I nodded. “What else do you know about him?”
“Almost nothing beyond the fact that he must be a real asshole.”
“Would it surprise you to learn that he’s in correspondence with your old friend Max Reles? And that he owns a construction company in Chicago?”
“How do you know that?”
“I’m a detective, remember? I’m supposed to know things I’m not supposed to know about.”
She smiled. “Sonofabitch. You searched his room, didn’t you? That’s why you were asking me about him last night. I’ll bet that’s when you did it, too. Right after that little scene in the lobby, when you knew he’d be out for a while.”
“Almost right. I followed him to the opera first.”
“Five minutes of
“His guests included the sports leader. Funk from Propaganda. Some army general called von Reichenau. The rest I didn’t recognize. But I’ll bet they were all Nazis.”
“Those you mentioned are all on the German Olympic Organizing Committee,” she said. “And I’ll bet the rest were, too.” She shook her head. “So you went back to the Adlon and searched his room while you knew he was safely otherwise engaged. What else did you find?”
“A lot of letters. Reles employs a stenographer I found for him, and it seems he keeps her very busy writing to companies who are bidding for Olympic contracts.”
“Then he must be on a kickback. Maybe lots of kickbacks. The GOC, too, maybe.”
“I took some carbon copies from his wastepaper basket.”
“Great. Can I see them?”
When we were in the car once again I handed them over. She started to read one. “Nothing incriminating here,” she said.
“That’s what I thought. At first.”
“It’s just a bid for a contract to supply cement to the Ministry of the Interior.”
“The other one is a bid for a contract to supply propane gas for the Olympic flame.” I paused. “Don’t you get it? That’s a carbon. It means that it was typed by the Adlon’s own stenographer in his suite. Contracts are supposed to be for German companies only. And Max Reles is an American.”
“Maybe he bought these companies.”
“Maybe. I think he’s probably got enough money. Probably that’s why he went to Zurich before he came here. There’s a bag in his room containing thousands of dollars and gold Swiss francs. Not to mention a submachine gun. Even in Germany you don’t need a machine gun to run a company these days. Not unless you have some serious problems with your labor force.”
“I need to think about this.”
“We both do. I’ve a feeling we’re getting in over our heads, and I’m kind of attached to mine. I mention that only because we have the falling ax in this country, and it’s not just criminals who get haircuts. It’s communists and republicans and probably anyone the government doesn’t like. Look, you really won’t mention any of this to von Tschammer und Osten, will you?”
“No, of course I won’t. I’m not ready to get thrown out of Germany just yet. Especially since last night.”
“I’m glad to hear it.”
“While I’m thinking about Max Reles, that idea you had. About looking for Isaac Deutsch’s uncle and basing my story on him. It’s a good one.”
“I only said that to get you back in the car.”
“Well, I’m back in the car, and it’s still a good idea.”
“I’m not so sure. Suppose you did write a story about Jews helping to build the new stadium. Maybe all those Jews will end up losing their jobs as a result of that. And what happens to them then? How are they going to feed their families? It might even be that some of them end up in concentration camps. Have you thought about that?”
“Of course I’ve thought about it. What do you take me for? I’m a Jew, remember? The human consequences of what I might write are always on my mind. Look, Bernie, the way I see it is this: There’s a much bigger issue at stake here than a few hundred people losing their jobs. The USA is by far the most important country in any Olympics. In L.A., we won forty-one gold medals, more than any other country. Italy, which was next, won twelve. An Olympiad without America would be meaningless. That’s why a boycott is important. Because if the games are not held here, it would be just about the most serious blow that Nazi prestige could suffer inside Germany. Not to mention it being one of the most effective ways that the outside world has of showing the youth of Germany its true opinion of Nazi doctrine. That has to be more important than whether a few Jews can feed their families. Wouldn’t you agree?”
“Maybe. But if we go to Pichelsberg looking for answers about Isaac Deutsch, we might find ourselves asking questions of the very people who tossed him into the canal. They might not take kindly to being written about. Even if it is in a New York newspaper. Looking for Joey Deutsch could turn out to be just as dangerous as investigating Max Reles.”
“You’re a detective. An ex-cop. I’d have thought a certain amount of danger is written into your job description.”
“A certain amount, yes. But that doesn’t make me bulletproof. Besides, when you’re back in New York collecting a Pulitzer Prize for reporting, I’ll still be here. That’s the hope, at least. I can float in the canal just as easily as Isaac Deutsch.”
