Conspiracy of Blood and Smoke

by Anne Blankman

  The next morning, Superintendent Gennat telephoned Friedrich to confirm that the body in the apartment had been Gunter Schultz’s, the younger brother of the fireman they sought. Which meant that Heinz might still be alive.

  Friedrich ordered a couple of his men to return to the bars around Herr Schultz’s apartment, once night had come and the establishments had opened. Someone needed to question Schultz’s neighbors, too, he added. Perhaps one of them had seen something.

  “I can go,” Daniel had jumped in.

  Friedrich shot him an annoyed look. “My men are pretending that Herr Schultz defaulted on a gambling debt and that’s why they’re looking for him. Nobody will give them a second glance. You, Herr Cohen, as I’ve already told you, can’t possibly pass as one of us. You’ll wait here until I figure out how you can be useful again. That will be all.”

  He and the three Ringverein men left. Gretchen watched Daniel, sensing his frustration in the way he paced the parlor. Three days, she thought, but didn’t speak it aloud, knowing it would make Daniel feel worse. Today was the twentieth—which meant they had three days until the Reichstag voted on the Enabling Act and Hitler assumed dictatorial powers. She didn’t see how they could possibly prove that the National Socialists had had Fräulein Junge killed to cover up their responsibility for the Reichstag fire. They didn’t have enough time.

  She sank onto the sofa and covered her face with her hands. From another room, she heard the steady ticking of a clock. Ticking down minutes they didn’t have.

  Unbidden, the image of Hitler in his old bed-sitting-room, surrounded by birthday cakes, rose in her mind. She hadn’t had time to puzzle over the dream, but now she wondered again why she had had it. What was her subconscious trying to tell her?

  She fetched a piece of paper and a pen and sat at the table. Alfred had taught her a technique he used on his patients to coax forth their repressed memories. He had based it on Freud’s free-association method, in which patients were encouraged to say whatever came into their heads, without censoring their thoughts. Often this technique opened a back door into people’s memories. It might help her now.

  Taking a deep breath, she imagined again the scene in Hitler’s room: him slumped on the bed, surrounded by cakes, and her father starting to speak to him. She wrote down the first word that occurred to her: cake. Then the next—taster. Her fingers flew over the page as more words popped up in her thoughts. Poison. Reporter. Blood. Smoke. Lies.

  She stopped, studying the words, the black slashes of them on the white paper. Slowly, she set down the pen.

  The trick had worked; bits of the afternoon had flown back to her. The ugly parts, before Hanfstaengl had arrived. At first, Uncle Dolf had been afraid that some of his birthday cakes might have been poisoned, moaning that he had so many enemies. She had offered to sample the cakes for him, like the king’s tasters she had learned about in school, and he had burst into delighted laughter. My little glutton! he’d said, patting her cheek. Very well, we’ll have some. Which do you want to try first?

  Once they had begun eating, he and Papa had talked in low voices about Herr Gerlich, who had wanted to meet with Hitler to discuss his plans to improve Munich’s economy. She had forgotten that Hitler and Gerlich had met a few times that year; they’d been friendly with each other until Hitler had tried to overthrow the city government in the putsch in which her father had died. Gerlich had declared Hitler couldn’t be trusted, and they’d been bitter enemies ever since. Her throat tightened. These days, Gerlich was trapped in Munich’s city jail, and she didn’t imagine that Hitler would ever approve his release.

  Focus, she ordered herself. Worrying about Gerlich wouldn’t help him. She glanced at the next words on the list. Blood. Smoke. She could hear Hitler’s voice in her head, murmuring that he hoped Gerlich was as credulous as the public. They’ll swallow anything if it’s repeated often enough, he had said, clapping her father on the shoulder. Like blood and smoke, eh, Müller? The truth doesn’t matter. Only the appearance of it.

  Then had come the part she didn’t want to remember: Quite right, her father had replied. Misdirection is the best tool in our arsenal, Adi.

