The Arms Maker of Berlin

THIRTY-THREE

Berlin—Monday, June 4, 2007

KURT BAUER BOUGHT FLOWERS from the kiosk at the Beusselstrasse S-Bahn station, just as he always did. The vendor was nearly as old as he was, and her fingers were just as gnarled. Kurt handed her three euros and grasped the bundle of wet newspaper, wrapped at the stems. It was a spring bouquet, mostly daffodils. Liesl would have liked the scent. He waited for the light to change and slowly crossed the highway.
The walkway took him over a bridge, high above a stinking canal, and then across a busy Autobahn. A desolate route, perhaps, but that was how Kurt preferred it. All too soon he would be too feeble to walk, and he would have to journey here by limousine. Too bad. Half the appeal of his monthly pilgrimage was his use of public transport and the way it let him blend into the surroundings, just like any other Berliner.
He turned the corner onto a narrow lane, which had been buckled and bowed by the large trucks of a nearby shipping firm. The lane ran alongside a high brick wall that had once surrounded the prison, the very wall Kurt had viewed from his cell for five months running. He paused to catch his breath, and shifted the bouquet to his left hand. Then he entered the stone courtyard of the Pl?tzensee Memorial.
It looked as if he had the place to himself. Good. Other visitors made him uncomfortable, especially young ones. If you were of a certain age and dressed in a certain way—prosperously but conservatively—they tended to regard you with suspicion, or outright hostility. As if you were Hitler himself, come to gloat over the dead.
Kurt never bothered anymore to go inside the site’s centerpiece, a brick shed that had been built to resemble the old death house. Once had been enough. The hangman’s meat hooks lined a far wall. They gave him the shakes.
He was also unsettled by other elements. There was an interpretive exhibit with grainy photos and thumbnail bios of the most prominent victims, plus a supposedly comprehensive roster of all 2,500 people who had been put to death here by the Nazis. Well-meaning, he supposed, but there was not a single mention of Liesl in all the fine print, for the unfair reason that she had been killed after her release. Kurt had long ago complained to the fools who presided over the place, but they merely shrugged and directed him to their equally indifferent superiors.
So he always paid his respects out in the elements, rain or shine, journeying deep into his memory while groping for contact with Liesl’s soul. At times he was taunted by the drifting fumes of his own factories, which were only a mile from here. The smoke traveled the same route that the bombers once had, swooping in from the west.
He raised the daffodils to his nostrils and sniffed, to mask the fumes. It was then that he realized he wasn’t alone after all. Someone had just stepped out of the shed. Mein Gott! It was the American, the researcher who had been working with that damned nuisance of a girl. Bauer recognized him from the surveillance photo, the one the Iranians had passed along. Helpful people, the Iranians. Kurt had been rooting for them. But they were of no further use now that the Americans had come up with the desired product. A pity, he supposed, although Kurt had learned long ago not to form emotional attachments in this sort of business. In the end, whoever could deliver the goods was always the preferable option.
The American stood in front of the shed, staring brazenly. Hadn’t he gotten the news that the whole thing was over? Stupid pest. And—oh, no—what was this now? Bauer spied a camera lens poking from behind the far corner of the building, aimed like the barrel of a sniper rifle. It could only be that damned girl, meaning she was in direct defiance of a court order.
He would have thought she would have had enough of him by now. The people he hired had apparently dug up sufficient damning material to ruin her, although Kurt had never bothered to read it. Well, if that didn’t stop her, there were other methods. Like the one he had used against Martin G?llner, once the old snoop had finally outed himself.
The American turned away and headed for the front gate, where a taxi had just pulled up. Good riddance. But, no, he wasn’t leaving. Instead, he was helping someone climb out of the back—a woman, even older than the flower vendor, her hair as gray as the skies. She was dressed like an East German, frumpy and proletarian. It had been seventeen years since reunification, but Kurt could still always tell.
The woman stood slowly. She turned toward the sun, and Kurt’s breath caught in his throat. For the briefest moment, the contours of her face struck a deep chord of memory, sharply enough to make him recall the nauseating smell of wet wool on hot tile, from a rainy morning long ago. Then the moment passed, and in relief he realized he had been mistaken. Kurt now saw that she was just someone’s grandmother, or elderly aunt. Or maybe just an old friend of the American’s. He raised the honey-scented daffodils to his face to get the stench of wet wool out of his head. His moment of panic had been a trick of sunlight and shadow, and of the strong emotions that were always at play whenever he visited this sacred ground.
