“Blok stood and watched over my shoulder, just as you are,” Frankewitz said. The pencil drew skinny legs dangling down from the iron fist. “I had to do the rough sketch five times before he was satisfied with it. Then I painted it on the metal, beneath the lettering. I graduated in the upper third of my class at art school. The professors said I had ‘promise.’ ” He smiled wanly, his hand working as if with a mind of its own. “The bill collectors bother me all the time. I thought you were one of them.” He was drawing a pair of limp arms. “I do my best work in the summer,” he said. “When I can get out in the park, in the sunshine.”
Frankewitz had finished the figure’s body: a cartoonish form, caught in the fist. He started on the head and facial features. “I had a painting in an exhibition once. Before the war. It was a picture of two goldfish swimming in a green pond. I’ve always liked fish; they seem so peaceful.” He drew in a pair of wide, bulging eyeballs and an uptilted slash of a nose. “Do you know who bought that painting? One of Goebbels’s secretaries. Yes. Goebbels himself! That picture might be hanging in the Reich Chancellery, for all I know!” He sketched a sweep of dark hair hanging down over the forehead. “My signature, in the Reich Chancellery. Well, the world is a strange place, isn’t it?” He completed the face with a black square of a mustache, and lifted the pencil. “There. That’s what I painted for Colonel Blok.”
It was a caricature of Adolf Hitler, his eyes popping and his mouth open in an indignant cry as he was squeezed by the iron fist.
Michael was speechless. Wheels were spinning in his brain, but they found no traction. SS Colonel Jerek Blok, a Nazi loyalist, had paid Frankewitz to paint a rather ludicrous caricature of the Reich’s Fuhrer? It made no sense! This was the kind of disrespect that granted a person an appointment with a noose, and it had been authorized by a Hitler fanatic. The bullet holes, the cracked glass, the caricature, the iron fist… what was it all about?
“I asked no questions.” Frankewitz stood up from his chair. “I didn’t want to know. All I wanted was to get home alive. Blok told me they might need me again, to do some more work. He told me it was a special project, and that if I let anyone else know about it the Gestapo would find out and come visit me.” He smoothed the wrinkles in his silk robe, his fingers nervous again. “I don’t know why I told Werner. I knew he was working for the other side.” Frankewitz watched the rain streaming down the windows, his gaunt face streaked with shadows. “I think… I did it because… of the way Blok looked at me. As if I were a dog that could do tricks. It was in his eyes: he loathed me, but he needed me. And perhaps he didn’t kill me because he thought he might need me again. I’m a human being, not a beast. Do you understand that?”
Michael nodded.
“That’s all I know. I can’t help you any more.” Frankewitz’s breathing had gotten hoarse again. He found another match and relit his cigarette, which had gone cold. “Do you have any money?” he asked.
“No, I don’t.” He had a wallet, given to him by his hosts, but there was no money in it. He stared at Frankewitz’s long white fingers, then he took off his kid gloves and said, “Here. These are worth something.”
Frankewitz took them without hesitation. Blue smoke wafted from his lips. “Thank you. You’re a true gentleman. There aren’t many of us left in the world.”
“You’d better destroy that.” Michael motioned toward the Hitler cartoon. He moved to the door and paused to add a final note. “You didn’t have to tell me these things. I appreciate it. But one thing I have to tell you: I can’t say that you’re safe, knowing what you do.”
Frankewitz waved his cigarette holder, leaving a scrawl of smoke in the air. “Is anyone safe in Berlin?” he asked.
For that question Michael had no answer. He began to unlatch the door; the dank room with its narrow, grimy windows had started to suffocate him.
“Will you come visit me again?” Frankewitz had finished his cigarette, and he crushed it in a green onyx ashtray.
“No.”
“For the best, I suppose. I hope you find what it is you’re looking for.”
