Garden of Beasts

fault, sir?”
    “Ach, the subtleties of our job, Janssen . . . I wished to give nothing away about our purpose and so I said we wished to see this man about a matter of ‘state security,’ which we say far too readily nowadays. My words suggested that the crime wasn’t the murder of an innocent victim but perhaps an offense against the government—which, of course, was at war with their country less than twenty years ago. Many of those athletes undoubtedly lost relatives, even fathers, to the Kaiser’s army, and might feel a patriotic interest in protecting such a man. And now it is too late to retract what I so carelessly said.”
    When they reached the street in front of the village, Janssen turned toward where they had parked the DKW. But Kohl asked, “Where are you going?”
    “Aren’t we returning to Berlin?”
    “Not yet. We’ve been denied our passenger manifest. But destruction of evidence implies a reason to destroy it, and that reason might logically be found near the point of its loss. So we’ll make some inquiries. We must continue our trail the hard way, by using our poor feet. . . . Ach, that food smells good, doesn’t it? They’re cooking well for the athletes. I remember when I used to swim daily. Years ago. Why, then I could eat whatever I wanted and never gain a gram. Those days are long behind me, I’m afraid. To the right here, Janssen, to the right.”
    •   •   •
    Reinhard Ernst dropped his phone into its cradle and closed his eyes. He leaned back in the heavy chair in his Chancellory office. For the first time in several days he felt content—no, he felt joyous. A sense of victory swept through him, as keen as when he and his sixty-seven surviving men successfully defended the northwestern redoubt against three hundred Allied troops near Verdun. That had earned him the Iron Cross, first-class—and an admiring look from Wilhelm II (only the Kaiser’s withered arm had prevented him from pinning the decoration on Ernst’s chest himself)—but this success today, which would be greeted with no public accolades, of course, was far sweeter.
    One of the greatest problems he’d faced in rebuilding the German navy was the section in the Versailles treaty that forbade Germany to have submarines and limited the number of warships to six battleships, six light cruisers, twelve destroyers and twelve torpedo boats.
    Absurd, of course, even for basic defense.
    But last year Ernst had engineered a coup. He and brash Ambassador-at-Large Joachim von Ribbentrop had negotiated the Anglo-German Naval Treaty, which allowed submarine construction and lifted the limitation on Germany’s surface navy to 35 percent of the size of England’s. But the most important part of the pact had never been tested until now. It had been Ernst’s brainstorm to have Ribbentrop negotiate the percentage not in terms of number of ships, as had been the measure at Versailles, but in tonnage.
    Germany now had the legal right to build even more ships than Britain had, as long as the total tonnage never exceeded the magic 35 percent. Moreover, it had been the goal all along of Ernst and Erich Raeder, commanderin chief of the navy, to create lighter, more mobile and deadlier fighting vessels, rather than behemoth battleships that made up the bulk of the British war fleet—ships that were vulnerable to attack by aircraft and submarines.
    The only question had been: Would England claim a foul when they reviewed the shipyard construction reports and realized that the German navy would be far bigger than expected?
    The caller on the other end of the line, though, a German diplomatic aide in London, had just reported that the British government had reviewed the figures and approved them without a second thought.
    What a success this was!
    He drafted a note to the Leader to give him the good news and had a runner deliver it in person.
    Just as the clock on the wall was striking four, a bald, middle-aged man wearing a brown tweed jacket and ribbed slacks stepped into Ernst’s office. “Colonel, I just—”
    Ernst shook his head and touched his lips, silencing Doctor-professor Ludwig Keitel. The colonel spun around and glanced out the window. “What a delightful afternoon it is.”
    Keitel frowned; it was one of the hottest days of the year, close to thirty-four degrees, and the wind was filled with grit. But he remained silent, an eyebrow raised.
    Ernst pointed toward the door. Keitel nodded and