A Gypsy in Berlin Read online

  “We’d better go now. Someone will have heard the shots.”

  Thomas remembered Eva Braun’s bodyguards, but decided that their priority would be to remove the Fuehrer’s mistress from the area before contacting the local police; that is, if they had heard the sharp reports, undoubtedly muffled by the winter air. “Let’s have a good look at the gunman,” he said, and turned over the body.

  There was a deep gash in the forehead, bone visible above the left eyebrow. Blue eyes floated in blood. It was the prominence of certain facial features that brought to mind the prostitute’s description—what Gerda Schacht had told him in South Kreuzberg—that the man in the riverside park had high cheekbones, a long narrow head, a thin pointed nose and light hair.

  “A perfect Aryan,” Ingrid said and, with her good leg, kicked the corpse.

  “Flick was there at the park, wasn’t he? He was the killer’s driver.”

  “I saw her drag them into the water.”

  “Her?”

  “The killer was a lady, a beautiful woman.”

  “What exactly did she look like?”

  “It was getting dark.”

  “Try to remember.”

  She shrugged her shoulders. “She resembled the actress in The Blue Angel.”

  “Uta Perle.” He helped Ingrid to her feet.

  “I don’t feel so good.”

  “Loss of blood, but not too much. You’ll survive.”

  “Let me go then,” she said. “I can survive on my own.”

  “The caretaker of Friedenskirche said the minister was away from Potsdam. I think you went to Berlin to meet Pastor Witte.”

  “You’re crazy...making wild guesses.” She leaned on the balustrade.

  “I spoke with the pathologist on the case. The pastor was without any identification. No one moves through Berlin without ID.” He glanced over his shoulder, saw nothing. “That means his papers were confiscated before he was thrown, already dead, into the water.”

  She bit her lower lip.

  “Why was the Sturmbannfuehrer there?”

  “I don’t know!” she blurted.

  “They were murdered in a public place by the Gestapo. Then their bodies were paraded in a public waterway for all to see. There has to be a reason!”

  “I need to change my dress.”

  The wind picked up, scattering leaves over the worn steps. He supported her on her right side and drew her along the path back to the Gypsy’s wagon. The Volkswagen was still parked where he had left it, in front of the church. The Mercedes and Eva’s bodyguards were gone. That meant Eva Braun had left Potsdam with them. He helped her up the steps into the wagon. The fortuneteller was absent.

  On the wall, a violin hung from a hook, its gut strings coiled on the counter below. On a small work table, wood chisels and a plane were laid out beside an unfinished instrument, a piece of fine grit sandpaper resting atop the bulging back of the violin. Now he noticed the caravan smelled of varnish and fresh wood shavings.

  Ingrid went to the stove and poured hot water from a kettle into a ceramic bowl and dipped a wash towel into the bowl. After rubbing the cotton towel on a small, precious piece of soap, she cleaned her leg wound—luckily not a deep one—and wrapped her thigh with dry towels and tied them off.

  Thomas took up the bow, ran a finger along it. “I saw my father today.”

  “How is he?”

  “He is in Sachsenhausen.”

  “You didn’t tell me that.”

  “He spoke of an Adam Reinhardt.”

  “What do you know of him?” she blurted and grabbed Thomas’ sweater.

  “He is your father, isn’t he?” Thomas said matter-of-factly.

  “I have to know his condition!”

  “Only that he is not well. He is receiving treatment in the camp infirmary.” He set down the bow and with his hands, indicated the unvarnished bridge and neck on the counter. “Gracefully carved, this luthier truly is a master craftsman.”

  The fortuneteller opened the caravan’s door and stepped inside. “Sir, if your name is Thomas Rost, the rich lady left something for you.”

  He stared at the key in her hand. “Did she say anything?”

  “Her instructions were, ‘Tell him to bring it back in one piece.’”

  “I have to go away for a few days, Aunt Helene,” Ingrid said.

  “I know,” she said softly. “Go with God, child.”

  By the road, Ingrid asked, “Who loaned you the car?”

  “Not for you to know.”

  “Ah, a secret.” She rested her forehead on the cold glass of the passenger’s side window. “That is the Gypsy way, too.”

