Garden of Beasts: A Novel of Berlin 1936 Read online

  The lieutenant said, “We’ll have a plane and a crew waiting in Holland. There’s an old aerodrome outside of Berlin. After you’ve finished we’ll fly you out from there.”

  “Fly me out?” Paul asked, intrigued. Flying fascinated him. When he was nine he broke his arm—the first of more times than he wanted to count—when he built a glider and launched himself off the roof of his father’s printing plant, crash-landing on the filthy cobblestones two stories below.

  “That’s right, Paul,” Gordon said.

  Avery offered, “You like airplanes, don’t you? You’ve got all those airplane magazines in your apartment. Books too. And pictures of planes. Some models too. You make those yourself?”

  Paul felt embarrassed. It made him angry that they’d found his toys.

  “You a pilot?” the Senator asked.

  “Never even been in a plane before.” Then he shook his head. “I don’t know.” This whole thing was absolutely nuts. Silence filled the room.

  It was broken by the man in the wrinkled white suit. “I was a colonel in the War too. Just like Reinhard Ernst. And I was at Argonne Woods. Just like you.”

  Paul nodded.

  “You know the total?”

  “Of what?”

  “How many we lost?”

  Paul remembered a sea of bodies, American, French and German. The wounded were in some ways more horrible. They cried and wailed and moaned and called for their mothers and fathers and you never forgot that sound. Ever.

  The older man said in a reverent voice, “The AEF lost more than twenty-five thousand. Almost a hundred wounded. Half the boys under my command died. In a month we advanced seven miles against the enemy. Every day of my life I’ve thought about those numbers. Half my soldiers, seven miles. And Meuse-Argonne was our most spectacular victory in the War. . . . I do not want that to happen again.”

  Paul regarded him. “Who are you?” he asked again.

  The Senator stirred and began to speak but the other man replied, “I’m Cyrus Clayborn.”

  Yeah, that was it. Brother . . . The old guy was the head of Continental Telephone and Telegraph—a real honest-to-God millionaire, even now, in the shadow of the Depression.

  The man continued. “Daddy Warbucks, like I was saying. I’m the banker. For, let’s say, projects like this it’s usually better for the money not to come out of public troughs. I’m too old to fight for my country. But I do what I can. That satisfy your itch, boy?”

  “Yeah, it does.”

  “Good.” Clayborn looked him over. “Well, I’ve got one more thing to say. The money they mentioned before? The amount?”

  Paul nodded.

  “Double it.”

  Paul felt his skin crackle. Ten thousand dollars? He couldn’t imagine it.

  Gordon’s head slowly turned toward the Senator. This, Paul understood, wasn’t part of the script.

  “Would you give me cash? Not a check.”

  For some reason the Senator and Clayborn laughed hard at this. “Whatever you want, sure,” the industrialist said.

  The Senator pulled a phone closer to him and tapped the hand piece. “So, what’s it going to be, son? We get on the horn to Dewey, or not?”

  The rasp of a match broke the silence as Gordon lit a cigarette. “Think about it, Paul. We’re giving you the chance to erase the past. Start all over again. What kind of button man gets that kind of deal?”

  II

  THE CITY OF WHISPERS

  FRIDAY, 24 JULY, 1936

  Chapter Three

  Finally, the man could do what he’d come here for.

  It was six in the morning and the ship in whose pungent third-class corridor he now stood, the S.S. Manhattan, was nosing toward Hamburg harbor, ten days after leaving New York.

  The vessel was, literally, the flagship of the United States Lines—the first in the company’s fleet constructed exclusively for passengers. It was huge—over two football fields in length—but this voyage had been especially crowded. Typical transatlantic crossings found the ship carrying six hundred or so passengers and a crew of five hundred. On this trip, though, nearly four hundred Olympic athletes, managers and coaches and another 850 passengers, mostly family, friends, the press and members of the AOC, filled the three classes of accommodations.

