Rosa

by Jonathan Rabb

  Fichte needed a moment to absorb the information. “So the fact that it’s not Wouters doesn’t trouble you.”

  “Of course it troubles me, Hans.” Hoffner’s tone was thick with frustration. “It horrifies me. But right now, it’s not the most inconsistent piece of information we have.”

  “It’s a shame Kroll didn’t have anything for us on the grease. That might have been helpful.”

  Hoffner nodded slowly. He had decided to keep this recent discovery from Fichte: until he knew what it all meant—and now, with the information from Bruges, he had no idea when that might be—Hoffner needed to keep everything as focused as possible. As much as he wanted to trust Fichte with it, he knew that would be unwise: the appearance of the Polpo had made that abundantly clear, not to mention the leak. The less Fichte knew, the safer it would be for everyone involved. “Yes,” said Hoffner. “We’ll have to wait on that.”

  Fichte tried another tack: “Was the Wouters case well reported in Belgium? I mean, during the war, would they have spent a lot of time with it in the newspapers? That could be of use.”

  Hoffner had been thinking the same thing. “Excellent question, Hans. You’ll have to ask the Chief Inspector when you see him.”

  Fichte’s confusion returned, and Hoffner explained: “We need to know what they have in Bruges, and we need it quickly. More than that, we need to hear what Mr. Wouters has to say, and whom he might have said it to.” Fichte remained silent. Hoffner tried to lead him. “There is another way to get from Bruges to Berlin, Hans, also controlled by the military, although a bit quicker than a train.” When Fichte continued to stare back at him, Hoffner said, “You’ve never been in an aeroplane, have you, Hans?” Hoffner watched as the blood drained from Fichte’s face. “Not so bad, really. Just remember to turn your head away from the wind.” Hoffner smiled at Fichte’s blank stare. “Trust me,” he said. “You’ll know when.”

  THE PACT

  Victor Knig, Hoffner’s onetime partner, had spent the last hour of his life circling over a vast stretch of lake hidden beneath fog in the autumn of 1915. Knig had not realized it, but had he flown just another twenty kilometers east, he would have seen the lights of a village and been able to land his Fokker E-I in any number of open fields. At the time, the “Eindecker” had been a relatively new aeroplane, renowned for its synchronous Spandau machine gun—that clever little gear which allowed it to stop firing when the propeller blade was moving directly in front of it—but Knig had been flying in empty sky: what he had needed was light, not a miracle gun. With his fuel dangerously low, and the sun dipping out of the horizon, Knig had chanced a drop dive into the cloud cover. Thinking he was coasting just above the water, and only a few hundred meters from open land, he had hit the lake head-on at full speed. The impact had left nothing of the aeroplane to recover, let alone any traces of Captain Victor Knig of the German Second Aircraft Battalion.

  It was an odd mistake for so experienced a flyer to have made. Knig had been flying since 1909, and had placed third in the Rundflug in both 1912 and 1913. It was why the Air Corps had overlooked his rather advanced age of thirty-eight on the application: a sky pilot with five years of flying under his belt was prime material. It was for those reasons that his squadron had assumed he had been hit somewhere over France. None of them had even considered the possibility of those final tormenting minutes that Knig had had to endure. Far from enemy fire, alone and blind, he had been done in by nothing more than the dark. It was probably better that no one had known. Victor had been a terribly proud man.

  Next to Hoffner, Tobias Mueller had been struck hardest by Knig’s death. Mueller had been a brash twenty-four-year-old with a genius for flight, and Knig’s closest comrade in the squadron. Hoffner had met him once during one of their leaves: they had liked each other instantly.

  Mueller had been something of a celebrity during the war. He had brought down eighteen French fighters in just over two years before being sent home in 1917: it had not been his decision. He had lost part of his right foot, along with a few fingers, in a crash landing, and now walked with a considerable limp. He had insisted he could still fight; the Air Corps, however, had seen it otherwise. Even so, Mueller had been too good with a stick to let go: he had been flying supplies in and out of Berlin for the past two years. True to form, it had taken Mueller no time to discover that a good deal of money could be made by a pilot willing to fly any number of other items in and out of Germany. He had been caught only once, luckily by the civilian police, and since the black market was Kripo jurisdiction, his case had landed on the third floor at the Alex. Hoffner had been the one to make it all go away, and Mueller had never forgotten him for that. The monthly supply of cigars and cigarettes was a particularly welcome treat.

