Cesare Read online

  “Mensch,” she snarled, “walk away. I’m with the Gestapo.”

  “So am I,” he whispered. “So am I.”

  She looked up, terrorized for a moment, and then she smiled.

  “Herr Magician, are you going to strangle me in the Adlon? I could pose for you. I’d love to see my picture in the Illustrirte.”

  “Dancing with Frau Valentiner at the White Mouse?”

  “Why not?” she said, shaking a bit of ash from her Roth-Händle. “That lizard couldn’t keep her hands off me. I was lucky to walk out of there with my own ass. I’m her little whore, did you know that? Does it excite you, Herr Magician? The White Mouse is a lesbian bar. That’s where she goes to pick up other lizards when I won’t sleep with her.”

  The Greifer had outsmarted Erik, hurled him off the track. He kept seeing images of Lisa dancing with her lizard at the White Mouse. He didn’t know what to think. Perhaps it did excite him, or made him angry enough to break her bones in bed. But he wasn’t going to let this Greifer out of his grasp.

  He had his own surge of cruelty. “Shall I read Faust to your father? I can push him right out of that little collection camp. He won’t survive on the streets of Berlin.”

  He couldn’t break into her smile. “Herr Magician, was it Lisa who scratched your face? We’re comrades, you and I. Shall I show you the love bites on my back?”

  “Tell me where you and Lisa got that truck and SS uniforms with all the right patches.”

  “From inside your own pocket, Herr Magician.”

  Perhaps he was a magician, because he seemed to conjure up Dr. Caligari out of his own thoughts.

  Admiral Canaris had arrived at the Adlon bar with a dachshund under each arm, Kasper and Sabine. He couldn’t bear to leave them alone on the embankment. And Erik had to let the Greifer escape. She fondled the scratches on his face and fled without her submariner, who sat hunched on a stool.

  The admiral looked gray in the bar’s dim light. His white hair was unruly; his hands were shaking.

  “Alte, should I hold the dogs for you?”

  And that’s when the air raid sirens began to wail. The dachshunds shivered in the admiral’s arms. But he wouldn’t release the dogs, not even to his own somnambulist. They left the bar, went down the sixteen steps to the barbershop in the basement. This was the Adlon’s most celebrated salon, with its black porcelain chairs, its network of marble sinks, its rows of pomades and hair tonics, its enormous brass holder for heated towels, its tile floor that was like a kingdom of checkerboards. The Adlon’s barbers were all Party members. And it was the barber in chief, Herr Winterdorf, who trimmed the Führer’s mustache, massaged his scalp, and pomaded him. The Führer would sit with a heated towel on his face, while Leibstandarte commandos stood around him in a perfect shield. These Nazi barbers were as good as secret agents. They spied on foreign diplomats and the hotel’s Jewish guests long before Hitler came to power. And it was the one area of the Adlon that the Abwehr had been unable to penetrate. Admiral Canaris couldn’t plant a single spy among these barbers with their Party pins.…

  They had to hike through the barbershop to arrive at the shelter, which was near the Adlon’s mandarin wine cellars; the shelter was like a second hotel, with several rooms, each equipped with Louis Quatorze sofas and armchairs. Page boys in powder blue coats and hats had assembled like a little army to assist the guests. The youngest page was in his sixties; the oldest was eighty-five. All of them, like the Adlon’s waiters, had come out of retirement to help cope with the war. Erik and the admiral had to find a safe corner where other guests couldn’t intrude upon their conversation. The Adlon’s electrical generators went dead, and Sabine moaned in the dark. The admiral didn’t utter a single word to soothe her. A soft yellow light began to sputter as the page boys scurried for candles to fit into the candelabra. It fell unevenly on the admiral’s face. He seemed to peer at Erik like a falcon out of one eye.

  “Männe, you’re going to America, and you’re taking Emil. Both of you will leave next week.”

  “Herr Admiral, I can’t believe that you’re reviving that silly adventure. All our agents in the last two landings were caught within a week. What is the use of these landings?”

  “They have no use, Männe. Our contacts have all been compromised. But it doesn’t matter. We have to get our little baron out of the country before the SD grabs him by the pants.”

  The SD was Hitler’s own secret service within the SS; it rivaled the Abwehr, and was much more ruthless. But it didn’t have the Abwehr’s expertise.