  The number of passengers and the unusual requirements of the athletes and reporters on board the Manhattan had made life hectic for the diligent, polite crew, but particularly so for this round, bald man, whose name was Albert Heinsler. Certainly his job as a porter meant long and strenuous hours. But the most arduous aspect of his day was due to his true role on board the ship, one that not a single soul here knew anything about. Heinsler called himself an A-man, which is how the Nazi intelligence service referred to their trusted operatives in Germany—their Agenten.

  In fact, this reclusive thirty-four-year-old bachelor was merely a member of the German-American Bund, a group of ragtag, pro-Hitler Americans loosely allied with the Christian Front in their stand against Jews, Communists and Negroes. Heinsler didn’t hate America but he could never forget the terrible days as a teenager when his family had been driven to poverty during the War because of anti-German prejudice; he himself had been relentlessly taunted—“Heinie, Heinie, Heinie the Hun”—and beaten up countless times in school yards and alleys.

  No, he didn’t hate his country. But he loved Nazi Germany with all his heart and was enraptured with the messiah Adolf Hitler. He’d make any sacrifice for the man—prison or even death if necessary.

  Heinsler had hardly believed his good fortune when the commanding Stormtrooper at the New Jersey headquarters of the bund had noted the loyal comrade’s past employment as a bookkeeper on board some passenger liners and had arranged to get him a job on the Manhattan. The brown-uniformed commandant had met him on the boardwalk at Atlantic City and explained that while the Nazis were magnanimously welcoming people from around the world they were worried about security breaches that the influx of athletes and visitors might allow. Heinsler’s duty was to be the Nazis’ clandestine representative on this ship. He wouldn’t be doing his past job, though—keeping ledgers. It was important that he be free to roam the ship without suspicion; he’d be a porter.

  Why, this was the thrill of his life! He immediately quit his job working in the back room of a certified public accountant on lower Broadway. He spent the next few days, until the ship sailed, being his typically obsessed self, preparing for his mission as he worked through the night to study diagrams of the ship, practice his role as a porter, brush up on his German and learn a variation of Morse code, called continental code, which was used when telegraphing messages to and within Europe.

  Once the ship left port he kept to himself, observed and listened and was the perfect A-man. But when the Manhattan was at sea, he’d been unable to communicate with Germany; the signal of his portable wireless was too weak. The ship itself had a powerful radiogram system, of course, as well as short- and long-wave wireless, but he could hardly transmit his message those ways; a crew radio operator would be involved, and it was vital that nobody heard or saw what he had to say.

  Heinsler now glanced out the porthole at the gray strip of Germany. Yes, he believed he was close enough to shore to transmit. He stepped into his minuscule cabin and retrieved the Allocchio Bacchini wireless-telegraph set from under his cot. Then he started toward the stairs that would take him to the highest deck, where he hoped the puny signal would make it to shore.

  As he walked down the narrow corridor, he mentally reviewed his message once again. One thing he regretted was that, although he wanted to include his name and affiliation, he couldn’t do so. Even though Hitler privately admired what the German-American Bund was doing, the group was so rabidly—and loudly—anti-Semitic that the Führer had been forced to publicly disavow it. Heinsler’s words would be ignored if he included any reference to the American group.

  And this particular message could most certainly not be ignored.

  For the Obersturmführer-SS, Hamburg: I am a devoted National Socialist. Have overheard that a man with a Russian connection intends to cause some damage at high levels in Berlin in the next few days. Have not learned his identity yet but will continue to look into this matter and hope to send that information soon.

  • • •

  He was alive when he sparred.

  There was no feeling like this. Dancing in the snug leather shoes, muscles warm, skin both cool from sweat and hot from blood, the dynamo hum of your body in constant motion. The pain too. Paul Schumann believed you could learn a lot from pain. That really was the whole point of it, after all.

  But mostly he liked sparring because, like boxing itself, success or failure rested solely on his own broad and slightly scarred shoulders and was due to his deft feet and powerful hands and his mind. In boxing, it’s only you against the other guy, no teammates. If you get beat, it’s because he’s better than you. Plain and simple. And the credit’s yours if you win—because you did the jump rope, you laid off the booze and cigarettes, you thought for hours and hours and hours about how to get under his guard, about what his weaknesses were. There’s luck at Ebbets Field and Yankee Stadium. But there’s no luck in the boxing ring.

