Private Berlin Read online

  “High Commissar?” Mattie said. “Are you there?”

  Finally, Dietrich cleared his throat and said, “Your sources are prostitutes and a schizophrenic methadone addict. Is that correct?”

  “Yes,” Mattie said, again defensive. “But I believe them.”

  The high commissar laughed scornfully. “That’s why you work for Private and I still work for Berlin Kripo. As a public servant, I have to take sources into account when I’m judging where to put my manpower.”

  “Greta Amsel is dead,” Mattie insisted. “I was an eyewitness to Artur Jaeger’s murder. And I think that body with Chris’s was Ilse Frei’s.”

  “Agnes Krüger is dead too,” Dietrich shot back. “And I’m beginning to believe Hermann killed Chris and the others.”

  “No, that’s something different. I think.”

  “Is it? Seems more likely than some crazy story about the slaughterhouse and a bogeyman named Falk.”

  “Maybe Krüger is Falk,” Mattie said. “Or Pavel is Falk.”

  Dietrich gritted his teeth. “Perhaps. I’ll ask them.”

  Mattie’s voice came back bitter. “You’re saying you won’t talk to Ilona? Hear her entire story firsthand?”

  Dietrich felt stronger now, charting his own way. “I will in due course, Frau Engel. Meanwhile, my time will be best spent hunting for Hermann Krüger.”

  The high commissar stabbed the End button on his phone, and the moon fell full victim to the clouds, leaving the war memorial grounds so pitch-black that Dietrich thought for a moment he’d been blinded.

  CHAPTER 93

  I CONFESS, FRIENDS and fellow Berliners, that I’ve been drinking absinthe, the green fairy, since midnight.

  Ordinarily I don’t indulge in any sort of intoxicant. But for the first time, I truly understand what it must be like to have escaped prison with dogs baying behind me. The green fairy is the only thing stopping me from panicked flight.

  The instinct is, of course, to run and run hard. My drunken heart races at the idea I might have to abandon my life and disappear into yet another mask.

  But I’ve done so much to craft this one, as carefully as the masks that line the walls of the room where I’m drinking absinthe and brooding.

  My mind feels sullen and foggy, and I keep seeing myself sitting down the street from Mattie Engel’s apartment building, waiting for Tom Burkhart to leave. But he did not leave. The lights in her place went off with him inside, and me filled with the sudden and intense longing for the green distillation I’m using to deaden my growing agitation.

  What did Ilona tell Engel and Burkhart?

  It doesn’t matter. An insane woman’s ravings. That’s what they’ll think.

  Unless they find Kiefer Braun.

  But I’ve been using every search engine at my disposal. I’ve even hired several tracking services, and there’s no trace of him. Maybe my dear old friend Kiefer just decided to disappear into another life as I did.

  Or maybe he left Germany.

  Or died?

  Well, then. If that’s the case, I’ve got nothing to worry about, do I? Kiefer’s long gone, and Ilona Frei’s a most unreliable witness, and I’m good. It’s as likely a scenario as another, I tell myself as I pour another drink.

  Now the green fairy begins to seriously toy with my brain, and I look up at my collection of masks, running my eyes fondly over the creatures I have become behind them.

  I’m smiling, my friends. I’m feeling among allies as true as you.

  They say absinthe has hallucinatory properties. I can’t say for sure. But then, among the masks hanging on the wall, the faces of Mattie Engel and Tom Burkhart materialize and sharpen. They seem to laugh at me.

  At first I’m shocked at this intrusion into my inner sanctum.

  Then I turn violent.

  I reel to the wall and pick off the masks where the faces of Private Berlin had mocked me, one carved of wood, the other molded and ceramic.

  I beat them to shards and splinters on the tile floor.

  When I’m done, when I’ve totally destroyed them, I get up and stand there weaving, panting, using the absinthe to summon every bit of my cunning while forcing myself to face the fact that if Ilona Frei talked someone will eventually believe her, which means the dogs are most certainly behind me.

