The Bridge of Sighs

by Olen Steinhauer

  Emil shook his head.

  “Graz.”

  “Like the city?”

  “It’s where they first made contact with him.”

  “The Russians?”

  Konrad leaned so close that Emil could feel his warm, moist breath cross the distance between them. “The Gestapo.”

  Emil blinked.

  Konrad waved his surprise aside and leaned back again. “This is long before we marched on Stalingrad. Back when Uncle Josef was still a friend to the Reich. Jerzy Michalec was a Hungarian clerk or something-or-other working out of Vienna, and after we marched into that impeccably tidy country in ‘thirty-eight, his Jewish wife became a problem for him.” He raised an eyebrow, and stopped.

  The dramatic pause was driving Emil crazy. “Well? What happened?”

  “The details are hazy. One friend says he spied in Budapest before we marched in, another says he went as deep as Stalingrad, just before that debacle. The only agreed-upon story is that he was one of the Gestapo’s men in the East.”

  “Do the Russians know this?”

  Konrad stubbed out his cigarette. “If the Russians made him into your country’s war hero for the Great Red Cause, do you think they’ll want to hear the opposite is true?” He smiled and tapped Emil’s cheek with a hand, like a mother. “Not without evidence they won’t.”

  Emil inhaled when he realized he hadn’t breathed for a while. It cleared his head. “Is this what Janos was looking for in Berlin? Evidence?”

  Konrad looked very pleased with himself. He had Emil’s complete attention. He leaned back, glanced at a wall clock, and said, “I’ve got a job to see to. Why don’t you come along?”

  The children had put considerable effort into brushing off the steps, so Emil dropped some change into the eldest one’s dirty hand and spoke loud enough for the others to hear. “Share, Comrade. You’re running your very own soviet.” This brought a look of nausea to Konrads face.

  They walked back into the city in silence. Emil began to understand just how much Janos had betrayed his friend and sometime- lover. In order to collect blackmail material, he had sent Konrad into what could have been a fatal investigation. And Konrad, made stupid by love, couldn’t see any of it. He remembered Lena: Women get stupid for the men they’ve married, it’s a fact. Not only women.

  Around them, a couple new buildings were ringed by shells of old homes and a few unscathed ones. They passed through many black markets, Konrad pausing long enough to consider some used shoes. “Makes me shiver to think where they got those,” he muttered, then bought a carton of Lucky Strikes. He knew half the old men standing around, opening their trench coats like flashers. Russian soldiers stood on the sidelines, charging sellers for the right to sell, and pawning off their excess rations and ammunition. Emil used his cane to keep up.

  “How long have you been in Berlin?” Konrad asked once they had left a square.

  “Since last night.”

  “It’s an amazing bit of fortune you came across me so quickly, don’t you think?”

  Emil lowered his voice as they passed more soldiers. “There’s a file on Janos. The Russians watched him come to your house, then go into the American sector. Where did he go in the American sector?”

  Konrads smile disappeared, and his lips formed a vague sneer. “They saw him?” he said finally. “Come to me?” He was wide-eyed as the implications became clear. “And that warranted afile?”

  “Everything warrants a file,” Emil said and, perhaps for the first time, realized that Michalec had access to all the same files he did. All it took was the inclination, and he would know everything Emil knew.

  Around another corner Germans stood in a loose crowd by a building with two hissing speakers blasting news at them. The Soviet sector was prospering despite all the westerners’ efforts. Next week in the Tiergarten, on the western side, the Socialist Unity Party would hold a rally against the opportunist mayor, Ernst Reuter. General Sokolovsky promised that the hugely successful Moscow dance troupes would return regularly for the Berliners’ enjoyment.

  A motorcycle buzzed by, and when its noise faded it was replaced by far-off planes.

  “Hurry up,” said Konrad. He grabbed Emil by the elbow.