  Erik had to measure that falcon’s eye in the crooked light. “It was Emil who provided the Jewish underground with uniforms and a truck.”

  “He is the Jewish underground.”

  “And yet you took him into the Abwehr.”

  The admiral sat with Sabine and Kasper in his lap. “And what should I have done with the little baron? Given him to the Gestapo? How could I have realized that he hadn’t severed the umbilical cord with his uncle, that they moved Die Drei Krokodile to another location—their own minds.”

  “Then Baron von Hecht is involved with all this?”

  “Gott,” said the admiral. “He’s their Doctor Mabuse. He sits in his emperor’s bed at the hospital and saves as many Jews as he can.”

  The room began to rumble; the Mosquitoes must have been flying over the Tiergarten with their load of bombs. The candles flickered, and the sleeve of a doddering page boy caught fire. Erik had to leap up and smother that fire with the cape of his leather coat. The dachshunds seemed enthralled by the dying licks of flame.

  Erik returned to the admiral with a scorched lining.

  “Alte, the baron isn’t safe in his bed. Should I carry him to America on my back?”

  “We can’t save the whole world. But we might save Emil.”

  They could no longer talk spy to spy. Frau Adlon had come into the shelter with three dachshunds of her own. She sat down next to the admiral. She was built like a battle-ax but had once danced the tango with Pola Negri during the tea dances that she herself had started at the Adlon. Pola Negri couldn’t survive the coming of talkies in America. Her Polish accent made her sound like an artillery captain. She exiled herself in a suite at the Adlon, made films at the Babelsberg studios—Mazurka and Moskau-Shanghai—and danced the tango with Frau Adlon in the Beethoven Salon, wearing a mustache and a Cossack cape. She had many lovers, including the Führer himself, some might say, but she wouldn’t dance at the Adlon without her mustache.

  Frau Adlon whispered to the waiters, who vanished into the wine cellars and returned with goblets of champagne. And then the Grand Mufti arrived with his contingent of Arab Gestapo agents, who installed him close to Caligari in a Louis Quatorze chair.

  “Herr Admiral, you have an excellent boy. The Engländers have put a price on my head, and your Cesare frightened one of their assassins out of this hotel.”

  “Assassins?” muttered Frau Adlon, with marks of hysteria between her eyebrows. “We have no assassins here. The Adlon wouldn’t allow it. We have our own detectives, our own index cards, like the Abwehr. Isn’t that so, Herr Admiral?”

  Caligari kissed her hand. “Gnädige Frau, I can guarantee you that your files are better than ours.”

  Erik slipped away. He didn’t care how many bombs fell over Berlin. He’d rather breathe the brittle air of a flak-filled night than sit in some cellar. But he couldn’t escape. The barbers’ salon was lit. And Hitler’s own barber, Herr Winterdorf, was behind his chair in a white smock, whetting his razor on a long leather strop. He could have been a general in the Kaiserskorps. The barber was a very tall man with steel gray hair. He had served as an infantryman in the Great War, and had almost been blinded in a gas attack. Erik had read his file in the Abwehr’s inner sanctum, called the “Little Library”—shelf after shelf of index cards kept under lock and key at the Tirpitz embankment.

  Three of the barber’s four sons had been killed on the eastern front. His fourth son
was feebleminded and had been tucked away on a farm, hidden from the Nazis’ euthanasia fanatics. The Abwehr could have used this information against the barber, kept him on a string, but the admiral wouldn’t allow a feebleminded boy to become a pawn in his rivalry with the SS.

  Erik didn’t have the same scruples. Herr Winterdorf had taken part in Kristallnacht, had raided Scheunenviertel, setting fire to synagogues, pulling on the beards of old men. He’d kept a Jewish maid at the hotel as his mistress before denouncing her. Erik dreamt of punishing the barber in his own chair. But on another night.

  He sailed past Herr Winterdorf without offering the Hitler salute.

  “Herr Cesare,” the barber said, “where’s the rush? The Engländers’ wooden planes are still in the sky. And soon we will have to put cement in the Adlon’s front windows or sit in a world of glass. But how will we live without light?”

  “You survive in your cave, Herr Winterdorf.”

  “But it is only a barbershop, not the lobby. And please call me Fritz.… Come, I will give you a shave.”