  He was now dancing over the ring that had been set up on the main deck of the Manhattan; the whole ship had been turned into a floating gymnasium for training. One of the Olympic boxers had seen him working out at the punching bag last night and asked if he wanted to do some sparring this morning before the ship docked. Paul had immediately agreed.

  He now dodged a few left jabs and connected with his signature right, drawing a surprised blink from his opponent. Then Paul took a hard blow to the gut before getting his guard up again. He was a little stiff at firs
t—he hadn’t been in a ring for a while—but he’d had this smart, young sports doctor on board, a fellow named Joel Koslow, look him over and tell him he could go head-to-head with a boxer half his age. “I’d keep it to two or three rounds, though,” the doc had added with a smile. “These youngsters’re strong. They pack a wallop.”

  Which was sure true. But Paul didn’t mind. The harder the workout the better, in fact, because—like the shadow-boxing and jump rope he’d done every day on board—this session was helping him stay in shape for what lay ahead in Berlin.

  Paul sparred two or three times a week. He was in some demand as a sparring partner even though he was forty-one, because he was a walking lesson book of boxing techniques. He’d spar anywhere, in Brooklyn gyms, in outdoor rings at Coney Island, even in serious venues. Damon Runyon was one of the founders of the Twentieth Century Sporting Club—along with the legendary promoter Mike Jacobs and a few other newspapermen—and he’d gotten Paul into New York’s Hippodrome itself to work out. Once or twice he’d actually gone glove to glove with some of the greats. He’d spar at his own gym too, in the little building near the West Side docks. Yeah, Avery, it’s not so swank, but the dingy, musty place was a sanctuary, as far as Paul was concerned, and Sorry Williams, who lived in the back room, always kept the place neat and had ice, towels and beer handy.

  The kid now feinted but Paul knew immediately where the jab was coming from and blocked it then laid a solid blow on the chest. He missed the next block, though, and felt the leather take him solidly on the jaw. He danced out of the man’s reach before the follow-through connected and they circled once more.

  As they moved over the canvas Paul noted that the boy was strong and fast, but he couldn’t detach himself from his opponent. He’d get overwhelmed with a lust to win. Well, you needed desire, of course, but more important was calmly observing how the other guy moved, looking for clues as to what he was going to do next. This detachment was absolutely vital in being a great boxer.

  And it was vital for a button man too.

  He called it touching the ice.

  Several years ago, sitting in Hanrahan’s gin mill on Forty-eighth Street, Paul was nursing a painful shiner, courtesy of Beavo Wayne, who couldn’t hit a midsection to save his soul but, Lord above, could he open eyebrows. As Paul pressed a piece of cheap beefsteak to his face, a huge Negro pushed through the door, making the daily delivery of ice. Most icemen used tongs and carried the blocks on their back. But this guy carried it in his hands. No gloves even. Paul watched him walk behind the bar and set the block in the trough.

  “Hey,” Paul’d asked him. “You chip me off some of that?”

  The man looked at the purple blotch around Paul’s eye and laughed. He pulled an ice pick out of a holster and chipped off a piece, which Paul wrapped in a napkin and held to his face. He slid a dime to the deliveryman, who said, “Thanks fo’ that.”

  “Let me ask,” Paul said. “How come you can carry that ice? Doesn’t it hurt?”

  “Oh, look here.” He held up his large hands. The palms were scar tissue, as smooth and pale as the parchment paper that Paul’s father had used when printing fancy invitations.

  The Negro explained, “Ice can burn you too, juss like fire. Like leavin’ a scar. I been touchin’ ice fo’ so long I ain’t got no feelin’ left.”

  Touching the ice . . .

  That phrase stuck with Paul. It was, he realized, exactly what happened when he was on a job. There’s ice within all of us, he believed. We can choose to grip it or not.

  Now, in this improbable gymnasium, thousands of miles from home, Paul felt some of this same numbness as he lost himself in the choreography of the sparring match. Leather met leather and leather met skin, and even in the cool air of dawn at sea these two men sweated hard as they circled, looking for weaknesses, sensing strengths. Sometimes connecting, sometimes not. But always vigilant.

