Garden of Beasts

present.”
    Webber grinned broadly. “Ach, Mr. John Dillinger, good for you! In Berlin only a short time and already your heart has spoken. Or perhaps the voice is from another part of your body. Well, how would your friend like a nice garter belt with stockings to match? From France, of course. A bustier in red and black? Or is she more modest? A cashmere sweater. Perhaps some Belgian chocolates. Or some lace. Perfume is always good. And for you, of course, my friend, a very special price.”

Chapter Sixteen
    Busy times.
    There were dozens of matters that might have been occupying the mind of the huge, sweating man who, late this Saturday afternoon, sat in his appropriately spacious office within the recently completed 400,000-square-foot air ministry building at 81–85 Wilhelm Street, bigger even than the Chancellory and Hitler’s apartments combined.
    Hermann Göring could, for instance, resume work on the creation of the massive industrial empire that he was currently planning (and that would be named after him, of course). He could be drafting a memorandum to rural gendarmeries throughout the country, reminding them that the State Law for the Protection of Animals, which he himself had written, was to be strictly enforced and anyone caught hunting foxes with hounds would be severely punished.
    Or there was the vital matter of his party for the Olympics, for which Göring was constructing his own village within the air ministry itself (he’d managed to get a look at the plans for Goebbels’s event and upped his own gala to outdo the mealworm by tens of thousands of marks). And, of course, there was the ever-vital matter of what he would wear to the party. He could even be meeting with his adjutants regarding his present mission within the Third Empire: building the finest air force in the world.
    But what forty-three-year-old Hermann Göring wasnow preoccupied with was a pensioner widow twice his age, who lived in a small cottage outside Hamburg.
    Not that the man whose titles included minister without portfolio, commissioner for air, commander in chief of the air force, Prussian minister president, air minister and hunting master of the empire was himself doing any of the legwork regarding Mrs. Ruby Kleinfeldt, of course. A dozen of his minions and Gestapo officers scurried about on Wilhelm Street and in Hamburg, digging through records and interviewing people.
    Göring himself was staring out the window of his opulent office, eating a massive plate of spaghetti. This was Hitler’s favorite dish and Göring had watched the Leader picking at a bowl of it yesterday. Seeing the unconsumed portion triggered an itch within Göring that had festered into a fierce craving; so far he’d had three large helpings today.
    What will we find about you? he silently asked the elderly woman, who knew nothing of the bustling inquiry about her. The investigation seemed absurdly digressive, considering the many vital projects currently on his calendar. Yet this one was vitally important because it could lead to the downfall of Reinhard Ernst.
    Soldiering was at the core of Hermann Göring, who often recalled the happy days of the War, flying his all-white Fokker D-7 biplane over France and Belgium, engaging any Allied pilot foolish enough to be in the skies nearby (a confirmed twenty-two had paid for that mistake with their lives, though Göring remained convinced he’d killed many more). He might now be a behemoth who couldn’t even fit into the cockpit of his old plane, a man whose life was painkillers, food, money, art, power. But if you asked him who he was at heart, Göring’s answer would be: I am a soldier.
    And a soldier who knew how best to turn his country into a nation of warriors once again—you showed your muscle. You didn’t negotiate, you didn’t pad around like a youth making for the bushes behind a barn to secretly puff away on his father’s pipe—the behavior of Colonel Reinhard Ernst.
    The man had a woman’s touch about this business. Even the faggot Roehm, the head of the Stormtroopers killed by Göring and Hitler in the putsch two years ago, was a bulldog compared with Ernst. Secret arm’s-length deals with Krupp, nervously shifting resources from one shipyard to another, forcing their present “army,” such as it was, to train with wooden guns and artillery in small groups, so they wouldn’t draw attention. A dozen other such prissy tactics.
    Why the hesitancy? Because, Göring believed,