Private Berlin Read online

  “No,” Katharina said. “We’re here because Chris Schneider is dead.”

  That shocked the billionaire’s wife. “Dead? How? He was such a young man!”

  Katharina gave her the bare bones of the circumstances. Mattie listened to her report as if it were arriving from outer space, incomprehensible even to her.

  “In a slaughterhouse?” the billionaire’s wife said. “Why?”

  “We don’t know,” Mattie replied. “We’re hoping you might help.”

  “Where has Hermann been the last few weeks?” Katharina asked.

  Agnes Krüger fidgeted in her chair. “He was here in Berlin for the most part, I believe. Ask his secretary.”

  “I did,” Katharina said. “She said he’s off on business.”

  “Or tending to his mistresses.”

  “Doesn’t he live here with you?” Mattie asked.

  Her face flickered painfully. “Hermann has a bed here. He uses it from time to time. Comes and goes as he pleases. Doesn’t give a damn if I’m in it or not.” Agnes Krüger looked closely at Mattie, who’d somehow won her trust. “You know, he wasn’t always like this. At least I don’t think so. This belief that anything goes came with the money.”

  “Where did you meet?” Mattie asked.

  “Here in Berlin shortly after the wall fell. He was making his first fortune bringing textiles into the newly liberated east as fast as he could. I worked for him as his secretary. Rudy was just a baby. My first husband had deserted me, and, well, Hermann is a good talker.”

  “Who knows how to make money,” Katharina said.

  “He came to capitalism naturally. It suited him.”

  “I don’t understand,” Mattie said.

  “He grew up in East Berlin, but as soon as the wall fell he was in motion.”

  “Same thing with Chris.”

  She studied Mattie again. “He was more than a colleague to you.”

  For the second time in twenty-four hours, Mattie wondered if she was that transparent, but she said, “My ex-fiancé.”

  “Oh, dear,” the billionaire’s wife said, her hand traveling to her lips. “I’m so sorry for you, Frau Engel.”

  Mattie nodded, swallowing hard at the loss pulsing in her.

  There was a pause and another painful flicker in her skin before Agnes Krüger said, “And you think my husband might have been involved in his death?”

  “What do you think?” Katharina asked. “Is he capable of it? Would he have reason? Would Chris’s knowing about all the women, and being ready to reveal them to you, drive him to murder?”

  The billionaire’s wife was still for several moments, and then she turned, disgusted. “On this my son is correct: Hermann’s soul is black.” She hardened. “You should know that there have been rumors about Hermann.”

  “What kind of rumors?” Mattie asked.

  Agnes Krüger gazed at Katharina and Mattie in turn before saying, “You’d have to talk with Rudy for any particulars, but evidently people who cross my husband have a way of disappearing or dying in convenient accidents.”

  CHAPTER 35

  THE RAIN LIFTED just before five that afternoon, casting the grounds of the Soviet War Memorial in Treptower Park in a light that looked nickel-plated to Hauptkommissar Hans Dietrich.

  The homicide detective stood at the base of the dripping statue of the Soviet soldier carrying the German child. His cheek ached and felt swollen.

  With an air of victory surrounding him, the colonel strode into view at precisely 5:07 p.m.

  Again his eyes slashed all over his son, lingering on the bandage on his cheek before his lips twisted in contempt.

  “Leave me alone, Hans,” he commanded.

  “I will after tonight, Colonel,” the high commissar promised. “That slaughterhouse in Ahrensfelde—”

  “I told you to leave that alone,” the colonel said and kept walking.

  This night Dietrich did not reach out to grab his father. To his back, he said, “Someone blew it up this morning with GDR-era Semtex.”

  The colonel stopped and turned, incredulous, but then said, “I thought I heard something like cannon fire.”

  The high commissar nodded. “Before it went off, we found decomposing bodies and skeletons in a subbasement. Thirty of them.”

  Dietrich always thought his father was unshakable, but that news rattled him. “No,” the colonel said in a voice that sounded suddenly old. “That’s not—”

  “They were there,” Dietrich insisted. “What do you know?”