Kurt cleared his throat, as if preparing to deliver a speech. He then stepped forward with his bouquet. Too many defilers here this morning. It was time to lay the flowers on the ground and move on.
HAD BAUER SEEN HER YET? Nat believed he had. The old man had even seemed to flinch, but now he was turning away and crossing the courtyard with a bunch of flowers in his hand—a memorial bouquet, just like the ones in all of Berta’s photos. And was Berta still lurking around the corner like a gremlin? Yes. There was her lens. Maybe the sight of the old woman at Nat’s side would lure her out of hiding. Everything was according to plan. Now all he had to do was keep from blowing his lines.
Nat had enjoyed a fruitful five days since his big discovery in Switzerland. On the previous Thursday morning he had arrived at a hulking gray building on Normannenstrasse in eastern Berlin, just as it was opening for business. The top floors were now a museum. You could tour wood-paneled offices and conference rooms where a grim fellow named Erich Mielke had once presided over East Germany’s Stasi, the notorious secret police. But downstairs, where linoleum and plastic prevailed, it was still business as usual in a way, because people continued to come here regularly to pry into the secrets of others. Except now the members of the public were the ones doing the snooping, by poring over the dossiers that the Stasi had once compiled on them.
It wasn’t easy getting permission to look at the Stasi files, especially on short notice, but Steve Wallace had apparently worked his magic. The only concession was that Nat wouldn’t be allowed to use his camera, although he could take as many notes as he liked.
He had been there before, of course. You couldn’t very well be a professor of twentieth-century German history and not go there. Because for all the renowned record keeping of the Nazis, it was their successors in East Germany who had created the nation’s true archival wonderland—six million dossiers in all. Load them into a single drawer and they would stretch more than a hundred miles, from Berlin to the Baltic Sea.
The files included the gleanings of as many as two million informants, from a nation of only seventeen million people. In other words, if you had attended an East German dinner party with sixteen other guests, chances are that at least two of them—possibly including you—would have been informants. The voluminous pages offered heartbreaking tales of wives ratting on husbands, and husbands on wives. Parishioners on pastors, and pastors on parishioners. Parents on children, and, as Nat already knew in Berta’s case, children on parents.
Berta was far from alone in this behavior. So far the agency had identified roughly ten thousand informants younger than eighteen. Nat knew now that Berta had come here last year to view her own file. By doing so, she had joined a procession of several million other citizens of the former East Germany who had peered through this disturbing window onto their past.
On his arrival at the front desk, Nat’s name got quick results. A supervisor was called from the back to assist him. She was dressed in black, with her hair chopped close to the scalp—a no-nonsense type who doubtless knew a string-puller when she saw one. She had set aside the requested file in advance, and now she brought it out from behind the counter and ushered him to a private viewing room.
“I hope you realize this is a very special exception,” she said sternly as they reached the door. “Normally you would not even be allowed.”
“I’m aware of that. And I thank you.” She said nothing in reply.
Nat settled in at a small table and picked up the file for Berta Heinkel, informant #314FZ. It was quite thick.
At first the contents were fairly routine. Her profile as a loyal citizen was well documented, including her membership in the Young Pioneers up to age fourteen, followed by the usual transition to the Free German Youth.
It turned out that Berta, too, had been informed on. Hardly surprising, although the list of informants was disheartening—three classmates, a schoolteacher, a principal. What an appalling way to grow up. He thought of Karen, a child of divorce, yet far more sheltered as a college freshman than Berta had been at fifteen, or younger. One girl mooned over poets and boyfriends. The other had consorted with security goons and professional snoops, thoroughly schooled in suspicion.
The informants’ reports almost invariably concerned episodes when Berta had complained about the way the state was treating her grandmother—a poor housing allowance, occasional harassment, frequent requests for police interviews, and so on. Maybe this explained why Berta had tried to keep her grandmother in line by reporting politically risky comments. A girl’s misguided attempt to keep small transgressions from growing into bigger ones. A stitch in time saves nine.
The last report filed against Berta was the most notable. A friend named Hans Koldow stated in September 1989 that she had made a wild accusation of government complicity in the recent death of her grandmother. Berta had apparently stated the belief that a fatal auto crash had been anything but an accident.