“If it’s a question of money.”
“Given what happened last night, I might tell you it’s not a question of money. At the same time, I have to admit that money is always a very persuasive answer.”
“Money talks, huh, Gunther?”
“Sometimes it seems you just can’t shut it up. I’m a hotel detective because I have to be, Noreen, not because I want to be. I’m broke, angel. When I quit KRIPO, I left behind a reasonable salary and a pension, not to mention what my father used to call ‘good prospects.’ I don’t see myself rising to the rank of hotel manager, do you?”
Noreen smiled. “Not in the kind of hotel I’d ever want to stay in.”
“Exactly.”
“How does twenty marks a day sound?”
“Generous. Very. But it’s a different kind of dialogue I’m looking for.”
“Pulitzer Prizes don’t pay that much, you know.”
“I’m not after a slice. Just a loan. A business loan, with interest. What with the Depression, the banks aren’t lending. Not even to each other. And I can hardly ask the Adlons to stake me enough to hand in my notice.”
“To do what?”
“To do this. Be a private investigator, of course. It’s about the one thing I’m good at. I figure about five hundred marks would let me set up on my own.”
“How do I know you’d stay alive long enough to pay me back?”
“That would be an incentive, of course. I’d hate to lose my life. And I’d hate to see you lose your money as a result of that, of course. Fact is, I could probably pay you a twenty-percent return on your investment.”
“You’ve obviously given this some thought.”
“Ever since the Nazis came into power. Human tragedies like the one we just witnessed in front of the town hall back there are happening all over this city. And it’s going to get worse before it gets better. A lot of people-Jews, Gypsies, Freemasons, communists, homosexuals, Jehovah’s Witnesses-they already figure they can’t go to the cops and get a hearing from anyone. So they’re going to go somewhere else. Which just has to be good for someone like me.”
“So you could end up making a profit under the Nazis?”
“That’s always a possibility. At the same time, it’s just possible I might actually end up helping someone as well as myself.”
“You know what I like about you, Gunther?”
“I sure could use a bit of reminding.”
“It’s that you can make Copernicus and Kepler look so very short-sighted and impractical and yet still cut a convincingly romantic figure.”
“Does that mean you still find me attractive?”
“I don’t know. Ask me later when I’ve forgotten that I’m no longer just your employer but your banker, too.”
“Does that mean you’re going to give me the loan?”
Noreen smiled. “Why not? But on one condition. You never tell Hedda that you got the money from me.”
“It’ll be our secret.”
“One of two, it now looks like.”
“You do realize you’re going to have to sleep with me again,” I said. “To guarantee my silence.”
“Of course. In fact, as your banker, I was banking on it. With interest.”
I DROPPED NOREEN OFF at the Ministry of the Interior for her interview with von Tschammer und Osten, and drove back to the hotel and then kept on driving, west, again. Now that she was out of the way, I wanted to nose around the Olympic site at Pichelsberg on my own. The fact was I had only the one pair of gum boots; and then there was the fact that I didn’t want to draw any attention while I was doing the nosing, which was almost impossible when Noreen was on my arm. She commanded attention like a nudist playing the trombone.
Pichelsberg Racecourse was at the north end of the Grunewald. In the center of the racecourse was the stadium, laid out from a design by Otto March and opened in 1913. Encircling the course were running and cycling tracks, while to the north was a swimming pool-all built for the canceled Berlin Olympiad of 1916. In stands that could accommodate almost forty thousand people were sculptures, including a goddess of victory and a Neptune group. Except that none of them were there anymore. Nothing was. Everything-the racecourse, the stadium, and the pool-had been demolished and replaced by an enormous earthwork: a huge mass of soil had been created from the excavation of a vaguely circular pit, where I assumed the new stadium was going to be built. As assumptions go, this one seemed unlikely. The Berlin Olympics were less than two years away and nothing had been built. Indeed, a perfectly serviceable and recently constructed stadium had been knocked down to make way for the Battle of Verdun as imagined by D. W. Griffith. As I got out of the car I half expected to see the French front lines, our own line, and heavy shell bursts in the air.
For a moment I was back in uniform and feeling fairly sick with fear at the sudden recollection of that earlier dun-colored wilderness. And then the shakes were on me, as if I had just woken up
