THE FIRST DAY OF FEBRUARY was as gray as nature intended. His Wednesday morning lesson with Ruth and Marthe was enjoyable as ever, but there was no sign of their brother or parents. Arriving back at Alexanderplatz with twenty minutes to spare he stopped for a coffee in Wertheim and ran into Doug Conway. They chatted for a few minutes, until Russell realized he was late for his appointment. The search for Oehms office made him even later, and McKinleys sister was looking none-too-happy when he finally arrived.
We were talking about Fraulein McKinleys flying boat, Oehm said, which further explained her look of irritation.
She was almost as tall as her brotherabout five-foot-eleven, he guessedand even thinner. Severely cut brunette hair framed a face that might have been pretty if the already-thin lips had not been half-pursed in disapproval, but Russell sensed that her current expression was the one she most usually presented to the world. She was wearing a cream blouse and smart, deep blue suit. There was no hint of black and no obvious sign of grief in her face. He told himself that shed had several days to take it all in.
He introduced himself and offered his condolences.
Eleanor McKinley, she responded. Tyler never mentioned you.
We werent close friends, just neighbors. Im here because the police thought an interpreter would make things easier for everyone. Have they told you what happened?
Oh, we got all the details from the Germany Embassy in Washington. A man came out to the house and explained everything.
Russell wondered what to say next. He found it hard to credit that the family believed Tyler had committed suicide, but it was hardly his place to question it, particularly with Oehm trying to follow their conversation.
The German interrupted. There are papers to sign. He passed them to Russell. If you could. . . .
Russell looked through them, and then explained the gist to Eleanor McKinley. There are two things here. One is an account of the investigation, complete with witness statements and the police conclusion that Tyler committed suicide. They need your signature to sign off on the case. The other form waives your familys right to an inquest. This is because youre taking him home with you.
I understand, she said.
Ill read it through, then.
No, no, dont bother, she said, extracting a pack of Chesterfields from her handbag. You wont mind if I smoke? she asked Oehm, holding up a cigarette in explanation.
Russell was taken aback. You understand that youre accepting their version of events, that this exempts them from any further investigation? he asked.
Are there any other versions? she asked.
No. I just wanted to be sure you knew that this puts an end to any. . . .
Good, she interrupted. She made a writing mime at Oehm, who handed her his pen.
Here and here, Russell said, placing the papers in front of her. She signed both, writing Eleanor V. McKinley in a large looping hand.
Is that it? she asked.
Thats it.
What about Tylers . . . what about the body?
Russell asked Oehm. It was still in the morgue, he thought, reaching for the phone.
It was. They need her for a formal identification before they can release it, Oehm told Russell in German. But not nowtheyre still trying to repair his face. If she comes at eleven in the morning theyll have plenty of time to seal it for transport and get it across to Lehrter.
Russell relayed the salient points.
Cant we do it now? she asked.
No, Im afraid not.
She made a face, but didn't press the issue. All right. Well, lets get out of this dreadful place. She offered Oehm her hand and the briefest of smiles, and headed for the door. I suppose I can get the apartment over with instead, she said as they walked back to the entrance. Youll come with me, she added. It was more of an assumption than a question.
They took a taxi. She said nothing as they drove through the old city, just stared out of the window. As they swung through Spittelmarkt toward Donhoffplatz and the bottom of Lindenstrasse she murmured something to herself, then turned to Russell and said: Ive never seen such a gray city.
The weather doesnt help, he said.
She was even less impressed with Neuenburgerstrasse. Frau Heidegger climbed the stairs to let them in, and insisted that Russell pass on her deepest condolences. And tell Fraulein McKinley how much I liked her brother, she added. How much we all did.
Russell did as he was bid, and McKinleys sister flashed another of her brief smiles in Frau Heideggers direction. Tell her wed like to be alone, she said in English.
Russell passed on the message. Frau Heidegger looked slightly hurt, but disappeared down the stairs.
