The Fatherland Files

by volker Kutscher

  You remember the day you met Sobotka. A man who never lost his vital energy, he managed to awaken new hope even in you.

  Though perhaps hope is the wrong word.

  Still, with Sobotka you laughed again for the first time in years; laughed, despite thinking you had forgotten how. In him you found something akin to friendship. After all those years spent thinking mankind was doomed to solitude; that anything else was just an illusion.

  Perhaps Sobotka’s friendship was an illusion, but still you laughed at his jokes. You were never angry when he teased you, and afterwards flashed his pearly white smile – because you knew he never meant offence. You felt that warmth again, which only friendship can provide, and so what did it matter if it was based on illusion?

  Yes, he made your life bearable again, but you never approved of his escape plans, which he harboured and shared with you from the start. You had no desire to escape from these walls, which afforded you a strange security; you wouldn’t have known what to do on the outside, if there was anything you could do at all.

  Then came the day in early summer when everything changed. Everything.

  It was the first visitor you’d ever received in Wartenburg, notwithstanding your public defender, who didn’t so much defend you during your trial at Lyck District Court as work on you to take a reduced sentence, for the purposes of which he extracted a confession. You let him extract it, of course, through your silence. It was clear the public prosecutor stood in thrall to the Wengler brothers and their corrupt witnesses. They wanted to send you away for murder, make an example of an alleged Polish sympathiser. Even the police officer had given a false statement; said you’d started the fight with the distillery trio, that he’d locked you up for it and released you an hour later.

  It wasn’t true; you were in that miserable cell more than two hours before you could head out to the lake, and find her.

  You no longer recall what happened next. It was as if your soul had already left your body as it sat breathing and staring blankly at the lake, and made its way in search of her, whose earthly form lay dead and pale in the water.

  Only in court did you learn you must have been crouched by the water more than an hour holding vigil at her corpse, when the policeman emerged from the forest and felled you with the butt of his rifle. The same man who prevented you from saving her life.

  There was only one question in that courtroom left unresolved: the true identity of Anna’s killer.

  You had to wait ten years for an answer.

  You couldn’t place her at first, sitting on the visitor’s chair, shy, hands on her lap, gaze lowered. Wartenburg was no place for a woman like her. Only when she lifted her head and looked at you, did you recognise her.

  Maria. The librarian.

  You could have almost cried, so greatly did it move you, so little had you expected it. Here was someone from your former life.

  She lowered her voice and told you an incredible tale, mentioned there was a witness to Anna’s death.

  That she knew who Anna’s killer was.

  By the time visiting was over, your views on jailbreak had gone full circle.

  To Sobotka’s great delight. For you were part of his plan. They always chained you together during the construction work prisoners carried out in the summer of 1930. The steel ankle shackles kept your hands free so that you could work.

  Guards with carbines looked on. They relied more on the shackles than their rifles. The chains could only be cut by a blacksmith prepared to involve himself with escaped convicts.

  Sobotka knew which guard was the most careless, having spent months planning and observing the routines, waiting for the decisive moment when the midday heat was at its peak, and the man responsible for your sector sat in the shade and dozed, and almost fell asleep.

  It worked out better than you could have hoped.

  You made it to the forest before he raised the alarm. There you could let go of the chains, the jangling no longer mattered; you just had to reach the lake before the wardens arrived with the dogs. It would take time for the canine unit to be deployed.

  There were many lakes in the woods near Wartenburg, and you chose the first you came upon. It had no landing stage, no boat, nothing. You managed to swim across, just, already you could hear the yapping of hounds as you emerged from the water on the other side. Sobotka grinned, because he knew the dogs would lose your scent at the shore.

  Even the shackles didn’t concern him; the railway line to Insterburg ran through the middle of the forest.

  ‘Not dangerous,’ he had explained with a characteristic grin when mentioning it for the first time. ‘Not dangerous.’

  You nodded back then, because you didn’t take his crazy ideas seriously. Because for you they were just theories that could never be implemented in practice.

  And yet . . .

  The railway line was the only sign of civilisation far and wide.

