The Good German (Bestselling Backlist)

by Joseph Kanon

He had pulled an old square box from the back of the drawer, velvet or felt, like a jewel case, opened now to a medal. Jake thought of the hundreds lying on the Chancellery floor, not put away like this, treasured.

  “Iron Cross, first class,” Bernie said. “Nineteen seventeen. A veteran. He never said.”

  Jake looked at the medal, then handed it back. “He was a good German.”

  “I wish I knew what that meant.”

  “It used to mean this,” Jake said. “Almost done?”

  “Yeah, grab the files. You think there’s anything in the bedroom? Not many effects, are there?”

  “Just the books.” He took a Karl May from the shelf, a souvenir, then moved to the table and picked up one of the folders and flipped it open. A Herr Krieger, said to have been in a concentration camp, now Category IV, no evidence of Nazi activity, release advised. He glanced idly down the page, then stopped, staring at it.

  Of course. No, not of course. Impossible.

  “My god,” he said.

  “What?” Bernie said, coming in from the bedroom.

  “You know how you said evidence lands on your desk? Some just landed on mine. I think.” Jake scooped up the files. “I need the jeep.”

  “The jeep?”

  “I have to check something. Another file. It won’t take long.”

  “You can’t drive like that. One hand?”

  “I’ve done it before.” Bumping through the Tiergarten. “Come on, quick,” he said, his hand out for the keys.

  “It’s getting dark,” Bernie said, but tossed them over. “What am I supposed to do here?”

  “Read that.” He nodded at the Karl May. “He tells a hell of a story.”

  He headed west to Potsdamerstrasse, then south toward Kleist Park. In the dusk only the bulky Council headquarters had shape, lit up by a few offices working late, the car park nearly deserted. Up the opera house staircase, down the hall, the translucent door to Muller’s office dark but not locked. Only the Germans huddled behind locks now.

  He flicked on the light. Jeanie’s usual neat desk, every pencil put away. He went over to the filing cabinet and flipped the tabs until he found the right folder, then carried it back to the desk with the persilscheins. It was only after he’d looked through it, then at the persilscheins once more, that he sat down, sinking back against the chair, thinking. Follow the points. But he saw, even before he reached the bottom of the column, that Gunther had found it without even knowing. Sitting there all along.

  And now what? Could he prove it? He could already see, with the inevitable sinking feeling, that Ron would take care of this too, another story to protect the guilty, in the interests of the Military Government. Maybe a little quiet justice later, when no one was looking. And why should anyone look? Emil back safe, the Russians foiled—everyone satisfied except Tully, who hadn’t mattered in the first place. The wrong war again. Jake would win and get nothing. Not even reparations. He sat up, staring at Tully’s transfer sheet, the block capitals in fuzzy carbon. Not this time. Not an eye for an eye, but something, a different reparation, one for the innocent.

  He leaned over, opened the desk drawers to his side, and rummaged through. Stacks of government forms, printed, second sheets gummed for carbons, arranged in marked piles. He mentally tipped his hat to Jeanie. Everything in its place. He pulled one out, then looked for another, a different pile, and swung around to the typewriter, removing the cover with his good hand and rolling in the first form, aligning it so that the letters would fill the box without hitting the line, official. When he started to type, a one-finger peck, the sound of the keys filled the room and drifted out to the lonely corridor. A guard came by, suspicious, but only nodded when he saw Jake’s uniform.

  “Working late? You ought to give it a rest, with the sling and all.”

  “Almost done.”

  But in fact it seemed to take hours, one keystroke at a time, his shoulder hurting. Then he realized he’d need a supporting document and had to search the desk again. He found it in the bottom drawer, next to a stash of nail polish from the States. So Jeanie had a friend. He rolled the new form into place and started typing, still careful, nothing messy. He was almost finished when a shadow from the doorway fell over the page.

  “What are you doing?” Muller said. “The guard said—”

  “Filling out some forms for you.”

  “Jeanie can do that,” he said, wary.

  “Not these. Have a seat. I’m almost done.”

  “Have a seat?” he said, drawing his shoulders back in surprise. Old army.

