The Good German (Bestselling Backlist)

by Joseph Kanon

  “Meissen, ja. Natürlich.”

  “What are you going to do with that?” Jake said. “Make soup?”

  “It’s pretty.”

  “Lucky Strike,” the woman said in accented English. “Camel.”

  Liz handed it back and motioned to the woman to pose. As the camera clicked, the woman smiled nervously, holding out her dish, still hoping for a sale, and Jake turned uneasily, feeling ashamed, as if they were stealing something, the way primitive people feared a camera took souls.

  “You shouldn’t do that,” he said as they moved off, the woman shouting after them in disappointment.

  “Local color,” Liz said, unconcerned. “Why do they all wear pants?”

  “They’re old uniforms. The men aren’t allowed, so the women wear them.”

  “They aren’t,” she said, pointing to two girls in summer dresses talking to French soldiers, whose red berets flashed like bird feathers in all the khaki and gray.

  “They’re selling something else.”

  “Really?” Liz said, curious. “Right out in the open?”

  But they posed too, arms around the soldiers’ waists, less self-conscious than the woman with porcelain.

  They had made a half-circle to the obelisk, past the cigarette dealers and watch salesmen and piles of PX cans. On the steps of the Nikolai a man had spread out carpets, a surreal touch of Samarkand. Nearby a one-armed veteran was offering a box of now useless hand tools. A woman with two children at her side held out a pair of baby shoes.

  They found Shaeffer near the north end of the colonnade, looking at cameras.

  “You remember Jake,” Liz said breezily. “He’s been looking for you.”

  “Oh yes?”

  “Find anything?” she said, taking the camera from him and putting it to her eye.

  “Just an old Leica. Not worth it.” He turned to Jake. “You looking for a camera?”

  “Not unless it’s got a Zeiss lens,” Jake said, nodding at Liz’s case. “You pick that one up at the plant?”

  “The plant’s in the Soviet zone, last I heard,” Shaeffer said, looking at him carefully.

  “I heard one of our tech units paid it a visit.”

  “Is that a fact?”

  “I thought they might have picked up some souvenirs.”

  “Now why would they do that? You can get anything you want right here.” Shaeffer spread his hand toward the square.

  “So you haven’t been there?”

  “What is this, twenty questions?”

  “Don’t race your motor,” Liz said to him, handing back the Leica. “Jake’s always asking questions. It’s what he does.”

  “Yeah? Well, go ask them somewhere else. You ready?” he said to Liz.

  “Hey, the babe with the camera.” Two American soldiers, running over to them. “Remember us? Hitler’s office?”

  “Like it was yesterday,” Liz said. “How you boys doing?”

  “We got our orders,” one of the soldiers said. “End of the week.”

  “Just my luck,” Liz said, grinning. “Want a shot for the road?” She held up the camera.

  “Hey, great. Get the obelisk in, can you?”

  Jake followed the camera’s eye to the GIs, the market swirling behind them. He wondered for a second how they’d explain it at home, Russians holding wristwatches to their ears to check the ticking, tired German ladies with tureens. At the church, two Russians were holding up a carpet, a general with medals hovering off to one side. As a tram pulled in, dividing the crowd, the Russian turned his face toward the colonnade. Sikorsky, holding a carton of cigarettes. Jake smiled to himself. Even the brass came to market day for a little something on the side. Or was it payday for informants?

  The GI was scribbling on a piece of paper. “You can send it there.”

  “Hey, St. Louis,” Liz said.

  “You too?”

  “Webster Groves.”

  “No shit. Long way from home, huh?” he said, looking toward the bombed-out schloss.

  “Say hi to the folks,” Liz said as they moved off, then turned to Shaeffer. “How do you like that?”

  “Let’s go,” he said, bored.

  “One more question?” Jake said.

  But Shaeffer had begun to walk away.

  “Why are you looking for Emil Brandt?”

  Shaeffer stopped and turned. For a second he stood still, staring, his face a question.

  “What makes you think I’m looking for anybody?”

  “Because I saw Frau Dzuris too.”

  “Who?”

  “The neighbor. From Pariserstrasse.”

  Another hard stare. “What do you want?”

