A Thousand Devils (Max Heller, Dresden Detective Book 2)

by Frank Goldammer

  “You have to come with me. We need to clear this up.”

  Fanny resisted, ramming the back of her head against his chest. “You’re not gonna lock me up,” she gasped. “No way you are. I hid my baby and I’m not telling where. So if you arrest me, he’s gonna starve and freeze and it’s all your fault!”

  “Where’s the baby? Tell me!”

  “You let me loose!” Fanny hissed.

  Heller let her go. “Where’s the baby?”

  “I’m not telling!”

  “Be reasonable, Fanny. It’s your child.”

  She shook her head. Rage brought tears to her eyes. “Russian baby is what it is.”

  “Don’t act like it doesn’t matter to you. Otherwise you wouldn’t have cared for it, nursed it. You’re a good mother. Karin told me. Fanny, where’s your baby boy? You can tell me.”

  “My Jörg wants him, don’t you understand? He cares, he does. He’s always so good.”

  “Karin and I can take the child, Fanny. We care too. You understand that, right? And I can talk to the public prosecutor and put in a good word for you both. You two have had it really rough, and you were only acting in self-defense. But you need to come with me now, and you have to tell me where your baby boy is . . .”

  Heller paused. He’d just figured out where the baby was. It was actually quite simple.

  Fanny was eyeing him with mistrust, trying to read his face. Then she whipped around and ran off.

  Heller wanted to run after her, but it was clear he wasn’t nearly as fast. He wondered how to proceed.

  He spotted a policeman in the distance.

  Exhausted and sweaty, Heller arrived at Martin Luther Church ten minutes later, right as the streetlamps turned off for the day. He’d lost sight of Fanny, but she couldn’t have gained much of a head start. He stood before the church, panting, unable to keep an eye on all three entrances at the same time. He had to go inside. The side door, which was closest to him, was locked. He rushed on to the main entrance. It was open.

  Once the large door closed behind him, darkness reigned inside the church. The altar at the far end appeared in silhouette, the pews barely visible. Heller listened in the dark and caught himself reaching for his gun. He forced himself to leave it in his overcoat.

  “Fanny?” he said into the darkness.

  “You’re not supposed to come here.” Fanny’s voice was quite close. He turned her way.

  “I had to. I’m a police officer. It’s my duty. This isn’t only about you, Fanny—it’s about the baby. Your baby. You carry a responsibility.”

  “She didn’t choose to have it—she’s still just a child herself.” Frau Dähne’s voice.

  Heller tried to spot the old woman in the darkness. “That excuses some of it, but not all. Everyone should exhibit a certain amount of reason.”

  “You don’t know a thing! You don’t know her suffering!”

  “How do you know? What do you know of me?” Heller kept moving toward their voices.

  “Stay where you are; I see what you’re doing,” Frau Dähne hissed. “Leave the girl alone. She’s only trying to survive. If you don’t, I’ll be forced to shoot.”

  Heller’s eyes finally adjusted to the darkness, and he saw the old woman. She was holding an MP 40 machine gun.

  “No, don’t—he’s gonna free my Jörg,” Fanny whispered, sounding tearful. “He’s gonna go to the Russians.”

  “Fanny. I’ll tell you one more time: I cannot do anything for your Jörg!” Heller gradually neared the old woman. “The Russians wouldn’t believe me, that he’s done nothing.” Only two yards separated him from Frau Dähne and the barrel of the machine gun.

  “The meat that you gave the children,” he said gently. “What animal was it?”

  “Why do you want to know? It was pig. I know a butcher, a relative of mine. He gives it to me.”

  The old woman stepped back.

  Heller stepped forward at the same pace, step for step. He could only guess where Fanny was.

  “Give me the weapon, Frau Dähne. You’re only making things worse for yourself.”

  “You listen to me, Herr Oberkommissar. You know how old I am? I have nothing to lose, not a thing. What’s it all good for, anyway, living like this, in struggle? One freezing night after the other, and you wake the next morning resigned to your fate, having to make it through yet another day. I could shoot you dead.” The old woman’s eyes flashed.

