A Good German Page 9

  “No press section. We don’t want to encourage speeches-hard to resist with the press around. Give them an audience, they can’t help themselves. We want working sessions.”

  “Nice and private.”

  “No.” He nodded to the recording desks. “There’ll be minutes. The council will meet once a quarter,” he continued. “The Coordinating Committee once a month, the subcommittees-well, all the time. There’s a lot to do.”

  Jake fingered the stack of notepads. “All organized.” ‹›“On paper,” Muller said, leaning against the table, his back to the window, so that his silver hair developed a halo of light. “Actually, nobody knows how it’s going to work. Until we do it. We’re making it up as we go along. Nobody planned on this, running the country.” He noticed Jake’s raised eyebrows. “Not this way. They trained a few people, somewhere down in Virginia-to help the Germans with the transition,” he said, drawing out the word. “Transition. I don’t know what they expected. The last war, I suppose. Get a peace treaty, hand the country over to the good guys, and go home. But not this time. There wasn’t anybody to hand it over to. Twelve years. Even the mailmen were Nazis. And the country-you’ve seen it, it’s just shot to hell. Nobody expected them to fight to the end. Why would they? You don’t expect a whole country to commit suicide.“

  “They had a little help from bomber command.”

  Muller nodded. “I don’t say they didn’t ask for it. But now it’s flat and we’ve got it. No food, nothing running-Berlin HQ has got its hands full just fixing the water mains.” He took a breath and looked directly at Jake. “We’ve got twenty million people to feed in our zone alone. The ones who aren’t starving are stealing bicycles just to get around. We’ve got a winter coming with no coal. Epidemics, if we’re not lucky, which we probably won’t be. DPs—” He waved his hand as if, overwhelmed, he’d run out of words. “We didn’t sign on for any of this,” he said, his voice as tired as his eyes, “but we’ve got it anyway. So there’s a lot to do.” He glanced at the room. “Seen enough?”

  Jake nodded. “Thanks for the look. And the speech,” he added easily. “You wouldn’t be trying to tell me something, by any chance.”

  Muller smiled patiently, Judge Hardy again. “Maybe just a little. I’ve been regular army all my life-we’re used to protecting our flanks. People who write about MG, maybe they should have some idea what we’re up against. A little perspective. We’re not all-well, come on, I’ll give you what you came for.”

  “How did you end up here, anyway?” Jake said, following him out into the long hall.

  “Like everyone else-they don’t need us in the field now, so we’ve got to serve our time out somewhere. I didn’t volunteer, if that’s what you mean. Tactical units don’t have much use for MG, think we’re just office boys. I wasn’t any different. Nobody’s going to get a promotion for fixing sewer lines. But nobody’s getting promoted in the field now either-the war’s over, they tell me-and I have a while to go before they pension me off. So. We’re long on old farts here. The civilians, that’s something else. Most of the time it’s some lawyer who sat out the war in Omaha and now wants a commission so he can call himself captain-they won’t sign on for the lower ranks. They get it too, the rank. What the rest of us had to work years for. It rubs a little, if you let it.”

  “But you don’t.”

  “I did. But it’s like anything else-the work takes over. You serve your country,” he said flatly, without a hint of irony. “I didn’t ask for it, but you know what? I think we’re doing one helluva job here, given everything. Or does that sound like another speech to you?“

  “No.” Jake smiled. “It sounds like they ought to promote you.” “They won’t,” Muller said evenly, then stopped and faced him. “You know, this is probably my last post. I wouldn’t want to see-any mess. If you’re going to start flinging mud around, I’d appreciate a little early warning.”

  “I’m not—”

  “I know, you’re just curious. So are we. A man’s been killed. And the truth is, we have no way of finding out what happened. We don’t have Scotland Yard here, just some MPs arresting drunks. So we may never know. But if there’s anything that might, well, be a problem for us, that we do need to know.”

  “What makes you think there is?”

  “I don’t. But that’s what you’re fishing for, isn’t it?” He started walking again. “Look, all I’m asking is you meet me halfway on this. I don’t have to release any information. If you hadn’t been there at Potsdam-but you were, and you knew him. So now I’ve got a situation. I can’t pretend it didn’t happen. But I don’t have to open this up to a lot of speculation either. I’m releasing it to you, not anybody else. If you do turn up something, okay, you’ve got yourself a story.”

