Jonathan Rabb - Rosa

Jogiches smiled elusively. “Precisely.”

There was nothing remotely satisfying in the answer. Whatever Jogiches thought he had been making clear was as impenetrable as that insufferable smile. “You know I have no idea what you’re talking about,” said Hoffner.

“I imagine you have more than you realize, Inspector.”

Impatience was seeping into Hoffner’s tone: “Then tell me what makes Munich so important.”

For the first time, Jogiches hesitated. “I don’t know,” he said with frustration. “In the same way I don’t know why a Prussian business interest, or a discontinued military ointment, or a substitute madman who was willing to kill himself so as to protect your little Belgian, are involved. But I do know they all revolve around Rosa. The when and the how, Inspector. That’s what you need to find out.”

Hoffner was impressed; Jogiches had mentioned virtually everything except, of course, the design of the Rosenthaler station, but then how could he have known about that? Hoffner was the only one to have put it together. It made the link to Munich even more startling: Stankevich’s letter had come from the engineer; the engineer was the only link to the station. Now Jogiches was mentioning Munich without any knowledge of the engineer.

Hoffner measured out two more glasses. “You seem to be doing fine on your own.”

“That has its limitations,” said Jogiches. “A revolutionary crying foul doesn’t exactly provoke a response, especially when the powers that be already consider him dead.”

“Your article.”

“The final nail, as they say. And dead men don’t have much luck catching trains out of Berlin.”

Jogiches was right. There was nowhere he could turn: the Social Democrats would do nothing to protect him; the right-wing troops would stop at nothing to eliminate him; and the police. . well, not really their jurisdiction. His only option had been the truth, and that was something Jogiches had never managed terribly well on his own. “Your source is very thorough,” said Hoffner.

“He has to be. There’s a great deal at stake now.”

And there it was, thought Hoffner. The catchphrase. There was always “a great deal at stake” for men like Jogiches: grand causes tended to subordinate every motivation to a singular truth. Only action mattered, which, as Hoffner now thought about it, made Jogiches’s approach not all that different from his own. The one distinction was in how each of them saw the confluence of events. For Jogiches, the details came together like pieces in a boundless jigsaw whose cover had gone missing, so that the final picture, though dimly imagined, remained forever a mystery: completion was always just another few days off, which made the eternal search all the more compelling. For Hoffner, the pieces produced a finite picture, smaller, of course, and without a sense of the greater totality, but no less coherent: the final product might have been only a tiny segment of the larger puzzle, but it brought resolution, and that, in the end, was all that mattered. There was either truth and causes and sacrifice, or there was practicality and cases and death. Hoffner had never questioned which took precedence.

He said, “So I have an ally inside the Alex?”

From his expression, Jogiches had never thought of it that way. Truth to tell-until this moment-neither had Hoffner. “I suppose you do,” said Jogiches.

Hoffner waited as a lifetime of mistrust stared back at him. Luckily, the dead are quick to realize that they have nothing to lose.

“Groener,” Jogiches finally said. “Detective Sergeant Ludwig Groener.”

Jogiches enjoyed the moment immensely. “Oh, don’t look so surprised, Inspector. Why do you think he never won promotion? Bit of an embarrassment to his uncle the General, I suspect, but then maybe that’s the reason he became one of us in the first place. I never asked. Groener’s far more than you ever imagined.”

In fact, Hoffner had never even conceived of it, not that he had heard much beyond the name. It had come at him like a wave of gibberish, a word in a child’s game with syllables and cadence but no meaning. Groener? The name was, at this moment, completely incomprehensible.

It was the perfect lead-in to the garbled singing that suddenly erupted from one of the tables by the front door. A drunk had taken to his feet and was already at full throttle:

“When lovely eyes begin to wink, when full glasses gleam and clink, there comes once more the call to drink, to drink, to drink, to drink!”

Everyone at the table laughed. It was loud enough to draw half the caf’s attention, Hoffner with them. When he turned back, Jogiches was on his feet. “We’ll do this again, Inspector,” he said as he reached for his hat. “There’s another door through the kitchen. They won’t have anyone there.”

“You still haven’t told me how you know about Munich.”

Jogiches placed his hat on his head. “And you, Herr Inspector, have to leave me some secrets.” Jogiches grabbed his umbrella and, without another word, headed for the back of the cafe.

It was only then that Hoffner remembered where he had seen Jogiches before. Rcker’s bar, the day they had found Mary Koop, the professor with the umbrella. It was a startling image. Hoffner wondered: Had Jogiches been watching him even then?

The front doors opened and a Polpo detective appeared; the man was too obvious to be anything else. Hoffner watched as the singing drunk suddenly maneuvered himself out into the aisle and clumsily blocked the detective’s path. Jogiches had picked his lookout well: the man showed a tremendous dedication to his task.

Taking advantage of the commotion, Hoffner stood and quietly made his way back toward the kitchen.

Martha was asleep by the time he stumbled in. As always, she had left a light on for him.

Hoffner was still mulling over his first encounter with Jogiches as he tossed his clothes in a pile and turned out the light: had Munich been a consideration back in January? Had Jogiches stayed in the shadows and allowed three more women to be killed rather than expose what he knew? Had Groener done worse? Hoffner quietly slipped into bed. His head was still thick from the brandy as he lay back, closed his eyes, and tried to piece it all together.

“Late night.” Martha’s voice filled the darkness.

It had been a long time since she had waited up for him. “You’re awake, then,” he said. He listened for movement; when none came, he added, “Not that late. Go back to sleep.”

There was the hope that she would give in, but they both knew better. She spoke quietly and without any hint of judgment. “Nothing you want to tell me, is there, Nicki?” She kept her back to him.

It always came here, he thought, with no distractions, nothing to run to for a moment of relief: a newspaper lying about, a package recently delivered, a boy passing by the door. Only darkness and conversation and the unbearable weight of the two.

“Tell you what?”

“That’s up to you, isn’t it?”

She had always had the good sense to wait until things had sputtered out before posing the question. It was safe by then, each of them aware of what he had done and how he had chosen not to let it drag on. There was a kind of victory in that for them both. Now, however, it was four years on since his last slip, and her timing had gone off.

“The Wouters case,” he said. “Loose ends.” He did his best to wrap it in the truth, which, of course, only made it more cruel: anything other than his confession signaled her miscalculation.

“Oh,” she said vaguely. She was trying not to sound betrayed.

“Yes. I might have to take a few days in Munich.”