Disoriented, he stumbled around the dark cellar until he finally came across a coal chute that led up to a heavy iron door. The evening air that greeted him outside felt good after his exertions. Oppenheimer took a deep breath. It was over. Lutzow was dead. He slowly calmed down again. Vogler appeared shortly afterward. They stood together outside the storage hut, two figures illuminated in blue by the night forest.
Oppenheimer looked around. The reinforcements Vogler had spoken of seemed to have already disappeared. The only company they had was a corpse lying on the ground a few meters away, still with the old gas mask covering his face.
“Lutzow?” Oppenheimer asked.
Vogler crossed his arms and leaned against the outside wall. “Your sleuthing instincts didn’t mislead you, Oppenheimer. Lutzow colluded with Ziegler.”
“What about the woman?” When Vogler shot him a puzzled look, Oppenheimer clarified. “The victim. Where is she?”
“Don’t worry, she’s unharmed. My people have brought her to safety. We won’t bother her for too long with our questions.”
“That’s good.”
“And then there’s one more thing,” Vogler added. He hesitated, searching for the right words. “We picked up two, well, strange gentlemen nearby. Unfortunately, they didn’t want to tell us what they were doing here so late. You don’t happen to know anything about it, do you, Oppenheimer?”
Oppenheimer froze. He knew what that meant. It was over. He was ruined. Secretly, he had hoped that Bauer and Lüttke would be able to disappear in time. But Vogler had caught them, and without those two, it would be impossible for Oppenheimer to leave Germany. He would no longer have a chance to make it up to Lisa for all the difficult years. In just one second, Vogler had managed to destroy the vague hope of being able to forget all that.
Oppenheimer knew he was a bad liar and that the shock was etched in his face. So he tried to avoid Vogler’s attentive gaze. As indifferently as possible, he asked, “What am I supposed to have to do with that?”
Vogler laughed out loud when he saw what an appalling actor Oppenheimer was. “I don’t really care, Oppenheimer. Those two are probably already being interrogated. Who knows what they’ll tell us. I have nothing more to do with it. I am off to the front tomorrow. And about time too. You see things more clearly when you’re under fire.”
With this comment, Vogler’s gaze wandered off into the distance.
Oppenheimer nodded. He thought he understood what the Hauptsturmführer meant. At the front, it was all about survival. There were only two types of reaction there—a right one, which meant you survived, and a wrong one, which meant you died. Although your life was occasionally also in danger at the home front, the decisions you had to make here were a lot complexer.
Both men were having similar thoughts. Although the Pervitin was now pulsing through Oppenheimer’s veins, he felt a great emptiness within.
He had to employ quite a bit of willpower to push himself out of this state, to get his stubborn body moving again. But Oppenheimer wanted to have a last look at Lutzow. He bent down and after a moment’s hesitation pulled the mask off the face.
Oppenheimer didn’t really know what he’d expected.
Maybe a sign of the madness that had eaten into Lutzow’s features? A manic expression? A jeering grin? But all his expectations were disappointed. The dead Lutzow looked ordinary. The open eyes were dull. His face, framed by a fringe of platinum-blond hair, radiated a serenity that is specific to the dead. Oppenheimer realized that he wouldn’t find any answers here. What remained was an unsettling helplessness.
When he perceived a reflection of light on Lutzow’s eyeballs, Oppenheimer turned around.
Vogler stood next to him, lighting a cigarette. “Is it always like this?” he asked after blowing out the match. “Is the solution to a case always different to what one expected?”
Oppenheimer straightened up and thought about this question for a few seconds. “It happens. But I think it’s less the result that is a surprise. It’s more the things one is confronted with during the investigation. You don’t really notice it, but the view you held in the beginning slowly changes.”
Vogler made an affirmative noise. “I now understand what you meant at the time. That you have to approach the matter without any preconceptions and so on.” He was just about to put the packet of cigarettes in his pocket when he changed his mind and offered Oppenheimer one. “Here. To celebrate the successful closing.”
As Oppenheimer struck a match to light the cigarette, he heard another sound right next to him.