  “I know what you would lose if you did,” Heller replied. “Your salvation.”

  Frau Dähne didn’t respond.

  Heller broke the silence. “Where’s the pastor?”

  The old woman stepped back to the left, moving into the darkest corner of the church, where, as Heller recalled, there was more than one door.

  “Don’t you have any sympathy for those children?” she said. “Don’t you wonder how it came to be that they had to live in the forest, that they had to sell themselves?”

  If he were fast enough, Heller thought, he could snatch the gun from her. He only needed to slap the barrel to the side and rip the butt from her hands.

  “Frau Dähne, that’s enough!” It was Pastor Christian Beger. His silhouette had separated from the corner shadows. He stood next to the old woman and gently took the weapon from her hands. In his black clothing the young man remained a dark blur to Heller, only his collar glowing.

  “Fanny, go!” the pastor said. “You hear me, Fanny? Go now. Take your boy and go.”

  “But my Jörg . . .”

  “I’ll see what I can do, but you must go. And you, Frau Dähne, go with her.” The pastor’s voice was firm, assertive.

  “But—”

  “Go, now!” insisted Pastor Beger.

  “Fanny,” Heller said. “Remember what Karin showed you. Your baby needs to be fed, and warm, and clean. And you, too, need to keep clean, you hear? And you have to talk to him.”

  It was silent for a moment. Then Heller heard soft footsteps moving away from them. The main door opened a crack, and for a few seconds the early light of day sliced through the darkness like a sharp razor. The two women darted outside, and the heavy door shut forcefully.

  In the darkness, Heller and Pastor Beger remained motionless, waiting for the shadows to reveal shapes again. Yet in those few seconds, Heller had seen a face smashed by the Soviets, the image still etched in his mind like a photo negative. One eye nearly swollen shut, the bridge of his nose with a gaping gash, and an eyebrow split open.

  “You’re a good man, Christian,” Heller said. “You’re like me. Always searching for the right way, constantly despairing on account of those who never become wiser, who never learn from their mistakes. Despairing about all the injustice out there.”

  Pastor Beger said nothing, but Heller could hear his labored breathing.

  “And you keep finding, over and over, just how hard it is to do the right thing. But not only is it tough, it’s actually impossible. Am I right? Who are you supposed to help? Who deserves sympathy, and who is truly guilty? It’s enough to drive you insane, don’t you think? You’re put to the test again and again, trying to make the right decision, yet you repeatedly end up disillusioned.”

  Heller could still hear his words, hoping they would stir the pastor. Yet Pastor Beger said nothing.

  “Frau Dähne, she only wanted to help. She wanted to help the children. But what did she do in return? Is she guilty? Is she a good soul?”

  The pastor now released something like a laugh.

  But Heller had heard another sound. He raised a hand.

  “You know,” the pastor began, then gasped in shock.

  Heller knew what it meant. He bounded forward and ripped the gun out of the pastor’s hands.

  “Go easy on him,” he told Oldenbusch.

  Oldenbusch had crept up with barely a sound. “Got here as fast as I could, boss. The church is surrounded.” He held the pastor in a tight armlock.

  “Let me go, please, my back! I can’t stand
it.” The pastor groaned and writhed in pain.

  Heller had slung the MP 40 on a shoulder. He shifted it onto his back and patted down the pastor for hidden weapons. Once he nodded the all-clear, Oldenbusch released the pastor. “Werner, have the men fan out at once. Fanny just took off with her baby along with Frau Dähne—they should still be in the vicinity.”

  “Yes, sir!” Oldenbusch rushed off.

  “No use of firearms!” Heller shouted after him. The door opened again. Light streamed in once more, fading when the door shut. Now it was just Heller and the pastor.

  “When did it happen?” Heller asked gently.

  “What?” the pastor said, looking around.

  “When did you lose your faith?”

  Pastor Beger smiled, trying to dismiss the question as a joke. Yet Heller’s face was like stone. The pastor’s mouth contorted as if in pain.

