the beach, their faces red from the sun, their hair messed up, their clothes peppered with white sand—buzzed with life like a huge hollowed-out tree colonized by a swarm of bees. Mercifully the station had, so far, escaped the bombs and remained my favorite place in the world. All human life was here in this glass Noah’s Ark, which was full of the things that I loved about the old Berlin. I picked up a phone and made the call.
“Herr Doctor Heckholz?”
“This is he.”
“I’m the man with five twenty-reichsmark notes and one pressing question.”
“Which is?”
“What do I have to do for them?”
“Come and see me at my office tomorrow morning. I have a proposition for you. I might even say, a handsome proposition.”
“Would you care to give me a clue as to what this is all about? I might be wasting your time.”
“I think it’s best I don’t. I have a strong suspicion that the Gestapo are listening in to my telephone calls.”
“If someone’s listening it’s certainly not the Gestapo,” I told him. “The German Signals Intelligence—the FA—is run by Göring’s Aviation Ministry and Hermann keeps a pretty jealous hold on it. Any information obtained by the FA is seldom shared with anyone in the RSHA. As long as you don’t say anything rude about Hitler or Göring, my professional opinion is that you’ve nothing to worry about.”
“If that’s the case then you’ve already earned your money. But do please come anyway. In fact, why not come for breakfast? Do you like pancakes?”
His accent sounded Austrian; the way he said “pancakes” was very different from the way a German would have said it and something a little closer to Hungarian. But I wasn’t about to hold that against him with his Albrechts in my pocket, not to mention the prospect of fresh-made pancakes.
“Sure, I like pancakes.”
“What time do you finish your shift?”
“Nine o’clock.”
“Then I’ll see you at nine-thirty.”
I hung up and went back across the road to the Alex.
It was a quiet night. I had some urgent paperwork but now that I was soon to be on my way to the War Crimes Bureau I wasn’t much inclined to do it; that’s the thing about urgent paperwork: the longer you leave it the less urgent it becomes. So I just sat around and read the newspaper and smoked a couple of the cigarettes I’d stolen from the Wannsee villa. Once, I went to check on the blackout blinds just to stretch my legs; and another time I tried the crossword in the
Illustrierter Beobachter
. Mostly I waited for the phone to ring. It didn’t. When you’re working nights for the Murder Commission, you don’t really exist unless there’s a murder, of course. Nobody cares what you look like or what your opinions are. All that is asked of you is that you’re there until it’s time to go home.
At nine o’clock I signed off and went back to the station, where I caught an S-Bahn train to Zoo Station and then walked a few blocks north, across Knie onto Bismarckstrasse. Bedeuten Strasse was off Wallstrasse, behind the German Opera House. In a solid, five-story redbrick building a short series of steps led up to an arched door and a large round skylight. I mounted the stairs and looked around. There was an older man in a cheap gray suit on the other side of the street reading the
Beobachter
. He wasn’t Gestapo; then again he wasn’t really reading the newspaper, either. Nobody leans on a lamppost to read a newspaper, especially one as dull and boring as the
Völkischer Beobachter,
unless he’s on a stakeout. Above the number on the wall was a mosaic of brass plaques for German doctors, German dentists, German architects, and German lawyers. Since there were hardly any Jews left in Berlin, and certainly none in these noble professions, their Aryan character seemed hardly worth mentioning. Everyone was Aryan now, whether he liked it or not.
Five
I tugged on a brass bellpull as big as a butcher’s weight, heard the door
“Herr Doctor Heckholz?”
“This is he.”
“I’m the man with five twenty-reichsmark notes and one pressing question.”
“Which is?”
“What do I have to do for them?”
“Come and see me at my office tomorrow morning. I have a proposition for you. I might even say, a handsome proposition.”
“Would you care to give me a clue as to what this is all about? I might be wasting your time.”
“I think it’s best I don’t. I have a strong suspicion that the Gestapo are listening in to my telephone calls.”
“If someone’s listening it’s certainly not the Gestapo,” I told him. “The German Signals Intelligence—the FA—is run by Göring’s Aviation Ministry and Hermann keeps a pretty jealous hold on it. Any information obtained by the FA is seldom shared with anyone in the RSHA. As long as you don’t say anything rude about Hitler or Göring, my professional opinion is that you’ve nothing to worry about.”
“If that’s the case then you’ve already earned your money. But do please come anyway. In fact, why not come for breakfast? Do you like pancakes?”
His accent sounded Austrian; the way he said “pancakes” was very different from the way a German would have said it and something a little closer to Hungarian. But I wasn’t about to hold that against him with his Albrechts in my pocket, not to mention the prospect of fresh-made pancakes.
“Sure, I like pancakes.”
“What time do you finish your shift?”
“Nine o’clock.”
“Then I’ll see you at nine-thirty.”
I hung up and went back across the road to the Alex.
It was a quiet night. I had some urgent paperwork but now that I was soon to be on my way to the War Crimes Bureau I wasn’t much inclined to do it; that’s the thing about urgent paperwork: the longer you leave it the less urgent it becomes. So I just sat around and read the newspaper and smoked a couple of the cigarettes I’d stolen from the Wannsee villa. Once, I went to check on the blackout blinds just to stretch my legs; and another time I tried the crossword in the
Illustrierter Beobachter
. Mostly I waited for the phone to ring. It didn’t. When you’re working nights for the Murder Commission, you don’t really exist unless there’s a murder, of course. Nobody cares what you look like or what your opinions are. All that is asked of you is that you’re there until it’s time to go home.
At nine o’clock I signed off and went back to the station, where I caught an S-Bahn train to Zoo Station and then walked a few blocks north, across Knie onto Bismarckstrasse. Bedeuten Strasse was off Wallstrasse, behind the German Opera House. In a solid, five-story redbrick building a short series of steps led up to an arched door and a large round skylight. I mounted the stairs and looked around. There was an older man in a cheap gray suit on the other side of the street reading the
Beobachter
. He wasn’t Gestapo; then again he wasn’t really reading the newspaper, either. Nobody leans on a lamppost to read a newspaper, especially one as dull and boring as the
Völkischer Beobachter,
unless he’s on a stakeout. Above the number on the wall was a mosaic of brass plaques for German doctors, German dentists, German architects, and German lawyers. Since there were hardly any Jews left in Berlin, and certainly none in these noble professions, their Aryan character seemed hardly worth mentioning. Everyone was Aryan now, whether he liked it or not.
Five
I tugged on a brass bellpull as big as a butcher’s weight, heard the door
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