“The Reichstag deputy?”
I nodded.
“And the other two?”
“One of them I don’t know. Perhaps Bauer will remember it.”
“Yes, perhaps.”
He paused expectantly. “And the Red that you do know?”
I told him about the day I had saved the life of Erich Mielke from a troop of SA intent on killing him.
“He was the fourth man in that car. And it’s true what Sergeant Willig says. He looks a lot like Erich Ziemer.”
“So. You believe that we’re looking for two Erichs, yes?”
I nodded again.
“Gunther? I’d hate to be known around the Alex as the man who saved the life of a cop killer.”
“I hadn’t really thought about that, sir.”
“Then perhaps you should. And from this moment on, my advice to you is this: that you make no further mention of exactly how you came to be acquainted with this Erich Mielke until he is safely in custody. Especially now. This is the kind of story the Nazis love to use to beat those of us in the police force who still count ourselves as democrats, is it not?”
“Yes, sir.”
We drove west and north of the Ring to Biesenthaler Strasse, which was the address on Erich Ziemer’s charge sheet. It was a dreary-looking building off Christiana Strasse and within snorting distance of the Löwen Brewery and the distinctive smell of hops that was always in the air over that part of Berlin.
Ziemer had rented a big gloomy room in a big gloomy house that was owned by an old man with a face like the Turin Shroud. He was unhappy to be roused from his bed at such an early hour, but hardly surprised that we were asking questions about his tenant, who was not in his room and, it seemed, was unlikely to be returning to it; but we asked to see the room anyway.
Up against the window was a dilapidated leather sofa that was the size and color of a slumbering hippo. On the dampish wall was a print of Alexander von Humboldt with a botanical specimen on an open book. The landlord, Herr Karpf, scratched his beard and shrugged and told us that Ziemer had disappeared like fog the previous day owing three weeks’ rent—taking his belongings, not to mention a silver and ivory tankard worth several hundred marks. It was difficult to imagine Herr Karpf owning anything valuable, but we promised to do our best to recover it.
There was a police call box on Oskar Platz, near the hospital, and from there we telephoned the Alex, where another officer had been looking for a crime sheet and an address for Erich Mielke, but so far without success.
“That’s that, then,” said Heller.
“No,” I said. “There’s one more chance. Drive south, to the Electricity Works on Volta Strasse.”
Heller’s car was a neat little cream-colored DKW cabriolet with a small two-cylinder, six-hundred-cc engine, but it had front-wheel drive and held on to the corners like a welded bracket, so we were there in no time at all. On Brunnen Strasse, opposite Volta Strasse, I told him to turn left on Lortzing Strasse and pull up.
“Give me ten minutes,” I said, and, stepping over the DKW’s little door, I walked quickly in the direction of a lofty-looking apartment building that was all red and yellow brick with window-box balconies and a mansard roof that resembled a small Moroccan fortress.
Elisabeth’s shapeless landlady, Frau Bayer, was only a little surprised to see me at this early hour, as I had got into the habit of visiting the dressmaker whenever I came off duty. She knew I was a policeman, which was normally enough to silence her grumbling at being got out of bed. Most Berliners were always respectful of the law, except when they were communists or Nazis. And when it wasn’t enough to silence her grumbling, I slipped a few marks into her dressing-gown pocket by way of compensation.
The apartment was a warren of shabby rooms full of old cherrywood furniture, Chinese screens, and tasseled lampshades. As always, I waited in the living room for Frau Bayer to fetch her lodger; and as always when she saw me, Elisabeth smiled a sleepy but happy smile and took me by the hand to lead me to her room, where a proper welcome awaited me; only this time I stayed put on the living room sofa.
“What’s the matter?” she said. “Is something wrong?”
“It’s Erich,” I said. “He’s in trouble.”
“What kind of trouble?”
“Serious trouble. Two policemen were shot and killed last night.”
“And you think Erich might have something to do with it?”
“It looks that way.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes. Look, Elisabeth, I don’t have much time. His best chance is if I find him before anyone else does. I can tell him what to say and, more importantly, what not to say. Do you see?”
She nodded and tried to stifle a yawn.
“So what do you want from me?”
“An address.”
“You mean you want me to betray him, don’t you?”
“That’s one way of looking at it, yes. I can’t deny that. But another way is this: that perhaps I can persuade him to make a clean breast of it. Which is the only thing that can save his life now.”
“They wouldn’t behead him, would they?”
“For killing a policeman? Yes, I think they would. One of the cops who was killed was a widower with three daughters who are now orphaned. The Republic would have no choice but to make an example of him, or else risk courting a storm of criticism in the newspapers. The Nazis would just love that. But if I am the arresting officer, I might be able to talk him into naming some names. If others in the KPD put him up to it, then he has to say so. He’s young and impressionable, and that will help his case.”
She pulled a face. “Don’t ask me to turn him in, Bernie. I’ve known that boy for half his life. I helped bring him up.”
“I am asking it. I give you my word I will do what I said and that I will speak up for him in court. All I’m asking for is an address, Elisabeth.”
She sat down in a chair and clasped her hands tightly and closed her eyes, almost as if she were uttering a silent prayer. Perhaps she was.
“I knew something like this would happen,” she said. “That’s why I’ve never ever told him that you and I have been seeing each other. Because he would have been cross. And I’m beginning to understand why.”
“I won’t tell him that it was you who gave me an address, if that’s what you’re worried about.”
“That’s not what I’m worried about,” she whispered.
“What, then?”
She stood up abruptly. “I’m worried about Erich, of course,” she said loudly. “I’m worried about what’s going to happen to him.”
I nodded. “Look, forget it. We’ll have to find him some other way. Sorry I bothered you.”
“He lives with his father, Emil,” she said dully. “Stettiner Strasse, number twenty-five. The top flat.”
“Thanks.”
I waited for her to say something else, and when she didn’t I knelt down in front of her and tried to take her hand to give it a comforting squeeze, but she pulled it away. At the same time, she avoided my eye as if it had been hanging out of its socket.
“Just go,” she said. “Go and do your duty.”
It was almost dawn on the street outside Elisabeth’s apartment building, but I felt that something important had happened between us: that something had changed, perhaps forever. I stepped into Heller’s car and told him the address. From my expression I guess he knew better than to ask how I had come by it.
We sped north up Swinemünder Strasse onto Bellermann Strasse and then Christiana Strasse. Twenty-five Stettiner Strasse was a gray tenement building around a central courtyard that would have probably collapsed in on itself but for several large support timbers. Although it could just as easily have been moss or mold, a green rug was hanging out of an open window on one of the upper floors, and it was the only spot of color in that ghastly sarcophagus of raw brick and loose cobblestones. Even though this was fast becoming a bright summer’s morning, no sun ever reached the lower levels of the tenements on Stettiner Strasse: Nosferatu could have spent the whole day quite comfortably in the twilight world of a ground-floor Stettiner Strasse apartment.