Garden of Beasts

by Jeffery Deaver

  "There," she announced, nodding at the tray. "No need for you to come to the breakfast room." She looked at him once quickly. Then away. "I have chores."

  "So, you still game?" he asked in English.

  "What is 'game'?"

  He kissed her. "It means what I asked you last night. Are you still willing to come with me?"

  She ordered the china on the tray, which had seemed to him already perfectly ordered. "I'm game. Are you?"

  He shrugged. "I wouldn't have let you change your mind. It would be Kakfif. Out of the question."

  She laughed. Then a frown. "One thing I wish to say."

  "Yeah?"

  "I give opinions quite often." She looked down. "And quite strongly. Michael called me a cyclone. I want to say, regarding the subject of sports: I could learn to like them too."

  Paul shook his head. "I'd rather you didn't."

  "No?"

  "Then I'll feel I had to like poetry."

  She pressed her head to his chest. He believed she was smiling.

  "You will like America," he said. "But if you don't, when all this blows over you can come back. You aren't necessarily leaving the country forever."

  "Ah, my wise writer-man. You think this will--the expression?--will blow over?"

  "Yes, I do. I think they won't be in power much longer." He looked at the clock. The time was nearly seven-thirty. "Now I have to meet my associate."

  "On Sunday morning? Ach, I finally understand your secret."

  He looked at her with a cautious smile.

  "You're writing about priests who play sports!" She laughed. "That's your big story!" Then her smile faded. "And why must you leave so quickly if you are writing about sports or the cubic meters of concrete used for the stadium?"

  "I don't have to leave quickly. I have some important meetings back in the United States." Paul drank his coffee quickly and ate one piece of toast and sausage. "You finish what's left. I'm not hungry now."

  "Well, hurry back to me. I will pack. But only one bag, I think. If I take too many, perhaps a ghost will try to hide in one." A laugh. "Ach, I am sounding like someone out of a story by our macabre friend E.T.A. Hoffmann."

  He kissed her and left the boardinghouse, stepped out into the morning, already hot, already painting a damp coat on the skin. With a glance up and down the empty street, he made his way north, over the canal, and into the Tiergarten, the Garden of Beasts.

  Paul found Reggie Morgan sitting on a bench in front of the very pond where Kathe Richter's lover had been beaten to death three years ago.

  Even at this early hour, dozens of people were here. A number of walkers and bicyclists. Morgan's jacket was off and his shirt sleeves partly rolled up.

  Paul sat down beside him. Morgan flicked an envelope inside his jacket pocket. "Got the greenbacks okay," he whispered in English.

  They reverted to German. "They cashed a check on Saturday night?" Paul asked, laughing. "I'm living in a whole new world."

  "You think Webber will show up?" Morgan asked skeptically.

  "Oh, yes. If there's money involved he'll be here. But I'm not sure how helpful he'll be. I looked over Wilhelm Street last night. There are dozens of guards, hundreds maybe. It'd be far too risky to do the job there. We'll have to see what Otto says. Maybe he's found another location."

  They sat in silence for a moment.

  Paul watched him look around the park. Morgan seemed wistful. He said, "I will miss this country very much." For a moment the man's face lost its keenness and the dark eyes were sad. "There are good people here. I find them kinder than the Parisians, more open than the Londoners. And they spend far more time enjoying life than New Yorkers. If we had time I'd take you to the Lustgarten and Luna Park. And I love to walk here, in the Tiergarten. I enjoy watching birds." The thin man seemed embarrassed at this. "A foolish diversion."

  Paul laughed to himself, thinking of the model airplanes sitting on his bookshelf in Brooklyn. Foolishness is in the eye of the beholder.

  "So you'll leave?" Paul asked.

  "I can't stay. I've been here far too long. Every day there's another chance of a mistake, some carelessness that will tip them off to me. And after what we're about to do they'll look very closely at every foreigner who's had business here recently. But after life returns to normal and the National Socialists are gone I can return."

  "What will you do when you come back?"