  “You know why I got this position here?” he began. “The Gestapo took away my predecessor. He was hiding two Jews here in the church. Someone from the parish reported him—someone who came to the service every Sunday, who prayed to Jesus, begging for salvation. They took the pastor away in the night and killed him. And what did the national church do? The bishop? They didn’t send a single note of protest. They acted as if nothing happened.” His voice sounded constricted, as if he were forcing himself not to yell.

  “Was it an accident? Acting on impulse? Rage alone isn’t enough to make a murderer. Who died first—Vasili Cherin or Franz Swoboda?”

  Pastor Beger gritted his teeth.

  “When Fanny showed up here the first time, I had no idea where she’d come from. Frau Dähne brought her in, and I gave her food. Later she told me about the children in the woods and I, I . . .” Pastor Beger stopped himself, then bit at his lip. “These children, these poor little creatures. It’s not our concern, people told me. No one wanted to care for them; everyone only worries about themselves. These children didn’t seem to matter to anyone. I did what I could, for months on end.” The pastor breathed harder. “There was such hunger everywhere and no one accountable, and there in the thick of it people like this Weiler, like those officers, like Gutmann. He donated food, bread, and sausage to me. And I was so stupid, so naïve, I didn’t understand what they were doing. At first, I thought they were really going to help those girls. And then here came Fanny, already carrying a child. And she believed it was normal. She believed she had to sell herself to get food. That is so . . .”

  He searched for the right words. And suddenly they erupted out of him. “All those people out there, such stupid, pigheaded narcissists, with no decency. They all think of themselves as victims. No one, not one, admits to being an offender. All the while they betray each other, stealing and killing. The worst criminals are already back in office, assuming the highest posts. And it’s precisely the people who voted for a murderer to be their leader who are now sitting on their stocks of food and getting fat while those children in the woods perish. I ask you: Where is God in all this? Where is my God, whom I’m supposed to believe in? There is no God, I can tell you that.”

  The pastor’s voice cracked. “He’s not here. He never has been. He’s a lie. You understand me, Oberkommissar? I’ve beseeched him, pleaded to him, begged. He must show himself. He must show me some kind of sign. Yet nothing happened. Instead this fiend, this war criminal, he beats on this young girl, nearly a child herself. Margi was far along in her pregnancy, you see, like Fanny, and she fled from him, into the woods, and she died from a miscarriage. That’s when I knew someone had to do something. Someone had to act, had to punish them, if He wasn’t going to. And if there’s no heaven and no hell, no divine punishment, then people like Swoboda need to be punished right here on earth.”

  “You’re right about that, but not when it comes to vigilante justice,” Heller replied. “Every person has a right to a fair trial.”

  “You of all people say that?” screeched Pastor Beger, his voice breaking. “You are the one who betrayed me to the Russians. They took me and beat me the very same day. And I’ve been forced to realize that I’m weak. I wasn’t strong enough. I couldn’t take it and was so afraid of the pain. No faith could make me strong, since even Jesus on the cross was just a lie. I betrayed those children because I couldn’t take the beating.” The pastor sobbed. “They shot poor Heinrich because he wouldn’t put down his weapon. He was trying to protect the group. And now they’re all gone, and I don’t know what’s happened to them. The outside world doesn’t care, not the Germans or the Russians.”

  “That’s not true. I care about the children,” Heller said. “I never betrayed you. And I took Fanny into my home. Without telling the Russians.”

  “A hypocrite’s what you are. You serve the Russians, just like you served the Nazis,” Pastor Beger hissed, making a fist.

  Oldenbusch was back. He quickly stepped in to protect Heller from the raving pastor. But Heller shook his head.

  “Do you want to tell me what happened? Did it start with Swoboda?”

  “Fanny took me into the woods to help Margi, but by the time I got there she was already dead—her child too. The only thing left to do was bury them. I said a prayer for the children, to give them some hope. But me? No one was giving me any hope. Hell had opened up right before me. And while I was still praying I was seized by this unbridled rage at a murderer like Swoboda lying there all fat and smug in his warm bed even though he deserved to have been hanged long ago. I took that bayonet, ambushed him, and rammed it into him. But he fought back. I had to stab again and again. Then during the night I dragged him over to Frau Dähne with my handcart, since I didn’t know what to do with him. She had to help me get rid of him.”

