by Joseph Kanon
Lena looked up. “Did he say what they were?”
“Notes of his. Something he needs for von Braun. Seems to think they’re pretty important. Kind of tore the place apart, didn’t he?” he said to Lena. “I’m sorry about that.”
“More lies,” she said, shaking her head.
“Ma’am?”
“And you’re taking him to America.”
“We’re going to try.”
“Do you know what kind of a man he is?” she said, looking directly at him, so that he shifted on his feet, uncomfortable.
“All I know is Uncle Sam wants him to build some rockets. That’s all I care about.”
“He lies to you. And you lie for him. You told me he saved Jake’s life. My god, and I believed you. And now you believe him. Notes. What a pair you are.”
“I’m only doing my job.”
Lena nodded her head, smiling faintly. “Yes, that’s what Emil said too. What a pair you are.”
Shaeffer held up his hand, flustered. “Now, don’t get me involved in domestic arguments. What happens between a man and his wife—” He dropped it and turned to Jake. “Anyway, whatever they are, do you have them?”
“No, he doesn’t,” Lena said.
Shaeffer peered at her, unsure where to take this, then back at Jake. Do you?
But Jake was looking at Lena, everything clear now, not even a wisp of haze. “I don’t know what Emil’s talking about.”
Shaeffer stood for a second, fingering his hat, then let it go. “Well, no matter. They’re bound to turn up somewhere. Hell, I thought he could do everything in his head.”
Afterward, the room was quiet enough to hear his footsteps on the stairs.
“Did you destroy them?” Jake said finally.
“No, I have them.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“I don’t know. I thought I would. And then they came to the flat. He was like a crazy man. Where are they? Where are they? You’re on his side. The way he looked at me then. And I thought, yes, his side.” She stopped, looking at him.
“Where were they?”
“In my bag.” She walked over to the bed and pulled the papers out of her bag. “Of course, he never thought to look there. My things. Everywhere else. I stood there watching him-like a crazy man-and I knew. He never came to Berlin for me, did he?”
“Maybe both.”
“No, only these. Here.” She carried them over to his chair. “You know and you don’t know-that’s how everything was. Just now, when you told me what happened, there was a click in my head. Do you know why? I wasn’t surprised. It was like before-you know and you don’t know. I don’t want to live like that anymore. Here.”
But Jake didn’t move, just looked at the buff sheets held out between them.
“What do you want me to do with them?”
“Give them to the Americans. Not that one,” she said, gesturing toward the door. “He’s the same. Another Emil. Any lie.” Then she pulled the papers back to her so that for a second Jake thought she couldn’t go through with it after all. “No. I’ll take them. Tell me where. There’s a name?”
“Bernie Teitel. I can’t ask you to do that.”
“Oh, it’s not for you,” she said. “For me. Maybe for Germany, does that sound crazy? To start somewhere. So there’s still something left. Not just Emils. Anyway, look at you. Where can you go like that?”
“As it happens, he lives downstairs.”
“Yes? So it’s not so far.”
“For you it is.” He reached up for the papers. “He’s still something to you.”
She shook her head. “No,” she said slowly. “Just a boy in a pic-ture.
They looked at each other for a minute, then Jake leaned forward, ignoring the papers and covering her hand instead.
She smiled and turned his hand over, tracing the palm with her finger. “Such a line. In a man.”
“You make a nice couple.” Shaeffer, standing in the doorway with Erich. “I brought the kid back.” He crossed over to them, Erich in tow. “Aren’t you the sly one?” he said to Lena, holding out his hand. “I’ll take them.”
“They don’t belong to you. Or Emil,” Lena said.
“No, the United States government.” He wiggled the fingers of his open hand in a give-me gesture. “Thanks for saving me another look-see. I figured.” He took the end of the papers. “That’s an order.” He stared at her until she released them.
“What do you think you’re doing?” Jake said.
“What do you think you’re doing? This is government property. You’re going to get yourself in trouble if you’re not careful.”
“They go to Teitel.”
“I’ll save you the trip.” He started riffling through, glancing at the pages. “Not rocket notes, I take it. Want to tell me?”
“Reports from Nordhausen,” Jake said. “Facts and figures from the camps. Slave labor details. What the scientists knew. Lots of interesting stuff. Keep looking-you’ll find a lot of your friends there.”
“Is that a fact. And you think this might make things a little embarrassing for them.”
“It might make them war criminals.”
Shaeffer looked up from the files. “You know, your trouble is you’re in the wrong war. You’re still fighting the last one.”
“They were involved,” Jake said, insistent.
“Geismar, how many times do I have to tell you? I don’t care.”
“You should care,” Lena said. “They killed people.”
“That’s good, coming from a German. Who do you think killed them? Or do you just want your husband to take the rap? Convenient.”
“You can’t talk to her that way,” Jake said, starting to get up, wincing as Shaeffer pushed him back.
