Fighting her dread, she bent her head and crouch-walked through the tunnel. When she touched the wall on either side, her hands came away with a texture she didn’t want to think about. The tunnel had to open into a larger area somewhere. This place had to be cavernous if thousands of soldiers and civilians had sheltered down here during the Allied bombing.
As if reality had taken a cue from her thoughts, the tunnel gave way to an enormous room with twenty-foot ceilings. She straightened her back, wiped the grit off her hands, and looked around. The floor and walls were blackened concrete and the air felt heavy and dank. A scaffolding of military bunk beds had been affixed to one wall and a gauze of ancient cobwebs, seemingly undisturbed for the last seventy years, covered the bunks like mosquito netting. A miscellany of artifacts littered the floor—an old boot, a helmet, a rotting blanket, a scattering of spent shell casings. A message in German had been printed on the wall opposite the bunks and another phosphorescent arrow pointed the way to the next room.
“Wegener? Wegener, where are you?” Her voice pealed, like the acoustics in a cathedral. If Hell had a cathedral.
She took the gun out of her bag and walked on. Stalactites of filth and cobwebs dangled from the ceiling and tiered down the walls like those shelf-like mushrooms that grow on decaying tree trunks. This hidden netherworld was a time capsule and the time it encapsulated must have been horrific. She imagined she could hear the bombs screaming down on the city, feel the crash and jolt as they landed, smell the fear of the people huddled in this man-made purgatory, between life and death.
She didn’t have to imagine the gun that prodded suddenly against her back.
“I was hoping you had forgotten about my underground sanctuary, Dinah.” He took her gun out of her hand.
She blenched at his touch. “Sergeant Wegener is down here. She’s armed, so you’d better let me go.”
“The Sergeant has met with a small accident. More a blow to her pride than her person, I assure you.”
She could feel his breath in her hair. If she whirled, she might catch him by surprise and knock him down. She turned her head and saw him tuck her gun away behind his hip at the small of his back.
“Don’t test me. I wouldn’t stick at one more casualty.”
The barrel of the gun gouged into her back. The naïve assumption that he wouldn’t hurt her evaporated. She said, “Wegener told the others about the bunker. They’ll be here any minute.”
“Then we’d better hurry.” He prodded her again. “Walk please. Use your little light.”
She’d read that some of the old bunkers had been linked with underground train stations, but the nearest U-Bahn to this house was the Brandenburger Tor on the other side of the Spree. The bunker must run parallel to the river, and very close. Pools of standing water began to appear. “Where are you taking me?”
“To a place where we can talk. I have something to give you.”
Jesus, Joseph, and Mary. Another “gift” from a double murderer.
A rat scurried along the wall. How much farther, and for what purpose? She edged around a pool of water from which two arms of a crudely painted swastika emerged. The floor sloped and river water washed in through cave-like holes.
“To your left.” He prodded her again.
“You want me to walk into the wall?”
He moved ahead of her and pushed. The wall opened and they walked into a tiny cubicle, like a dungeon cell. Two LED lanterns emitted a harsh light that hurt her eyes after being in pitch darkness. He pulled an iron ring that closed the wall behind them.
There was a card table and a chair. Wegener lay on the floor, eyes closed and hands bound behind her.
“Sergeant Wegener?”
She didn’t speak or move.
“She can’t hear you. I daresay she won’t wake up for a while yet.”
“Give me your shoulder bag, Dinah.”
She lifted it over her head and handed it over. He tossed it into a wooden wine crate with Wegener’s gun and holster.
“Sit down,” he said.
The gun pointed at her middle was persuasive. She sat. “You’ve got this place tricked out like a medieval castle. How many movable walls and secret rooms are there?”
“This is the only one you’ll see.” He took a green hardcover book off the table and handed it to her, Winnetou, die Apache Ritter. “A Ritter is a knight. A noble man, like Viktor was. Go ahead. Open it.”
She did and a brown envelope fell out. “Is this the letter you used to bait Farber into an ambush?”