  *********

  Die Letze Katze was on a pockmarked block, and Konrad used one of ten keys on a ring to open the door to the basement level. Two more locks on the inner steel door. The club smelled of sour liquor. Konrad used a key to open his office—no more than a closet, a table covered with a telephone and slips of paper, photos taped to a mirror on the far wall that gave the illusion of space— and another key on the liquor cabinet behind the bar. Emil climbed onto a stool and grunted.

  Konrad filled two glasses with tonic water and held his up. “Janos.”

  Emil drank. It was sticky in his mouth.

  Konrad nodded at the cane lying across the next stool. “So what happened to you?”

  “Bullets.”

  “The war?”

  “At home. Recently.”

  “Nothing to do with Janos?”

  Emil shrugged.

  The room was long and narrow and a lot like Helsinki cellar bars, where dingy workers chain-smoked and fought and broke bottles. At the far end was a small stage framed by cheap satin curtains tied up with yellow rope. Stale smoke was in everything—the carpet, the chairs, the walls—and only lighting a fresh cigarette helped dispel it. “Your place is nice.” He didn’t know what else to say.

  “My place? I own nothing. Manage is the word.”

  “The Russians think you own it.”

  “Well, they do me an honor” he said, and raised his glass to toast again.

  “Tell me,” said Emil.

  Konrad set his glass down.

  “Where did Janos go? Who did he see in the American sector?”

  Konrad held up an index finger, then pointed at the front door. “Outside again? You mind?”

  They walked the length of the block, slowly, as though they were in another Berlin, one where they could admire the flowers. In the middle of the street, two very clean children pushed a rusty, rattling baby carriage filled with coal. “I’m sure of my own apartment,” said Konrad. “But the bar? I don’t know. People I don’t know are in there all the time. A friend of mine says I’m paranoid, but he was arrested last week.”

  “What about me?”

  Konrad stuck his hands deep into his pockets. “I think we have some solidarity, you and I. Janos was beautiful, a poet, he understood solidarity. I think you do too. People from your country know about living under the boot of another nation. Am I wrong?”

  Emil said he wasn’t.

  Konrad cleared his throat and stroked his boxer’s nose. “On the telephone—on a friend’s secure line—I told Janos everything. Everything I’d learned. It seemed to me that this friend of his, this Michalec, as an employee of the Reich, would have had a file. The Gestapo kept files on everyone.” He thought about that a moment. “Times don’t change, do they?”

  They didn’t.

  “Around a year ago, the Americans found a storehouse of records. In Munich, I think. A lot of information—including, of course, files of the Gestapo. Crates and crates. They brought them here to Berlin, then decided to send it all back to Washington. They were going to fly the records out of Tempelhof.”

  Emil stopped and looked at him. “The airport?”

  Konrad nodded. “But nothing ever turns out as we expect, and there was this American lieutenant. Named Mazur. Harry Mazur, an historian. Harry, can you imagine?” Konrad laughed—a high, uncontrolled chuckle that he quickly silenced, as though embarrassed by its sound. “So, this American military historian Lieutenant Harry Mazur arrived in Berlin a week before the crates were scheduled to leave us. He found out about them, made some inquiries, and got permission to work on them himself, here in Berlin. Washington, he was convinced, would leave them to the dust.” He paused and, as an aside, cited five sources for this story: two Soviet of
ficers (a captain and a colonel), one de-Nazified liquor vendor, one still fully Nazified policeman and a prostitute who had been a red since birth.

  “These files,” said Emil. “Where are they now?”

  “Still there. A basement room at Tempelhof. Apparently, our admirable Lieutenant Harry has been going at them ever since. Now that all this has started,” he said, waving his hand at the buzzing sound they once again noticed, “I’ll bet he’s had to go it alone. I’ll bet those are a lot of files for any one man.” Konrad stopped for an old woman to pass. She glanced enviously at Emil’s cane.

  “This is where Janos went? To the airport?”

  Konrad shrugged as they turned back toward the nightclub. The breeze shifted, and the sound of planes grew louder.

  Emil stopped him with a hand on his shoulder. “How did he get there?”

  “Just walk on over, dearest. Nobody will stop you. They might look at your papers, but no more. All they worry about is precious coal making it to the American sector.”