  For now, Mueller was favoring the aerodrome at Tempelhof as his base of operations. It was little more than four or five buildings scattered across a stretch of wide-open grassland, and was still considered second-rate when compared to the airfields at Johannisthal—the site from which the Rundflug fliers had set off and returned during those wild, prewar days of summer—but it did have the advantage of being closer in to town. It was the preferred stop of the supply runners for that reason, more so because no one really paid it much attention. Planes could come and go as they pleased. On occasion, a little something for the station guard was advised, but aside from that, sky pilots had the run of the place. It also meant that Tempelhof was always in need of a good overhaul.

  Hoffner and Fichte were finding that out for themselves firsthand as they slogged their way across a field that was more like a mass of dense pudding than a runway. It was clear why boots were a staple of the aviator outfit.

  Hoffner was the first into the hangar. It would have been difficult to call the domed tent a building, as it was nothing more than a tarp hung over several very long poles. Ten or so aeroplanes of every color and design stood in a row along the side wall, half of them stripped for parts in aid of the other five. Mueller was pilfering something from one of the stray engines when he looked around at the sound of footsteps. He was wearing a pair of coveralls, streaked in oil and grease from collar to foot. His boots, however, were immaculate. He started toward them.

  Still far enough away not to be heard, Fichte said quietly, “I’m getting into an aeroplane with a cripple? Wonderful.”

  Under his breath, Hoffner answered, “I won’t tell him about your lungs, and you don’t mention the limp. Fair enough?”

  Mueller drew up to them, and, wiping the grease onto a cloth from his remaining fingers, he extended his hand. Without hesitation, Hoffner took it. “Hello, Toby,” he said.

  “Nikolai,” said Mueller. “Nice to see you.”

  “This is Hans Fichte. Your passenger.”

  Mueller extended his hand to Fichte, who tried a smile and took Mueller’s hand. Fichte squeezed gently and felt the gaps in the grip. “It’s an odd sensation,” said Mueller, “but you get used to it.” Fichte nodded awkwardly. Mueller smiled. “I was talking about flying. You never get used to the hand.” Mueller laughed. Again Fichte nodded, as he pulled his hand away.

  “How soon until you can go?” said Hoffner.

  “The sky’s clear enough, for now. Up to you. Everything’s ready on my end.” Mueller nodded over to a biplane along the row, one with a tapered undercarriage and a high skid under the back fin. From the little Hoffner recalled, it could have been anything from a Siemens-Schuckert D-IV to an English Sopwith Snipe. Hoffner was putting nothing past Mueller, these days. Mueller had been talking about getting his hands on a Bentley engine for weeks: the 230-horsepower B.R.2, if memory served. It was a bit tougher to handle, but the power was unmatched, over 300 kph in a dive, according to Mueller. Hoffner had trouble even conceiving of those speeds. The chances, however, of one having “fallen” into Mueller’s lap during his travels was just too good. Hoffner knew Georgi would have been able to spot it instantly.

  Mueller turned to Fichte. “We can fly above the
rain, but you’ll need something warmer than what you’ve got on. There are some things back in the office you can try.” Fichte nodded.

  “So I can leave him with you, Toby?” said Hoffner. “I need you there for a day, two at the most. You can work that?”

  Mueller said, “Bruges is as good a place as any to find castor oil.”

  Seeing Fichte’s expression, Hoffner said, “To grease the cylinders, Hans. An old sky pilot’s trick.”

  Mueller headed for the office as Hoffner lagged behind with Fichte so as to give the boy some last-minute instructions. “Get what you can and wire me, Hans.” Not that Hoffner was thrilled to be sending Fichte off like this—there had been only time enough for Fichte to throw an extra pair of socks and some shaving equipment into a satchel—but given the leak, Hoffner had no interest in having the Bruges story come out before getting the information firsthand. Fichte would have to make do. “And mark the wire ‘restricted.’ I’ll have a boy waiting at the desk, day and night. Send it whenever you can.”