  Chapter 4

  BLACKOUT COVERS ON the Volkswagen’s headlamps left the road barely visible. In addition, yellow fog floated off the River Havel and marched into the forest like distended wraiths. He felt exhausted and his head ached while, beside him, Ingrid clutched her wounded leg, groaning in pain as the initial shock wore off.

  Finally they reached Spandau. The town center was dark and empty, the Zitadelle Spandau a ghostly apparition, its crenellated tower rising into a nocturnal nothingness. As the car passed the citadel by the rivers Spree and Havel, the fog thinned and became a road-hugging mist. Beyond a stand of pine trees, Thomas turned onto a gravel drive and, shifting into neutral, coasted up to a cottage.

  The wooden front door opened and Johanna stepped out. “You brought your lover to my house?”

  “I’ve already told you, she isn’t...” He gave up trying to explain and got out. Helping Ingrid from the car, he said, “She’s been shot.”

  Johanna watched him carefully. “All right, bring her into the kitchen,” she directed, and went inside.

  “I couldn’t very well take her to a hospital,” Thomas said, and pushed Ingrid into the cottage.

  “I’m a pathologist, not a surgeon.”

  “Just do what you can.”

  In the kitchen, Johanna boiled water on the stove and cut off the blood-soaked cloths. “The bleeding has stopped, but I’ll have to reopen the wound to clean the tissue.”

  “I’m ready,” Ingrid said weakly.

  With a hot towel, Johanna wiped around the wound, then pulled threads of cotton from the coagulated blood. “A millimeter deep into the muscle. She’ll need sutures.”

  “You can talk to me, Dr. Rost,” Ingrid said, “I’m right here.”

  “How about something to ease her pain?” Thomas suggested.

  “What a great idea! Ordinarily, my patients are past suffering.” She took a small glass vial from her black leather bag, drew fluid into a hypodermic and jabbed the needle into Ingrid’s thigh. “How’s that?”

  “What the hell are you doing?” Thomas demanded.

  “Someone just tried to kill her. And whoever is after her will come here. Who carries guns in Berlin? You know what I’m talking about, don’t you?”

  “I...I didn’t think it through.”

  “Yes, your mind was elsewhere,” Johanna said, and put away the needle.

  “Why didn’t you go to Leipzig like I told you?”

  “I have to work tomorrow.”

  “Call in sick.”

  “How convenient.” She poured antiseptic onto a cotton ball. “Where is my patient staying tonight?”

  “Thomas can drop me off anywhere.”

  “Oh, that’s clever.”

  “She can have my apartment,” Thomas volunteered.

  “A bombed-out apartment building? Yes, why didn’t I think of that?”

  Thomas said, “My rooms are the last place someone would look now.”

  “Then where will you spend the night?” Johanna asked.

  It was an awkward moment. Thomas slowly filled a glass from the kettle and sipped the hot water.

  “Well?” prompted Johanna.

  “I’m working on that.”

  Chapter 5

  WITH THE FLASHLIGHT borrowed from his ex-wife rolling around on the passenger seat, Thomas motored t
hrough Charlottenburg into the Wilmersdorf district. At least Ingrid is relatively safe hiding at my place, he told himself. Despite bomb damage to some of the front-facing apartments, city authorities hadn’t condemned the entire building—no doubt influenced by the citywide housing shortage. He glanced in the rearview mirror. No sign of anyone watching from down the road.

  The two-story house sat on a quiet residential street near the village of Grunewald. A four-door sedan was parked on the driveway. Because Peter Rost had never owned a car, Thomas cruised past the family home and around the corner. Dressed in brown wool slacks, a dark green sweater and rubber-soled shoes—leaving his coats in the car—he cut through a neighbor’s yard to the low hedge by the kitchen door. Crouching, he went up to the basement window. As usual, the latch was loose.

  He climbed in and dropped to the cement floor. After shutting the window, he attached thin blue paper to the flashlight’s lens with a rubber band. The basement was cold. Switching on the light, he noted that the coal bin was empty and went up the wooden steps to the kitchen. The sink was full of unwashed dishes and the icebox door was ajar, suggesting a hasty, unplanned departure.