  “There,” Jake said, rolling the form out. “All ready. All you have to do is sign.”

  “What the hell are you doing?”

  “You know how to do that. That’s what you do. Lots of signatures. Like these.” He pushed over the Bensheim releases from Gunther’s.

  Muller picked them up, a quick glance. “Where did you get these?”

  “I looked. I like to know things.”

  “Then you know these are forged.”

  “Are they? Maybe. This isn’t.” He held up the other folder.

  “What isn’t?” Muller said, not even bothering to look.

  “Tully’s transfer home. You transferred him. Tully was attached to Frankfurt. There was never any reason for a copy of his orders to end up here, except a copy would go to the authorizing officer. Regulations. So one did. Maybe you didn’t even know it was here—Jeanie just filed it away with everything else that came in. She’s an efficient girl. Never occurred to her to—” He dropped the folder. “Of course, it never occurred to me either. Why there’d be a copy here. But then, a lot of things didn’t occur to me. Why you’d hold out on me with the CID report. Why you’d lead me on that wild goose chase with the black market. I thought I was dragging it out of you—that must have been fun to watch, me asking all the wrong questions. Let’s not embarrass the MG.” He paused, looking up at the lean Judge Hardy face, older than he remembered. “You know the funny thing? I still don’t want it to be you. Maybe it’s the hair. You don’t fit the part. You were one of the good guys. I thought at least there had to be one.”

  “Don’t want what to be me?”

  “You killed him.”

  “You can’t be serious.”

  “And it almost worked, too. If he’d just stayed down there in the Havel. Just—disappeared. The way Emil did. But he didn’t.”

  “You enjoy this? Making up stories?”

  “Mm. This is a good one. Let me try it on you. Have a seat.”

  But Muller remained standing, shoulders erect, his tall frame looming over the desk, waiting, like a weapon held in reserve.

  “Let’s start with the transfer. That’s what should have tipped me if I’d been paying attention. Gunther would have seen it—that’s the kind of thing he noticed. Transfer a man you didn’t know. Except you did. Your old partner.” Jake nodded at the persilscheins. “Just why you wanted to get him home I’m not sure, but I can guess. Of course, he wasn’t the most reliable guy to do business with in the first place, but my guess is that you got nervous. Everything worked the way it was supposed to. Brandt’s trail was cold before they even knew there was one. But then Shaeffer started sniffing around. He’s a guy who likes to make noise. Set off some bells and whistles—I think that’s the expression he used. Which means he went to MG. Which means they started going off here. With a congressman behind him. Nothing to connect you yet. But now it wasn’t going to go away either. And there’s Tully—talk about a weak link. Who knew what he’d say? How long before Shaeffer found out you’d done business before?” Another nod at the Bensheim file.

  “You with me so far? So the easiest thing was to send him home—all you had to do was sign a form. That’s what everybody wants, isn’t it? Except this time it didn’t take. Tully didn’t want to go home—he had plans here. You call him to Berlin, in a hurry, not even time to pack, get him on the first plane. You might have waited, by the way. Did you know he was coming
anyway? A Tuesday appointment. But no matter. The point was to get it done fast. Here’s your hat, what’s your hurry. Sikorsky meets him at the airport and drops him at the Control Council.”

  Muller raised his head to speak.

  “Don’t bother,” Jake said. “He told me so himself. So Tully comes to pick up a jeep. But nobody just waltzes in and takes a jeep. It’s not a taxi stand out there. Motor pool assigns them. To you, for instance. I could check how many you had signed out that day, but why bother now? One of yours.

  “Where you were, I don’t know—probably at a meeting, defending the free and the brave. Which is why you couldn’t meet him in the first place. The plane was late, which must have cut into your schedule. Anyway, busy. Which was too bad, because Tully got busy too, down at the Document Center, so that when you met him there later, he had a new racket going. Not to mention a new payment from Sikorsky. Which he didn’t, I guess—mention, that is.”