  “No,” said Emil, shaking his head. “Inside. Tempelhof Airport.”

  Konrad shrugged theatrically, palms up. “Back then, you realize, it was a different world. None of these planes, we had plenty American cigarettes and they had their electricity. But now, who knows? Inside?” He reached for the door handle and showed his perfect false teeth as he smiled. “But maybe, dear Comrade Inspector, for the sake of a beloved genius, just maybe I can help you.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  *******************

  Small, shallow bullet holes peppered the Brandenburg Gate. Between chipped columns stood soldiers—Soviet on his side, American on the other—waving people through. A trickle of women stood on the American side with empty shopping bags. In another line, women with full shopping bags returned to the West. Emil stood behind them, looking down at a bag of salamis, wishing he’d eaten.

  Janos had stood in this same spot eight months ago, February, single-mindedly focused on breaking free of his wife’s support. He had stood near these damaged classical columns, thinking of evidence and blackmail and money. He was already purchasing the apartment in his head, living his new, free life.

  And behind Janos, maybe crouching among the blackened shards of the demolished Reichstag, MVD agents had taken notes.

  Emil looked back and saw only soldiers with rifles and women with shopping bags. But what he saw didn’t matter; they knew whose path he was following.

  The Russian soldier smiled at the women. He was a flirt. The women smiled back as necessary when he asked them why they wanted to leave the Soviet sector, where all their needs would be met. Sometimes he asked to see their papers, then, with a wink, flicked them back. “NächsteΓ

  Emil handed over his passport. Close up, the soldier wasn’t so young, and he remembered Lena’s conviction that these were just peasant boys who wanted their mothers. Lost children. The boyman looked him up and down and spoke in Russian. “A long way from home, Comrade?”

  Emil took out his green Militia certificate, which was half in Russian, and handed it over. “Yes, Comrade.”

  The soldier shifted his rifle so that the barrel no longer pointed at the ground. “What kind of business do you have with the Americans?”

  The badge was useless, but the soldier might not know this. “Just visiting the enemy, Comrade. Taking a look.”

  The soldier pursed his lips as he read the certificate carefully, then handed it back. “Not much to see over there,” he said. “Stalingrad, that’s a city.”

  Emil folded the Militia certificate back into his jacket.

  “They’re different here,” said the soldier confidentially. “They don’t understand the value of gifls. “

  Emil understood. He put his hand in his pocket and spoke loudly. “Thank you very much, Comrade! Your assistance is appreciated.”

  He held out his hand to shake, and the soldier, uncertain, took it. When he felt the Östmarks slide into his palm, his features relaxed. He stood straight, at attention. “May your business long serve the interests of the victorious proletariat!”

  “That’s my aim, Comrade,” said Emil, and after five long steps he passed a sign that told him he was in the American sector.

  A thick-boned GI asked in clotted German what his business was.

  He had an impulse to bribe again, but he’d heard about the Americans. They were fat, rich people for whom a bribe was no temptation. Certainly whatever meager bribe he could afford.

  “Tourism.”

  The GI nodded at the soldier he’d just left. “What did you show him? That green thing.”

  Emil looked back at the Russian, who was busy flirting with some more women, then back at the humorless American. He handed his Militia certificate over, and saw, in a flash, prisons and interrogations. His weak stomach trembled, but he forced it to settle. Just a little war tourism. No one could prove otherwise.

  The soldier frowned at the cyrillics. He was young, and Emil wondered if the Americans came from farms like the Russians, and if they also felt lost on this side of the Atlantic, buried deep in bomb-scarred Europe. The soldier took Emil’s passport and badge to a gray guardhouse and spoke with an officer inside. After a moment, the officer, now holding the IDs, stepped out and waved for Emil to follow him. He had wind-chapped features that Emil attributed to American plains in states he had heard of: Kansas, Missouri.

  When he looked back, Emil saw the round-faced Russian boy staring from the other side of the Gate, looking as though he had been had.