  Morgan brightened. "I would like to be a diplomat. That's why I am in this business. After what I saw in the trenches..." He nodded at a bullet scar on his arm. "After that, I decided I was going to do whatever I could to stop war. The diplomatic corps made sense. I wrote the Senator about it. He suggested Berlin. A country in flux, he called it. So here I am. I hope to be a liaison officer in a few years. Then ambassador or a consul. Like our Ambassador Dodd here. He's a genius, a true statesman. I won't be posted here, of course, not at first. Too important a country. I could start out in Holland. Or maybe Spain, well, after their civil war is over, of course. If there's any Spain left. Franco's as bad as Hitler. It'll be brutal. But, yes, I would like to come back here when sanity returns."

  A moment later Paul spotted Otto Webber coming down the path, walking slowly, a bit unsteadily and squinting against the powerful sunlight.

  "There he is now."

  "Him? He looks like a Burgermeister. And one who spent the evening in his cups. We're relying on him? "

  Webber approached the bench and sat down, breathing hard. "Hot, hot day. I didn't know it could be this hot in the morning. I'm rarely up at this hour. But neither are the dung-shirts so we can meet without much concern. You are Mr. John Dillinger's associate?"

  "Dillinger?" Morgan asked.

  "I am Otto Webber." He shook Morgan's hand vigorously. "You are?"

  "I'll keep my name to myself if you don't mind."

  "Ach, me, yes, that's fine." Webber examined Morgan closely. "Say, I have some nice trousers, several pair. I can sell them to you cheap. Yes, yes, very cheap. The best quality. From England. I can have one of my girls alter them to fit you perfectly. Ingrid is available. And very talented. Quite pretty too. A real pearl."

  Morgan glanced down at his gray flannel slacks. "No. I don't need any clothes."

  "Champagne? Stockings?"

  "Otto," Paul said. "I think the only transaction we're interested in involves what we were talking about yesterday."

  "Ach, yes, Mr. John Dillinger. Except I have some news you may not like. All of my contacts report that a veil of silence has descended on Wilhelm Street. Something has made them cautious. Security has become higher than ever. And all this in the last day. There is no information anyone has about this person you were mentioning."

  Paul's face twisted in disappointment.

  Morgan muttered, "I spent half of last night coming up with the money."

  "Good," Webber said brightly. "Dollars, correct?"

  "My friend," the slim American added caustically, "you don't get paid if we don't get results."

  "But the situation is not hopeless. I can still be of some assistance."

  "Go on," Morgan said impatiently. He looked down again at his slacks, brushing at a smudge.

  The German continued. "I can't tell you where the chicken is but what would you say if I can get you into the henhouse and you could find out for yourself?"

  "The--"

  He lowered his voice. "I can get you into the Chancellory. Ernst is the envy of all the ministers. Everyone tries to snuggle close to the Little Man and get offices in the building but the best that most of them can do is to find space nearby. That Ernst abides there is a source of anguish to many."

  Paul scoffed. "I looked it over last night. There're guards everywhere. You couldn't get me in there."

  "Ah, but I am of a different opinion, my friend."

  "How the hell can you do it?" Paul had lapsed into English. He repeated the question in German.

  "We have the Little Man to thank. He is obsessed with arc
hitecture. He has been renovating the Chancellory since he came to power. Laborers are there seven days a week. I will provide a workman's outfit, a forged identification card and the two passes that will get you into the building. One of my contacts is doing the plastering there and he has access to all the documentation."

  Morgan considered this and nodded, now less cynical about the idea.

  "My friend tells me that Hitler wishes rugs in all the offices on the important floors. That will include Ernst's. The carpet suppliers are measuring the offices. Some have been measured, some have not. We will hope Ernst's has not. In the event it has been, you can make some excuse about having to measure again. The pass I will give you is from a company that is known for, among other things, its fine carpeting. I will also provide a meter stick and a notebook."

  "How do you know you can trust this man?" Paul asked.

  "Because he's been using cheap plaster and pocketing the difference between its cost and what the state is paying him. That's a death offense when you're building Hitler's seat of power. So I have some leverage with him; he wouldn't lie to me. Besides, he thinks only that we're running some scam to undercut the price of carpets. Of course, I did promise him a bit of egg."