  The colonel rubbed his left arm as if to soothe an ache. “I honestly don’t know anything.”

  “But there were rumors,” Dietrich pressed. “I heard you one night—”

  His father’s face twisted and he held his arm tighter as he hissed back, “There were rumors everywhere about everything and everybody. No one knew what was true and what was fiction. No one. And I still don’t.”

  “Don’t you want to know?”

  “No,” his father croaked, then turned, now clutching his left arm.

  The colonel made three steps in the direction of the closest sarcophagus. He stopped, weaving unsteadily. Then he reeled to his right and pitched over on his side in a puddle on the gravel path.

  For an instant Dietrich was too stunned to move. He did not think it possible that…“Papi!” he cried, rushing to his father’s side.

  The colonel was choking and looking at him bug-eyed. Dietrich threw himself on his knees to perform CPR.

  But his father’s right hand shot up and grabbed him by the collar of his jacket. “I know I wasn’t a good father,” he rasped. “But was I a good man?”

  For once in his life, the high commissar did not know how to answer a question. His silence was a response that the colonel understood. The old man’s cheeks tightened. He turned his gaze away from his son to the statue of the triumphant Soviet warrior and the German child towering above them.

  “I was a good citizen,” the colonel gasped. “You know I was.”

  And then in a harsh sigh, the life went out of Dietrich’s father and his eyes took on the dull and glazed stare of fate.

  CHAPTER 36

  IT’S 8 P.M. WHEN I enter the Diana FKK, a high-class mega-brothel in a luxurious spa setting on the outskirts of West Berlin.

  Indoor pools. Jacuzzis. Saunas. Masseuses. And beautiful women of every race and color parading around completely nude.

  One would think that my thirst for flesh would have been satisfied by my late-afternoon interlude with my friend, the woman who honestly believes I love her. But the lethal events of the past two days seem to have filled me with an unquenchable desire for all things carnal.

  I pay my entrance fee, and go down to the locker room where I strip and put on a robe and rubber slippers. I take the canvas bag with my latest mask acquisition and head upstairs, hearing the sound of women laughing.

  Is there anything like it? The sound of women laughing? I feel alive here among these laughing women. I can be anyone I want to be. They can be anyone I want them to be.

  And that’s a relief after such a long and difficult day.

  But as I wander, evaluating the women against my criteria, my mind keeps flashing to the expression on my friend the thief’s face when I hit him with the stun gun.

  Even with the music blaring from the brothel bar I can honestly hear the crunch and squish of the screwdriver entering his brain.

  And behind it all, like a shimmering backdrop, the memory of that unbelievable fireball that rose above the slaughterhouse, scorching and pulverizing that part of my past into dust.

  As I walk through the brothel’s spa, admiring the women soaking in the whirlpools, these pleasant memories bow to pressing concerns. I have much to do to finish burying my past for good, and it will take every bit of my skill to get it done swiftly and without a trace of my participation.

  But I’ll wait until tomorrow to address those crucial tasks.

  For now, I’m seeking to
cleanse myself, a sensual reduction to the primal, a release from all that I appear to be to the ignorant outside world.

  I spot my prey on an elevated platform in the middle of one of the pools.

  She’s exotic. Black hair. Dark, flashing eyes. A copper stain to her skin.

  She’s naked except for a gold chain about her waist, and she’s writhing in a slow-motion belly dance to the appreciation of several men lounging in the water below her.

  I stand there, watching until our eyes meet. I smile and crook a finger at her. She smiles and keeps dancing.

  We keep this up and a nice little tension builds between us before she finally leaves, crosses the pool, and comes up to me. Her brown eyes are dazzling. Her hips to die for.

  She says her name is Bettina and asks if I want company. I smile warmly. She comes into my arms as if she belongs beneath me. Which she does.

  I tell her I’ve got a little surprise for her in my bag.

  “What kind of surprise?” Bettina asks.

  “The kind that surprises, silly girl,” I tease.

