“I was wondering if you knew,” Bernie said. “I guess not. Not with that face. Interested now?”
“What is it?” Lena said.
“A soldier who was killed last week,” Jake said, still looking at the paper.
“And you blame Emil for that?” she said to Bernie, anxious.
He shrugged. “All I know is, two men went missing from Kransberg and one of them’s dead.”
Jake shook his head. “You’re off-base. I know him.”
“That must keep things friendly,” Bernie said.
Jake looked up at him, then passed over it. “Why would Tully sign him out?”
“Well, that’s the question, isn’t it? What occurred to me was, it’s a valuable piece of paper. The only problem with that is the guests don’t have any money-at least, they’re not supposed to. Who needs cash when you’ve got room service courtesy of the U.S. government?”
Jake shook his head again. “It wasn’t Emil’s money,” he said, thinking of the dash before the serial number, but Bernie had leaped elsewhere.
“Then somebody else’s. But there must have been some deal. Tully wasn’t the humanitarian type.” He picked up another folder. “Here, bedtime reading. He’s been in one racket or another since he hit the beach. Of course, you wouldn’t know it from this-just a series of transfers. The usual MG solution-make him somebody else’s problem.”
“Then why send him to a place like Kransberg?”
Bernie nodded. “I asked. The idea was to get him away from civilians. He was MG in a town in Hesse, and things got so bad even the Germans complained. Hauptmann Toll, they called him-crazy. He’d prance around in those boots carrying a whip. They thought the SS was back. So MG had to get him out of there. Next, a detention camp in Bensheim. No market there, maybe a few cigarettes, but what the hell? What I hear, though, is that he was selling discharge papers. Don’t bother to look-record just says ‘relieved.’ That was sweet. The way they nailed him is he ran out of customers, so he started having them arrested once they were out-figured they’d pay again. One of them screams bloody murder and the next thing you know he’s off to Kransberg. They probably thought, what harm could he do there? No one wants to check out.”
“Except Emil,” Jake said.
“Evidently.”
“But what did they say? When Emil didn’t come back. People just come and go?”
“The guards figured it must be okay if he had papers. And Tully drove him. See, the idea is, it’s not a prison-once in a while the scientists go into town with an escort. So nobody thought anything of it. Then, when he didn’t come back, Tully says he’s as surprised as anybody.”
“Wasn’t he supposed to stay with him?”
“What can you do? Tully had a weekend pass-he didn’t want to play nursemaid. He says he trusted him. It was personal-a family matter. He didn’t want to be in the way,” Bernie said, glancing again at Lena.
“And nobody says anything?”
“Oh, plenty. But you can’t court-martial a man for being stupid. Not when he thinks he’s doing one of the guests a favor. Best you can do is transfer him out. I’d lay you even money it was just a matter of time before those papers were in the works again. But then he went to Potsdam. Which is where you came in.”
Jake had flipped open the folder and was staring at the photograph stapled to the top sheet. Young, not bloated from a night of drifting in the Jungfernsee. He tried to picture Tully striding through a Hessian village with a riding crop, but the face was bland and open, the kind of kid you found on a soda fountain stool in Natick, Mass. But the war had changed everybody.
“I still don’t get it,” he said finally. “If it was that loose, why pay to get out? From the sound of it, he could have jumped out a window and run. Couldn’t he?”
“Theoretically. Look, nobody’s trying to escape from Kransberg- it doesn’t occur to them. They’re scientists, not POWs. They’re trying to get a ticket to the promised land, not run away. Maybe he wanted the pass-you know what they’re like about documents. So officially he wouldn’t be AWOL.”
“It’s a hell of a lot to pay for a pass. Anyway, where did the money come from?”
“I don’t know. Ask him. Isn’t that what you wanted to know in the first place?”
Jake looked up from the picture. “No, I wanted to know why Tully was killed. From the sound of it, there could have been a hundred reasons.”
“Maybe,” Bernie said slowly. “And maybe just one.”
“Just because a man signed a piece of paper?”
Bernie spread his hands again. “Maybe a coincidence. Maybe a connection. A man gets out of Kransberg and heads for Berlin. A week later the man who gets him out comes to Berlin and ends up killed. I don’t believe in coincidence. It has to connect somewhere. You add two and two—”
“I know this man. He didn’t kill anybody.”
“No? Well, I’d sure like to hear it from him. Ask him about the SS medal while you’re at it, since you know him so well.” He went over to the piano. “Anyway, he’s your lead. You won’t even have to go looking. He’s coming to you.”
“He hasn’t turned up yet.”
“Does he know where you are?” Bernie said to Lena.
She had slumped onto the bench again, staring at the floor. “His father, maybe. His father knows.”
“Then sit tight. He’ll show up. Or maybe you’d rather he didn’t,” he said to Jake. “A little inconvenient, all things considered.”
“What’s gotten into you?” Jake said, surprised at his tone.
“I don’t like putting Nazis in hotels, that’s all.”
“He didn’t do it,” Jake said.
“Maybe. Maybe you don’t want to do the math anymore. Add it up. Two and two.” He gathered the other folders off the piano. “I’m late. Frau Brandt,” he said, a courtesy nod that became a parting shot. He turned to Jake. “It connects.”
He was halfway across the room before Jake stopped him.
“Bernie? Try this one. Two and two. Tully comes to Berlin. But the only one we know he was coming to see was you.”
Bernie stood quietly for a moment. “Meaning?”
“Numbers lie.”
When Bernie left, the room seemed as still and airless as a vacuum tube, the only movement the ticking of the hall clock.
“Don’t mind him,” Jake said finally. “He just talks tough. He likes to be mad.”
Lena said nothing, then got up and went over to the window, folding her arms over her chest and staring out. “So now we’re all Nazis.”
“That’s just Bernie. Everybody’s a Nazi to him.”
“And it’s better in America? Your German girlfriend. Was she a Nazi too? That’s how he looks at me. And he’s your friend. Frau Brandt,” she said, imitating Bernie.
“That’s just him.”
“No, I am Frau Brandt. I forgot, for a little while.” She turned to him. “Now it’s really like before. There are three of us.”
“No. Two.”
She smiled weakly. “Yes, it was nice. We should go now. The rain’s finished.”
“You don’t love him,” he said, a question.
“Love,” she said, dismissing it. She turned to the piano. “I’ve scarcely seen him. He was away. And after Peter, everything changed It was easier not to see each other.” She looked back. “But I won’t send him to prison either. You can’t ask me to do that.”
“I’m not.”
“Yes. I’m the bait-isn’t that what he said? I saw your face-like a policeman. All those questions.”
“He’s not going to prison. He didn’t kill anybody.”
“How do you know? I did.”
“That was different.”