  He watched Muller’s face. “No, he wouldn’t. But all the more reason now to hang around—more money where that came from. You tell me how it played from there. Did he tell you where to stick your transfer? Or did he threaten to expose you if you didn’t play ball? In for a penny, in for a pound. Plenty of money to be made on those SS files. Shaeffer? You could take care of him. You’d taken care of Bensheim, hadn’t you? And if you couldn’t—well, you’d have to, or he’d take you down with him. Anyway, he sure as hell wasn’t going to Natick, Mass., when there was a fortune to be made here. Of course, it’s possible you got rid of him to keep the files all to yourself, but he didn’t have the files yet, the Doc Center had come up dry so far, so I think it’s just that he boxed you in so tight, you didn’t think you had much choice. The transfer would have been so easy. But you still had to get rid of him somehow. Is that more the way it was?”

  Muller said nothing, his face blank.

  “So you did. A little ride out to the lake to talk things over—you don’t want to be seen together. And Tully’s stubborn. He’s got a belt full of money and god knows what dancing in his head, and he tells you the way it’s going to be. Not just Brandt. More. And you know it’s not going to work. Brandt was one thing—he even helped. But now you’ve got Shaeffer around. Do the smart thing—take the money and run, before it’s too late. The last thing Tully wants to hear. Maybe the last thing he did hear. I’ll give you this much—I don’t think you planned it. Too sloppy, for one thing—you didn’t even take his tags after you shot him, just threw him in. No weights. Maybe you thought the boots would do it. Probably you weren’t thinking at all, just panicked. That kind of crime. Anyway, it’s done and he’s gone. And then—here’s the best part, even I couldn’t make it up—you went home and had dinner with me. And I liked you. I thought you were what we were here for. To make the peace. Christ, Muller.”

  “Everything okay here?” The guard, surprising them from the door.

  Muller swiveled, moving his hand to his hip, then stopped.

  “We’re almost done,” Jake said steadily, staring at Muller’s hand.

  “Getting late,” the guard said.

  Muller blinked. “Yes, fine,” he said, his MG voice, dropping his hand. He turned back and waited, his eyes locked on Jake, until the steps in the hall grew faint.

  “Jumpy?” Jake said. He nodded at Muller’s hip. “Watch yourself with that.”

  Muller leaned forward, placing his hands on the desk. “You take some chances.”

  “What? That you’ll plug me? I doubt it.” He waved his hand. “Anyway, not here. Think of the mess. What would Jeanie say? Besides, you already tried that once.” He looked at him until Muller took his hands away from the desk, as if he’d literally been pushed back by Jake’s stare.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “In Potsdam. That’s when everything started falling apart. Now you had real blood on your hands. Not just a small-time chiseler. Liz. How’d that make you feel when you heard?”

  “Heard what?”

  “You killed her too. Same as if you pulled the trigger.”

  “You can’t prove this,” Muller said, almost a whisper.

  “Want to bet? What do you think I’ve been doing all this time? You know, I might not even have tried if it had just been Tully. I guess you could say he got what was coming to him. But Liz didn’t. Gunther was right about that too. The when. Why try to kill me then? Another thing that didn’t occur to me until now, when I started putting things together. Why do it at all? Tully’s dead, and so’s Shaeffer’s trail. No way to connect you. Even after he washes up—quick report, body’s shipped out before anybody can take a good look. Not that anybody wanted to—all they were looking at was the money. What other explanation could there be? It’s sure as hell the only one you wanted me to have. Talk about a lucky break for you. Money you didn’t even know he had. What did you think when it turned up, by the way? I’d be curious to know.”

  Muller said nothing.

  “Just a little gift from the gods, I guess. So you’re safe. Shaeffer’s stuck and I’m off looking at watches in the black market. And then something happens. I start asking questions about Brandt at Kransberg—for personal reasons, but you don’t know that, you think I must know something, made the connection no one else did. And if I’m asking, maybe somebody else is going to put two and two together too. But you can’t get me out of Berlin, that would just make things worse—I’d make a stink and people would wonder. And then, at Tommy’s going-away party, what do I do? I ask you to check the dispatcher at Frankfurt, the one you called—or did you get Jeanie to do it? No, you’d do it yourself—to get Tully on the plane. Personal authorization, not on the manifest. Which he’d remember. Not just close anymore, a real connection. So you panic again. You transfer his ass out of there like that, but even that’s not safe enough. You get somebody to get rid of me in Potsdam. The next day. But that didn’t occur to me either, not then. I was just lying there with an innocent woman’s blood all over me.”