  Moments later in a mirrored room, I have her get on her knees and elbows, her legs open so I can see every little bit of her mystery.

  I unlock the case and draw out the mask: a black jaguar with golden eyes and ruby mouth, baring golden teeth.

  Bettina’s looking back over her shoulder, uneasy at the mask.

  I can already feel myself rising.

  I put the mask on and prepare to enter her.

  Bettina’s clearly unnerved now, and I don’t think I could be more excited if I’d planned to throttle the life out of her or stick a screwdriver in her brain.

  “What’s with the mask?” she asks in a tremulous voice.

  “It’s an ancient Mayan relic, Bettina,” I say as I crouch over her and drive myself into her as a panther might, thrilled at her grunt of disbelief and fear. “It depicts their Jaguar God, the ruler of the night and the lord of the fucking underworld.”

  CHAPTER 37

  AT EIGHT THIRTY that evening Mattie stood unsteadily outside the door to her apartment. She smelled fresh cookies baking. She could hear a radio announcer giving the news, and caught something about the slaughterhouse explosion.

  She leaned her head against the door. She was more than a little drunk.

  The 6 p.m. strategy meeting Jack Morgan called in order to better manage the various threads of the investigation had eventually devolved into an impromptu wake for Chris.

  Drinks were poured. Toasts were given. Stories were told. Tears were shed. They’d even laughed a few times at old memories.

  Now standing outside her apartment door, digging for her keys, she realized that memories were all she had of Chris.

  It was all he would ever be.

  But Niklas was alive. Niklas had a future. She had to make him see that.

  Mattie opened the door to see her aunt Cäcilia coming out of the kitchen.

  “Where is he?” Mattie asked, unable to hide the sadness.

  “He just went to his room,” Aunt Cäcilia replied, her face twisting with concern. “Chris?”

  Mattie bit her lip and shook her head. “He’s dead, Aunt C.”

  “No!” Aunt Cäcilia cried as she hurried over. “No! What happened?”

  Mattie fell into her arms, tears brimming in her eyes. “I’ll explain it to you later after I explain it to Niklas. But how am I supposed to do that when I can’t explain it to myself?”

  Her aunt hugged her tightly and the dam burst. Mattie sobbed in her arms.

  “Life can be so cruel sometimes, child,” Cäcilia said, rubbing her back.

  “Why is that?” Mattie cried. “Why is that?”

  “That’s a question beyond my qualifications, dear, one better addressed to God.”

  “Mommy?”

  Mattie raised her head and saw Niklas watching her from the hallway. He was already in his pajamas and looked so frightened that she almost collapsed with grief. But she got hold of herself, left her aunt, and went toward him, saying, “I’m sorry, Nicky.”

  Her son’s chin trembled and for a moment she thought he was going to blame her and run away. But, dissolving into tears, he ran into her arms and cried in a hiccupping voice, “But I thought…I prayed…Aunt C said…”

  Mattie picked him up and carried him to the rocking chair in the television room. “I know. I know.”

  Niklas curled up in his mother’s lap. Socrates appeared and jumped into Niklas’s lap.

  Mattie held on to them and watched her aunt sit down crying on the couch, realizing that these three beings were among the very few anchors left in her life.

  CHAPTER 38

  THE NEXT MORNING, after a near-sleepless night, Mattie resisted the urge to go to work early. She stayed with Niklas, cooked him his breakfast, and walked him through the streets to the John Lennon Gymnasium, where he attended elementary school.

  When they neared the school, Niklas stopped and looked up at her, asking, “Are you going to be all right, Mommy?”

  She had been about to ask him the same thing. She hugged him. “As long as I’ve got you, little man, I’ll always be all right.”

  “Me too,” Niklas said.

  She kissed him and said, “Go on, or you’ll be late. Aunt C will be here to pick you up.”

  “I know the way home.”

  “I know you do,” Mattie said. “But she’ll be waiting just the same.”

