The Good German (Bestselling Backlist)

by Joseph Kanon

  Another awkward silence in the room, broken finally by the judge.

  “The witness is not on trial here,” he said. “Are you disputing what he saw?”

  The defense shook his head, as eager as everyone else now to move on.

  “Good. Then you’re finished,” the judge said to Gunther. “Step down.” He glanced at his wristwatch. “We will meet tomorrow.”

  “But we have other witnesses,” the prosecutor said, anxious not to let his momentum stall.

  “Then call them tomorrow. It’s enough for today. And next time stick to the facts.”

  Which were what, Jake wondered. Another column of numbers.

  When no one moved, the judge waved his hand at the room. “Adjourned, adjourned,” he said irritably, then rose, motioning for the other two to follow.

  Jake heard the sound of chairs being moved, a low buzz, lawyers gathering papers. Gunther stayed in his chair, still looking straight ahead. The guards, surprised by the abrupt dismissal, nudged Renate away from her railing and began to lead her at gunpoint out of the room. Jake watched her pass in front of the bench, her eyes meeting his as she approached the prosecution table. She stopped.

  “So it’s really you,” she said to him, her old voice. “You came back.”

  The guards, not sure whether she was allowed to speak, looked around for instructions, but the judges had gone, the room emptying with them.

  Jake nodded, not knowing what to say. It’s good to see you again? Collarbones sticking out.

  “It wasn’t for myself,” she said to Jake, her eyes on him, waiting.

  Jake looked down, unable to respond. Bernie was watching from the side, waiting too. But what could anyone say? A guard took her arm. In a minute she’d be gone. One word, something.

  He fell back on the empty courtesy of a prison visit. “Can I get you anything?”

  She looked at him for another moment, disappointed, then shook her head. More Russian, insistent now. The guards pushed her away from the table.

  Jake stayed until the room was almost cleared, just a hum coming in from the hall. Gunther was still in his chair. When Bernie went over to get him, he looked up once, then brushed him aside, getting up stiffly, and walked toward Jake, one deliberate foot in front of the other.

  “I’ll give you a lift,” Bernie said, but Gunther ignored him.

  He stopped for a second at the table. “I’ll talk to Willi,” he said to Jake, then kept walking out of the room.

  Bernie, disconcerted, went over and began putting files back in his briefcase.

  “What about you?” he said.

  Jake looked up. “I have the jeep.” He stood up to leave, then turned. “Still think all the stories end the same way?” he said.

  Bernie shoved the last file in the case. “Marthe Behn’s did.”

  CHAPTER 12

  Outside, Jake avoided the Alex, where everyone had parked, and took one of the side streets instead, too numb to face Ron and the others swapping notes. Gunther had already disappeared somewhere in the rubble. A walk, anything to get away. But the courtroom followed him, a dead hand on his shoulder. What happens when it’s over. He looked around. No one in the street, not even the usual children climbing over bricks. The raids had done their worst here—not a wall standing, the air still thick with sour dust. Flies buzzed over a deep bomb crater, now a gray pond of sewage from a broken main. But poison had been seeping into Berlin for years. When had Hans Becker told Renate about her mother? While they were in bed? Always something worse, even when it was ordinary. A waitress collecting her check, knowing. What it was like, day after day. For the first time Jake wondered if Breimer might be right, if this wasteland was what they deserved, some biblical retribution to wipe out the poison once and for all. But here it still was, a giant hole filling with sludge.

  “Uri.”

  The Russian startled him, coming out of nowhere.

  “Uri,” the soldier said again, pointing to Jake’s arm.

  “No watch.”

  The Russian scowled. “Ja, uri,” he said, pointing to the old Bulova on Jake’s wrist. He pulled a wad of bills from his pocket and held them out.

  “No. Now piss off.”

  A hard stare, menacing, so that suddenly Jake felt his blood jump, a spurt of fear. A deserted street. It could be this easy, capricious, like shooting at rats. Another incident. But the Russian was turning away, disgruntled, stuffing the notes back in his pocket.

