The bus swayed as they drove through the Brandenburg Gate, narrowly missing the stone sides, and many of the passengers gave a gasp of humorous alarm, like on the roller coaster at Coney Island; he supposed the reaction was a Berlin tradition.
Käthe pulled the rope and they disembarked on Under the Lindens at Wilhelm Street, then walked south along the wide avenue that was the center of the Nazi government. It was nondescript, with monolithic gray office buildings on either side. Clean and antiseptic, the street exuded an unsettling power. Paul had seen pictures of the White House and Congress. They seemed picturesque and amiable. Here the facades and tiny windows of the rows upon rows of stone and concrete buildings were forbidding.
And, more to the point tonight, they were heavily guarded. He’d never seen such security.
“Where’s the Chancellory?” he asked.
“There.” Käthe pointed toward an old, ornate building with a scaffolding covering much of the front.
Paul was discouraged. His quick eyes took in the place. Armed guards in front. Dozens of SS and what appeared to be regular soldiers were patrolling the street, stopping people and asking for papers. On the tops of the buildings were other troops, armed with guns. There must have been a hundred uniformed men nearby. It would be virtually impossible to find a shooting position. And even if he were able to, there was no doubt that he’d be captured or killed trying to get away.
He slowed. “I think I’ve seen enough.” He eyed several large, black-uniformed men demanding papers from two men on the sidewalk.
“Not as picturesque as you’d expected?” She laughed and started to say something – perhaps “I told you so,” but then thought better of it. “If you have more time, don’t worry; I can show you many parts of our city that are quite beautiful. Now, shall we go to dinner?” she asked.
“Yes, let’s.”
She directed him back to a tram stop on Under the Lindens. They got aboard and rode for a brief while then climbed off at her direction.
Käthe asked what he’d thought of Berlin so far in his short time here. Paul again gave some innocuous answers and turned the conversation back to her. He asked, “Are you going with anyone?”
“‘Going’?”
He’d translated literally. “I mean romantically involved.”
Straightforward, she answered, “Most recently I had a lover. We no longer are together. But he still owns much of my heart.”
“What does he do?” he asked.
“A reporter. Like you.”
“I’m not really a reporter. I write stories and hope to sell them. Human interest, we’d say.”
“And you write about politics?”
“Politics? No. Sports.”
“Sports.” Her voice was dismissive.
“You don’t like sports?”
“I am sorry to say I dislike sports.”
“Why?”
“Because there are so many important questions facing us, not just here, but everywhere in the world. Sports are… well, they’re frivolous.”
Paul replied, “So is strolling down the streets of Berlin on a nice summer evening. But we’re doing it.”
“Ach,” Käthe said testily. “The sole point of education in Germany now is to build strong bodies, not minds. Our boys, they play war games, they march everywhere. Did you hear we’ve started conscription?”
Paul recalled that Bull Gordon had described the new German military draft to him. But he said, “No.”
“One out of three boys fails because they have flat feet from all the marching they do at school. It’s a disgrace.”
“Well, you can overdo anything,” he pointed out. “I enjoy sports.”
“Yes, you seem athletic. Do you body-build?”
“Some. Mostly I box.”
“Box? You mean the sort where you hit other people?”
He laughed. “That’s the only kind of boxing there is.”
“Barbaric.”
“It can be – if you let your guard down.”
“You joke,” she said. “But how can you encourage people to strike each other?”
“I couldn’t really tell you. But I like it. It’s fun.”
“Fun,” she scoffed.
“Yeah, fun,” he said, growing angry too. “Life’s hard. Sometimes you need to hold on to something fun, when the rest of the world is turning to shit around you… Why don’t you go to a boxing match sometime? Go see Max Schmeling. Drink some beer, yell till you’re hoarse. You might enjoy it.”
“Kakfif,” she said bluntly.
“What?”
“Kakfif,” Käthe repeated. “It’s a shortening for ‘Completely out of the question.’”
“Suit yourself.”
She was silent for a moment. Then she said, “I’m a pacifist, as I was telling you today. All my friends in Berlin are pacifists. We don’t combine the idea of fun with hurting people.”
“I don’t walk around like a Stormtrooper and beat up the innocent. The guys I spar with? They want to do it.”
“You encourage causing pain.”
“No, I discourage people from hitting me. That’s what sparring is.”
“Like children,” she muttered. “You’re like children.”
“You don’t understand.”
“And why do you say that? Because I’m a woman?” she snapped.
“Maybe. Yeah, maybe that’s it.”
“I’m not stupid.”
“I’m not talking about intelligence. I only mean that women aren’t inclined to fight.”
“We aren’t inclined to be the aggressor. We will fight to protect our homes.”
“Sometimes the wolf isn’t in your home. Don’t you go out and kill him first?”
“No.”
“You ignore him and hope he goes away?”
“Yes. Exactly. And you teach him he doesn’t need to be destructive.”
“That’s ridiculous,” Paul said. “You can’t talk a wolf into being a sheep.”
“But I think you can if you wish to,” she said. “And if you work hard at it. Too many men don’t want that, however. They want to fight. They want to destroy because it gives them pleasure.” Dense silence between them for a long moment. Then, her voice softening, she said, “Ach, Paul, please forgive me. Here you are, being my companion, doing the town with me. Which I haven’t done for so many months. And I repay you by being like a shrew. Are American women shrews like me?”
“Some are, some aren’t. Not that you are one.”
“I’m a difficult person to be with. You have to understand, Paul – many women in Berlin are this way. We have to be. After the War there were no men left in the country. We had to become men and be as hard as they. I apologize.”
“Don’t. I enjoy arguing. It’s just another way of sparring.”
“Ach, sparring! And me a pacifist!” She gave a girlish laugh.
“What would your friends say?”
“What indeed?” she said and took his arm as they crossed the street.
Chapter Eighteen
Even though he was a “lukewarm” – politically neutral, not a member of the Party – Willi Kohl enjoyed certain privileges reserved for devout National Socialists.
One of these was that when a senior Kripo official had moved to Munich, Kohl had been offered the chance to take his large four-bedroom apartment in a pristine, linden-lined cul-de-sac off Berliner Street near Charlottenburg. Berlin had had a serious housing shortage since the War and most Kripo inspectors, even many at his level, were relegated to boxy, nondescript folk-apartments, thrown together in boxy, nondescript neighborhoods.
Kohl wasn’t quite sure why he’d been so rewarded. Most likely because he was always ready to help fellow officers analyze crime scene information, make deductions from the evidence or interview a witness or suspect. Kohl knew that the most invaluable man in any job is the one who can make his colleagues – and superiors especially – appear invaluable as well.
These rooms were his sanctuary. They were as private as his workplace was public and were populated by those closest to his heart: his wife and children and, on occasion (sleeping always in the parlor, of course), Charlotte’s fiancé, Heinrich.
The apartment was on the second floor and as he walked, wincing, up the stairs, he could make out the smells of onions and meat. Heidi kept to no schedule in preparing her food. Some of Kohl’s colleagues would solemnly declare Saturdays, Mondays and Wednesdays, for instance, to be State Loyalty Meat-free Days. The Kohl household, at least seven strong, went without meat often, owing to scarcity as well as cost, but Heidi refused to be bound by a ritual. This Saturday night they might have aubergine with bacon in cream sauce or kidney pudding or sauerbraten or even an Italian-style dish of pasta with tomatoes. Always a sweet, of course. Willi Kohl liked his linzertorte and strudel.