Jeffery Deaver - Garden Of Beasts

Janssen was carrying a copy of the National Socialist newspaper, The People’s Observer, which featured Göring prominently on the front page, wearing a jaunty hat of a cut that wasn’t common in Berlin. Thinking of these particular accessories, Kohl glanced at his assistant; the inspector candidate’s fair face was growing red from the July sun. Did today’s young people not realize that hats had been created for a purpose?

As they approached the restaurant Kohl motioned Janssen to slow. They paused beside a lamppost and studied the Summer Garden. There were not many diners remaining at this hour. Two SS officers were paying and leaving, which was just as well, since, for the reasons he’d just explained to Janssen, he preferred to say nothing about the case. The only men remaining were a middle-aged fellow in lederhosen and a pensioner.

Kohl noted the thick curtains, protecting them from surveillance from inside. He nodded to Janssen and they stepped onto the deck, the inspector asking each diner if he’d seen a large man in a brown hat enter the restaurant.

The pensioner nodded. “A big man? Indeed, Detective. I didn’t look clearly but I believe he walked inside about twenty minutes ago.”

“He’s still there?”

“He hasn’t come out, not that I saw.”

Janssen stiffened like a beagle on a scent. “Sir, shall we call the Orpo?”

These were the uniformed Order Police, housed in barracks, ready, as the name suggested, to keep order by use of rifles, machine pistols and truncheons. But Kohl thought again of the mayhem that could erupt if they were summoned, especially against an armed suspect in a restaurant filled with patrons. “No, I think we won’t, Janssen. We’ll be more subtle. You go around the back of the restaurant and wait at the door. If anyone comes out, whether in a hat or not, detain him. Remember – our suspect is armed. Now move surreptitiously.”

“Yes, sir.”

The young man stopped at the alley and, with an extremely unsurreptitious wave, turned the corner and vanished.

Kohl casually started forward and paused, as if perusing the posted menu. Then he moved closer, feeling uneasiness, feeling too the weight of his revolver in his pocket. Until the National Socialists came to power few Kripo detectives carried weapons. But several years ago, when then Interior Minister Göring had expanded the many police forces in the country, he’d ordered every policeman to carry a weapon and, to the shock of Kohl and his colleagues in the Kripo, to use them liberally. He’d actually issued an edict saying that a policeman would be reprimanded for failing to shoot a suspect, but not for shooting someone who turned out to be innocent.

Willi Kohl hadn’t fired a weapon since 1918.

Yet, picturing the shattered skull of the victim in Dresden Alley, he now was pleased that he had the gun with him. Kohl adjusted his jacket, made sure he could grab the gun quickly if he needed to and took a deep breath. He pushed through the doorway.

And froze like a statue, panicked. The interior of the Summer Garden was quite dark and his eyes were used to the brilliant sunlight outside; he was momentarily blinded. Foolish, he thought angrily to himself. He should have considered this. Here he stood with “Kripo” written all over him, a clear target for an armed suspect.

He stepped further inside and closed the door behind him. In his cottony vision, people moved throughout the restaurant. Some men, he believed, were standing. Someone was moving toward him.

Kohl stepped back, alarmed. His hand went toward the pocket containing his revolver.

“Sir, a table? Sit where you like.”

He squinted and slowly his vision began returning.

“Sir?” the waiter repeated.

“No,” he said. “I’m looking for someone.”

Finally the inspector was able to see normally again.

The restaurant contained only a dozen patrons. None was a large man with a brown hat and light suit. He started into the kitchen.

“Sir, you can’t-”

Kohl displayed his identification card to the waiter.

“Yes, sir,” the man said timidly.

Kohl walked through the stupefyingly hot kitchen and to the back door. He opened it. “Janssen?”

“No one came through the door, sir.”

The inspector candidate joined his boss and they returned to the dining room.

Kohl motioned the waiter over to them.

“Sir, what is your name?”

“Johann.”

“Well, Johann, have you seen a man in here, within the past twenty minutes, wearing a hat like this?” Kohl nodded at Janssen, who displayed the picture of Göring.

“Why, yes, I have. He and his companions just left moments ago. It seemed rather suspicious. They left by the side door.”

He pointed to the empty table. Kohl sighed with disgust. It was one of the two tables next to the windows. Yes, the curtain was thick but he noted a tiny gap at the side; their suspect had undoubtedly seen them canvassing the patrons on the patio.

“Come, Janssen!” Kohl and the inspector candidate rushed out the side door and through an anemic garden typical of the tens of thousands throughout the city; Berliners loved growing flowers and plants but land was at such a premium that they were forced to use any scraps of dirt they could find for their gardens. There was only one route out of the patch; it led to Rosenthaler Street. They trotted to it and looked up and down the congested street. No sign of their suspect.

Kohl was furious. Had he not been distracted by Krauss they would likely have had more of a chance to intercept the large man in the hat. But mostly he was angry with himself for his carelessness on the patio a moment earlier.

“In our haste,” he muttered to Janssen, “we’ve burnt the crust, but perhaps we can salvage some of the remaining loaf.” He turned and stalked back toward the front door of the Summer Garden.

Paul, Morgan and the skinny, nervous man known as Max stood fifty feet up Rosenthaler Street in a small cluster of linden trees.

They were watching the man in the white suit and his younger associate in the garden, beside the restaurant, looking up and down the street, then they returned to the front door.

“They couldn’t be after us,” Morgan said. “Impossible.”

“They were looking for someone, ” Paul said. “They came out the side door a minute after we did. That’s not a coincidence.”

In a shaky voice, Max asked, “You think they were Gestapo? Or Kripo?”

“What’s Kripo?” Paul asked.

“Criminal police. Plainclothes detectives.”

“They were some sort of police,” Paul announced. There was no doubt. He’d suspected it from the moment he’d seen the two men approach the Summer Garden. He’d taken the window table specifically to keep an eye on the street and, sure enough, he’d noticed the men – a heavyset one in a Panama hat and a slimmer, younger one in a green suit – asking diners on the patio questions. Then the younger one had stepped away – probably to cover the back door – and the white-suited cop had walked to the posted menu, examining it for far longer than one normally would.

Paul had stood suddenly, tossed down money – paper bills only, on which fingerprints would be nearly impossible to find – and snapped, “Leave now.” With Morgan and a panicked Max behind him, he’d pushed through the side door and waited at the front of a small garden until the cop had gone inside the restaurant, then walked fast down Rosenthaler Street.

“Police,” Max now muttered, sounding near tears. “No… no…”

Too many people to chase you here… and too many people to follow you, too many people to rat on you.

I’d do anything for him and the Party…