“Naturally, he wanted it.”
“That sounds like premeditation. I can understand why you hated Pohl, but you had no cause to kill Farber. He hadn’t done you any harm.”
“He killed Viktor, or conspired with Hess to kill him.”
“What happened to your suicide theory?”
“They would have made it look like suicide, of course, and gotten away with it. I’m sure they had similar plans for me. Florian attacked me when I opened the door. He punched and kicked my legs, thinking to detach my artificial limb. Fortunately, I was armed and able to give him the death he deserved. I had hoped that Reiner would be with him, but Farber said he’d been arrested.”
“You were going to kill Hess, too?”
“When both the law and God fail, someone must be concerned with matters of truth and justice.”
If that was his twisted translation of the Einstein quote, he was a psychopath. She wondered if there was a chink in his hubris. “Did Florian not understand that all he had to do was offer you money for the letter?”
His face reddened with rage. “It disappoints me that you, of all people, would think me so crass.”
“You’ve murdered two men. Crass isn’t the first word that springs to mind. You’re a megalomaniac with a sick, inflated sense of your own omnipotence.”
He raised the gun to her face. Her courage wicked away in an instant.
“You’re a brave woman to speak so boldly,” he said, spectacularly mistaken.
“A female Winnetou,” she said, worrying the turquoise on the bolo tie she’d hung around her neck. She took it off and held it out to him. “You forgot your tie.”
His rage seemed to dissipate. He actually smiled. “Keep it as a souvenir of our brief acquaintance. I wish I had time to change your opinion of me.”
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Wegener’s head move. She didn’t think Baer had noticed. His eyes were riveted on her face. She tried to keep them there. “What about Sabine? What would she think of her charming husband’s gross brutality?”
“The dead don’t think, Dinah. It is what the clergy call heaven.” He jabbed his index finger on Viktor’s letter, lying on top of the open book. “I had intended to mail this to you once I was away and safe, but here we are. You seem to have strong feelings about the Native American heritage. I want you to make sure Viktor’s information reaches the proper authorities, whether in Germany or America. He has provided valuable information about the sources and methods of some of Florian’s trading partners.”
“If you care so much, why don’t you send the letter to the authorities, yourself?”
“I can hardly do so without being apprehended and getting the people with power to take meaningful action will require a good deal of nagging.”
She looked down at the Winnetou book to sneak a peripheral glance at Wegener. She was holding her head an inch off the floor. She was conscious. To distract Baer, Dinah moved the letter off to the side and began reading at random. “We came to the spot where I had killed the two buffaloes, but I saw that the body of the old bull was gone.” She snapped the book shut. “You won’t get away, Baer. The police have the house surrounded.”
“The police are easily outwitted, Dinah. Pohl outwitted them. Florian outwitted them. Reiner outwitted them. His lawyers have probab
ly already engineered his release. I have no doubt that I will escape. I have a motorized skiff tethered on the riverbank. I can be far away very quickly. And now I must leave you.”
He reached across the table as if to touch her face and she stood up, knocking over the chair behind her and upending the table. At the same time, Wegener kicked her legs straight out like a battering ram and clipped Baer hard on the side of the knee. He lost his balance and staggered back against the wall. Her hands somehow free, the sergeant scrambled to her feet and dived at him. Baer fired. The sound was deafening, and the shot ricocheted off the concrete wall.
Wegener wrestled the gun out of his hand. It dropped to the floor and she snaffled it up in an instant. “Sie sind verhaftet. You are under arrest,” she said, her eyes shining with triumph.
Dinah’s fingers had been clutching the turquoise so tightly, they felt fused. She loosened her grip and let out an immense sigh.
Baer righted himself and massaged his knee. Holding the gun on him, Wegener moved the card table out of her way and reclaimed her gun and holster from the wine crate. “Go back to the house, Frau Pelerin, and guide my colleagues back to this place. I will hold Herr Eichen here for the Inspector.”
