Garden Of Beasts

Kohl felt the blow in his chest, hearing this news. But he recovered quickly. “Forgive me, State Police Chief,” the inspector said, shaking his head and smiling. “Of course I was aware. The incident here has wholly occupied my mind… Regarding Janssen, he’ll be ready soon. He’s proving extremely talented.”

“We’ve had our eye on him for some time, Heydrich and I both. You can be proud of that boy. He’s going to the top quickly, I have a feeling. Hail Hitler.”

“Hail Hitler.”

Devastated, Kohl walked away. Janssen? He’d pla

Janssen, you could have me arrested, you know, and sent to Oranienburg for a year for saying what I just did…

Still, he reflected, the inspector candidate needed Kohl to get ahead and could not afford to denounce him. Perhaps the danger was not as great as it could have been.

Kohl looked up from the ground at the coterie of SS troops standing around the van. One of them, a huge man in a black helmet, asked, “Yes? Can we help you?”

He explained about his DKW.

“The killer disabled it? Why did he bother? He could have outrun you on foot!” The soldiers laughed. “Yes, yes, we’ll give you a ride, Inspector. We’ll leave in a few minutes.”

Kohl nodded and, still numb with shock from learning about Janssen, climbed into the van and sat by himself. He stared into the orange disk of the sun, slipping behind a hillside bristling with the silhouettes of flowers and grass. He slouched, head against the back of the seat. The SS troops got into the vehicle and they started off, out of the college, heading southeast, back to Berlin.

The soldiers talked about the attempted assassination and the Olympic Games and plans for a big National Socialist rally outside of Spandau this coming weekend.

It was at this moment that the inspector came to a decision. His choice seemed absurdly impulsive, as fast as the sudden vanishing of the sun below the horizon, brilliant color in the sky one moment then nothing but a blue-gray dimness an instant later. But perhaps, he reflected, his was no conscious choice at all but was inevitable and had been determined long, long before, by immutable laws, in the same way that day had to become dusk.

Willi Kohl and his family would leave Germany.

Konrad Janssen’s betrayal and the Waltham Study – both stark emblems of what the government was and where it was going – were reason enough. Yet what truly decided the matter was the American, Paul Schuma

Standing with the SS officers outside Building 5, aware that he had both Schuma

As for how he would leave, he knew that too. He would remain ignorant of Janssen’s choice (but would, of course, cease his improvident asides to the young man), he would mouth whatever lines Chief of Inspectors Horcher wished him to, he would stay well clear of the basement of Kripo headquarters with its busy DeHoMag card-sorting machines, he would handle murders like the one in Gatow exactly the way they wished him to – which was, of course, to handle them not at all. He would be the model National Socialist policeman.

And then in February he would take his entire family with him to the International Criminal Police Commission conference in London. And from there they would sail for New York, to which two cousins had emigrated some years ago and had made lives for themselves.

Being a senior official traveling on Kripo business he could easily arrange for exit documents and permission to take a good amount of money out of the country. There would be some tricky maneuvering, of course, in making the arrangements, but who in Germany nowadays did not have some skill at intrigue?

Heidi would welcome the change, of course, finding a haven for her children. Günter would be saved from his Nazi Youth classmates. Hilde could attend school once again and perhaps become the professor she wished to be.

His older daughter had a complication, of course: her fiancé, Heinrich Sachs. But Kohl decided he would convince the man to come with them. Sachs was vehemently anti-National Socialist, had no close relatives and was so completely in love with Charlotte that he would follow her anywhere. The young Sachs was a talented civil servant, spoke English well and, despite some bouts of arthritis, he was a tireless worker; Kohl suspected that he would have a far easier time finding a job in America than would Kohl himself.

As for the inspector – starting over in middle age! What an overwhelming challenge! He thought ironically of the Leader’s nonsensical opus, My Struggle. Well, what a struggle he himself would have – a tired man with a family, begi

No, the tears were for what he was now looking at as they swept around a turn en route to Berlin: the plains of Prussia. And, though they were dusty and wan on this dry summer evening, they still exuded a grandeur and palpable significance, for they were the plains of his Germany, a great nation at heart, whose truths and ideals had somehow tragically been stolen by thieves.

Kohl reached into his pocket and pulled out his meerschaum pipe. He filled the bowl then searched his jacket but could find no match. He heard a rasp as the SS trooper sitting next to him struck one and held it out for him. “Thank you,” Kohl said and sucked on the stem to ignite the tobacco. He sat back, filling the air around him with the scent of pungent cherries, and stared out the front windshield as the lights of Berlin came into view.

Chapter Forty-Two

The car wove like a dancer along the road to his home in Charlottenburg. Reinhard Ernst sat in the back, bracing himself against the turns, his head resting on the luxurious leather. He had a new driver and guard; Claus, the SS lieutenant with him at Waltham College, had been injured by glass flying from a window of the Mercedes and had been taken to a surgeon. Another SS car, filled with black-helmeted guards, was behind them.

He removed his glasses and rubbed his eyes. Ach, Keitel dead, along with the soldier taking part in the study. “Subject D” was how Ernst thought of him; he’d never even known the man’s name… What a disaster this day had been.

Yet the one thing that stood out most prominently in Ernst’s thoughts was the choice that the killer had made outside Building 5. If he’d wanted to kill me, the colonel reflected, which was clearly his mission, he could have, easily. Yet he had decided not to; he’d rescued the young men instead. Reflecting on this act, the horror of what Ernst had been doing became clear. Yes, he realized, the Waltham Study was abominable. He had looked those young men in the face and told them: Serve in the army for a year and your sins will be absolved – all the while knowing that this was a lie; he’d spun the fiction solely to keep the victims relaxed and unsuspecting, so that the soldier could get to know them before he killed them.

Yes, he’d lied to the Fischer brothers, just as he’d lied to the Polish workers when he’d said they would receive double pay to transplant some trees near Charlottenburg for the Olympics. And he’d lied to the Jewish families in Gatow, telling them to assemble by the riverside, because there were some renegade Stormtroopers nearby and Ernst and his men would protect them.