Garden of Beasts

walked through the various rooms, flashing the American’s passport, asking if anyone had seen him. The civilians in the audience were typically blind, and the SS typically uncooperative. (One barked, “You’re blocking my view, Kripo. Move your ass!”)
    But then he’d shown the picture to a waitress. Her eyes had flashed in anger.
    “You know him?” Kohl had asked.
    “Ach, do I know him? Yes, yes.”
    “You are?”
    “Liesl. He claimed his name was Hermann but I see that was a lie.” She nodded at the passport. “I’m not surprised. He was here not an hour ago. With his toad of a companion, Otto Webber.”
    “Who is this Webber?”
    “A toad, as I say.”
    “What were they doing here?”
    “What else? Drinking, talking. Ach, and flirting . . . A man flirts with a girl and then rejects her coldly. . . . How cruel that is.” Liesl’s Adam’s apple had quivered and Kohl deduced the whole sad story. “Will you arrest him?”
    “Please, what do you know about him? Where he is staying, what his business is?”
    Liesl had not known much. But one bit of information was golden. Schumann and Webber apparently planned to meet with someone later that afternoon. And a clandestinegathering it was to be, the spurned waitress had offered darkly. “A toad’s business. At someplace called Waltham College.”
    Kohl had hurried from the Aryan Café, collected the DKW and sped to Waltham. He now saw the military college in front of him and eased the car gently onto the gravel shoulder near two low brick columns topped with statues of imperial eagles. Several students lounging on the grass beside backpacks and a picnic basket glanced at the dusty, black car.
    Kohl gestured the students over to the car and the blond young men, sensing authority, trotted quickly forward.
    “Hail Hitler.”
    “Hail,” Kohl replied. “School is still in session? In the summer?”
    “There are courses being taught, sir. Today, though, we have no classes, so we’ve been hiking.”
    Like his own sons, these students were caught in the great fever of Third Empire education, only more so, of course, since the whole point of this college was to produce soldiers.
    What brilliant criminals the Leader and his crowd are. They kidnap the nation by seizing our children. . . . 
    He opened Schumann’s passport and displayed the picture. “Have you seen this man?”
    “No, Inspector,” one said and glanced at his friends, who shook their heads no.
    “How long have you been here?”
    “Perhaps an hour.”
    “Has anyone arrived in that time?”
    “Yes, sir. Not long ago, a school bus arrived and with it an Opel and a Mercedes. A black one. Five-liter. New.”
    “No, it was the seven-point-seven,” a friend corrected.
    “You’re blind! It was much smaller.”
    A third said, “And that Labor Service truck. Only it didn’t drive in here.”
    “No, it went past and then turned off the road.” The boy pointed. “Near the entrance of some other academic buildings.”
    “Labor Service?”
    “Yes, sir.”
    “Was the truck full of workers?”
    “We couldn’t see in the back.”
    “Did you get a look at the driver?”
    “No, sir.”
    “Nor I.”
    Labor Service . . . Kohl pondered this. RAD workers were used primarily for farming and public works. It would be very unusual for them to be assigned to a college, especially on Sunday. “Has the Service been doing some work here?”
    The boy shrugged. “I don’t believe so, sir.”
    “I’ve heard of nothing either, sir.”
    “Don’t say anything of my questions,” Kohl said. “To anyone.”
    “A matter of Party security?” one boy asked with an intrigued smile.
    Kohl touched his finger to his lips.
    And left them gossiping excitedly about what the mysterious policeman might mean.

Chapter Thirty-Five
    Closing in on the gray Opel.
    Crawling, pause.
    Then crawling again. Just like at St. Mihiel and the dense, ancient forests of Argonne.
    Paul Schumann smelled hot grass and the old manure used to fertilize the field. Smelled the oil and creosote of the weapon. Smelled his own sweat.
    Another few feet. Then pause.
    He had to move slowly; he was very exposed here. Anyone on the field around Building 5 might have glanced his way and noticed the grass swaying unnaturally or caught the glint of low light reflecting off the rifle barrel.
    Pause.
    He looked over the field again. The man in brown was taking a stack of documents from the panel truck. The glare on the