Garden of Beasts

one, where we can hardly speak the language, where we have no jobs, a place we were at war with only twenty years ago? How well do you think we’ll be received?”
    Kurt had no rebuttal for this. His brother was one hundred percent correct. And there were probably a dozen more arguments to be made against their leaving.
    Outside, they looked up and down the hot street. None of the few people out at this hour paid any attention to them. “Let’s go,” Kurt said and strode down the sidewalk, reflecting that, in a way, he’d been honest with Mrs. Lutz. They were going on a wander—only not to any rustic hostel in the fragrant woods west of Berlin but toward an uncertain new life in a wholly alien land.
    •   •   •
    He jumped when his phone buzzed.
    Hoping it was the medical examiner on the Dresden Alley case, he grabbed the receiver. “Kohl here.”
    “Come see me, Willi.”
    Click.
    A moment later, his heart beating solidly, he was walking up the hall to Friedrich Horcher’s office.
    What now? The chief of inspectors was at headquarters on a Sunday morning? Had Peter Krauss learned that Kohl had made up the story about Reinhard Heydrich and Göttburg (the man came from Halle) to save the witness, the baker Rosenbaum? Had someone overheard him make an improvident comment to Janssen? Had word come down from on high that the inspector inquiring about dead Jews in Gatow was to be reprimanded?
    Kohl stepped into Horcher’s office. “Sir?”
    “Come in, Willi.” He rose and closed the door, gestured Kohl to sit.
    The inspector did so. He held the man’s eye, as he’d told his sons to do whenever they looked at another human being with whom difficulty might arise.
    There was silence as Horcher resumed his seat androcked back and forth in the sumptuous leather chair, playing absently with the brilliant red armband on his left biceps. He was one of the few senior Kripo officials who actually wore one in the Alex.
    “The Dresden Alley case . . . keeping you busy, is it?”
    “An interesting one, this.”
    “I miss the days of investigating, Willi.”
    “Yes, sir.”
    Horcher meticulously ordered papers on his desk. “You will go to the Games?”
    “I got my tickets a year ago.”
    “Did you? Your children are looking forward to it?”
    “Indeed. My wife too.”
    “Ach, good, good.” Horcher had not heard a single word of Kohl’s. More silence for a moment. He stroked his waxed mustache, as he was accustomed to do when not playing with his crimson armband. Then: “Sometimes, Willi, it’s necessary to do difficult things. Especially in our line of work, don’t you think?” Horcher avoided his eyes when he said this. Through his concern, Kohl thought: This is why the man will not advance very far in the Party; he’s actually troubled to deliver bad news.
    “Yes, sir.”
    “People within our esteemed organization have been aware of you for some time.”
    Like Janssen, Horcher was incapable of being sardonic. “Esteemed” would be meant sincerely, though which organization he might be referring to was a mystery, given the incomprehensible hierarchy of the police. To his shock he learned the answer to this question when Horcher continued. “The SD has quite some file on you, wholly independent of the Gestapo’s.”
    This chilled Kohl to his core. Everyone in governmentcould count on a Gestapo file. It would be insulting not to have one. But the SD, the elite intelligence service for the SS? And its leader was none other than Reinhard Heydrich himself. So the story he’d spun to Krauss about Heydrich’s hometown had returned. And all to save a Jew baker he didn’t even know.
    Breathing hard, palms staining his trousers with sweat, Willi Kohl numbly nodded, as the end of his career—and perhaps his life—began to unfold before him.
    “Apparently there have been discussions about you at high levels.”
    “Yes, sir.” He hoped his voice didn’t quaver. He locked his eyes onto Horcher’s, which tore themselves away after an electric few seconds and examined a Bakelite bust of Hitler on a table near the door.
    “There is a matter that has come up. And unfortunately I can do nothing about it.”
    Of course there would be no help from Friedrich Horcher, who was not only merely Kripo, the lowest rung of the Sipo, but was a coward as well.
    “Yes, sir, what might this matter be?”
    “It is desired . . . it actually is ordered that you represent us at the ICPC in London this