Private Berlin Read online

  Mattie’s heart plunged ten stories. Burkhart? Dead? In her mind she saw him making Eggs Burkhart earlier that morning, and laughing at one of Niklas’s jokes.

  She felt crazed with fear. “Where’s my son?” Mattie demanded.

  Falk walked to a door in the corner of the room and pulled out Niklas, who was in restraints. Duct tape sealed his mouth.

  “Nicky!” Mattie yelled.

  Walleyed, Niklas started whining at his mother.

  “Let him go!” Ilona Frei yelled. “You’ve got me. You’ve got what you want!”

  Falk laughed. “And spoil my fun, Ilona? I think not.”

  CHAPTER 124

  MY FRIENDS, FELLOW Berliners, I light the gas lantern I brought especially for this occasion.

  “You remember the lanterns, don’t you, Ilona?” I ask. “The soft wavering light where we used to play in the slaughterhouse?”

  Ilona looks hypnotized, staring at the lantern, her mouth stretching against some horror playing in her schizophrenic mind before the light inside her seems to click off. She turns her head and stares at the wall, humming a child’s tune.

  “You do remember,” I say and click my throat in approval.

  Then I haul Mattie Engel to her feet, walk her backward, and tell her to kneel again, hands over her head. I feed a steel hook around the restraints. It’s attached to a rope that runs through a pulley I’ve attached to the beam.

  “Stand up,” I say and start pulling out the slack until her arms are stretched tight.

  I come around her and smile.

  “There,” I say. “Now that is better, don’t you think? Hmmm?”

  “Let my son go,” she says. “Please. He’s innocent.”

  “You two are like an old record,” I snap. “If it didn’t work for Ilona’s mother, or Chris’s mother, or any of the others, what makes you think it will work for you? What makes you so special?”

  I cross the room to Niklas and tear the tape from his mouth.

  Then I return to Mattie, get out a utility knife, and use its razor-sharp blade to slit off her blouse and bra.

  When I’m done I display her proudly to her son, Niklas. Then I press the blade to her breast and leer at the boy. “You love your mommy, don’t you?”

  CHAPTER 125

  NIKLAS BEGAN TO cry in pain and fear for Mattie. “Why are you doing this?”

  Mattie felt more than humiliated, her own shame magnified by Niklas’s, and she understood why Falk’s methods had garnered confessions. She looked him up and down, spotted the excitement in Falk’s face, and the bulge in his slacks, and remembered what Genevieve the sex worker had told her.

  Mattie turned livid and shouted, “Don’t show him anything, Niklas. He wants to see your fear. Don’t give it to him. No matter what happens. Don’t.”

  Niklas hesitated, but then clamped his jaw tight and stared back at his mother, nodding with wide and glassy eyes.

  My brave, brave little boy, Mattie thought.

  Falk’s joy faded. He twisted his lips at Mattie as if she’d spoiled his fun. Then he shrugged. “That’s okay. I enjoy pain, too.”

  He went around behind her and pulled hard on the rope.

  The plastic restraints sawed into Mattie’s wrists and her shoulders popped as she was lifted off the floor.

  The restraints cut her. She felt like her arms were going to dislocate from their sockets.

  Mattie had never known such agony. She bit her lip not to scream, doing everything in her power not to show her pain. But finally, as if it were coming from another person, she heard an uncontrolled howl of rage burst from her throat.

  When Falk came around in front of her, his eyes were lit up like a kid’s at an amusement park.

  Mattie refused to look at him. Instead, she focused on Niklas, who was backed up against the wall, shaking and crying but trying to stop. “Mom.”

  Mattie did not reply. Instead she took the rage burning in her and channeled it.

  She arched and kicked at Falk. The tips of her shoes just missed his groin but hit him hard in his upper thigh.

  He was somewhat shocked before he laughed with delight. “You’re only the second one to ever try that. Didn’t work the first time, either.”

  Kicking at him had only damaged her wrists more. The pain was excruciating. She saw black spots dance before her eyes and thought she was going to pass out.

