Jeffery Deaver - Garden Of Beasts

“A Pschorr.”

“Yes, yes, I’m pleased to. I’ve missed you.”

Ignored by the waitress, Webber said petulantly, “Excuse me, ach, excuse me. A lager for me.”

Liesl bent and kissed Paul’s cheek. He smelled powerful perfume. It hung around him even after she left. He thought of lilac, thought of Käthe. He pushed the thoughts aside abruptly then explained what had happened at the stadium and afterward.

“No! Our friend Morgan?” Webber was horrified.

“A man pretending to be Morgan. The Kripo has my name and passport but they don’t think I killed him. And they haven’t connected me with Ernst and the stadium.”

Liesl brought them the beers. She squeezed Paul’s shoulder as she stepped away and brushed against him flirtatiously, leaving another cloud of strong perfume around the table. Paul leaned away from it. She smiled lasciviously as she sashayed away.

“She just can’t figure out I’m not interested, can she?” he muttered, all the angrier because he couldn’t get Käthe out of his mind.

“Who?” Webber asked, drinking several large gulps.

“Her. Liesl.” He nodded.

Webber frowned. “No, no, no, Mr. John Dillinger. Not her. Him. ”

“What?”

Webber frowned. “You thought Liesl is a woman?”

Paul blinked. “She’s a…”

“But of course.” He drank more beer, wiped his mustache with the back of his hand. “I thought you knew. It’s obvious.”

“Jesus Lord.” Paul rubbed his cheek hard where he’d been kissed. He glanced back. “Obvious to you maybe.”

“For a man with your profession, you’re a babe in the woods.”

“I said I liked women, when you asked me about the rooms here.”

“Ach, the show in here is women. But half the waitresses are men. Don’t blame me if both sexes find you attractive. Besides, it’s your fault – you tipped her like a prince from Addis Ababa.”

Paul lit a cigarette to cover the scent of the perfume, which he now found revolting.

“So, Mr. John Dillinger, I see there are problems for you. Are the people behind this betrayal the ones who were to get you out of Berlin?”

“I don’t know yet.” He glanced around the nearly empty club but still leaned forward to whisper, “I need your help again, Otto.”

“Ach, here I am, always ready to assist. Me, the saver-from-dung-shirts, the butter-maker, the champagne-dealer, the Krupp-impersonator.”

“But I have no money left.”

Webber gave a sneer. “Money… it’s the root of all evil, after all. What do you need, my friend?”

“A car. Another uniform. And another gun. A rifle.”

Webber was quiet. “Your hunt continues.”

“That’s right.”

“Ach, what I could’ve done with a dozen men like you in my gang ring… But Ernst’s security will be higher than ever. He may leave town for a while.”

“True. But perhaps not immediately. When I was in his office I saw that he had two appointments today. The first was at the stadium. The other is at a place called Waltham College. Where is that?”

“Waltham?” Webber asked. “It’s-”

“Hello, darling, do you wish another beer? Or maybe you wish me? ”

Paul jumped as hot breath blew against his ear and arms snaked around him. Liesl had come up from behind.

“The first time,” the waitress whispered, “will be free. Perhaps even the second time.”

“Stop it,” he barked. The waitress’s face went cold.

Now knowing the truth about him, Paul could see that while the creature’s face was pretty it had clearly masculine angles.

“You needn’t be rude, my darling.”

“I’m sorry,” Paul said, leaning away. “I’m not interested in men.”

Liesl said coolly, “I’m not a man.”

“You know what I mean.”

“Well, then, you shouldn’t have flirted,” Liesl snapped. “You owe me four marks for the beers. No, five. I added wrong.”

Paul paid and the waitress turned away coldly, muttering and noisily cleaning adjacent tables.

“My girls,” Webber said dismissively, “they get the same way sometimes. It can be such a bother.”

They resumed their conversation and Paul repeated, “Waltham College? What do you know about it?”

“A military school not far from here. It’s on the way to Oranienburg, by the way – the home of our beautiful concentration camp. Why don’t you just knock on the door while you’re there and give yourself up. Save the SS the trouble of tracking you down.”

“A car and a uniform,” Paul repeated. “I want to be an official but not a soldier. That’s what we did at the stadium and they might be anticipating it. Maybe-”

“Ach, I know! You can be an RAD leader.”

“A what?”

“National Labor Service. A Soldier of the Spade. Every young man in the country must do a stint as a laborer, probably thought up by Ernst himself as another clever way to train soldiers. They carry their shovels like guns and practice marching as much as digging. You’re too old to be in the service but you could be an officer. They have trucks to shuttle workers to job sites and parade grounds and they’re common in the countryside. No one would notice you. I know where to find you one, a nice truck. And a uniform. They’re a tasteful blue-gray. Just the color for you.”

Paul whispered, “And the rifle?”

“That will be harder. But I have some thoughts.” He finished his beer. “When do you wish to do this?”

“I should be at Waltham College by five-thirty. No later.”

Webber nodded. “Then we must move quickly to turn you into a National Socialist official.” He laughed. “Though you need no training. God knows the real ones have none.”

He heard only static at first. Then the scratchy sounds coalesced into: “Gordon?”

“We don’t use names,” the commander reminded, pressing the Bakelite phone to his ear furiously so that he could hear the words from Berlin more clearly. It was Paul Schumann, calling via radio patched through London. The time was just before 10 A.M. on Sunday morning but Gordon was at his desk at the Office of Naval Intelligence in Washington, D.C., where he’d been all night, anxiously waiting to hear whether the man had succeeded in killing Ernst. “Are you all right? What’s going on? We’ve been checking all the press, monitoring the radio broadcasts and nothing’s-”

“Be quiet,” Schumann snapped. “I don’t have time for ‘friends in the north’ and ‘friends in the south.’ Just listen.”

Gordon sat forward in his chair. “Go ahead.”

“Morgan’s dead.”

“Oh, no.” Gordon closed his eyes momentarily, feeling the loss. He hadn’t known the man personally but his information had always been solid, and any man who risks his life for his country was okay in Gordon’s book.

Then Schumann delivered a bombshell. “He was murdered by somebody named Robert Taggert, an American. You know him?”

“What? An American?”

“Do you know him?”

“No, never heard of him.”

“He tried to kill me too. Before I could do what you sent me for. The guy you’ve been talking to for the past couple of days was Taggert, not Morgan.”

“What was that name again?”

Schumann spelled it and told Gordon that he might have some connection with the U.S. diplomatic service but he wasn’t sure. The commander wrote the name on a slip of paper and shouted, “Yeoman Willets!”

The woman appeared in the doorway a moment later. Gordon jammed the note into her palm. “Get me everything you can find about this guy,” he said. She vanished instantly. Then into the phone: “Are you all right?”