Eleanor sat down on the bed looking, for the first time, as if her brothers death meant something to her.
Now was the moment, Russell thought. He had to say something. I find it hard to believe that your brother killed himself, he said tentatively.
She sighed. Well, he did. One way or another.
Im sorry. . . .
She got up and walked to the window. I dont know how much you knew about Tylers work. . . .
I knew he was working on something important.
Exposing some terrible Nazi plot? she asked.
Maybe. She was angry, he realized. Furious.
Well, that was a pretty effective way of committing suicide, wouldn't you say?
Russell bit back an answer. Hed said much the same thing to McKinley himself.
Look at this, she said, surveying the room. The life he chose, she said bitterly.
That you couldn't, Russell thought. He silently abandoned the idea of asking for her help in checking out the poste restante.
She picked up McKinleys pipe, looked around, and took one of his socks to wrap it in. Ill take this, she said. Can you get rid of the rest?
Yes, but. . . .
I cant imagine it would be much use to anyone else.
Okay.
He accompanied her downstairs and out to the waiting taxi.
Thank you for your help, she said. I dont suppose youre free tomorrow morning? I could use some help at the morgue. My train leaves at three and I cant afford any hold-ups. And some moral support would be nice, she added, as if it had just occurred to her that identifying her brother might involve an emotional toll. Ill buy you lunch.
Russell felt like refusing, but he had no other appointments. Be generous, he told himself. Its a deal, he said.
Pick me up at the Adlon, she told him. Around ten-thirty.
He watched the cab turn the corner onto Lindenstrasse and disappear. He felt sorry for McKinley, and perhaps even sorrier for his sister.
HE ARRIVED AT THE ADLON just before 10:00, and found Jack Slaney sitting behind a newspaper in the tea room. Ive got something for you, Russell said, sitting down and counting out the ninety Reichsmarks he owed from their last poker game.
A sudden inheritance? Slaney asked.
Something like that.
What are you doing here? the American asked, as he gestured the waiter over to order coffees.
Russell told him.
He was a nice kid, Slaney said. Shame about his family.
The uncles not one of your favorite senators?
Slaney laughed. Hes a big friend of the Nazis. Anti-Semitic through and throughthe usual broken record. On the one hand, we should be leaving Europe alone, on the other, we should be realizing that Britain and France are on their last legs and Germanys a progressive power-house, our natural ally. Bottom lineits just business as usual. The Senators brotherMcKinleys dadhas a lot of money invested here. One plant in Dusseldorf, another in Stuttgart. Theyll do well out of a war, as long as we stay out of it.
The daughters not exactly soft and cuddly, Russell admitted.
I know. Hey! Slaney interrupted himself. Have you heard the latest? Over the weekend some Swedish member of Parliament nominated Hitler for the Nobel Peace Prize. Wrote a letter of recommendation and everything. Slaney flipped back the pag
es of his notebook. He praised Hitlers glowing love of peace, heretofore best documented in his famous book Mein Kampf.
A spoof, right?
Of course. But at least one German paper missed that bit. They printed the whole thing as if it was completely kosher. He threw back his head and laughed out loud, drawing stares from across the room.
At 10:30 Russell asked the receptionist to let Eleanor know he was in the lobby. She appeared a couple of minutes later. The suit was a deep crimson this time, and she was wearing a silk scarf that was a shimmering gold. Her heels were higher than on the previous day, the seams of her stockings straight as arrows. The fur coat looked expensive. It doesnt look like theyre getting ready for a war, she said, as their cab motored down Unter den Linden.
The morgue was ready for them. McKinleys body was laid out on a stretcher in the middle of the spacious cold storeroom. She marched confidently forward, heels clicking on the polished floor, then suddenly faltered and looked back at Russell. He came forward, took her arm, and together they advanced on the stretcher.