  “I’m an old friend of the family. When I tried to look him up, I found your foot sticking in the door. Now why is that?”

  “An old friend of the family,” Shaeffer said.

  “Before the war. I worked with his wife. So let me ask you again—why are you looking for him?”

  Shaeffer kept his eyes on Jake, trying to read his face. “Because he’s missing,” he said finally.

  “From Kransberg, I know.”

  Shaeffer blinked, surprised. “Then what’s your question?”

  “My question is, so what? Who is he to you?”

  “If you know Kransberg, you know that too. He’s a guest of the U.S. government.”

  “On an extended stay.”

  “That’s right. We’re not finished talking to him.”

  “And when you do, he’s free to go?”

  “I don’t know about that. That’s not my department.”

  “Which is what, exactly?”

  “None of your fucking business. What do you want, anyway?”

  “I want to find him, too. Just like you.” He glanced up. “Any luck?”

  Shaeffer looked sharply at him again, then eased off, taking a breath. “No. And it’s been a while. We could use a break. Maybe you’re the break. A friend of the family. We don’t know anything personal about him, just what’s in his head.”

  “What is?”

  Shaeffer looked down. “A lot. He’s a fucking walking bomb, if he talks to the wrong people.”

  “Meaning Russians.”

  Shaeffer nodded. “You say you knew his wife? Know where she is now?”

  “No,” Jake said, avoiding Liz’s eye. “Why?”

  “We figure he’s with her. He kept talking about her. Lena.”

  “Lena?” Liz said.

  “It’s a common name,” Jake said to her, a signal that worked, because she looked away, quiet. He turned again to Shaeffer. “What if he doesn’t want to be found?”

  “That’s not an option,” Shaeffer said stiffly. He looked down at his watch. “We can’t talk here. Come to headquarters at two.”

  “Is that an order?”

  “It will be if you don’t show up. You going to help or not?”

  “If I knew where he was, I wouldn’t have asked you.”

  “His background—you can brief us on that. There must be someone he’d see. Maybe you’re the break,” he repeated, then shook his head. “Christ, you never know, do you?”

  “It’s been a long time. I don’t know who his friends are—I can tell you that now. I didn’t even know he’d been a Nazi.”

  “So? Everyone was a Nazi.” Shaeffer looked over at Jake, suspicious again. “You one of those?”

  “Those what?”

  “Guys still fighting the war, looking for Nazis. Don’t waste my time with that. I don’t care if he was Hitler’s best friend. We just want to know what’s up here,” he said, putting a finger to his temple.

  An echo from another conversation, at a dinner table.

  “One more question,” Jake said. “First time I saw you, you were picking Breimer up. Gelferstrasse, July sixteenth. Ring a bell? Where’d you go?”

  Shaeffer stared again, his mouth drawn thin. “I don’t remember.”

  “That’s the night Tully was killed. I see you know the name.�
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  “I know the name,” Shaeffer said slowly. “PSD at Kransberg. So what?”

  “So he’s dead.”

  “I heard. Good riddance, if you ask me.”

  “And you don’t want to know who did it?”

  “Why? To give him a medal? He just saved somebody else from having to do it. The guy was no good.”

  “And he drove Emil Brandt out of Kransberg. And that doesn’t interest you.”

  “Tully?” Liz said. “The man we found?”

  Jake glanced at her, surprised at the interruption, then at Shaeffer, a jarring moment, because it occurred to him for the first time that it might have been Shaeffer’s interest all along, a flirtation to see what she knew. Who was anybody?

  “That’s right,” he said, then turned to Shaeffer. “But that doesn’t interest you. And you don’t remember where you took Breimer.”

  “I don’t know what you think you’re getting at, but go get it somewhere else. Before I paste you one.”

  “All right, that’s enough,” Liz said. “Save it for the ring. I came here to get a camera, not to watch you two square off. Kids.” She glared at Jake. “You take some chances. Now how about giving me a nice smile—I want to finish off this roll—and then you run along like a good boy. That means you too,” she said to Shaeffer.

  Surprisingly, he obeyed, turning to face the camera with Jake. “Two o’clock. Don’t forget,” he said out of the side of his mouth.

