Garden of Beasts

office. He stopped suddenly, alarmed that the man might be here, since the light under the door was so bright. But he knocked again and heard nothing. He opened the door and found that the brilliance was sunlight; the office faced east and the morning light streamed viciously into the room. Debating about the door, he decided to leave it open; closing it was probably against regulations and would be suspicious, if guards made rounds.
    His first impression was how cluttered the office was: papers, booklets, account sheets, bound reports, maps, letters. They covered Ernst’s desk and a large table in the corner. Many books sat on the shelves, most dealing with military history, apparently arranged chronologically, starting with Caesar’s Gallic Wars. After what Käthe had told him about German censorship, he was surprised to find books by and about Americans and Englishmen: Pershing, Teddy Roosevelt, Lord Cornwallis, Ulysses S. Grant, Abraham Lincoln, Lord Nelson.
    There was a fireplace, empty this morning, of course, and scrubbed clean. On the black-and-white marble mantel were plaques of war decorations, a bayonet, battle flags, pictures of a younger, uniformed Ernst with astout man sporting a fierce mustache and wearing a spiked helmet.
    Paul opened his notebook, in which he’d sketched a dozen room plans, then paced off the perimeter of the office, drew it and added dimensions. He didn’t bother with the measuring stick; he needed credibility, not accuracy. Walking to the desk, Paul looked over it. He saw several framed pictures. These showed the colonel with his family. Others were of a handsome brunette woman, probably his wife, and a threesome: a young man in uniform with, apparently, his own young wife and infant. Then there were two of the same young woman and the child, taken several years apart and more recently.
    Paul looked away from the pictures and quickly read over dozens of papers on the desk. He was about to reach for one of the piles of documents and dig through it, but he paused, aware of a sound—or perhaps an absence of sound. Just a softening of the loose noises floating about him. Instantly Paul dropped to his knees and set the measuring stick on the floor, then began walking it from one side of the room to the other. He looked up as a man slowly entered, glancing at him with curiosity.
    The photographs on the mantel and the ones that Morgan’s contact, Max, had shown him had been several years old but there was no doubt that the man standing in front of him was Reinhard Ernst.

Chapter Twenty-Two
    “Hail Hitler,” Paul said. “Forgive me if I am disturbing you, sir.”
    “Hail,” the man replied lethargically. “You are?”
    “I am Fleischman. I am measuring for carpets.”
    “Ah, carpets.”
    Another figure glanced into the room, a large, black-uniformed guard. He asked to see Paul’s papers, read them carefully and then returned to the ante-office, pulling up a chair just outside the door.
    Ernst asked Paul, “And how big a room do I have here?”
    “Eight by nine and a half meters.” Paul’s heart was pounding; he’d nearly said “yards.”
    “I would have thought it bigger.”
    “Oh, it is bigger, sir. I was referring to the size of the rug. Generally with fine floors like this our customers want a border of wood visible.”
    Ernst glanced at the floor as if he’d never seen the oak. He took his jacket off and hung it on a suit form beside his desk. He sat back in his chair, closed his eyes and rubbed them. Then he sat forward, pulled on some wire-rimmed glasses and read some documents.
    “You are working on Sunday, sir?” Paul asked.
    “As you,” Ernst replied with a laugh, not looking up.
    “The Leader is eager to finish the renovations to the building.”
    “Yes, that is certainly true.”
    As he bent to measure a small alcove Paul glanced sideways at Ernst, noting the scarred hand, the creases around the mouth, the red eyes, the demeanor of someone with a thousand thoughts percolating in his mind, someone carrying a thousand burdens.
    A faint squeal as Ernst swiveled in his chair to face the window, removing his glasses. He seemed to soak up the glare and heat of the sun hungrily, with pleasure, but with a hint of regret, as well, as if he were a man of the outdoors not happy that his duty kept him desk-bound.
    “How long have you done this work, Fleischman?” he asked without turning.
    Paul stood, clutching the notebook at his side. “All my life, sir.