  Muller lowered his head. “That wasn’t supposed to happen.”

  Jake sat still. Finally there, the confession, so easily said.

  “That girl. That wasn’t supposed to happen,” Muller said again. “I never meant her to—”

  “No, just me. Christ, Muller.”

  “It wasn’t me. Sikorsky. I told him I’d transfer Mahoney, that would do it. I never told him to kill you. Never. Believe me.”

  Jake looked up at him. “I do believe you. But Liz is still dead.”

  Now Muller did sit down, his body sagging slowly into the chair, head still low, so that only his silver hair caught the light of the desk lamp. “None of this was supposed to happen.”

  “You start something, people get in the way. I suppose Shaeffer would have been a bonus.”

  “I didn’t even know he was there. I didn’t know. It was all Sikorsky. He was worse than Tully. Once they start—” His voice trailed off.

  “Yeah, it’s hard to get away. I know.” Jake paused, toying with the folder. “Tell me something, though. Why’d you tip Shaeffer that I’d be at the parade with Brandt? It had to be you—I’ll bet you know just how to get something to Intelligence like it came out of the air. But why do it? Gunther sets it up with Kalach, who tells you, but you can’t go. The one person who couldn’t. You’re brass, General Clay’s man—you had to be at the parade. Another thing that didn’t occur to me. So, our mistake. But Kalach’s going to make the snatch anyway. You could have watched the whole thing without anyone’s being the wiser. Right up there with Patton. Why tip Shaeffer?”

  “To put an end to it. If Shaeffer got him back, he’d stop. I wanted it to stop.”

  “And if he didn’t get him? It didn’t really matter who got him, did it? Maybe Kalach would after all and take Shaeffer out doing it, and it would stop that way. While you were watching.”

  “No. I wanted Shaeffer to have him. I thought it would work. Sikorsky would have been suspicious if something went wrong, but the
new man—”

  “Would have taken the blame himself. And you’d be home free.”

  Muller looked over. “I wanted out. Of all of it. I’m not a traitor. When this started, I didn’t know what Brandt meant to us.”

  “You mean how much Shaeffer would want him back. Just another one of these,” Jake said, picking up the Bensheim file. “For ten thousand dollars.”

  “I didn’t know—”

  “Let’s do us both a favor and skip the explanations. Everybody in Berlin wants to give me an explanation, and it never changes anything.” He dropped the folder. “But just give me one. The one thing I still can’t figure. Why’d you do it? The money?”

  Muller said nothing, then looked away, oddly embarrassed. “It was just sitting there. So easy.” He turned back to Jake. “Everybody else was getting theirs. I’ve been in the service twenty-three years, and what’s it going to get me? A lousy pension? And here’s a little snot like Tully with plenty of change in his pockets. Why not?” He pointed to the persilscheins. “The first few, at Bensheim, I didn’t even know what I was signing. Just more paper. There was always something—he knew how to slip them through. Then I finally realized what he was doing—”

  “And could have court-martialed him. But you didn’t. He make you a deal?”

  Muller nodded. “I’d already signed. Why not a few more?” he said, his voice vague, talking to himself. “Nobody cared about the Germans, whether they got out or not. He said if it went wrong later, I could say he’d forged them. Meanwhile, the money was there—all you had to do was pick it up. Who would know? He could be persuasive when he wanted to be—you didn’t know that about him.”

  “Maybe he had a willing audience,” Jake said. “Then things got tricky at Bensheim, so you got him out of there—another one of your quick transfers—and the next thing you know, he turns up with another idea. Still persuasive. Not just a little persilschein this time. Real money.”

  “Real money,” Muller said quietly. “Not some lousy pension. You know what that’s like, waiting for a check every month? You spend your whole life just to get the rank and these new guys come in—”