The Good German (25 page)

“What do you mean, evidence?”

But he wasn’t listening now, looking at the bill. What had Danny said? A dash before the number. He turned the bill over. A dash, Russian money. He stood for a second, trying to think what it could mean, then gave it up, indifferent, his mind still hazy, not wanting anything to interrupt the day. He put the note back in the drawer and leaned down to kiss her head. The lavender was still there, mixed now with the smell of them.

“I’ll be down in two minutes,” she said, eager to leave, as if the billet were a hotel room they’d rented for the afternoon.

“All right. We’ll go home,” he said, pleased at the sound of it. He picked up Liz’s shoes on the way out.

In the hall he waited until she answered his knock.

“Hey, Jackson,” she said, still looking embarrassed. “Sorry about that. Next time put a tie on the door.”

“Your shoes,” he said, handing them to her. “I borrowed them.”

“I’ll bet you looked swell.”

“Hers were wet.”

She looked up at him. “It’s against the house rules, you know.”

“It’s not what you think.”

“No? You could have fooled me.”

“What did you want, anyway?” he said, feeling too good to want to explain.

“Mostly to see if you were alive. You still live here, don’t you?”

“I’ve been busy.”

“Uh-huh. And here I was, worried. Men. People have been asking for you, by the way.”

“Later,” he said, unconcerned. “Thanks again for the shoes.”

She tipped one to her head in a salute. “Anytime. Hey, Jackson,” she said, stopping him as he turned to go. “Don’t let it throw you. It s only—”

“It’s not what you think,” he said again.

She smiled. “Then stop grinning.”

“Ami?”

“Ear to ear.”

Was he? He went down the stairs, wondering if his face were really a flushed sign, giving them away. Slap-happy. All the intimacy reduced to a popular song lyric. But who cared?

He turned off the phonograph and finally had a cigarette, pacing now instead of lying in bed, the usual ritual turned around like everything else. How long since she’d come down the stairs dressed like that, wanting to? Outside, the wet leaves were gleaming in the new light, shiny as coins. Russian money. Tully’d had Russian money. His mind, still vague, was toying with it when he heard stamping at the door. Bernie, wiping his feet on the mat and shaking out an umbrella, a careful boy who practiced piano.

“Where the hell have you been?” he said, hurrying in. “I’ve been looking for you. For days.” A faint accusation.

“Working,” Jake said, the only legitimate excuse. Was he grinning?

“I’ve got other things to do, you know. Playing errand boy. And you take a powder,” Bernie said, his voice as raspy as an alarm clock.

“You heard from Frankfurt?” Jake said, waking to it.

“Plenty. We need to talk. You didn’t tell me there was a connection.” He put the files he’d been carrying on the piano, as if he were about to roll up his sleeves and start to work.

“Can it wait?” Jake said, still elsewhere.

Bernie stared at him, surprised.

“Okay,” Jake said, giving in, “what did they say?”

But Bernie was still staring, this time beyond him, to Lena coming down the stairs, her hair pinned back up, proper again, but the dress swaying with her, another entrance. She stopped at the door.

“Lena,” Jake said. “I want you to meet someone.” He turned to Bernie. “I found her. Bernie, this is Lena Brandt.”

Bernie kept staring, then nodded awkwardly, as embarrassed as Liz.

“We got caught in the rain,” Jake said, smiling.

Lena mumbled a polite hello. “We should go,” she said to Jake.

“In a minute. Bernie’s been helping me with a story.” He turned. “So what did they say?”

“It can wait,” Bernie said, still looking at Lena, flustered, as if he hadn’t seen a woman in weeks.

“No, it’s all right. What connection?” Curious now.

“We’ll talk later,” Bernie said, looking away.

“I won’t be here later.” Then, taking in his embarrassment, “It’s all right. Lena’s—with me. Come on, give. Any luck?”

Bernie nodded reluctantly. “Some,” he said, but he was looking at Lena. “We’ve located your husband.”

For a minute she stood still, then slumped to the piano bench, holding on to the edge.

“He’s not dead?” she said finally.

“No.”

“I thought he was dead.” Her voice a monotone. “Where is he?”

“Kransberg. At least he was.”

“It’s a prison?” she said, her voice still flat.

“A castle. Near Frankfurt. Not a prison, exactly. More like a guesthouse. For people we want to talk to. Dustbin.”