  As Jake watched him go, breathing again, the street felt even emptier. No market crowds here. If Gunther was right, if he’d been the target, they could pick him off easily now. Not even a witness. If they wanted him. He stood still for a moment, back in Potsdam. A shell game of a crime, knowing the killer but not the victim. Three of them. What if it had been him? He moved his hand to his hip, an involuntary reflex, wishing he had a gun. Not that it had done Liz any good. He stopped. But she hadn’t been wearing it that day, her cowgirl holster. Where was it? On the way back to Webster Groves? He tried to remember Ron in her room, folding clothes. No gun. Did it matter? But something unexplained.

  He looked at the pond, unsettled. Follow the points. You play a shell game by elimination. Three of them in the market. Usually the one intended. But why would anyone want to kill Liz? Which left two. One of them now ready for visitors in Gelferstrasse. He turned and started back up the street, hand still on his hip. When he reached the jeep, another Russian, reading a newspaper, glanced up at him uneasily and moved away, as if he were in fact carrying a gun.

  He found Breimer reading what seemed to be the same paper at Shaeffer’s billet, a villa across the street from the collapsed house. An army nurse was flicking through Life, half listening as Breimer read snatches out loud, apparently unable to stop talking even outside a sickroom door.

  “Two thousand times more than the Townbuster. That was the biggest we had. Two thousand times.” He looked up as Jake walked in. “Ah, good. He’s been asking for you. Well, it’s a great day, isn’t it? It won’t be long now.” When Jake said nothing, confused, he handed him the paper. “I see you haven’t heard,” he said. “And you call yourself a newspaperman. We’ll all be going home after this. Twenty thousands tons of TNT. Size of a fist. Hard to imagine.”

  Jake took the paper. Stars and Stripes. U.S. REVEALS ATOM BOMB USED FIRST TIME ON JAPS. The other war, almost forgotten. A city he’d never heard of. Two square miles wiped out in one blast, the mess behind the Alex a warmup by comparison.

  “It’s over now for sure,” Breimer said, but what Jake saw was the Russian’s face by the jeep, uneasy.

  “How does it work?” he said, scanning the page. A chart of the other bombs, getting bigger toward the bottom.

  “You’ll have to ask the eggheads that. All I know is, it did. They say you still can’t see through the smoke. Two days. No wonder old Harry was playing hardball with the Reds. You have to hand it to him—he sure kept this one close to the vest.”

  Jaunty in a double-breasted suit on the Cecilienhof terrace, smiling for Liz’s camera. With an ace up his sleeve.

  “Yes sir, a great day,” Breimer said, still excited. “When I think of all those boys—coming home. They’ll all be coming home now. In one piece too, thank the Lord.”

  Jake looked at the fleshy face moving into another Kiwanis speech. But wasn’t it true? Who would wish a single Marine dead on a Honshu beach? On Okinawa, they’d had to drag the Japs out of caves with flamethrowers, one by one. Still, something new, worse than before. Breimer was starting in again.

  “How’s the patient?” Jake said, interrupting.

  “On the mend, on the mend,” Breimer said. “Thanks to Corporal Kelly here. Too pretty to be a nurse, if you ask me. But you should see her make them hop to. No monkey business with this one.”

  “Not with a hypodermic in your hand, anyway,” she said dryly, but her plain face was smiling, flattered.

  “Can I see him?”

  “Joe would want to see him,” Breimer s
aid to the nurse, clearly in charge. He put his hand on Jake’s shoulder. “That’s a hell of a thing you did, getting him out of there. We’re all grateful, I can tell you that.”

  “We who?”

  “We everybody,” Breimer said, dropping the hand. “Americans. That’s an important boy we’ve got in there, one of the best. You don’t want the Russkies getting their hands on him.”

  “He’s not a favorite of theirs?”

  Breimer took this as a joke and smiled. “Not exactly. Not Joe.” He lowered his voice. “Shame about the girl.”

  “Yes.” Jake moved to the door. “She’s on duty when?” he said, nodding toward the nurse.

  “Twice a day. Make sure everything’s all right. I come when I can, of course. Least I can do. Joe’s been a real help to me.”

  “Can you get someone round the clock? Use some pull? There ought to be someone here.”

