The Good German (Bestselling Backlist) Read online

  Bernie walked over to the piano and flipped open a file folder. “Take a look at the signature,” he said, handing Jake a carbon sheet.

  “Lieutenant Patrick Tully,” Jake said, reading aloud, his voice falling. He raised his eyes to find Bernie watching him.

  “I was wondering if you knew,” Bernie said. “I guess not. Not with that face. Interested now?”

  “What is it?” Lena said.

  “A soldier who was killed last week,” Jake said, still looking at the paper.

  “And you blame Emil for that?” she said to Bernie, anxious.

  He shrugged. “All I know is, two men went missing from Kransberg and one of them’s dead.”

  Jake shook his head. “You’re off-base. I know him.”

  “That must keep things friendly,” Bernie said.

  Jake looked up at him, then passed over it. “Why would Tully sign him out?”

  “Well, that’s the question, isn’t it? What occurred to me was, it’s a valuable piece of paper. The only problem with that is the guests don’t have any money—at least, they’re not supposed to. Who needs cash when you’ve got room service courtesy of the U.S. government?”

  Jake shook his head again. “It wasn’t Emil’s money,” he said, thinking of the dash before the serial number, but Bernie had leaped elsewhere.

  “Then somebody else’s. But there must have been some deal. Tully wasn’t the humanitarian type.” He picked up another folder. “Here, bedtime reading. He’s been in one racket or another since he hit the beach. Of course, you wouldn’t know it from this—just a series of transfers. The usual MG solution—make him somebody else’s problem.”

  “Then why send him to a place like Kransberg?”

  Bernie nodded. “I asked. The idea was to get him away from civilians. He was MG in a town in Hesse, and things got so bad even the Germans complained. Hauptmann Toll, they called him—crazy. He’d prance around in those boots carrying a whip. They thought the SS was back. So MG had to get him out of there. Next, a detention camp in Bensheim. No market there, maybe a few cigarettes, but what the hell? What I hear, though, is that he was selling discharge papers. Don’t bother to look—record just says ‘relieved.’ That was sweet. The way they nailed him is he ran out of customers, so he started having them arrested once they were out—figured they’d pay again. One of them screams bloody murder and the next thing you know he’s off to Kransberg. They probably thought, what harm could he do there? No one wants to check out.”

  “Except Emil,” Jake said.

  “Evidently.”

  “But what did they say? When Emil didn’t come back. People just come and go?”

  “The guards figured it must be okay if he had papers. And Tully drove him. See, the idea is, it’s not a prison—once in a while the scientists go into town with an escort. So nobody thought anything of it. Then, when he didn’t come back, Tully says he’s as surprised as anybody.”

  “Wasn’t he supposed to stay with him?”

  “What can you do? Tully had a weekend pass—he didn’t want to play nursemaid. He says he trusted him. It was personal—a family matter. He didn’t want to be in the way,” Bernie said, glancing again at Lena.

  “And nobody says anything?”

  “Oh, plenty. But you can’t court-martial a man for being stupid. Not when he thinks he’s doing one of the guests a favor. Best you can do is transfer him out. I’d lay you even money it was just a matter of time before those papers were in the works again. But then he went to Potsdam. Which is where you came in.”

  Jake had flipped open the folder and was staring at the photograph stapled to the top sheet. Young, not bloated from a night of drifting in the Jungfernsee. He tried to picture Tully striding through a Hessian village with a riding crop, but the face was bland and open, the kind of kid you found on a soda fountain stool in Natick, Mass. But the war had changed everybody.

  “I still don’t get it,” he said finally. “If it was that loose, why pay to get out? From the sound of it, he could have jumped out a window and run. Couldn’t he?”

  “Theoretically. Look, nobody’s trying to escape from Kransberg—it doesn’t occur to them. They’re scientists, not POWs. They’re trying to get a ticket to the promised land, not run away. Maybe he wanted the pass—you know what they’re like about documents. So officially he wouldn’t be AWOL.”

  “It’s a hell of a lot to pay for a pass. Anyway, where did the money come from?”