“Perhaps these statements were not actually so malicious, seeing as how she was suffering terribly from grief at the time,” Hans wrote charitably, or as charitably as a stool pigeon could. “I nonetheless felt it was my duty to report them.”
Had anything come of his complaint? The file didn’t say so, and Nat doubted it, because by then the East German government had been crumbling from within. Massive demonstrations in Leipzig and Berlin were on the boil. Only two months later the Wall had come down. Berta, it seemed, had been saved by history, only to succumb to it later.
Nat found one of the key items he was searching for just beneath Koldow’s report. It was a roster of everyone she had ever informed on. Only four people were listed. Three were Heinkels, and one was Hartz, just as on the summary Nat had gotten from his professor friend at the Free University.
But the summary had contained initials instead of forenames. Nat had reached his own conclusions as to what two of those initials must have stood for, and he was thrilled to see now that he had been correct:
3—Hannelore Heinkel, grandmother
4—Liesl Hartz, family friend
Their maiden names, he felt certain, had been Hannelore Nierendorf and Liesl Folkerts. That meant both of them had escaped from Pl?tzensee Prison, but for some reason Bauer—and, apparently, everyone else who mattered—had been convinced that Liesl was killed in a bombing raid on the morning of her release.
Nat suspected G?llner knew the truth—another little secret the Gestapo man had hoarded against Bauer, banking it for an uncertain future. That certainly would have explained why G?llner told Gordon in 1945 that only three people, not four, had died as the result of Bauer’s actions.
How much had Berta known? Well, she had almost certainly heard of her grandmother’s escape, from all the stories Hannelore must have told her down through the years about the White Rose. But judging from the contents of the file, Berta had barely been acquainted with the woman known as Liesl Hartz.
In fact, Berta’s only submission on Liesl referred to her simply as “Mrs. Hartz,” and from what she wrote it seemed clear that she had met the woman only once. The report said Berta accompanied Mrs. Hartz and her grandmother on a trip to an art gallery, and during this time Mrs. Hartz had criticized the government several times. Berta made it a point to say that her grandmother had not agreed with all of the criticisms. Nat suspected that was half the reason she had made the report. To show what a good citizen her Oma was becoming.
Berta’s reports on her grandmother were similarly mild, and always added some bit of mitigating evidence. It was enough to make Nat believe that Berta had little reason to feel so guilty. After all, she had been a girl, and a very passionate and impressionable one at that.
Then he came across an item that abruptly changed his mind.
The first part of it was dated August 21, 1989, although a key addendum had come later:
#314FZ reports conversation with family in which subject (H. Heinkel) expressed outrage over positive news coverage in Western media of prominent West German industrialist. Subject expressed intention to denounce said industrialist, claiming he was a Nazi collaborator, and then said, in critical tone, “Why doesn’t the Stasi ever do anything about people like him, instead of always bothering people like us?” (Case officer’s note: Verified that subject did contact State Security offices the following day to arrange appointment to discuss this matter. Appointment never kept, as subject was fatally struck by motor lorry on scheduled day. Item referred to official inquiry. See attached summary from Investigative Report #16LB-0989-Heinkel.)
The investigative summary, while brief, was larded with acronyms, code names, and arcane bureaucratic references that Nat could have spent weeks deciphering. But the gist of it was clear enough. Due to a security breach within the Stasi, the granddaughter’s report of the pending denunciation of the “prominent businessman” had been leaked to West German intelligence. As a result, the fatal accident that occurred one week later had been deemed “suspicious.”
As of November 9, 1989, the investigation was still active. But that was the day the Wall came down, throwing the Stasi into chaos. Meaning no one had ever followed up. Except Berta, of course. She apparently had her suspicions from the beginning, to judge from the Hans Koldow report filed against her that September. Then, a year ago, she had come in to see her own file. It was right about the time she “went off the deep end,” according to her university colleagues, and began her downward spiral of destructively obsessive behavior.
Now he knew why. Not because she had been outed by Bauer, or figured her future was doomed. Nothing that selfish. It was instead because she had learned that her own loose lips had led directly to her grandmother’s death and that Bauer himself may have helped arrange it.