  No panic, my friends. It’s not in me. I’m a Berliner. I know how to defend my ground. The trick here is to be smarter than the dogs, to go to water if need be, to double back, or better yet to make a move they’re totally not expecting.

  Double back, I think again. Make a move that will floor them.

  Suddenly, the green fairy tosses up an idea from deep in my subconscious.

  I grab it, and consider it like a gift.

  A treasured gift.

  I smile. How perfect.

  Yes, I think at last, this particular option is the best way to handle the situation once and for all. How goddamn perfect!

  I set the glass of absinthe down and cross to a laptop on my desk. I reattach Chris Schneider’s hard drive and call up the pictures.

  I scroll down, looking for the one I want.

  Ahhh, there it is.

  I double click the icon and up pops a photograph of Mattie Engel’s son. Niklas is on one knee, soccer ball in hand, shooting the camera an impish grin.

  What a lovely little boy, my friends, my fellow Berliners. Quite captivating.

  I’ll bet he’s the apple of his mother’s eye.

  CHAPTER 94

  MATTIE WOKE UP to the smell of bacon frying and coffee brewing. She actually felt rested for the first time since getting word of Chris’s disappearance.

  But then she thought of High Commissar Dietrich. Why was he being so obstinate in his pursuit of Hermann Krüger? Was he getting pressure from above because of her status? Or was he just a man in grief, trying to put one easy step in front of another for fear of falling?

  Rather than stew any further, she took a quick shower, got dressed, and went out to find Niklas at the breakfast counter. He was already dressed for school. An empty plate and juice glass sat on the counter in front of him.

  Aunt C was nowhere to be seen. But Burkhart was at the stove, working a wooden spoon in a cast-iron skillet.

  “He’s making his specialty,” Niklas informed her. “Eggs Burkhart.”

  “The one and only,” Burkhart said. “Want more?”

  “I have to go to school,” Niklas said.

  “Mattie?”

  “When I get back,” she said. “I like to walk him.”

  It was a chill, blustery day, and Niklas’s hands got too red and cold for her to hold as they walked.

  “I like Tom,” Niklas said. “He doesn’t treat you like you’re a kid.”

  “Is that right?”

  “He said I knew more about soccer than most adults.”

  “Well, that’s true,” Mattie said and mussed his hair.

  “Mom,” Niklas groaned, “I just combed it.”

  “For who? For me? Or is there another lady in your life?”

  Niklas looked slightly taken aback, but he said nothing.

  “Friends?” Mattie asked.

  Niklas shrugged and nodded before asking, “What’s wrong with Frau Frei?”

  They were nearing John Lennon Gymnasium. Mattie paused, wondering what to tell him. Then she said: “She’s had a hard and difficult life, one I could not imagine, Niklas. People like that can be delicate. Easy to break.”

  “Is that why she’s staying with us?” he pressed.

  “Yes,” Mattie said. “And the fact that she was one of Chris’s childhood friends, and so was her sister.”

  They reached the corner down the street from the school. Niklas said, “I can walk from here. Okay?”

  Mattie could see the school entrance and children streaming into it clearly from where she stood. But she still had a moment’s hesitation before thinking that she had to give him his independence slowly and in small increments.

&n
bsp; “Okay,” she said. “And—”

  “Aunt C will be here when practice is over,” he said in a mild grumble. “You sure I can’t walk home alone?”

  She shook her head. “Maybe next year.”

  “Ahhh,” Niklas groaned. “That’s not until I’m ten.”

  “Exactly. Love you, Niklas.”

  He pursed his lips and said grudgingly, “I love you too, Mommy.”

  Mattie watched her son until he’d disappeared inside his school, and then she felt odd, as if someone were watching her.

  But she looked around and saw no one at all.

  CHAPTER 95

  THE FEELING OF being anonymously scrutinized had fallen away from Mattie by the time she bought the newspapers and returned to the apartment where Aunt Cäcilia and Ilona Frei were finishing up plates of Eggs Burkhart.

  “This is very good,” Aunt Cäcilia said. “I’m going to get the recipe.”

  Ilona Frei smiled at her, fidgeted, and started scratching at her wrists.