  It was quiet, a few birds chirruping, wind rustling in the treetops. No dogs. They had lost your scent.

  Sobotka lay on the track bed and instructed you to follow suit. On the outside. ‘It isn’t so dangerous there,’ he said.

  ‘I don’t think it’s dangerous at all.’

  ‘Not for the person on the outside.’

  ‘But for you.’

  ‘So long as there’s nothing hanging from the train, it’ll be fine. The cars are high enough. I just have to duck.’ His grin. ‘This is the Prussian Ostbahn. There won’t be anything under their trains. No metal parts, no loose screws. Nothing.’

  You remember that you believed him. What else could you do? You lay beside him, likewise on your stomach, just the track between you now, and above the track the chain that held your shackles together.

  As you lay down you heard the track vibrating.

  Sobotka said nothing, simply covered the back of his head with his hands. You were about to follow suit when you shielded your ears to try and block out the vibrations, which were accompanied now by a rattling sound.

  The train was approaching.

  85

  The longer the conversation went on, the worse Charly felt. As if yesterday’s grilling wasn’t bad enough, there was now the matter of Gereon’s telephone call. She had told Gennat about it straightaway, and there had been no let-up since. ‘You know this means you’re shielding a wanted man.’

  ‘I’m not shielding anyone. I don’t know where he is. You think he’s any more open with me?’

  ‘Unless something has changed, you’re engaged so, yes, I’d expect a degree of openness between you. Besides, it was you he called, no one else.’

  ‘He called headquarters!’ Charly lit a cigarette angrily. ‘I just happened to be there.’

  ‘But you didn’t tell anyone.’

  ‘It was around eight, half past. I told you straightaway this morning. It didn’t seem necessary last night.’

  She didn’t mention how Dettmann had got in the way. She’d been happy just to leave the station without further indignity.

  ‘We could have tipped Warrants off,’ Gennat said. ‘You know how important time is in our work.’

  ‘Tipped them off . . .how? He didn’t actually tell me where he was.’

  ‘Is that really true?’

  ‘As soon as the connection was interrupted, I telephoned his Treuburg hotel. He checked out yesterday at midday. He was calling from a train station.’

  ‘Then he’s still in East Prussia.’

  ‘Or in the Corridor. He was planning on coming back, that much he did tell me.’ She didn’t say that Gereon wouldn’t be arriving until early tomorrow morning. Perhaps all this would have blown over by then. ‘At least we know he’s alive,’ she said, stubbing out the cigarette with enough force to burn a hole in the ashtray. Her anger didn’t stem from Gennat’s persistence, more that she felt obliged to lie. To Buddha, whom she worshipped more than any man she’d ever worked for.

  He adopted a more conciliatory tone. ‘Wengler’s ope
rations manager is killed, Inspector Rath falls under suspicion, and a day later he gets in touch claiming Gustav Wengler’s a murderer. It can’t be a coincidence, can it?’ Charly was tired, weary of these questions. ‘Do you believe him? That Wengler, is a murderer?’

  ‘He can’t prove it yet. He said so himself.’ She looked at Gennat. ‘But, yes, I believe him.’

  She wondered whether Buddha would buy it. Her tone gave him reason to doubt.

  ‘So who’s after Wengler, then? Who is this sinister avenging angel?’

  ‘If Gereon says he’ll find out, then you can be sure he will. He’ll do everything in his power.’

  ‘That’s precisely what I’m afraid of,’ Gennat said.

  His secretary knocked and opened the door. ‘Excuse me, Sir, but Andreas Lange is here to see you. He says it’s urgent.’

  ‘Send him in,’ Buddha grunted. Moments later, Lange stood in Gennat’s office, hat in hand and a little out of breath.

  ‘It’s Gustav Wengler,’ he said, without taking a seat. ‘He’s gone.’

  ‘Gone where?’ Gennat asked.

  ‘Boarded the train to Danzig at Friedrichstrasse. I could scarcely get on with him.’