A metallic click.
Oppenheimer immediately understood that Vogler had released the safety catch of his gun. He stood stiffly and tried not to make any sudden movements. Oppenheimer felt the weight of his own gun. Stupidly, he’d put it in the inside pocket of his coat when he’d climbed up the coal chute. He would never be able to pull it out fast enough.
For a few seconds, the two men just stood there without anything happening. Finally, Oppenheimer inhaled deeply so that the end of his cigarette began to glow. When he dropped the match, it had almost burned down. He knew he had no chance; he was at the Hauptsturmführer’s mercy. Oppenheimer dared to turn toward Vogler only very slowly. But the SS man wasn’t looking at him. He was staring at the corpse.
“No one will find out that Johannes Lutzow was involved in these deeds,” the Hauptsturmführer said. His voice sounded strangely croaky. “Does that surprise you, Oppenheimer?”
Oppenheimer had to swallow hard before he could answer. “I thought as much.”
“Tomorrow morning, there will be no evidence that he ever existed; this building will no longer exist. No one will remember it.”
Oppenheimer realized what Vogler was trying to say. He was an accessory who had to be silenced. Sweat appeared on his brow. Silently, he observed Vogler aiming at something in their surroundings. Oppenheimer had forgotten the cigarette between his lips. Panicked, he searched for a way out, a means of escape. It was only now that he noticed how light it was. The bloody lamp over the entrance! There was no chance of disappearing into the darkness. Oppenheimer assessed the distance to the lorry, the distance to the nearest trees, but everything was too far away. If he ran for it now, Vogler could get him with a single shot.
When Oppenheimer looked back at the Hauptsturmführer, the man’s mood had changed. He had a rakish grin on his face and looked like someone who was laughing about a joke that only he understood. He briefly closed his eyes, then lowered his gun. “It is better for you if you don’t return to the Kameradschaftssiedlung. And don’t go back to the Jewish House either. Reithermann, the fat pig, will move heaven and hell to get you. And please don’t make the mistake of trying to shoot me. I’m a quicker draw.” With that, Vogler threw away his half-smoked cigarette and blew a final cloud of smoke into the night air. “This conversation did not take place. It seems like this is it, Inspector.” Oppenheimer looked at the Hauptsturmführer in surprise. Why was he letting him go? Were Hilde’s gloomy intimations unjustified in the end? Had Oppenheimer been right after all? Was Vogler capable of more than blind obedience? Oppenheimer understood Vogler’s words as a prompt to go. So he cleared his throat and turned to leave.
He had only taken a few steps, when Vogler said, “Oppenheimer?”
The Hauptsturmführer approached him and handed him a small, longish metal cylinder. Oppenheimer examined it curiously.
“A cyanide capsule,” Vogler explained. “I think you might need it more than I do.”
* * *
Berlin spread out before him beneath the crescent of the waxing moon. The clear air worked as a magnifying glass, making distances shrink. Oppenheimer was convinced he could touch the nearby buildings with his hands. Tonight, the pale green light of the burning phosphor lent the city a ghostly aura.
Just a few minutes after Oppenheimer had taken his leave of Vogler, his old suspicions had returned. The realization that he was now free game made him cautiou
s. It had occurred to him that perhaps Vogler had only let him go so that he didn’t need to get his own hands dirty. Oppenheimer knew that Vogler’s men were probably waiting for him at the bottom of the hill, in case the Hauptsturmführer didn’t really want him to get away. But there was an alternative to returning to the Müggelheim dam. This pathway down the hill was a bit more challenging, but it had the advantage of leading in exactly the opposite direction. Oppenheimer knew he was capable of finding his way even during the night. He just had to follow the crest of the hill in a westerly direction until he finally reached the observation tower on the Kleine Müggelberg. From there, he could simply climb down the steps on the southern side of the hill to the Langer See lake and try to make his way along the bank toward Köpenick.
