Private Berlin Read online

  How had it all gone so wrong?

  How had this happened? The chip. The hacking. And now his apartment is tossed. And why? What was Chris on to?

  Mattie reached the alcove where Chris often worked at home. She spotted the smashed laptop on the floor and went to it. She crouched and used a pen to push aside the pieces, barely aware of Burkhart picking up a photograph of Chris and a young boy.

  “Engel, is this—?” Burkhart began.

  “Fuck!” Mattie cried, cutting him off. “They got his hard drive. Fuck!”

  “All right, we know what they were after then,” Burkhart said, setting the picture down. “We’re out of here. We call Kripo.”

  Mattie stood and pushed by him. “I’m finding his cat. You wait at the car.”

  She did not wait for an answer, but instead walked down the hallway past the kitchen, where dirty dishes and takeout Thai food boxes contributed to a foul reek. She stopped breathing in through her mouth and went into the bedroom, which was painted bright white.

  The comforter was bright white too. So were the drapes, which billowed with the gusts of wind and rain blowing in through the open French windows that overlooked the courtyard. Rain soaked the rug below the windows.

  There was a wastebasket by the bed filled to the brim with papers, one of the few containers that had not been emptied in the entire apartment. Mattie crossed to it and saw several crumpled pieces of paper on top.

  She was picking one up when she heard a meow. She looked over and saw Socrates, Chris’s charcoal and gray tabby, coming out of the bathroom.

  Mattie took a step toward him, grinning. “There you are.”

  Then she spotted the imprint of soles on the wet rug.

  She followed the tracks with her eyes to the closet door at her immediate right, then slipped the crumpled paper into her pocket, took a step toward the cat, and started to reach for her pistol, saying, “Good Socrates. You hungry?”

  The closet door exploded outward.

  CHAPTER 14

  A BURLY MAN in black leathers and a motorcycle helmet smashed into Mattie’s left side and blew her off her feet.

  She crashed to the rug next to Socrates. The man tried to kick her in the stomach, but she saw it coming and curled up so her thigh took the impact.

  He took two steps to the window and jumped out.

  Mattie fought to get to her feet, drawing her pistol. She heard the motorcycle engine growl to life and staggered to the window just as he popped the clutch, throwing up grass as he wove toward the entry to the building.

  Without thinking, Mattie jumped.

  She landed in the soggy, freshly tilled bed and then rolled out of it as a parachutist might. She saw Krauss coming into the courtyard from the opposite side, horror on his face.

  “Mattie!” he cried.

  She had no time to explain. The motorcyclist was getting away. She sprinted through the building’s main door, hoping to catch the license plate.

  The motorcyclist was accelerating west. She could see his back and helmet but no license plate.

  “Shit!” she cried.

  The BMW screeched up beside her, Burkhart at the wheel. “Get in.”

  She jumped in the passenger seat and they went squealing after the motorcyclist, who braked and turned onto Englische Strasse, heading south.

  By the time they reached the corner he was turning west again, paralleling the canal and the campus of the Technical University. Burkhart downshifted and almost caught him before he crossed the March Bridge onto campus.

  Students were diving out of the way of the motorcycle and Burkhart’s car as they raced through campus.

  At a roundabout the rider curled left onto Hardenbergstrasse and then crossed under the Zoologischer S-Bahn station, where he wove hard to his right onto Joachimstaler, then sharply left onto Kantstrasse, heading east toward the ruins of the belfry tower.

  Despite the serpentine course they ran through the city, Burkhart had somehow managed to close the gap again when the man who’d trashed Chris’s apartment dodged without warning across traffic and up onto the plaza that surrounded the ruins.

  “Don’t you dare!” Mattie cried at Burkhart. “There are people all over that plaza. Take the next right at Budapester instead.”

  Burkhart gritted his teeth but did as he was told, lucking out that the light was in his favor. The street ran parallel to the plaza. Mattie could see the motorcyclist weaving through pedestrians, who scattered ahead of him.

  “There’s got to be a cop there somewhere,” Mattie said.

