Jeffery Deaver - Garden Of Beasts

Käthe had brought coffee and toast, along with some pale margarine, cheese, dried sausage and soupy marmalade. She walked through the low, dusty light streaming into the front window of his living room and set the tray on the table near the kitchen.

“There,” she announced, nodding at the tray. “No need for you to come to the breakfast room.” She looked at him once quickly. Then away. “I have chores.”

“So, you still game?” he asked in English.

“What is ‘game’?”

He kissed her. “It means what I asked you last night. Are you still willing to come with me?”

She ordered the china on the tray, which had seemed to him already perfectly ordered. “I’m game. Are you?”

He shrugged. “I wouldn’t have let you change your mind. It would be Kakfif. Out of the question.”

She laughed. Then a frown. “One thing I wish to say.”

“Yeah?”

“I give opinions quite often.” She looked down. “And quite strongly. Michael called me a cyclone. I want to say, regarding the subject of sports: I could learn to like them too.”

Paul shook his head. “I’d rather you didn’t.”

“No?”

“Then I’ll feel I had to like poetry.”

She pressed her head to his chest. He believed she was smiling.

“You will like America,” he said. “But if you don’t, when all this blows over you can come back. You aren’t necessarily leaving the country forever.”

“Ah, my wise writer-man. You think this will – the expression? – will blow over?”

“Yes, I do. I think they won’t be in power much longer.” He looked at the clock. The time was nearly seven-thirty. “Now I have to meet my associate.”

“On Sunday morning? Ach, I finally understand your secret.”

He looked at her with a cautious smile.

“You’re writing about priests who play sports!” She laughed. “That’s your big story!” Then her smile faded. “And why must you leave so quickly if you are writing about sports or the cubic meters of concrete used for the stadium?”

“I don’t have to leave quickly. I have some important meetings back in the United States.” Paul drank his coffee quickly and ate one piece of toast and sausage. “You finish what’s left. I’m not hungry now.”

“Well, hurry back to me. I will pack. But only one bag, I think. If I take too many, perhaps a ghost will try to hide in one.” A laugh. “Ach, I am sounding like someone out of a story by our macabre friend E.T.A. Hoffmann.”

He kissed her and left the boardinghouse, stepped out into the morning, already hot, already painting a damp coat on the skin. With a glance up and down the empty street, he made his way north, over the canal, and into the Tiergarten, the Garden of Beasts.

Paul found Reggie Morgan sitting on a bench in front of the very pond where Käthe Richter’s lover had been beaten to death three years ago.

Even at this early hour, dozens of people were here. A number of walkers and bicyclists. Morgan’s jacket was off and his shirt sleeves partly rolled up.

Paul sat down beside him. Morgan flicked an envelope inside his jacket pocket. “Got the greenbacks okay,” he whispered in English.

They reverted to German. “They cashed a check on Saturday night?” Paul asked, laughing. “I’m living in a whole new world.”

“You think Webber will show up?” Morgan asked skeptically.

“Oh, yes. If there’s money involved he’ll be here. But I’m not sure how helpful he’ll be. I looked over Wilhelm Street last night. There are dozens of guards, hundreds maybe. It’d be far too risky to do the job there. We’ll have to see what Otto says. Maybe he’s found another location.”

They sat in silence for a moment.

Paul watched him look around the park. Morgan seemed wistful. He said, “I will miss this country very much.” For a moment the man’s face lost its keenness and the dark eyes were sad. “There are good people here. I find them kinder than the Parisians, more open than the Londoners. And they spend far more time enjoying life than New Yorkers. If we had time I’d take you to the Lustgarten and Luna Park. And I love to walk here, in the Tiergarten. I enjoy watching birds.” The thin man seemed embarrassed at this. “A foolish diversion.”

Paul laughed to himself, thinking of the model airplanes sitting on his bookshelf in Brooklyn. Foolishness is in the eye of the beholder.

“So you’ll leave?” Paul asked.

“I can’t stay. I’ve been here far too long. Every day there’s another chance of a mistake, some carelessness that will tip them off to me. And after what we’re about to do they’ll look very closely at every foreigner who’s had business here recently. But after life returns to normal and the National Socialists are gone I can return.”

“What will you do when you come back?”

Morgan brightened. “I would like to be a diplomat. That’s why I am in this business. After what I saw in the trenches…” He nodded at a bullet scar on his arm. “After that, I decided I was going to do whatever I could to stop war. The diplomatic corps made sense. I wrote the Senator about it. He suggested Berlin. A country in flux, he called it. So here I am. I hope to be a liaison officer in a few years. Then ambassador or a consul. Like our Ambassador Dodd here. He’s a genius, a true statesman. I won’t be posted here, of course, not at first. Too important a country. I could start out in Holland. Or maybe Spain, well, after their civil war is over, of course. If there’s any Spain left. Franco’s as bad as Hitler. It’ll be brutal. But, yes, I would like to come back here when sanity returns.”

A moment later Paul spotted Otto Webber coming down the path, walking slowly, a bit unsteadily and squinting against the powerful sunlight.

“There he is now.”

“Him? He looks like a Bürgermeister. And one who spent the evening in his cups. We’re relying on him? ”

Webber approached the bench and sat down, breathing hard. “Hot, hot day. I didn’t know it could be this hot in the morning. I’m rarely up at this hour. But neither are the dung-shirts so we can meet without much concern. You are Mr. John Dillinger’s associate?”

“Dillinger?” Morgan asked.

“I am Otto Webber.” He shook Morgan’s hand vigorously. “You are?”

“I’ll keep my name to myself if you don’t mind.”

“Ach, me, yes, that’s fine.” Webber examined Morgan closely. “Say, I have some nice trousers, several pair. I can sell them to you cheap. Yes, yes, very cheap. The best quality. From England. I can have one of my girls alter them to fit you perfectly. Ingrid is available. And very talented. Quite pretty too. A real pearl.”

Morgan glanced down at his gray flannel slacks. “No. I don’t need any clothes.”

“Champagne? Stockings?”

“Otto,” Paul said. “I think the only transaction we’re interested in involves what we were talking about yesterday.”

“Ach, yes, Mr. John Dillinger. Except I have some news you may not like. All of my contacts report that a veil of silence has descended on Wilhelm Street. Something has made them cautious. Security has become higher than ever. And all this in the last day. There is no information anyone has about this person you were mentioning.”

Paul’s face twisted in disappointment.

Morgan muttered, “I spent half of last night coming up with the money.”

“Good,” Webber said brightly. “Dollars, correct?”

“My friend,” the slim American added caustically, “you don’t get paid if we don’t get results.”

“But the situation is not hopeless. I can still be of some assistance.”

“Go on,” Morgan said impatiently. He looked down again at his slacks, brushing at a smudge.