A white sheet concealed whatever injuries her brother had suffered below the neck. The familiar shock of dark hair had been burned away at the front, and the entire left side of his face looked blackened beneath the morticians make-up. The eyes looked as though theyd been re-inserted in their sockets; one was not quite closed, and presumably never would be again. The bottom lip had been sewn back on, probably after McKinley had bitten clean through it. An angry red-brown wound extended around the Americans neck above the uppermost edge of sheet, causing Russell to wonder whether he had been decapitated.
Its him, Eleanor said in a voice quivering with control. She signed the necessary documentation on the small table by the door and left the room without a backward glance. During the first part of their ride back to the Adlon she sat in silence, staring out of the window, an angry expression on her face. As they crossed over Friedrichstrasse she asked Russell how long hed lived in Berlin, but hardly listened to his answer.
Come up, she said when they reached the lobby, and gave him a quick glance to make sure he hadn't read anything into the invitation.
Her suite was modest, but a suite just the same. An open suitcase sat on the bed, half-filled with clothes, surrounded by bits and pieces. Ill only be a minute, she said, and disappeared into the bathroom.
An item on the bed had already caught Russells eyeone of the small gray canvas bags that the Kripo used for storing personal effects.
There was no sound from the bathroom. Now or never, he told himself.
He took one stride to the bed, loosened the string, and looked inside the bag. It was almost empty. He poured the contents onto the bed and sorted through them with his fingers. A reporters notebookalmost empty. German notesalmost 300 Reichsmarks worth. McKinleys press accreditation. His passport.
The toilet flushed.
Russell slipped the passport into his pocket, rammed the rest back into the bag, tightened the string, and stepped hastily away from the bed.
She came out of the bathroom, looked at the mess on the bed, staring, or so it seemed to Russell, straight at the bag. She reached down, picked it up . . . and placed it in the suitcase. I thought wed eat here, she said.
FIVE MINUTES LATER, they were being seated in the hotel restaurant. Having locked her brother away in some sort of emotional box, she chatted happily about America, her dog, the casting of Vivien Leigh as Scarlett OHara in the new film of Gone with the Wind. It was all very brittle, but brittle was what she was.
After they had eaten he watched her look around the room, and tried to see it through her eyes: a crowd of smart people, most of the women fashionably dressed, many of the men in perfectly tailored uniforms. Eating good food, drinking fine wines. Just like home.
Do you think therell be a war? she asked abruptly.
Probably, he said.
But what could they gain from one? she asked, genuinely puzzled. I mean, you can see how prosperous the country is, how content. Why risk all that?
Russell had no wish to talk politics with her. He shrugged agreement with her bewilderment and asked how the flight across the Atlantic had been.
Awful, she said. So noisy, though I got used to that after a while. But its a horrible feeling, being over the middle of the ocean and knowing that theres no help for thousands of miles.
Are you going back the same way?
Oh no. It was Daddy who insisted I come that way. He thought it was important that I got here quickly, though I cant imagine why. No, Im going back by ship. From Hamburg. My train leaves at three, she added, checking her watch. Will you take me to the station?
Of course.
Upstairs he watched her cram her remaining possessions into the suitcase, and breathed a silent sigh of relief when she asked him to close it for her. A taxi took them to the Lehrter Bahnhof, where the D-Zug express was already waiting in its platform, car attendants hovering at each door.
Thank you for your help, she said, holding out a hand.
Im sorry about the circumstances, Russell said.
Yes, she agreed, but more in exasperation than sadness. As he turned away she was reaching for her cigarettes.
Near the front of the train three porters were manhandling a coffin into the baggage car. Russell paused in his stride, and watched as they set it down with a thump by the far wall. Show some respect, he felt like saying, but what was the point? He walked on, climbing the steps to the Stadtbahn platforms which hung above the mainline stations throat. A train rattled in almost instantly, and three minutes later he was burrowing down to the U-bahn platforms at Friedrichstrasse. He read an abandoned Volkischer Beobachter on the journey to Neukolln, but the only item of interest concerned the Party student leader in Heidelberg. He had forbidden his students from dancing the Lambeth Walka jaunty Cockney dance, recently popularized on the London stageon the grounds that it was foreign to the German way of life, and incompatible with National Socialist behavior.