  Breimer smiled. “Now don’t get all excited. He’s not that sick. Main trouble’s keeping him in bed. Wants to do things too soon.”

  “The Russians took a shot at him once. They can do it again.” Jake spread his hand toward the front door, wide open to the street.

  Breimer looked at him, troubled. “They said it was an accident.”

  “They weren’t there. I was. I’d get somebody, just in case.”

  “Maybe you’re a little jumpy. We’re not in the Russian zone here.”

  “Congressman, the whole city’s a Russian zone. You want to take the chance?”

  Breimer met his eyes, all business now. “Let me see what I can do.” Not even a quibble.

  “Armed,” Jake said, then opened the door.

  Shaeffer was propped up in bed, bare-chested, with a wad of gauze and adhesive tape covering one side. They’d given him a haircut in the hospital and now, with his ears sticking out, he seemed ten years younger, no longer a poster Aryan, smaller out of uniform, like a high school athlete without the shoulder pads. He was reading the newspaper too, but dropped it on the sheet when Jake came in.

  “Well, finally. I was hoping you’d come. I wanted to thank—”

  “Save it,” Jake said easily, casing the room. Ground floor, an open window facing the bed. The room had been a library; a few books were still leaning on their sides on the shelves, evidently not worth ransacking. “You should have stayed in the hospital.”

  “Oh, I’m all right,” Shaeffer said, cheerful, taking it for medical concern. “You hang around there long enough, some sawbones wants to take a leg off. You know the army.”

  “I mean it’s safer. Any rooms upstairs?” He walked over to the window and looked out.

  “Safer?”

  “I asked Breimer to get a guard out front.”

  “What for?”

  “You tell me.”

  “Tell you what?”

  “Why the Russians took a potshot at you.”

  “At me?”

  “The congressman seemed to think they don’t like you very much.”

  “Breimer? He sees Russians in his dreams.”

  “Yeah, well, I saw them in Potsdam. Shooting—at you. Now suppose you tell me why they’d want to do that.” He pulled up a chair next to the bed.

  “I haven’t the faintest idea.”

  Jake said nothing, staring at him from the chair. Finally Shaeffer, restless, looked away.

  “Got a smoke?” he said. “The nurse took mine. Says I’ll live longer.”

  “Not the way you’re going,” Jake said, lighting the cigarette and handing it to him, still staring.

  “Look, I owe you something, I guess, but I don’t owe you a story. I can’t. The work’s classified.”

  “I don’t have any notebooks out. This one’s for me, not the papers. You almost got me killed out there too. I figure I’m entitled to know why. Now, how about it?”

  Shaeffer took another drag, following the smoke up with his eyes as if he were leaving the room with it. “You know FIAT?”

  “No.”

  “Field Information Agency Technical. Fancy way of saying we take care of the scientists. Debriefing. Detention centers. Whatever.”

  “Like Kransberg,” Jake said.

  Shaeffer nodded. “Like Kransberg.”

  “And what’s the whatever?”

  “Finding them in the first place. It’s possible we set up a team to cover Berlin. It’s possible the Russians don’t like that.”

  “Why? They’ve been here since May. What’s left?”

  Shaeffer smiled, expansive. “Plenty. The Russians were so busy shipping out the hardware, it took them a little while to realize they needed the guys who ran it. By that time a lot of them had disappeared—gone west, maybe into hiding. The Russians have a hard time recruiting. People aren’t falling over themselves to travel east.”

  “Not when they can get a fat contract from American Dye,” Jake said, nodding to the door.

  Shaeffer looked at him, then stubbed out the cigarette. “Don’t push me. He’s out of it, or we stop here. Understood?”

  “I hear you.”

  “Anyway, that’s not it. The Russians have been offering good salaries too. If you want to go to work in the fucking Urals.”

  “Instead of beautiful Utica.”

  Shaeffer looked again. “I mean it.”

  Jake held up his hand. “Okay, they don’t go to Utica.”

  “No, they don’t. Dayton, since you want to know. There’s a facility near Wright Field.” He stopped, aware that he’d given something for free, then shrugged. “The first group goes to Dayton. If we can get them over. Satisfied?”