  He moved down the hall to the study and closed the curtains, then shined the light on a bookshelf, a floor-to-ceiling affair made of dark mahogany. Thomas Mann’s first novel occupied a special place at eye level. Besides Buddenbrooks were books that his father had helped edit—The Magic Mountain, The Stories of Joseph (1933) and, lastly, Young Joseph (1934), the latter volume released a year after the author had left for Switzerland, before he established a home in California.

  The blue-tinted beam fell on a framed photograph of his mother, Amanda Rost. He lifted the picture and studied her delicate features in the black-and-white image. The eyes projected intelligence and curiosity, her light hair set in a stylish wave. Her mouth was partly open in a smile. It was her joyful demeanor that gave away her American origin. Free of Old World reserve, her graciousness and laughter had set the tone for his entire childhood, a kind of balance to his father’s sense of high purpose.

  “Shall I take it with me?” he asked himself.

  The open drawers of the desk provided an answer. The whole house would have been methodically searched, the contents catalogued. He put the photograph back and left the study. At the top of the stairs he entered his old bedroom. Once again there was evidence of a police presence—the open closet door; half-opened dresser drawers; a long, ragged slice down the center of the mattress. He crossed the hall to the bathroom.

  An oak footstool was under the sink. He set it below the ceiling light. Resting the flashlight on a hand towel in the sink, he aimed the beam up at the porcelain socket. The light bulb was missing. Stepping onto the stool he took out his penknife and unscrewed the socket’s fasteners. Within a minute the screws were out and, brushing aside the pull cord, he lowered the socket enough to reveal a metal cylindrical cigar case, set between the wiring. Carefully he pulled the case out of its hiding place and clamped it with his lips while screwing the socket back into the plaster ceiling. After getting down from the stool he leaned on the lip of the sink and opened the case.

  There was a roll of paper inside.

  Unrolling the paper, he aimed the flashlight and quietly read a list of names: “Sauerbruch, Ferdinand; Bruening, Heinrich; Spranger, Eduard; Lauter, Sigismund.”

  Sauerbruch was chief surgeon at Charité. Bruening had served as Germany’s chancellor from 1930-32 and was now at St. Hedwig’s Hospital. Spranger was a professor of philosophy at Berlin University. Lauter was director of St. Getrauden Hospital. All of them were friends or associates of his father’s. He read on, “Goerdeler, Carl; Dohnanyi, Hans von; Bonhoeffer, Dietrich.”

  As recently as 1937, Goerdeler was the Lord Mayor of Leipzig. Dohnanyi, son of a Hungarian composer, was a lawyer who had worked for the Supreme Court. Then there was Bonhoeffer, Dohnanyi’s brother-in-law and, after Martin Niemoeller’s arrest, one of the leaders of the Confessional Church. A brilliant young theologian and preacher, he was a man of unyielding principles. He was also a son of Dr. Karl Bonhoeffer, a friend and colleague of Johanna Rost.

  More names followed, obviously highly-placed members of the resistance to Adolf Hitler’s regime. It was the last name on the list that jumped from the curled page—Philip Witte, the minister from Potsdam. Was Pastor Witte eliminated because of his role in the Opposition or was there another, even more sinister reason? Thomas wondered.

  Time to leave. He couldn’t risk burning the list in the house and he couldn’t flush it down the toilet, the pipes were too noisy. Instead, he rolled up the paper, reinserted it into the cigar tube and stuffed the case into the right front pocket of his trousers. Back at the car, he decided, he’d set fire to the paper and drive over the ashes. He put the stool and towel back where he’d found them and went downstairs.

  In the kitchen he lifted a corner of the door curtain but didn’t see anyone outside. While reciting the burglar’s mantra, “In through a window, out through a door,” he backed from the house onto the porch and immediately felt a hard metallic object between his shoulder blades.

  “You picked the wrong house to break into, Fritz. Don’t move,” the man said smugly.

  “You’re the police?”

  “Geheimes Staatspolizei.”

  Gestapo. “How did you know I was here?”

  “The curtain in the study, we left it open. Now, walk backward down the steps.”

