. “Here,” she said, handing Jake the key.
“Take care. It’s good to see you again,” Rosen said to Lena, leaving. “Don’t get too much sun.” He nodded at the girl. “Marie,” he said, then shuffled away.
“So you’re the new girl. An American to pay-very nice for you. You already know Rosen?”
“He took care of me when I was ill.”
The girl made a face. “That Jew? I won’t let him touch me. Not there, with Jew hands.”
“He saved my life,” Lena said.
“Did he? Very nice for you.” She grabbed up one of the bags. “Jews. If it wasn’t for them—”
Jake carried their cases through the door to get away.
“I’m sorry to put you out,” Lena said, following him.
“Go to hell.”
The flat had the disarray of leave-taking, everything angled slightly out of place. In the next room he could see an unmade bed and a wardrobe with the door left open. A scarf had been draped over a lampshade, turning the light a dim red. “Nice girl,” he said.
Lena walked over to the lamp and lifted the scarf, then sank into the easy chair next to it, as if seeing the room had exhausted her.
“There were lots like her.” She lighted a cigarette. “She thinks I’m a whore. Is that what this place is?”
“It’s a flat. No one will bother you.” He glanced out at the street then drew the curtains.
She smiled wryly, staring at the cigarette. “My mother was right. She said if I came to Berlin I’d end up like that.”
“I’ll find someplace else if you don’t like it.”
She looked around the room. “No, it’s a good size.”
“It’ll seem better after we clean it up. You won’t even know she was here.”
“Jew hands,” she said moodily. “There was a girl like that at school. Not even a Nazi, a girl. How do you clean that away?” She drew on the cigarette again, her hand shaking a little. “You know, after the Russians came, they made us see films. Of the camps. Germans, they said, this is what was done in your name. Imagine, they did it for me. So now what? It’s my fault too? All that business.”
“Nobody says that.”
“Yes. The Germans did it, everyone says that. And, you know, somebody did. Somebody did those things.” She looked up. “Somebody made the weapons-maybe it’s worse. German people. Even my brother. He came on leave, just before- You know what he said? That terrible things were being done there, in Russia, and no one must ever know. And I thought, what things would Peter do? A boy like that. Now I’m glad I don’t know. I don’t have to think about that. Whatever he did.”
“Maybe he didn’t do them,” Jake said quietly. He sat down next to her. “Lena, what’s this about?”
She put out the cigarette, still agitated, pushing it around the ashtray. “I don’t want to know what Emil did either. To think of him that way. I don’t want to know what’s in the files. His numbers. Maybe it’s terrible what they were doing, making weapons, but he was my husband. You know, when he came to Berlin, I thought I was saving him. Go, I told him, before it’s too late. I said it for him. Now you’re—”
“Now I’m what?”
“Making him a criminal. For working in the war. So did my brother. So did everybody, even your policeman. Who knows what they did? In my name. Sometimes I think I don’t want to be German anymore. Isn’t that terrible? Not wanting to be who you are. I don’t want to know what they did.“
“Lena,” he said patiently, “the files are there. They’ve already been seen. Emil handed them over himself. They’re not about him.”
“Then why do you want to see them?”
“Because I think they can tell us something about the man who was killed. He was in the business of selling information, so what was there to sell? Now, doesn’t that make sense?” he said calmly, coaxing a child.
“Yes.”
“Then why does it worry you?”
She looked down. “I don’t know.”
“It’s the flat. We’ll move.”
“It’s not the flat,” she said dully.
“Then what?”
She folded her hands in her lap. “He came to Berlin for me.” She looked up, her voice faltering and dispirited. “He came for me.”
He reached over and covered her hand. “So did I.” Contents — Previous Chapter / Next Chapter
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
“The problem is the cross-referencing,” Bernie said, walking past the rows of file cabinets. “They just threw everything in here and we’re still sorting it out. Himmler’s personal files are over there, t
he general SS ones here, but sometimes it pays to check one against the other if dates are missing. You know, what’s personal? That’s assuming Brandt’s files haven’t been mis filed. Which you can’t assume. They got involved in the rocket program in ‘forty-three, so you can skip all of these.” He waved away half the room. “Program was designated A-4, so we try to keep it all together in an A-4 section, but as I say, it pays to cross-check. Here,” he said, pulling a drawer, “happy reading.”