“Thank you. I do, too.” Michael slipped the final lock, left the apartment, and closed the door behind him. Immediately he heard Theo von Frankewitz relocking the door on the other side; it was a frantic sound, the noise of an animal scurrying in a cage. Frankewitz coughed a few times, his lungs clogged with fluid, and then Michael walked down the corridor to the stairs and descended to the rain-swept street.
Wilhelm pulled the Mercedes smoothly to the curb, and Michael got in. Then the driver started them off again, heading west through the rain.
“You found out what you needed to know?” Mouse asked when Michael volunteered no information.
“It’s a beginning,” he answered. Hitler being crushed by an iron fist. Bullet holes on green-painted metal. Dr. Hildebrand, the researcher of gas warfare. A warehouse, on a landing strip where the air smelled of the sea. A beginning, yes: the entrance to a maze. And the invasion of Europe, poised to take place when the spring’s wild tides eased. The first week of June, Michael thought. Hundreds of thousands of lives in the balance. Live free, he thought, and smiled grimly. The heavy yoke of responsibility had settled around his shoulders. “Where are we going?” he asked Wilhelm after another few minutes.
“To check you in, sir. You’re a new member of the Brimstone Club.”
Michael started to ask what that was, but Wilhelm’s attention was on his driving and the rain was slashing down again. Michael stared at his own gloveless hands, while the questions turned in his mind and the torrent clawed at the windows.
5
“There it is, sir,” Wilhelm said, and both Michael and Mouse saw it through the whirring windshield wipers.
Before them, veiled in the rain and the low-lying mist, a turreted castle rose from an island in the Havel River. Wilhelm had been following a paved road through Berlin’s Grunewald Forest for almost fifteen minutes, and now the pavement ended at the river’s edge. But the road continued: a wooden pontoon bridge that led over the dark water to the castle’s massive granite archway. Entry to the pontoon bridge was blocked by a yellow barricade, and as Wilhelm slowed the car a young man in a maroon uniform, wearing dark blue gloves and carrying an umbrella, stepped out of a small stone checkpoint station. Wilhelm rolled down the window and announced, “The Baron von Fange,” and the young man nodded crisply and returned to his station. Michael could see through a window into the structure, and he watched the young man dialing a telephone. The phone wires crossed the river and went into the castle. In another moment the man reappeared, lifted the barricade, and waved Wilhelm through. The Mercedes crossed the pontoon bridge.
“This is the Reichkronen Hotel,” Wilhelm explained as they neared the archway. “The castle was built in 1733. The Nazis took it over in 1939. It’s for dignitaries and guests of the Reich.”
“Oh, my God,” Mouse whispered as the immense castle loomed above them. He’d seen it before, of course, but never so close. And never had he dreamed he’d be about to enter it. The Reichkronen was reserved for Nazi party leaders, foreign diplomats, high-ranking officers, dukes, earls, and barons-real barons, that is. As the castle grew and its archway awaited like a gray-lipped mouth, Mouse felt very small. His stomach churned. “I don’t… I don’t think 1 can go in there,” he said.
He had no choice. The Mercedes moved through the archway into a large courtyard. A wide set of granite stairs fluted upward to the double front doors, above which were the gilt letters Reichkronen and a swastika. Four young blond-haired men in maroon uniforms emerged from the doors and hurried down the stairs as Wilhelm braked the Mercedes.
“I can’t… I can’t…” Mouse was saying, feeling as if the breath were being squeezed out of him.
Wilhelm speared him with an icy stare. “A good servant,” he said quietly, “does not let his master down.” And then the door was opened for Mouse, an umbrella was held over his head, and he stood dazed as Wilhelm got out and came around to unlock the trunk.
Michael waited for his door to be opened, as befitting a baron. He stepped out of the car and into the protection of an umbrella. His stomach was tight, too, as were the muscles at the back of his neck. But this was no place for hesitation, and if he was going to survive this masquerade, he had to play his part to the hilt. He forced down the alarm of nerves and started up the steps at a brisk clip so the young man with the umbrella would have difficulty keeping up with him. Mouse followed a few paces behind, feeling smaller with every step. Wilhelm and the