  “I don’t know. Ask him. Isn’t that what you wanted to know in the first place?”

  Jake looked up from the picture. “No, I wanted to know why Tully was killed. From the sound of it, there could have been a hundred reasons.”

  “Maybe,” Bernie said slowly. “And maybe just one.”

  “Just because a man signed a piece of paper?”

  Bernie spread his hands again. “Maybe a coincidence. Maybe a connection. A man gets out of Kransberg and heads for Berlin. A week later the man who gets him out comes to Berlin and ends up killed. I don’t believe in coincidence. It has to connect somewhere. You add two and two—”

  “I know this man. He didn’t kill anybody.”

  “No? Well, I’d sure like to hear it from him. Ask him about the SS medal while you’re at it, since you know him so well.” He went over to the piano. “Anyway, he’s your lead. You won’t even have to go looking. He’s coming to you.”

  “He hasn’t turned up yet.”

  “Does he know where you are?” Bernie said to Lena.

  She had slumped onto the bench again, staring at the floor. “His father, maybe. His father knows.”

  “Then sit tight. He’ll show up. Or maybe you’d rather he didn’t,” he said to Jake. “A little inconvenient, all things considered.”

  “What’s gotten into you?” Jake said, surprised at his tone.

  “I don’t like putting Nazis in hotels, that’s all.”

  “He didn’t do it,” Jake said.

  “Maybe. Maybe you don’t want to do the math anymore. Add it up. Two and two.” He gathered the other folders off the piano. “I’m late. Frau Brandt,” he said, a courtesy nod that became a parting shot. He turned to Jake. “It connects.”

  He was halfway across the room before Jake stopped him.

  “Bernie? Try this one. Two and two. Tully comes to Berlin. But the only one we know he was coming to see was you.”

  Bernie stood quietly for a moment. “Meaning?”

  “Numbers lie.”

  When Bernie left, the room seemed as still and airless as a vacuum tube, the only movement the ticking of the hall clock.

  “Don’t mind him,” Jake said finally. “He just talks tough. He likes to be mad.”

  Lena said nothing, then got up and went over to the window, folding her arms over her chest and staring out. “So now we’re all Nazis.”

  “That’s just Bernie. Everybody’s a Nazi to him.”

  “And it’s better in America? Your German girlfriend. Was she a Nazi too? That’s how he looks at me. And he’s your friend. Frau Brandt,” she said, imitating Bernie.

  “That’s just him.”

  “No, I am Frau Brandt. I forgot, for a little while.” She turned to him. “Now it’s really like before. There are three of us.”

  “No. Two.”

  She smiled weakly. “Yes, it was nice. We should go now. The rain’s finished.”

  “You don’t love him,” he said, a question.

  “Love,” she said, dismissing it. She turned to the piano. “I’ve scarcely seen him. He was away. And after Peter, everything changed. It was easier not to see each other.” She looked back. “But I won’t send him to prison either. You can’t ask me to do that.”

  “I’m not.”

  “Yes. I’m the bait—isn’t that what he said? I saw your face—like a policeman. All those questions.”

  “He’s not going to prison. He didn’t kill anybody.”

  “How do you know? I did.”

  “Tha
t was different.”

  “Maybe it was different for him too.”

  He looked at her. “Lena, what is it? You know he didn’t.”

  “And you think that matters to them? A German? They blame us for everything.” She stopped and looked away. “I won’t send him to prison.”

  He went over to her, turning her face with his finger. “Do you really think I’d ask you to do that?”

  She looked at him, then moved away. “Oh, I don’t know anything anymore. Why can’t we leave things as they are?”

  “This is the way they are,” he said quietly. “Now stop worrying. Everything’s going to be all right. But we have to find him. Before the others do. You see that.”

  She nodded.

  “Would he really go to his father? You said they didn’t speak.”

  “But there’s no one else. He came for him, you know, even after everything. So.”

  “Where were you? Pariserstrasse?”

  She shook her head. “It was bombed already. The hospital. He said to wait for him there, but then he didn’t get through.”

  “So he wouldn’t know where else to look. He’d try his father.”

