Garden of Beasts

time was nearly seven-thirty. “Now I have to meet my associate.”
    “On Sunday morning? Ach, I finally understand your secret.”
    He looked at her with a cautious smile.
    “You’re writing about priests who play sports!” She laughed. “That’s your big story!” Then her smile faded. “And why must you leave so quickly if you are writing about sports or the cubic meters of concrete used for the stadium?”
    “I don’t have to leave quickly. I have some important meetings back in the United States.” Paul drank his coffee quickly and ate one piece of toast and sausage. “You finish what’s left. I’m not hungry now.”
    “Well, hurry back to me. I will pack. But only one bag, I think. If I take too many, perhaps a ghost will try to hide in one.” A laugh. “Ach, I am sounding like someone out of a story by our macabre friend E.T.A. Hoffmann.”
    He kissed her and left the boardinghouse, stepped out into the morning, already hot, already painting a damp coat on the skin. With a glance up and down the empty street, he made his way north, over the canal, and into the Tiergarten, the Garden of Beasts.
    •   •   •
    Paul found Reggie Morgan sitting on a bench in front of the very pond where Käthe Richter’s lover had been beaten to death three years ago.
    Even at this early hour, dozens of people were here. A number of walkers and bicyclists. Morgan’s jacket was off and his shirt sleeves partly rolled up.
    Paul sat down beside him. Morgan flicked an envelope inside his jacket pocket. “Got the greenbacks okay,” he whispered in English.
    They reverted to German. “They cashed a check on Saturday night?” Paul asked, laughing. “I’m living in a whole new world.”
    “You think Webber will show up?” Morgan asked skeptically.
    “Oh, yes. If there’s money involved he’ll be here. But I’m not sure how helpful he’ll be. I looked over Wilhelm Street last night. There are dozens of guards, hundreds maybe. It’d be far too risky to do the job there. We’ll have to see what Otto says. Maybe he’s found another location.”
    They sat in silence for a moment.
    Paul watched him look around the park. Morgan seemed wistful. He said, “I will miss this country very much.” For a moment the man’s face lost its keenness and the dark eyes were sad. “There are good people here. I find them kinder than the Parisians, more open than the Londoners. And they spend far more time enjoying life than New Yorkers. If we had time I’d take you to the Lustgarten and Luna Park. And I love to walk here, in the Tiergarten. I enjoy watching birds.” The thin man seemed embarrassed at this. “A foolish diversion.”
    Paul laughed to himself, thinking of the model airplanes sitting on his bookshelf in Brooklyn. Foolishness is in the eye of the beholder.
    “So you’ll leave?” Paul asked.
    “I can’t stay. I’ve been here far too long. Every day there’s another chance of a mistake, some carelessness that will tip them off to me. And after what we’re about to do they’ll look very closely at every foreigner who’s hadbusiness here recently. But after life returns to normal and the National Socialists are gone I can return.”
    “What will you do when you come back?”
    Morgan brightened. “I would like to be a diplomat. That’s why I am in this business. After what I saw in the trenches . . .” He nodded at a bullet scar on his arm. “After that, I decided I was going to do whatever I could to stop war. The diplomatic corps made sense. I wrote the Senator about it. He suggested Berlin. A country in flux, he called it. So here I am. I hope to be a liaison officer in a few years. Then ambassador or a consul. Like our Ambassador Dodd here. He’s a genius, a true statesman. I won’t be posted here, of course, not at first. Too important a country. I could start out in Holland. Or maybe Spain, well, after their civil war is over, of course. If there’s any Spain left. Franco’s as bad as Hitler. It’ll be brutal. But, yes, I would like to come back here when sanity returns.”
    A moment later Paul spotted Otto Webber coming down the path, walking slowly, a bit unsteadily and squinting against the powerful sunlight.
    “There he is now.”
    “Him? He looks like a Bürgermeister. And one who spent the evening in his cups. We’re relying on him? ”
    Webber approached the bench and sat down, breathing hard. “Hot, hot day. I didn’t know it could be this hot in the morning.