  "Egg?" Morgan asked.

  It was for Paul to interpret. "Money."

  Whose bread I eat is whose song I sing....

  "Take it out of the thousand dollars."

  "I wish to point out that I don't have the thousand dollars."

  Morgan shook his head, reached into his pocket and counted out a hundred.

  "That's fine. See, I'm not greedy."

  Morgan rolled his eyes at Paul. "Not greedy? Why, he's like Goring."

  "Ach, I take that as a compliment, sir. Our air minister is a very resourceful businessman." Webber turned to Paul. "Now, there will be some officials in the building, even on Sunday. But my man tells me they will be senior people and will be mostly in the Leader's portion of the building, to the left, which you will not be allowed near. To the right are the lower-level-officials' offices--that's where Ernst's is. They, and their secretaries and aides, will most likely not be there. You should have some time to browse through his office and, with luck, find his calendar or a memo or notation about his appointments in the next few days."

  "This is not bad," Morgan said.

  Webber said, "It will take me an hour or so to put everything in place. I will pick up the coveralls and your papers and a truck. I'll meet you by that statue there, the woman with the large bosom, at ten A . M . And I'll bring some pants for you, " he added to Morgan. "Twenty marks. Such a good price." He smiled then said to Paul, "Your friend here eyes me with a very particular look, Mr. John Dillinger. I don't believe he trusts me."

  Reggie Morgan shrugged. "I will tell you, Otto Wilhelm Friedrich Georg Webber." A glance at Paul. "My colleague here told you about the precautions we've taken to make certain you don't betray us. No, my friend, trust is not the issue. I'm looking at you this way because I wish to know what the hell you think is wrong with these trousers of mine?"

  He saw Mark's face in the young boy's before him.

  This was to be expected, of course, seeing the father in the son. But it was still unsettling.

  "Come here, Rudy," Reinhard Ernst said to his grandson.

  "Yes, Opa."

  The hour was early on Sunday and the housekeeper was removing breakfast dishes from the table, on which sunlight fell as yellow as pollen. Gertrud was in the kitchen, examining a plucked goose, which would be dinner later that day. Their daughter-in-law was at church, lighting candles to the memory of Mark Albrecht Ernst, the very same young man the colonel saw now echoed in his grandson.

  He tied the laces of Rudy's shoes. He glanced once more at the boy's face and saw Mark again, though noted a different look on his face this time: curious, discerning.

  It was uncanny really.

  Oh, how he missed his son...

  It was eighteen months since Mark had said good-bye to his parents, wife and Rudy, all of them standing behind the rail at Lehrter Station. Ernst had given the twenty-seven-year-old officer a salute--a real salute, not the fascist one--as his son had boarded the train to Hamburg to take command of his ship.

  The young officer was fully aware of the dangers of the ramshackle vessel yet he'd wholly embraced them.

  Because that is what soldiers and sailors do.

  Ernst thought about Mark daily. But never before had the spirit of his son come so close to him as now, seeing these familiar expressions in his own grandson's face, so direct, so confident, so curious. Were they evidence that the boy had his father's nature? Rudy would be subject to the draft in a decade. Where would Germany be then? At war? Peace? Back in possession of the lands stolen away by the Treaty of Versailles? Would Hitler be gone, an engine so powerful that it quickly seizes and burns? Or would the Leader still be in command, burnishing his vision of the new Germany? Ernst's heart told him he should be vitally concerned about these questions. Yet he knew he couldn't worry about them. All he could focus on was his duty.

  One had to do one's duty.

  Even if that meant commanding an old training ship not meant to carry powder and shells, whose jerry-rigged magazine was too close to the galley or engine room or a sparking wire (no one would ever know), the consequences being that one moment the ship was practicing war maneuvers in the cold Baltic and the next she was a cloud of acrid smoke over the water, her shattered hull dropping through the blackness of water to the sea floor.

  Duty...

  Even if that meant spending half one's days battling in the trenches of Wilhelm Street, all the way to the Leader, if necessary, to do what was best for Germany.

