Garden of Beasts Read online

  "I don't mind it one bit, no, sir," Jesse Owens said. "Just, I'm always surprised people keep up so close with what I do. Just running and jumping. Haven't seen much of you on the trip, Paul."

  "I've been around," Paul said evasively. He wondered if Owens knew something about what'd happened to Heinsler. Had he overheard them? Or seen Paul grab the man on the top deck by the smokestack? But he decided the athlete would've been more troubled if that had been the case. It seemed he had something else in mind. Paul nodded toward the deck behind them. "This is the biggest damn gym I've ever seen. You like it?"

  "I'm glad for the chance to train but a track shouldn't move. And it definitely shouldn't rock up and down like we were doing a few days ago. Give me dirt or cinders any day."

  Paul said, "So. That's our boxer I was up against."

  "That's right. Nice fellow. I spoke to him some."

  "He's good," Paul said without much enthusiasm.

  "Seems to be," the runner said. It was clear he too knew boxing wasn't the strong suit of the American team but Owens wasn't inclined to criticize a fellow athlete. Paul had heard that the Negro was among the most genial of the Americans; he'd come in second in the most-popular-athlete-on-board contest last night, after Glenn Cunningham.

  "I'd offer you a ciggie..."

  Owens laughed. "Not for me."

  "I've pretty much given up offering butts and hits from my flask. You folks're too damn healthy."

  Another laugh. Then silence for a moment as the solid Negro looked out to sea. "Say, Paul. I got a question. You here officially?"

  "Officially?"

  "With the committee, I mean? Maybe like a guard?"

  "Me? Why do you say that?"

  "You sort of seemed like a, well, soldier or something. And then, the way you were fighting. You knew what you were doing."

  "I was in the War. That's probably what you noticed."

  "Maybe." Then Owens added, "Course that was twenty years ago. And those two fellows I've seen you talking with. They're navy. We heard 'em talking to one of the crew."

  Brother, another trail of clues.

  "Those two guys? Just bumped into 'em on board. I'm bumming a ride with you folks.... Doing some stories about sports, boxing in Berlin, the Games. I'm a writer."

  "Oh, sure." Owens nodded slowly. He seemed to debate for a moment. "Well, if you're a reporter, you still might know something 'bout what I was going to ask you. Just wondering if you heard anything about those two fellows?" He nodded at some men on the deck nearby, running in tandem, passing the relay baton. They were lightning fast.

  "Who're they?" Paul asked.

  "Sam Stoller and Marty Glickman. They're good runners, some of the best we've got. But I heard a rumor they might not run. Wondered if you knew anything about that."

  "Nope, nothing. You mean some qualification problem? Injury?"

  "I mean because they're Jewish."

  Paul shook his head. He recalled there was a controversy about Hitler not liking Jews. There was some protest and talk about moving the Olympics. Some people even wanted the U.S. team to boycott the Games. Damon Runyon had been all hot under the collar about the country even participating. But why would the American committee pull some athletes because they were Jewish? "That'd be a bum deal. Doesn't seem right by a long shot."

  "No, sir. Anyway, I was just thinking maybe you'd heard something."

  "Sorry, can't help you, friend," Paul said.

  They were joined by another Negro. Ralph Metcalfe introduced himself. Paul knew about him too. He'd won medals in the Los Angeles Olympics in '32.

  Owens noticed Vince Manielli looking down at them from an upper deck. The lieutenant nodded and started for the stairs.

  "Here comes your buddy. That you just met on board." Owens had a sly grin on his face, not completely convinced that Paul'd been on the level. The Negro's eyes looked forward, at the growing strip of land. "Imagine that. We're almost in Germany. Never thought I'd be traveling like this. Life can be a pretty amazing thing, don't you think?"

  "That it can," Paul agreed.

  The runners said good-bye and jogged off.

  "Was that Owens?" Manielli asked, walking up and leaning against the railing. He turned his back to the wind and rolled a cigarette.

  "Yep." Paul pulled a Chesterfield out of a pack, lit it in cupped hands and offered the matches to the lieutenant. He too lit up. "Nice man."

  Though a little too sharp, Paul thought.