  “Quiet,” Liz said, crouching a little to frame the picture. “Come on, smile.”

  As she bent, the sound of a shot cracked through the square, followed by a scream. Jake looked over her shoulder. A Russian soldier was running past the obelisk, dodging people who flew out of his way like startled geese. Another shot, off to the right, from a handful of Russians near the parked Horch, guns out. But in the split second of his glance, Jake saw that the guns weren’t pointing at the obelisk but had tracked farther along, aiming now at Liz’s back.

  “Down!” he yelled, but instead she jerked up, surprised, so that when the bullet came it thudded into her neck. A frozen second, then another crack, a sharp whistle. Shaeffer staggered backward, hit, and crumpled to the ground. Before Jake could move, he felt Liz’s body falling forward, toppling him against the colonnade, its weight forcing him back until he was falling too, his head hitting the column as he went down. Screams everywhere now in the square, the sound of feet running on stone, another shot glancing off the colonnade. He tried to breathe under the weight, then realized that what stopped his mouth was blood pumping out of her throat, coating him. More shots, the market erupting with guns, so many guns that they seemed fired at random, not aimed, people hugging the paving stones to get out of the crossfire.

  In a panic Jake tried to roll Liz away, pushing her hips as another rush of blood spurted into his face. He wriggled out from under and reached over to grab Shaeffer’s pistol from its holster, then snaked behind the column, breathing in gulps. The Russians by the Horch were still firing, shooting in all directions now as soldiers around the square crouched and fired back. Jake aimed the gun, trying to steady his weaving hand, but when he fired the shot missed, smashing the headlight of the car. A bullet from somewhere else caught one of the Russians instead, flinging his body back against the car.

  And then, before Jake could fire again, it was suddenly over, the other Russians scurrying away behind the Horch, quick as rats, and gone, the square empty except for a body lying near the obelisk, everything still. He heard a gurgle next to him, then a shout in German near the Nikolai. He crawled over to Liz, feeling his shirt sticky with blood. Her eyes were open, still wide with terror but moving, and the blood had stopped gushing, just a steady flow into the pool next to her head. He pressed his hand on her neck to stop it, but a trickle oozed through his fingers, wetting them.

  “Don’t die,” he said. “We’ll get help.”

  But who? Shaeffer rolled slightly and groaned. No one moved in the square.

  “Don’t die,” he said again, his voice catching. Her eyes were looking straight at him, and he wondered for a second if she could see, if he could will her to hold on simply by looking back at her. A girl from Webster Groves.

  He turned his head to the square. “Somebody help!” he shouted, but who knew English? “Hilfe!” As if an ambulance might come screeching down the street, where there were no ambulances.

  He looked at her eyes again. “It’s going to be all right. Just hold on.” He pressed harder on her neck, his hand now completely red. How much blood had she lost? Footsteps behind him. He looked up. One of the tourist GIs, stunned by the blood.

  “Jesus Christ,” he said.

  “Help me,” Jake said.

  “They got Fred,” he said, groggy, as if it were an answer.

  “Ask one of the Germans. We have to get her to a hospital. Krankenhaus.”

  The GI looked at him, bewildered.

  “Krankenhaus,” Jake said again. “Just ask.”

  The boy moved away unsteadily, a sleepwalker, and sank to his knees by the obelisk where the other GI lay. A few people had crept back into the square, looking left and right, wary of more fire.

  “Don’t worry,” he said to Liz. “Just hold on. We’ll make it.”

  But at that moment he knew, a shudder through his body, that they wouldn’t, that she was going to die. No ambulance was going to come, no doctor in a white coat to make everything better. There was only this. And he saw that she knew, wondered how you filled those last minutes—a roar in the head or was it utterly still, taking in the sky? In the time it took to snap a picture. Her eyes moved, frightened, and his moved with them, keeping her here, and then she opened her mouth as if she were about to speak, and he heard the gasp, not dramatic, quiet, a little intake of ragged air that stopped and didn’t come back, trapped somewhere. None of the noisy theater of birth, just an interrupted breath of air and you left your life.