  “Yes, I think so.”

  “Anyone else? Frau Dzuris hadn’t seen him.”

  “Frau Dzuris?”

  “I tried her first, remember? You’re not so easy to find.” He paused. “Wait a minute. She said there’d been a soldier. Maybe that’s why Tully came—to find you.”

  “Me?”

  “Well, Emil. To get him back. That would explain why he wanted to see Bernie, too—to check the fragebogens. That’s Bernie’s department. Maybe he thought he’d find yours there. Except you didn’t fill one out. Why didn’t you, by the way?”

  She shrugged. “A party member’s wife? They would have made me work on the rubble. I couldn’t, I was too weak. And for what, a class V card? I had that much from Hannelore.”

  “But Tully wouldn’t have known. I didn’t. So he’d want to check.”

  “If he was looking for me.”

  “It makes sense. Finding Emil would get him out of a lot of hot water.”

  “But if he’d already paid?”

  Jake shook his head. “Bernie’s wrong. He didn’t get money from Emil. Russian marks aren’t floating around Frankfurt. He got it in Berlin.”

  “Then why did he let him out?”

  “That’s what I want to ask Emil.”

  “Now you’re a policeman again.”

  “A reporter. Bernie’s right about one thing. Emil’s the only lead I’ve got. There must be a connection—just not the one he thinks.”

  “He wants to make trouble for Emil. You can see that. It’s so important, this soldier? Who was he?”

  “Nobody. Just a story. At least he was. Now he’s something else. If you really want to keep Emil out of trouble, we’d better find out who did kill him.”

  Lena took this in, brooding, then went over to the phonograph and fingered one of the records as if she were waiting for the music to start again.

  “A little while ago, we were going to Africa.”

  He came up behind her, touching her shoulder. “Nothing’s changed.”

  “No. Except now you’re a policeman. And I’m bait.”

  CHAPTER 9

  The next day was hot again. Berlin was literally steaming, the rain that had washed the dust from the air now rising in wisps over the wet ruins, making the smell worse. Emil’s father lived in Charlottenburg, a few streets away from the schloss, in what was left of an art nouveau block of flats, divided into rooms for bombed-out families. The street hadn’t been cleared, so they’d had to leave the jeep on Schloss Strasse and thread their way through the rubble on a footpath dotted with house-number sticks planted in the debris like trail markers. They were sweating when they arrived, but Professor Brandt was dressed, in a suit and a high starched collar from the Weimar era, stiff even in the wilting heat. His height took Jake by surprise. Emil had been Jake’s size, but Professor Brandt towered over him, so tall that when he kissed Lena on the cheek, he bent at the waist, an old officer’s bow.

  “Lena, it’s good of you to come,” he said, more polite than warm, as if he were receiving a former student.

  He looked at Jake, taking in the uniform, and his eye twitched. “He’s dead,” he said flatly.

  “No, no, a friend of Emil’s,” Lena said, and introduced them.

  Professor Brandt offered a dry hand. “From happier days, I think.”

  “Yes, before the war,” Jake said.

  “You are welcome, then. I thought perhaps—an official visit.” A flicker of relief even his composed face couldn’t hide. “I’m sorry, I have nothing to offer guests. It’s difficult now,” he said, indicating the cramped room whose light came in shafts through a boarded-up broken window. “Perhaps you would care to walk in the park? It’s more pleasant, in this weather.”

  “We can’t stay long.”

  “Well, a little walk, then,” he said, clearly embarrassed by the room and eager to go out. He turned to Lena. “But first, I must tell you. I’m so sorry. Dr. Kunstler was here. You know I asked him to inquire in Hamburg. Your parents. I’m sorry,” he said, his words as formal as a eulogy.

  “Oh,” she said, the sound catching in her throat like a whimper. “Both?”

  “Yes, both.”

  “Oh,” she said again. She sank to a chair, covering her eyes with a hand.

  Jake expected Professor Brandt to reach out to her, but instead he moved away, leaving her isolated, alone with her news. Jake looked at her awkwardly, stuck helpless in his role, a friend of the family unable to do more than be silent.

