Philip Kerr - If the Dead Rise Not

Noreen searched her empty cigarette case for a smoke. “Damn,” she said again.

I gave her mine. “Much as I’m reluctant to admit it, Noreen, this little investigation is over. Nothing would give me more pleasure than to spin this out and keep on driving you around Berlin. But I think honesty’s best. Especially since I’m a little out of practice in that area, what with one thing and another.”

She lit the cigarette and stared out of the window as we came into Steglitz.

“Pull up,” she said, sharply.

“What?”

“Pull up, I said.”

I stopped the car close to the town hall, at the corner of Schlossstrasse, and started to apologize on the assumption that she had taken offense at something I had said. Even before I had switched off the engine, she had got out of the car and was walking swiftly back down the street. I followed.

“Hey, I’m sorry,” I said. “But there’s still a story you can write here. Maybe if you found Isaac Deutsch’s uncle Joey-the guy who was his trainer-then perhaps he’d talk. You could get his story. That would be a good angle. How Jews are forbidden to compete in the Olympics but how one who gets an illegal job building the stadium ends up dead. That could be a great story.”

Noreen didn’t look like she was listening. And I was more than a little horrified to see that she was heading toward a large group of SA and SS men standing around a man and woman dressed in civilian clothes. The woman was blond and in her twenties; the man was older and Jewish. I knew he was Jewish, because, like her, he had a placard around his neck. The man’s placard read: “I’m a dirty Jew who takes German girls to his room.” The girl’s placard read: “I go to this dirty swine’s place to sleep with a Jew!” Before I could do anything to stop her, Noreen threw away her cigarette, produced her Baby Brownie from her capacious leather handbag, and, looking down through the little viewfinder, took a photograph of the somber couple and the grinning Nazis.

I caught up with her and tried to take her by the arm. She pulled it away angrily.

“This is not a good idea,” I said.

“Nonsense. They wouldn’t have put those placards around their necks unless they wanted people to pay attention to them. And that’s just what I’m doing.” She wound her film and once again lined up the group.

One of the SS shouted at me, “Hey, Bubi. Leave her alone. She’s right, your girlfriend. There’s no point in making an example of bastards like these unless people see it and take note.”

“That’s exactly what I’m doing,” said Noreen. “Taking note.”

I waited patiently until Noreen had finished. Until now she’d photographed only anti-Semitic signs in the parks and some Nazi flags on Unter den Linden, and I hoped this rather more candid kind of photography wasn’t about to become a habit with her. I doubt my nerves could have taken it.

We walked back to the car in silence, abandoning the miscegenating couple to their public disgrace and humiliation.

“If you’d ever seen them beat someone up,” I said, “then you’d be more careful about doing something like that. You want to photograph something interesting, I’ll run you over to the Bismarck Monument or the Charlottenburg Palace.”

Noreen dropped the camera back in her bag. “Don’t treat me like some goddamn tourist,” she said. “I didn’t take that picture for my album. I took it for the fucking newspaper. Don’t you get it? A picture like that makes an absolute mockery of Avery Brundage’s claims that Berlin is a proper place to hold an Olympic Games.”

“Brundage?”

“Yes, Avery Brundage. Weren’t you listening? I told you before. He’s the president of the American Olympic Committee.”

I nodded. “What else do you know about him?”

“Almost nothing beyond the fact that he must be a real asshole.”

“Would it surprise you to learn that he’s in correspondence with your old friend Max Reles? And that he owns a construction company in Chicago?”

“How do you know that?”

“I’m a detective, remember? I’m supposed to know things I’m not supposed to know about.”

She smiled. “Sonofabitch. You searched his room, didn’t you? That’s why you were asking me about him last night. I’ll bet that’s when you did it, too. Right after that little scene in the lobby, when you knew he’d be out for a while.”

“Almost right. I followed him to the opera first.”

“Five minutes of Parsifal . I remember. So that’s why you went.”

“His guests included the sports leader. Funk from Propaganda. Some army general called von Reichenau. The rest I didn’t recognize. But I’ll bet they were all Nazis.”

“Those you mentioned are all on the German Olympic Organizing Committee,” she said. “And I’ll bet the rest were, too.” She shook her head. “So you went back to the Adlon and searched his room while you knew he was safely otherwise engaged. What else did you find?”

“A lot of letters. Reles employs a stenographer I found for him, and it seems he keeps her very busy writing to companies who are bidding for Olympic contracts.”

“Then he must be on a kickback. Maybe lots of kickbacks. The GOC, too, maybe.”

“I took some carbon copies from his wastepaper basket.”

“Great. Can I see them?”

When we were in the car once again I handed them over. She started to read one. “Nothing incriminating here,” she said.

“That’s what I thought. At first.”

“It’s just a bid for a contract to supply cement to the Ministry of the Interior.”

“The other one is a bid for a contract to supply propane gas for the Olympic flame.” I paused. “Don’t you get it? That’s a carbon. It means that it was typed by the Adlon’s own stenographer in his suite. Contracts are supposed to be for German companies only. And Max Reles is an American.”

“Maybe he bought these companies.”

“Maybe. I think he’s probably got enough money. Probably that’s why he went to Zurich before he came here. There’s a bag in his room containing thousands of dollars and gold Swiss francs. Not to mention a submachine gun. Even in Germany you don’t need a machine gun to run a company these days. Not unless you have some serious problems with your labor force.”

“I need to think about this.”

“We both do. I’ve a feeling we’re getting in over our heads, and I’m kind of attached to mine. I mention that only because we have the falling ax in this country, and it’s not just criminals who get haircuts. It’s communists and republicans and probably anyone the government doesn’t like. Look, you really won’t mention any of this to von Tschammer und Osten, will you?”

“No, of course I won’t. I’m not ready to get thrown out of Germany just yet. Especially since last night.”

“I’m glad to hear it.”

“While I’m thinking about Max Reles, that idea you had. About looking for Isaac Deutsch’s uncle and basing my story on him. It’s a good one.”

“I only said that to get you back in the car.”

“Well, I’m back in the car, and it’s still a good idea.”

“I’m not so sure. Suppose you did write a story about Jews helping to build the new stadium. Maybe all those Jews will end up losing their jobs as a result of that. And what happens to them then? How are they going to feed their families? It might even be that some of them end up in concentration camps. Have you thought about that?”

“Of course I’ve thought about it. What do you take me for? I’m a Jew, remember? The human consequences of what I might write are always on my mind. Look, Bernie, the way I see it is this: There’s a much bigger issue at stake here than a few hundred people losing their jobs. The USA is by far the most important country in any Olympics. In L.A., we won forty-one gold medals, more than any other country. Italy, which was next, won twelve. An Olympiad without America would be meaningless. That’s why a boycott is important. Because if the games are not held here, it would be just about the most serious blow that Nazi prestige could suffer inside Germany. Not to mention it being one of the most effective ways that the outside world has of showing the youth of Germany its true opinion of Nazi doctrine. That has to be more important than whether a few Jews can feed their families. Wouldn’t you agree?”