Dinah edged around the table and pushed open the wall into the outer bunker, pointing her cell phone light into the darkness. She threw a last glance over her shoulder. Wegener stood on one side of the room looking at Viktor’s letter and holding the gun. Baer stood against the opposite wall, elbows out, palms against his back as if rubbing at a pain. One arm moved forward and a synapse fired in Dinah’s brain.
“My gun!” she cried, and flung the turquoise at his head.
The stone bonked him hard in the face. Blood gouted from his nose onto his shirt front. His wooden glasses broke and the Smith & Wesson hit the floor behind him as his hands flew to his face.
Looking somewhat abashed, Wegener retrieved the gun, pushed Baer into the chair, and secured her prisoner. She picked the turquoise stone off the floor and bounced it up and down in her hand. “That was a lucky shot.”
“Not really,” said Dinah.
The Sergeant smiled. “Like Annie Oakley,” she said, with nary a trace of irony or disapproval.
Chapter Forty
Before WWII, Potsdamer was the poshest section of Berlin. During the war, the Allies bombed it to smithereens and after 1961, when the GDR erected the Wall, the square was cut in two. A wide swath on both sides of the divide became an urban wasteland of filth and debris. All that changed when the Wall came down and capitalism triumphed. Sony, Daimler, Nike, and a horde of international corporations moved in and transformed the area into a futuristic complex of hotels and businesses. Many Berliners deplored the “Disneyfication” of the historic square. Dinah sympathized, but as she sat down on a bench under the so-called volcano—a dramatic, tent-like canopy of glass modeled on Mt. Fuji—there was no denying that the new Potsdamer Platz was a wonder of renewal and the power of money.
She had read about the supernatural amplification of power and energy that resulted from meditating under a pyramid. She closed her eyes and tried to focus her thoughts. The clock was ticking on her big decision and she vacillated from hour to hour. Once decided, there could be no do-over. And there was another decision hanging fire, one that was equally irrevocable. No supernatural power whispered in her ear and after a minute, she concluded that meditating under a phony volcano didn’t confer the same benefit as a pyramid. She got up and headed to the family dinner, which for a host of reasons had been postponed, downsized, and moved to Lutter & Wegner’s here in the Potsdamer Platz. Inadvertently, she had chosen the perfect location to discuss renewal and money.
Margaret, Swan, K.D., and Thor were already seated when she arrived. Jack was off at the movies with a group from his new English language school.
Thor stood and pulled out a chair for her between him and Swan. “How did your first class go?”
“It was great. I dropped all the introductory stuff and had the students tell me what drew them to the course and what books they’d read about Indians. Their interest is more academic and less romantic than der Indianer club. It will be a challenge to teach them anything they don’t already know.”
“Well, I think it’s grand, you gettin’ yourself a teaching job in a hifalutin university,” said Swan, her smile radiant. “Pour her a glass of that delicious Riesling, Thor. We should make a toast.”
Thor picked up the bottle, but Dinah put a hand over her glass. “None for me, thanks.”
Margaret raised her eyebrows. “You can give me her share, Thor.”
“Pathetic,” snarked K.D.
In a level voice, Thor said, “Tell me when you can’t stand our company any longer, K.D. We’re only a half-hour from the airport.”
For once, K.D. looked impressed. She simpered an apology. “I’m sorry, Thor.”
He said, “It’s Margaret who deserves the apology.”
“Sorry, Margaret.”
Under the table, Dinah squeezed his hand. She panned around the table and cleared her throat. “I wanted you all together tonight because I have an announcement that will concern you all.”
“I knew it!” Swan clasped her hands to her breast and gushed. “You and Thor are gonna make it official! ‘Little Joey Jingle, he used to live single.’”
“No, Mother. No!” Her voice shrilled. She took a breath and tried to put a damper on her emotions.
“Goodness sakes, baby. I’m sorry if I upset you.”
“I’m not upset. As a matter of fact, I’m relieved. I’ve reported Cleon’s money to the powers that be.”
“Good God, why?” Margaret seemed stupefied. “The IRS? The DEA?”
