Jeffery Deaver - Garden Of Beasts

At the American dorms he bypassed the reception area, with its German soldier, and slipped into his room through the back door. He changed his outfit, burying the green jacket in a basket full of dirty laundry, there being no sewers handy, and putting on cream-colored flannels, a tennis shirt and a light cable-knit sweater. He brushed his hair differently – to the side. The makeup had worn off but there was nothing he could do about that now. As he stepped out the door with his suitcase and satchel a voice called, “Hey, Paul.”

He glanced up to see Jesse Owens, dressed in gymnasium clothes, returning to the dorm. Owens asked, “What’re you doing?”

“Heading into town. Get some work done.”

“Naw, Paul. We were hoping you’d stay around. You missed an all-right ceremony last night. You’ve gotta see the food they got here. It’s swell.”

“I know it’s grand, but I gotta skip. I’m doing some interviews in town.”

Owens stepped closer then nodded at the cut and bruise on Paul’s face. Then the runner’s sharp eyes dropped down to the man’s knuckles, which were raw and red from the fight.

“Hope the rest of your interviews go better than the one this morning. Dangerous to be a sportswriter in Berlin, looks like.”

“I took a spill. Nothing serious.”

“Not for you maybe,” Owens said, amused. “But what about the fellow you landed on?”

Paul couldn’t help but smile. The runner was just a kid. But there was something worldly about him. Maybe growing up a Negro in the South and Midwest made you mature faster. Same with putting yourself through school on the heels of the Depression.

Like stumbling into his own line of work had changed Paul. Changed him real fast.

“What exactly are you doin’ here, Paul?” the runner whispered.

“Just my job,” he answered slowly. “Just doing my job. Say, what’s the wire on Stoller and Glickman? Hope they haven’t been sidelined.”

“Nope, they’re still scheduled,” Owens said, frowning, “but the rumors aren’t sounding good.”

“Good luck to them. And to you too, Jesse. Bring home some gold.”

“We’ll do our best. See you later?”

“Maybe.”

Paul shook his hand and walked off toward the entrance to the village, where a line of taxis waited.

“Hey, Paul.”

He turned to see the fastest man in the world saluting him, a grin on his face.

The poll of the vendors and bench-sitters along Rosenthaler Street had been futile (though Janssen confirmed that he’d learned some new curses when a flower seller found out he was troubling her only to ask questions, not to buy anything). There had been a shooting not far away, Kohl had learned, but that was an SS matter – perhaps about their jealously guarded “minor security matter” – and none of the elite guard would deign to speak to the Kripo about it.

Upon their return to headquarters, however, they found that a miracle had occurred. The photographs of the victim and of the fingerprints from Dresden Alley were on Willi Kohl’s desk.

“Look at this, Janssen,” Kohl said, gesturing at the glossy pictures, neatly assembled in a file.

He sat down at his battered desk in his office in the Alex, the Kripo’s massive, ancient building, nicknamed for the bustling square and surrounding neighborhood where it was located: Alexander Plaza. All the state buildings were being renovated except theirs, it seemed. The criminal police were housed in the same grimy building they’d been in for years. Kohl did not mind this, however, since it was some distance from Wilhelm Street, which at least gave some practical autonomy to the police, even if none now existed administratively.

Kohl was also fortunate to have an office of his own, a room that measured four meters by six and contained a desk, a table and three chairs. On the oak plain of the desk were a thousand pieces of paper, an ashtray, a pipe rack and a dozen framed photographs of his wife, children and parents.

He rocked forward in his creaking wooden chair and looked over the crime scene photographs and the ones of the fingerprints. “You’re talented, Janssen. These are quite good.”

“Thank you, sir.” The young man was looking down at them, nodding.

Kohl regarded him closely. The inspector himself had taken a traditional route up through the police ranks. The son of a Prussian farmer, young Willi had become fascinated with both Berlin and police work from the story-books he’d read growing up. At eighteen he’d come to the city and gotten a job as a uniformed Schupo officer, went through the basic training at the famed Berlin Police Institute and worked his way up to corporal and sergeant, receiving a college degree along the way. Then, with a wife and two children, he’d gone on to the institute’s Officers School and joined Kripo, rising over the years from detective-inspector assistant to senior detective-inspector.

His young protégé, on the other hand, had gone a different route, one that was far more common nowadays. Janssen had graduated from a good university several years ago, passed the qualifying exam in jurisprudence, then, after attending the police institute, he was accepted at this young age as a detective-inspector candidate, apprenticed to Kohl.

It was often hard to draw the inspector candidate out; Janssen was reserved. He was married to a solid, dark-haired woman who was now pregnant with their second child. The only time Janssen grew animated was when he talked about his family or about his passion for bicycling and hiking. Until all police were put on overtime because of the approaching Olympics, detectives worked only half days on Wednesday and Janssen would often change into his hiking shorts in a Kripo lavatory at noon and go off on a wander with his brother or his wife.

But whatever made him tick, the man was smart and ambitious and Kohl was very fortunate to have him. Over the past several years the Kripo had been hemorrhaging talented officers to the Gestapo, where the pay and opportunities were far better. When Hitler came to power the number of Kripo detectives around the country was twelve thousand. Now, it was down to eight thousand. And of those, many were former Gestapo investigators sent to the Kripo in exchange for the young officers who’d transferred out; in truth, they were largely drunks and incompetents.

The telephone buzzed and he picked it up. “This is Kohl.”

“Inspector, it is Schreiber, the clerk you spoke to today. Hail Hitler.”

“Yes, yes, hail.” On the way back to the Alex from the Summer Garden, Kohl and Janssen had stopped at the haberdashery department at Tietz, the massive department store that dominated the north side of Alexander Plaza, near Kripo headquarters. Kohl had shown the clerk the picture of Göring’s hat and asked what kind it was. The man didn’t know but would look into the matter.

“Any luck?” Kohl asked him.

“Ach, yes, yes, I have found the answer. It’s a Stetson. Made in the United States. As you know, Minister Göring shows the finest taste.”

Kohl made no comment on that. “Are they common here?”

“No, sir. Quite rare. Expensive, as you can imagine.”

“Where could I buy one in Berlin?”

“In truth, sir, I don’t know. The minister, I’m told, special-orders them from London.”

Kohl thanked him, hung up and told Janssen what he’d learned.

“So perhaps he’s an American,” Janssen said. “But perhaps not. Since Göring wears the same hat.”

“A small piece of the puzzle, Janssen. But you will find that many small pieces often give a clearer picture of a crime than a single large piece.” He took the brown evidence envelopes from his pocket and selected the one containing the bullet.