Garden of Beasts

stock. Smelled the aroma of oil and creosote and the leather of the sling. He rarely used rifles in his job and the combination of sweet scents and solid wood and metal took him back in time. He could smell the mud of the trenches, the shit, kerosene fumes. And the stink of death, like wet, rotting cardboard.
    “These are special bullets too, which are hollowed out at the tip, as you can see. They are more likely to cause death than standard cartridges.”
    Paul dry-fired the gun several times to get a feel for the trigger. He pressed bullets into the magazine then sat down at a bench, resting the rifle on a block of wood covered with cloth. He began to fire. The report was ear-splitting but he hardly noticed. Paul just stared through the scope, concentrating on the black dots of the target. He made a few adjustments to the scope and then slowly fired the remaining twenty rounds in the box of ammunition.
    “Good,” he said, shouting because his hearing was numb. “A good weapon.” Nodding, he handed the rifle back to the pawnbroker, who took it apart, cleaned it and packed the gun and ammunition into a battered fiberboard suitcase.
    Morgan took the case and handed an envelope to the shopkeeper, who shut the lights out in the range and led them upstairs. A look out the door, a nod that all was clear and soon they were outside again, strolling down the street. Paul heard a metallic voice filling the street. He laughed. “You can’t escape it.” Across the street, at a tram stop, was a speaker, from which a man’s voice droned on and on—yet more information about public health. “Don’t they ever stop?”
    “No, they don’t,” Morgan said. “When we look back, that will be the National Socialist contribution to culture: ugly buildings, bad bronze sculpture and endless speeches. . . .” He nodded at the suitcase holding the Mauser. “Now let’s go back to the square and call my contact. See if he’s found enough information to let you put this fine piece of German machinery to use.”
    •   •   •
    The dusty DKW turned onto November 1923 Square and, unable to find a place to park on the hectic street, narrowly avoided a vendor selling questionable fruit as it drove halfway over the curb.
    “Ach, here we are, Janssen,” Willi Kohl said, wiping his face. “Your pistol is convenient.”
    “Yes, sir.”
    “Then let’s go hunting.”
    They climbed out.
    The purpose of the inspector’s diversion after they left the U.S. dormitory was to interview the taxi drivers stationedoutside the Olympic Village. With typical National Socialist foresight, only cabdrivers who were multilingual were allowed to serve the village, which meant both that there was a limited number of them and that they would return to the village after dropping off fares. This, in turn, Kohl reasoned, meant that one of them might have driven their suspect somewhere.
    After dividing the taxis up between them, and speaking to two dozen drivers, Janssen found one who’d had a story that did indeed interest Kohl. The fare had left the Olympics not long before with a suitcase and an old brown satchel. He was a burly man with a faint accent. His hair did not seem on the long side or to have a red tint but it was slicked straight back and dark, though that, Kohl reasoned, might have been due to oil or lotion. He said he had been wearing not a suit but light-colored casual clothing, though the driver couldn’t describe it in detail.
    The man had got out at Lützow Plaza and vanished into the crowds. This was one of the busiest, most congested intersections in the city; there were few hopes of picking up the suspect’s trail there. However, the cabdriver added that the man had asked directions to November 1923 Square and wondered if he could walk to it from Lützow Plaza.
    “Did he ask anything more about the square? Anything specific? His business? Comrades he was hoping to meet? Anything?”
    “No, Inspector. Nothing. I told him that it would be a long, long hike to the square. And he thanked me and got out. That was all. I was not looking at his face,” he explained. “Only at the road.”
    Blindness, of course, Kohl had thought sourly.
    They had returned to headquarters and picked upprinted handbills of the Dresden Alley victim. They then had raced here, to the monument in honor of the failed putsch in 1923 (only the National Socialists could turn such an embarrassing defeat into an unqualified victory). While Lützow