Behind Grzesinski followed Deputy Police Commissioner Bernhard Weiss, uniform immaculate as always, and Uniform Commander Magnus Heimannsberg, each man escorted, in turn, by two Reichswehr officers. Though the eyes under the steel helmets stared straight ahead, the young men were clearly afraid that the members of the Berlin police force, hundreds of whom were employed here at Alex alone, might foil the arrest. Yet not a hand stirred; officers whispered and murmured, grew indignant, but none intervened.
The customs officer mumbled an apology along the lines of ‘best not to interfere in police matters’, and took his leave.
Charly couldn’t believe it. They had actually been so bold. Papen and his reactionary ministers didn’t just want to take the Free State of Prussia, the only province that had been continuously governed by the Social Democrats since the war, they wanted its police force too. It wasn’t enough to exile the interior minister, they had to replace the entire Berlin Police executive: the Social Democrat Grzesinski, the Liberal Weiss and the Catholic Centrist Heimannsberg.
‘They can’t get away with this,’ Charly said to Böhm. ‘We have to do something!’
‘The commissioner need only say the word, and thousands of men will stand behind him.’
‘Then let him, goddamn it. He’s going without a fight, like a lamb to the slaughter.’
‘He knows what he’s doing. Armed resistance could provoke a civil war between the police and Reichswehr. The bloodshed would be worse than 1919.’
‘Papen can’t want civil war. No one can. Isn’t there enough violence on our streets as it is?’
‘What Papen wants certainly isn’t democracy.’
The black cutaway and top hat was a fitting outfit, even if Grzesinski had been prevented from attending Superintendent Mercier’s funeral. A fitting outfit with which to mourn the death of Prussian democracy.
More and more office doors opened, and more and more officers stepped into the corridor to look, pushing towards the stairwell to watch the soldiers in field grey leading away their superiors. A few colleagues, above all those in uniform, showed their respect to the police chiefs by performing a military salute.
‘Long live the Republic!’ someone cried suddenly, and the faces under the steel helmets looked about nervously.
‘Long live the Republic!’ More and more officers joined the cry, and now Charly, too, cried at the top of her voice, and even Böhm, whom she’d not have thought capable of such a thing, stood by her side and chanted. ‘Long live the Republic. Long live our chiefs!’
The cry echoed through the corridors and stairwell, growing ever louder. ‘Long live the Republic. Long live our chiefs!’
With increasing nervousness, the youthful soldiers gazed left and right, hands on their weapons, ready to fire. At any moment a CID officer could draw his service pistol and shoot. The Prussian Police could put an end to this nonsense.
No one did, of course. The officers assembled were far too Prussian. In the absence of an explicit command, no one would reach for a weapon, but the disregard in which these insurrectionists were held was plain to see.
Amidst the chants of her colleagues, every so often an isolated cry of ‘Freedom!’ rang out, and Charly felt a hitherto unknown sense of pride in the Berlin Police and her Prussian homeland. Notwithstanding men like Dettmann, she felt inordinately proud to be a part of this police body which, despite the Reich government’s display of force, stood in democratic solidarity with its executive officers.
The officers followed the cortège through the stairwell down to the ground floor, and Charly stood with them. Right now she didn’t care about Gustav Wengler, Dietrich Assmann and the rest, she was simply glad to be a part of the Prussian police force, protesting against its most senior officers being led away like criminals.
Below on Alexanderstrasse was a Mercedes with a Reichswehr number plate, into which Grzesinski now climbed with the Reichswehr captain. Heimannsberg and Weiss followed in a second and third car. Where they were headed, no one could say, only that it was somewhere out west.
Once the cars had disappeared around a corner, Charly looked up at the brick façade of police headquarters. Almost all Castle windows were open, everywhere officers stood following the unworthy spectacle, and the cries that moments before had filled the stairwell resounded still from open windows and the mouths of colleagues: ‘Long live the Republic! Long live our chiefs!’
But Charly no longer felt any desire to join them. Suddenly she recognised the futility of their actions. Her pride and euphoria evaporated, and she felt only impotence. She sensed, no, she knew, that, in the face of the Reich government’s staggering effrontery, words could never be enough. She looked across for Wilhelm Böhm but couldn’t find him among her fellow officers, and with only unfamiliar faces for company she felt utterly alone.
It was Wednesday evening, shortly after half past five, and the death knell for Prussian democracy had just sounded.
71
Rath didn’t know how many pages he’d read. They were confused and not necessarily in chronological order, but made for fascinating reading all the same. The style was similar to the letters, only here Radlewski seemed to reveal more of himself. Sometimes relating details from his everyday life, sometimes dim memories from childhood, they were filled even now with hatred for his father and love for his mother. But there was one event he kept coming back to, the same event he’d described to Maria Cofalka: the murder of Anna von Mathée in the shallows of the little lake.
Radlewski had seen a man rape Anna, and failed to intervene. Returning to the same spot, full of remorse, he had found her dead.
How many times had he recounted the scene? The young woman’s corpse floating on the water as, still stunned, he registered the fact of her death. A young man discovering her body. The killer returning to the scene of the crime in the company of a uniformed police officer. The same officer striking the grieving young man with the butt of his revolver as he knelt by the corpse. Even the perpetrators’ exchange was recorded.
‘Should we drown the dirty Polack, here and now?’ the cop asks.
The wicked one shakes his head. ‘Let him pay for it,’ he says. ‘Let him spend the rest of his miserable life paying for it.’
And then he looks at the cop, as if he can issue him with instructions.
‘Arrest him,’ he says. ‘Arrest him, and we’ll have him tried. Let everyone know what he has done.’
There was no mention of the name Polakowski, but perhaps Radlewski hadn’t known the young registrar. Who else could it be?
Should we drown the dirty Polack?
Rath thought back to the furniture dealer on the aeroplane. He, too, had spoken of dirty Polacks. In jest, perhaps, but the sentiment was real. In the meantime, far too many Germans spoke of their Polish neighbours in a hate-filled and contemptuous manner. Not that the Poles were any less guilty, the feelings cut both ways.
He spun around as, suddenly, the door flew open. He felt as if he had been caught out. Whatever form these notebooks might take, they were still a man’s private diaries. The book was snatched from him, and he was pushed from the chair with no more than a twist of the hand.
Landing on the floor he gazed at the force of nature that stood above him. Artur Radlewski was bareheaded, his hair plaited in two braids and complemented by an Indian-style headband. With his full beard and leather garb the man only partially resembled the vision of his dreams.
Seeing the Kaubuk in person, fever now dissipated, Rath knew that, with his long hair and beard, there was no way this man could have wandered the streets of Dortmund, Wittenberge and Berlin avenging his mother’s death. He’d have been spotted immediately. Even in Berlin, where events that might elsewhere trigger a popular uprising were greeted with a shrug, someone would have seen him. As for the enormous black dog that stood guarding the door, tongue hanging out of its mouth…