“And these would be what Brandt turned over?”
“Some of them. Sources aren’t indicated, but if they’re his, they’d be in here. Of course, the scientific documents were down in Nordhausen. Von Braun buried them for safekeeping-in some old mine, I think-so FIAT’s got them, but you only wanted Brandt’s, right?”
“Right.”
“Then you’re here,” he said, tapping the cabinet.
“Christ,” Jake said, looking at the long row of files.
“Yeah, I know. They were so busy covering ass you wonder when they got time to fight.”
“Well, the army. They live on the stuff, don’t they? I’d hate to see ours.”
“These are a little different,” Bernie said. “If you get bored, try the aeromedical files over there. Want to know how long it takes a man to freeze to death? It’s all there-blood temp, pressure, right down to the last second. Everything but the screams. I’ll be downstairs if you need any help.”
But the first folders, at least, were ordinary-memos, staff directives, summary reports, the sort of thing he might have found im any office files, American Dye in Utica, except for the black SS letterheads. A paper trail of a bureaucratic takeover, with a Trojan horse of laborers. Peenemunde had been built with foreign conscripts, but by July ‘43 the program had needed more, the extra hands only the SS could supply- haftlinge, detainees, a memorandum word for prisoners in the death camps. After that first requisition, the fatal bargain, the real files began, thick with dates and events, a flurry of paper between department heads to seize opportunity while it lasted. July 7, an A-4 demonstration for Hitler, who is impressed. July 24, the great fire raid on Hamburg. July 25, A-4 gets a top priority go-ahead to produce its rockets, vengeance weapons. August 18, Peenemunde bombed. August 19, as night follows day, Hitler orders Himmller to provide camp labor to speed production. Three days later, August 21, Himmler takes charge of constructing a new production site at Nordhausen, far away from the bombs. August 23, the first workers arrive, the horse inside the gates.
The next folders followed the race to build Aladdin’s cave, clawed out of the mountain to house the vast underground factory. File after file of numbing construction details, weekly progress reports, new camps for workers. Even as Jake’s eyes glazed over at the day-to-day tallies, he was watching a whole city take shape, the sheer scale of the thing right there in the numbers. Ten thousand workers. Two giant tunnels reaching two miles back into the mountain; forty-seven cross tunnels, each two football fields long. Bigger every day, the way the pyramids must have been built. The same way, in fact. The ten thousand were slaves. No mention of how many were dying-you bad to guess by the requisitions for replacements from Himmler’s endless supply. The whole terrible business obscured by engineering estimates and monthly targets. In Berlin, the reports were dated, stamped, and filed away. Had Emil seen them back at Peenemunde, where the scientists gathered at night over coffee to discuss trajectories?
Meanwhile, page by page, the tunnels grow, rockets begin to be built, more camps, and finally the takeover is official-8 August 1944 Hans Kammler, SS lieutenant general, replaces Dornberger as head of the program. Now the scientists and their wonder rockets belong to Himmler. Medals are passed out. Jake looked for a minute at the memo describing the ceremony. Peenemunde, not Berlin; no families; a special luncheon. There had been champagne. Toasts were exchanged.
More folders. February ‘45, the rocket team finally abandons Peenemunde. A request for a special train, air travel too risky for scientific personnel, with the skies crowded with bombers. Everyone south now, scattered in villages near the great factory. The prison population reaches forty thousand-spillovers from the eastern camps as the Russians get closer. In spite of everything, V-2s are still streaming daily out of the mountain on their way to London. More files in March-demands, improbably, for increased production. And then the sudden end to the paper. But Jake could finish the story himself- he’d already written it. April 11, the Americans take Nordhausen. A-4 is over. He leaned back in his chair. But what did it mean? Drawers full of details not known to him but presumably known to someone. Nothing worth flying to Berlin for, getting killed for. What had he missed?
He left the last file open on the table and went outside for a smoke, sitting on the steps in the sun. A yellow afternoon light washed the trees of the Grunewald. Hours, to find nothing. Had Tully spent the day here?
“Need a break?” Bernie said from the doorway. “You lasted longer than most. Maybe you have a stronger stomach.”
“They’re not like that. Office politics, mostly. Production stats. Nothing.”
Bernie lit a cigarette. “You don’t know how to read them. That s not German, it’s a new language. The words mean something else.”
