Jeffery Deaver - Garden Of Beasts

But what forty-three-year-old Hermann Göring was now preoccupied with was a pensioner widow twice his age, who lived in a small cottage outside Hamburg.

Not that the man whose titles included minister without portfolio, commissioner for air, commander in chief of the air force, Prussian minister president, air minister and hunting master of the empire was himself doing any of the legwork regarding Mrs. Ruby Kleinfeldt, of course. A dozen of his minions and Gestapo officers scurried about on Wilhelm Street and in Hamburg, digging through records and interviewing people.

Göring himself was staring out the window of his opulent office, eating a massive plate of spaghetti. This was Hitler’s favorite dish and Göring had watched the Leader picking at a bowl of it yesterday. Seeing the unconsumed portion triggered an itch within Göring that had festered into a fierce craving; so far he’d had three large helpings today.

What will we find about you? he silently asked the elderly woman, who knew nothing of the bustling inquiry about her. The investigation seemed absurdly digressive, considering the many vital projects currently on his calendar. Yet this one was vitally important because it could lead to the downfall of Reinhard Ernst.

Soldiering was at the core of Hermann Göring, who often recalled the happy days of the War, flying his all-white Fokker D-7 biplane over France and Belgium, engaging any Allied pilot foolish enough to be in the skies nearby (a confirmed twenty-two had paid for that mistake with their lives, though Göring remained convinced he’d killed many more). He might now be a behemoth who couldn’t even fit into the cockpit of his old plane, a man whose life was painkillers, food, money, art, power. But if you asked him who he was at heart, Göring’s answer would be: I am a soldier.

And a soldier who knew how best to turn his country into a nation of warriors once again – you showed your muscle. You didn’t negotiate, you didn’t pad around like a youth making for the bushes behind a barn to secretly puff away on his father’s pipe – the behavior of Colonel Reinhard Ernst.

The man had a woman’s touch about this business. Even the faggot Roehm, the head of the Stormtroopers killed by Göring and Hitler in the putsch two years ago, was a bulldog compared with Ernst. Secret arm’s-length deals with Krupp, nervously shifting resources from one shipyard to another, forcing their present “army,” such as it was, to train with wooden guns and artillery in small groups, so they wouldn’t draw attention. A dozen other such prissy tactics.

Why the hesitancy? Because, Göring believed, the man’s loyalty to National Socialist views was suspect. The Leader and Göring were not naive. They knew their support was not universal. You can win votes with fists and guns; you cannot win hearts. And many hearts within their country were not devoted to National Socialism, among them people at the top of the armed forces. Ernst could very well be intentionally dragging his Prussian heels to keep Hitler and Göring from having the one institution they needed desperately: a strong military. It was likely Ernst himself even hoped to accede to the throne if the two rulers were deposed.

Thanks to his soft voice, his reasonable manner, his smooth ways, his two fucking Iron Crosses and dozens of other decorations, Ernst was currently in Wolf’s favor (because it made him feel close to the Leader, Göring liked to use the nickname women sometimes referred to Hitler by, though the minister, of course, uttered the intimacy only in his thoughts).

Why, look at how the colonel had attacked Göring yesterday on the issue of the Me 109 fighter at the Olympics! The air minister had lain awake half the night, enraged over that exchange, picturing again and again Wolf turning his blue eyes to Ernst and agreeing!

Another burst of rage swept through him. “God in heaven!” Göring swept the spaghetti dish to the floor. It shattered.

One of his orderlies, a veteran of the War, came running, stiff on his game leg.

“Sir?”

“Clean that up!”

“I’ll get a pail-”

“I didn’t say mop the floor. Just pick up the pieces. They’ll mop this evening.” Then the huge man glanced at his blousy shirt and saw tomato stains on it. His anger doubled. “I want a clean shirt,” he snapped. “The china is too small for the portions. Tell the cook to find bigger. The Leader has that Meissen set, the green and white. I want plates like those.”

“Yes, sir.” The man was bending down to the shards.

“No, my shirt first.”

“Yes, Air Minister.” The man scurried off. He returned a moment later, bearing a dark green shirt on a hanger.

“Not that one. I told you when you brought it to me last month that it makes me look like Mussolini.”

“That was the black one, sir. Which I’ve discarded. This is green.”

“Well, I want white. Get me a white shirt! A silk one!”

The man left then came back once more, with the correct color.

A moment later one of Göring’s senior aides stepped inside.

The minister took the shirt and set it aside; he was self-conscious of his weight and would never think of undressing in front of a subordinate. He felt another flash of rage, this time at Ernst’s slim physique. As the orderly picked up the shards of china, the senior aide said, “Air Minister, I think we have good news.”

“What?”

“Our agents in Hamburg have found some letters about Mrs. Kleinfeldt. They suggest that she is a Jew.”

“‘Suggest’?”

“ Prove, Mr. Minister. They prove it.”

“Pure?”

“No. A half-breed. But from the mother’s side. So it’s indisputable.”

The Nuremberg Laws on Citizenship and Race, enacted last year, removed Jews’ German citizenship and made them “subjects,” as well as criminalized marriage or sex between Jews and Aryans. The law also defined exactly who was a Jew in the case of ancestral intermarriage. With two Jewish and two non-Jewish grandparents, Mrs. Kleinfeldt was a half-breed.

This was not as damning as it could be but the discovery delighted Göring because of the man who was Mrs. Kleinfeldt’s grandson: Doctor-professor Ludwig Keitel, Reinhard Ernst’s partner in the Waltham Study. Göring still didn’t know what this mysterious study was all about. But the facts were sufficiently damning: Ernst was working with a man descended from Jews and they were using the writings of the Jew mind-doctor Freud. And, most searing of all, Ernst had kept the study secret from the two most important people in the government, himself and Wolf.

Göring was surprised that Ernst had underestimated him. The colonel had assumed that the air minister wasn’t monitoring telephones in the cafés around Wilhelm Street. Didn’t the plenipotentiary know that in this paranoia-soaked district those were the very phones that yielded the most gold? He’d gotten the transcript of the call Ernst had made to Doctor-professor Keitel this morning, urgently requesting a meeting.

What happened in that meeting wasn’t important. What was critical was that Göring had learned the good professor’s name and had now found out that he had Yid blood in his veins. The consequences of all this? That largely depended on what Göring wished those consequences to be. Keitel, a part-Jew intellectual, would be sent to the camp at Oranienburg. There was no doubt about that. But Ernst? Göring decided it would be better to keep him visible. He’d be ousted from the top ranks of government but retained in some lackey position. Yes, by next week the man would be lucky to be employed scurrying after Defense Minister von Blomberg, carting the bald man’s briefcase.

Ebullient now, Göring took several more painkillers, shouted for another plate of spaghetti and rewarded himself for his successful intriguing by turning his attention back to his Olympic party. Wondering: Should he appear in the costume of a German hunter, an Arab sheik, or Robin Hood, complete with a quiver and a bow on his shoulder?