Joseph Kanon - A Good German

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.

“You with me so far? So the easiest thing was to send him homeall you had to do was sign a form. That’s what everybody wants, isn’t it? Except this time it didn’t take. Tully didn’t want to go home-he had plans here. You call him to Berlin, in a hurry, not even time to pack, get him on the first plane. You might have waited, by the way. Did you know he was coming anyway? A Tuesday appointment. But no matter. The point was to get it done fast. Here’s your hat, what’s your hurry. Sikorsky meets him at the airport and drops him at the Control Council.”

Muller raised his head to speak.

“Don’t bother,” Jake said. “He told me so himself. So Tully comes to pick up a jeep. But nobody just waltzes in and takes a jeep. It’s not a taxi stand out there. Motor pool assigns them. To you, for instance. I could check how many you had signed out that day, but why bother now? One of yours.

“Where you were, I don’t know-probably at a meeting, defending the free and the brave. Which is why you couldn’t meet him in the first place. The plane was late, which must have cut into your schedule. Anyway, busy. Which was too bad, because Tully got busy too, down at the Document Center, so that when you met him there later, he had a new racket going. Not to mention a new payment from Sikorsky. Which he didn’t, I guess-mention, that is.”

He watched Muller’s face. “No, he wouldn’t. But all the more reason now to hang around-more money where that came from. You tell me how it played from there. Did he tell you where to stick your transfer? Or did he threaten to expose you if you didn’t play ball? In for a penny, in for a pound. Plenty of money to be made on those SS files. Shaeffer? You could take care of him. You’d taken care of Bensheim, hadn’t you? And if you couldn’t-well, you’d have to, or he’d take you down with him. Anyway, he sure as hell wasn’t going to Natick, Mass., when there was a fortune to be made here. Of course, it’s possible you got rid of him to keep the files all to yourself, but he didn’t have the files yet, the Doc Center had come up dry so far, so I think it’s just that he boxed you in so tight, you didn’t think you had much choice. The transfer would have been so easy. But you still had to get rid of him somehow. Is that more the way it was? “