  But then Falk went around behind her, released the rope, and lowered her until she stood on the floor, hands snugged up toward the beam.

  “Mom, you’re bleeding!” Niklas cried.

  Dazed, Mattie looked up. Blood trickled and oozed from her wounds.

  When Falk came back around to face her, Mattie gasped, “You did this to the mothers at the slaughterhouse? Hanging them on meat hooks?”

  “Got to have some way to move a carcass around.”

  “I’m not a carcass.”

  “You will be, soon enough.”

  He gestured with the knife toward Niklas and then pressed the tip against her rib cage, just below her breast. “That’s how they’ll find you, your son, and Ilona. Hanging like carcasses.”

  CHAPTER 126

  DEAR FRIENDS, I must admit I’m enjoying myself, especially because the drumming of rain on the orphanage has become a comfort, deadening everything, focusing everything on the delights of my final interlude: a mother, a son, an old friend, the anticipation of death.

  But then I check my watch and say, “When exactly do you think they will be here?”

  “Who?” Mattie asks.

  I put on one of the bulletproof vests, replying, “Whoever you called to come and rescue you.”

  “We called no one. We did what you told us; now let us go.”

  “Liar,” I say. “You brought big Herr Burkhart when I told you not to. So you must have told someone else what was going on.”

  “We didn’t,” Mattie says. “I’m telling you we didn’t.”

  I stare at her for several long moments.

  I suppose it’s possible. But highly unlikely. I check my watch again.

  She’s been out of her car for roughly twenty minutes. I’ve got at least twenty more to play before clearing the premises.

  But I want to be sure, and quickly.

  I go to my pack and find a device I picked up just the other day.

  I turn around with it in my hand, the tip just showing. I wave it at her.

  “What is that?” she says.

  “It’s too bad we don’t have much time,” I say. “I do so like to let these things unfold at their leisure.”

  Mattie starts to squirm and it makes me excited. She has no idea what I’ve got. Isn’t that the big, big fear? The unknown? Human brains can’t handle the unknown. Do you know why?

  Because their imagination always comes up with something worse.

  At last, I open my hand and show her the device.

  “It was developed for mountaineers who needed to light fires in high winds,” I say. “They call it a pocket torch. I bought it last week. Handy.”

  I click on the starter. There’s a snapping noise and then a thin, intense flame bursts from a tube.

  “Twenty-four hundred degrees,” I say, enjoying the terror flaring in Mattie’s face. “The fear of it is primal, isn’t it? Fire? You know, I’ve always found that when all else fails, the fear of having an eye melted usually makes people talk.”

  CHAPTER 127

  THUNDER BROKE WITHIN several hundred yards of the orphanage, and the lightning flash made the room brighter than day, but all Mattie could see was that evil flame hissing out the nozzle of the pocket torch.

  “No!” Niklas screamed. “Don’t! Please!”

  Time seemed to slow for Mattie. She was acutely aware of Falk drifting behind her right side where she could not kick at him. She gritted her teeth and twisted her head.

  Then, like a delirious whisper coming from another dimension, she heard Burkhart talking in her ear. “Engel. Mattie. I’ve been hit t
wice out behind the orphanage. Left forearm through and through. Tourniqueted. Left thigh. Broken femur. I’ve got a belt on it too. I can’t find my cell phone because I can’t move, Mattie. I can’t come for you and Ilona and Niklas.”

  Burkhart began to choke bitterly. “I can’t save you.”

  He got hold of himself. “If you can hear me, don’t give up. Prolong whatever nightmare he’s taken you into. Fight. There are people who love you, Mattie. I…I love you. You’re beautiful. And brave. And smart. And tough. And your kid is the greatest. Keep fighting until they can get to you. Keep fighting.”

  Falk grabbed Mattie’s chin and twisted her head toward him. She saw the flame, orange and red, and shaped like a fine chisel.

  It passed her ear, singed her hair, and then stroked her shoulder blade.

  The pain was indescribable. Mattie jerked away from it. She screamed, and screamed again.