  There’s no luck in the boxing ring. . . .

  • • •

  Albert Heinsler perched beside a smokestack on one of the high decks of the Manhattan and hooked the battery to the wireless set. He took out the tiny black-and-brown telegraph key and mounted it to the top of the unit.

  He was slightly troubled to be using an Italian transmitter—he thought Mussolini treated the Führer with disrespect—but this was mere sentiment; he knew that the Allocchio Bacchini was one of the best portable transmitters in the world.

  As the tubes warmed up he tried the key, dot dash, dot dash. His compulsive nature had driven him to practice for hours on end. He’d timed himself just before the ship sailed; he could send a message of this length in under two minutes.

  Staring at the nearing shore, Heinsler inhaled deeply. It felt good to be up here, on the higher deck. While he hadn’t been condemned to his cabin, retching and moaning like hundreds of the passengers and even some crew, he hated the claustrophobia of being below. His past career as shipboard bookkeeper had had more status than the job of porter and he’d had a larger cabin on a high deck. But no matter—the honor of helping his surrogate country outweighed any discomfort.

  Finally a light glowed on the face plate of the radio unit. He bent forward, adjusted two of the dials and slipped his finger onto the tiny Bakelite key. He began transmitting the message, which he translated into German as he keyed.

  Dot dot dash dot . . . dot dot dash . . . dot dash dot . . . dash dash dash . . . dash dot dot dot . . . dot . . . dot dash dot . . .

  Für Ober—

  He got no further than this.

  Heinsler gasped as a hand grabbed his collar from behind and pulled him backward. Off balance, he cried out and fell to the smooth oak deck.

  “No, no, don’t hurt me!” He started to rise to his feet but the large, grim-faced man, wearing a boxing outfit, drew back a huge fist and shook his head.

  “Don’t move.”

  Heinsler sank back to the deck, shivering.

  Heinie, Heinie, Heinie the Hun . . .

  The boxer reached forward and ripped the battery wires off the unit. “Downstairs,” he said, gathering up the transmitter. “Now.” And he yanked the A-man to his feet.

  • • •

  “What’re you up to?”

  “Go to hell,” the balding man said, though with a quavering voice that belied his words.

  They were in Paul’s cabin. The transmitter, battery and the contents of the man’s pockets were strewn on the narrow cot. Paul repeated his question, adding an ominous growl this time. “Tell me—”

  A pounding on the cabin door. Paul stepped forward, cocked his fist and opened the door. Vince Manielli pushed inside.

  “I got your message. What the hell is—?” He fell silent, staring at their prisoner.

  Paul handed him the wallet. “Albert Heinsler, German-American Bund.”

  “Oh, Christ . . . Not the bund.”

  “He had that.” A nod at the wireless telegraph.

  “He was spying on us?”

  “I don’t know. But he was just about to transmit something.”

  “How’d you tip to him?”

  “Call it a hunch.”

  Paul didn’t tell Manielli that, while he trusted Gordon and his boys up to a point, he didn’t know how careless they might be at this sort of game; they could’ve been leaving behind a trail of clues a mile wide—notes about the ship, careless words about Malone or another touch-off, even references to Paul himself. He hadn’t thought there was much of a risk from the Nazis; he was more concerned that word might get to some of his old enemies in Brooklyn or Jersey that he was on the ship, and he wanted to be prepared. So he’d dipped into his own pocket just after they’d left port and slipped a senior mate a C-note, asking him to find out about any crew members who were strangers to the regular crew, kept to themselves, were asking unusual questions. Any passengers too who seemed suspicious.

  A hundred dollars buys a hell of a lot of detective work but throughout the voyage the mate had heard of nothing—until this morning, when he’d interrupted Paul’s sparring match with the Olympian to tell him that some of the crew had been talking about this porter, Heinsler. He was always skulking around, never spent time with fellow crew members and—weirdest of all—would start spouting hooey about the Nazis and Hitler at the drop of a hat.