  There was a bitter taste in the back of her throat. She already knew that her father hadn’t been the good-hearted man she’d once imagined him to be. But the proof of it still hurt. Blinking hard, she tried to make her thoughts cold and rational. What had Hitler meant when he had mentioned “blood and smoke”? She considered smoke, swirling, dark and heavy, concealing what was truly there. Blood, red and thick, the essence of life. The symbol of racial purity, in Hitler’s opinion. And death.

  She frowned. Hitler had said that he didn’t need to tell the truth; he merely needed to appear as though he did. He had sounded as if he were planning on deliberately misleading others. Like setting fire to Berlin’s seat of government, a terrorist attack reported all over the world, and then blaming your strongest political opponents for it. Misdirection, as Papa had said.

  “Daniel,” she said shakily, and he whirled to face her, his eyes narrowed in concentration, “I think I’ve remembered something important.”

  Once she had told him about the memory, he sat with his head bowed for a moment, thinking. “It doesn’t prove anything,” he said at last. “But it shows Hitler’s state of mind.”

  Gretchen nodded in instant comprehension. “He’s not afraid to fool the public to further his own goals. The fire was the perfect opportunity to frighten everybody so much that they didn’t complain when he suspended civil liberties.”

  “And it sets him up to assume absolute power when President Hindenburg dies.” Daniel sounded grim. “We have to stop him before the Enabling Act is passed.”

  They spent the rest of the day in the hideout, waiting for news. Gretchen sat bolt upright on the sofa, too nervous to move. Daniel must have walked five miles, he crossed the parlor so many times. The Ringverein guard who sat at the table, tallying columns in the account books, kept shooting them wary looks but remained silent.

  For supper, they choked down a couple of sandwiches with potato salad that Gretchen had been sent out to get from the delicatessen down the street. As she and Daniel were filling the sink with hot water to wash the dishes, the telephone shrilled from the corridor. They froze, straining to hear the Ringverein man’s muttered conversation.

  He appeared in the kitchen doorway. “Friedrich wants to speak to both of you straightaway. He’s at the bar down the street—Herr Cohen, you know the one, it’s where you’ve helped out in the mornings.”

  “Thanks.” Daniel dashed from the room, Gretchen close behind him. This had to be the news they’d been waiting for. They grabbed their coats and hats from the bedroom, flinging them on as they raced down the stairs and outside.

  Night had laid itself across the city like a blanket. At this hour, the Zwinglistrasse was deserted except for a couple of skinny dogs and a handful of drunkards, weaving along the pavement. Gretchen and Daniel hurried past them.

  The bar took up the cellar of a large brick building on the corner. They wound down the steps into a gray dimness and the slurred voices of the inebriated. A handful of men and women in much-mended clothes slumped over their drinks at the bar. Behind the long counter, a woman in a flowered dress poured potato vodka into water-spotted glasses.

  At a table in the corner, two girls sat with a couple of young men, laughing uproariously over a shared joke. Gretchen realized with a start that one of them was Birgit. She smiled at Gretchen. Maybe this was her night off—did prostitutes even have those? Gretchen wondered—or she was with a customer.

  “Pardon me,” Daniel said to the woman behind the counter. “We need to speak with Iron Fist Friedrich.”

  “Office in the back,” the woman muttered.

  “Thank you.” They went to the corridor at the opposite end of the barroom. It was paneled in dark wood and flanked with a few closed doors. A frosted glass panel with the word OFFICE painted in black stood on their left. Da
niel knocked.

  “Come in,” called Friedrich’s voice. He stood when they entered, waving at a couple of battered wooden chairs. They sat down. Knives twisted in Gretchen’s stomach and she clutched her purse, feeling the revolver’s reassuring shape through the leather. What had Friedrich’s men found out? Had they finally found the clue that would break open the case?

  “One of my men has just stumbled across a piece of luck.” Friedrich dropped into a chair. “Heinz Schultz’s neighbor returned from visiting a relative today, and she had most interesting information. She said she saw Schultz leaving his apartment a day or two after the fire. He was carrying a folded-up canvas camping tent.” Friedrich tapped his fingers together, the diamond in his pinkie ring catching the lamplight. “She hasn’t seen him or his brother since.”

  That made no sense. The fireman had to be mad to go camping in March in Berlin. During the day, the temperature rarely rose above twenty or thirty degrees, and at night it plunged toward the zero mark. Mad, Gretchen realized, or desperate.

