His mother, Hannelore, knelt beside him. Once a handsome blonde, Hannelore was now grey and gaunt.
‘What happened?’ said Carla, fearing the answer.
‘The police,’ said Hannelore. ‘They accused my husband of treating Aryan patients. They have taken him away. Rudi tried to stop them smashing the place up. They have . . .’ She choked up.
Carla put down her basket and knelt beside Hannelore. ‘What have they done?’
Hannelore recovered the power of speech. ‘They broke his hands,’ she whispered.
Carla saw it at once. Rudi’s hands were red and horribly twisted. The police seemed to have broken his fingers one by one. No wonder he was moaning. She was sickened. But she saw horror every day, and she knew how to suppress her personal feelings and give practical help. ‘He needs morphine,’ she said.
Hannelore indicated the mess on the floor. ‘If we had any, it’s gone.’
Carla felt a spasm of pure rage. Even the hospitals were short of supplies – and yet the police had wasted precious drugs in an orgy of destruction. ‘I brought you morphine.’ She took from her basket a vial of clear fluid and the new syringe. Swiftly, she took the syringe from its box and charged it with the drug. Then she injected Rudi.
The effect was almost instant. The moaning stopped. He opened his eyes and looked at Carla. ‘You angel,’ he said. Then he closed his eyes and seemed to sleep.
‘We must try to set his fingers,’ Carla said. ‘So that the bones heal straight.’ She touched Rudi’s left hand. There was no reaction. She grasped the hand and lifted it. Still he did not stir.
‘I’ve never set bones,’ said Hannelore. ‘Though I’ve seen it done often enough.’
‘Same here,’ said Carla. ‘But we’d better try. I’ll do his left hand, you do the right. We must finish before the drug wears off. God knows he’ll be in enough pain.’
‘All right,’ said Hannelore.
Carla paused a moment longer. Her mother was right. They had to do anything they could to end this Nazi regime, even if it meant betraying their own country. She was no longer in any doubt.
‘Let’s get it done,’ Carla said.
Gently, carefully, the two women began to straighten Rudi’s broken hands.
Thomas Macke went to the Tannenberg Bar every Friday afternoon.
It was not much of a place. On one wall was a framed photograph of the proprietor, Fritz, in a First World War uniform, twenty-five years younger and without a beer belly. He claimed to have killed nine Russians at the Battle of Tannenberg. There were a few tables and chairs, but the regulars all sat at the bar. A menu in a leather cover was almost entirely fantasy: the only dishes served were sausages with potatoes or sausages without potatoes.
But the place stood across the street from the Kreuzberg police station, so it was a cop bar. That meant it was free to break all the rules. Gambling was open, street girls gave blow jobs in the toilet, and the food inspectors of the Berlin city government never entered the kitchen. It opened when Fritz got up and closed when the last drinker went home.
Macke had been a lowly police officer at the Kreuzberg station years ago, before the Nazis took over and men such as he were suddenly given a break. Some of his former colleagues still drank at the Tannenberg, and he could be sure of seeing a familiar face or two. He still liked to talk to old friends, even though he had risen so far above them, becoming an inspector and a member of the SS.
‘You’ve done well, Thomas, I’ll give you that,’ said Bernhardt Engel, who had been a sergeant over Macke in 1932 and was still a sergeant. ‘Good luck to you, son.’ He raised to his lips the stein of beer that Macke had bought him.
‘I won’t argue with you,’ Macke replied. ‘Though I will say, Superintendent Kringelein is a lot worse to work for than you were.’
‘I was too soft on you boys,’ Bernhardt admitted.
Another old comrade, Franz Edel, laughed scornfully. ‘I wouldn’t say soft!’
Glancing out of the window, Macke saw a motorcycle pull up outside driven by a young man in the light-blue belted jacket of an air force officer. He looked familiar: Macke had seen him somewhere before. He had over-long red-blond hair flopping on to a patrician forehead. He crossed the pavement and came into the Tannenberg.
Macke remembered the name. He was Werner Franck, spoiled son of the radio manufacturer Ludi Franck.
Werner came to the bar and asked for a pack of Kamel cigarettes. How predictable, Macke thought, that the playboy should smoke American-style cigarettes, even if they were a German imitation.
Werner paid, opened the pack, took out a cigarette, and asked Fritz for a light. Turning to leave, cigarette in his mouth tilted at a rakish angle, he caught Macke’s eye and, after a moment’s thought, said: ‘Inspector Macke.’
The men in the bar all stared at Macke to see what he would say.
He nodded casually. ‘How are you, young Werner?’
‘Very well, sir, thank you.’