  “They’re never around when you need them,” Burkhart said, barreling down Budapester Strasse.

  The motorcyclist veered off the plaza and out onto Budapester.

  But Burkhart was right behind him.

  “He’s got no license plate,” Mattie said.

  “I imagine not,” Burkhart said as they shot off-road through the busy Palme-Platz.

  Burkhart was a genius behind the wheel. He made every move the motorcyclist did, until they crossed the canal again east of the zoo.

  On the immediate north side, the motorcycle suddenly braked hard, as if trying to avoid something in the road ahead.

  “Bastard, gonna knock you down,” Burkhart said, hammering the gas.

  The BMW’s front left fender just missed the rear wheel of the motorcycle as it veered hard left onto Corneliusstrasse.

  Burkhart slammed on his brakes, threw the car in reverse, and then squealed after the motorcyclist. But Mattie already had a sinking feeling in her stomach.

  She knew this part of Berlin well. She and Chris had run here often.

  Straight ahead two blocks, the way west was blocked, except for pedestrians and bicyclists who could access a trail that ran along the canal inside Tiergarten Park and between the zoo and Neuer Lake.

  The last Mattie saw of the motorcyclist, he was accelerating west on the canal path, and then he disappeared behind the falling leaves, the pouring rain, and the waning light of day.

  CHAPTER 15

  “HAUPTKOMMISSAR?”

  Hans Dietrich turned to his trainee. He towered over her, looking exasperated. “What is it, Weigel?”

  Standing in the eastern end of the slaughterhouse, Inspector Weigel’s cheeks reddened, but then she stammered, “The technicians have found blood samples. Many of them.”

  Dietrich stiffened, hesitated, and then sputtered, “Well, I imagine so. It was a slaughterhouse.”

  “Sir, they want to know what you want them to do.”

  He hesitated again, and then said, “Take twenty random samples.”

  The inspector paused, then nodded uncertainly. “Hauptkommissar, are you not feeling well?”

  Dietrich stared at her a moment, and then he looked at his watch. Four ten.

  He did his best to appear stricken. “No, as a matter of fact, I feel like I’m coming down with something. I…I think I shall have to go home.”

  “Sir?” Weigel said.

  “A twelve-hour bug,” Dietrich said. “If you find something of significance, call me.”

  Twenty minutes later, the high commissar was driving his old Opel down a corridor of horse-chestnut trees that lined both sides of Puschkinallee, heading toward Treptower Park in southeast Berlin.

  Dietrich glanced in his rearview mirror, seeing the television tower at Alexanderplatz framed in the road behind him. His lip curled. He hated the tower. He hated everything it stood for.

  He’d heard lately that real estate speculators were going to tear it down as part of the redevelopment of Alexanderplatz. Dietrich thought the tower was a good thing to be rid of, a very good thing.

  As an investigator he had learned well that the past is always eventually buried, especially in a city. It may take centuries, it may take mass destruction, but the past is always eventually reduced to rubble, dust, and rumor.

  As far as the high commissar was concerned, the sooner the burial happened in certain parts of Berlin the better.

 
Which is why, as he approached Treptower Park, Dietrich felt like he’d been forced to pick up a shovel and dig into a mound of radioactive material; he knew he had to do it, but he feared he might be destroyed in the process.

  He parked the Opel and checked his watch.

  It was 4:40 p.m. He had twenty minutes.

  He swallowed hard, grabbed his umbrella, and struggled from the car.

  In a long, ungainly gait that caused his head to bob forward with every step, the high commissar hurried south on a lane that ran through sopping autumn woods until he reached a vast rectangular opening in the forest.

  He passed a statue of a mother crying, Mother Russia crying. He walked up a long promenade lined with weeping silver birches toward two massive red monuments facing each other. The red granite had been taken from Hitler’s Chancellery and then carved into giant stylized flags adorned with the Soviet Union’s hammer and sickle.