  Thomas’ mind raced. The detective would apply handcuffs and pat him down. Men’s lives were at stake and he decided that, with a bit of luck, he might be able to slide the tube from his pocket, lose it in the shrubbery.

  “I feel sick,” he said. “I need to sit down.”

  “You’re not too ill to prowl around.”

  “I have a contagious disease,” Thomas lied.

  ‘You’re bluffing,” the detective said, but stepped back. “I still have to search you.”

  “You shouldn’t touch me. It’s not safe.”

  “Then maybe I’ll just have to shoot you.”

  “And get hit by blood spatters? You’ll go into quarantine for sure.”

  “Okay, damnit. Empty your pockets.”

  Thomas heard a soft, wheezing cry, like the sound of air released from a balloon and the detective collapsed against his legs, shoving Thomas onto the kitchen steps. He was pinned under the weight of the Gestapo officer’s dead body.

  “That was close, Rost,” a bass voice said. “You’re lucky I got here in time.”

  Thomas tried to look back. “Who are you?”

  “Call me Werner. My real name is not important.” The man called Werner pulled the detective off of Thomas’ legs and lowered the unconscious man onto a shrub.

  Thomas rose unsteadily, brushed off his slacks and stared at his rescuer. Werner was tall and thin with a striking facial deformity—the left cheekbone was caved-in, the eye above lifeless. His hair was cut short, military style. His fingers were uncommonly long, easily the equal of those of the Russian composer and pianist, Sergei Rachmaninoff.

  “Is he dead?” Thomas asked.

  “Bad concussion.” Werner held up a stuffed sock in his right hand. “Filled with lead.”

  “There was another one...in a car out front.”

  “Chloroform got. By the time he regains consciousness we’ll be gone.”

  “I don’t understand why you are here.”

  “You have something for us.”

  Thomas shivered, involuntarily. “What group are you with?”

  Werner raised the stocking. “I don’t have to ask. I can take it from you.”

  Thomas looked down at the fallen detective. “His gun could’ve gone off when you struck him.”

  “I’d still get the product, wouldn’t I?”

  “Terrific. I’m left to die and you walk off with the prize.”

  “It’s a dangerous game you’re involved in, Rost. You’re playing with the big boys now.” Werner retrieved the poli
ceman’s pistol, removed the clip and ejected the round from the firing chamber against his jacket. He picked up the bullet and tossed it and the clip onto the roof. In the quietness, the bullet could be heard rolling down into a gutter. “Walther PPK, .380 cal., a very nice weapon. Those bastards always get the best equipment.” Oddly, he made the sign of the cross and then threw the gun into a pile of leaves. “I’m not a thief.”

  “So what happens now?”

  “You will come with me. There are some people who want to meet you.”

  “The Volkswagen I drove—’’

  “I’ll drive it. Once in the car,” he produced a wide band of black cloth, “tie this around your eyes.”

  Thomas took the cloth. “Should I thank you for intervening on my behalf?”

  “What you carry counts for more than your life.”

  Thomas nodded. “It’s good to know one’s place in the greater scheme of things.”

  At the car, Werner ducked his head and slid behind the wheel. “Hah, the People’s car.”

  Thomas sat where Eva Braun had been not long before and took out the black cloth. Before applying it he asked, “How did the injury to your face occur?”

  Werner started the air-cooled motor, put it in gear and pulled away from the curb. “It’s like this, Herr Rost. Contrary to popular opinion, some units of the French Army fought like devils. I was with the First Panzer Division in northern France. My tank had raced so far and so fast, we ran out of fuel. Before the tanker reached us, we met with stiff resistance. After we ran out of ammunition, we engaged the enemy in close combat and that is when the butt of a Frenchman’s rifle met the side of my head. But I count my blessings daily...at least I still have one good eye.”

  Chapter 6

  “TAKE OFF THE BLINDFOLD,” Werner ordered, and stopped the car. “Get out.”

  On the sidewalk, Thomas noticed the pair of square stone pillars that anchored an elaborate iron gate. Behind the gate a passageway led between 18th century five-story buildings to a church with a single spire.

  “The Sophienkirche,” Thomas said. “You drove Eva Braun’s car into the heart of Berlin?”