A Quiet Flame

“I met this doctor who’s handling some very sensitive clinical trials at the state hospital in Friedrichshain here in Berlin. I think he said he was working for Bayer. And I was wondering if he might be the kind of discreet and reliable fellow who might help us out once in a while. From all accounts he’s a very gifted man. I heard him described as the next Paul Ehrlich. You know? The ‘magic bullet’?”

“Oh, you must mean Gerhard Domagk,” said Duisberg.

“That’s him,” I said. “I just wondered if you might be able to vouch for him. As simple as that, really.”

“Well, I haven’t actually met him myself. But from what I hear, he’s very brilliant. Very brilliant, indeed. And very discreet. He has to be. Much of our work is highly confidential. I’m sure he would be delighted to help the Berlin Police if it was within his power to do so. Was there something specific you wanted to ask him?”

“No. Not yet. Perhaps in the future.”

I pocketed the IGF man’s card and let him get back to the rest of his lunch party. That let Frieda get back to me. She looked flushed and very grateful, which is the way I like my women.

“You handled that cucumber like a professional,” she said.

“Didn’t you know? Before I joined the Berlin polenta, I was a green-grocer, in Leverkusen.”

“Where the hell is Leverkusen?”

“Didn’t you know? It’s a new town, on the Rhine. The center of the German chemical industry. What do you say we go there for the weekend and you can show me how grateful you are?”

Frieda smiled. “We don’t have to go that far to go that far,” she said. “We only have to go upstairs. To room 102. That’s one of our VIP suites. Empty right now. But Charlie Chaplin once slept in room 102. So did Emil Jannings.” She smiled again. “But then neither of them had me around to help keep them awake.”

IT WAS AROUND FOUR-THIRTY when I got back to the Alex. On my desk was a box of cucumbers. I waved one in the air as several of the KRIPO men in the detective room cheered and clapped. Otto Trettin, one of the best cops in the department and a specialist in criminal rings like the Always True, came over to my desk. There was a half-cucumber in his shoulder holster. He took it out, pointed it at me, and made a noise like a pistol shot.

“Very funny.” I grinned and removed my jacket, then hung it on the back of my chair.

“Where’s yours?” he asked. “Your gun, I mean.”

“In the car.”

“Well, that explains the cucumber, I suppose.”

“Come on, Otto. You know how it is. When you wear a gun, you have to keep your jacket buttoned, and in this warm weather we’ve been having . . .”

“You thought you could get away with it.”

“Something like that.”

“Seriously, Bernie. Now that you’ve gone up against Ricci Kamm, you’re going to have to watch your back. Your front, too, most likely.”

“You think so?”

“A man who puts Ricci Kamm in the Charité with a broken nose and a concussion had better start carrying a firearm or he’ll be wearing a knife between his shoulder blades. Even a cop.”

“Maybe you’re right,” I admitted.

“Course I’m right. You live on Dragonerstrasse, don’t you, Bernie? That’s right on the doorstep of the Always True’s territory. A gun’s no good in the glove box, old man. Not unless you’re planning to hold up a garage.” And still shooting the cucumber in my direction, Otto walked away.

“You should listen to him,” said a voice. “He knows what he’s talking about. When words fail, a gun can come in very handy.”

It was Arthur Nebe, one of the slipperiest detectives in KRIPO. A former right-wing Freikorps man, he had been made a commissar in DIa within just two years of joining the force and had a formidable record of solving crimes. Nebe was a founding member of the NSBAG—the National Socialist Fellowship of Civil Servants—and was rumored to be a close friend of such leading Nazis as Goebbels, Count von Helldorf, and Kurt Daluege. Strangely, Nebe was also a friend of Bernard Weiss. There were other influential friends, in the SDP. And around the Alex it was generally held that Arthur Nebe had more options covered than the Berlin Stock Exchange.

“Hello, Arthur,” I said. “What are you doing here? Is there not enough work in Political that you have to come and poach down here?”

Ignoring my remark, Nebe said, “Since he arrested the Sass brothers, Otto’s had to watch himself. Like he was painting his own portrait.”

“Well, we all know about Otto and the Sass brothers,” I said. In 1928, Otto Trettin had almost been dismissed from the force after it became known that he had beaten a confession out of these two criminals. “What I did was in no way similar to that. Pulling Ricci Kamm was a proper collar.”