  She waited until he’d disappeared up the steps inside the school. Her cell phone rang. It was Katharina Doruk. “Meet me at Tacheles.”

  “I was heading to the office.”

  “I found out that Rudy Krüger lives and works in Tacheles. It might be a nice time for a chat. I hear early is always good when you’re dealing with artists and anarchists.”

  Mattie had her sights set on Chris’s past, but she could see the value in talking to the billionaire’s son.

  “When?”

  “I’ll be there in twenty minutes.”

  Mattie headed toward the underground at Rosenthaler Platz. It was a cool, blustery day, with dark puffy clouds racing across a deep-blue sky, and Mattie found herself wondering if life was nothing more than that, a cloud racing across a blue sky, and then, simply, gone on the wind.

  That thought consumed her until she entered the underground station and noticed the Berliner Zeitung and Berliner Morgenpost newspaper headlines at one of the kiosks. She snapped up both, paid, and read the articles about the slaughterhouse on the train to Oranienburger Strasse.

  Both stories noted the explosion, the fact that police vehicles had been seen in the area the day before, and the rumor that High Commissar Hans Dietrich had been working the case. Federal agent Risi Baumgarten was the only official quoted in either story, however, and she had revealed very little, refusing to say what police had been doing inside the old abattoir before it blew up.

  The Morgenpost article went further, noting that the GDR government built the slaughterhouse as an auxiliary to East Berlin’s main stockyard and slaughterhouse in the late 1950s. As the communist economy slowly crumbled the building had been used less often, and then abandoned. It had stood that way until yesterday’s blast.

  “That place was never fully abandoned,” Mattie muttered to herself as she got off the underground train. “Someone knew about that subbasement and that fake drain going way, way back.”

  CHAPTER 39

  TACHELES WAS THE epitome of cool in Berlin, a bullet-ridden, bomb-scarred, and graffiti-clad building in Mitte that the East Germans never tore down after Hitler’s war.

  When the wall fell, squatters moved in to the former department store on Oranienburger Strasse and formed an artists’ collective. Twenty years later, more than one hundred artists lived and worked in the building and on the grounds, which over the years had evolved to include studios, an avant-garde cinema, restaurants, a squatters’ village, a giant sculpture garden, and an outdoor performance area and stage.

  It was eight fif
teen in the morning, but the lower building was nearly dead quiet. They climbed upstairs. Rudy Krüger’s rented squat was on the third floor. Katharina’s smartphone dinged. She looked at it.

  “Interesting,” she said. “Olle Larsson, the Swedish financier, just announced that he’s taken a five percent interest in Krüger Industries.”

  “Which means what?” Mattie asked.

  “Possible target of a take-over bid, and according to this report, there’s been no comment by Krüger—who is said to be out of the country on business.”

  “I bet a hostile takeover would put a lot of pressure on Hermann.”

  “Keep him away from his women, certainly,” Katharina said.

  “Maybe enough to make him homicidal?”

  “I don’t know. Let’s ask.”

  They found the door to Rudy Krüger’s studio. Electronic music played inside. Katharina pounded on the door.

  “I’m working!” Rudy Krüger yelled back immediately.

  Katharina identified herself and a moment later the music lowered and the door opened on a chain. The billionaire’s stepson wore a white coverall spattered in black and blue paint. “I’m busy. I’ve got an exhibition opening in three days, and a meeting to be at in an hour.”

  “We just want to talk to you about your stepfather, the alleged murderer,” Mattie said.

  He gave them a calculating stare and then opened the door.

  They entered a loft area with north light beaming into a large, high-ceilinged studio. There were canvases up on easels and others stacked against the walls. They were all abstracts in blues and blacks and featured the words Rude, Rot, and Riot splashed somewhere in brilliant yellows or reds.

  “Selling any?” Katharina asked.

  Rudy looked at her contemptuously. “Buying and selling have little to do with art. I’m more about the doing than the marketing.”

  “Uh-huh,” Mattie said. “Tell us about your stepfather. Your mother said he’s had people killed, but she had no particulars.”