  “Here’s yours,” Burkhart said, sliding a plate with an egg dish and toast to her.

  “Thanks,” Mattie said. She tossed the papers on the table behind her and took a bite of Burkhart’s egg concoction. It was good. Really good.

  “What’s in this?” she asked. “Bacon and…”

  “It changes every time,” Burkhart said. “Like stone soup.”

  “I need to go to the clinic soon,” Ilona Frei announced in a worried voice.

  “As soon as I’m done,” Mattie promised, before looking at Burkhart. “I’ll take her by her apartment to get the things she needs.”

  “And me?”

  “You’re going to look for proof of Falk’s existence.”

  “Where am I supposed to do that?”

  “Start in Ahrensfelde, then go to the special archives,” she said. “They’re right here in Berlin.”

  “I know where they are,” Burkhart retorted. “But don’t you think if Falk was in there that his story would have come out by now?”

  “We’re just looking for his name and some connection to the slaughterhouse,” Mattie said. “Some tangible proof that Falk was real.”

  “He was real,” Ilona Frei insisted.

  “We know that,” Mattie soothed. “But—”

  Her cell phone rang. Katharina Doruk began the conversation by saying, “An Inspector Weigel just called here for you. Hermann Krüger has surfaced. He’s going to appear voluntarily for questioning at central Kripo this afternoon.”

  “Really?” Mattie said, surprised. “Where’s he been?”

  “Kripo’s not exactly sure where he’s been,” Katharina admitted. “His lawyer’s been brokering the surrender deal with the higher-ups. But I figured you’d want to be there. You should probably call Dietrich to arrange it.”

  “The high commissar is probably too hungover to care,” Mattie said before describing her frustrating conversation with him the evening before.

  “You’re saying he’s sticking his head in a hole?” Katharina responded.

  “Yes, but why would he?” Mattie said. “It doesn’t make sense. It’s not like he’s somehow linked to…”

  She stopped, puzzled at a possibility that she hadn’t considered before.

  “You all right?” Katharina asked.

  “I’ll get back to you,” Mattie said and hung up.

  She sat there thinking a second, then jumped up, spun around, and went for the morning newspapers on the table behind her. She checked the indexes and then tore through them before stabbing a finger on a page deep inside the Morgenpost.

  “No obituary,” she said out loud. “Just a death notice.”

  “Whose?” Burkhart asked, confused.

  “High Commissar Dietrich’s father. Conrad Dietrich Frommer.”

  CHAPTER 96

  CASSIANO STIRRED AT the sharp knock on his bedroom door and asked in Portuguese, “Who is it?”

  “It’s me, silly,” a woman’s lilting voice called back. “Open up. Why is your door locked?”

  Cassiano got out of bed wearing a warm-up suit. He glanced at the bathroom before going to the suite door, and then he twisted the dead bolt and opened it.

  Dressed in skimpy black lingerie, Perfecta stood there holding a tray heaped with fruits and breads and a pot of tea.

  Cassiano feigned surprise. “I didn’t know you were in Germany.”

  Perfecta smiled at him as if he were addled, then brushed by him saying, “Of course I am. Right when I said I would be. With enough time to prepare your favorite pregame meal.”

  Cassiano grinned. “Put it down over there.”

  Perfecta did and then turned, skipped into her husband’s arms, and kissed him hungrily. “Miss me?”

  “Every day you’ve been gone,” the soccer star said coolly.

  “I’m home for a whole month now,” Perfecta promised. “No trips until November.”

  “That’s excellent,” Cassiano said. “We should celebrate. Go out after the game somewhere. Eat. See a show.”

  Perfecta hesitated. “Yes. Of course. Why don’t you eat, and then we’ll burn some calories in bed, get you relaxed before your game.”

  She made to head toward the bed, but the striker stopped her, saying, “Sit first. We’ll eat a little snack together. It will make us stronger for love.”

  Perfecta looked uncomfortable, but then she smiled brightly. “I just ate.”

  Cassiano poured from the teapot. “Tea then? You love green tea.”