  "Damn, that man can run. What'd he say?"

  "We were just shooting the breeze." In a whisper: "What's the situation with our friend down below?"

  "Avery's handling it," Manielli said ambiguously. "He's in the radio room. Be here in a minute." A plane flew overhead, low. They watched it for several minutes in silence.

  The kid still seemed shaken by the suicide. Not in the same way Paul was, though: because the death told him something troubling about the people he was going up against. No, the sailor was upset because he'd just seen death up close--and for the first time, it was pretty clear. Paul knew there were two kinds of punks. They both talked loud and they both blustered and they both had strong arms and big fists. But one kind would leap for the chance to give knuckle and take it--touching the ice--and the other wouldn't. It was the second category that Vince Manielli fell into. He was really just a good boy from the neighborhood. He liked to sling out words like "button man" and "knock off" to show he knew what they meant, but he was as far from Paul's world, though, as Marion was--Marion, the good girl who flirted with bad.

  But, like the mob boss Lucky Luciano had once told him, "Flirting ain't fucking."

  Manielli seemed to be waiting for Paul to comment on the dead sap, Heinsler. Something about the guy deserving to die. Or that he was nuts in the head. People always wanted to hear that about somebody who died. That it was their own fault or they deserved it or it was inevitable. But death is never symmetrical and tidy, and the button man had nothing to say. A thick silence filled the space between them and a moment later Andrew Avery joined them. He was carrying a folder of papers and an old battered leather briefcase. He looked around. There was no one within earshot. "Pull up a chair."

  Paul found a heavy wooden white deck chair and carried it over to the sailors. He didn't need to carry it in one hand, would've been easier in two, but he liked seeing Manielli's blink when he hefted the furniture and swung it over without a grunt. Paul sat down.

  "Here's the wire," the lieutenant whispered. "The commander's not so worried about this Heinsler guy. The Allocchio Bacchini's a small wireless; it's made for fieldwork and airplanes, short range. And even if he got a message off, Berlin probably wouldn't pay it much attention. The bund's an embarrassment to them. But Gordon said it's up to you. If you want out, that's okay."

  "But no get-out-of-jail card," Paul said.

  "No card," Avery said.

  "This deal just keeps getting sweeter and sweeter." The button man gave a sour laugh.

  "You're still in?"

  "I'm in, yeah." A nod toward the deck below. "What'll happen to the body?"

  "After everybody disembarks, some marines from the Hamburg consulate'll come on board and take care of it." Then Avery leaned forward and said in a low voice, "Okay, here's what's going to happen about your mission, Paul. After we dock, you get off and Vince and I'll take care of the situation with Heinsler. Then we're going on to Amsterdam. You stay with the team. There'll be a brief ceremony in Hamburg and then everybody takes the train to Berlin. The athletes'll have another ceremony tonight but you go straight to the Olympic Village and stay out of sight. Tomorrow morning take a bus to the Tiergarten--that's the Central Park of Berlin." He handed the briefcase to Paul. "Take this with you."

  "What is it?"

  "It's part of your cover. Press pass. Paper, pencils. A lot of background about the Games and the city. A guide to the Olympic Village. Articles, clippings, sports statistics. The sort of stuff a writer'd have. You don't need to look at
it now."

  But Paul opened the case and spent some minutes looking carefully, going through the contents. The pass, Avery assured him, was authentic and he could spot nothing suspicious about the other materials.

  "You don't trust anybody, do you?" Manielli asked.

  Thinking it'd be fun to sock the punk once, really hard, Paul clicked the briefcase closed and looked up. "What about my other passport, the Russian one?"

  "Our man'll give that to you there. He's got a forger who's an expert with European documents. Now, tomorrow, make sure you have the satchel with you. It's how he'll recognize you." He unfurled a colorful map of Berlin and traced a route. "Get off here and go this way. Make your way to a cafe called the Bierhaus."

  Avery looked at Paul, who was staring at the map. "You can take it with you. You don't have to memorize it."

  But Paul shook his head. "Maps tell people where you've been or where you're going. And looking at one on the street draws everybody's attention to you. If you're lost, better just to ask directions. That way only one person knows you're a stranger, not a whole crowd."