“The relevant powers.” Dinah hadn’t an inkling which agency Thor had consulted or how it would be handled. He had told her only that the matter was in process. She said, “It will probably take the authorities a while to figure out what to do with me. I hope they’ll show leniency. But it’s entirely possible that I’ll do jail time. The interest and penalties will be stiff and I don’t have nearly enough money to pay.”
The three women stared in stunned silence.
Swan found her voice first. “But Thor will help you, won’t you, Thor? With the fines, or what-have-you.”
Dinah said, “It’s not Thor’s place to buy me a get-out-of-jail card.”
He answered Swan in a low-key, general way. “Dinah knows she can count on me for whatever she needs.”
“There,” chirped Swan. “You see? That’s what I call true chivalry.”
“That was my money,” said K.D., her eyes shining. “Daddy left it to me. You had no right.”
“I had every right.” This was the speech Dinah had been building toward, and K.D. had given her her opening. “I never thought I’d meet another man like Cleon Dobbs. But I recently had the misfortune of spending several hours in the company of another man with a God complex, someone who thought it was his privilege to mete out rewards and punishments. In truth, he was a stone killer with a veneer of charm. Just like your daddy, K.D.”
“I know that he loved me, and I loved him,” said K.D.
Dinah could have disputed the first part of that assertion, but she didn’t. “You’re the only good thing he left behind in this world, K.D. But the fact that you hate Margaret, and Margaret hates Swan, and Swan hated a man she barely knew—hated him enough to think about killing him—that’s all Cleon’s legacy. He hung your mother out to dry, manipulated my mother in ways I’m sure I’ll never know, and he used my confusion and my sense of obligation to you and your brother to stick me with that damned dirty money. Now it’s out of my hands and I’m done with the Cleon saga. After tonight, I never want to hear his name again.”
Nobody said anything for a long time. The waiter came and they ordered food and another bottle of Riesling. K.D. seemed to lapse into a brown study.
Dinah was done with the money, but she wasn’t done worrying about how K.D. would fare without it. She thought about that bump key and hoped that her own effort at renewal didn’t catapult K.D. into a life of crime. “I don’t know how, K.D., but I’ll do what I can to help you come up with tuition for college. If you’ll go.”
“Tell the IRS it was my money,” said Margaret. “I’ll give them an affidavit, or whatever they want. With my record, they’ll believe me. I’m serious, Dinah. Do it.”
“You’d go to jail for me, Margaret?”
“K.D.’s right. I drink too much. It’ll be like a vacation at the Betty Ford Center, only free. Anyway, I’ve got nothing better to do with my time.”
K.D. raised her eyes. “I’m not a plank, Dinah. I know what you’ve done for me. The only reason I cared about the money was because it stood for Daddy, for how I thought he had loved me and thought of me with his dying breath. I know it was a thorn in your side and I don’t blame you. If you let me stay, I can lace up and earn my own way.” She laughed. “Maybe Thor will hire me to look after Jack if you have to ‘go away.’ I promise I wouldn’t teach him to pick a lock.”
Thor said, “I don’t think Dinah will go to prison, but it has to make her feel good that her family is willing to stand by her, come what may.”
“It does make me feel good. Thank you all. Thank you, K.D. and Margaret. I wish I had a token of appreciation for everyone, but this is all I have tonight.” She turned to Swan. “I brought you a present, Mom.” She handed her a little box tied with a red ribbon.
“Goodness, what can it be?” Swan slipped off the ribbon and lifted the lid. Her eyes misted over. It was the microcassette tape and Baer’s player.
“I don’t know what’s on it,” said Dinah, pre-empting speculation. “I’m not the Stasi, or the N.S.A. As you say, if a woman can’t trust her own daughter.” She left the vice versa unspoken.
Swan covered Dinah’s hand with hers. “We haven’t understood each other as well as we should since your father passed.”
“You mean, since Cleon murdered him,” said Dinah. “For you.”
Where the Bones are Buried Page 27
