They drove west past the press camp to the U-bahn station at Krumme Lanke, where a handful of soldiers and civilians huddled in a miniature version of the Reichstag market, then turned right down a quiet street. At the far end Jake could see the trees of the Grunewald. He thought of the old summer Sundays, with hikers in shorts heading out to the beaches where the Havel widened into the series of bays Berlin called lakes. Today, in the same hot sun, there were only a few people gathering fallen branches and loading them into carts. An axe chipped away at a broad stump.
“Pathetic, isn’t it?” the soldier said. “They chop down the trees when nobody’s looking. There won’t be anything left by winter.” A winter with no coal, according to Muller.
At the edge of the woods, they turned up a narrow street of suburban villas, one of which had been turned into a fortress with a high barbed-wire double fence, floodlights, and patrolling sentries.
“They’re not taking any chances,” Jake said.
“DPs camp out in the woods. Once it’s dark-”
“What’s in there, gold?”
“Better. For us, anyway. Party records.”
He showed a pass at the door, then led Jake to a sign-in ledger in the entrance hall. Another guard was inspecting the briefcase of a soldier on his way out. Neither spoke. The council headquarters had had the busy shoe-clicking hum of a government office. This was quieter, the locked-in hush of a bank. One more ID check took them into a room lined with filing cabinets.
“Christ. Fort Knox,” Jake said.
“Bernie’ll be down in the vault,” the soldier said, smiling. “Counting the bars. This way.”
“Where’d you get it all?” Jake said, looking at the cabinets.
“All over. The party kept everything right to the end-membership applications, court records. Guess they never thought they’d lose. Then they couldn’t destroy them fast enough.” He spread his hand toward the cabinets as they walked. “We got the SS files too, even Himmler’s personal one. The big haul, though, that’s downstairs. Index cards. The central party registry in Munich kept duplicates of all the local cards-every single Nazi. Eight million and counting. Sent them to a paper mill in Bavaria finally, to pulp them, but before the owner could get around to it, the Seventh Army arrived. So, voila. Now we’ve got them. Here we go.” He went down a staircase to the basement. “Teitel, you here? I found your guy.”
Bernie was bent over a broad table whose littered surface was a mirror image of the mess in his office. The room, an alcoved cellar that might once have held wine, was now walled from floor to ceiling with wooden drawers, like card catalogues in a library. When he looked up, his eyes were confused, as if he had no idea who Jake was.
“Sorry to barge in like this,” Jake said. “I know you’re busy. But I need your help.”
“Oh, Geismar. Right. You’re looking for a friend. I’m sorry, I forgot all about it.” He picked up a pen, ready to work.
“Don’t forget to sign him out,” the driver said to Bernie, drifting back up the stairs.
“What was the name?” ‹›“Brandt. But I need something else.” Bernie looked up, his pen still poised to write. Jake pulled out a chair.
“A soldier was killed in Potsdam yesterday-well, killed the day before. He washed up on the conference grounds yesterday. Hear about it?”
Bernie shook his head, waiting. ‹›“No, I guess not,” Jake said, “not down here. Anyway, I was there, so I got interested. He had some money on him, a lot, five thousand, maybe closer to ten. I thought that was interesting too, but apparently I’m the only one. MG just gave me the brush this morning-polite, but a brush. This one came with a lecture. Happens all the time. Black market’s a nickel-and-dime game, no big players. Nobody gets excited when a Russian shoots one of our men, just when they do anything else. So go away, please. Now I’m even more interested. Then I hear the body’s already been shipped back to Frankfurt. That’s a little too efficient, especially for MG. Following me so far?“
“Who was the brush?”
“Muller,” Jake said.
Bernie frowned. “Fred Muller? He’s a good man. Old army.”
“I know. So they say keep a lid on it and he keeps a lid on it. Look, I don’t blame him. He’s a time-server and he doesn’t want any trouble. He probably thinks I’m a pain in the ass.”
“Probably.”
“But why keep a lid on it? He promises me an exclusive and gives me a casualty report. But not all of it. There’s a sheet missing.” Jake paused. “The kind of thing the DA’s office used to pull.”
Bernie smiled. “So why come to me?”
“Because you were a DA. I’ve never met one yet who stopped being a DA. Something’s funny here. You can feel it in your gut.”
Bernie looked over at him. “I don’t feel anything yet.”
“No? Try this. Muller wants me to think it’s a GI making a few bucks on the side. Okay, not nice, but nothing special, either. But he wasn’t just a GI. PSD, that’s Public Safety Division, isn’t it?”
“That’s what it says on the charts,” Bernie said slowly.
