Garden of Beasts

in America than would Kohl himself.
    As for the inspector—starting over in middle age! What an overwhelming challenge! He thought ironically of the Leader’s nonsensical opus, My Struggle. Well, what a struggle he himself would have—a tired man with a family, beginning again at an age when he should be delegating cases to young inspectors and taking half-days off to escort his children to the wave-making pool at Luna Park. Yet, it was not the thought of the effort and uncertainty awaiting him that made him choke quietly and that drew tears from his eyes, which he averted from the young SS troopers.
    No, the tears were for what he was now looking at as they swept around a turn en route to Berlin: the plains of Prussia. And, though they were dusty and wan on this dry summer evening, they still exuded a grandeur and palpable significance, for they were the plains of his Germany, a great nation at heart, whose truths and ideals had somehow tragically been stolen by thieves.
    Kohl reached into his pocket and pulled out his meerschaum pipe. He filled the bowl then searched his jacket but could find no match. He heard a rasp as the SS trooper sitting next to him struck one and held it out for him. “Thank you,” Kohl said and sucked on the stem to ignite the tobacco. He sat back, filling the air around him with the scent of pungent cherries, and stared out the front windshield as the lights of Berlin came into view.

Chapter Forty-Two
    The car wove like a dancer along the road to his home in Charlottenburg. Reinhard Ernst sat in the back, bracing himself against the turns, his head resting on the luxurious leather. He had a new driver and guard; Claus, the SS lieutenant with him at Waltham College, had been injured by glass flying from a window of the Mercedes and had been taken to a surgeon. Another SS car, filled with black-helmeted guards, was behind them.
    He removed his glasses and rubbed his eyes. Ach, Keitel dead, along with the soldier taking part in the study. “Subject D” was how Ernst thought of him; he’d never even known the man’s name. . . . What a disaster this day had been.
    Yet the one thing that stood out most prominently in Ernst’s thoughts was the choice that the killer had made outside Building 5. If he’d wanted to kill me, the colonel reflected, which was clearly his mission, he could have, easily. Yet he had decided not to; he’d rescued the young men instead. Reflecting on this act, the horror of what Ernst had been doing became clear. Yes, he realized, the Waltham Study was abominable. He had looked those young men in the face and told them: Serve in the army for a year and your sins will be absolved—all the while knowing that this was a lie; he’d spun the fiction solely to keep the victims relaxed and unsuspecting, so that thesoldier could get to know them before he killed them.
    Yes, he’d lied to the Fischer brothers, just as he’d lied to the Polish workers when he’d said they would receive double pay to transplant some trees near Charlottenburg for the Olympics. And he’d lied to the Jewish families in Gatow, telling them to assemble by the riverside, because there were some renegade Stormtroopers nearby and Ernst and his men would protect them.
    Ernst didn’t dislike Jews. He’d fought beside some in the War and found them as smart and courageous as everyone else. Indeed, based on the Jews he’d known then and since, he couldn’t find any difference between them and Aryans. As for Poles, well, his reading of history told him they too were not so very different from their Prussian neighbors and indeed had a nobility that few National Socialists possessed.
    Repugnant, what he was doing with the study. Horrifying. He felt a twist of razor-sharp shame within him, like the searing pain in his arm when the hot shrapnel had ripped into his shoulder in the War.
    The road now straightened and they approached the neighborhood where he lived. Ernst leaned forward and gave the driver directions to his home.
    Abominable, yes . . .
    And yet . . . as he looked around him at the familiar buildings and cafés and parks of this portion of Charlottenburg, the horror began to dull, just as happened on the battlefield after the last Mauser or Enfield was fired, the cannon salvos ceased, the cries of the wounded abated. He recalled tonight watching the “recruitment officer,” Subject D, who had willingly, cavalierly, hooked up the deadly hose to the school, even though