Authors: Paul Grossman
Persistence, luckily, didn’t take long to reward this time. Just across the street at Schmidt’s Tonsorial Parlor, both the barber and his assistant claimed to know Heilbutt many years. They broke into an argument about where he’d said he was going.
“Bremen.”
“Bremer
haven
.”
“Perhaps Bremer
haven,
but on the
Bremen
.”
“The
Bremen
?” Willi was trying to grasp this. “You mean, the ocean liner?”
“What other
Bremen
is there?” The barber looked at him. “Herr Heilbutt said it was costing him a fortune, but it was a once-in-a-lifetime thing, to visit his sister in America. So he’d cashed out on his pension and was happy to spend it.”
“This was when?”
“The day before yesterday.”
“No, it was Tuesday.”
“That
was
the day before yesterday!”
Willi checked his watch: a quarter past four. It would take a miracle, he realized, but yanking his collar he hurried back out into the pelting wind, breathless by the time he made it back to the U-Bahn station. A train was just pulling in, and even with two transfers he managed to arrive at the passenger service desk of the Norddeutscher Lloyd Line on Unter den Linden with ten minutes to spare, where he got a bit of good news. If Heilbutt was leaving Germany on the
Bremen,
the man was still in the country, he was informed, because the ship wasn’t sailing until tomorrow night. Unfortunately, they didn’t have the passenger lists here. But they could call Bremerhaven.
“If you’d be so kind.”
Willi waited.
“Are you positive?… H-e-i-l-b-u-t-t.… Okay, thank you.… Sorry, sir. No, it doesn’t appear any Herr Heilbutt will be sailing with us tomorrow.”
The man was scared, Willi realized. Whatever had driven Dr. Riegler to kill herself was causing Heilbutt to flee. He might easily be waiting to purchase a last-minute ticket so he couldn’t be traced. Or even traveling under an assumed name, with false papers. It was a long shot. But in seven years Willi’d learned one thing: if anyone got the story straight from the horse’s mouth, it was usually the barber.
* * *
Next morning he was out of Berlin on the eight o’clock train. The going proved painfully slow. Track work. Delays. Not until two did the giant Becks brewery pass outside the window, then another hour through redbrick suburbs to the mouth of the Weser River and one of Germany’s great ports. Even as they pulled into the station, he could see the huge black-and-white superstructure towering over the berth across the road and the famed twin orange funnels of the SS
Bremen
.
Flagship of the Norddeutscher Lloyd Line,
Bremen
had ushered in a whole new era in ocean travel last year. Her sleek profile and slender smokestacks exemplified “streamlined” every bit as much as the Mercedes SSK. Her revolutionary bow, bulbing just below the waterline to reduce drag and increase speed, had proven a stunning success. On her maiden voyage in July she deposed the Cunard’s famed
Mauretania,
crown-holder for twenty years, beating the old Brit by half a day to become the world’s fastest ocean liner. On her return from New York, she broke the record again by another three hours, thrilling the whole of Germany.
At the pier, noisy crowds already bunched around the boarding ramps, the elegant ship scheduled to depart in less than three hours. There were mountains of luggage. Stevedores shouting. Children jumping. Willi wondered how he was going to find somebody in all this. Looking up at the graceful white bridge, he realized there was only one possibility: help from above.
His Kripo badge gained him access. From the first-class gangway he was taken directly to the chief purser, whom he soon enough learned was a big fan of the Berlin Kriminal Polizei. “The whole country applauds the victories of our capital’s famed detectives,” he informed Willi while thumbing through the passenger lists. “For instance, that fellow who chopped up his wife and shipped her to the department store where she owed all that money. Was that you who brought him in?”
“No,” Willi answered. “My colleague Hans Freksa.”
“
Ach ja,
Freksa! A real sleuthhound. The name
Heilbutt,
however, is not on my register, I’m afraid, Herr Sergeant-Detektiv.”
Since Willi had no photo of him, the case was taken directly to the highest levels.
“Descriptions of the man will be sent to all officers at all ramps,” the captain assured, even though the ship had of course been boarding for several hours now. Perhaps, Willi suggested, the best thing would be to observe things from right here. “Yes, with our new high-powered binoculars, the bridge will be the just the place for you to keep an eye on things.”
