TWENTY
PROFESSOR CHRISTIAN HERMANN WAS an old acquaintance of Nat’s. They crossed paths at least once a year at some conference or another, and Hermann was always good for a beer and a few witty stories of his travels in Eastern Europe, where he had made a name for himself by plumbing state archives for captured Nazi documents. Some of his discoveries had been under lock and key for decades behind the Iron Curtain.
Hermann’s longtime obsession, however, was his search for the last original manuscript of Hitler’s sequel to Mein Kampf. Most people didn’t even know Hitler wrote a sequel, nor would they want to read it. But Hermann had been captivated by the idea of finding the Zweites Buch ever since learning that the first manuscript, discovered in 1958, was a collation of typescript and carbon copies, meaning that a second must also exist.
He had been searching for fourteen years. His operative theory was that it had ended up at the Berghof, Hitler’s mountaintop getaway, and that an American GI must have walked off with it when the troops looted the place in the spring of ’45. This meant he often sought out U.S. veterans, and Nat had helped arrange introductions to plenty of skeptical old men. As a result, Hermann was always willing to lend a hand, and when Nat phoned from the taxi the professor urged him to come by at once.
“You’ll have to press the buzzer downstairs. Classes are out, and I’m the only one here. Considering it’s a Friday you were lucky to catch me at all.”
The history department was in a frumpy stucco building in a leafy suburb. Nat scanned the dozens of posters in the foyer advertising upcoming symposia. No one could talk a subject to death like the Germans, leaving you in a funk of earnestness that could linger for days. He was disheartened to see that the topic of the Third Reich wasn’t mentioned on a single item. He had first noted this trend in the wake of 1995, following a six-year orgy of fiftieth-anniversary commemorations of the war. Having dutifully immersed themselves, the Germans then seemed to shake off the era like a wet dog taking shelter from the storm. And by then, of course, a hot new topic had come along—the deadly legacy of the Stasi, and East Germany’s security state—fresh corpses, more readily exhumed, not to mention that West Germans could participate in the discussion guilt free.
The buzzer sounded. Nat took the stairs. Christian Hermann was waiting with a cold pilsner.
“Turnbull! A perfect surprise. The department head is away, so we can drink all we like as long as we hide the empties. But you should have given me more warning. I’m preparing for a trip to Riga in the morning, so I can’t even treat you to dinner.”
“I’m lucky to be here at all, considering the weird little errand I’m on. It’s for a law enforcement client, so it’s not exactly pure research.”
Hermann frowned. He would never consider taking a government assignment. Hardly surprising for someone who studied his country’s most notorious regime.
“I’m not sure what my department head would find more objectionable. These beers or the idea that I’m helping a representative of George W. Bush.”
“That’s not where I need your help. I want advice on one of your colleagues.”
“From the Free University?”
“Yes. Berta Heinkel.”
Hermann raised his eyebrows and set his beer down on a student’s paper.
“My God. Are you mixed up with her romantically or professionally?”
“The latter.”
“They sometimes go together. That’s why I asked.”
“Which one usually produces worse results?”
“Ha! Good question. Although without firsthand experience I cannot say for sure.”
“How is she regarded professionally?”
“If you had asked me two years ago, I would have given her the highest marks. She is intelligent, a strong researcher. And dogged, very determined. Sound, too. Never sloppy in her methods. Or didn’t used to be. She was also teaching then, and students liked her.”
“What happened?”
“That’s what we’d all like to know. Frankly, I think she began to get a little obsessed. All of this White Rose business, do you know about it?”
“Oh, yes.”
“I hope that’s not why you’re in Berlin. The further mythologizing of Hans and Sophie Scholl, student angel pamphleteers of Munich? Pardon my disrespect, but what a crock. Admirable, yes, but let’s not kid ourselves about their zero impact.”
“You’re preaching to the choir, Christian. But my impression was that Berta has been on this White Rose hunt for ages, not just a few years.”
“It was always her specialty. But only in the last year or two did she let it take over her life. She began missing appointments, blowing off meetings. There was some kind of eating disorder, too. A colleague used to find her vomiting in the women’s room.”
“Jesus.”
“Her teaching declined. They replaced her at midterm in two courses. Her research suffered, too. Anything that didn’t have to do with the Berlin White Rose, poof, it might as well not have existed. Some colleagues suspected drugs, but I think her only addiction was this quest, because that was also when the complaints began to come in.”
“Complaints?”