  Her eyes had stopped moving, the pupils fixed. He took his hand away from her neck and wiped it on his pants, smearing blood. The thick smell of it. He picked up the camera lying next to her, still dazed, every movement an effort. Everything gone in a second, one flash at a time, too fast even for a Zeiss lens.

  Shaeffer groaned again and Jake wobbled over, still on his knees. More blood, a patch spreading across the left shoulder.

  “Take it easy,” Jake said. “We’ll get you to a hospital.”

  Shaeffer reached up with his good arm to grab Jake’s and squeeze it. “Not Russian,” he said in a hoarse whisper. “Get me out of here.”

  “It’s too far.”

  But Shaeffer clenched his arm again. “Not Russian,” he said, almost violent. “I can’t.”

  Jake looked toward the square, filling up now, people shuffling aimlessly, the moment after an accident. Russians everywhere; a Russian town.

  “Can you move?” Jake said, reaching behind Shaeffer’s head. Shaeffer winced but lifted himself slowly, stopping halfway, like someone sitting up in bed. He was blinking, dizzy with shock. Jake reached under his shoulder and began pulling him up, straining under the weight. “The jeep’s over there. Can you stand?”

  Shaeffer nodded, then fell forward, stalled. Jake glanced again toward the square. Anybody.

  “Hey, St. Louis!” he shouted, waving the GI over, keeping Shaeffer propped up as he waited. “Here, give me a hand. Get him in the jeep.”

  Together they managed to drag Shaeffer to his feet and lugged him forward, each step a mile, panting. Fresh blood seeped out of the wound. “Not Russian,” Shaeffer mumbled again, sounding delirious, then yelled in pain when his body hit the passenger seat, a final heave, and passed out, head drooping down on his chest.

  “Is he going to make it?” the GI said.

  “Yes. Help me with the girl.”

  But when they got there and saw Liz lying in her pool of blood, the GI balked, staring at her. Impatient, Jake reached under and lifted her by himself, his knees shaking, and staggered ba
ck to the jeep, as if he were carrying somebody over the threshold, with her head dangling down. He laid the body in gently and went back for the gun. The GI was still standing there, pale, holding Liz’s camera in his hand.

  “You got blood on you,” he said stupidly.

  “Stay with your buddy. I’ll send somebody,” Jake said, taking the camera.

  The GI looked at the soldier lying on the ground. “Jesus Christ Almighty,” he said, his voice breaking. “I don’t even know what happened.”

  A new group of Russians had arrived, surrounding the Horch like MPs, examining the dead Russian. The running soldier who had started it all was gone, swallowed up in Potsdam. No other bodies, just Liz and the boy going home at the end of the week. When Jake got to the jeep, anxious now to leave, one of the Russians started toward him, gesturing at Shaeffer slumped in the front seat. There would be questions, a Soviet doctor—what he’d wanted to avoid. Jake got in and started the jeep. The soldier called out to him, presumably telling him to stop. No time now. The closest army hospital would be HQ in Lichterfelde, miles away.

  The Russian stood in front of the jeep, holding up his hand. Jake raised the gun, aiming it. The Russian cowered and stepped aside. A kid no older than the GI, scared, who saw a madman covered in blood with a gun in his hand. The others looked up, then ducked away too. The power of a gun, as heady as adrenaline. Nobody stopped you when you held a gun. They were still backing away toward the Horch as the jeep spun out of the square and headed toward the bridge.

  Shaeffer’s body swayed with the initial jolt, then fell limply against Jake’s side, leaning on him as they drove out of Potsdam. When they sped past the sector crossing, Jake could see the guards’ alarmed expressions and realized his face was still bloody. He wiped it with his sleeve, sweat streaked with dark red. Now that they were on the road, racing, he found himself gulping in air, his chest heaving, as if he’d been holding his breath underwater. A dream, except for the body in the back and the heavy soldier lying against him, head bobbing. I don’t even know what happened. But he did. When he played the dream again in his mind, it stopped after the soldier ran to the obelisk, when he saw the guns pointing beyond the soldier, at Liz. A diversionary run, the guns always intended for someone else. But who would want to kill Liz? A mistake. He looked over to Shaeffer. Someone else. A man who’d rather risk his life than be taken away by Russians.