It explained why she had spoken with such passion about the power of love. Nat had scoffed, foolishly so, when she later claimed she was speaking of her Oma. He had also made some crack about how her grandmother must have been her “guardian against the Stasi.” No wonder Berta had cooled so quickly.
So, yes, it was love that drove her, but also shame, grief, and a burning desire for vengeance and atonement—even after her reputation was in ruins and her bank account was empty.
In the back of the folder, agency officials had listed the names of everyone who had viewed this file to date.
Berta was the second visitor. She had come in May 2006. Nat was the fourth.
The first, only a few weeks before Berta, was a lawyer with an address on the Ku-Damm—probably the Bauer henchman who had dug up the dirt and passed it along to the Free University. He, too, hadn’t been entitled to see the material, meaning that Bauer had pulled strings just as Nat had done.
It was the third visitor’s identity that provided Nat with his most pleasant surprise.
Liesl Hartz had come here only about a month after Berta. Like most Germans who visited the Stasi files, she had been curious to find out which neighbors and friends had been spying on her all those years. It was her address that was remarkable, so much so that it raised the hair on Nat’s arms. After the Wall came down she must have moved back to the west side of the city. Perhaps she did it to be near the place where she grew up, because her apartment was in Dahlem, on a street Nat was familiar with. It was only blocks from the Krumme Lanke U-Bahn stop. No wonder he had sensed such a strange presence that day with Berta. Except Liesl was no mere spirit. She lived and breathed, and her home was his next destination.
AS HE KNOCKED at the door, Nat wondered how many times Liesl must have heard that sound and feared the worst. Not only had she endured two of history’s most oppressive and intrusive regimes, but she had dared to defy them and, somehow, had survived.
Yet when Liesl Hartz opened her door, she did not bother with a security chain or even a precautionary glance through a peephole. She simply threw it open and looked straight into his face. Her voice was neither harsh nor challenging. Nor was it timid or cowed.
“Good afternoon. Whom do you wish to see?”
“Liesl Hartz. Or, as I expect you were once known, Liesl Folkerts.”
Her eyes betrayed a flash of surprise, and she stepped back from the threshold.
“Oh, my,” she said, raising a hand to her neck. “No one has spoken my maiden name for quite some time, and I’m not sure I like the idea of anyone knowing it. Who are you, and how did you find me?”
“I’m an American historian, Dr. Nathaniel Turnbull. But I hope you’ll call me Nat. And, well, I found you, at least indirectly, through the granddaughter of the woman who was once your best friend.”
“You must mean Berta Heinkel, Hannelore’s favorite. The one who did her in, poor child, quite unwittingly.”
“Oh, she knows, I’m afraid. In fact, she seems to have spent the better part of the past year trying to make up for it. It has practically ruined her.”
Liesl shook her head. Then her expression took on an air of suspicion.
“I was just about to invite you in. But I would feel more comfortable about it if you could first indulge me by answering one more question.”
“Certainly.”
“Are you here on behalf of Kurt Bauer?” She placed a hand on the doorknob, as if preparing to shut the door.
“Definitely not. If he knew I was here, he’d probably be doing everything in his power to stop me. Because I’ve come to ask you about the war years, and the White Rose, and everything else that happened then.”
She exhaled in apparent relief.
“Then I had better make some coffee. You’re going to be here for quite a while.”
She showed Nat to a couch in the parlor. The furniture was clean but threadbare, and the walls were unadorned except for a few simple prints. Her television set was a small black-and-white model, ancient, but her bookcases were full. A tea table was piled high with newspapers and magazines. The place bore all the earmarks of someone who had little money for luxuries yet had never stopped feeding an active mind.
She carried in a wooden tray with a coffee thermos and two plain white mugs.
“Milk and sugar?”
“Just milk, thank you.”
“I’m afraid this coffee may be the only item of any real value that I can offer,” she said. “I have my impressions, of course, and my memories. But I have none of the sort of items that historians usually think of as proof, at least where Kurt Bauer is concerned, even though I have never had any doubt since the end of the war as to what really happened. Hannelore also knew, but she, too, had nothing you would ever call proof. It’s why neither of us was ever bold enough to come forward. Until, well … I suppose you must already know of how Hannelore died? Or was killed, rather.”
“Yes, I read the report. But I wouldn’t worry any longer about not having any proof against Bauer.” He handed her a copy of G?llner’s interrogation transcript. “Take a few minutes to read this.”
