Jeffery Deaver - Garden Of Beasts

“I happened to run into some Stormtroopers attacking this couple. I stopped them. As for the Luger, it was one of theirs. I stole it.”

“Yes, yes, so you say… Do you know Al Capone?”

“Of course not,” Paul said, exasperated.

Webber sighed loudly, genuinely disappointed. “I follow American crime. Many of us do, here in Germany. We are always reading crime shockers – novels, you understand? Many are set in America. I followed with great interest the fate of John Dillinger. He was betrayed by a woman in a red dress and shot down in an alley after they’d been to the cinema. I think it was good he saw the film before they killed him. He died with that small pleasure within him. Though it would have been better yet had he seen the film, gotten drunk, bedded the woman and then been shot. That would have been a perfect death. Yes, I think that, despite what you say, you are a real mobster, Mr. John Dillinger. Liesl! Beautiful Liesl! More beer here! My friend is buying two more.”

Webber’s stein was empty; Paul’s was three-quarters full. He called to Liesl, “No, not for me. For him only.”

As she disappeared toward the bar she tossed Paul another adoring look, the brightness in her eyes, the slim figure reminding him of Marion. He wondered how she was, what she was doing at the moment, which would be six or seven hours earlier in America. Call me, she’d said in their last conversation, thinking he was bound for Detroit on business. Paul had learned you could actually place a telephone call across the Atlantic Ocean but it cost almost $50 a minute. Besides, no competent button man would think of leaving such evidence of his whereabouts.

He looked over the Nazis in the audience: some SS or soldiers in their immaculate black or gray uniforms, some businessmen. Most were tipsy, some were well into their afternoon drunks. All smiled gamely but seemed bored as they watched a very unsexy sex show.

When the waitress arrived she did indeed have two beers. She set one in front of Webber, whom she otherwise ignored, and said to Paul, “You may pay for your friend’s but yours is a present from me.” She took his hand and placed it around the handle of the stein. “Twenty-five pfennigs.”

“Thank you,” he said, reflecting that the extra marks from the fiver would probably have bought him a keg. He gave her a mark this time.

She shivered with pleasure, as if he’d slipped her a diamond ring. Liesl kissed his forehead. “Please enjoy.” And headed off again.

“Ach, you got the familiar discount. Me, I have to pay fifty. Of course, most foreigners pay a mark seventy-five.”

Webber drained a third of the stein. He wiped the residue from his mustache with the back of his arm and pulled out a pack of cigars. “These are vile but I rather like them.” He offered the pack to Paul, who shook his head. “They are cabbage leaves soaked in tobacco water and nicotine. It’s hard now to find real cigars.”

“What line are you in?” Paul asked. “Aside from being a wine importer.”

Webber laughed and squinted a coy gaze at Paul. He worked to inhale the acrid smoke and then said thoughtfully, “Many different things. Much of what I do is to acquire and sell hard-to-find items. Military goods are in demand lately. Not weapons, of course. But insignias, canteens, belts, boots, uniforms. Everyone here loves uniforms. When husbands are at work, their women go out and buy them uniforms, even if they have no rank or any affiliation. Children wear them. Infants! Medals, bars, ribbons, epaulets, collar tabs. And I sell them to the government for our real soldiers too. We have conscription again. Our army is swelling. They need uniforms, and cloth is hard to come by. I have people from whom I acquire uniforms and then I alter them somewhat and sell them to the army.”

“You steal them from one government source and sell them back to another.”

“Ach, Mr. John Dillinger, you are very funny.” He looked across the room. “One moment… Hans, come here. Hans!”

A man dressed in a tuxedo appeared. He looked suspiciously at Paul but Webber assured him that they were friends and then said, “I have come into possession of some butter. Would you like it?”

“How much?”

“How much butter or how much the price?”

“Both, naturally.”

“Ten kilos. Seventy-five marks.”

“If it’s like last time, you mean you have six kilos of butter mixed with four kilos of coal oil, lard, water and yellow dye. That is too much to pay for six kilos of butter.”

“Then trade me two cases of French champagne.”

“One case.”

“Ten kilos for one case?” Webber looked indignant.

“Six kilos, as I explained.”

“Eighteen bottles.”

With a dismissing shrug the maître d’ said, “Add more dye and I’ll agree. A dozen patrons refused to eat your white butter last month. And who could blame them?”

After he had left, Paul finished his beer and shook a Chesterfield out of the pack, once again keeping it below the level of the table so that no one could see the American brand. It took him four tries to light the cigarette; the cheap matches the club provided kept breaking.

Webber nodded at them. “I didn’t supply those, my friend. Don’t blame me.”

Paul inhaled long on the Chesterfield and then asked, “Why did you help me, Otto?”

“Because, of course, you were in need.”

“You do good deeds, do you?” Paul raised an eyebrow.

Webber stroked his mustache. “All right, let us be honest: In these days one must look much harder for opportunities than in the past.”

“And I’m an opportunity.”

“Who can say, Mr. John Dillinger? Perhaps no, perhaps yes. If no, then I’ve wasted nothing but an hour drinking beer with a new friend and that is no waste at all. If yes, then perhaps we can both profit.” He rose, walked to the window and looked out past a thick curtain. “I think it is safe for you to leave… Whatever you are doing in our vibrant city, I may be just the man for you. I know many people here, people in important places – no, not the men at the top. I mean the people it is best to know for those in our line of work.”

“What people?”

“The little people, well placed. Did you hear the joke about the town in Bavaria that replaced its weathervane with a civil servant? Why? Because civil servants know better than anyone which way the wind is blowing. Ha!” He laughed hard. Then his face grew solemn again and he finished the stein of beer. “In truth, I’m dying here. Dying of boredom. I miss the old days. So, leave a message or come see me. I’m usually here. In this room or at the bar.” He wrote the address down on a napkin and pushed it forward.

Glancing at the square of paper, Paul memorized the address and pushed the paper back.

Webber watched him. “Ah, you’re quite the savvy sportswriter, aren’t you?”

They walked to the door. Paul shook his hand. “Thank you, Otto.”

Outside, Webber said, “Now, my friend, farewell. I hope to see you again.” Then he scowled. “And for me? A quest for yellow dye. Ach, this is what my life has become. Lard and yellow dye.”

Reinhard Ernst, sitting in his spacious office in the Chancellory, looked over the carelessly formed characters in the note once again.

Col. Ernst:

I await the report you have agreed to prepare on your Waltham Study. I have devoted some time to review it on Monday.

Adolf Hitler

He cleaned his wire-rimmed glasses, replaced them. He wondered what the careless lettering revealed of the writer. The signature was particularly distinctive. The “Adolf ” was a compressed lightning bolt; “Hitler” was somewhat more legible but it sloped curiously, and severely, downward to the right.