“Of harassment, stalking even. Kurt Bauer, the big industrialist, I’m sure you’ve heard of his company. Your shaver probably has his name on it.”
“Or my latest shipment of heavy water.”
Hermann laughed.
“Yes, that too.” Then he eyed Nat carefully. “Government work, you said?”
“Let’s just say I have an understanding with regard to reimbursement and a rough arrangement on how to share any results.”
“Your government has never liked Kurt. Mine’s not keen on him, either. His dabbling in nuclear materials made everyone nervous. Although I gather Pakistan quite likes him. Is this what concerns you, or are your interests confined to your usual area?”
“I’m afraid it’s nothing I can discuss, Christian.”
“But you’re working with Berta, which must also mean the White Rose. Interesting.”
“You said there were complaints. From Bauer himself?”
“His lawyers. People like Bauer never file their own complaints. A court issued some sort of restraining order.”
“You’re kidding.”
“An exclusion zone, one hundred meters.”
That would explain Berta’s interest in long-lens photography.
“Did it stop her?”
“His lawyers said it didn’t, although at least she no longer rang his doorbell or staked out his parking space. But he wasn’t the only one who took her to court.”
“There were others?”
“A White Rose survivor in Duisberg, some old Gestapo people, even a few Americans who served with the occupation forces. Come on, you really haven’t heard about this?”
“It’s not like she’d be eager to tell me.”
“No, I mean from your colleagues at Wightman. One of her targets was Gordon Wolfe, your very own … well, whatever you’d call him after he, uh …”
“He was my mentor. It’s still okay to say it. We made our peace, just before he died.”
“Died? Gordon’s dead?”
“A week ago. His heart.”
“I had no idea. My condolences.”
“Thanks. But Gordon was one of the complainants?”
“Oh, yes. He said she had followed him for days at a time.”
“Good Lord.”
“Yes. Not very smart, making people think we’re a bunch of lunatics here. Still, she might have weathered the storm if it hadn’t been for the Stasi file.”
“The what?”
Hermann nodded glumly.
“I am afraid so. Berta was an informant.”
Nat’s heart sank. In latter-day Germany there were few things more damning, or more fatal professionally, than being outed as an informant for the East German secret police. It was a catastrophe, the sort of revelation that might explain a lot—bulimia, stalking, obsession—all her possible pathologies. But even then Nat couldn’t quite believe it.
“How is that possible? She was fifteen when the Wall came down.”
“I know. That’s what made her case so remarkable.”
“The good Pioneer,” Nat mumbled.
“Excuse me?”
“She told me about her childhood. Laughed about what a good little Commie she was.”
“Apparently that included spying on her parents.”
“She informed on her family?”
“With the best of intentions, of course. Or that was her defense. Trying to reform them, protect them from the authorities. You know, there is a summary of it around here somewhere. One of the department gossips, Professor Schneider, finagled a look at the report and did a synopsis, which she distributed to all our mail slots.”
“How sweet of her.”
“Yes. Heaven help anyone who gets in Schneider’s way. I think Berta bedded one of her boyfriends. Now where did I put that thing?”
Hermann yanked open a drawer. Papers flew out like cloth snakes from a clown jar.
“Ah. There it is.”
It was crumpled, and stained with coffee rings, but Nat spotted Berta’s name.
“Yes,” Hermann said, reading it over. “Mostly family members. Schneider did us the service of listing them, although she was of course polite enough to substitute initials for the forenames. ‘To protect their identity,’ she said. Here, take a look.”
Nat checked the names first:
F. Heinkel, father.
J. Heinkel, mother.
H. Heinkel, grandmother.
L. Hartz, family friend.
“Apparently she never reported anything major,” Hermann said. “ ‘Daddy criticized Chairman Honecker at dinner.’ That sort of rot. The lovely Frau Schneider claimed Berta’s grandmother suffered genuine repercussions, but she never dug up the details. Not for lack of trying, I’m sure.”
“Berta said she was quite fond of her grandmother.”
“All the more reason to keep her on the straight and narrow, then. Love does strange things to people, Turnbull, especially in the German state of mind.”
“Spoken like a true German.”
Hermann smiled crookedly.
“It is my patriotic duty as a historian to speak poorly of our national character.”
“Pretty easy to do so in Berta’s case. How did this come to light?”
“An anonymous letter to the department chair. A photocopy of her file was enclosed.”
“You think Bauer sent it?”
“It’s what everyone suspects. But she already knew the file existed. She told Schneider she had gone to see it herself, a year earlier.”
“Isn’t that about the time she went off the deep end?”
