Jeffery Deaver - Garden Of Beasts

And so the question of trust had arisen. Albrecht Fischer managed to contact a former colleague, Gerhard Unger, from the University of Berlin. A pacifist and Soci himself, Unger had quit his job teaching not long after the National Socialists had come to power and returned to his family confectionary company. He often traveled over borders and, being firmly anti-Hitler, was more than happy to help smuggle the boys out of Germany in one of his company’s trucks. Every Sunday morning Unger made a run to Holland to deliver his candy and pick up ingredients. It was felt that with all the visitors coming into the country for the Olympics the border guards would be preoccupied and pay no attention to a commercial truck leaving the country on a regular run.

But could they trust him with their lives?

There was no apparent reason not to. Unger and Albrecht had been friends. They were like-minded. He hated the National Socialists.

Yet nowadays there were so many excuses for betrayal.

He could denounce us because it’s Sunday…

And there was another reason behind Kurt Fischer’s hesitation to leave. The young man was a pacifist and Social Democrat mostly because of his parents and his friends; he’d never been very active politically. Life to him had been hiking and girls and traveling and skiing. But now that the National Socialists were in power, he was surprised to find within him a strong desire to fight them, to enlighten people about their intolerance and evil. Perhaps, he debated, he should stay and work to bring them down.

But they were so powerful, so insidious. And so deadly.

Kurt looked at the clock on the mantelpiece. It had run down. He and Hans were always forgetting to wind it. This had been their father’s job and the image of the still timepiece made Kurt’s heart ache. He pulled his pocket watch out and checked the time. “We have to go now or call him and tell him we’re not doing it.”

Tink, tink, tink… The knife resumed its cymbal tapping on the plate.

Then long silence.

“I say we stay,” Hans said. But he looked at his brother expectantly; there’d always been rivalry between the two, yet the younger would abide by any decision the older made.

But will I decide correctly?

Survival…

Kurt Fischer finally said, “We’re going. Get your pack.”

Tink, tink…

Kurt shouldered his knapsack and glared defiantly at his brother. But Hans’s mood changed like spring weather. He suddenly laughed and gestured at their clothing. They were dressed in shorts, short-sleeved shirts and hiking boots. “Look at us: Paint us brown and we’d be Hitler Youth!”

Kurt couldn’t help but smile. “Let’s go, comrade,” he said sarcastically, the term the same one used by Stormtroopers and Youth to refer to their fellows.

Refusing a last look around the apartment, for fear he’d start to cry, Kurt Fischer opened the door and they stepped into the corridor.

Across the hallway was stocky, apple-cheeked Mrs. Lutz, a War widow, scrubbing her doormat. The woman usually kept to herself but would sometimes stop by certain residents’ apartments – only those who met her strict standards of neighborliness, whatever those might be – to deliver her miraculous foodstuffs. She considered the Fischers her friends and over the years had left presents of lung pudding, prune dumplings, head cheese, pickled cucumbers, garlic sausage and noodles with tripe. Just seeing her now, Kurt began to salivate.

“Ach, the Fischer brothers!”

“Good morning, Mrs. Lutz. You’re hard at work early.”

“It will be hot again, I’ve heard. Ach, for some rain.”

“Oh, we don’t want anything to interfere with the Olympics,” Hans said with a hint of irony. “We’re so looking forward to seeing them.”

She laughed. “Silly people running and jumping in their undergarments! Who needs them when my poor plants are dying of thirst? Look at my John-go-to-bed-at-noons outside the door. And the begonias! Now, tell me, where are your parents? Still on that trip of theirs?”

“In London, yes.” Their parents’ political difficulties were not common knowledge and the brothers were naturally reluctant to mention them to anyone.

“It’s been several months. They better get home soon or they won’t recognize you. Where are you off to now?”

“Hiking. In the Grünewald.”

“Oh, it’s lovely there. And much cooler than in the city.” She returned to her diligent scrubbing.

As they walked down the stairs Kurt glanced at his brother and noticed that Hans had quickly grown sullen again.

“What’s the matter?”

“You seem to think this city is the devil’s playground. But it’s not. There are millions of people like her.” He nodded back up the stairs. “Good people, kind people. And we’re leaving all of them behind. And to go to what? A place where we know no one, where we can hardly speak the language, where we have no jobs, a place we were at war with only twenty years ago? How well do you think we’ll be received?”

Kurt had no rebuttal for this. His brother was one hundred percent correct. And there were probably a dozen more arguments to be made against their leaving.

Outside, they looked up and down the hot street. None of the few people out at this hour paid any attention to them. “Let’s go,” Kurt said and strode down the sidewalk, reflecting that, in a way, he’d been honest with Mrs. Lutz. They were going on a wander – only not to any rustic hostel in the fragrant woods west of Berlin but toward an uncertain new life in a wholly alien land.

He jumped when his phone buzzed.

Hoping it was the medical examiner on the Dresden Alley case, he grabbed the receiver. “Kohl here.”

“Come see me, Willi.”

Click.

A moment later, his heart beating solidly, he was walking up the hall to Friedrich Horcher’s office.

What now? The chief of inspectors was at headquarters on a Sunday morning? Had Peter Krauss learned that Kohl had made up the story about Reinhard Heydrich and Göttburg (the man came from Halle) to save the witness, the baker Rosenbaum? Had someone overheard him make an improvident comment to Janssen? Had word come down from on high that the inspector inquiring about dead Jews in Gatow was to be reprimanded?

Kohl stepped into Horcher’s office. “Sir?”

“Come in, Willi.” He rose and closed the door, gestured Kohl to sit.

The inspector did so. He held the man’s eye, as he’d told his sons to do whenever they looked at another human being with whom difficulty might arise.

There was silence as Horcher resumed his seat and rocked back and forth in the sumptuous leather chair, playing absently with the brilliant red armband on his left biceps. He was one of the few senior Kripo officials who actually wore one in the Alex.

“The Dresden Alley case… keeping you busy, is it?”

“An interesting one, this.”

“I miss the days of investigating, Willi.”

“Yes, sir.”

Horcher meticulously ordered papers on his desk. “You will go to the Games?”

“I got my tickets a year ago.”

“Did you? Your children are looking forward to it?”

“Indeed. My wife too.”

“Ach, good, good.” Horcher had not heard a single word of Kohl’s. More silence for a moment. He stroked his waxed mustache, as he was accustomed to do when not playing with his crimson armband. Then: “Some-times, Willi, it’s necessary to do difficult things. Especially in our line of work, don’t you think?” Horcher avoided his eyes when he said this. Through his concern, Kohl thought: This is why the man will not advance very far in the Party; he’s actually troubled to deliver bad news.