Liesl slipped on a pair of glasses, and for most of the next half hour the only sound in the room was of the traffic, whisking by out front. Her eyes glistened a few times, and she paused often to shake her head, slowly and dolefully. Twice she sighed loudly and put down the papers, as if struggling to maintain her composure. But she never once shed a tear. Too much hard-earned endurance for that, Nat supposed.
As Nat watched her, it occurred to him why this case had fascinated him so much, even apart from the personal connections, and why it would probably continue to absorb him for months to come, or longer. It wasn’t just the opportunity for a world-class “gotcha” in exposing Bauer, or even the higher motive of helping Holland and playing a small role in a twist of global history. It was more that this cast of players—Bauer and Berta, Gordon and Sabine, Liesl and Hannelore—perfectly encapsulated his life’s work. The six of them were his curriculum, Modern Germany made flesh, in all its macabre and tragic grandeur.
Liesl put down the transcript with a final sigh. Dry-eyed, she handed it back.
“Keep it,” he said. “I’ve made copies.”
“Thank you. But tell me, if you have this, what could you possibly need from me?”
“Well, one thing I’d like to know is how the hell you got away from Pl?tzensee Prison without anyone finding out you’d survived?”
She smiled.
“That was Hannelore’s trick. The bombs blew open her cell, of course, and I happened to be standing in a hallway at the time. I had just been released. G?llner himself had come to sign the discharge papers, which were still in my hand. One of the walls collapsed, and everything was pretty crazy, pretty frightening. Somehow I ended up outside, half in shock, and that’s when she saw me. She took me by the arm and we ran. And that might have been it, except Hannelore had the presence of mind to place my release papers in that poor girl’s hand, the one who was already half-buried in the fallen bricks. Another prisoner, I suppose. No one has ever known her name, because when the authorities found her they logged her death under my name.”
“G?llner must have realized the mistake.”
“I’m certain he did. He knew my face, and he would have seen hers. But he would have been glad to keep it a secret.”
“What makes you say that?”
“Because of what he had just told me, inside the prison, while I waited for him to sign my papers. He told me all about what Kurt had done. His idea of a joke on Kurt, I suppose. I gather he was feeling ill-treated by his superiors as the result of all the pressure being applied by Kurt’s father. Telling me about Kurt’s betrayal was his only way of getting back at the Bauers. And when he heard later that Kurt thought the dead girl was me, it must have made him even happier.”
“Where did you go from there?”
“We tried my house first. But by then my family had been killed, that very morning. So we went across town, to some friends of Hannelore’s in Prenzlauer Berg. We barely survived all the bombings during the next few months, and then we barely survived the Russians. I was raped by a soldier in the Red Army. Hardly unusual, as you must know. Hannelore was a far better survivor. She killed one of them with a pair of scissors. She was also better than me at surviving the Worker’s Paradise, at least for a while. She was quite the firebrand at first. Then they put her in prison for two years, and she was never quite as vocal afterward. Nor was I. After a while I no longer had much spirit for dissent.”
“Weren’t you ever tempted to contact Bauer, or confront him in some way?”
“Hannelore and I always talked about that. In private, of course. We drafted several letters to the press, laying out our case. And I found out his phone number, the one to his home. But we never mailed the letters, and I never called.”
“Why not?”
“Only two things could have happened, and neither was satisfactory. Without proof, the West would have seen it as another trumped-up Communist attempt to smear a good capitalist. There were quite a few of those, you know, complete with forgeries. In some ways that would only have made him stronger, an object of pity.”
“Maybe.”
“Yes, maybe. Meaning maybe we could have succeeded. But then we realized what that would have meant. Hannelore and I would have been celebrated as heroes of the Worker’s Paradise. Sturdy tools in the hands of our new enemy. The very people who were making others spy on us would have been richly rewarded. Besides, part of me simply never wanted to relive those days. Those horrible executions. Discovering that my true love had betrayed us. Then learning that my entire family had been blown to pieces. All in one terrible day. Those sorts of memories don’t bear much stirring up. Even after Hannelore and I were both married, with new names to hide behind, we never said much about our days in the White Rose. Although I gather that toward the end Hannelore told some of her stories to Berta. Maybe that’s what finally inspired the girl to try and take down Bauer.”
