Robert Butler - The Empire of Night

“Who are you?” I asked, faintly aggressive, in the most formal German I could muster.

“I am with the hotel,” he said.

“I am staying at the hotel,” I said. “In this room.”

He hesitated a beat. He was doing the thinking now.

But it was about my nose, my complexion. He’d seen me pass through the lobby last night. He tilted his head again, in the other direction, and looked at me carefully.

“May I ask what brought you to the center of my sitting room floor?” I said.

His attention snapped from my nose to my eyes. I thought I saw a flicker of uncertainty in him.

Give him a punch, give him a pat. I stepped to him and offered my hand, making my voice go warm. “I’m Joseph Hunter.”

He took my hand and shook it, still looking at me, still hesitating behind his eyes. Mother’s makeup was good. He was trying to accept what he was seeing before him as me, given his impression from yesterday, when he’d directly seen my face only briefly and from ten or fifteen yards away.

I knew I’d eventually have to pay the piper if I didn’t address this issue now. Izzy’s face would vanish by tomorrow. The question was when I’d encounter this guy again.

“I am the assistant manager,” he said.

We ended the handshake and I gave him a quick, overt once-over, saying, “ Herr . .” and leaving it for him to fill in his name.

“Wagner.”

“Herr Wagner,” I said. “What can I do for you?”

“I am here to make sure everything is correct in your room,” he said.

He did not twinkle at the ambiguity. He kept his little joke to himself.

I did not let him know I was in on the gag. “That is very kind of you,” I said. “Everything seemed to me to be in order.”

He clicked his heels, but his eyes stayed fixed on my face. And then he said, “Good day, Herr Hunter.”

I stepped aside for him and he went out of the room and closed the door softly behind him.

I did not check the room. Thanks to the Hotel Baden, I had no secrets here. I regretted showing my altered face; I could have used the chance to think a bit before reacting to Wagner. I was suddenly afraid I’d winged it into a threshing machine. I probably should have dealt immediately with the whole issue of my appearance, one way or another.

But it was done. I changed my suit and slipped watchfully through the Adlon lobby again, more than an hour before Stockman’s appointed time. There was no sign of Herr Wagner.

Outside, I put on a charcoal-gray, snap-visored golf cap, and I stepped into a taxi and told the driver simply to drive down Unter den Linden till I said otherwise. I watched out the back and made sure we were not being followed, and then I directed us to the address on Schlesische-Strasse.

The street ran parallel to the Spree near the old Silesian Gate, which was now an elevated railway stop. Number 11 was a large brick building on an even larger lot at a corner, and I instructed the driver to pass it by and drop me at the next corner, at Ufer-Strasse, a hundred yards farther on.

I stepped out of the taxi. At my back was the harbor’s train-track-laced jumble of grain elevators and package freight terminals and petroleum tanks, the whole area oddly pristine for a dock, having opened only a couple of years ago. Before me, Schlesische-Strasse emerged from the upriver shadow of the massive brick Oberbaum Bridge, which carried the elevated across the Spree.

The street was a little sleepy at this hour, only a few local boys passing through on foot. Both sides were lined with variations on Reinauer’s joint, blood-clot-red brick boxes holding trade offices and light warehousing.

I pulled my Waltham.

A quarter after three. Forty-five minutes to go.

I crossed the street to approach his building from the opposite side. I had to find a way to watch the building, for now and maybe for later. And just in case, I had to find a way in.

The frontage was all private business with simply a narrow stoop in the center going up to double slab doors. The facade’s array of windows suggested a very high ceiling on both the first and second floors, and two more standard office floors above.

I walked past, crossed at the intersection, turned at once to the left and crossed Schlesische-Strasse, heading south, away from the river, on Cuvry-Strasse. This western side of the building had the same pattern of windows as in the front, though without a doorway. I approached its southwest corner and slowed my walk after I could tell in my periphery that I was just clear of the building.

I stopped and pulled out a cigarette, and I twisted away to light it, before looking where I wanted, just in case I was being observed. Before me was an alleyway that ran along the back of this block of buildings. The big brick box immediately at hand had half a dozen sixty-gallon galvanized refuse cans lined up at the closer of two alley doors.

My cigarette was lit and I casually straightened and turned around, waving the flame from my match. As if incidentally, I looked toward Number 11. The alley had ended at my feet. On the other side of the street was a large, macadamized delivery lot. It lay behind Reinauer’s building, which comprised two wide bays of loading docks, with raised concrete platforms and metal canopies.

On the nearest platform a couple of Reinauer’s boys in overalls slouched against a stack of pallets. They were also taking this moment to light up, sharing a match.

They hadn’t noticed me yet.

I’d seen enough for now.

I turned back the way I’d come, in the direction of the river, and strolled off.

At Schlesische-Strasse once again, I realized I’d been so concentrated on Number 11 a short time ago that I’d walked by without noticing the ongoing enterprise in the corner storefront. The signs along the Cuvry-Strasse wall spoke of keeping an orderly line and detailed the hours for work calls. I stepped around the corner. The place was an employment center for temporary day laborers on the docks.

The daily calls finished at noon. This was a reasonable place for a guy with a job handing out jobs to take a slack-time break to have a smoke. I leaned against the cornerstone, putting my profile to the front doors of the Reinauer building. I had plenty of Fatimas and a fretful, let’s-get-on-with-it need to do some uninterrupted smoking.

I didn’t like the daylight. There was no effective way to get into the building. I was beginning to think this was a waste of time, though I’d had no choice but to come down here. Stockman would arrive, the real stuff would happen inside, and I’d be a futile, distant observer of bricks and mortar. But it was all I had.

I smoked the pack down low but kept a few back for props and I gave my watch fob a workout, and then it was four o’clock, and on the dot a taxi pulled up and Stockman got out.

I nipped my cap down a bit on the right side and watched him in my periphery. He was focused on the stoop and then the door and then he was gone.

I shuffled my feet and waited some more. And some more.

And then I was reconfirmed in my faith in sometimes just hanging around and waiting. Muttering its way up Schlesische-Strasse from the docks came a three-ton Daimler truck. It approached, and its gears ground, and it turned in front of me, into Cuvry-Strasse.

This was a late model with high wooden sides on its bed and a canvas top. I looked around the corner and watched it turn once more into the back lot of Reinauer’s building. He rated, this import guy, to command a truck like that in wartime Berlin.

I strolled along after it.

One quick glance to the left: the truck was backing up to the near bay; Reinauer’s boys continued to slouch and smoke.