  Below the flags, bronze statues of war-weary Russian soldiers knelt facing each other. In the distance, framed between the two soldiers, stood a third statue. This warrior was ten times the size of the others. The noble Soviet carried a German child. At his feet lay a broken Nazi swastika.

  The high commissar climbed the stairs and walked between the kneeling statues. He looked out over a graveyard of five thousand of Stalin’s soldiers who died in the battle for Berlin at the end of World War II.

  But Dietrich was not looking at the sixteen crypts that held the bodies, nor was he thinking about Stalin, or the particulars of the Soviet War Memorial. He was peering beyond all of it through the lightly falling rain to a path that ran parallel to the cemetery through a grove of trees.

  In the dull pewter light and the rain, a lone figure appeared from the trees in a black raincoat, jogging pants, and shoes. He strode briskly down the path, arms pumping and his head up like a dog on alert.

  The high commissar checked his watch.

  Five p.m. on the dot.

  He shook his head in mild disbelief. “Like fucking clockwork.”

  CHAPTER 16

  DIETRICH WATCHED THE figure move away from him toward the rear of the war memorial and calculated his speed. When he thought he had it right, he headed off at a slant to the walker, weaving through the sarcophagi and losing sight of his quarry for several minutes.

  The high commissar stopped on the north side of the statue of the victorious Soviet and the German child. The rain had slowed, so he could hear the slap of the man’s feet coming long before he spotted him.

  “Oberst?” Dietrich said. “Colonel? Can I have a moment of your time?”

  The colonel was old, in his eighties at least, but his bearing was autocratic, a man used to giving orders and having them carried out. And he had a steel-blue penetrating stare that slashed all over the high commissar before a look of disgust curled his lip. He did not slow his pace, and tried to get by him.

  Dietrich reached out and grabbed the older man by the elbow. “I need to talk. I need your help. Your advice.”

  “You need my help?” the colonel laughed spitefully and wrenched his arm free with surprising strength. “For years you want nothing to do with your own father, and now, out of nowhere, after what, ten years, you need?”

  For a moment, Dietrich felt as sick as he’d claimed to be earlier in the afternoon. His stomach ached and he was bombarded by a sense of claustrophobia that he had not felt since the last time he’d spoken with his father.

  “I’m on a case,” Dietrich said.

  “Yes,” the colonel said with mild contempt. “You are a police officer.”

  “Hauptkommissar,” Dietrich said, feeling old anger stirring in him. “I just need to rule a few things out.”

  “About what, Hauptkommissar?”

  It had begun to rain again in earnest. His father’s hood was down, but the old man showed no bother.

  Dietrich hesitated, and then said, “I need you to tell me what you know about certain ancient rumors.”

  The colonel turned suspicious. “What kind of ancient rumors?”

  “About the old auxiliary slaughterhouse near Ahrensfelde.”

  Something cracked in the old man’s expression.

  But it sealed tight a moment later. “I don’t know anything about it. And neither should you.”

  Dietrich said, “I have reason to believe someone might have been murdered in there. Assaulted certainly.”

  “Blood but no body then?”

  “A piece of skin but no body. And animal blood. Lots of it. We’re searching the place now. Are we going to find anything?”

  The colonel blinked at raindrops that hung from his lashes, and then said, “It could be squatters fighting.”

  “No evidence of that yet.”

  “Then I can’t tell you.”

  Dietrich did not believe him. He’d understood at a relatively young age that the more in control his father seemed, the more likely he was to be lying through his teeth.

  “I’ve got a life, Colonel. A position. A reputation. People who count on me.”

  “People who don’t know who you really are.” His father snorted in derision, and then soured further. “In all honesty, Hans, I don’t care about your life, your position, your reputation, or your people.

  “And in case I did not tell you this the last time I saw you, when I think of you—and that is admittedly a rare occurrence—I think of you as an utter disappointment. Your actions today have not changed my assessment.”

  With that, the colonel turned and took up his brisk evening walk as if he’d never paused.

  Dietrich’s throat flamed with anger.

  But his stomach churned with fear.

