Fatherland
cleaners? Oh, how I miss you all—I don't think! Here we are." Friedman transferred his cigar from his hand to his mouth and tugged at a large door. "Behold the cave of Aladdin!"
The metal slid open with a crash to reveal a small hangar stuffed with lost and abandoned property. "The things people leave behind," said Friedman. "You wouldn't believe it. We even had a leopard once."
"A leopard? A cat?"
"It died. Some idle bastard forgot to feed it. It made a good coat." He laughed and snapped his fingers, and from the shadows an elderly, stoop-shouldered man appeared—a Slav, with wide-set, fearful eyes.
"Stand up straight, man. Show respect." Friedman gave him a shove that sent him staggering backward. "The Sturmbannführer here is a good friend of mine. He's looking for something. Tell him, March."
"A case, perhaps a bag," said March. "The last flight from Zürich on Monday night, the thirteenth. Left either on the aircraft or in the baggage claim area."
"Got that? Right?" The Slav nodded. "Well, go on, then!" He shuffled away and Friedman gestured to his mouth. "Dumb. Had his tongue cut out in the war. The ideal worker!" He laughed and clapped March on the shoulder. "So. How goes it?"
"Well enough."
"Civilian clothes. Working the weekend. Must be something big."
"It may be."
"This is the Martin Luther character, right?" March made no reply. "So you're dumb, too. I see." Friedman flicked cigar ash onto the clean floor. "Fair enough by me. A brown-pants job, possibly?"
"A what?"
"Zollgrenzschutz expression. Someone plans to bring in something they shouldn't. They get to the customs shed, see the security, start shitting themselves. Drop whatever it is and run."
"But this is special, yes? You don't open every case every day?"
"Just in the week before the Führertag. "
"What about the lost property? Do you open that?"
"Only if it looks valuable!" Friedman laughed again. "No. A jest. We haven't the manpower. Anyway, it's been X-rayed, remember—no guns, no explosives. So we just leave it here, wait for someone to claim it. If no one's turned up in a year, then we open it, see what we've got."
"Pays for a few suits, I suppose."
"What?" Friedman plucked at his immaculate sleeve. "These poor rags?" There was a sound, and he turned around. "Looks like you're in luck, March."
The Slav was returning, carrying something. Friedman took it from him and weighed it in his hand. "Quite light. Can't be gold. What do you think it is, March? Drugs? Some dollars? Contraband silk from the East? A treasure map?"
"Are you going to open it?" March touched the gun in his pocket. He would use it if he had to.
Friedman appeared shocked. "This is a favor. One friend to another. Your business." He handed the case to March. "You'll remember that, Sturmbannführer, won't you? A favor? One day you'll do the same for me, comrade to comrade?"
The case was of the sort that doctors carry, with brass- reinforced corners and a stout brass lock, dull with age. The brown leather was scratched and faded, the heavy stitching dark, the hand grip worn smooth like a brown pebble by years of carrying until it felt like an extension of the hand. It proclaimed reliability and reassurance; professionalism; quiet wealth. It was certainly prewar, maybe even pre-Great War—built to last a generation or two. Solid. Worth a lot.
All this March absorbed on the walk back to the Volkswagen. The route avoided the Zollgrenzschutz—another favor from Friedman.
Charlie fell upon it like a child upon a birthday present and swore with disappointment when she found it locked. As March drove out of the airport perimeter she fished in her own bag and retrieved a pair of nail scissors. She picked desperately at the lock, the blades scrabbling ineffectively on the brass.
March said, "You're wasting your time. I'll have to break it open. Wait till we get there."
She shook the bag with frustration. "Get where?"
He ran a hand through his hair.
A good question.
Every room in the city was booked. The Eden with its roof-garden café, the Bristol on Unter den Linden, the Kaiserhof in Mohren-Strasse—all had stopped taking reservations months ago. The monster hotels with a thousand bedrooms and the little rooming houses dotted around the railway termini were filled with uniforms. Not just the SA and the SS, the Luftwaffe and the Wehrmacht, the Hitler Youth and the League of German Girls, but all the others besides: the National Socialist Empire War
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