It proved a spectacular perch. The whole ship, a quarter of a mile long, came into view. And all around, the great dockworks, steel cranes, and brick warehouses of Bremerhaven. The wide, green Weser estuary all the way to the sea. The sky so vast. So promising. The air so sweet. The whole panorama, it seemed, beckoning.
Willi was amazed by how powerful the binoculars were, far stronger than anything the Zeiss company had made during the war. And far lighter. He could see distinct expressions on couples strolling halfway down the ship on the forward promenade. The hand signals of sailors on the boat deck. What he wouldn’t have given for these behind French lines. At the first-class gangway he spied the irritated scowl of a woman toting two Pekinese dogs and her husband. Further down in tourist—a well-scrubbed family excited to leave on holidays, the children hardly able to contain themselves. For an instant he fantasized about taking his family on a trip to America. How the kids would love it. How wonderful it would be sailing into New York harbor on a grand ship like this, past that lady lifting her lamp, Vicki on his arm.
They would do it someday. Soon.
He aimed at the third-class boarding desk. Several young people in worker’s caps and kerchiefs were lugging heavy canvas bags, clutching tickets to what they no doubt hoped was a better tomorrow. For seventy-five years Bremerhaven had been one of the main ports of emigration to America, not only from Germany but all across Central Europe. Many millions of people had set off for the New World from here.
Heilbutt apparently intent on joining them.
Which class might he be traveling in? For a man of his rank, tourist would be logical. But the barber had specifically said Heilbutt mentioned it was costing a fortune, so maybe he’d splurged on a better ticket.
There was nothing to do but watch.
For the next two hours Willi stood on deck, scanning, scanning.
Evening fell. All along the hulk of the ship portholes illuminated, turning the water below shimmering silver. The cargo ramps were drawn in. A series of bells announced an hour left until departure. He grew uneasy. He couldn’t stay on the bridge forever. It would be pure luck to spot Heilbutt at this point anyway, so he decided just to wander around and let fate take its course.
The ocean liner was huge. Magnificent. He passed luxurious dining rooms, card rooms, smoking lounges, and indoor pools, boutiques, and theaters. The long hallways were crowded with people coming in and out of staterooms, saying farewell to those not sailing. Everybody in the world seemed on board but Heilbutt. Finally uniformed stewards began walking about hitting three-tone xylophones announcing only twenty minutes until departure. All guests needed to head toward the exit ramps.
Which is when Willi spotted him.
Halfway down the hallway. There was no mistaking that ill-tempered face. Or the intense fear on it when he recognized Willi. He may have been over sixty, but with all the agililty of a mountain goat Heilbutt pivoted and disappeared down the third-class staircase.
He had a good head start. People trying to get off the ship obstructed Willi’s progress. He had to make his way down narrow corridors filled with hippolike
hausfrau
s and beer-bellied
burgher
s, feeling more than one blow against his back as he pushed past. In the third-class reading room, he thought he caught sight of Heilbutt leaping from the rear door, but hall after hall, room after room, he couldn’t find him again.
Finally, furious, he exited onto the third-class promenade deck and found himself staring at the tricolors of the republic on the stern flagpole, flapping in the wind. He’d reached the end of the ship. It was freezing out here. He could hear stewards calling the fifteen-minute warning. What to do? Go to the captain? Delay departure? Have everyone in third class paraded past him? Or let the old man flee in peace? Let whomever cover up whatever they were covering, and just go home to his wife and—
There he was.
Left of the flagpole. Willi’d cornered him. There was no way to get by and nowhere to go, except overboard. When Heilbutt realized this, he peered from the guardrail, then turned around ashen-faced, panting.
“Okay, so you got me. Proud, Kraus? A man twice your age. What are you gonna do now, toss me in?”
After the run the old fellow had given him from Berlin, Willi kind of felt like it.
* * *
It was a clear, cold night. Stars studded the sky. Somewhere up near the bow of the
Bremen,
bells were clanging.
“You know she took poison,” Willi said furiously.
Heilbutt’s head dropped.
“Three days before I found her. Not a word of explanation. Now, you are going to tell me why.”