  A favorable judge might decide this was an unpremeditated emotional act, Heller thought. “And Weiler had to die because he’d betrayed the previous pastor?”

  “Frau Dähne knew. Weiler had found out about the pastor accidently. He must have told Frau Schlüter at the printing company, then she reported it to the Gestapo. But Weiler, he kept on going to church every Sunday; he survived that inferno of an air raid without a scratch. Even got a good position after the war. Provided Gutmann with food, got invited to the bar, sexually assaulted those girls, yet still came every Sunday, saying the Lord’s Prayer like a good boy, donating candles and canned food. Nearly drove me insane with his hypocrisy. I lured him into the ruined house, numbed him, and strung him up. A person like that should suffer, you see. Shouldn’t ever be allowed to experience a merciful death. I watched him, the way he struggled for his pathetic life, the way he pleaded and whined. And the way he pleaded, it was . . .” Pastor Beger cut himself off, needing to compose himself.

  Heller wanted to keep the pastor talking. “And then it was Cherin’s turn?”

  “Cherin wasn’t any better. He didn’t care what happened to Fanny. First he promised her a new life, then he disowned her. He didn’t want a child, especially not from Fanny. After she told me about it, I followed him and stabbed him.”

  “Whereupon Berinov started searching for whoever killed his friend. Did he suspect you?”

  “I wanted to take the head to Gutmann and nail it to his front door. I wanted to teach him real fear, that hypocrite with a crucifix in that frightful building of his, him and everyone who visited that place. Berinov surprised me there. He wanted to know what was in the backpack. I ran back to the ruined house, and he followed me. He attacked me down in the cellar, took the backpack, and tried to run off with it. I chased after him, injected him with the anesthetic, but it didn’t work right. He staggered up the cellar stairs, and I tried to stop him. He kept pushing me away. I got desperate and rammed the bayonet into his neck. But he kept going, right out of the house, and I couldn’t stop him, didn’t dare follow him. There were already people out on the streets. I didn’t know what to do. A little later I heard that they’d found a dead Russian.”

  “And you sent Fanny to go fetch the backpack?”

  “She found out about i
t and went there on her own. She was only trying to help.”

  “Found out about it from whom? Frau Dähne? She knew everything?”

  “I put her in a difficult situation. Please don’t punish her for it.” Pastor Beger sounded exhausted.

  “That’s not for me to decide,” Heller said. “Were you the one who hid Weiler’s severed hands in the Schlüters’ cellar, along with those bloody tools?”

  The pastor’s face darkened again. “They deserved what they got. Always complaining about their own fate, all without ever questioning who actually bore the guilt. I can’t stand it!”

  “What about you, Pastor Beger? Do you not bear any guilt? What did you feel seeing those men die? You watched Gutmann suffer. Did it give you pleasure?”

  The pastor laughed. “It was agony, an awful torment. Seeing him twitching and soiling himself. But I had to endure it. I had to sit still and watch. I had to bear witness to these fiends paying for their crimes.”

  “What about me? Were you planning on stringing me up too? And watching me die?”

  Pastor Beger lowered his gaze. It was completely still in the church.

  “That would be murder, Herr Beger,” Heller said. “You do understand that?”

  Pastor Beger looked up and shook his head. “I didn’t murder. I only did what needed to be done.”

  Heller, stunned, shook his head. “But it’s not up to you to play judge, to rule over life and death. Every person, no matter the crime, must have the chance at a fair trial.”

  “Fair!” blurted out the pastor. “You really believe it’s fair what the Russians are doing here? Did I get a fair chance not to betray those children? And would I ever receive a truly fair trial?”

  The pastor pushed Oldenbusch aside and ran off into the darkness.

  Heller was expecting that. He gave chase. The pastor disappeared through the door to the church steeple and threw it shut. Heller stormed into the stairwell, but Beger was already climbing the first steps of the tower staircase. Heller stayed close on his heels, taking two steps at a time in hopes of sparing his right ankle. But he wasn’t able to catch up.