“The women weren’t hung up by their legs?” asked Heller.
Ludwig shook his head.
Heller leaned forward and whispered, “Are you the Fright Man? Go on, tell me. Say it. Don’t be modest.”
Ludwig giggled, and his eyes twitched. “I like it when people are frightened. Otherwise, I’m always the one who’s frightened. Always. I was so horribly frightened of the Russians and the shooting. And I’m frightened of father.”
“Ludwig, did you kill Klara Bellmann? The other woman?”
“Klara Bellmann? Yes!”
“And the other one?”
“Yes, the other one too.”
“And what was her name?”
“I don’t know.”
“I found underpants in the cellar, from a woman. Are they from a dead woman?”
“I think so. Yes!”
“Ludwig, did your parents know about this?”
He shook his head. “No, no, they knew nothing at all!”
It was a lie, Heller knew. Ludwig wanted to protect his parents, at least his mother. “You’re lying. They knew about it. They’ve known you’re the murderer, and they wanted to protect you so you wouldn’t get hanged.”
“No, Herr Heller, I don’t like getting hanged. Please. The others, they were always teasing me, ’cause I’m so chubby and ’cause I run so slow and ’cause I always put my hands over my ears when the Russians fire. And they were saying I’m a coward and not a good German soldier and a disgrace. And I never had friends. No one wanted to play with me. And my father, not even he wanted me anymore.” Ludwig’s eyes filled with tears.
“Show me your teeth!” Heller grabbed at Ludwig’s chin, pulled down his jaw, and looked at his teeth. Both of his incisors were slanted. They would need to do an exact comparison, but they didn’t have anything to match it to anymore.
“And that other nurse? Irma Braune is her name. She’s been missing since yesterday. Was she in the dungeon too?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know her.”
“Ludwig, listen. Those bones in the dungeon—who are they from?” Heller asked but got frustrated hearing Magdalena Klepp groaning. He turned and was appalled to see that Zaitsev had thrown the woman to the ground and jammed his knee into her while twisting her arm behind her back.
“What are you doing?” Heller shouted.
“I’m finding out where Klepp is!” Zaitsev got back to it, making Frau Klepp groan so loud her eyes rolled back.
“You’re going to break her arm!” Heller protested as he held Ludwig back.
“I don’t care. Go on, woman, talk!”
Ludwig’s mother only moaned, and spit ran out the corners of her mouth. Zaitsev abruptly released her, letting her head drop into the dirt. Then he pressed his knee into her lower back, grabbed her hand, and broke her little finger.
She let out a piercing scream, which so alarmed her son that he tried crawling past Heller to get to her. Zaitsev drew his weapon. “Back! Heller, goddamnit, keep an eye on Ludwig.”
“Alexei, stop it. That’s torture.”
“You don’t know what torture is, stupid old man.”
“What’s that supposed to mean? I won’t put up with it.”
“Oh, yes, you will, and I will say whatever I want about torture, about the way the Germans did it, how they tortured partisans so they betrayed their comrades. I must know where her husband is, because I know he’s in the city. He could be shooting at you again tomorrow, Heller, and then you will wish I broke every one of her fingers.”
“But that makes you no better than all the rest. If you act the same as they do, what’s the difference between you?”
“Revenge is the difference!”
“Zaitsev, think about it. Who are you getting revenge on? It’s never on the ones committing the crimes, it’s only on others.”
“You all committed crimes.”
“You know what I mean.”
“All right, fine, you three wish to fucking preach to me about morality? You can all go straight to hell!” Zaitsev stood and drew his pistol. He fired into the air and shouted something in Russian.
“We’re taking them both to headquarters, and you’ll interrogate them according to your morally proper methods. You’ll see. This woman will stay as silent as the grave, because she knows she has nothing to gain and everything to lose.”
“We’ll see.” Maybe there was some way to appeal to reason.
“Please, please, don’t lock me away,” whispered Magdalena.
“Why shouldn’t we?” asked Heller. “Tell me where your husband is, and maybe we can talk.”
It was only now, with her hair showing from under her hat, that her features appeared gentler.
She lowered her head. “You don’t understand. You can’t understand. Don’t harm him, please, don’t harm him.”
