“She was a reporter,” Jake said. “Just like the rest of us. I trained her.”
Ron stopped and turned. “That must give you something to think about,” he said, then followed Benson through the door.
Bernie was standing at the end of the table with Gunther but came over as Jake took his seat. The judges were just returning, walking in single file.
“So,” he said to Jake. “How do you think it’s going so far?”
“Jesus, Bernie. Crutches.”
Bernie’s face grew tight. “The crutches are real. So was the gas.”
“Why not just take her out and shoot her?”
“Because we want it on the record-how they did it. People should know.”
Jake nodded. “So she’s what? A stand-in?”
“No, she’s the real thing. No different from Otto Klopfer. No different.” He took in Jake’s blank expression. “The guy who wanted the exhaust pipe fixed. Or maybe you forgot already. People do.” He looked back to the press section, a restless scraping of chairs. “Maybe they’ll listen this time.”
“They made her do it. You know that.”
“That’s what Otto says too. All of them. You believe it?”
Jake looked up. “Sometimes.”
“Which gets you where? Everybody’s got a sad story, and the end’s always the same. One thing I learned as a DA-you start feeling sorry for people, you never get a conviction. Don’t waste your sympathy. She’s guilty as hell.”
The prosecutor began by calling Gunther to the stand, but before he could take the chair the defense attorney jumped up, stirred finally to some activity.
“May I address the court? What is the purpose of these witnesses? This emotionalism. The nature of the prisoner’s work is not in ques tion here. She herself has described it for the court.“ He held up a transcript. ”Work, I would add, that she performed under the threat of her own death. She has also, let us remember, helped us identify her employers, given her full cooperation so that the Soviet people can bring the real fascists to justice. And what is her reward? This? We have here a matter for the Soviet people to decide, not the western press. I ask that we dispense with these theatrics and proceed with the serious business of this court.“
This was so clearly unexpected that for an instant the judges just sat expressionless. Then they turned to each other. What they asked, however, was that he repeat his statement in Russian, and Jake wondered again how much of the trial they really understood. Renate stood impassively as the pleas rolled out again in Russian. Her full cooperation. Beaten out of her? Or had she sat down willingly and filled sheets with names? A new assignment, catching the catchers. When the lawyer finished, the judge dismissed him with a scowl. “Sit down,” he said, then looked at Gunther. “Proceed.”
The lawyer lowered his head, a schoolboy reprimanded for speaking out of turn, and Jake saw that he had missed the point. The business of the court was the theater. What happens when it’s over, the summer after the war. Not clearing the rubble, not the shuffling DPs-peripheral stories. What happened was this season of denunciations, personal reprisals, all the impossible moral reparations. Tribunals, shaved heads, pointed fingers- auto da fes to purge the soul. Everyone, like Gunther, would have his reckoning.
They started his testimony carefully, a slow recitation of the years of police service, his voice a calm monotone, a return to order after Frau Gersh’s crying. Bernie knew his audience. You could soften them with crutches, but in the end they would respond to this, the sober reassurance of authority. The judges were listening politely, as if, ironically, they had finally recognized one of their own.
“And would it be fair to say that these years of training had made you a good observer?”
“I have a policeman’s eye, yes.”
“Describe for us, then, what you saw that day at the—” He broke off to check his notes. “Cafe Heil, Olivaerplatz.” Down the street from Lena’s flat, where the world had gone on around them. “The cafe was familiar to you?”
“No. That’s why I paid particular attention. To see if it was safe.”
“For your wife, you mean.”
“Yes, forMarthe.”
“She was in hiding.”
“At that time she had to walk during the day, so the landlady would think she was at work. Public places, where people wouldn’t take notice. Zoo Station, for instance. Tiergarten.”
“And you met her during these walks?”
“Twice a week. Tuesdays and Fridays,” Gunther said, precise. “To make sure she was all right, give her a meal. I had coupons.” Every week, for years, waiting for a tap on the shoulder.
“And this was where?”
“Usually Aschinger’s. By Friedrichstrasse Station. It was always crowded there.” The big cafeteria where Jake had often gone himself, grabbing a bite on his way to the broadcast. Jake saw them pretending to meet, jostled by the lunch crowd at the stand-up tables, eating blue-plate specials. “But it was important to change places. Her face would become familiar. So, that day, Olivaerplatz.”
“This was in 1944?”
“March seventh, 1944. One-thirty.”
“What is the importance of this?” the defense attorney said, standing.
“Sit down,” the judge said, waving his hand.
The big roundups had started in ‘42. Two years of fading into crowds.
“Your memory is excellent, Herr Behn,” the prosecutor said. “Please tell us the rest.”
Gunther glanced toward Bernie, who nodded.
“I arrived first, as always, to make sure.”
“The prisoner was there?”
“In the back. With coffee, a newspaper-ordinary. Then Marthe came. She asked me if the chair was free. A pretense, you see, so we would not seem to be together. I noticed the prisoner looking at us, and I thought perhaps we should go, but she went back to her paper, nothing wrong, so we ordered the coffee. Another look. I thought, you know, she was looking at me, perhaps she was someone I had arrested-this happened sometimes-but no, just a busybody. Then she went to the toilet. There is a phone there-I checked later-so that was when she called her friends.“
“And did she come back?”
“Yes, she finished her coffee. Then she paid the bill and walked right past us to the door. That’s when they came for Marthe. Two of them, in those leather coats. Who else had leather coats in ‘forty-four? So I knew.”
“Excuse me, Herr Behn. You know for a fact the prisoner called them? How is that?”
Gunther looked down. “Because Marthe talked to her. A foolish slip, after being so careful. But what difference did it make in the end?”
“She talked to her?”
“She knew her. From school. Schoolgirls. ‘Renate, is it really you?’ she said. Just like that, so surprised to see her. Marthe must have thought she was in hiding too. Another U-boat. ‘So many years,’ Marthe said, ‘and just the same.’ Foolish.”
“And did Fraulein Naumann recognize her?”
“Oh yes, she knew. ‘You’re mistaken,’ she said, and of course that was right. Marthe shouldn’t have said anything. It was dangerous to be recognized. They tortured the U-boats sometimes, to find the others, to get names. But she knew.” He stopped, his eyes moving away, then began to talk more quickly, wanting it over. “She tried to leave then, of course, but they came, the coats, so she couldn’t get out. And that’s when I saw. They looked at her, one of them. First around the room, searching, then at her. To tell them. She could have said, she’s gone, she just left. She could have saved her. Her old school friend. But no. ‘That’s the one,’ she says. ‘She’s a Jew.’ So they grabbed Marthe. ‘Renate,’ she said, that’s all, the name, but the greifer wouldn’t look at her.”
“And you?” the lawyer said in the quiet room. “What did you do?”
“Of course people were looking then. ‘What is this?’ I said. ‘There’s some mistake.’ And they said to her, the greifer, ‘Him too?’ And she had no idea who I was, you see. So they were ready to take me too, but then Marthe saved me. ‘He’s nobody,’ she said. ‘We were just sharing the table.’ Nobody. And she moved away with them so