“Yes. I suppose she realized it would eventually become public.”
Maybe, Nat thought. Or maybe the file’s contents, rather than its mere existence, sent her into a spiral.
“Can I copy this?”
“Keep it. I should have thrown it away ages ago.”
Nat could request the whole file if he wanted. Stasi records were stored right across town. But there was no guarantee he would be allowed to see it. Bauer certainly shouldn’t have qualified, but people like him always found a way around the rules. Even if Nat got permission, he would have to wait weeks, even months. More to the point, it was a sideshow. Gordon Wolfe and Kurt Bauer were still the main event.
“So tell me, Turnbull. How on earth did you get mixed up with Berta Heinkel?”
“By reading her credentials on your goddamned Web site, for one thing.”
“Oh, dear. We should fix that. Although officially she is still employed. You know how slowly these things go, and the chairman has managed to keep everything out of the papers. Of course, that will change once the firing becomes final. They’ve scheduled disciplinary hearings, but she has petitioned for delays. Health reasons, she claimed.”
“Mental, no doubt.”
Hermann laughed, spluttering beer onto his shirt front.
“Sorry. I know it isn’t funny In fact, it has pretty much ruined her. She lost her office, even her apartment. One of those nice renovations in Prenzlauer Berg. Last I heard, she had moved in with a friend.”
No wonder she had insisted on a hotel. She must be financing everything with maxed-out plastic. He felt bad for asking her to chip in on the payment to G?llner.
“Well, I guess it’s a good thing I stopped by.”
“You don’t look it.”
“I didn’t say I was happy. But I needed to know.”
“That’s always our downfall, isn’t it? Our need to know?”
Hermann clinked his bottle to Nat’s and they downed the dregs, appropriately bitter.
“I must pack,” Hermann said. “I am taking my wife to dinner. A peace offering. I had to cancel our weekend in Tuscany to make this trip to Riga.”
“Let me guess. A fresh lead on the Zweites Buch?”
“Like I said. Our downfall. Can I drop you somewhere?”
“No, thanks. I walked from the U-Bahn. Frankly, right now I could use the air.”
It was dark when they left the building. Nat watched the taillights of Hermann’s Opel disappear. A breeze carried the scent of pine needles, and the streets and sidewalks were empty. He supposed he should call Holland with an update, but he decided that first he would call Karen.
So much to tell her, especially about Berta, which he knew was her main subject of interest anyway. Karen would want poetry, of course, as part of his presentation. But somehow even the brooding lines of Dickinson weren’t nearly broad or flexible enough to enfold Berta’s dark complexities. How, indeed, could he explain to an impressionable girl of eighteen the ways in which a surveillance state could swallow your entire childhood?
He was punching in the number when he heard footsteps approaching from behind. Something about their urgency made him reconsider the call. No sense being overheard.
Nat kept walking, but the footsteps drew nearer. He glanced over his shoulder, expecting to see a jogger. Instead, it was a thin figure in a leather jacket. No reason to panic, but he walked faster. The footsteps did, too, moving closer. Nat broke into a trot, feeling silly yet frightened. Scuffing soles told him his pursuer was still gaining.
Nat lengthened his stride and lowered his head, going all out. By then he could hear labored breathing—closing, closing. A hand fell on his shoulder, and he cried out as the grip spun him around. They lost balance. Nat landed on his rump, his pursuer atop him. They grappled clumsily. Nat, in a panic, saw a stubbled face, dark eyes leering eagerly, the sharp scent of sweat and cologne. He tried rolling free, but a huge hand pinned his chest, and a second thrust forward with a flash of metal lit by the streetlamp.
He wrenched sideways just enough to avoid a blow to the chest, but the blade tore his sleeve and sliced open his forearm, a line of heat. The attacker again raised the knife just as light exploded from a nearby hedge with a bright yellow flash and an unearthly bark—once, twice. His attacker cried out and fell away onto the sidewalk, gurgling as if he were choking. Nat scuttled crablike into the dewy grass, palms against pine needles.
Just as a sense of deliverance was sinking in, another set of hands clamped his shoulders, and a gruff voice whispered in Berliner German, “Don’t make a move,” while a second man gripped his forearms and pulled him roughly to his feet.
“What’s happening?”
“Quiet! Stay still!” The grip around his arms tightened.
Both men were dressed in dark clothes. Two more rushed forward from the shadows, one of them holstering a pistol in his jacket. All four wore gloves. Down on the sidewalk, his attacker lay still in a spreading pool of blood.