“ Haftlinge,‘’ Jake said, an example.
Bernie nodded. “Poor bastards. I guess it made it easier for the secretaries to type. Instead of what they really were. See the ‘disciplinary measures’? That’s hanging. They strung them up on a crane at the tunnel entrance so everybody had to pass under when they went to work. They let them swing for a week, until the smell got bad.”
“Discipline for what?”
“Sabotage. A loose bolt. Not working fast enough. Maybe they were the lucky ones-at least it was quick. The others, it took weeks before they dropped. But they did. The death rate was a hundred and sixty a day.”
“That’s some statistic.”
“A guess. Somebody took a pencil and averaged it out. For what it’s worth.” He walked over to the steps. “I take it you didn’t find what you wanted.”
“Nothing. I’ll go through them again. It has to be there somewhere. Whatever it is.”
“Trouble is, you don’t know what you’re looking for and Tully did.”
Jake thought for a minute. “But not where. He must have been fishing too. That’s why he wanted your help.”
“Then maybe he didn’t find it either.”
“But he came. His name’s right there in the book. It has to be here.”
“So now what?”
“Now I look again.” He flicked the cigarette end into the dusty yard. “Every time I think I’m getting someplace, I’m back where I started. Tully getting off a plane.” He stood up and brushed the seat of his pants. “Hey, Bernie, can I twist your arm for another favor? Talk to your pals in Frankfurt again-see if Tully’s on a flight manifest for July sixteenth. On whose okay. I asked MG, but if I wait for them I’ll be eighty. They have this way of getting lost in somebody’s In box. And see if anybody knows where he went the weekend Brandt left.”
“Frankfurt, they said.”
“But where? Where do you spend the weekend in Frankfurt? See if he said anything.”
“Does it matter?”
“I don’t know. Just a loose end. At least it gives us something to do while I figure out these files.”
Bernie looked up. “You know, it’s possible he got it wrong-that there isn’t anything here.”
“There must be. Emil came to Berlin for them. Why would he do that if there’s nothing in them?”
“Nothing you want, you mean.”
“Nothing he’d want either. I just read them.”
“That depends how you look at it. Want a theory?” Bernie paused, waiting for Jake to nod. “I think von Braun sent him.”
“Why?”
“It took about two weeks to round up the scientists after we got to Nordhausen. They were all over the place down there. Von Braun himself didn’t surrender until May second
. So what were they doing?”
“I give up, what?”
“Putting their alibis in order.”
“That’s a DA talking. Alibis for what?”
“For being part of what you just read about,” Bernie said, nodding toward the building. “‘It wasn’t us, it was the SS. Look, it’s right here. They did everything. We’re just the eggheads.’ Might be a useful thing to have when people start asking questions. Which we did, after we got a look at their factory help. Von Braun was the team leader-he had the technical files, the real trump card. But these aren’t bad as a bargaining chip. Clean hands.” He held up his own. “‘Let’s shake and make a deal. Here are the specs and the drawings. Let’s make some rockets together. The rest of it-you can see, we weren’t responsible, it was SS.’”
“But it was SS-it’s all there.”
“Then he was right to want them, wasn’t he? He’s even convinced you.”
“Come on, Bernie, they didn’t string anybody up. They were in Peenemunde until February-it says so in the files. How much could they know?”
“Everybody knew,” he said sharply, using his courtroom voice, making another case. “That’s what no one wants to believe. Everybody knew. Renate Naumann knew. Gunther knew. Everybody in this goddamn country knew. You think somebody who could get an SS car those last weeks didn’t know? They didn’t stop hanging people after February-they had to have seen it. Not to mention all the oth ers. They had forty camps for workers there, Jake, forty, and people were dying in all of them. They knew.“
“That doesn’t make them—”
“No, just accessories. You think they’re any better because they knew how to work a slide rule? They knew.” He stopped, dropping his prosecutor’s voice. “And I can’t touch them. Lucky for them the SS liked to take all the credit. So they’re off a very big hook. Worth coming to Berlin for, wouldn’t you say? Anyway, it’s a theory. Got a better one?”
“Then why send Emil? Why not some flunky?”
“Maybe he was the only one willing to go. He had a wife here.”
Jake looked away, then shook his head. “Except he didn’t come alone. There were two men with him. Why risk sending him?”