  Avery lifted an eyebrow, and even Manielli couldn't find anything to razz him about on this point.

  "Near the cafe there's an alley. Dresden Alley."

  "It'll have a name?"

  "In Germany the alleys have names. Some of them do. It's a shortcut. Doesn't matter where to. At noon walk into it and stop, like you're lost. Our man'll come up to you. He's the guy the Senator was telling you about. Reginald Morgan. Reggie."

  "Describe him."

  "Short. Mustache. Darkish hair. He'll be speaking German. He'll strike up a conversation. At some point you ask, 'What's the best tram to take to get to Alexanderplatz?' And he'll say, 'The number one thirty-eight tram.' Then he'll pause and correct himself and say, 'No, the two fifty-four is better.' You'll know it's him because those aren't real tram numbers."

  "You look like this's funny," Manielli added.

  "It's right out of Dashiell Hammett. The Continental Op. "

  "This ain't a game."

  No, it wasn't, and he didn't think the passwords were funny. But it was unsettling, all this intrigue stuff. And he knew why: because it meant he was relying on other people. Paul Schumann hated to do that.

  "All right. Alexanderplatz. Trams one thirty-eight, two fifty-four. What if he flubs the tram story? It's not him?"

  "I'm getting to that. If something seems fishy, what you do is you don't hit him, you don't make a scene. Just smile and walk away as casually as you can and go to this address."

  Avery gave him a slip of paper with a street name and number on it. Paul memorized it and handed the paper back. The lieutenant gave him a key, which he pocketed. "There's an old palace just south of Brandenburg Gate. It was going to be the new U.S. embassy but there was a bad fire about five years ago and they're still repairing it; the diplomats haven't moved in. So the French, Germans and British don't bother to snoop around the place. But we've got a couple of rooms there we use from time to time. There's a wireless in the storeroom next to the kitchen. You can radio us in Amsterdam and we'll place a call to Commander Gordon. He and the Senator'll decide what to do next. But if everything's silk, Morgan'll take care of you. Get you into the boardinghouse, find you a weapon and get all the information you need on the... the man you're going to visit."

  We people say touch-off...

  "And remember," Manielli was pleased to announce, "you don't show up in Dresden Alley tomorrow or you give Morgan the slip later, he calls us and we make sure the police come down on you like a ton of bricks."

  Paul said nothing and let the boy have his bluster. He could tell Manielli was embarrassed about his reaction to Heinsler's suicide and he needed to jerk some leash. But in fact there was no possibility that Paul was going to lam off. Bull Gordon was right; button men never got a second chance like he was being given--and a pile of dough that would let him make the most of it.

  Then the men fell silent. There was nothing more to say. Sounds filled the damp, pungent air around them: the wind, the shusssh of the waves, the baritone grind of the Manhattan 's engines--a blend of tones that he found oddly comforting, despite Heinsler's suicide and the arduous mission that lay ahead. Finally the sailors went below.

  Paul rose, lit another cigarette and leaned against the railing once more as the huge ship eased into the harbor in Hamburg, his thoughts wholly focused on Colonel Reinhard Ernst, a man whose ultimate importance, to Paul Schumann, had little to do with his potential threat to peace in Europe and to so many innocent lives but could be found in the fact that he was the last person that the button man would ever kill.

  Several hours after the Manhattan docked and the athletes and their entourage had disembarked, a young crewman from the ship exited German passport control and began wandering through the streets of Hamburg.

  He wouldn't have much time ashore--being so junior, he had a leave of only six hours--but he'd spent all his life on American soil and was bound and determined to enjoy his first visit to a foreign country.

  The scrubbed, rosy-cheeked assistant kitchen mate supposed there were probably some swell museums in town. Maybe some all-right churches too. He had his Kodak with him and was planning to ask locals to take some snapshots of him in front of them for his ma and pa. ("Bitte, das Foto?" he'd been rehearsing.) Not to mention beer halls and taverns... and who knew what else he might find for diversion in an exotic port city?

  But before he could sample some local culture he had an errand to complete. He'd been concerned that this chore would eat into his precious time ashore but as it turned out he was wrong. Only a few minutes after leaving the customs hall, he found exactly what he was looking for.

