Joseph Kanon - A Good German

“He didn’t get me out,” Lena said quietly.

“But he was here?”

“Yes. He came for me-and his father. But it was too late. The Russians—” She glanced over to Jake. “He didn’t get through. I thought they killed him. Those last days-it was crazy, to take that risk.”

“Maybe it was worth it to him,” Bernie said. “Anyway, that’s what they think now. In fact, they’re looking for you.”

“Forme?”

“In case they’re right. They want him back.”

“Do they want to arrest me too?”

“No, I think the idea is that you’re the bait. He’ll come looking for you. Why else would he want out? Everyone else is trying to get in. Kransberg’s for special guests. We like to keep the big Nazis comfortable.”

“He’s not a Nazi,” Lena said dully.

“Well, that’s a matter of opinion. Don’t worry, I can’t touch him. The technical boys put Kransberg off-limits. Scientists are too valuable to be Nazis. Whatever they did. He should have stayed where he was, nice and cozy. A little Ping-Pong in the evenings, I hear. Makes you wonder, doesn’t it?”

“Bernie—” Jake began.

“Yeah, I know, leave it alone. You can’t fight city hall. Every time we start getting somewhere on one of them, the tech units yank the file. Special case. Now I hear they want to take them to the States, the whole fucking team. They’re arguing over salaries. Salaries. No wonder they wanted to surrender to us.” He nodded to Lena. “Let’s hope he finds you soon-you don’t want to miss the boat.” He paused. “Or maybe you do,” he said, glancing at Jake.

“You’re out of line,” Jake said.

“Sorry. Don’t mind me,” Bernie said to Lena. “It comes with the job. We’re a little shorthanded.” He looked at Jake again. “Now the tech units, that’s something else. Nothing but manpower there.” He turned back to Lena. “If he turns up, give one of them a call. They’ll be glad to hear from you.”

“And if he doesn’t?” Jake said. “You said two weeks.”

“Then start looking. I think you’ll want to find him.”

Jake looked at him, puzzled. “What exactly is he accused of?”

“Strictly speaking, nothing. Just leaving Kransberg. A little rude, for an honored guest. But it makes the rest of them jumpy. They like to stick together-improves their bargaining position, I guess. And of course the tech boys have had to beef up security, which takes away from the country club feel of the thing. So they’d like him back.”

“He just walked out?”

“No. That’s the part that will interest you. He had a pass, all official.”

“Why would that interest me?”

Bernie walked over to the piano and flipped open a file folder. “Take a look at the signature,” he said, handing Jake a carbon sheet.

“Lieutenant Patrick Tully,” Jake said, reading aloud, his voice falling. He raised his eyes to find Bernie watching him.

“I was wondering if you knew,” Bernie said. “I guess not. Not with that face. Interested now?”

“What is it?” Lena said.

“A soldier who was killed last week,” Jake said, still looking at the paper.

“And you blame Emil for that?” she said to Bernie, anxious.

He shrugged. “All I know is, two men went missing from Kransberg and one of them’s dead.”

Jake shook his head. “You’re off-base. I know him.”

“That must keep things friendly,” Bernie said.

Jake looked up at him, then passed over it. “Why would Tully sign him out?”

“Well, that’s the question, isn’t it? What occurred to me was, it’s a valuable piece of paper. The only problem with that is the guests don’t have any money-at least, they’re not supposed to. Who needs cash when you’ve got room service courtesy of the U.S. government?”

Jake shook his head again. “It wasn’t Emil’s money,” he said, thinking of the dash before the serial number, but Bernie had leaped elsewhere.

“Then somebody else’s. But there must have been some deal. Tully wasn’t the humanitarian type.” He picked up another folder. “Here, bedtime reading. He’s been in one racket or another since he hit the beach. Of course, you wouldn’t know it from this-just a series of transfers. The usual MG solution-make him somebody else’s problem.”

“Then why send him to a place like Kransberg?”

Bernie nodded. “I asked. The idea was to get him away from civilians. He was MG in a town in Hesse, and things got so bad even the Germans complained. Hauptmann Toll, they called him-crazy. He’d prance around in those boots carrying a whip. They thought the SS was back. So MG had to get him out of there. Next, a detention camp in Bensheim. No market there, maybe a few cigarettes, but what the hell? What I hear, though, is that he was selling discharge papers. Don’t bother to look-record just says ‘relieved.’ That was sweet. The way they nailed him is he ran out of customers, so he started having them arrested once they were out-figured they’d pay again. One of them screams bloody murder and the next thing you know he’s off to Kransberg. They probably thought, what harm could he do there? No one wants to check out.”

“Except Emil,” Jake said.

“Evidently.”

“But what did they say? When Emil didn’t come back. People just come and go?”

“The guards figured it must be okay if he had papers. And Tully drove him. See, the idea is, it’s not a prison-once in a while the scientists go into town with an escort. So nobody thought anything of it. Then, when he didn’t come back, Tully says he’s as surprised as anybody.”

“Wasn’t he supposed to stay with him?”

“What can you do? Tully had a weekend pass-he didn’t want to play nursemaid. He says he trusted him. It was personal-a family matter. He didn’t want to be in the way,” Bernie said, glancing again at Lena.

“And nobody says anything?”

“Oh, plenty. But you can’t court-martial a man for being stupid. Not when he thinks he’s doing one of the guests a favor. Best you can do is transfer him out. I’d lay you even money it was just a matter of time before those papers were in the works again. But then he went to Potsdam. Which is where you came in.”

Jake had flipped open the folder and was staring at the photograph stapled to the top sheet. Young, not bloated from a night of drifting in the Jungfernsee. He tried to picture Tully striding through a Hessian village with a riding crop, but the face was bland and open, the kind of kid you found on a soda fountain stool in Natick, Mass. But the war had changed everybody.

“I still don’t get it,” he said finally. “If it was that loose, why pay to get out? From the sound of it, he could have jumped out a window and run. Couldn’t he?”

“Theoretically. Look, nobody’s trying to escape from Kransberg- it doesn’t occur to them. They’re scientists, not POWs. They’re trying to get a ticket to the promised land, not run away. Maybe he wanted the pass-you know what they’re like about documents. So officially he wouldn’t be AWOL.”

“It’s a hell of a lot to pay for a pass. Anyway, where did the money come from?”

“I don’t know. Ask him. Isn’t that what you wanted to know in the first place?”

Jake looked up from the picture. “No, I wanted to know why Tully was killed. From the sound of it, there could have been a hundred reasons.”

“Maybe,” Bernie said slowly. “And maybe just one.”

“Just because a man signed a piece of paper?”

Bernie spread his hands again. “Maybe a coincidence. Maybe a connection. A man gets out of Kransberg and heads for Berlin. A week later the man who gets him out comes to Berlin and ends up killed. I don’t believe in coincidence. It has to connect somewhere. You add two and two—”