  Thin, white hair stuck out from beneath the officer’s cap. They were beside each other now, approaching a dirty white trailer that, when the door was opened, smelled of scalded coffee. A small iron stove burned in the corner. The officer took off his cap—he was bald on top—and poured coffee from a thermos. He held out a cup, but Emil shook his head. They sat on either side of a small kitchen table covered by a piece of lace.

  “Speak English?”

  Emil shook his head. “Deutsch, Russkii.”

  “So you’re from the People’s Militia,” the officer said in unbelievably smooth, fluent Russian as he laid the two IDs on the table. Emil wondered how a farmer had learned such fine Russian. “Does this mean you’re investigating something in our sector?”

  Emil faltered. His stomach was tearing itself up. The nervousness had come upon him as soon as he had stepped into this room. And now the American officer saw right through him.

  But what was he really hiding?

  He was hiding everything, because trust was not an option.

  “A murder?” the American guessed. “It does say homicide here.”

  He had a kind face, but Emil knew from experience that this was impractical evidence.

  Again: What did he have to hide?

  “A murder,” said Emil. “Yes.” He spoke in clipped syllables, trying to hide his sudden despair.

  The farmer-officer pressed his lips together as he nodded. “Are you an agent of Soviet Intelligence? MVD? MGB?”

  “What?”

  “You heard me.” The kindness had slipped from his features.

  “I’m not. I’m neither.”

  The officer sipped gingerly and considered Emil a moment. The iron stove kept the trailer very warm. “Tell me about your case.”

  His stomach was furious, tumultuous. “I’m afraid I can’t.”

  “Why not?”

  Emil raised his palms helplessly. “I don’t know much myself. And what I do know is questionable.” He rubbed his face, the adrenaline now exhausting him. Maybe it was the fatigue making him say so much. “This is my dilemma,” he told the American. “What I do know may be of more value than I realize. But not necessarily of value to my case. So I can’t share any of it. Do you understand?”

  The officer did, Emil could see this. He leaned back in his chair, nodding, spreading his feet as wide as they would go in the cramped quarters, but said, “Please explain.”

  He shifted so his stomach could expe
l the gasses building inside it, then felt the sharp old wounds. “If I tell you something that is of more value than I realize,” said Emil, “I could be in trouble with my own government. Or with the Russians. As soon as I step back over that line, I could be shot.”

  “Nothing would leave this room,” said the American officer. “You can trust that.”

  Emil leveled a cool gaze on him, but his empty stomach was a writhing acid pit. “I can t trust that.”

  The officer licked the inside of his mouth, rapped his knuckles on the tabletop, then glanced out the window. “What about them, then?”

  “Who?”

  “The Soviets.” He leaned forward. “You can t be too happy with them, now can you? They marched into your country and set up a puppet dictatorship. You do know this, right? They rewrite history like it’s their own goddamn Tolstoy novel.” He paused to let it sink in. “You’re not a fool, I can tell that. You don’t think that Mihai of yours is doing anything other than listening to his Moscow phone for orders—do you?”

  Emil heard his grandfather muttering in his skull, but shrugged it off. “No country’s perfect.”

  The officer almost shouted: “That’s what drives me crazy about you people! You’ve got the lowest standards in the world.”

  “We’re never disappointed.”

  He laughed a big, American laugh, and patted his big hand on the shaking table. Outside, a dented green Opel pulled up. “All right, Emil Brod of the People’s Militia,” he said as he handed back the passport and certificate. “Have a good stay in the American sector. Excuse our lack of electricity. Another gift from your Soviet friends.” He smiled. “And remember. You hurt anyone under our care, and you’ll have the United States up your ass.”

  A man got out of the Opel’s passenger’s side and stood waiting.

  Emil’s stomach cleared suddenly, then sank. He was so slow. He took too much at face value. The officer had been holding him here, waiting.

  “Are they taking me away?” asked Emil.

  “What? Them?”

  Emil waited for an answer.

  “Maybe in your country, kid, but not in ours.” He handed Emil his cane. “Just some eyes to make sure you stay out of trouble.” He held out his hand, and Emil took it.