  “But if I don’t—”

  “Then you don’t guess out loud. No mystery body. No unsolved anything. You might get some mileage out of that in the papers. But all we’d get is a lot of questions we can’t answer. That just eats time. We can’t afford that. There’s too much to do. All I’m asking is a little discretion.”

  “And tell you in advance what I’m going to say.”

  “I didn’t say you couldn’t say it. Just tell me if it’s coming.”

  “So you can deny it?”

  “No,” Muller said, deadpan. “So I can duck.” He stopped at a door paned with translucent glass. “Here we are. Jeanie should have the copies by now.”

  Jeanie was a pretty WAC whose red fingernails seemed too long for serious typing. She was putting carbon sheets into two beige folders and threw Muller a smile that Jake, amused, guessed was more than secretarial. Muller, however, was all business.

  “Got those reports?”

  She handed him one of the folders, then a message slip. “The general wants you at ten.”

  “Come on, then,” he said to Jake, leading him into a plain office with an American flag in the corner. Muller belonged to the clean desk school-the only things on the empty surface were a pen set and a framed picture of a young soldier.

  “Your boy?” Jake asked.

  Muller nodded. “He was hit on Guadalcanal.”

  “I‘ m sorry.

  “No, not killed. Wounded. At least he’s out of it now.” Then, avoiding any more intimacy, he opened the folder, took out two carbon flimsies, and pushed them across the desk to Jake. “Service record. Casualty report.”

  “You’re calling it a casualty?”

  “It’s what we call the report,” Muller said, slightly annoyed. “It’s just a form. Anyway, now you know what we know.”

  Jake skimmed the first sheet, a spare listing of dates and assignments. Patrick Tully. Natick, Mass. A little older than the boy in the picture on the desk. The casualty report Jake could have written himself. “Not much, is it?” he said.

  “No.”

  “What isn’t here? Any trouble before that didn’t make it into the record?”

  “Not that I know of. Service record’s clean, no flags. A distinguished member of the United States Armed Forces. That’s what we’re going to write to his mother, anyway.”

  “Yes,” Jake said. A person, not a number, a kid with a family, not as lucky as young Muller. “What about the money?”

  “She’ll get that too, with his effects. APO money order. It was his, as far as we know. Let’s hope she thinks he saved his back pay.”

  “How much was there? It doesn’t say.”

  Muller looked at him, then nodded. “Fifty-six thousand marks. They convert at ten to one. So roughly five thousand dollars. That’s what the Russians gave us, anyway. They say some of it blew away.”

  “So figure twice that. That’s a lot of back pay.”

  “Maybe he was good at cards,” Muller said.

  “What brings in that kind of money? On the black market.”

  “Watches, mostly. If it ticks, the Russians’ll buy it. A Mickey Mouse can go for five hundred bucks.”

  “That’s still a lot of watches.�
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  “That depends how long he was doing it. If he was doing it. Look, on the record? There is no black market. Sometimes supply depots come up a little short. Things disappear. One of the facts of wartime. The Germans are hungry. They’ll buy food any way they can. It’s about food. Naturally, we’re doing what we can to stop it.”

  “And off the record?”

  “Off the record, everybody does it. How do you stop a kid in a candy store? Want to do some quick arithmetic? A GFs allowed a carton of cigarettes a week at the PX. A nickel a pack, fifty cents a carton. On the street, it’s worth a hundred dollars-that’s five thousand dollars a year. Add in some chocolate, four bottles of liquor a month, another five thousand dollars. A package of food from home? Maybe some tuna fish, a can of soup? More. Lots more. It adds up. A guy can make a year’s salary just from his rations. You try stopping that. Officially, there’s no fraternization either. So how do we explain all the VD?”

  Jake glanced down at the sheet. “He’d only been in Germany since May.”

  “What do you want me to say? Some of our boys are more enterprising than others. You don’t have to be a big operator to make money in Germany. Last month our troops were paid about a million dollars. They sent three million home.” He paused. “Off the record.”

  Jake stared, staggered by the figure. “I didn’t think the Germans had that much money.”

  “The Germans. They’re selling silverware for a stick of margarine. Whatever they’ve got left. The Russians have the money.”

  Jake thought of the ragtag guards at the Chancellery, the peasants wheeling carts through Potsdamerplatz, as primitive as a muddy village. “The Russians have that kind of money?” he said dubiously. “Since when?”