  Erik stared at the razor and the long leather strop that looked like the lone suspender of some lost German giant. He smiled and sat down in Fritz’s gleaming black chair. It might turn into a merry evening if the barber meant to kill him. Erik saw his own sad face in the salon’s wonderland of mirrors. He really was Cesare, a wanderer in Berlin. But he slid the dirk out of his sleeve.

  “Close your eyes,” the barber whispered. “Mensch, I cannot shave you if you’re not relaxed. I might cut your chin.”

  The somnambulist closed his eyes. Fritz pumped on a treadle, and his black chair turned into a bed. Cesare lay on the leather upholstery, wondering if the barber had prepared a coffin for him. Suddenly, he had a hot towel on his face with the scent of lilacs. And the barber slid his fingers under the towel to massage Cesare’s temples and his scalp.

  “Herr Kapitän, you must warn the Jewish baron.”

  Erik held his dirk close to the barber’s groin. “And why is that, Herr Fritz? Is the SD going to spank him for being the wealthiest man in Berlin?”

  “The SD has nothing to do with this. I’m talking about the Leibstandarte commandos. They have been compromised. Fifty Jews disappear from their own fingers, on a truck that does not belong to them, with other Jews posing as officers in Leibstandarte uniforms. They’re not fools. Who could have financed such an Aktion? Only a man who had once seduced Berlin with Die Drei Krokodile, only the baron. And who could have helped him? Only the Abwehr … but this is not a criticism, Herr Kapitän.” “Then what is it?” Erik asked from under the hot white mask of a towel with monograms. But Fritz wouldn’t answer; he stopped massaging Erik’s scalp, plucked off the towel, smothered the somnambulist in shaving cream, stooped over the reclining chair, and plunged with his razor in one hand. Erik was like a captured bird; he couldn’t even maneuver with his knife while the barber scraped his chin. The sound of it roared in Erik’s ears.

  “I am fond of the baron. He was always kind to me. He even wore the Party pin once upon a time … until he was obliged to give it back. He would permit no other barber to shave him. And when I had problems with my own finances, it was the baron who paid my bills. You must get him out of Berlin. The Leibstandarte SS mean to kill the baron and his daughter. But there will be no arrest, Herr Kapitän Cesare, no interrogation. They hope to set an example and burn them alive—in the forest. An auto-da-fé in front of the Leibstandarte high command.”

  Erik tried to clamber out of the chair, but Fritz held him down with his free hand.

  “Do you want to ruin my reputation? I can’t let you out of my shop looking like a wilder Mann. The baron still has three more days.”

  So Erik sat through the ritual of razor scrapes, perfumes, and talcum powder. And Fritz wouldn’t even accept a gratuity.

  “You don’t have much of a future, Herr Kapitän. The Leibstandarte also have you on their lists. You should leave Berlin with the baron. They are a little frightened of you, yes. They have never had to confront a magician. But that won’t stop them from trampling you to death.”

  Erik climbed up the sixteen steps to the reception hall, which was deserted now and looked like a moonscape with palm trees and reddish marble pillars. He went through the revolving doors and out onto Unter den Linden with its row of Nazi banners planted in the ground. There wasn’t even an air raid warden to shout him back inside the hotel. But Cesare did have his own silent serenade. Four Leibstandarte commandos appeared from under the Adlon’s canopy and rushed him into a field car. They didn’t attack him with their fists. They had truncheons that resembled rubber snakes. They threw him into the rear of the car, bounced him on their laps, and said, “We were expecting you, Herr Magician,” before they knocked him senseless with their rubber snakes.

  The Krankenhaus

  18

  THEY WERE CAREFUL WITH THE MAGICIAN. They didn’t vanish with him into their barracks, where he couldn’t have survived the night. The commandos would have plucked out his eyes, trampled on him until every bone in his body had become a relic. So they sneaked him into Gestapo headquarters on Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse, sat him down in the cellar, and it was the Leibstandarte’s own intelligence chief, Colonel—SS-Standartenführer—Joachim, who interrogated him. The Standartenführer wore a plum-colored leather coat and boots of the very same deep red. He had the long fingers of a fiddler. He had once played duets with that other fiddler, Reinhard Heydrich. Colonel Joachim swiped his light blond mustache with one long finger. He didn’t look like a murderer. He had a kind of merriment in his eyes.