  “Mom!” Niklas was hysterical, up on his knees blubbering. “Mommy!”

  “I’ll ask you once more,” Falk said. “Who’s coming? And when?”

  Mattie was shaking and on the verge of vomiting from the smell of her own burned flesh, and from the agony she saw painted on her son’s face.

  She heard Burkhart’s voice, telling her to fight.

  “We called Berlin police before we came in,” she gasped. “They’re coming. No matter what you do to us, they are going to catch you this time, Falk.”

  There was a moment of doubt on Falk’s face, but then he grinned. “Oh, I’ll get away. I always do. They’ll probably call Halle Kripo, but they’re twenty-five minutes away at least. Still, I’ll have to move up my time schedule.”

  He went to his bag and got out a flathead screwdriver.

  Deep in her haze of pain, Mattie still knew what that meant.

  “Delay,” Burkhart whispered in her ear. “Delay.”

  Falk took a step toward Ilona, who was still on her knees and facing the wall and humming like a child.

  “How did you do it the first time?” Mattie gasped. “How did you get your Stasi files and destroy them? How did you get away?”

  CHAPTER 128

  MY FELLOW BERLINERS, at her question, I pause, wanting to ignore her, to finish my business and then leave this place for good.

  But a part of me wants someone, anyone, to know of my genius. It’s irresistible. And besides. When I set to my work, I am quick and efficient like my father taught me.

  “It was relatively easy,” I tell her. “By the mid-1980s, I could see clearly that the GDR’s time was coming to an end. I could also see that my special talents would not be understood if that came to pass. So I set about erasing myself almost three years before the wall fell.”

  “How?”

  “A bribe to the right people. A threat to the right people. I got hold of my files, which I burned. I knew Mielke was already shredding everything to do with me. So then it was just a matter of waiting until things became destabilized enough. Once I heard about the storming of Stasi headquarters in Leipzig, I knew the time was right. I went out into the streets of East Berlin like everyone else. And watched while they knocked the wall down with sledgehammers and cranes. When the crowds surged through in both directions, I went west with fake papers, and soon disappeared to Africa.”

  I gesture proudly to my face. “That’s where all this was done. Almost a year of work. No one would ever know I was Matthias Falk.”

  I grip the screwdriver and half turn toward Ilona.

  “And the masks?” Mattie asks.

  I can’t resist. “A childhood interest long dormant. I found a mask there, in Africa,” I reply. “I began collecting them while I was recuperating. A passion turned into a business.”

  “How did you fund all this? Where did the money come from?”

  I grin. “That was the first thing that I tortured out of the mothers. I got them to tell me where their family money, jewelry, and silverware were hidden. I had more than enough to do what I had to do. So three years after the wall came down, I flew back to Berlin and started my gallery.”

  “And Ilse Frei?”

  Ilona Frei stops humming.

  “Ahhh, Christoph and Ilse,” I say, truly enjoying the moment. “In the FKK, Ilse recognized my voice. I saw it in her face the moment it happened. I had to take care of her.”

  “And Chris?”

  “He managed to track me back to Berlin by going to the FKK clubs in the city, asking about a man with masks. No one talked, except one of my regulars, who told me. I told her to tell Chris about me, and the shop. Once I knew he was on my tail, I led him to the slaughterhouse and ambushed him. I knew he’d be upset being there, not thinking correctly, especially after seeing the rats on Ilse in the subbasement.”

  Ilona starts to sob, and my empathetic side understands.

  “You didn’t know, Ilona?” I say, feeding on her pain. “Oh, yes, it’s true, your dear little sister is gone. And now, so are you.”

  I take two steps and grab her by her hair and wrench it upward, revealing the nape of her neck.

  Ilona’s making these squealing noises like a piglet going to slaughter.

  I cock my arm and prepare to drive the screwdriver up into her little piggy brain.

  CHAPTER 129

  “STOP RIGHT THERE!” a male voice shouted from behind Mattie. “Drop it and her or by God I’ll blow your head off.”

  Falk froze and looked back. Mattie twisted around.

