Garden of Beasts

they’ll get all the officials back to Berlin as fast as possible. I’ll ride with the guards protecting them. Once we’re in town, I’ll get lost in the crowd.” Afterward he’d slip into the embassy building near the Brandenburg Gate and radio Andrew Avery and Vince Manielli in Amsterdam, who’d send the plane out to the aerodrome for him.
    As their eyes returned to the maps of the stadium Paul decided it was time. He said, “I want to tell you. There’s someone coming with me.”
    Morgan glanced at Webber, who laughed. “Ach, what are you thinking? That I could possibly live anywhere but this Prussian Garden of Eden? No, no, I will leave Germany only for heaven.”
    Paul said, “A woman.”
    Morgan’s mouth tightened. “The one here.” Nodding toward the hallway of the boardinghouse.
    “That’s right. Käthe.” Paul added, “You looked into her. You know she’s legitimate.”
    “What have you told her?” asked the troubled American.
    “The Gestapo has her passport and it’s only a matter of time until they arrest her.”
    “It’s a matter of time until they arrest a lot of people here. What have you told her, Paul?” Morgan repeated.
    “Just our cover story about sportswriting. That’s all.”
    “But—”
    “She’s coming with me,” he said.
    “I should call Washington, or the Senator.”
    “Call who you like. She’s coming.”
    Morgan looked at Webber.
    “Ach, I have been married three times, possibly four,” the German said. “And I now have a . . . complicated arrangement. Expect no advice from me on matters of the heart.”
    Morgan shook his head. “Jesus, we’re running an airways service.”
    Paul fixed his fellow American with a gaze. “One other thing: At the stadium I’ll only have the Russian passport for ID. If I don’t make it she’ll never hear what happened. Will you tell her something—about me having to leave? I don’t want her thinking that I ditched her. And do what you can to get her out.”
    “Of course.”
    “Ach, you’ll make it, Mr. John Dillinger. You’re the American cowboy with big balls, right?” Webber wiped his sweating forehead. He rose and found three glasses in the cupboard. From a flask he poured some clear liquid intothem and passed them around. “Austrian obstler. You have heard of it? It is the best of all liquors, good for the blood and good for the soul. Now, drink up, gentlemen, then let us go out and change the fate of my poor nation.”
    •   •   •
    “I will need as many of them as you can find,” Willi Kohl said.
    The man nodded cautiously. “It isn’t really a question of finding them. They are always quite findable. It’s a question of how out-of-the-ordinary this matter is. There is really no precedent for it.”
    “It is out of the ordinary,” Kohl agreed. “That much is true. But Police Chief Himmler has branded this an unusual case and an important one. Other officers are occupied throughout the city with equally pressing matters and he left it to me to be resourceful. So I have come to you.”
    “Himmler?” asked Johann Muntz. The middle-aged man stood in the doorway of a small house on Grün Street in Charlottenburg. Shaved and trimmed and wearing a suit, he looked as if he’d just returned from church this Sunday morning, a risky outing, to be sure, if you wished to retain your job as headmaster of one of the best schools in Berlin.
    “Well, as you know, they’re autonomous. Completely self-governed. I cannot dictate anything to them. They might say no. And there is nothing I can do about that.”
    “Ah, Dr. Muntz, I’m just asking for an opportunity to appeal to them in hopes they will volunteer to help the cause of justice.”
    “But today is Sunday. How can I contact them?”
    “I suspect you need only call the leader at home and he will arrange for their assembly.”
    “Very well. I will do it, Inspector.”
    Three-quarters of an hour later, Willi Kohl found himself in Muntz’s backyard, looking over the faces of nearly two dozen boys, many of whom were dressed in brown shirts, shorts and white socks, black ties dangling from a braided leather clasp at the throat. The youngsters were, for the most part, members of the Hindenburg School’s Hitler Youth brigade. As the school’s headmaster had just reminded Kohl, the organization was completely independent of any adult supervision. The members selected their own leaders and it was they who determined the activities of their