A Quiet Flame

I FOUND THE THIRD ARMY all over Berlin. Armored cars outside the public buildings, and platoons of soldiers enjoying the July sunshine in all of the main parks. It was as if the clock had been turned back to 1920. But there seemed little chance of Berlin’s workers organizing a general strike to defeat this particular putsch, as had happened then. Only inside the Alex did there appear to be any appetite for resistance. Police major Walter Encke, who lived in the same apartment building as Commander Heimannsberg and was his close friend, was the focus for a counterputsch. The Alex was full of Nazi spies, however. And Encke’s plan to use uniformed SCHUPO riot brigades to arrest all of the Nazis in the Berlin police came to nothing when a rumor began to go around that he and Heimannsberg were lovers. Later on, the rumor proved to be entirely without foundation, but by then it was too late. Fearing for the loss of his reputation as a policeman and as a man, Encke quickly wrote and circulated a letter in which he condemned all talk of a counterputsch using riot brigades and assured the army of his loyalty “as a former officer of the imperial army.” Meanwhile, no less than sixteen KRIPO officials, among them four commissars, denounced Bernard Weiss for alleged improprieties in office. And I was summoned to the office of the new Berlin Police president, Dr. Kurt Melcher.

Melcher was a close associate of Dr. Franz Bracht, the former mayor of Essen and now deputy Reichskommissar of the Prussian government. Melcher was originally a lawyer, from Dortmund, and was the author of a well-known but turgidly written history of the Prussian police, which only made what happened next all the more remarkable. Ernst Gennat was present at my meeting with the new police president. So was the new deputy police president, Johann Mosle. But it was the fifty-four-year-old Melcher who did most of the talking. An obviously irascible man, he lost little time in coming to the point with the assistance of an accusatory and nicotine-stained forefinger.

“I will not have officers of the Berlin police force brawling with other policemen. Is that clear?”

“Yes, sir.”

“I’m sure you think you had a good reason but I don’t want to hear it. The political differences that have existed between various officers are now over. All disciplinary proceedings against officers with Nazi affiliations are to be dropped, and the ban on membership of the Nazi Party for officials in the service of the Prussian state is to be lifted. If you can’t live with these changes, then there’s no place for you in this force, Gunther.”

I was about to say that I’d been living and working with men who were openly Nazi for a while. But then I caught sight of Gennat. He closed his eyes and, almost imperceptibly, shook his head, as if counseling silence.

“Yes, sir.”

“There’s a greater enemy than Nazism abroad in this country. And this city in particular. Bolshevism and immorality. We’re going to go after the Communists. And we’re going to crack down on vice of all kinds. The meat-market shows are going to close. And the whores are going to be kicked off our streets.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And that’s not all. KRIPO is going to operate more like a team. There will be no more star detectives giving press conferences and getting their names in the newspapers.”

“What about police officers writing books, sir?” I asked. “Will that be permitted? I’ve always wanted to write a book.”

Melcher smiled a toadlike smile and leaned forward as if taking a closer look at some kind of grubby schoolboy.

“You know, it’s plain to see how you got those bruises on your face, Gunther. You’ve got a smart mouth. And I don’t like detectives who think they’re smart.”

“Surely there would be no point in employing stupid detectives, sir.”

“There’s smart and there’s smart, Gunther. And then there’s clever. The clever cop knows the difference. He knows when to shut his strudel hole and listen. He knows how to put his personal politics aside and get on with the job at hand. I’m not sure that you know how to do any of that, Gunther. I can’t see how else you ended up spending three days and nights in a Munich police cell. What the hell were you doing there, anyway?”

“I went there at the invitation of a brother police officer. To look at the case notes on a murder I’ve been investigating. The Anita Schwarz case. There were some striking similarities between that case and a murder they’d been investigating. I had hoped to find a new lead. But when I arrived in Munich, I discovered that this police officer, Commissar Herzefelde, a Jew, had been murdered.”

I used the word “brother” with emphasis, in an attempt to provoke Melcher into some sort of anti-Semitic outburst. I hadn’t forgotten Izzy Weiss and the lies that were now being spread about my old boss and friend.

“All right. What did you find out?”