Garden of Beasts

will be mostly in the Leader’s portion of the building, to the left, which you will not be allowed near. To the right are the lower-level-officials’ offices—that’s where Ernst’s is. They, and their secretaries and aides, will most likely not be there. You should have some time to browse through his office and, with luck, find his calendar or a memo or notation about his appointments in the next few days.”
    “This is not bad,” Morgan said.
    Webber said, “It will take me an hour or so to put everything in place. I will pick up the coveralls and your papers and a truck. I’ll meet you by that statue there, the woman with the large bosom, at ten A.M. And I’ll bring some pants for you, ” he added to Morgan. “Twenty marks. Such a good price.” He smiled then said to Paul, “Your friend here eyes me with a very particular look, Mr. John Dillinger. I don’t believe he trusts me.”
    Reggie Morgan shrugged. “I will tell you, Otto Wilhelm Friedrich Georg Webber.” A glance at Paul. “My colleague here told you about the precautions we’ve taken to make certain you don’t betray us. No, my friend, trust is not the issue. I’m looking at you this way because I wish to know what the hell you think is wrong with these trousers of mine?”
    •   •   •
    He saw Mark’s face in the young boy’s before him.
    This was to be expected, of course, seeing the father in the son. But it was still unsettling.
    “Come here, Rudy,” Reinhard Ernst said to his grandson.
    “Yes, Opa.”
    The hour was early on Sunday and the housekeeper was removing breakfast dishes from the table, on which sunlight fell as yellow as pollen. Gertrud was in the kitchen, examining a plucked goose, which would be dinner later that day. Their daughter-in-law was at church, lighting candles to the memory of Mark Albrecht Ernst, the very same young man the colonel saw now echoed in his grandson.
    He tied the laces of Rudy’s shoes. He glanced once more at the boy’s face and saw Mark again, though noted a different look on his face this time: curious, discerning.
    It was uncanny really.
    Oh, how he missed his son . . .
    It was eighteen months since Mark had said good-bye to his parents, wife and Rudy, all of them standing behind the rail at Lehrter Station. Ernst had given the twenty-seven-year-old officer a salute—a real salute, not the fascist one—as his son had boarded the train to Hamburg to take command of his ship.
    The young officer was fully aware of the dangers of the ramshackle vessel yet he’d wholly embraced them.
    Because that is what soldiers and sailors do.
    Ernst thought about Mark daily. But never before had the spirit of his son come so close to him as now, seeing these familiar expressions in his own grandson’s face, so direct, so confident, so curious. Were they evidence that the boy had his father’s nature? Rudy would be subject to the draft in a decade. Where would Germany be then? At war? Peace? Back in possession of the lands stolen away by the Treaty of Versailles? Would Hitler be gone, an engine so powerful that it quickly seizes and burns? Or would the Leader still be in command, burnishing his vision of the new Germany? Ernst’s heart told him he should be vitally concerned about these questions. Yet he knew he couldn’t worry about them. All he could focus on was his duty.
    One had to do one’s duty.
    Even if that meant commanding an old training ship not meant to carry powder and shells, whose jerry-rigged magazine was too close to the galley or engine room or a sparking wire (no one would ever know), the consequences being that one moment the ship was practicing war maneuvers in the cold Baltic and the next she was a cloud of acrid smoke over the water, her shattered hull dropping through the blackness of water to the sea floor.
    Duty . . .
    Even if that meant spending half one’s days battling in the trenches of Wilhelm Street, all the way to the Leader, if necessary, to do what was best for Germany.
    Ernst gave a final tug on Rudy’s shoelace to make sure it wouldn’t come undone and trip the boy. Then he stood and looked down at this tiny version of his son. Acting on impulse, very unusual for Ernst, he asked, “Rudy, I have tosee someone this morning. But later, would you like to come with me to the Olympic stadium? Would you like that?”
    “Oh, yes, Opa.” The boy’s face blossomed into a huge smile. “I could run around the tracks.”
    “You run