Hoffner folded his paper and placed it on the table. “Alas, Frulein, but the Russians are out of the Kriminalpolizei’s jurisdiction. We deal only with the Berlin hordes.”
The man at the bar smiled quietly and retrieved the bottle, but Hoffner shook his head and pushed back his chair, a bit farther than he had anticipated needing. His wife was pleased that he was having no trouble keeping the weight on, a testament to her culinary skills amid all the shortages. Not that he was fat, but Hoffner had a certain image of himself that he was, as yet, unwilling to part with: good height, deep eyes, dark hair (he had gotten the latter two from his Russian mother, likewise the first name), reasonably fit, and with a thin scar just beneath the chin, a worthy reminder of championship days as a Gymnasium fencer. At forty-five, however, several centimeters had vanished to the slight roll in his shoulders; the depth of his eyes had relocated south to a pair of ever-widening bags; and while the hair was still full, dark most certainly would have been a stretch. As to the rest, more like distant friends than close companions.
“Thank you, Frulein,” said Hoffner. “But I’m guessing you’ve got better things to do with your hard-earned money.”
The front door opened and a pocket of chilled air quickly made the rounds. There, slick from the rain and out of breath, stood Hans Fichte, his eyes on Hoffner.
“Shut that door,” barked the barman as he placed the bottle back on its shelf.
Fichte did as he was told, and moved quickly to Hoffner’s table. “You’re needed back in the square, Herr Kriminal-Kommissar. It’s-” He glanced around, then leaned farther in over the table. “It’s important we get back.” Fichte spoke as if he actually thought someone other than Hoffner might have any interest in what he was saying.
Fichte was a large man, over two meters tall, and with wide, thick shoulders. A strip of flaxen hair, matted in sweat and rain, held to the top of his brow, and his usually gray/white cheeks were blistered in odd blotches of red. A single drop-let it be perspiration-clung to the tip of his nose, which was too long for his narrow face, and which always gave him a look of mild disdain. At twenty-three, Fichte still had a boyish smoothness to his complexion, though the ordeal of the last six weeks was beginning to dig out some distinguishing lines: hardly what one would call character, but it was something.
The fact that Fichte had reached twenty-three-uncrippled and completely unconnected with any of the convalescence asylums that had recently surfaced throughout the city and the Reich-made him something of an anomaly. Fichte had been fit enough to serve his Kaiser in 1914, or at least up through the second week of September 1914, when, in a moment of profound stupidity, he had volunteered during a drill to demonstrate how to use one of the early gas masks, those chemically treated masks that required wetting with a special activating agent immediately prior to use. Hans had not known about the need for the wetting. The gas had come on, he had inhaled, and from that moment on, he had ceased to be fit enough to serve his Kaiser.
Damaged lungs, however, were just fine for the Schutzmannschaft (municipal beat cops), and after three years of stellar duty, Fichte had applied and won transfer to the Kripo. He had been presented to Hoffner two and half months ago as his Kriminal-Assistent (detective in training), a replacement for a partner of twelve years who had volunteered and then gone missing in 1915. Victor Knig had come as close to a friend as Hoffner had permitted, and his death had taken some time to get over. With the choices on the home front greatly diminished, the Kriminaldirektor (KD) had been kind enough to let Hoffner work alone for the better part of four years. Hans Fichte was now the price for that kindness.
“So important,” Hoffner said as he got to his feet, “that you’ve decided to leave the square yourself?” He was waiting for a response. “In the future, Hans, find a boy-there’s always one roaming about-and send him to get me. Yes?”
Fichte thought for a moment, a mental note etched across his face. When it was properly filed, he nodded, and then headed for the door.
Hoffner followed, stopping as he reached the bar. “One more for my friend,” he said. He pushed a coin along the uneven surface, then turned to the young woman’s table and placed several more in a neat stack next to her glass. She continued to stare at her bread.
“It’ll cost you a lot more than that, Herr Detective,” she said.
Hoffner slowly pulled his hand away. “No-I think umbrellas go for about that much in this weather, Frulein.”
She looked up. A kind, if sparing, smile curled her lips.
Hoffner turned back to the bar to find two small glasses filled with brandy. “Come on, Fichte. It’ll do you good. Whatever’s up on the square can wait while you get a bit of warming-up.”
Fichte hesitated, then strode to the bar and downed the brandy in one swift movement. He stood there, awaiting his next assignment. Hoffner did his best to ignore the deferential stare as he sniffed at the liquid and then tossed it back. He placed the glass on the bar. “You’re welcome, Fichte.”
Another moment to consider. “Oh. . 0A0; yes. Thank you, Herr Komm. . 0A0; Hoffner.”
“And to you as well, Herr Economics.” Hoffner tipped his hat to the young lady and motioned Fichte to the door. Together they stepped out into the street.
The brandy, as it turned out, was no match for the city’s infamous Berliner Luft, a smack of frigid air just the thing to set Hoffner’s eyes tearing. He turned up his coat collar and pulled his hat down to his face. His wife had insisted he take a scarf, but he had left it back at the office: Martha would find a certain pleasure in that later tonight. Hoffner noticed Fichte was sporting a nice thick woolen muffler. And who’s been taking care of him, Hoffner wondered.
They turned right, the rain spraying up at them through the wind tunnel that was the block of tenements. The street was deserted, its gray stone merely a faade for the life that lay hidden beyond. Too many times, Hoffner had been forced to venture into the inner courtyards, each dripping with laundry-Turkish, Polish, German-endless lines of clothes that spoke to one another in a kind of ragged semaphore. And within the crumbling buildings, the squalor grew only more oppressive, dank hallways leading blindly from one hovel to the next, each filled with the smell of rotting cabbage. The worst was the “Ochsenhof” (“cattle yard”), with its dozen entrances and twenty stairways, all leading nowhere, pointless escapades in search of criminals all too secure within its walls. It was a vast, silent place to the men of the Kripo, indecipherable and thus impregnable.
Outside, however, all was serene. The stones blended effortlessly into the darkened haze of sky, only those occasional passersby bold enough to peek out from under the brims of their hats able to determine where one left off and the other began. Hoffner was not one of these: he pressed his head farther down to meet the wind. By the time he and Fichte had made it to the square, his pants were once again damp through from the knees down: at least the exertion was helping to keep him warm.
Surprisingly, the wind was taking no interest in Rosenthaler Platz. People were jumping on and off trams without the least sign of aerial difficulty, and whatever Fichte had thought demanded his immediate attention, Hoffner could find nothing that was even remotely out of the ordinary: like a painted newsreel clip, the square buzzed in accelerated activity. There was the requisite line outside the windowed cafeteria that was Aschinger’s, the hawkers of neckties and sponges and fruit brandies in front of Fabische’s on the corner (“A suit, mein Herr? Take one, Ready-To-Wear!”), and the usual mayhem of cabs, horsedrawn carts, and pedestrians darting in and out of one another’s ways. Rosenthaler Platz had taken no time off to breathe during the revolution; why should it do so now?