  Fichte said, “You don’t think it would be better for both of us to go?”

  Hoffner had explained this twice on the ride over. He tried to be encouraging. “Of course it would, Hans, but then who’s going to find that leak?” Hoffner paused. “You’re from the big city. Use it to your advantage.”

  Mueller had reached the office. He turned back. “All right, boys, we’ve got about three and a half hours of light left. We need to be in the air in ten minutes if we’re going to get as far as Kln by tonight, and I want to get as far as Kln by tonight.” He stepped into the office and headed for a locker. “Now,” he said to himself in a loud voice, “let’s see if we’ve got anything big enough for Herr Kripo in here.”

  Hoffner patted Fichte on the shoulder and started for the field. “Safe trip, Hans.” Almost at the opening flap, he added, “And try not to fall out.” Hoffner was gone by the time Fichte turned around to answer.

  The Ullstein Building is the site from which most of Berlin’s popular news is processed and packaged for daily consumption. Having stood its ground for the past forty years, the building had survived relatively unscathed during the weeks of revolution. In the distant past, its editors had made it through Bismarck’s right-wing barrages, and later the left’s equally vicious attacks for the paper’s support of the war. The men of Ullstein had even found ways to defuse the ever-recurring anti-Semitic assaults. Leopold Ullstein, the publisher and founder—along with his five sons—had done a remarkable thing for Berlin by giving her workingmen newspapers written just for them; Ullstein senior had even sat on the city council in thanks for his services. But Jews were Jews, and there was always something so threatening in that, and so, whenever things got a bit slow, the Ullstein papers were the inevitable target. According to the current editors, however, if they had managed to weather those storms, a few shots from some disgruntled soldiers weren’t going to stall the presses.

  Since November the real intrigue had been taking place elsewhere—at the offices of the Social Democrats’ Vorwrts a few blocks away, and at the ever-relocating rooms of Die Rote Fahne, Luxemburg’s “authentic” rag of the people. Ullstein’s Die Berliner Zeitung am Mittag (the BZ) and its Morgenpost, on the other hand, had chugged along quite nicely, and had left the rabble-rousing, and all its attendant mayhem, to the less stable publications. The Morgenpost had continued to report on the life of Berlin in full detail; the BZ had offered her up in little vignettes.

  For fifteen years now, the BZ had been the city’s boulevard paper—to be picked up, read, and discarded—with stories that had just enough meat on them to keep the reader hooked for a tram ride or a morning coffee. It gave a snapshot of the city: eclectic, pulsating, and immediate. The only in-depth reporting the BZ ever did was the Monday sports section—horse races, motorcycle rallies, sailing, boxing, football, handball: the pages were always thick with the sweat of the middle class. It also liked to titillate and shock—murder was its biggest seller—which was why most of the men of the Kripo were familiar with its offices.

  Hoffner pushed his way through the swinging doors and into the BZ’s editorial department. The sound of typewriter keys striking metal cylinders, and the constant clatter of the newswire machines, gave the impression that the fourth floor was under attack from a legion of angry, pellet-throwing elves. Even the ringing of the telephones took on a sirenlike wail, as if a miniature ambulance corps were shuttling unseen from one side of the room to the other. The BZ staff seemed oblivious to the noise; they remained focused on the news. The one or two who did look over as Hoffner made his way through knew exactly where he was heading. When the Kripo came, they came looking for Gottlob Kvatsch. It was probably why Kvatsch insisted that his desk remain on the back wall: he liked the view it presented. He also liked to keep his distance. Ullstein was beginning to hire too many of its own kind. Kvatsch might not have been able to avoid working for Jews; he just had no desire to work side by side with them. He had moved his desk three times during the last year. None of his co-workers had shown the least concern.

  Kvatsch saw Hoffner long before Hoffner had made his way past the “cooking tips” and “affordable fashions” desks. Kvatsch quickly began to fold up the few notebooks that were spread out in front of him, and was placing the last of them inside a drawer when Hoffner pulled up. Keeping his gaze on the desk, Kvatsch found something to busy himself with: he began to rearrange the pens on his blotter. Hoffner stood quietly for a few moments and enjoyed the performance.