  “I don’t care one way or the other. What’s the holdup?”

  “De-Nazification. Those guys—we’d be lucky to get Ike cleared. They want the good Germans. So find me one. You don’t think the Russians give a rat’s ass.”

  Jake got up and walked toward the shelf. “But they do about you—assuming your team exists.”

  “Assuming.”

  “Been doing anything you shouldn’t?”

  “From their point of view? Winning. The Russians have been here two months and they’re still going through their wanted list. We’ve been here three weeks and we’re picking it clean. Once you start, one leads you to another. They’ve been waiting for us to come. Just holding on. Luftwaffe—the whole aeromedical staff. They even kept the research papers. KWI—still a lot of warm bodies over there if you can dig them out. It’s not hard—their friends help. They’re around, all right.” Out for a stroll, walking the dog.

  “Engineers at Zeiss?” Jake said.

  “That’s in the eastern zone. We don’t go into the eastern zone.”

  “That’s not what the Russians say.”

  “They like to make a stink. What I hear is, the engineers wanted to come.”

  “They just needed a helping hand.”

  Shaeffer’s eyes followed him to the bookshelf, then looked away.

  “It’s possible their bombsight optics were years ahead of ours. Years ahead—worth a risk to get. It’s possible someone wanted to send the Russians a message. They have this habit of kidnapping people. Maybe we wanted to show them we could do it too. Make them think twice next time.”

  “And did it?”

  “More or less. Nobody’s gone missing lately, anyway.”

  “Except Emil Brandt.”

  “Yes, except Emil.”

  “So now he’s on your list.”

  “He’s on everybody’s list. He did all the calculations—he knows the whole program. I told you, we don’t want to lose this one. Not now, for sure.”

  Jake raised his eyebrows. “Why not now?”

  “The rocket team?” Schaeffer picked up the newspaper. “Can you imagine if the V-2s had carried one of these babies?”

  “No, I can’t,” Jake said. London, gone.

  “They’re everybody’s top pick,” Shaeffer said. “But we got them. And we’re going to keep them. All of them.”

  “What if they don’t want to go?”


  “They do. Even Brandt. He just wants to take his wife. Always the wife. We almost lost him once, after Nordhausen. We get the rockets, the blueprints, the team’s stashed away in Oberjoch. And he gives the slip and takes off for Berlin on some fucking wild goose chase. He was lucky to get out alive.”

  “With his files,” Jake said casually, a shot.

  Shaeffer waved his hand. “Admin. Not worth a damn thing. All the tech files were at Nordhausen. That was just an excuse to get his wife.”

  “Admin? I thought they were SS files.”

  “It was an SS program. They took it over. By that time they were taking over everything. For what it was worth.”

  “They gave him a medal.”

  “They gave everybody a medal. The scientists weren’t too thrilled about the SS taking over. Not the coziest guys you could think of. But what the hell, who gets to pick his boss? So they hand out some medals and it’s smiles again. They had a ton of them.” A floor in the Chancellery, heaped with Iron Crosses.

  “Finally we get them to Kransberg,” Shaeffer was saying. “Keep them together, see? And he does it again. The others, we tell them the dependents’ll come later and they don’t like it much. But this one, no. He has to go shack up with her somewhere, have a little reunion. As if we don’t have enough to do. Go chasing her now. And we’re short-handed as it is. And now this.” He gestured to his wound.

  “He’s not with his wife,” Jake said. “She doesn’t know where he is.”

  Shaeffer looked at him, not saying anything for a moment. Then he took another cigarette from the pack on the bed, still buying time.

  “Thanks for saving me the legwork,” he said calmly. “Want to tell me where she is?”

  “No.”

  “In our zone?”

  Jake nodded. “She doesn’t know anything.”

  “Well, that’s a relief, anyway.”

  “What is?”

  “Where she is. What do you think’s been keeping me up nights—what if the Russians get her first? That’d be an offer we couldn’t compete with. We’d lose him for sure.”

  Bait. Jake looked out the window, feeling another jump of blood, as if the soldier behind the Alex had appeared again.