  The mate walked up to a middle-aged man in a green uniform and a black-and-green hat. He tried out his German. "Bitte..."

  "Ja, mein Herr?"

  Squinting, the mate blundered on, "Bitte, du bist ein Polizist, uhm, or a Soldat? "

  The officer smiled and said in English, "Yes, yes, I am a policeman. And I was a soldier. What can I help you for?"

  Nodding down the street, the kitchen mate said, "I found this on the ground." He handed the man a white envelope. "Isn't that the word for 'important'?" He pointed to the letters on the front: Bedeutend. "I wanted to make sure it got turned in."

  Staring at the front of the envelope, the policeman didn't respond for a moment. Then he said, "Yes, yes. 'Important.'" The other words written on the front were Fur Obersturmfuhrer-SS, Hamburg. The mate had no idea what this meant but it seemed to trouble the policeman.

  "Where was this falling?" the policeman asked.

  "It was on the sidewalk there."

  "Good. You are thanked." The officer continued to look at the sealed envelope. He turned it over in his hand. "You were seeing perhaps who dropped it?"

  "Nope. Just saw it there and thought I'd be a Good Samaritan."

  "Ach, yes, Samaritan."

  "Well, I better scram," the American said. "So long."

  "Danke," the policeman said absently.

  As he headed back toward one of the more intriguing tourist sites he'd passed, the young man was wondering what exactly the envelope contained. And why the man he'd met on the Manhattan, the porter Al Heinsler, had asked him last night to deliver it to a local policeman or soldier after the ship docked. The fellow was a little nuts, everybody agreed, the way everything in his cabin was perfectly ordered and clean, nothing out of line, his clothes pressed all the time. The way he kept to himself, the way he got all wet-eyed talking about Germany.

  "Sure, what is it?" the mate had asked.

  "There was a passenger on board who seemed a little fishy. I'm letting the Germans know about him. I'm going to try to send a wireless message but sometimes they don't go through. I want to make sure the authorities get it."

  "Who's the passenger? Oh, hold up, I know--that fat guy in the checkered suit, the one who passed out drunk at the captain's table."

  "No, it was some
body else."

  "Why not go to the sergeant-at-arms on board?"

  "It's a German matter."

  "Oh. And you can't deliver it?"

  Heinsler had folded his pudgy hands together in a creepy way and shook his head. "I don't know how busy I'll be. I heard you had leave. It's real important the Germans get it."

  "Well, I guess, sure."

  Heinsler had added in a soft voice, "One other thing: It'd be better to say you found the letter. Otherwise they might take you into the station and question you. That could take hours. It could use up all your shore leave."

  The young mate had felt a little uneasy at this intrigue.

  Heinsler had picked up on that and added quickly, "Here's a twenty."

  Jesus, Mary and Joseph, the man had thought, and told the porter, "You just bought yourself a special delivery."

  Now, as he walked away from the policeman and headed back toward the waterfront, he wondered absently what had happened to Heinsler. The young man hadn't seen him since last night. But thoughts about the porter vanished quickly as the mate approached the venue he'd spotted, the one that seemed like a perfect choice for his first taste of German culture. He was, however, disappointed to find that Rosa's Hot Kitten Club--the enticing name conveniently spelled in English--was permanently closed, just like every other such attraction on the waterfront.

  So, the mate thought with a sigh, looks like it'll be churches and museums after all.

  Chapter Four

  He awoke to the sound of a hazel grouse fluttering into the sky from the gooseberry bushes just outside the bedroom window of his home in suburban Charlottenburg. He awoke to the smell of magnolia.

  He awoke to the touch of the infamous Berlin wind, which, according to young men and old housewives, was infused with an alkaline dust that aroused earthy desires.

  Whether it was the magic air, or being a man of a certain age, Reinhard Ernst found himself picturing his attractive, brunette wife of twenty-eight years, Gertrud. He rolled over to face her. And he found himself looking at the empty indentation in their down bed. He could not help but smile. He was forever exhausted in the evenings, after working sixteen-hour days, and she always rose early because it was her nature. Lately they had rarely even shared so much as a word or two in bed.