But instead of choosing the 347 steps down, he decided to sneak onto the terrace of the pub next to the observation tower under the cover of darkness. It seemed to make sense to get an overview of the situation before he returned to the hellhole down there. Although the panorama from the edge of the terrace was not as impressive as from the observation tower, which you had to pay to access, it proved to be sufficiently impressive to take Oppenheimer’s breath away.
From this perspective, it hardly seemed possible that there was still life in the city. And yet Oppenheimer knew that millions of people had sought shelter somewhere in the depths of the city. In a ring around the city, the light beams of the antiaircraft guns projected up into the air like transparent spider’s legs, slowly gliding across the sky. There was something else up there. Airplanes with bellies full of explosives hung over the city like a mobile over a baby’s crib. Blaring artillery fire was spewed into the sky, bombs fell toward the ground with a whistling sound. This was no large-scale, minutely planned attack but one of the usual British night attacks in the cover of darkness. And yet it released enough destruction to wipe out hundreds of lives.
Again and again, blue flashes shot upward. A phosphor canister detonated with a buzzing sound, scorching the streets with its burning breath. Mesmerized, Oppenheimer leaned against the railings and watched the goings-on. His box seat offered an almost obscene perspective, but he knew that he could not stay any longer. After all, he had to get to Lisa, had to support her, reassure her that he was still alive. And yet something made him hesitate.
He realized that he’d involuntarily put his hand on his breast pocket. Beneath the material, he felt the hard object Vogler had given him. Curious, he pulled the cylinder from his pocket and unscrewed the lid. The poison capsule was see-through, narrow, and about two to three centimeters long. Ideal for hiding in your mouth and then biting on it, should the circumstances require. Oppenheimer held it up in the moonlight. The pockmarked moon lent the clear liquid a tempting sheen. He could barely tear his eyes away.
And then, a completely different sensation came over him. Oppenheimer was filled with an inexplicable feeling of calm. It took him a while to understand that this wasn’t his body’s chemical reaction to the Pervitin pills. Instead, he realized that this was his reaction to the poison capsule.
It was strange, but when Oppenheimer looked at the means that offered him the option to commit suicide, he felt more alive than ever before. With this capsule, he had the power to choose his own end. No Gestapo officer or other Nazi loudmouth could intimidate him now. They couldn’t touch him anymore. He was the master of his own destiny once more, and this thought gave him courage. He wondered what Vogler had intended by giving him the poison. Was it an unspoken order to take his own life? Or was it his bizarre way of showing him his appreciation, a whiff of humanity because Vogler was still counting on Hitler’s victory? However long Oppenheimer would think about this, it would remain a mystery. Only one thing was clear. From now on, this poison capsule would be his most valued possession.
About the Author
HARALD GILBERS, born 1970, studied English and history in Augsburg and Munich. He was a television editor before becoming a director for the theater. Germania, his first novel, has been awarded the Glauser Prize for the best crime-novel debut and in 2016, the French Prix Historia for Odins Söhne (Odin’s Sons), also shortlisted for the Festival Polar Cognac Prize for the best international novel in 2016. You can sign up for email updates here.
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Contents
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
About the Author
Copyright
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
First published in the United States by Thomas Dunne Books, an imprint of St. Martin’s Publishing Group
GERMANIA. Copyright © 2013 by Harald Gilbers. Translation copyright © 2020 by Alexandra Roesch. All rights reserved. For information, address St. Martin’s Publishing Group, 120 Broadway, New York, NY 10271.
www.thomasdunnebooks.com
Cover design by Ervin Serrano
Cover art: man © Donald Jean/Arcangel; texture © Krasovski Dmitri/Shutterstock
The Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request.
ISBN 978-1-250-24693-6 (hardcover)
ISBN 978-1-250-24694-3 (ebook)
eISBN 9781250246943
Our ebooks may be purchased in bulk for promotional, educational, or business use. Please contact the Macmillan Corporate and Premium Sales Department at 1-800-221-7945, extension 5442, or by email at [email protected].
Originally published in Germany by Droemer Knaur
First U.S. Edition: 2020
Germania: A Novel of Nazi Berlin Page 40