  “Magician,” he said, offering Erik a Roth-Händle from a burnished silver case. “Must we hurt you? Frau Valentiner has already scratched your face. Ah, her marks have a certain symmetry, no?”

  “What is it you want, Joachim? And Frau Valentiner is none of your fucking business.”

  “But that is what concerns us, dear Erik. Your fucking business. You shouldn’t be sleeping with Mischlinge, particularly one who’s married to an SS man. Standartenführer Valentiner is important to us.”

  “Yes, he pulls the gold teeth out of cadavers in all the conquered counties.”

  But it was Joachim and his Death’s-Heads who were the real ghouls. They had massacred civilians in Poland and Moravia—princes and priests, Jewish merchants, kindergarten teachers, lawyers, and professors—murdered them wholesale, buried them without a trace.

  “What is it you want from me, Joachim? Schnell. Why did you bring me here?”

  “You shouldn’t have interfered with the factory raid, pretending that the headquarters of Spartakus was the atelier of a mad photographer.”

  “Fine, then take me to your barracks and beat me to death.”

  “I have a much better plan. I want you to arrest Frau Valentiner and the Jewish baron.”

  Erik was bewildered. Fritz had talked of an auto-da-fé in the forest.

  “You’re confusing me with the Gestapo, Joachim. I’m not a policeman.”

  “Ah, but you carry a Gestapo card in your pocket. And sometimes you even wear our uniform.”

  “But that’s only to unsettle our enemies. I couldn’t survive without a cover.”

  The colonel sneered at him. “You have no cover, Herr Magician. Shoemakers in Dresden know about your exploits. That’s the only reason you’re still alive. And don’t think that Caligari’s Brandenbergers can save you. They’re locked inside their barracks at the moment. The Führer is sending them to the eastern front.”

  Erik suddenly realized that he would have to build his own auto-da-fé.

  “Richtig,” he said. “I’ll do it.”

  “Do what, Herr Magician? You talk in riddles.”

  “Arrest the Jew and his daughter—but not tonight.”

  The colonel started to groan. “But we’ll lose the element of surprise. And you might warn them.”

  “Joachim, I’m like a mouse in a mousetrap. And where can the baron go? The Krankenhaus on Iranische Strasse is hi
s very last kingdom.”

  “Cesare,” the colonel said, wiping the Gestapo’s dust from his plum-colored coat. “I am suspicious of such a king. Our baron has a taste for royalty. That could be a danger to us all.”

  Erik smiled to himself: He remembered an article Colonel Joachim had written in Das Schwarze Korps, the weekly journal put out on pink paper by the SS. Joachim, who fancied himself a literary critic and might even have studied Hamlet at Heidelberg, mocked the young Danish prince, said that Hamlet was the Dreck and Schweinerei of Shakespeare’s own diseased intellect. Hamlet was a feebleminded weakling with a flair for hysterical language—Hamlet could never have been a member of the Black Corps. And Erik wondered if the Black Corps’ literary critic considered the baron some kind of demented Lear with one depraved daughter instead of three.

  “Joachim, we will catch Berlin’s Jewish Lear and his Cordelia in the Krankenhaus. And then you can write about it in Das Schwarze Korps.”

  THE SAME COMMANDOS RETURNED HIM TO THE ADLON, but this time Erik sat up front while they passed around a bottle of liebfraumilch and sang “Schöner Gigolo.” The gigolos began to disappear from Berlin tearooms after the Nazis seized power. Perhaps the craze lasted a little longer at Unter den Linden, because of Frau Hedda’s own craze to dance the tango on Sunday afternoons. She took over the Beethoven Salon for herself, dressed as an Apache, and danced with perfect strangers … after Pola Negri vacated her suite and vanished from Berlin. But it astonished Erik that Leibstandarte commandos should have memorized a song about taxi dancers; he could imagine them beating up the very gigolos they serenaded in the song.

  “Herr Cesare,” they said, “we will help you catch the Jew.”

  Colonel Joachim had ordered these commandos to spy on him; they would sit like spiders outside the hotel.

  The main hall was packed with bellboys in their buttoned uniforms and pillbox hats; the red veins in the marble pillars seemed to dance in the light. It dazzled him—he had to save Lisalein and the baron.