“I don’t know, sir. I’ve never been there.”

“Can you find out where he’ll be in the next few days? When he might go to the office?”

“Yes, I’ll try.” A pause. “I don’t know if…” Max’s voice faded.

“What?” Paul asked.

“I know some things about his personal life too. About his wife, daughter-in-law, his grandson. Do you want to know that side of his life? Or would you rather not?”

Touching the ice…

“No,” Paul said in a whisper. “Tell me everything.”

They drove down Rosenthaler Street, as quickly as the tiny engine could carry them, toward the Summer Garden restaurant.

Konrad Janssen asked his boss, “Sir, a question?”

“Yes?”

“Inspector Krauss was hoping to find that a foreigner was the killer and we have evidence that the suspect is one. Why didn’t you tell him that?”

“Evidence that suggests that he might be one. And not very strongly. Merely that he might have had an accent and that he whistled for a taxi.”

“Yes, sir. But shouldn’t we have mentioned it? We could use the Gestapo’s resources.”

Heavyset Kohl was breathing hard and sweating furiously in the heat. He liked the summer because the family could enjoy the Tiergarten and Luna Park or drive to Wannsee or the Havel River for picnics. But for climate he was an autumn person at heart. He wiped his forehead and replied, “No, Janssen, we should not have mentioned it nor should we have sought the Gestapo’s help. And this is why: First, since the consolidation last month, the Gestapo and SS are doing whatever they can to strip the Kripo of its independence. We must retain as much as we can and that means we need to do our job alone. And second, and much, much more important: The Gestapo’s ‘resources’ are often simply arresting anyone who seems in the least guilty – of anything. And sometimes arresting those who are clearly innocent but whose arrests might be convenient. ”

Kripo headquarters contained six hundred holding cells, whose purpose had once been like those in police stations everywhere: to detain criminal arrestees until they were released or tried. Presently these cells – filled to overflowing – held those accused of vague political crimes and were over-seen by Stormtroopers, brutal young men in brown uniforms and white armbands. The cells were merely temporary stops on the way to a concentration camp or Gestapo headquarters on Prince Albrecht Street. Sometimes to the cemetery.

Kohl continued. “No, Janssen, we’re craftsmen practicing the refined art of police work, not Saxon farmers armed with sickles to mow down dozens of citizens in the pursuit of a single guilty man.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Never forget that.” He shook his head. “Ach, how much harder it is to do our job in this moral quicksand around us.” As he pulled the car to the curb he glanced at his assistant. “Janssen, you could have me arrested, you know, and sent to Oranienburg for a year for saying what I just did.”

“I wouldn’t say anything, sir.”

Kohl killed the ignition. They climbed out, then trotted quickly up the broad sidewalk toward the Summer Garden. As they got closer Willi Kohl detected the scent of well-marinated sauerbraten, for which this place was known. His stomach growled.

Janssen was carrying a copy of the National Socialist newspaper, The People’s Observer, which featured Göring prominently on the front page, wearing a jaunty hat of a cut that wasn’t common in Berlin. Thinking of these particular accessories, Kohl glanced at his assistant; the inspector candidate’s fair face was growing red from the July sun. Did today’s young people not realize that hats had been created for a purpose?

As they approached the restaurant Kohl motioned Janssen to slow. They paused beside a lamppost and studied the Summer Garden. There were not many diners remaining at this hour. Two SS officers were paying and leaving, which was just as well, since, for the reasons he’d just explained to Janssen, he preferred to say nothing about the case. The only men remaining were a middle-aged fellow in lederhosen and a pensioner.

Kohl noted the thick curtains, protecting them from surveillance from inside. He nodded to Janssen and they stepped onto the deck, the inspector asking each diner if he’d seen a large man in a brown hat enter the restaurant.

The pensioner nodded. “A big man? Indeed, Detective. I didn’t look clearly but I believe he walked inside about twenty minutes ago.”

“He’s still there?”

“He hasn’t come out, not that I saw.”

Janssen stiffened like a beagle on a scent. “Sir, shall we call the Orpo?”

These were the uniformed Order Police, housed in barracks, ready, as the name suggested, to keep order by use of rifles, machine pistols and truncheons. But Kohl thought again of the mayhem that could erupt if they were summoned, especially against an armed suspect in a restaurant filled with patrons. “No, I think we won’t, Janssen. We’ll be more subtle. You go around the back of the restaurant and wait at the door. If anyone comes out, whether in a hat or not, detain him. Remember – our suspect is armed. Now move surreptitiously.”

“Yes, sir.”

The young man stopped at the alley and, with an extremely unsurreptitious wave, turned the corner and vanished.

Kohl casually started forward and paused, as if perusing the posted menu. Then he moved closer, feeling uneasiness, feeling too the weight of his revolver in his pocket. Until the National Socialists came to power few Kripo detectives carried weapons. But several years ago, when then Interior Minister Göring had expanded the many police forces in the country, he’d ordered every policeman to carry a weapon and, to the shock of Kohl and his colleagues in the Kripo, to use them liberally. He’d actually issued an edict saying that a policeman would be reprimanded for failing to shoot a suspect, but not for shooting someone who turned out to be innocent.

Willi Kohl hadn’t fired a weapon since 1918.

Yet, picturing the shattered skull of the victim in Dresden Alley, he now was pleased that he had the gun with him. Kohl adjusted his jacket, made sure he could grab the gun quickly if he needed to and took a deep breath. He pushed through the doorway.

And froze like a statue, panicked. The interior of the Summer Garden was quite dark and his eyes were used to the brilliant sunlight outside; he was momentarily blinded. Foolish, he thought angrily to himself. He should have considered this. Here he stood with “Kripo” written all over him, a clear target for an armed suspect.

He stepped further inside and closed the door behind him. In his cottony vision, people moved throughout the restaurant. Some men, he believed, were standing. Someone was moving toward him.

Kohl stepped back, alarmed. His hand went toward the pocket containing his revolver.

“Sir, a table? Sit where you like.”

He squinted and slowly his vision began returning.

“Sir?” the waiter repeated.

“No,” he said. “I’m looking for someone.”

Finally the inspector was able to see normally again.

The restaurant contained only a dozen patrons. None was a large man with a brown hat and light suit. He started into the kitchen.

“Sir, you can’t-”

Kohl displayed his identification card to the waiter.

“Yes, sir,” the man said timidly.

Kohl walked through the stupefyingly hot kitchen and to the back door. He opened it. “Janssen?”

“No one came through the door, sir.”

The inspector candidate joined his boss and they returned to the dining room.

Kohl motioned the waiter over to them.

“Sir, what is your name?”

“Johann.”

“Well, Johann, have you seen a man in here, within the past twenty minutes, wearing a hat like this?” Kohl nodded at Janssen, who displayed the picture of Göring.

“Why, yes, I have. He and his companions just left moments ago. It seemed rather suspicious. They left by the side door.”