May 18, 1945: About Noon
Zaitsev smoked and glanced at Heller walking next to him. “What is wrong?”
“Why did she say that? ‘Don’t harm him.’”
They were on the way to the hospital. Zaitsev’s wound had reopened while fighting with Magdalena Klepp, and he’d taken his jacket off. The bandage was soaked with blood, and he had to be in great pain, but he wasn’t letting it show. Heller was amazed at how stoic Zaitsev was during the walk. They had started out a half hour ago, right after Magdalena and Ludwig Klepp were taken away.
“She was worried about her son,” Zaitsev replied.
He saluted a Russian patrol surrounded by a cluster of children, the soldiers laughing and handing out chocolates as the children wrestled for the bounty.
Heller didn’t respond. He kept pondering things until they reached the hospital.
They were immediately let through to Dr. Schorrer. “You again?” the doctor said, then saw the Russian’s bloody shirt and sat down to work.
“Did you find Ludwig Klepp?” he asked Heller over his shoulder while removing Zaitsev’s bandages.
“Yes, we have him. And his mother.”
Schorrer paused. “Does this mean Rudolf Klepp is still alive? Here in the city?”
“You never wondered this before?” Zaitsev asked. He looked pale and exhausted sitting on the exam table, and Heller was practically relieved to see that the strain was finally getting to him. Zaitsev was only human too.
Schorrer snorted. “Sure, but why would he be so stupid? He could have at least made his way to the Americans. He would’ve had enough time.”
Zaitsev’s face had gone all white. Schorrer must have noticed, yet he kept focusing on his work.
“Maybe he’s one of those unrepentant types,” the Russian said. “Where were you exactly in Poland?”
“Near Warsaw. We had a large field hospital in a suburb.” Schorrer sighed. “You need to start looking after yourself, my friend. This is no small wound. Then there’s the heat and the way you’re exerting yourself. You could die from infection.”
“It will be fine,” Zaitsev muttered, wiping sweat from his brow.
“Maybe you’d like to lie down for a few minutes? We have a quiet room here.”
Zaitsev shook his head at first, but then he consented. “Very well. Heller, go find yourself something to eat. That pass of yours will get you something.”
Outside, the heat immediately sapped Heller’s energy. An excavator was operating nonstop, and diesel exhaust from the emergency power generators mixed with the swirling dust. The sweat stuck to his forehead. He looked around for Seibling, hoping to send him to Karin so she’d finally know he was all right. He looked around for Rita too, but he didn’t spot either of them.
At the public soup kitchen just outside the hospital grounds, he received a slice of bread, soup, and a cup of tea for the usual amount of occupation marks and one Reichsmark fifty. He ate and drank standing, sweating inside his overcoat—he wouldn’t set it down for fear it would be stolen. People pressed into him as they passed, one man complaining of getting too little for his marks. Someone stood close
behind Heller.
“Beg your pardon,” Heller said. Yet the man with a full thick beard wouldn’t budge. Heller grew alarmed. Could the man have a knife on him? Was he one of Klepp’s crew? He could slit Heller’s throat no problem before disappearing into the crowd. Heller, starting to panic, grasped the spoon in his hand like a weapon, which only made him look ridiculous.
“Max, don’t you recognize me?” the man whispered.
“What . . . who are you?”
“It’s me, Werner!”
“Oldenbusch?” Only now did Heller recognize his former colleague. He laughed with relief and hugged him, completely out of character.
Oldenbusch whispered, “Are you in some kind of trouble, Max? Do the Russians have it in for you?”
“No, Werner, don’t worry. You remember the Fright Man? I’m still trying to find him. And to make any progress, I have to work with the Russians.”
“The Fright Man? He’s still running around here? Figured he’d be long dead by now.”
“That’s what I thought too. But now we have a good lead. We’re right on his heels.” Heller couldn’t tell him much more than that. “So tell me, Werner, how are you? How did you manage to get out of the army unscathed?”