  Kvatsch was wearing a weathered suit, the kind found on any of those Saturday wagons in the Rosenthaler Platz or near the Hackescher-Markt. The tie was also secondhand. The shirt, however, was crisp and white: Kvatsch chose his creature comforts carefully. To the men of the Kripo, he had always reminded them of a slightly bedraggled detective sergeant, one whose time had never come, yet who continued to wear the once-impressive suit in the hopes of being noticed. There was the story that Kvatsch had actually applied to the Kripo and been dismissed years ago, but Hoffner guessed it was more of a cautionary tale for young recruits than the reason for Kvatsch’s persistent choice in attire. Even so, they all knew what Kvatsch liked to be called around the BZ: he was “the Detective.” Maybe, then, the clothes were a deliberate choice, thought Hoffner, even as the word “pathetic” ran through his mind.

  “Hello, Kvatsch.” Hoffner spoke with just the right tinge of contempt.

  “Herr Detective Inspector.” Kvatsch was still intent on his pens. “What a surprise.”

  “‘Sources in the Kripo.’ That’s very impressive. I’d like to know which ones.”

  Kvatsch looked up. His face always had a nice sheen to it, as if his wide pores were the source of the oil used to comb back his hair. And he was always pursing his thick lips, afraid, perhaps, that his teeth might slip out without constant supervision. Kvatsch reached into his jacket pocket and produced a pack of very expensive cigarettes: he was making clear his own connections. He took one and laid the pack on the desk. “I’d offer you one, Herr Inspector, but I know you don’t smoke.” Kvatsch lit up and settled back comfortably into his chair. His lips continued to purse around the butt of the cigarette.

  “Let’s save ourselves some time, Kvatsch. Just tell me where you got it.”

  “Please, Inspector. Have a seat.” He indicated a space in front of his desk, then took in a long drag. There was no chair in front of his desk. “Are you confirming the story?”

  Hoffner smiled. “I’m just trying to find out who’s been passing false information on to our friends in the press.”

  “False information?” echoed Kvatsch. “Is that why you’re here? It worries you that much that someone might be misleading me?”

  Hoffner kept his smile. “The name, Kvatsch. I’d hate to have to bring you down to the Alex.”

  Kvatsch nodded slowly, as if he were about to submit. His eyes, however, had the look of a little boy’s with a secret. “Haven’t you heard, Inspector? The socialist
s have introduced something quite wonderful. It’s called “freedom of the press.” The Americans have been doing it for years.”

  “Really?” Hoffner gently moved the pens out of the way so that he could take a seat on the lip of the desk. His proximity seemed to straighten Kvatsch up in his chair. “They also have libel laws. Little things like that. We don’t, so we get to use other methods.” Without the least bit of threat, Hoffner reached over and pulled a cigarette from Kvatsch’s pack. He took Kvatsch’s cigarette and lit his own.

  Kvatsch showed no reaction. “Would you like a cigarette, Detective Inspector?”

  “No thanks.” Hoffner took a drag on his own, and then crushed out Kvatsch’s in the ashtray. “You know, Kvatsch, I don’t think the socialists had you in mind when they started parading out all of these freedoms.”

  “Must be up to four or five by now, if you’re this keen for my source, Inspector. And here I thought it was just your run-of-the-mill little murder. Not even front-page material. Tell me, is it true about the knife markings? I think that’s the part that’s going to sell the most papers.”

  “We both know it’s going to take me no time to find this out. You can either do yourself a favor, or you can do what you always do. End up a few steps behind, kicking yourself for having been so stupid.” Hoffner enjoyed the momentary flash in Kvatsch’s eyes. “These socialists are an unpredictable bunch. It’s another week before the Assembly votes get tabulated. Who knows where we might be then? Between you and me, Kvatsch, I don’t think this is the time not to have a friend in the Kripo, do you?” Hoffner stood. He crushed out his cigarette. “Just something to think about.”