“Watch your shoulder. Well, now we’ve got a situation. What a pain in the ass you are.”
“I’ll be a bigger pain in the ass if Teitel doesn’t get those files. Not even Ron’s going to spike this story.”
“Which one is that?”
“Try a congressman bringing Nazis into the States.”
“He wouldn’t like that.”
“Or a tech team playing hide-and-seek with the Russians. Lots of ways to go, if I want to. Or we could do it the right way. You helping the Military Government do what it says it’s trying to do, bring these fucks to trial. A trial story. This time, you’re the hero.”
“Let me explain something to you,” Shaeffer said. “Plain and simple. Look at this country. These scientists are the only reparations we’re likely to get. And we’re going to get them. We need them.”
“To fight the Russians.”
“Yes, to fight the Russians. You ought to figure out whose side you’re on.”
“And it doesn’t matter about the camps.”
“I don’t care if they banged Mrs. Roosevelt. We need them. Got it?”
“If Teitel doesn’t get those files, I’ll do the story. Don’t think I won t.
“I think you won’t.”
Shaeffer turned the papers sideways, and before Jake could move, tore them across.
“Don’t,” Jake said, starting to rise, the sound of tearing jolting across him like the pain shooting through his shoulder. Another tear, Jake only half out of his seat, then falling back, watching helplessly as the paper became pieces. “You bastard.” A final rip.
Shaeffer took a step toward the window and flung them out, large bits of paper, suspended, then caught by the wind, flying over the garden-not small; about the same size, Jake saw, staring hypnotically, as the bills that had danced and blown over the Cecilienhof lawn.
“Like I said,” Shaeffer said, turning back, “you’re in the wrong war. That one’s over.”
Jake watched him go, brushing past Lena and wide-eyed Erich, who had already known everything was kaput.
“I feel I’ve let you down too,” Jake said to Bernie. “You more than anybody, I guess.”
They had come to Gunther’s to pick up the
persilscheins and found the room ransacked, stacks pulled apart, torn boxes littering the floor.
“Join the crowd. Everybody lets me down,” Bernie said, a light growl, not really angry. “Christ, look at this. Word gets around fast. Ever notice how the liquor’s the first thing to go? Then the coffee.” He picked up the folders from the floor and stacked them. “Don’t beat yourself up too much, okay? At least I know what to look for. That’s more than I had before. There’s lots of evidence floating around Germany-some of it could still land on my desk.”
“You’ll never get them,” Jake said, gloomy.
“Then we’ll get someone else,” Bernie said, going through a bureau drawer. “Not exactly a shortage.”
“But doesn’t it bother you?”
“Bother me?” He turned to Jake, shoulders sagging. “Let me tell you something. I came over here, I thought I was really going to do something. Justice. And where did I end up? At the back of the line. Everybody’s got a hand out. ‘We can’t do it all.’ Feed the peoplethey’re starving. Get Krupp up and running again, get the mines open. The Jews? Well, that was terrible, sure, but what are we supposed to do this winter if we don’t get some coal out of the Russians? Freeze? Everybody’s got a priority. Except the Jews aren’t on anybody’s list. We’ll deal with that later. If anybody has the time. So I lose a few scientists? I’m still trying to get the camp guards.”
“Small fry.”
“Not to the people they killed.” He paused. “Look, I don’t like it either. But that’s the way it is. You think you’re going to set the world on fire and you come here-all you do is pick through the damage. Without a priority. So you do what you can.”
“Yeah, I know, one at a time. An eye for an eye.”
Bernie looked up. “That’s a little Old Testament for me. There isn’t any punishment, you know. How do you punish this?”
“Then why bother?”
“So we know. Every trial. This is what happened. Now we know. Then another trial. I’m a DA, that’s all. I bring things to trial.”
Jake looked down, fingering the persilscheins on the table. “I still wish I had the files. They weren’t guards-they should have known setter.”
“Geismar,” Bernie said softly, “everybody should have known better.”
“Would it help if I wrote something? Got you some press?”
Bernie smiled and went back to the drawer. “Save your ink. Go home. Look at you, all banged up. Haven’t you had enough?”
“I’d like to know.”
“What?”
“Who the other man is.”
“That? You’re still on that? What’s the point?”
“Well, for one thing, he could still be working for the Russians.” Jake dropped the folder on the table. “Anyway, I’d like to know for Gunther, finish the case for him.”
“I doubt he cares anymore. Or do you have ways of getting messages up there?”
Jake walked over to the map, left in place by the scavengers. The Brandenburg. The wide chausee, where the reviewing stand had been.
“Why would someone working for the Russians tip off the Americans where Emil was going to be? Why would he do that?”
“You got me.”
“Now, see, Gunther would have figured it out. That’s the kind of thing he was good at-things that didn’t add up.”
“Not anymore,” Bernie said. “Hey, look at this.”
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 per-silscheins. It was only after he’d looked through it, then at the per-silscheins 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.