“How often did you see Berta?”
“Only once or twice. And on both occasions Hannelore introduced me simply as Mrs. Hartz, because Berta had already heard so many wartime tales of the heroic Liesl Folkerts. Even then Hannelore suspected the girl was reporting on her. Out of love, she said, which I could never understand. All I saw in Berta was a frightening little Communist, and Hannelore knew I felt that way. So there is no way she would have ever told Berta who I really was.”
“I guess you weren’t very surprised to read in your Stasi file that Berta had informed on you as well.”
“Not at all. Although it made me want to look up Berta’s file as an informer, which I was entitled to do as one of her ‘victims.’ That’s when I found out how Hannelore had been killed. It made me furious at the girl, of course. Her stupidity had cost me my best friend. But it also made me realize that she, too, was a victim of the state. Besides, she was only a girl.”
“Kurt Bauer was only a boy.”
“But his motives were wealth and self-preservation, and he was nearly eighteen. Berta was three years younger, a far more vulnerable age, and she had been indoctrinated from birth. And as perverse as it sounds, I really do believe she was acting out of love, just as Hannelore said. Surely in your profession you can see the difference between them.”
“What are your feelings about her now?”
“There is still anger, of course. But there is also pity. I have heard through others that she has lost everything. She has paid a far greater price than Kurt ever did. And I would guess that what torments her most is the loss of her Oma.”
“ ‘Torment’ is exactly the word, and I’m hoping I can help her. I’d like to share these materials with her, if it’s all right with you. I may even let her help me prepare an article for publication. She did show me the way to your door, in a sense. I can’t say her motives were always admirable, and definitely not her methods, but I wouldn’t have succeeded without her.”
“You must do as you see fit. But I am told she no longer has a home. Do you even know where to reach her?”
“I’m pretty sure I will quite soon. Bauer, too. Which brings me to my last question. Are you busy this coming Monday?”
ON SUNDAY NIGHT, just as Nat was putting the finishing touches on his arrangements for the following morning, he telephoned Holland. The agent was at home, and sounded a little tipsy.
“Still celebrating?” Nat asked.
“Why not? You gave us plenty to celebrate.”
“You’ll also be happy to know I’ve completed my expense report. I’ll fax it tonight if you’ll give me a number.”
“I hope you took me up on that offer of a nice dinner in Bern.”
“Didn’t have time, as it turned out. Had to head straight to Berlin.”
“Berlin? What on earth for?” He sounded a little edgy.
“I had a few loose ends to wrap up. Still do, in fact, if I ever want to publish.”
“Publish?”
“Don’t worry, I’m not looking to spoil your party. In fact, the whole point of this call is to make sure I don’t. Which is why I have only one question, and if you’re smart you’ll answer it.”
“Try me.”
“This stuff you wanted from Bauer. Has he given it to you?”
“Yes, all of it. Took up the better part of the weekend. The last debriefing session ended this afternoon.”
“And it’s complete? It’s everything he promised?”
“That’s more than one question. But, yes, everything. Our experts were even a little taken aback by the bounty. Names, contact info, flowcharts, transport networks, important middlemen, the works. Even better than expected, from what I’ve been told. And after seeing what was in those folders you found, I can understand why he was willing to make the deal. Completely off the record, some people in our own government weren’t exactly sorry to see this stuff buried for good, either, given the way certain matters were handled, way back when.”
“Good. That means I can proceed with a clear conscience.”
“Oh, dear.” He sounded concerned, but he quickly relaxed into a chuckle. “Am I to take it you found some way to outsmart us?”
“No comment.”
Another chuckle.
“You don’t exactly sound worried by the prospect,” Nat said.
“Off the record again?”
“Sure.”
“A few days ago I would have been. But we kept our end of the bargain—delivered everything Bauer wanted, took every precaution to assure its secrecy. If he’s still not used to dealing with the likes of you—well, that’s his problem. Besides, it’s the Agency that stands to be embarrassed on our side, not us. Although frankly we’ve also made some accommodations I’m not very comfortable with. Agreeing to look the other way on some of these recent deaths, for example.”
“Gordon’s?”
“No. His was natural. I wasn’t lying about that.”
“Willis Turner, then, and the PI in Florida. Plus G?llner in Germany.”
“It was the Germans who caved on G?llner. And those other two are only part of the story.”
