He returned to his list and flipped over to the Ks: KREBS, EMILIA, and KREBS, HUGO. The latter was marked with a triangle, which meant, in Hauser’s system, something like uh-oh. Now to the three-by-five cards. Yes, there it was, definitely worth a triangle; this Krebs was a colonel on the Oberkommando Wehrmacht, the General Staff, and not to be pestered. Scheisse! You had to be careful in this work. You had to be on your toes! Or you’d wind up in Warsaw, God forbid. Still, he wondered, and had a look at KREBS, EMILIA. Close and longtime friend of the Gruens, neighbor in Dahlem, Jew. Hunh, look at that. This Colonel Krebs must be powerful indeed to have a Jewish wife and get away with it.
He was distracted from this line of thinking by two taps on the door and the entry of the department’s chief clerk: tall, fading blond, and middle-aged. Something of a dragon, Traudl, with her stiff hair and stiff manner, but smart, and relentless in her commitment to the job. No surprise there, at one time she’d worked for some of the better-mostly Jewish, alas-law firms in the city. Then, with Hitler’s ascension, she’d seen the light and come to work for the Gestapo. “Hauptsturmfuhrer Hauser?” she said. “Pardon the intrusion, but I have brought your morning coffee.”
“Thank you, Traudl.” He set the steaming cup on his desk.
“Will there be anything else, sir?”
“No, thank you,” Hauser said. “I’ll be going out for a bit.”
He took a sip of the coffee. Real coffee, and strong-oh, the little pleasures of this job. He returned to his paperwork, drumming his fingers on the yellow list. So, who wants to see the Gestapo today? But he already knew that, some tiny clicker in his brain had decided to go out to Emilia Krebs’s house. That wasn’t pestering the husband, was it? No, certainly not, he would never know about it, because she would never know about it. Just a little spur-of-the-moment surveillance. Just a look-see.
Hauser picked up his phone and dialed a two-digit number, which connected him with the office of Untersturmfuhrer, Lieutenant, Matzig, his partner. “Matzi?”
“Yes, Albert?”
“Let’s go for a little ride, I need some air.”
“I’ll bring the car around,” Matzig said.
So, yet another ride out to Dahlem. Lord, this neighborhood was a dissident nest! But, in the end, there wasn’t much to see. Hauser and Matzig sat in the front seat, talking idly from time to time, waiting, the principal activity of the investigative life. The winter darkness came early, a light snow began to fall, and eventually the colonel came home from work, dropped off at his door by a Wehrmacht car. The colonel disappeared into his house and, though the two officers waited another hour, that was it for the day.
They tried earlier the following day, waited longer, and were rewarded with a view of the Krebses going out for dinner. Thus Hauser and Matzig got to wait outside Horcher’s while the couple dined. No fun at all, visiting the best restaurants in Berlin, but not a morsel of food. After dinner, the couple went home. Matzig drove the Mercedes to their chosen vantage point, Hauser lit a cigar and said, “Let’s go home, Matzi. We’ll give it one more day, tomorrow.” All he could afford, really, because like any job you had to show your bosses some success, some production, and there was nothing yet to warrant even the most diffident interview.
But then there was. Patience paid off, at least sometimes, because just after five on the third day, the lovely Emilia Krebs, in sober gray coat and wide-brim gray hat, briefcase in hand, left her house, walked quickly down the path that led to the sidewalk, and turned left, toward downtown Berlin. As she passed the low hedge that bordered her property, here came a fellow in a dark overcoat: half-bald, heavy, wearing glasses-some sort of intellectual, from the look of him. For the length of a block, he matched her pace. Hauser and Matzig exchanged a look; then, no discussion required, Matzig turned on the ignition, put the car in gear, and drove past Emilia Krebs to a side street with a view of the nearest tram stop.
She arrived soon after, followed by the man in the dark overcoat. They stood at a distance from each other, mixed in with a few other people, all waiting for the trolley. Five minutes later it appeared, bell ringing, and rolled to a stop. Emilia Krebs and the others climbed on, but the man in the overcoat stayed where he was and, once the trolley moved away, he turned and walked back the way he’d come.
“Did you see what I saw?” Hauser said.
“A trailer, you think?” The function of a trailer, in clandestine practice, was to make sure the person ahead wasn’t being followed.
“What else?”
6 February. Paris. Occupied Paris: triste and broken, cold and damp, the swastika everywhere. Following the operational plan, Zannis played the role of a Greek detective in Paris, come to escort a prisoner back to Salonika. In trench coat and well-worn blue suit, heavy shapeless black shoes, and holstered pistol on his belt, he took a taxi to the commercial hotel Escovil had named-on a little street near the Gare du Nord-and slept all afternoon, recovering from days of train travel. Then, around eight in the evening, he ventured forth, found a taxi, and went off in search of Parisian food and Parisian sex. So, if anybody was watching, that’s what they saw.
He left the taxi at the Place de la Bastille, found the proper cafe on the second try, and the woman right away. She was, according to plan, reading Le Soir, the evening tabloid, and marking the classified ads with a pencil.
“Excuse me,” Zannis said, “are you waiting for Emile?” He hadn’t been in France since the time he’d worked as a Parisian antiquaire, more than ten years earlier, but the language, though halting and awkward, was still there.
“I’m waiting for my grandfather,” she said, completing the identification protocol. Then, looking at her watch, added, “We’d better be on our way. You shall call me Didi.”
Didi! Good God. For whoever she was-and she’d given Didi her best effort: neckline much too low, “diamond” earrings, scarlet lipstick-this woman had never been picked up in a cafe, she’d never met a woman who’d been picked up in a cafe. What was she, a baroness? Possible, Zannis thought: narrow head, small ears, thin nostrils, aristocratic tilt to the chin. Didi? Oh fuck, these people are going to get me killed.
“Off we go, honey,” Zannis said, with a coarse grin, a nod toward the door, and a proffered arm.
The aristocrat almost flinched. Then she recovered, stood, took his arm, pressed it to her champagne cup of a noble breast, and off they went-circling the Place Bastille, heading for a brasserie down a side street. Zannis took a deep breath. These people were brave, were resisting the Occupation, were putting their lives in jeopardy. They were, he told himself, doing the best they could.
So the Greek detective, in case anybody was watching-and there was no way to know whether they were or not-had found a girl for the evening and would now take her out for dinner. The restaurant was called the Brasserie Heininger, a man in an apron and a fisherman’s waterproof hat was shucking oysters on a bed of shaved ice by the entryway.
When Zannis opened the door, the interior hit him hard-much fancier than any place he’d been to when he’d lived in Paris. The brasserie was fiercely Belle Epoque: red plush banquettes, polished brass, and vast gold-framed mirrors lining the walls, the waiters in muttonchop whiskers, the conversation loud and manic, the smoky air scented by perfume and grilled sausage. And, as the maitre d’ led them to a table-that sexy slut Didi had reserved ahead-Zannis saw what looked to him like half the officer class of occupied Paris, much of it in Wehrmacht gray, with, just to set off the visual composition, a sprinkling of SS black. As they wove their way among the tables, the aristocrat crushed Zannis’s arm against her breast so hard he wondered why it didn’t hurt her, or maybe she was so scared she didn’t notice. At last they were seated, side by side on a banquette at a table where the number 14 was written on a card supported by a little brass stand. The aristocrat settled close to him, then took a deep breath.