“Please, Max, not so loud.” Oldenbusch took a careful look around. “I’m lying low until things quiet down. I was in Luga. When I got on the train to the front, I got sick with a bad case of the runs. I was completely dehydrated. They thought it was dysentery and sent me to a field hospital. We kept getting moved around. When it turned into complete pandemonium, I took off and stayed in hiding with people I knew. I’ve been back since Friday, looking for relatives and friends. I also asked around about you. Someone told me you’d been out and about with the Russians. You need any help?”
Heller shook his head, smiling. “No, Werner, keep a low profile for a while longer. I’m happy to see you alive and well. Right now, I have to make sure I hurry back to my Russian.” He shook Oldenbusch’s hand.
“Where can I find you, if I might ask?” Oldenbusch said.
“Weisser Hirsch area, on Rissweg, lady named Marquart.”
Oldenbusch laughed. “Weisser Hirsch, where all those Red Army generals live? Always in the lion’s den—it’s just the way I remember you, Max.”
When Heller returned to Schorrer’s hospital building, chaos had taken over. Several Red Army trucks were parked at the entrance, and soldiers were leading the nurses to the trucks, where their fellow nurses already sat crying or staring ahead, ashen with fear.
“They’re going to take us all away, send us to Siberia!” one said as Heller pushed through the crowd.
“What’s going on?” he asked one of the Red Army soldiers, making sure to hold up his pass from Major General Medvedev. The Russian shrugged and pointed at a woman wearing a white nurse’s smock over her Red Army uniform.
“What’s going on?” Heller shouted to her.
She answered gruffly in Russian and shoved him aside. The first truck started up and drove off. But more soldiers were coming out of the building and leading away staff.
“What’s going on here?” Heller asked a nurse holding her head high as a soldier shoved her past. The soldier pushed Heller away from her.
“They think we’re killing patients,” she shouted over her shoulder. “We’re supposed to be interrogated.”
“Patients?”
“Yes, from the concentration—” A violent blow silenced the nurse. They heaved her onto the truck and shut the gate, then the truck drove off with the others.
Heller stormed into the building, heading for Schorrer’s floor. All he saw were highly agitated staff running around and no sign of Rita Stein or Dr. Schorrer. He stopped a nurse. “Where’s Dr. Schorrer?”
“Russians took him.”
“What about the political commissar, the injured one? Where’s he? He needed to use Schorrer’s quiet room.”
The nurse pointed at a door. Heller stormed inside.
Zaitsev was sleeping, and not even Heller’s violent shaking woke him. “Zaitsev, wake up.” Heller resorted to slapping his face and raising his eyelids, but his pupils showed no reaction. The Russian couldn’t be aroused—his breathing was flat, and Heller could barely feel a pulse. He rushed out to get a cup of water from a container in the hallway and splashed it in Zaitsev’s face, then rubbed it on his neck and wrists. After what felt like an eternity, Zaitsev’s eyelids started fluttering. He groaned and feebly raised a hand.
“Voda,” he rasped. Heller grabbed more water and helped Zaitsev sit up to drink. Zaitsev had barely emptied the cup before he threw up on the floor. Heller held on to him so he didn’t topple off the cot.
“Voda!”
Heller went to get water yet again. This time Zaitsev kept it down. “I’m doing better now. Sleeping is not good,” Zaitsev groaned. “Do you know what ‘Zaitsev’ means?”
Heller shook his head.
“Rabbit. And a rabbit must always bounce.”
“Hop. Our rabbits hop.”
“Hop. Yet another funny word you have. Help me up.”
Heller supported the Russian and helped him to his feet.
“They’ve arrested the nurses,” Heller said. “They say they were killing former concentration camp inmates. Schorrer is gone too. Nurse Rita probably. Just yesterday she was telling me that few of the former inmates could be saved. They were all dying of failing kidneys.”
Zaitsev just stared. He didn’t seem to understand a word. He was having trouble supporting himself on the edge of the cot. “Well, we must go to headquarters anyway.”
“You’re not walking,” Heller insisted. “I’ll go see if someone can drive us.”
Soviet headquarters was completely overcrowded, yet Heller’s initial impression of disarray turned out to be false. Everyone seemed to know what needed to be done and was working away. Zaitsev had pulled his uniform jacket back on despite the dry heat of early afternoon. He was either just keeping it together for his comrades or had recovered from his dizzy spell surprisingly fast.