  Darek Eberhardt, the farmer who was tilling the fields by Waisenhaus 44 when Mattie first came to the orphanage, was standing in the doorway and looking over the brace of his double-barreled shotgun.

  “Drop it!” Eberhardt repeated. “I know how to use this weapon, mister!”

  Falk let go of Ilona and dropped the screwdriver.

  “Get on the floor,” Mattie shouted at Falk. “Face fucking down! Hands where he can see them!”

  Falk looked at Mattie in shock, disbelief, and then sullen resentment as he lowered himself to the floor.

  Horrified, Eberhardt came around Mattie. “My God, what’s he done to you?”

  “He’s got a gun,” Mattie said. “It’s over there. And a pocket torch too.”

  She was watching Falk, who lay on the floor with his fingers entwined behind his head. His body was tense and alert.

  “Got them,” Eberhardt said, and she watched him toss the pistol and the torch out the window.

  “Please, Herr Eberhardt,” Mattie said. “Cut me down. Get us free.”

  Eberhardt pulled out a knife and sliced the restraints from Mattie’s wrists, the pain almost as bad as fire. Eberhardt set down the shotgun, shrugged off his raincoat, and gave it to her to cover herself.

  “Thank you,” she said as Eberhardt went to free Niklas.

  She felt dizzy, as if she might faint, then surged with joy at seeing Niklas cut free. He got up and rushed into her arms. “Mommy,” he sobbed.

  Mattie bear-hugged Niklas to her, tears streaming down her cheeks as she kissed the top of his head. “I’m so, so sorry you had to—”

  “I thought he was going to kill us.”

  “No, no, baby,” Mattie whispered. “Not today.”

  Eberhardt freed Ilona and helped her to her feet. She moved drunkenly when she asked Mattie, “Did you see her in the slaughterhouse basement? Ilse?”

  Mattie felt gutted. “I couldn’t tell you. I just didn’t have the heart to do it.”

  “I had hope,” Ilona said in a little-girl voice. “And now…”

  She wheeled around and kicked viciously at Falk, hitting him in the ribs.

  “You fucking sick bastard!” she screamed, going into meltdown. “You killed Ilse and Chris and Greta.” She kicked him again. “You killed our mothers. You made them confess to things they never did. Why?”

  Mattie grabbed her and pulled her away as she continued to shriek.

  CHAPTER 130

  LYING THERE ON the floor, I can’t help my hard wiring. I’m feeling the kicks Ilona gave m
e and I’m loving the painful throb.

  And I’m hearing the pain in her voice and am loving life all the more.

  “Why?” I say with a grin. “Because I like it, Ilona. I like to be there when the lights go out. And I like making them go out even more. I like to be there when the life drains out of ’em. I like to feel, smell, taste, and hear death. It’s as simple as that. Always has been. Cow, pig, mother, child. It’s all the same to me.”

  The farmer is circling to my left. I can see his rubber boots in my peripheral vision. “What kind of animal are you?” he demands.

  “A predator,” I reply. “Didn’t you know? Killing is in our nature.”

  Eberhardt takes a step toward me, as if he is going to kick me too.

  But then over the sound of the rain, I hear sirens in the distance. The farmer stops. He hears them too.

  He takes several careful steps backward away from me.

  Cracking, splintering, the floor beneath his left rubber boot collapses.

  He breaks through up to his thigh and is wrenched violently backward.

  I’m up and moving even before I realize he’s dropped the shotgun.

  I take two quick steps and kick him right on the point of the chin.

  Eberhardt’s head snaps back, out cold. I spin, looking for Mattie.

  But she’s already on me.

  She smashes me in the ribs with a piece of wood.

  It stuns me. I go to my knees. She steps up to hit me again.

  But I drop into a sitting position and lash out with my foot, connecting with her ankle.

  She buckles and falls.

  I roll to my feet and kick her in the stomach. I hear all the wind go out of her.

  The sirens are closer now. I can hear them wailing.

  I look at Mattie Engel. “Time for just one more, I’d say.”