The Second Son

Hoffner sat with this for a few moments before reaching for his whiskey. He took a drink. “So it’s the oddsmakers who are reading Keynes?” Hoffner expected a smile but Radek said nothing.

Franz, now ru

Hoffner smiled and looked at Radek. “We’re taking this latest theory very seriously, are we?”

Radek said, “You enjoy being an idiot, don’t you?”

“Not really a question of enjoying,” said Hoffner. “I think I liked the sex theory better, though. I’ve never bet on car racing.”

“Last I checked,” said Radek, “you weren’t doing much on the sex front, either.”

Hoffner laughed to himself.

Radek set down the paper and took his glass. “You have any idea where he is?” He drank.

Hoffner lapped back the last of his whiskey. “Barcelona,” he said. “Somewhere in there.” He raised his empty glass to a waiter. “I think everything’s happening up on hilltops right about now.”

“And he’s alive?”

“He has to be, doesn’t he?”

“It’ll be hot.”

The waiter appeared and took the glass. “Yes,” said Hoffner. “It will.”

“Georgi’s good in spots like that. He always has been.”

“You’ve met him twice, Zenlo.” There was an unexpected edge to Hoffner’s voice. “You have no idea who or what he is.” It was an awkward few moments before the food miraculously arrived, and Rolf and Franz were forced to stack their plates onto the empties so as to make room. Finally Hoffner said, “He’s always liked you, though. Liked that you never tried to corrupt me.”

Radek was glad for the reprieve. “How much more corruption could you take?” When Hoffner started in on the noodles, Radek said, “You like Gershwin, Nikolai?” Hoffner focused on his plate and Radek said, “I do.”

Hoffner nodded as he chewed.

Rolf said lazily, “It’s not Gershwin.” He was working his way through a mouthful of potatoes.

“What?” said Radek.

“The piano,” said Rolf, swallowing. “It’s not Gershwin. You’re thinking of the wrong thing.” He shoveled in another forkful.

“I’m not.”

“You are.”

“No,” said Radek. “I’m not.” There was a quiet menace in his tone; Rolf, however, continued to chew. “This is”-Radek became more serious as he thought-“Crazy Girl,” he said triumphantly. “ ‘Embraceable You’ from Crazy Girl.”

“Girl Crazy,” Rolf corrected. “And, no, it’s not. This is ‘Night and Day’ from The Gay Divorce. Cole Porter.” Rolf took a drink of beer and swallowed.

Radek watched as Rolf dug back in. “I have the phonograph,” Radek said.

Rolf nodded. “Good. Then you have the phonograph of The Gay Divorce by Cole Porter.” He raised his hand to a waiter, made some indecipherable gesture with his fingers, and went back to his plate. “I’m getting the spatzle, Nikolai, if you want some.”

This, evidently, was the way an evening with Berlin’s most dangerous trio took shape: elementary economics and Tin Pan Alley.

With anyone other than Rolf or Franz, Radek would have found a reason to press things, even when he knew he was wrong. He had once told Hoffner it was good for a man to learn how to cower every now and then. This wasn’t cruelty. It was therapeutic, even better if the man recanted the truth just so as to save himself. Radek called it the psychology of order: men liked knowing where they stood; they liked even better being told where to stand. No wonder he was finding Berlin so comforting.

“Finish up,” said Radek. “We’re heading west. I’ve got a treat for you.”

Half an hour later, all four were crammed into the back of Radek’s Daimler saloon, Franz and Rolf perched precariously on the two jump seats.

“You were a fencer, weren’t you?” said Radek.

Hoffner tapped his cigarette out the window and watched as a floodlit Unter den Linden raced by. The avenue had once been famous for its dual column of trees down the center. Not now. The Nazis had insisted on building a north-south U-Bahn to impress their Olympic guests. That meant digging and destruction and the temporary loss of the trees. But not to worry. There were always plenty of flagpoles and light stanchions at the ready to take their place, row after row of perfectly aligned swastika ba

Berlin was now nothing more than an over-rouged corpse, gaudy jewels and shiny baubles to distract from the gray, fetid skin underneath.