  Daniel gasped. “He must have gone to the Kuhle Wampe.” He glanced at Gretchen, adding, “It’s the largest tent camp for the homeless in the city. Countless people live there on the shores of the Müggelsee. During the winter, they stay in shelters, so the place should be deserted now.”

  “That’s my guess as well.” Friedrich ground his cigar into an ashtray. “Let’s go. I have a car waiting—”

  He broke off as a thunderous cascade of footsteps drowned him out. It sounded as though a dozen people or more had rushed down the steps into the barroom.

  “Police!” several men’s voices shouted. “This is a raid! Everyone, hands where we can see them!”

  Gretchen couldn’t move. Through the walls, she heard women screaming and the splintering crash of wood hitting the ground. Glass shattered. The police must be throwing tables and chairs and drinks onto the floor.

  She surged to her feet. “We have to get out of here!” Another minute and the police might come into the office and see her and Daniel. . . .

  “These raids happen all the time.” Friedrich waved a dismissive hand. “I’ll throw some money at them, and that’ll be the end of it.”

  He strode from the room. As one, Gretchen and Daniel crept to the half-open door and peered into the corridor. She could see nothing except a lamp bracketed on the wall. From the barroom, more glass broke. Men’s and women’s shouts tangled together into an indecipherable wall of sound.

  “Get these people to shut up!” someone yelled. “I want order!”

  It was Hermann Göring. Gretchen clutched blindly at Daniel’s arm. “This isn’t a raid!” she hissed. “Göring’s here!”

  Daniel pulled her back into the room and closed the door gently. Fear had tightened his face into a mask. His gaze skittered around the room. Gretchen looked, too: a desk, a cabinet, a table, four chairs. And the small rectangular window, turned black by the fullness of night. It was so high up that the top of its frame reached the crease between the wall and ceiling. The window wasn’t even two feet wide; she didn’t know if they could squeeze through.

  “The table.” Daniel nodded at it. “If we move it under the window, we should be able to hoist ourselves up.”

  “But what about Friedrich? He’s out there and so are those poor people. Birgit’s there!” she remembered, her heart lurching. “We have to do something.”

  Daniel took a decanter and glasses off the table and set them on the floor. “We go out there and we’re dead.”

  He was right and she knew it. They could only hope to save themselves. She cast an anxious look at the door, thinking, I’m sorry, Birgit. She seized one end of the table. Together, they carried it across the room. As quietly as they could, they set it on the floor beneath the window, and Daniel ran a hand over his injured arm. His left-hand fingers were spasming uncontrollably; she could imagine how much his effort to carry the table had cost him.

  Through the closed door, there were more screams and shouts from the barroom. Then Gretchen heard the sickening smack of nightsticks meeting flesh. Was Birgit being beaten, too? Her stomach wrenched as she thought of her friend falling to the ground, her arms wrapped protectively over her head.

  “How much will it cost to send you lot away this time?” Friedrich shouted above the din. The barroom silenced as if a switch had been thrown. “I confess, I’m surprised to see you here, Minister Göring. After we met at the ball, I fancied we had become friends.”

  Daniel clambered onto the table. It wobbled under his weight.

  “Take him into the corridor,” Göring ordered.

  Daniel fumbled with the window’s hand crank. Slowly, the panel eased open.

  Footfalls tramped down the corridor, stopping outside the office door. Don’t come in, Gretchen pleaded silently. The door shook in its frame as a body slammed against it. Gretchen had to bite her lip so she didn’t scream. Friedrich.

  Daniel waved Gretchen closer. Come on! he mouthed at her.

  She climbed onto the table. Under her added weight, it started wobbling and Gretchen felt herself losing her balance. God, the racket it would make, if she fell to the floor! She jumped back to the floor and the table righted itself.

  From the corridor, Göring spoke again, sounding breathless. “You shouldn’t have sent your men to the fireman’s apartment tonight to talk to his neighbors. That was foolish. Did you really imagine it would escape my notice?”

  Gretchen braced her hand on the wall for balance.