  Muller looked at him. “Since we gave it to them.” He hesitated. How far off the record are we? “

  ‘Farther every minute.“

  Muller sat back. “I’m going to hold you to that. You see, the original plan was to issue occupation marks. Something all the forces could use here and the locals would accept, not gum up the works with four different currencies. Fine. So the Treasury made up the engraving plates and, like idiots, gave a set to the Russians. Same money. Of course, the idea was they’d keep a strict accounting of theirs, since it would have to be convertible to hard currency-dollars, pounds, whatever. Instead they just started the presses and kept going. Nobody knows how much they made. Most of their troops hadn’t been paid in three years. They got it all in occupation marks. The hitch is, they can’t take them home-the Russians won’t convert them-and now you’ve got a whole army with more money than they’ve ever seen before in their lives and one place to spend it. Here. So they buy watches and whatever else they can carry home. At any price. It’s Monopoly money to them. And meanwhile, since the currency has to be honored, our boys take the marks they get and send them home as dollars and the Treasury has one hell of a drain on its hands. We yell and scream, of course, but I’d lay you even money-in dollars-that we’re never going to see one ruble for those plates. The Russians say their marks just circulate in Germany, keeping the local wheels going-the Germans’ tab. And we have a small problem explaining why so many are flooding back home, since there is no black market-so we pay. We’re paying, in fact, for the Russian occupation here. But nobody wants to touch that story.“ He smiled. ”And neither do you.“

  “I’m not even sure I understand it.”

  “Nobody understands money. Except what’s in his pocket. Which is lucky for the Treasury. If we’d pulled a stunt like that, they’d court-martial us out of here in no time.”

  “So what are you going to do about it?”

  “That’s the ten o’clock meeting. General Clay wants to limit the amount a man can send home to his actual pay. It’ll be a headache for the APO, just keeping track, and it won’t solve everything, but at least it’ll stop the worst of the bleeding. Of course they can still send goods home, but the money will stay here, where it belongs. Ultimately, the only thing that’s going to work is a new currency, but don’t hold your breath. How fast do you think the Russians would agree to that?”

  “I mean, what are you doing on the ground? How do you police it?”

  “Well, it’s a problem. MP raids the worst spots from time to time, but that’s just a little finger in the dike. Berlin’s an open city-people go where they want-but it’s just administered in zones. So we can’t patrol Zoo Station, that’s the Brits. Alexanderplatz is in the Russian zone.“

  “Like Potsdam.” ‹›Muller looked up at him. “Like Potsdam. There’s nothing we can do there.“ ‹›“What about off the street? This much money-somebody must be running things.“

  “You mean gangs? Professionals? That I don’t know. And I’d doubt it. You hear rumors about the DPs, but people like to blame the DPs for everything. Nobody polices them. The kind of thing you’re talking about, you’d have to go back to Bavaria or Frankfurt, where there’s still something to steal. Warehouses. Big hoardings. It happens, and I suppose Frankfurt must have somebody on it, if you’re interested. But Berlin? It’s been picked pretty clean. What you’ve got here is a lot of small money that adds up.”

  “That’s a fair description of the numbers racket too.” A reluctant smile. “I guess.” Muller paused, spreading his hands on the desk. “Look. A soldier sells a watch. Maybe he shouldn’t, and maybe you don’t think we’re doing enough to stop him. But I’ll tell you this-I’ve seen lots of men die in the last few years. Ripped up, holding their guts in. Good men. Kids. Nobody thought they were criminals then. Now they’re picking up a few bucks. Maybe it’s wrong, but you know what? I’m still a soldier. I think they’re worth two million a month.” ‹›“So do I,” Jake said slowly. “I just don’t like to see them get shot. It doesn’t seem right. For a watch.” Muller looked at him, disconcerted, then lowered his head. “No. Well. Is there anything else?”

  “Lots, but you’ve got a meeting to get to,” Jake said, standing up. “I don’t want to wear out my welcome.”

  “Any time,” Muller said pleasantly, also getting up, relieved. “That’s what we’re here for.”

  “No, you’re not. I appreciate the time.” Jake folded the flimsies into his pocket. “And these. Oh, one more thing. Can I see the body?” “The body?” Muller said, literally taking a step back in surprise. “I thought you had seen it. Isn’t that why we’re here? It’s-gone. It was shipped back to Frankfurt.” “That was fast. No autopsy?”