  ‘No problem,’ Gennat said. ‘I’ll inform Officer Muhl in Danzig. They can intercept him at the train station, and assume surveillance duties.’

  ‘It’s the Free City of Danzig,’ Lange said. ‘The German Police has no authority there.’

  ‘Perhaps that is why Wengler is headed there, but John Muhl is a Prussian and an old friend. He’ll be glad to help.’

  86

  The night train through the Corridor didn’t leave for another four and a half hours, so Rath used the time to visit the jail where Jakub Polakowski had been wrongly interned until his fatal escape attempt two years before. The prison director was happy to receive him, so, shortly after arriving at Allenstein train station, he made his way over by taxi.

  The smell of prisons was unmistakable, whether you were in Klingelpütz, Plötzensee or Tegel: urine and sweat, mixed with dust and steel and fear. As soon as he passed through the security gates he knew he was in a place of confinement. Wartenburg Jail had originally been conceived as a monastery and, certainly, he knew of no other detention facility with a church steeple as the dominant feature. It was almost idyllically situated on a peninsula, separated from Wartenburg town centre with its brick church by the mill pond.

  Rath doubted whether the prisoners would appreciate the view, but . . .

  Imagine Polakowski languishing here, his lover murdered by the man who helped send him to jail.

  A guard entered the waiting room. ‘The director will see you now.’ He had been ushered into the estate house at Luisenhöhe to meet Gustav Wengler with similar words. The prison director’s office was on the small side, but looked across the water onto the town. Clearly, East Prussian officials understood the value of a good view.

  Prison Director Karl Henning was a thin man with even thinner hair, who greeted Rath kindly and offered him a rickety chair.

  ‘Beautiful location,’ Rath said, cautiously taking his seat. The chair felt as if it might snap at any moment. ‘May I smoke?’

  ‘Feel free.’ Henning gestured towards an ashtray on the desk, and Rath took out his case. ‘Are you interested in someone in particular?’

  ‘Yes, Director. Jakub Polakowski. Sentenced to life imprisonment for murder. Committed on 7th November 1920.’

  ‘You’re aware the man is dead? He perished during an escape attempt.’

  ‘Yes, but I’d like to know whether he had any relatives or close friends. Who visited him during his time here?’

  ‘I can tell you exactly. We keep a book.’ Henning reached for the telephone on his desk. ‘Grundmann? Bring me the Polakowski file, Jakub, prisoner four-six-six-slash-twenty.’

  Rath still hadn’t finished his cigarette when a young, overzealous type appeared with a thin file, which he placed on the director’s desk. Henning didn’t need long. ‘Here we are . . .’ He leafed back and forth, as if the odd page were missing, then continued. ‘If this is correct, then in the ten plus years Jakub Polakowski was here, he received only one visitor.’ He shook his head. ‘I remember thinking the man was very isolated, but I didn’t realise the full extent.’

  ‘Who visited him, and when? It’s very important. The man could have been a killer, someone taking revenge on Polakowski’s account.’

  ‘It wasn’t a man,’ Henning said. He passed the file across the desk and pointed to the name entered there, alongside a full address.

  Cofalka, Maria, Librarian, Treuburg, Administrative Region of Gumbinnen, Seestrasse 3.

  It wasn’t the name he’d been expecting. He’d reckoned with another Polakowski, some distant relative or other, but in spite, or indeed because, of this, he felt the same tingling sensation he always did when potentially decisive developments began to emerge.

  ‘This was just a matter of days before his escape attempt,’ Henning said, shaking his head. ‘Tragic. When he finally receives a visit, he chooses to break out and forfeit his life.’

  ‘Perhaps he broke out because he suddenly had a reason to live?’

  ‘You mean, he fell in love with his visitor?’ Henning shrugged. ‘Perhaps you’re right. It wouldn’t be the first time.’

  ‘What actually happened? Was he shot?’

  ‘No.’ Henning didn’t have to consult the file to tell the story. ‘Polakowski was engaged in road construction work with a number of other prisoners. A guard lost concentration and he escaped, together with the prisoner he was chained to. A crafty bank robber named Sobotka.’