He proceeded to storm into Medvedev’s office without knocking and engaged in a sharp exchange of words with an officer Heller didn’t know, all right above the head of Medvedev’s staff clerk. The two men didn’t like each other, that much was clear. The staff clerk soon rose and withdrew to the window.
“Ask about the nurses,” Heller said.
Zaitsev glared at him. “I already did. Professor Ehlig has complained to Colonel General Shishkov about the treatment of his staff. His staff will now be released after questioning. So you need not worry about your fellow German comrades.”
The officer interjected, his tone aggressive. He pointed at Heller and Zaitsev, clearly trying to maintain his authority over the fuming Zaitsev. Heller thought he heard the names Medvedev and Klepp a few times. The officer parried Zaitsev’s continued verbal assault by shaking his head. Things suddenly got loud behind Heller, as armed guards stormed into the room, but they quickly lowered their weapons when they realized the disturbance was only two of their superiors having a heated dispute. Heller retreated to the window anyway.
Medvedev’s staff clerk was holding a bundle of papers pressed to his chest like a shield. “What are they saying?” Heller whispered to him.
“Ovtcharov not let Zaitsev see woman,” the clerk whispered back.
“The Klepp woman?”
The clerk shrugged. “Ovtcharov is NKVD. He say Zaitsev responsible for politics, not purging Nazis.”
The Russians were saying much more than that. Their tempers grew increasingly aggressive until Zaitsev even drew his pistol. Everyone in the room pulled back. The officer drew his weapon. Zaitsev spoke in a menacingly quiet tone.
“He threaten to report Ovtcharov,” the staff clerk interpreted for Heller. “Because Ovtcharov know where SS man is, will not tell Zaitsev.”
Zaitsev didn’t look like he was going to back down. Only Major General Medvedev would be able to get control of this si
tuation.
“Where is the major general?” whispered Heller.
“Eat. Officers’ mess.”
Heller looked out the window. He spotted something outside. “Zaitsev,” he shouted.
“You keep out of this, Heller,” Zaitsev hissed back.
“Alexei, let it go,” Heller said to calm the Russian.
“He knows where Rudolf Klepp is,” Zaitsev said, “and he will not tell me!”
“It doesn’t matter. Listen to me, Alexei. One SS man is not worth shooting over.” Heller then winked at Zaitsev, which finally made Zaitsev lower his gun and mutter something to Ovtcharov. Ovtcharov only smirked.
“Come, nemets, we’re going,” Zaitsev ordered, and he and Heller left the room.
They were barely out the door before Heller pulled Zaitsev to the nearest window. “Look! Over there.”
In front of the gate to the grounds stood the young woman they’d saved from the dungeon. She was speaking to a Red Army soldier. She had a white bandage around her head, she was laughing and joking, and she allowed the soldier to touch her on the behind. She placed a hand on his chest, apparently speaking fluent Russian, and they whispered to one another. The soldier nodded, glanced around, and kept whispering.
“She’s sounding him out. Whether he knows anything about Klepp. Now she’s leaving.”
Zaitsev nodded. “Let’s go.”
They ran off down the stairs, Zaitsev taking three steps at a time. Outside he whistled at a jeep, a repainted German army VW. Heller kept an eye on the woman until her white bandaged head disappeared among the hustle and bustle along Bautzner Strasse. Zaitsev waved Heller over, and he had no choice but to leap into the jeep as it slowly passed. They drove through the gate, turned to the left, and followed the young woman as she hurried down the street.
Zaitsev warned the driver to drive slower. At Waldschlösschenstrasse, the woman turned right. The driver followed at a distance. The woman suddenly vanished. Zaitsev stood on his seat and looked around.
“Suka! She spotted us.”
“She couldn’t have seen us,” Heller said.
Suddenly the young woman exited the driveway of a building riding a bicycle, crossed the street ten yards ahead of them, and turned back into Bautzner Strasse, heading straight for the city center, pedaling furiously. She picked up speed on the downward-sloping street, and soon she was gone again, around the corner of the next building.
The Air Raid Killer (Max Heller, Dresden Detective Book 1) Page 22