Seemingly from nowhere, a black Mercedes pulled to the curb with its lights off, followed closely by a second. The man behind him briskly patted Nat down from head to toe. The doors of the first car opened and the driver rasped, “Put him in. Let’s go.”
“Will someone just tell me what the hell’s going on?” Nat shouted.
The man behind him clamped a gloved palm over Nat’s mouth.
“Not another word!” he whispered harshly. “Get in the car. No struggling unless you want to end up like the other one.” He twisted Nat’s arm to show he meant business.
“Ow! Easy!”
They shoved him onto the backseat and piled in after him.
“Where are you taking me? Are you the police?”
“No questions.”
The driver started the engine, still no headlights. Nat twisted around for a view through the smoked windows and saw the body being loaded into the second car while someone else sluiced water onto the sidewalk to wash away the blood.
The whole thing had lasted no more than a minute or two, and the manpower and hardware employed were, in themselves, impressive—eight men in dark clothes and gloves, two unmarked cars, a gun with a silencer. Result: one man dead, a second captured, both wiped from the scene like fingerprints from a doorknob.
The car pulled away smoothly. He was flanked on both sides, and there were two men up front. No one said a word. By now Nat assumed that the initial assailant must have been a member of Holland’s “competition,” meaning he was from Iran or Syria. If so, then who were these people? And why the need for so much tidiness? More to the point, who would be capable of orchestrating it?
The answer seemed obvious. The same sort of fellow who could illegally obtain a Stasi file, of course. Kurt Bauer. No wonder the scene had unfolded with such industrial precision. Build a better shaver. Construct a neater abduction. It was all in the engineering.
After a block the driver switched on the headlights. The other car wasn’t following. Maybe Nat was going to be all right. He took a deep breath and realized he was shaking.
“Can someone tell me where we’re going?”
“Take care of him!” the driver barked, and before Nat could respond a hood came down over his head. A drawstring was cinched tight at the neck, and the darkness was complete. When he reached up to loosen it, someone slapped his hands away.
“Cuffs!” the driver said.
They wrenched his wrists behind him and tightly clamped a pair of handcuffs on them.
“C’mon! What is this?”
No one answered.
His breath was warm against the heavy fabric, which smelled of panic and old sweat. Nothing like the stench of fear to set your mind at ease. He thought of Karen, and how he should have called her earlier, and he wondered how long before he would talk to her again, if ever. She might even be meeting the same fate. Maybe these people were rounding up everyone, everywhere. If only he had stayed in contact with Holland, perhaps none of this would have happened. Fear and panic made him shout again.
“Where are you taking me!” He was embarrassed by the strangled tone, so he repeated it, this time trying to master his emotions. “I said, where are you taking me?”
Still nothing. Just the maddening hum of German engineering in full trim as the Mercedes leaned into a curve, purring like a great cat that has eaten its fill. He spent a few seconds trying to calm down, wondering how he might free himself. Fat chance, with all these people around him. For a while he tried to keep track of their course, but he had already lost count of the turns, and the hood kept him from even detecting the strobe of passing streetlamps. His arm stung, and blood was seeping onto his torn sleeve.
The driver swung the wheel sharply left, and the engine echoed as if they had just entered a tunnel. Nat’s stomach told him they were plunging downhill, below street level. The springs sagged as they hit a speed bump and went deeper into a series of right turns—three, four, five, then more for at least a minute longer until they stopped.
By then they must have been several stories underground, and when a door opened he detected the bunkerlike smell of damp concrete. The engine shut off. More doors opened. Whatever they were planning to do, he sensed it was about to happen.
“Get him out,” a voice said sternly from outside the car. “Quickly.”
Maybe they would take off the hood and all would be revealed. Bauer himself would be there, seated in a big swivel chair like some caricature of a tycoon gone mad. He would puff a cigar and scold Nat for reckless research. Then he would hand over a folder of forged documents, his version of setting the record straight, and the thugs would unlock the cuffs and send Nat on his way, chastened but intact.
But no. The hood stayed on. His assailants gripped him tightly as they climbed from the car.
“Bring him here,” the voice commanded. “This is where we get rid of him.”
Not at all what he wanted to hear. Yet, for all his dread and panic and thundering pulse, part of him wasn’t a bit surprised. Hadn’t he predicted as much for years, in class after class, albeit with a glibness totally inappropriate to the current moment? And as the men yanked him forward, Nat’s own words returned to him like a prophetic taunt:
“History plays for keeps, and so do I.”