The Sleepwalkers by Paul Grossman Page A

unremarkable man in his late forties, with thin brown hair, calm, gentle eyes, and a rather amiable expression. “You don’t really take that leg stuff seriously? It’s all part of the act. I just use it to rile up the women. Women are my calling card. I must live up to my reputation, to prove I can get even the most attractive completely in my power. There’s no such thing as the nine kinds of legs. I just made that up to sound as if I possess all sorts of esoteric knowledge. People want to believe in magic. They want to give themselves up to a higher power. It’s all part of my job, gentlemen. You do yours. I do mine. I’m sorry this poor girl has gone missing. Truly I am. I hold no malice toward any living being. But I certainly had nothing to do with it. Once I wake these women up, they are completely back to normal. You saw that with your own eyes.”
    “Yes, of course I did. But surely you’d be the first to admit”—Willi’s voice was not as harsh as he’d have liked—“that what one
sees
and what really
is
are not always the same.” Despite himself he liked this man. Something about his off-stage persona wasdownright sympathetic. “Sorry to have disturbed you, Herr Gustave,” he concluded. “Your show was most enlightening. Most enlightening indeed.”
    He’d seek a warrant at once, he decided, to search the King of Mystics’ home.

Six
    It was all meetings the next morning. Meetings with the unit heads. The division heads. Those above him. Those below. And then a most enlightening meeting with Gunther in the early afternoon, who’d just returned from Charité Hospital’s medical archives.
    “I finally got something on bone transplants.” Gunther’s face had lost the wolfish lust Willi’d seen creep through it last night. He was simply good old Gunther again. The wolf in him asleep. “A major address in 1930 at the Medical College of Leipzig. It focused specifically on the possibility of implanting human bones, and utilizing grafting techniques to allow their regeneration in a host body. Take one guess who made it.”
    Willi just loved when the kid got playful at moments like these.
    Gunther leaned forward, his blue eyes sparkling. “Dr. Hermann Meckel.”
    Then it
was
all related! A thunderclap shook Willi. Meckelwas involved both with the Mermaid and the Bulgarian princess. Something big was in the works here.
    Terribly big.
    “And not only that,” Gunther added, “but Meckel’s file’s also missing from the Charité archives. He’s on their board, but there’s not a single record of it. The clerk assured me the file had been there, but now again for some reason, it’s gone.”
    “There could only be one reason,” Willi said, feeling a sudden darkness looming. “Because someone’s taking them before we get there, Gunther. Someone, or something, is keeping one step ahead of us.”
    Gunther swallowed, his enormous Adam’s apple dropping down his throat. “Maybe that gold pin they found on the Mermaid’s clothing will give us a lead.”
    “What gold pin?” Willi looked at him.
    “You didn’t know? I saw Dr. Shurze from Pathology. He told me they’d discovered a gold Nazi Party pin in the fabric of that gray smock the Mermaid was wearing.”
    An alarm went off in Willi’s head. “Dr. Hoffnung never mentioned any gold pin. And who is this Shurze?”
    “The new head of Pathology. Hoffnung’s retired.”
    “Retired? But that’s—” Willi spotted one of his Detektivs, little, black-mustached Herbert Thurmann, lingering near the door. “Very interesting.”
    Alone finally, Willi leaned back in his office chair and stared out the window. He was sane enough to realize that it was delusional to imagine a Jewish inspector could take on an SA general single-handedly. But it didn’t mean the guy was untouchable. Just that it was time to call for bigger guns. Fritz. One of Germany’s most famous journalists. There wasn’t a soul in Berlin he didn’t know. Not so much