  He held the teacup out to her. “So good for the skin.”

  Perfecta looked worried, and then she shook her head. “No. I’ve already had three glasses this morning.”

  “I insist,” her husband said.

  She appeared insulted and her nostrils flared. “No.”

  “I insist,” Cassiano retorted with a hard edge to his voice.

  Perfecta stepped toward him but did not take the teacup. She ran her hand across the front of his training pants. “Let’s see if we can—”

  The door to the bathroom burst open. Out jumped Jack Morgan, Daniel Brecht, and Georg Johansson, an agent with the Bundeskriminalamt, or BKA, the German Federal Criminal Police.

  Agent Johansson flashed his badge and said, “Perfecta Delores, you are under arrest for wire fraud, conspiracy to commit wire fraud, and the attempted murder of your husband.”

  “You bitch,” Cassiano snarled, throwing the tea at her.

  CHAPTER 97

  MORGAN, BRECHT, AND Johansson grilled Perfecta for almost an hour on her whereabouts and activities during the last ten days. She spoke decent English. At first she indignantly claimed that she had been in Africa on a photo shoot and threatened to sue them all for defamation of character.

  Then they showed her Dr. Gabriel’s analysis of Cassiano’s hair, which indicated that he’d been exposed to low doses of cyanide. Not enough to kill him, but enough to make him nauseated and “off” for a couple of days.

  “I have no idea how that could have happened,” Perfecta insisted.

  “No idea?” Morgan said, picking up the teapot. “I’m betting there’s some form of raw Brazilian manioc in this tea. The raw stuff contains cyanide, as I’m sure you know. Everyone in Brazil has to know that.”

  Perfecta denied her involvement again before Cassiano shouted at her: “Who did you poison me for? Maxim Pavel?”

  For the first time, Morgan saw a crack in the fashion model’s façade even as she started to say, “I don’t—”

  Cassiano hit the remote and the screen was filled with the image of Perfecta stripping for Pavel in the hotel hallway.

  “How could you do this to me with him?” her husband shouted in outrage. “He’s twice my age!”

  “And he knows how to use his hands, not his feet!” Perfecta shot back.

  They got it all out of her eventually.

  She’d done it out of greed. It was true that her husband might make good money at Manchester United, possibly as much as 1.5 million e
uros a year. But Pavel had offered her twenty times that in the betting scam.

  “Did Pavel kill Chris Schneider?” Brecht demanded.

  “Who?” Perfecta asked, her puzzlement undisguised.

  “Who?” Brecht echoed.

  “He worked at Private,” Morgan said. “We think he was on to the swindle.”

  “I’ve never heard of him.”

  “Where’s Pavel now?” Brecht asked.

  She shrugged. “I don’t know. He disappears for days at a time. He’s very secretive, but frankly I didn’t want to know where he goes.”

  “Uh-huh,” Morgan said. “Well, I can tell you that after the beating he’s going to take this afternoon on the Hertha Berlin game he’s going to come looking for you, Perfecta, and he’s not going to be happy. As a matter of fact, I expect him to be homicidal.”

  CHAPTER 98

  MATTIE WALKED OUT of the methadone clinic with Ilona Frei, who was glassy-eyed and moving slowly with a contented expression.

  But Mattie craned her head all around, looking everywhere, knowing that the clinic was a choke point in Ilona’s life, a place where she could be counted on to show up, a place where someone like Falk might try to attack her.

  But they made it to the car safely.

  “Do you think Burkhart will find the records?” Ilona asked.

  Mattie wanted to say that she doubted it, but she replied, “I’ve learned that he’s a very determined man.”

  Ilona blinked several times. “I heard they were shredding everything they could at the end. It’s what started it all. The end I mean. Do you remember?”

  “Other than Niklas’s birth, they were the greatest days of my life.”

  “People were dancing and singing,” Ilona recalled as Mattie pulled away from the curb. “Ilse and I left the orphanage with Chris and Artur and Kiefer and Greta and came to Berlin. We wanted to see what was happening for ourselves.”