Jeffery Deaver - Garden Of Beasts

“Leave the country,” Paul whispered.

She rolled about to face him. He felt her strong arms, strengthened from scrubbing tubs and sweeping floors, snake around him, he felt her heel rise and find the small of his back, pulling him closer, closer.

“Leave,” he repeated.

The shivering stopped. Her breathing grew more regular. “I cannot leave.”

“Why not?”

“It’s my country,” she whispered simply. “I can’t abandon it.”

“But it’s not your country any longer. It’s theirs. What did you say? Tier. Beasts, thugs. It’s been taken over by beasts… Leave. Get away before it gets worse.”

“You think it will get worse? Tell me, Paul. Please. You’re a writer. The way of the world isn’t my way. It isn’t teaching or Goethe or poetry. You’re a clever man. What do you think?”

“I think it will get worse. You have to get out of here. As soon as you can.”

She relaxed her desperate grip on him. “Even if I wanted to I cannot. After I was fired my name went on a list. They took my passport. I’ll never get exit papers. They’re afraid we’ll work against them from England or Paris. So they keep us close.”

“Come back with me. I can get you out.”

Words between lovers…

“Come to America.” Had she not heard? Or had she decided no already? “We have wonderful schools. You could teach. Your English is as good as anyone’s.”

She inhaled deeply. “What are you asking?”

“Leave with me.”

A harsh laugh. “A woman cries, a man says anything to stop the tears. Ach, I don’t even know you.”

Paul said, “And I don’t know you. I’m not proposing, I’m not saying we live together. I’m just saying you have to get the hell out of here. I can arrange that.”

In the silence that followed, Paul was thinking that, no, he wasn’t proposing. Nothing of the sort. But, truth be told, Paul Schumann couldn’t help but wonder if his offer wasn’t about more than helping her escape from this difficult place. Oh, he’d had his share of women – good girls and bad girls and good girls playing at being bad. Some of them he’d thought he’d loved, and some he’d known he had. But he knew he’d never felt for them what he felt for this woman after such a short period of time. Yes, he loved Marion in a way. He’d spend an occasional night with her in Manhattan. Or she with him in Brooklyn. They’d lie together, they’d share words – about movies, about where hemline lengths would go next year, about Luigi’s restaurant, about her mother, about his sister. About the Dodgers. But they weren’t lovers’ words, Paul Schumann realized. Not like he’d spoken tonight with this complicated, passionate woman.

Finally she said dismissively, irritated, “Ach, I can’t go. How can I go? I told you about my passport and exit papers.”

“This is what I’m saying. You don’t have to worry about that. I have connections.”

“You do?”

“People in America owe me favors.” This much was true. He thought of Avery and Manielli in Amsterdam, ready at a moment’s notice to send the plane to collect him. Then he asked her, “Do you have ties here? How about your sister?”

“Ach, my sister… She’s married to a Party loyalist. She doesn’t even see me. I’m an embarrassment.” After a moment Käthe said, “No, I have only ghosts here. And ghosts are no reason to remain. They’re reasons to leave.”

Outside, laughter and drunken shouts. A slurring male voice sang, “When the Olympic Games are done, the Jews will feel our knife and gun…” Then the crash of breaking glass. Another song, several voices singing this time. “Hold high the banner, close the ranks. The SA marches on with firm steps… Give way, give way to the brown battalions, as the Stormtroopers clear the land…”

He recognized the song that the Hitler Youth had sung yesterday as they lowered the flag at the Olympic Village. The red, the white and the black hooked cross.

Ach, surely you know…

“Oh, Paul, you can really get me out of the country, without papers?”

“Yes. But I’ll be leaving soon. Tomorrow night, I hope. Or the night after.”

“How?”

“Leave the details to me. Are you willing to leave immediately?”

After a moment of silence: “I can do that. Yes.”

She took his hand, stroked his palm and interlaced her fingers with his. This was by far the most intimate moment between them tonight.

He gripped her tightly, stretched his arm out and struck something hard under the pillow. He touched it and, from the size and feel, realized that it was the volume of Goethe’s poems that he’d given her earlier.

“You won’t-”

“Shhhh,” he whispered. And stroked her hair.

Paul Schumann knew that there are times for lovers’ words to end.

He had been in his office at the Alex for an hour, since 5 A. M., painstakingly writing out the English-language telegram that he had composed in his mind as he lay sleepless in bed beside peaceful Heidi, fragrant with the powder she dusted on before retiring.

Willi Kohl now looked over his handiwork:

I AM BEING SENIOR DETECTIVE INSPECTOR WILLI

KOHL OF THE KRIMINALPOLIZEI (CRIMINAL POLICE) IN

BERLIN STOP WE SEEK INFORMATION REGARD AMERI

CAN POSSIBLY FROM NEW YORK PRESENTLY IN BERLIN

PAUL SCHUMANN IN CONNECTION OF HOMICIDE STOP

ARRIVED WITH AMERICAN OLYMPIC TEAM STOP PLEASE

TO REMIT ME INFORMATION ABOUT THIS MAN AT KRIM

INALPOLIZEI HEADQUARTERS ALEXANDERPLATZ

BERLIN TO DIRECTION OF INSPECTOR WILLI KOHL

STOP MOST URGENT STOP THANKING YOU REGARDS

He’d struggled hard with the wording. The department had translators but none worked on Sunday and he wanted to send the telegram immediately. It would be earlier in America; he wasn’t sure about the time zones and he guessed the hour to be about midnight overseas but he hoped that the law enforcers there would keep the same long shifts as police in most countries.

Kohl read the telegram once again and decided that, though flawed, it was good enough. On a separate sheet of paper he wrote instructions to send it to the International Olympic Committee, the New York City Police Department and the Federal Bureau of Investigation. He walked down to the telegraph office. He was disappointed to find that no one was as yet on duty. Angrily, he returned to his desk.

After a few hours’ sleep, Janssen was presently en route back to the Olympic Village to see if he could pick up any more leads there. What else could Kohl himself do? Nothing occurred to him, except hounding the medical examiner for the autopsy and FPE for the fingerprint analysis. But they, of course, were not in their offices yet either and might not come in at all on Sunday.

He felt the frustration acutely.

His eyes dropped down to the hard-worked-on telegram.

“Ach, this is absurd.” He would wait no longer. How difficult could it be to man a Teletype machine? Kohl rose and hurried back to the department, figuring he would do the best he could to transmit the telegram to the United States himself. And if, because of his clumsy fingers, it ended up being sent by mistake to a hundred different places in America, well, so much the better.

She had returned to her own room not long before, around 6 A.M., and was now back in his, wearing a dark blue housedress, pins holding her hair flat to her head, a little blush on her cheeks. Paul stood in the doorway, wiping the remnants of the shaving froth from his face. He put the cover on his safety razor and dropped it into his stained canvas bag.