“You mean there were more?”
“This thing got pretty complicated, and Bauer pulled out all the stops. As of now we’re not even certain who was responsible for half of it. Bauer, the Iranians, who knows? But today I was told in no uncertain terms that we no longer need to find out.”
“So we’re covering for him. Again. Meaning he’ll never answer for it.”
“Not in a court of law. Which should explain why I’m not really upset by what you’re apparently up to. Of course, I never said that. In fact, we never had this conversation.”
“Fine by me. As long as you pay my tab.”
SO NOW IT HAD COME to this on a cloudy Monday morning in Berlin: Nat, standing beside Liesl on the grounds of the Pl?tzensee Memorial. Berta, with her camera, lurking behind a wall. Bauer, stooped and wary, bouquet in hand. All the dramatis personae, in place for the final act.
Bauer shuffled toward the spot in the stone courtyard where he always placed the flowers. Just as he was bending over, the motor drive of Berta’s camera whirred into action. Nat heard it clearly. Bauer must have, too, because he stiffened and clenched the flowers tightly. Even from twenty feet away you could see his knuckles whiten. He then turned toward Nat and strolled briskly forward, as if he had decided that this was where he would focus his anger first.
Liesl, holding Nat’s arm, tensed in anticipation, and Nat decided to intervene before things turned ugly. He patted her hand and headed toward Bauer. The two men came face-to-face in the middle of the courtyard just as Berta emerged fully from behind the shed.
Bauer raised a bony finger, which quivered as he spoke.
“All of this is over, you know!” Spittle punctuated every word, flak bursts of fury. “Over! For you and for that horrid girl!” He nodded toward Berta, who had lowered her camera and was watching in rapt silence. “One call to the police and she will be arrested! They will no doubt wish to hear about you as well. I will ruin you, just as I ruined her.”
No sense arguing, Nat decided. Only a full frontal assault would do now.
“As you please, Herr Bauer. But I’ve brought someone with me who has wanted to speak to you for a very long time. Liesl, will you please come here?”
Bauer froze at the sound of her name and clutched the flowers to his chest. For a moment Nat feared he would drop dead from a heart attack. He even felt a twinge of sympathy. Look at how far astray the man’s adoration had led him—so many misguided betrayals, each of them a burnt offering at the altar of her memory. But now you could sense the dawning realization that he had built a flawed temple to a false god.
“It is you,” the old man said, breathless. “Liesl. My dearest!”
Bauer reached out a hand, but Liesl backed away, repelled. There was no way she was going to let him touch her, and you could see that it wounded him deeply. Berta, too, had been halted in her tracks. It was clear to Nat that she had recognized her Oma’s best friend and, having heard Liesl’s name, she was now adding up the rest of the story, stunned by its implications.
“Yes, Kurt. It is me,” Liesl said. “I have told our story to this young man. Hannelore’s story, too. She was the grandmother of that young woman over there, the one with the camera. Anything else you’ll just have to learn by reading about it. And by then, of course, everyone will know.”
Bauer was too dumbfounded to answer, as if he was still trying to reconcile this vengeful old woman with the girl he had once loved. Liesl turned toward Berta.
“Put your camera down and come here, unless you never want to escape your past, like this bitter old man here. If you come with me, I think we will have a great deal to talk about.”
Liesl held out her hand. Berta nodded, and obeyed as if in a trance. They linked arms and turned to go. Liesl called out to Nat over her shoulder.
“I will see you back at the car, Dr. Turnbull.”
Berta nodded toward him, the barest hint of a smile. Gratitude or relief, he couldn’t tell which. She was still stunned to silence, yet also aglow, as if she had not only finally found her answers but also had been pleasantly surprised to discover that there was more than just death at the heart of things.
As for Bauer, he remained speechless and staring, his open mouth as rigid as that of a corpse. He was an old man rooted to his memories, unable to reconcile any of what he had just seen. Turning slowly, he watched the two women climb into the taxi, the younger one helping the older. Yes, it was Liesl, so stooped and bent—his age, his era, and, also like him, fading now beneath the burdens of their shared past, a history that had at last come to claim him.
At the very moment when the door of the taxi slammed shut, the bouquet fell from his hands. The flowers were still bundled in wet newspaper, his final tainted offering upon a girl’s empty grave.