How many Germans, Russell wondered, were itching to dance the Lambeth Walk?
Not the family in Zembskis studio, that was certain. They were there to have their portrait taken, the father in SA uniform, the wife in her church best, the three blond daughters all in pigtails, wearing freshly ironed BdM uniforms. Nazi heaven.
Russell watched as the big Silesian lumbered around, checking the lighting and the arrangement of the fake living room setting. Finally he was satisfied. Smile, he said, and clicked the shutter. One more, he said, and smile this time. The wife did; the girls tried, but the father was committed to looking stern.
Russell wondered what was going through Zembskis mind at moments like this. He had only known the Silesian for a few years, but hed heard of him long before that. In the German communist circles which he and Ilse had once frequented, Zembski had been known as a reliable source for all sorts of photographic services, and strongly rumored to be a key member of the Pass-Apparat, the Berlin-based Comintern factory for forged passports and other documents. Russell had never admitted his knowledge of Zembskis past. But it was one of the reasons why he used him for his photographic needs. That and the fact that he liked the man. And his low prices.
He watched as Zembski ushered the family out into the street with promises of prints by the weekend. Closing the door behind them he rolled his eyes toward the ceiling. Is smiling so hard? he asked rhetorically. But of course, hell love it. I only hope the wife doesnt get beaten to a pulp for looking happy. He walked across to the arc lights and turned them off. And what can I do for you, Mister Russell?
Russell nodded toward the small office which adjoined the studio.
Zembski looked at him, shrugged, and gestured him in. Two chairs were squeezed in on either side of a desk. I hope its pornography rather than politics, he said once they were inside. Though these days its hard to tell the difference.
Russell showed him McKinleys passport. I need my photograph in this. I was hoping youd either do it for me or teach me how to
do it myself.
Zembski looked less than happy. What makes you think Id know?
I was in the Party myself once.
Zembskis eyebrows shot up. Ah. A lots changed since then, my friend.
Yes, but theyre probably still using the same glue on passports. And you probably remember which remover to use.
Zembski nodded. Not the sort of thing you forget. He studied McKinleys passport. Who is he?
Was. Hes the American journalist who jumped in front of a train at Zoo Station last weekend. Allegedly jumped.
Better and better, the Silesian said dryly. He opened a drawer, pulled out a magnifying glass, and studied the photograph. Looks simple enough.
Youll do it?
Zembski leaned back in his chair, causing it to squeak with apprehension. Why not?
How much?
Ah. That depends. Whats it for? I dont want details, he added hurriedly, just some assurance that it wont end up on a Gestapo desk.
I need it to recover some papers. For a story.
Not a Fuhrer-friendly story?
No.
Then Ill give you a discount for meaning well. But itll still cost you a hundred Reichsmarks.
Fair enough.
Cash.
Right.
Ill take the picture now then, Zembski said, maneuvering his bulk out of the confined space and through the door into the studio. A plain background, he muttered out loud as he studied the original photograph. Thisll do, he said, pushing a screen against a wall and placing a stool in front of it.
Russell sat on it.
Zembski lifted his camera, tripod and all, and placed it in position. After feeding in a new film, he squinted through the lens. Try and look like an American, he ordered.
How the hell do I do that? Russell asked.
Look optimistic.
Ill try. He did.
I said optimistic, not doe-eyed.
Russell grinned, and the shutter clicked.
Lets try a serious one, Zembski ordered.
Russell pursed his lips.
The shutter clicked again. And again. And several more times. Thatll do, the Silesian said at last. Ill have it for you on Monday.
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