The Arms Maker Of Berlin Part 26

"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?" 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 subst.i.tute initials for the forenames. 'To protect their ident.i.ty,' 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 G.o.dd.a.m.ned 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 pet.i.tioned for delays. Health reasons, she claimed."

"Mental, no doubt."

Hermann laughed, spluttering beer onto his s.h.i.+rt 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 Gollner.

"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?" 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 d.i.c.kinson 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 gra.s.s, 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 h.e.l.l'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 doork.n.o.b.

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 a.s.sumed that the initial a.s.sailant must have been a member of Holland's "compet.i.tion," 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 embarra.s.sed 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 pa.s.sing 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 b.u.mp 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 tyc.o.o.n gone mad. He would puff a cigar and scold Nat for reckless research. Then he would hand over a folder of forged doc.u.ments, 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 a.s.sailants 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 cla.s.s after cla.s.s, 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."

TWENTY-ONE.

Berlin-February 18, 1943 THE SHRILL CRY of a police whistle pursued them down Uhlandstra.s.se. Thank G.o.d for the blackout, or they would have been easy prey as they ran down the sidewalk. of a police whistle pursued them down Uhlandstra.s.se. Thank G.o.d for the blackout, or they would have been easy prey as they ran down the sidewalk.

"There's a U-Bahn station coming up," Kurt hissed in the dark Liesl and Hannelore were barely keeping pace. They rounded the corner and half stumbled down the steps of the station as the whistle sounded again.

"Hurry!" Liesl shouted.

Hannelore, predictably, had fallen farther behind, but when they reached the platform Kurt saw that luck was with them. A train lay waiting, rumbling like an animal ready to pounce. They clambered aboard just as a harsh voice shouted from the stairway.

"Halt! Polizei!"

Luckily, the subway driver either didn't hear or was more worried about his timetable, because the doors jolted shut and the train lurched forward. With a rising moan it was soon hurtling into the tunnel. Kurt saw a fleeting image of a huffing policeman arriving on the platform with two black-clad Gestapo officers in his wake. Then, darkness, and the empty clatter of the tracks. He exhaled loudly and sagged forward in his seat. Sweat dripped from his nose onto the slatted wooden floor. His body stank, but so did everyone else's these days. Between the ban on weekday bathing and the shortage of decent soap, every railcar smelled like a sweatshop.

Kurt looked across the aisle. Hannelore had of course taken the seat next to Liesl. Lately, Kurt and Hannelore seemed to be competing every day for Liesl's time and attention. But at the moment he was angrier at Hannelore's slowness.

The occasion for their close call was the fourth meeting of the Berlin White Rose. It was supposed to have been the first meeting to produce tangible results. Kurt had finally been able to steal a boxful of paper from his father's offices. Eight full reams-four thousand sheets in all. Given the regime's mania over seditious literature, a cache like that was as valuable as diamonds.

White Rose pamphlets out of Munich had been spreading across the country in recent weeks, and the local Gestapo was in a frenzy to keep the material out of Berlin. Anti-n.a.z.i graffiti that appeared by night was gone by morning. Their group had decided that only an explosion of locally produced pamphlets could overcome such diligence.

Helmut Hartert had drafted their first message and was standing by with his printing press. The fourth meeting had been called to vote on the final wording. Then Kurt was supposed to hand over the paper so that the printing could begin.

He had lugged his precious cargo up five flights of stairs to the site-an empty loft above an exclusive dress shop. Christoph Klemm had chosen the place after a week of scouting. The shop, owned by his uncle, had been shuttered by the Propaganda Ministry after Goebbels deemed luxury items an affront to the long-suffering troops.