Garden Of Beasts

“Käthe, I haven’t been honest with you, no. But you have to leave with me… Please.”

“Do you know what our philosopher Nietzsche wrote? He said, ‘He who fights monsters must take care that he does not become a monster himself.’ Oh, how true that is, Paul. How true.”

“Please, come with me.” He took her by the shoulders, gripping her hard.

But Käthe Richter was strong too. She pulled his hands off and stepped back. Her eyes fixed on his and she whispered ruthlessly, “I’d rather share my country with ten thousand killers than my bed with one. ”

And turning on her heels, she hesitated for a moment then walked away quickly, drawing the glances of passersby, who wondered what might have caused such a fierce lovers’ spat.

Chapter Thirty-One

“Willi, Willi, Willi…”

Chief of Inspectors Friedrich Horcher drew the name out very slowly.

Kohl had returned to the Alex and was nearly to his office when his boss caught up with him. “Yes, sir?”

“I’ve been looking for you.”

“Yes? Have you?”

“It’s about that Gatow case. The shootings. You will recall?”

How could he forget? Those pictures would be burned into his mind forever. The women… the children… But now he felt the chill of fear again. Had the case in fact been a test, as he’d worried earlier? Had Heydrich’s boys waited to see if he’d drop the matter and now learned that he’d done worse: He’d secretly called the young gendarme at home about it?

Horcher tugged at his blood-red armband. “I have good news for you. The case has been solved. Charlottenburg too, the Polish workers. They were both the work of the same killer.”

Kohl’s initial relief that he was not going to be arrested turned quickly to bewilderment. “Who closed the case? Someone at Kripo?”

“No, no, it was the head of the gendarmerie himself. Meyerhoff. Imagine.”

Ach… The matter was begi

“Was there one accomplice or more?” Kohl asked.

“Accomplice? No, no, the Czech was alone.”

“Alone? But the gendarme in Gatow concluded there had to be at least two or three perpetrators, probably more. The pictures support that theory, and logic, as well, given the number of victims.”

“Ach, as we know, Willi, being trained policemen, the eye can be fooled. And a young gendarme in the suburbs? They are not used to crime scene investigation. Anyway, the Jew confessed. He acted alone. The case is solved. And the fellow is on his way to the camp.”

“I would like to interview him.”

A hesitation. Then, smiling still, Horcher adjusted his armband once again. “I’ll see what I can do about that. Though it’s likely that he might already be in Dachau.”

“Dachau? Why would they send him to Munich? Why not Oranienburg?”

“Overcrowding perhaps. In any event, the case is done, so there’s really no reason to talk to him.”

The man was, of course, dead by now.

“Besides, you need all your time to concentrate on the Dresden Alley matter. How is that coming?”

“We’ve had some breakthroughs,” Kohl told his boss, trying to keep anger and frustration out of his voice. “A day or two and I think we’ll have all our answers.”

“Excellent.” Horcher frowned. “Even more hubbub over on Prince Albrecht Street than before. Did you hear? More alerts, more security measures. Even mobilizing among the SS. Still haven’t heard what’s going on. Have you caught a glimmer, by any chance?”

“No, sir.” Poor Horcher. Afraid everybody was better informed than he. “You’ll have the report on the killing soon,” Kohl told him.

“Good. It is leaning toward that foreigner, isn’t it? I believe you said it was.”

Kohl thought: No, you said it was. “The case is moving apace.”

“Excellent. My, look at us, Willi: Here we are working Sundays. Can you imagine it? Remember when we actually had Saturday afternoon and Sunday off?” The man wandered back up the quiet hallway.

Kohl walked to the doorway of his office and saw the blank spaces where his notes and the photographs of the Gatow killings had rested. Horcher would have “filed them away” – meaning they’d had the same fate as the poor Czech Jew. Probably burned like the manifest of the Manhattan and floating over the city as particles of ash in the alkaline Berlin wind. He leaned wearily against the doorjamb, staring at the empty spaces on his desk, and he thought: This is the one thing about murder: It can never be undone. You return the stolen money, bruises heal, the burned-down house is rebuilt, you find the kidnap victim troubled but alive. But those children who had died, their parents, the Polish workers… their deaths were forever.

And yet here was Willi Kohl being told that this was not so. That the laws of the universe were somehow different in this land: The deaths of the families and the workers had been erased. Because, if they had been real, then honest people would not rest until the loss had been understood and mourned and – Kohl’s role – vindicated.

The inspector hung his hat on the rack and sat heavily in his creaking chair. He looked over his incoming mail and telegrams. Nothing regarding Schuma

It was just as well that he could make the comparison himself. A message from the Identification Department told him that all the examiners and analysts had been ordered to drop any Kripo investigation and make themselves available to the Gestapo and SS in light of “a new development in the security alert.”

He walked to Janssen’s desk and learned that the coroner’s men still hadn’t collected Taggert’s body from the boardinghouse. Kohl shook his head and sighed. “We’ll do what we can here. Have the ballistics technicians run tests on the Spanish pistol to make sure it is the murder weapon.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Oh, and, Janssen? If the firearms examiners too have been commandeered in the search for this Russian, then run the tests yourselves. You can do that, can you not?”

“I can, sir, yes.”

After the young man had left, Kohl sat back and began to jot a list of questions about Morgan and the mysterious Taggert, which he would have translated and sent to the American authorities.

A shadow appeared in the doorway. “Sir, a telegram,” said the floor ru

“Yes, yes, thank you.” Thinking it would be from the United States Lines about the manifest or Ma

But he was wrong. It was from the New York City Police Department. The language was English but he could understand the meaning well enough.

TO DETECTIVE INSPECTOR W KOHL

KRIMINALPOLIZEI ALEXANDERPLATZ BERLIN

IN RESPONSE TO YOUR REQUEST OF EVEN DATE BE ADVISED

THAT THE FILE ON P SCHUMANN HAS BEEN EXPUNGED AND OUR

INVESTIGATION RE SAID INDIVIDUAL SUSPENDED INDEFINITELY

STOP NO MORE INFORMATION IS AVAILABLE STOP