  Ernst gave a final tug on Rudy's shoelace to make sure it wouldn't come undone and trip the boy. Then he stood and looked down at this tiny version of his son. Acting on impulse, very unusual for Ernst, he asked, "Rudy, I have to see someone this morning. But later, would you like to come with me to the Olympic stadium? Would you like that?"

  "Oh, yes, Opa." The boy's face blossomed into a huge smile. "I could run around the tracks."

  "You run quickly."

  "Gunni at my child-school and I ran a race from the oak tree to the porch and he's two years older than I but I won."

  "Good, good. Then you will enjoy the afternoon. You'll come with me and you can run on the same track that our Olympians will race on. Then when we see the Games next week you can tell everyone that you ran on the same track. Won't that be fun?"

  "Oh, yes, Opa."

  "I have to go now. But I'll return at noontime and pick you up."

  "I'll practice running."

  "Yes, you do that."

  Ernst walked to his den, collected several files on the Waltham Study, then found his wife in the pantry. He told her that he would pick up Rudy later that day. And for now? Yes, yes, it was Sunday morning but still he had to attend to some important matters. And, no, they couldn't wait.

  Whatever else they said about him, Hermann Goring was tireless.

  Today, for instance, he'd arrived at his desk in the air ministry at 8 A.M. A Sunday, no less. And he'd had a stop to make on the way.

  Sweating furiously, he had marched into the Chancellory a half hour before that, making his way to Hitler's office. It was possible that Wolf was awake-- still awake, that is. An insomniac, the man often stayed up past dawn. But, no, the Leader was in bed. The guard reported that he'd retired about five, with instructions not to be disturbed.

  Goring had thought for a moment then jotted a note and left it with the guard.

  My Leader,

  I have learned of a matter of concern at the highest level. Betrayal might be involved. Significant future plans are at stake. I will relate this information in person as soon as it suits.

  Goring

  Good choice of words. "Betrayal" was always a trigger. The Jews, the Communists, the Social Democrats, the Republicans--the backstabbers, in short--had sold out the country to the Alli
es at the end of the War and still threatened to play Pilate to Hitler's Jesus.

  Oh, Wolf got hot when he heard that word.

  "Future plans" was good, as well. Anything that threatened setbacks to Hitler's vision of the Third Empire would get the man's immediate attention.

  Though the Chancellory was merely around the corner, it had been unpleasant to make the trip, a large man on a hot morning. But Goring'd had no choice. He couldn't telephone or send a runner; Reinhard Ernst wasn't a competent enough intriguer to have his own intelligence network to spy on colleagues but any number of others would be delighted to steal Goring's revelation about Ludwig Keitel's Jewish background and hand it to the Leader as if it were their own discovery. Goebbels, for instance, Goring's chief rival for Wolf's attention, would do so in a heartbeat.

  Now, close to 9 A.M., the minister was turning his attention to a discouragingly large file about Aryanizing a large chemical company in the west and folding it into the Hermann Goring Works. His phone buzzed.

  From the anteroom his aide answered. "Minister Goring's office."

  The minister leaned forward and looked out. He could see the man standing to attention as he spoke. The aide hung up and walked to the doorway. "The Leader will see you in a half hour, sir."

  Goring nodded and walked to the table across his office. He sat and served himself food from the heaped-high tray. The aide poured coffee. The air minister flipped through the financial information on the chemical company but he had trouble concentrating; the image that kept emerging from the charts of numbers was of Reinhard Ernst being led from the Chancellory by two Gestapo officers, a look of bewilderment and defeat on the colonel's otherwise irritatingly placid face.

  A frivolous fantasy, to be sure, but it provided some pleasant diversion while he scarfed down a huge plate of sausage and eggs.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  In a spacious but dusty and unkempt Krausen Street apartment, which had been in existence from the days of Bismarck and Wilhelm, a half kilometer southeast of the government buildings, two young men sat at an ornate dining room table. For hours they'd been engaged in a debate. The discussion had been lengthy and fervent because the subject was nothing less than their survival.