Hoffner said, “It’s going to smell like this for a while, isn’t it?”

The avenue was jam-packed with the city’s esteemed visitors, guzzling their beer and munching their sausages-most of them good little Germans, small-town folk, who had been arriving by the trainload for the past week. The foreign contingent-all that promised money from abroad-had proved something of a disappointment. Still, at least most of these knew how to speak the language.

Radek said, “Gives it a nice rustic feel, doesn’t it?”

They drove past the Brandenburg Gate, and the light in the car intensified. Hoffner said, “So how much have they laid out for all this?”

“Why?” said Radek. “You thinking of chipping in?”

Hoffner turned to him. “How much?”

Radek shrugged. “No idea.”

“Really.”

Radek shook his head. “I’m telling you, we had the stadium-that’s it. The electrics went to Frimmel. The Sass brothers took the village complex. They get catering on that, so they’ll be making some nice money, although they’ve had to deal with the Wehrmacht, and I wouldn’t wish that on anyone. And Grobnitz got waste disposal.”

Franz, who was staring out the window, laughed quietly to himself.

“Franz likes that Grobnitz will be up to his arms in it,” Radek said. “What Franz doesn’t realize is how much money there is in shoveling someone else’s shit.”

Hoffner said, “Refreshing to see all the syndicates working so nicely together.”

“It’s the Olympic spirit,” said Radek. “Everyone’s been asked to sacrifice.”

“And in your pocket?”

Radek smiled. “Isn’t there a little pride somewhere in there, Nikolai? Something for the German greater good?”

“Tremendous amounts,” said Hoffner. “How much?”

Radek’s smile grew as he bobbed his head from side to side, calculating. “A hundred thousand seats in the stadium … Maifeld-that’s over twenty-eight acres of open ground-the practice facilities … Maybe”-he shot a glance at Franz-“what do you say, Franz? Twelve, fifteen million?”

“Twenty-seven,” Franz said blandly, as he continued to stare out.

“Twenty-seven million?” Radek’s disbelief was matched only by his cynicism. “Really? That much? Just imagine getting a cut of that.”

“Yah,” said Hoffner. “Just imagine.”

“They want to throw away the city’s money on this, Nikolai, I’m happy to help them.” Hoffner tossed his cigarette out and Radek said, “So you didn’t think of pulling out the old saber? Helping the great German cause?”

The thought of dragging his ancient legs onto the strip forced a dismissive snort from Hoffner. “I think Fraulein Mayer rounds out the token half-Jews on the team, don’t you?”

It had been in all the papers, the girl’s “special dispensation” from the Reich’s Committee. Mayer, a former world champion now living in America-and a Jew only in name-had been made an “honorary Aryan.” It seemed demeaning, no matter which way one leaned.

“She’s not doing them any favors,” said Radek.

“Who,” said Hoffner, “the Jews or the Reich? My guess, she wins something, she’ll have to give it back anyway.”

The Reichssportfeld sits on over three hundred acres of Grunewald forest in the far west section of town. From central Berlin, it is a relatively easy trip past the Tiergarten if one makes sure not to take the truck roads out to the Halske or Siemens factory sites-unless, of course, one is desperate for a rotary engine or any number of other electrical engineering devices. If one keeps to the low roads, the first behemoth to appear on the horizon is the stadium itself. It looms at the end of the wide Olympischer Platz, stone and granite leading all the way up to the double columns of the Marathoner Gate, with the five rings pitched in between. Though ostensibly the brainchild of the March brothers-Werner and Walther-the entire complex has the feel of an Albert Speer design, the thick limestone and wide columns telltale of the Reich’s architectural wunderkind. There was a rumor that the Fuhrer, on hearing of Werner’s plans to create a modern wonder-steel, glass, and cement-said he would rather cancel the games than have them take place in “a big glass shitbox.” But that was only rumor.