  “You loathsome coward!” Friedrich growled. “I know what you did to Fräulein Junge. Perhaps you think you’re innocent because you sent someone else to do your dirty work. But your hands are just as bloodied.”

  “Shut your mouth!” Göring yelled. “Somebody, shoot him! Why do you hesitate? Shoot and I will protect you!”

  Gretchen thought of the revolver in her purse. What could she do? It sounded as though there were a couple dozen police and SA men out there. She couldn’t possibly shoot them all.

  A sharp report echoed up and down the corridor. Something heavy fell. She recognized the sound, for she had heard it before: a tangle of limbs collapsing to the floor. Friedrich had been shot.

  27

  FOR A HORRIBLE INSTANT, GRETCHEN STOOD FROZEN on the table. There was no cry of pain from the corridor, no plea for mercy. Nothing but the creak of leather. A pistol being returned to its holster, perhaps. Friedrich must be dead. The thought pushed the air from her lungs. In one instant, the trigger pulled and a life extinguished, just as Daniel had said. It seemed too quick. Too easy. Murder should be harder than a split-second decision and a bullet.

  But it had happened; Friedrich was gone; she could tell by the sudden hush from the corridor, broken only by the men’s panting breaths. She thought of the little girls she’d met in Friedrich’s apartment, with light brown hair and shy smiles. Her throat tightened. Friedrich might have been a criminal, but he had cared about his employees and had wanted to support his daughters and wife. And he had been kind to her and Daniel, in his way.

  Daniel’s hand gripped her arm. She saw her own horror reflected in his eyes.

  We have to go, he mouthed at her.

  His words broke through the haze in her mind. Jerkily, she nodded. There was nothing they could do for Friedrich. The most they could hope for was finding a way to escape themselves. She grabbed the window ledge and hauled herself up.

  From the barroom, the fights had started again, men shouting and punching, fists plowing into skin, glass breaking. Footsteps sounded from the corridor, fading as they retreated toward the bar. Göring shouted about getting a morgue wagon.

  She wedged herself into the window’s narrow opening. Her shoulders scraped the edges, but her head was through. The space was so tight she couldn’t take a breath. Glancing sideways, she saw the window opened into a long, brick-lined alley.

  Daniel grasped her waist and pushed hard. She wriggled forward until her arms were free, then curled her hands around
the icy cobblestones, straining to pull herself through. Her arms shook from the effort. She pulled again and burst free from the window. She fell about an inch to the cold ground, landing so hard that a white-hot ache exploded in her knee.

  She scrambled upright and yanked on Daniel’s arms as he emerged from the opening. His weakened left limb trembled under her grip. She pulled harder, her fingers digging into the rough wool of his coat.

  Then he was out, sprawling across the cobblestones, white-faced and cradling his injured arm. He jumped up. Together they crept to the mouth of the alley and peered into the street. There were two police cars parked at the curb. All of her felt numb except her knee, which throbbed.

  There were no policemen in the street; they must all be inside. She and Daniel would have to be quick before the officers came back outside. By unspoken assent, they ran out of the alley. Together they sprinted through the darkness toward the hideout to warn whoever might be there.

  The hideout was quiet when they arrived. The lamps had been left off, and a dozen men moved by the illumination from the flashlights they carried. Little yellow circles bobbed around the parlor as they scooped jewelry into leather bags or stacked bills and coins in suitcases. Nobody spoke.

  “There’s been a raid at the bar—” Daniel started to say, but a fellow cut him off.

  “We know. One of our men managed to slip out and warn us. We were working at the nightclub one street over, so we were able to get back here quickly. We need to set up a new hideout, in case the police come here. Get your things and get out. There’s nothing more we can do together.” He fastened the buckles on a suitcase. “And for pity’s sake, don’t turn on any lights. We don’t want to alert anyone who might be watching that we’re in here.”

  Gretchen swallowed hard. “Friedrich—”

  “Is dead,” the man interrupted, his tone harsh. He grabbed the suitcase and hurried toward the door, pausing at the entrance to glance back at them. “We’ve already heard. He was a fair man, and his widow and children will be cared for. But I’m in charge now, and I say we abandon the investigation into Fräulein Junge’s death.”