The older man clenched his eyes as if to make himself invisible—which Willi wanted him to understand was not possible. No more vanishing acts.
“Let’s see your passport.”
The eyes popped wide. “But I—”
“Passport! Passport!” Willi demanded.
The eyes darted as if Heilbutt was thinking maybe it was worth going over the side after all. So Willi yanked him away from the rail, stuck an arm in his coat, and just pulled the passport from his pocket.
A forgery.
“Joachim Baumeister. How interesting. I’d say you’re in a pretty precarious situation here.” Only feet away people were throwing streamers over the edge of the ship. “Fleeing the country under an assumed identity … evading an officer of the criminal police. My guess is you’re looking at least, well, let’s be honest, at your age, the rest of your life.”
Heilbutt went white. “Can we go inside?” His voice was a whisper. “I’m rather chilled.”
From high overhead an earsplitting blast of steam broke the night.
Willi got right up to Heilbutt’s face. “The only place you’re going is back to Berlin, straight to the Dungeons at the Alex if you don’t tell me what I came to find out. Now!”
Heilbutt searched the sky a moment, then looked back at Willi. “If I tell you, will you let me go?”
There was another furious blast of steam, and a sudden rain of confetti.
Willi had no time to waste. He needed the truth, fast. He didn’t want to deal with dragging the man off the ship, unless absolutely necessary.
“In principle I have nothing against you visiting New York. Unless—”
“Unless you need me to testify?” Heilbutt’s ill-humored expression filled with a gleam of hope. “Listen, Kraus, if it ever got that far, believe me, I’d—”
“Get on with it, then. And don’t leave anything out.”
Heilbutt wiped his forehead, lowering his eyes. “She didn’t have to do that.” His wrinkled cheeks trembled. “She could have left, like me. Or kept her mouth shut.” He swallowed as if the words burned on the way out. “God knows, she managed to all those years—”
“Get to the meat, Heilbutt. Start with the bow-wow stuff.”
The ill-tempered face nodded obediently. “You remember the inflation, what it was like. People carting their life savings to the butcher in a wheelbarrow. Everyone trying to cut costs to the bone, so to speak.”
As if Willi could forget. A loaf of bread shot up from five marks to 5 million in a week. A week later it was 10 million. A month after that half a billion. They kept printing higher denominations—a 10 million mark note, a 100 million—but the money wasn’t worth the paper it was printed on. Germany’s hyperinflation of 1923 was the worst in history.
“Get to the meat, Heilbutt.”
“The first few months of ’23 we kept receiving reports about funny tastes in sausages. Nothing unusual. People always complaining about this or that. Sure enough, though, random tests start turning up samples with ten, maybe twelve percent filler of what we figure out in the lab is unmistakably
Canis lupus familiaris
. Dog. No bacteria. Nobody’s getting sick. Just … dog. We’re all disgusted, naturally. But the higher-ups insist we keep it hush-hush. Times are insane enough without making people afraid to eat, so we investigate quietly. Make progress too. I’d say halfway there when suddenly all the samples are turning up clean. No more dog. Whoever’s doing it must have caught wind we’re closing in because it never turned up again. Plus, by then we’d had the currency reform, inflation’s over. In no uncertain terms we’re told: case closed.”
“You got halfway to where?”
Heilbutt’s eyes flared. “We found it being sold at a peddlers’ market off Landsberger Allee, labeled mutton. The vendor was twelve years old. Can you believe it? Didn’t even know his boss’s name. Clearly the stuff was coming from the
Viehof
. Our guess was the south side, by-product zone. I wanted to keep going on the sly. But Henrietta—that was Dr. Riegler’s name, you know—was terrified of losing her job. She told me she’d worked too hard to throw it all away on some antisocial miscreants. As long as no one got sick.”
Heilbutt’s worn-out eyes filled with sudden tenderness. “What can I say? She came from a modest family. Had a real struggle to get into medical school. Can you imagine”—he smiled dimly—“the only girl in her class. Completely devoted to her career. Never married. Being my boss, of course, it couldn’t have worked, but I might have asked her myself, Kraus. I pretended not to, but—”
There were three short blasts of steam. The loudspeaker blared with finality, “All ashore that’s going—”