  ‘They were chained together? Wouldn’t that render any escape attempt hopeless?’

  ‘That’s what we thought,’ Henning said. ‘That only a madman would try it. Or, rather madmen. Whatever, Sobotka managed it – we’re still looking for him today.’ Henning adopted a serious expression. He didn’t enjoy discussing the subject. ‘And Polakowski, the poor fellow, whom Sobotka had incited to flee in the first place, was the one who died.’

  ‘Go on.’

  The director explained how they had found Polakowski’s corpse on the railway line between Allenstein and Insterburg. Of Sobotka there was no trace.

  ‘Could I take another look at the file?’ Rath asked.

  Moments later Rath sat with the Polakowski file in an empty office, whose windows looked onto a prison courtyard. In the watchtower two men stood with loaded carbines. He lit a cigarette and leafed through the file. A serious man gazed out of the photo, a man who had abandoned hope.

  He checked the date in the visitor log. Maria Cofalka, Treuburg librarian, residence ibidem, Seestrasse 3 had visited Prisoner Jakub Polakowski on 27th July 1930 at 17h, a Sunday. Exactly a week after the plebiscite anniversary during which she’d accused Gustav Wengler of murder.

  Maria Cofalka had let Polakowski in on her secret! Following her visit, prisoner 466/20 had a reason to live again, but not because he had fallen in love with the librarian. Not love, but hatred, had been the driving force behind his escape, which took place one and half weeks later, at one thirty on a Tuesday afternoon. Shortly after five they had recovered his corpse.

  The prison file came to a close on that date, 5th August 1930, with the stamped remark: Deceased.

  Rath leafed back to the photograph. The sight set something inside him in motion, a vague feeling which he tried, once more, to grasp until, all of a sudden, he realised what it was. He knew this man. His appearance might have changed, but the eyes left him in no doubt. It was a man he had met a short while ago, but not in Treuburg. In Berlin.

  87

  Charly felt a little queasy inside. It was her first armed operation, and she was still a relative novice with the gun. Gennat had insisted she take it.

  Buddha himself held position in the Castle. By his own account, Hartmut Janke lived on the fourth floor, and for the overweight superintendent that was a step too far. He had enough difficulty negotia
ting the single flight of stairs up to A Division. Perhaps – and it wasn’t just Charly who thought this – it was why he was wont to sleep in his office, where he’d had a small bedroom made up years ago for those nights he was obliged to work late. Such nights were commonplace for Gennat, as they were for any CID officer who took the job seriously. Nights such as tonight.

  It was already gone eight when the uniform cops took up position in the stairwell. By now all escape routes were blocked, with additional officers posted in the courtyard and on the street below. The squad leader nodded to Böhm, and he knocked on the wooden door. No response. Böhm knocked a second time.

  ‘Herr Janke? Are you there? Please excuse the late interruption, but I need to speak with you urgently. CID. We have some questions regarding the Haus Vaterland murder three weeks ago. It won’t take long.’

  There was nothing from behind the door.

  Charly was wondering if she should volunteer her lock-picking skills, when Böhm wound back and aimed a mighty kick at the door frame, lifting it off its hinges. Wood splintered, and there was a loud crack.

  Uniform stormed the apartment.

  Charly followed at a respectful distance, weapon drawn for form’s sake. She held it primed, barrel in the air, but only because it looked better, and she didn’t want to embarrass herself in front of colleagues.

  She had told Gennat and Böhm about Gereon’s call right away. The first thing Buddha said was: ‘I hope you know where he is this time.’

  ‘Not right this moment, but I do know he telephoned from a jail.’

  ‘Pardon me?’

  ‘From Wartenburg, a jail in East Prussia. He recognised Janke, aka Polakowski, from the files.’

  Gennat had acted immediately, enlisting a squad of a hundred officers in case Polakowski should attempt to resist arrest or flee. In the rear courtyard uniform cops stood at every entrance and exit point, stretching all the way to Müllerstrasse. Even in Wedding, such a large police presence didn’t go unnoticed.