“I don’t understand,” she said, confused.

“That’s what they call it. There’s another near Paris—Ashcan. Dustbin’s where they’ve stashed the scientists. You know he was part of the rocket team?”

She shook her head. “He never talked to me about his work.”

“Really.”

She looked at him. “Never. I don’t know anything.”

“Then you’ll be interested,” Bernie said, his voice hard. “I was. He did the numbers. Trajectories. Fuel capacity. Everything but the casualties in London.”

“You blame him for that? There were casualties in Berlin too.”

Jake had stood following them as if he were at a tennis match and now looked at her, surprised at the strength of her return. A kindergarten covered with concrete slabs.

“Not from flying bombs,” Bernie said. “We didn’t have the benefit of his expertise.”

“And now you will,” she said, unexpectedly bitter. “In prison.” She got up and went over to the window. “Can I see him?”

Bernie nodded. “If we find him.”

The phrase shook Jake awake. “What do you mean?”

Bernie turned to him. “He’s missing. About two weeks now. Just up and left. It’s got them all foaming. Apparently he’s a particular favorite of von Braun’s,” he said, glancing toward Lena. “Can’t do without him. I made a routine query, and half of Frankfurt jumped down my throat. They seem to think he was coming to see you,” he said to Lena. “Von Braun, anyway. Says he tried it before. There they were, safe and sound down in Garmisch, waiting for the end, and he makes a beeline for Berlin to get his wife out before the Russians got here. Is that right?”

“He didn’t get me out,” Lena said quietly.

“But he was here?”

“Yes. He came for me—and his father. But it was too late. The Russians—” She glanced over to Jake. “He didn’t get through. I thought they killed him. Those last days—it was crazy, to take that risk.”

“Maybe it was worth it to him,” Bernie said. “Anyway, that’s what they think now. In fact, they’re looking for you.”

“Forme?”

“In case they’re right. They want him back.”

“Do they want to arrest me too?”

“No, I think the idea is that you’re the bait. He’ll come looking for you. Why else would he want out? Everyone else is trying to get in. Kransberg’s for special guests. We like to keep the big Nazis comfortable.”

“He’s not a Nazi,” Lena said dully.

“Well, that’s a matter of opinion. Don’t worry, I can’t touch him. The technical boys put Kransberg off-limits. Scientists are too valuable to be Nazis. Whatever they did. He should have stayed where he was, nice and cozy. A little Ping-Pong in the evenings, I hear. Makes you wonder, doesn’t it?”

“Bernie—” Jake began.

“Yeah, I know, leave it alone. You can’t fight city hall. Every time we start getting somewhere on one of them, the tech units yank the file. Special case. Now I hear they want to take them to the States, the whole fucking team. They’re arguing over salaries. Salaries. No wonder they wanted to surrender to us.” He nodded to Lena. “Let’s hope he finds you soon—you don’t want to miss the boat.” He paused. “Or maybe you do,” he said, glancing at Jake.

“You’re out of line,” Jake said.

“Sorry. Don’t mind me,” Bernie said to Lena. “It comes with the job. We’re a little shorthanded.” He looked at Jake again. “Now the tech units, that’s something else. Nothing but manpower there.” He turned back to Lena. “If he turns up, give one of them a call. They’ll be glad to hear from you.”

“And if he doesn’t?” Jake said. “You said two weeks.”

“Then start looking. I think you’ll want to find him.”

Jake looked at him, puzzled. “What exactly is he accused of?”

“Strictly speaking, nothing. Just leaving Kransberg. A little rude, for an honored guest. But it makes the rest of them jumpy. They like to stick together—improves their bargaining position, I guess. And of course the tech boys have had to beef up security, which takes away from the country club feel of the thing. So they’d like him back.”

“He just walked out?”

“No. That’s the part that will interest you. He had a pass, all official.”

“Why would that interest me?”

Bernie walked over to the piano and flipped open a file folder. “Take a look at the signature,” he said, handing Jake a carbon sheet.

“Lieutenant Patrick Tully,” Jake said, reading aloud, his voice falling. He raised his eyes to find Bernie watching him.

“I was wondering if you knew,” Bernie said. “I guess not. Not with that face. Interested now?”

“What is it?” Lena said.

“A soldier who was killed last week,” Jake said, still looking at the paper.

“And you blame Emil for that?” she said to Bernie, anxious.