  “Some water?” Professor Brandt said.

  She shook her head. “Both. It’s certain?”

  “The records—there was so much confusion, you can imagine. But they were identified.”

  “So now there’s no one,” she said to herself in a small voice.

  Jake thought of Breimer looking out of the plane window at the wrecked landscape. What they deserved. Seeing buildings.

  “Are you all right?” Jake said.

  She nodded, then stood up, smoothing out her skirt, visibly putting herself in order. “I knew it must be. It’s just—to hear it.” She turned to Professor Brandt. “Perhaps a walk would be better. Some air.”

  He picked up a hat, clearly relieved, and led them down the hall, away from the front entrance. Lena drifted behind, ignoring Jake’s arm. “We’ll go out the back. They’re watching the building,” he said.

  “Who?” Jake said, surprised.

  “Young Willi. They pay him, I think. He’s always in the street. Or one of his friends. With cigarettes. Where do they get them? He was always a sneak, that one.”

  “Who pays him?”

  Professor Brandt shrugged. “Thieves, perhaps. Of course, they may not be watching me. Someone else in the building. Waiting for their chance. But I prefer they don’t know where I am.”

  “Are you sure?” Jake said, looking at the white hair. An old man’s imagination, protecting a boarded-up room.

  “Herr Geismar, every German is an expert at that. We’ve been watched for twelve years. I would know in my sleep. Here we are.” He opened the back door to the blinding light. “No one, you see.”

  “I take it Emil hasn’t been here?” Jake said, still thinking.

  “Is that why you’ve come? I’m sorry, I don’t know where he is. Dead, perhaps.”

  “No, he’s alive. He’s been in Frankfurt.”

  Professor Brandt stopped. “Alive. With the Americans?”

  “Yes.”

  “Thank God for that. I thought the Russians—” He started walking again. “So he got out. He said the Spandau bridge was still open. I thought he must be crazy. The Russians were—”

  “He left Frankfurt two weeks ago,” Jake said, interrupting him. “For Berlin. I was hoping he’d come to you.”

  “No, he wouldn’t come to me.”

  “
To find Lena, I mean,” Jake said, awkward.

  “No, only the Russian.”

  “A Russian was looking for him?”

  “For Lena,” he said, hesitant. “As if I would help him. Swine.”

  “Me?” Lena said, listening after all.

  Professor Brandt nodded, avoiding her eyes.

  “What for?” Jake said.

  “I didn’t ask questions,” Professor Brandt said, his voice almost prim.

  “But he didn’t want Emil,” Jake said, thinking aloud.

  “Why would he? I thought—”

  “He give you a name?”

  “They don’t give names. Not them.”

  “You didn’t ask? A Russian making inquiries in the British sector?”

  Professor Brandt stopped, upset, as if he’d been caught in an impropriety. “I didn’t want to know. You understand—I thought it was personal.” He looked at Lena. “I’m sorry, don’t be offended. I thought he was perhaps a friend of yours. So many German women—one hears it all the time.”

  “You thought that?” she said, angry.

  “It’s not for me to judge these things,” he said, his voice correct and distant.

  She looked at him, her eyes suddenly hard. “No. But you do. You judge everything. Now me. You thought that? A Russian whore?” She looked away. “Oh, why am I surprised? You always think the worst. Look how you judge Emil—your own blood.”

  “My own blood. A Nazi.”

  Lena waved her hand. “Nothing changes. Nothing,” she said and strode ahead, visibly walking off her anger.

  They crossed the street quietly, Jake feeling like an intruder in a family quarrel.

  “She’s not herself,” Professor Brandt said finally. “It’s the bad news, I think.” He turned to Jake. “Is there some trouble? This Russian—it’s to do with Emil?”

  “I don’t know. But let me know if he comes back.”

  Professor Brandt looked at Jake closely. “May I ask what exactly you do in the army?”

  “I’m not in the army. I’m a reporter. They make us wear the uniform.”

  “For your work. That’s what Emil said too. You’re looking for him—as a friend? Nothing else?”

  “As a friend.”

  “He’s not under arrest?”