  CHAPTER 17

  THE APARTMENT BUILDING where Mattie Engel lived on Schliemannstrasse south of Prenzlauer Allee was painted bright green and red and white. The building stood next to a preschool painted with images of kids on tricycles and others playing with dump trucks.

  Tom Burkhart slowed to a stop on wet cobblestones in front of the school. Mattie had Socrates on her lap. They’d gone back to Chris’s apartment, found the cat, secured the place, and tried to call Dietrich with the news.

  But the high commissar had not answered his cell phone, and Mattie had not left a message. He’d find out soon enough. She reached for the door handle.

  “You going to be okay?” Burkhart asked.

  “As long as I never get in a car with you again, I’ll be fine.”

  “What?”

  “We’re lucky we’re not in jail.”

  “Nonsense,” Burkhart said. “I had total control. But do you?”

  Mattie hesitated and said, “I’ve got to sleep. Chris could be out there somewhere alive and I’m going to sleep.”

  Burkhart’s tone softened. “You’ll function better if you do. I’ll meet you at Dietrich’s office first thing in the morning.”

  Mattie nodded, climbed from the BMW, and hurried to her front door with the cat in her arms. Burkhart waited until she was inside and then drove off. She took the elevator to the third floor and walked to her door. She paused, hearing a television blaring inside and smelling onions frying.

  She looked at the cat. How am I going to do this? What do I say?

  Socrates just stared at her, blinking. Then he meowed.

  Mattie stuck her key in the lock and went in to an open area with a couch, two chairs, and a coffee table. There was a counter at the back that looked into the kitchen where Mattie’s aunt Cäcilia, a stout woman in her seventies, bustled about cooking Sunday dinner.

  Aunt Cäcilia had lived on and off with Mattie since the Berlin Wall fell. She had watched Mattie grow into womanhood, and she’d cared for Mattie’s mother as she died. Mattie did not know what she’d do without her.

  From a room opposite the kitchen, the television got louder with the roar of a crowd and an announcer screaming, “Goal Cassiano! Goal Cassiano!”

  A boy’s voice pitched in, screaming: “Goal Cassiano! Goal Berlin!”

  Socrat
es leaped from Mattie’s arms and scampered toward the commotion. Mattie followed the cat, worming her arms from her rain jacket and calling, “Niklas? I’m home.”

  “Hello, dear,” her aunt called from the kitchen. “I’ll have your dinner ready in a second.”

  “Thanks,” Mattie said, and looked around the corner into the small room opposite the kitchen. Her nine-year-old son bounced on the couch, watching the replay and yelling, “Goal Cassiano!” when the striker drove the ball into the upper-right corner of the net.

  The cat leaped into Niklas’s lap.

  A whippet-lean boy with large, welcoming eyes, Niklas looked shocked and then even more overjoyed than he’d been celebrating Cassiano’s goal.

  “Socrates!” he cried, and then hugged the cat. “Where’d you come from?”

  “I brought him,” Mattie said. “I wish you’d get that excited to see me.”

  Niklas finally seemed to notice her. He grinned. “My mommy!”

  Mattie went to him. She hugged him close to her and petted Socrates’s head. “Missed you,” she said.

  Niklas pressed his head into her belly. “Missed you too. But you should have seen it, Mommy—Cassiano. He’s…like no one on Berlin ever.”

  Mattie looked over at the television, studying the Brazilian who was being shown in close-up. Did he have something to do with Chris’s disappearance?

  Niklas’s smile disappeared. He looked down at the cat. “Why is Socrates here?” His smile returned before she could answer. “Is Chris here?”

  Mattie was amazed sometimes at how intuitive Niklas was, one of those people who seemed to sense hidden emotion. Then again, that’s how you grow up when you don’t have a father.

  “I’ve got some troubling news,” Mattie said at last.

  Niklas’s face tightened. “You’re working next weekend again?”

  Mattie hesitated, still unsure of what to say and how to say it.

  Niklas got up, dropping the cat and barging by his mother. “You promised we could go to the lake and canoe again. It’ll be too cold soon!”