  “No,” Muller said, slightly puzzled. “Why would there be an autopsy? We know how he died. Should there have been one?”

  Jake shrugged. “At least a coroner’s report.” He caught Muller’s expression. “I know. You’re not Scotland Yard. It’s just a little skimpy, that’s all,” he said, patting the sheets in his pocket. “It might have helped to examine it. I wish you’d waited.”

  Muller looked at him, then sighed. “You know what I wish, Geismar? I wish you’d never gone to Potsdam.”

  Jeanie was arranging her set of carbons when he came out. She looked up and smiled without stopping, like a casino dealer, shuffling the third sheet to the bottom, then tossing the folder into an out box for filing. “All set?”

  Jake smiled back. The army never changed, a world run in duplicate. He wondered if there was another girl to do the filing to save those wonderful nails. “For now,” he said, still smiling, but she took it as a pass, arching her eyebrows and shooting him a look.

  “We’re here nine to five,” she said, a dismissal.

  “That’s good to know,” he said, playing along. “Colonel keep you pretty busy? ”

  “All the live-long day. Stairs are down the hall to your right.”

  “Thanks,” he said, lifting his fingers to his forehead in a salute.

  On the entrance steps he was blinded by the light and shaded his eyes to get his bearing. The sun, already hot, was streaming in from the east, filtering through the dust that hung over the ruins beyond the graceful colonnades. The work party, bent
over their rakes, had got rid of their shirts but not, Jake noticed, their initials, P on one trouser leg, W on the other. The war had branded everybody, even Tully, now just some initials on a carbon flimsy.

  He stood for a minute, his mind full of engraving plates and watch prices, all of which led him nowhere. Which was probably where Muller wanted him to go. He smiled to himself, thinking of Jeanie- two brush-offs in one morning, one more direct than the other. It was Muller who’d taken the circular way around, leaving him back on the steps not even sure he’d been through a revolving door. Except something nagged, a missing crossword piece that would leap to the eye if you looked at it long enough. He told the driver he wanted to walk.

  “Walk?” the soldier said, amazed. “You mean back?”

  “No meet me at Zoo Station in about an hour. You know where that is?“

  The soldier nodded. “Sure. It’s a hike from here.”

  “I know. I like to walk. Helps me think.” Explaining himself. He made a mental note to ask Ron for his own jeep.

  But the soldier, like Jeanie, had been around. “I get it. You sure you don’t want me to drop you? I mean, I don’t care, it’s your business.”

  Everybody does it, Jake thought as he headed across the battered park; a lot of small money that adds up. So whom had Tully done business with? A gun-happy Russian? A DP with nothing to lose? Anybody. Five thousand dollars, more. People got killed every day in Chicago for less, just for skimming a numbers collection. Life would be even cheaper than that here. But why come in the first place? Because the Russians were here, flush with cash. Not porcelain knickknacks and old silver to trade. Cash. Honey for bears. Everybody does it.

  The park gates opened onto lower Potsdamerstrasse and a small stream of military trucks and civilians on rickety bicycles, all that was left of the traffic that used to roar by to the center. On foot Berlin was a different city, not the spectacle he’d seen from a touring jeep but something grittier, a wreck in closeup. He had loved walking in the city, exploring the miles of flat, irregular streets as if just the physical touch of shoe leather made it personal, brought him into its life. Sundays in the Grunewald. Afternoons wandering through districts where the other journalists never went, Prenzlauer or the tenement streets in Wedding, just to see what they were like, his eyes gliding from building to building, oblivious to curbs. Now he had to step carefully, skirting clumps of broken cement and picking his way through plaster and glass that crunched underfoot. The city had become a trail hike, full of obstacles and sharp things hidden under stones. Steel rods twisted into spiky shapes, still black from fire. The familiar rotting smell. At the corner of Pallasstrasse, the remains of the Sportpalast, where bicycles used to whiz by in the rac-ing oval and Hitler promised the faithful a thousand years. Only the giant flak tower was standing, like the ones at the zoo, too sturdy even for boombs. A soldier was propped against the wall with one hand, talking to a girl and fondling her hair, the oldest black market in the world. Across tile street, a few other girls in thin dresses leaned against a standing wall, gesturing to convoy trucks. At ten o’clock in the morning.