Now that Detective Sergeant Gruber had arrested Willi, he seemed determined to find Lola as well. He ordered his detectives to stake out her apartment. Bergemann was assigned to be part of the stakeout, but even though he was there the night Fegelein visited, he didn’t see anything. Fegelein went in over the roof and down the airshaft.
After two days Bergemann decided it would be safer if Lola left Munich altogether, and Fegelein had to agree. Blaskowitz offered to take her to the green house on the Riegsee, and that seemed the perfect solution.
Years earlier Fedor Blaskowitz had been a teacher of Greek and Latin at the Herder Gymnasium in Munich. While there, he had been blackmailed because of his homosexuality and forced by the notorious Otto Bruck, the school headmaster at the time, to give false evidence in a murder investigation. Fedor could have been charged with obstruction of justice and sent to prison, and Willi had helped him extricate himself from that situation. Fedor soon left Munich for Murnau, where he had found another teaching position.
Fedor’s brush with criminality and his friendship with Willi had changed everything for him. He didn’t think of himself as a brave man by any measure, but he was no longer the fearful man he had once been either. And because Fedor had experienced injustice followed by justice, he became devoted to the cause of justice, and to Willi, whom he saw as an instrument of justice. He knew that by bringing Lola to Murnau he was placing himself in danger, but that didn’t matter to him.
They could not very well take the train to Murnau; the SS would be watching the trains. And Fedor did not drive or own a car. Bergemann asked Frau Schimmel whether she had anyone who could help, and of course she did. At the appointed hour on Saturday morning a young man named Pierre drove up and stopped outside the safe house. Frau Schimmel had sent him, he said. He knew the password which he pronounced with a French accent.
He was a fast and sure driver. He drove in silence. A little over an hour later they all got out at the green house by the lake. Mephi was excited to see them and danced around Lola’s legs barking as they walked to the door. Pierre insisted on carrying Lola’s suitcase.
It was lunchtime and Fedor opened a bottle of wine. He brought out a loaf of black bread, some ham, cheese, apples, and some pickles he had made the summer before. Because it was a sunny, unseasonably warm day with only the slightest breeze coming off the lake, he flung a red and white checked tablecloth across the rustic picnic table outside the back door. They sat down on the benches by the table, and the three of them had a relaxed picnic lunch as though they hadn’t a care in the world. Mephi dozed at their feet.
Frau Schimmel Again
Bertha Schimmel’s doctor told her that the sharp pain she had been experiencing in her legs indicated that her cancer had spread further throughout her body. The tests he performed confirmed that she probably had less than a year to live. He was surprised and bit horrified when she laughed at the news.
‘Come now, Doctor,’ she said. ‘Why are you surprised? You know me. You know all about me.’
This was true. The doctor was only a few years younger than Bertha, and had been her doctor since before she became Bertha Schimmel. In addition to knowing her real name, he knew she was Jewish, knew she was a former revolutionary, and thought that she was probably somehow involved at this very moment in something subversive. As a socialist and a Jew himself, he knew what fate might await her if she fell into the hands of the regime.
‘Well then, Doctor’ – she still called him doctor after all this time, as though that were his name and not Albert – ‘why wouldn’t I be happy to learn that, despite the dire political circumstances and the imminent threat to us Jews, despite the fact that our country is almost certainly headed into another terrible war, why wouldn’t I be thrilled to learn that I have a fair chance of dying a natural and peaceful death, maybe even in my own bed? I can hardly imagine better news. Can you?’
‘I take your point,’ said Albert.
‘Can you give me something for the pain?’ she said.
‘I can,’ said Albert.
Bertha Schimmel felt liberated by the news of her impending death. She even felt rejuvenated in a sense. Her communist comrades were all either dead or scattered to the wind. Resistance to Hitler was pretty much non-existent. She yearned to take up the battle herself, or at least do whatever she could. Oh, to man the barricades again! Of course, there were no barricades to be manned. And given her illness, she could barely make her way up and down the stairs.
‘Good morning, Herr Schleiffer,’ she said one morning.
Heinz had been mopping the floor and hadn’t heard her come down the stairs. ‘Good heavens, be careful, Frau Schimmel. It’s slippery.’ He took her shopping cart from her – how had she even managed? He took her by the arm, and walked her gently to the door. ‘Do you need me to come with you, Frau Schimmel?’
‘Don’t be silly, Herr Schleiffer.’
‘Well, I’ll watch for you when you come back.’
She was about to get on her way, when she had a thought. ‘By the way, Herr Schleiffer,’ her voice was now more of a whisper, ‘have they done a search of Herr Juncker’s apartment?’
‘They?’ said Schleiffer.
‘You know,’ she said. ‘They.’
There was nobody else in the lobby, but Schleiffer looked in every direction anyway before he spoke. ‘Of course they have,’ he whispered.
‘Well, what did they find?’
Schleiffer was a bit taken aback; she
