“In their own enterprises.”

“I believe so.” She looked at me. “What’s the next step? What will the upshot be when you arrest Welker and Samarin? What will happen to the Sorbian bank?”

“I don’t know. In the old days I could have called and asked Nägelsbach, but he’s retired, and I’d be happy to transfer my money from the Badische Beamtenbank to the Sorbian Cooperative Bank, but it won’t be enough. It wouldn’t matter that I’m not part of the cooperative, would it? I’m also not an official. Schuler was a retired official, but he’s dead. Can you understand that? I still don’t understand why he’s dead.”

She looked at me in alarm.

I got up. “I’ve got to go. I don’t want to leave still owing you an explanation, but I’ve got to get to bed. I’m sick. I’m running a temperature. Some skinheads threw me into the Landwehr Canal yesterday, which in a way served me right, and today I stood outdoors all day in the rain and cold. The only reason my nose isn’t running is because I got some medicine, but now my head’s so heavy and numb that I’d rather not have a head at all. Not to mention that I feel cold.”

My teeth were chattering.

She got up. “Herr…”

“Self.”

“Herr Self, shall I call you a cab?”

“It would be best if I could lie down on your sofa and you’d lie down with me till I warmed up again.”

She didn’t lie down with me. But she set me up on her sofa, heaped all the comforters and woolen blankets she could find over me, gave me two aspirin, made me some grog, and placed her cool hand on my hot forehead till I fell asleep.

21 Childish faces

When I woke up it was bright daylight. My suit was draped neatly over a chair and there was a note on the table: “I’ll try to be back by four. Hope you feel better.” I made some tea in the kitchen, took the cup to the sofa, and lay down again.

I had regained all my senses. But my nose was runny, my throat was sore, and I felt so weak that I wanted nothing more than to doze all day and drowsily look out the window, watching the wind drive the gray clouds across the blue sky and rustle through the bare twigs of the plane tree. I wanted to listen to the rain and watch the raindrops running down the windowpanes. Not think about Schuler, whom I could have saved if I had not been too slow; not about the skinheads I’d let make a fool of me; and not about Karl-Heinz Ulbrich, whom I found touching even though I didn’t like him. But whenever I dozed off, it all came back: Ulbrich seeking my paternal acknowledgement and backing, the skinheads and my fear, Schuler staggering toward me with his attaché case. So I got up and sat by the tiled stove and thought about everything that Vera Soboda had told me. She was right; when you own a bank it’s not hard to launder money. The dirty money went into the false accounts of customers at the Sorbian Cooperative Bank, accounts that were run in a secret parallel system, and from there the money would be invested in companies that only showed losses and perhaps didn’t even exist. That way the customers were rid of money they didn’t even know they had, while the owners of the dirty money and the companies ended up with clean money. Frau Sellmann had a hundred thousand marks too much in her account; even if the idea wasn’t to deposit an extra hundred thousand marks in every illegitimate account, but simply three or four times the amount that people had in their legitimate accounts, with a few thousand clients, millions upon millions of marks could be laundered.

Schuler must have found out where dirty money was being kept. Why hadn’t he gone to the police? Why had he come to me? Because he didn’t want to destroy Welker, his former pupil and the son of his friend and patron?

It was noon. I looked around the apartment. The kitchen area had once been part of the bathroom, and the living room was also her bedroom, the sofa her bed, and she had spent the night in the covered veranda. She also had an office with a desk, a computer, and a hammock. As the manager of a bank she ought to be able to afford more. What did she do with her money? Next to the desk were photographs of her with and without her husband, with and without a child, a girl with a high forehead and blond hair, as dainty as Frau Soboda was robust. Might the girl not be a daughter but a niece? I took a sheet of paper from her desk.

Dear Frau Soboda,

Thank you for everything you have done for me. I enjoyed staying at your place, even though I admit I am somewhat shaken that I might look like a man from the Stasi. I slept a long time, my temperature is almost gone, and I’m glad that my head is back on my shoulders.

I’m not a policeman. I am a private investigator and, though it may be hard for you to believe, Herr Welker hired me: I am investigating a matter for him that I am quite certain is merely a pretext. But I do not know for what.

I wish I knew what it was. I also hope to know more before I go to the police with what I know. I’ll inform you when I get to that point.

Best regards,

Gerhard Self

I added my address and phone number. Then I called a taxi and headed for the train station. By late afternoon I was back in Berlin.

I don’t know what devil possessed me. Instead of rebooking my flight and leaving immediately or discarding the ticket and taking the next train home, I settled in again at the hotel on Unter den Linden, went strolling through Berlin again, and ended up once more at the Hallesches Tor metro station. What was I looking for? I had also gone to the street where I grew up. The hydrant where I pumped some water with a large lever, just for fun, might well have been the same one where I had pumped water as a child. I wasn’t quite sure.

It was the others who were at the Hallesches Tor this time. Black pants and jackets, and a few girls in grungy black outfits. I didn’t recognize them, but they recognized me. “That’s the old guy who was shouting ‘Heil Hitler’ the other day. You’re an old Nazi, right?”

I didn’t say anything. Hadn’t they seen that I’d been forced to play along, and that I’d ended up in the canal?

They crowded around me, forcing me back against the railing. What childish faces, I thought. What foolish, eager, childish faces. But I felt I had been punished sufficiently two days ago for the “Heil Hitlers.” Perhaps I merited more punishment for the many “Heil Hitlers” all those years ago and all the misery I had caused as public prosecutor. But not from these children.

“Please let me through.”

“We’re the Antifa!” They, too, had a leader of the pack, a tall thin fellow wearing glasses. When I tried to wriggle my way through, he pushed his hand against my chest. “We don’t want any fascists in our city.”

“Aren’t there enough young people you can teach that lesson to?”

“One thing at a time! First the older generation, then the young!” He was still pressing his hand against my chest.

I lost control of myself. I hit his hand away and gave his foolish face two slaps-one on the left cheek and one on the right. He threw himself at me and pressed me against the railing. This time there was no “One, two, three!”-the others helped him silently with set mouths until I hung head-down. I fell with a splash into the water.

I was standing once again on the sidewalk, taxis kept driving by, first slowing down when the driver saw me wave, then speeding away when the driver saw my wet clothes. A patrol car did the same. Finally a young woman had mercy on me, asked me into her car, and dropped me off in front of my hotel. The doorman who’d been on duty two days before was standing at his post again. He recognized me and laughed out loud. I didn’t think it was funny.