He shrugged. “All I know is, two men went missing from Kransberg and one of them’s dead.”

Jake shook his head. “You’re off-base. I know him.”

“That must keep things friendly,” Bernie said.

Jake looked up at him, then passed over it. “Why would Tully sign him out?”

“Well, that’s the question, isn’t it? What occurred to me was, it’s a valuable piece of paper. The only problem with that is the guests don’t have any money—at least, they’re not supposed to. Who needs cash when you’ve got room service courtesy of the U.S. government?”

Jake shook his head again. “It wasn’t Emil’s money,” he said, thinking of the dash before the serial number, but Bernie had leaped elsewhere.

“Then somebody else’s. But there must have been some deal. Tully wasn’t the humanitarian type.” He picked up another folder. “Here, bedtime reading. He’s been in one racket or another since he hit the beach. Of course, you wouldn’t know it from this—just a series of transfers. The usual MG solution—make him somebody else’s problem.”

“Then why send him to a place like Kransberg?”

Bernie nodded. “I asked. The idea was to get him away from civilians. He was MG in a town in Hesse, and things got so bad even the Germans complained. Hauptmann Toll, they called him—crazy. He’d prance around in those boots carrying a
whip
. They thought the SS was back. So MG had to get him out of there. Next, a detention camp in Bensheim. No market there, maybe a few cigarettes, but what the hell? What I hear, though, is that he was selling discharge papers. Don’t bother to look—record just says ‘relieved.’ That was sweet. The way they nailed him is he ran out of customers, so he started having them arrested once they were out—figured they’d pay again. One of them screams bloody murder and the next thing you know he’s off to Kransberg. They probably thought, what harm could he do there? No one
wants
to check out.”

“Except Emil,” Jake said.

“Evidently.”

“But what did they say? When Emil didn’t come back. People just come and go?”

“The guards figured it must be okay if he had papers. And Tully drove him. See, the idea is, it’s not a prison—once in a while the scientists go into town with an escort. So nobody thought anything of it. Then, when he didn’t come back, Tully says he’s as surprised as anybody.”

“Wasn’t he supposed to stay with him?”

“What can you do? Tully had a weekend pass—he didn’t want to play nursemaid. He says he trusted him. It was personal—a family matter. He didn’t want to be in the way,” Bernie said, glancing again at Lena.

“And nobody says anything?”

“Oh, plenty. But you can’t court-martial a man for being stupid. Not when he thinks he’s doing one of the guests a favor. Best you can do is transfer him out. I’d lay you even money it was just a matter of time before those papers were in the works again. But then he went to Potsdam. Which is where you came in.”

Jake had flipped open the folder and was staring at the photograph stapled to the top sheet. Young, not bloated from a night of drifting in the Jungfernsee. He tried to picture Tully striding through a Hessian village with a riding crop, but the face was bland and open, the kind of kid you found on a soda fountain stool in Natick, Mass. But the war had changed everybody.

“I still don’t get it,” he said finally. “If it was that loose, why pay to get out? From the sound of it, he could have jumped out a window and run. Couldn’t he?”

“Theoretically. Look, nobody’s trying to
escape
from Kransberg— it doesn’t occur to them. They’re scientists, not POWs. They’re trying to get a ticket to the promised land, not run away. Maybe he wanted the pass—you know what they’re like about documents. So officially he wouldn’t be AWOL.”

“It’s a hell of a lot to pay for a pass. Anyway, where did the money come from?”

“I don’t know. Ask him. Isn’t that what you wanted to know in the first place?”

Jake looked up from the picture. “No, I wanted to know why Tully was killed. From the sound of it, there could have been a hundred reasons.”

“Maybe,” Bernie said slowly. “And maybe just one.”

“Just because a man signed a piece of paper?”

Bernie spread his hands again. “Maybe a coincidence. Maybe a connection. A man gets out of Kransberg and heads for Berlin. A week later the man who gets him out comes to Berlin and ends up killed. I don’t believe in coincidence. It has to connect somewhere. You add two and two—”

“I know this man. He didn’t kill anybody.”

“No? Well, I’d sure like to hear it from him. Ask him about the SS medal while you’re at it, since you know him so well.” He went over to the piano. “Anyway, he’s your lead. You won’t even have to go looking. He’s coming to you.”

“He hasn’t turned up yet.”

“Does he know where you are?” Bernie said to Lena.