City of Women (34 page)

A look, and then she removes the envelope’s contents and pauses. Another Reisepass. Lifting open the document’s linen facing, she is confronted by her own glum expression. “So. You
did
steal my card,” is all she says.

“I needed a photograph. And I knew you would never stand for one. So now, Frau Schröder, should you ever decide to take a holiday outside the borders of our Fatherland, you have the Reisepass necessary to satisfy the rubber-stamp brigades.”

“I see,” she says, and reinserts the booklet in the envelope, but as she does a small brass capsule tumbles out onto the table linen. “And what is this?”

Wolfram reaches over and picks it up in his fingers. “Remove the brass cap like this,” he instructs, exposing the tip of a tiny glass vial. “Insert the glass vial into the back of your mouth, and bite down. In case,” he tells her quietly, “you ever need to make a
different
decision.”

Sigrid gazes deeply at the vial as if gazing at a hole that has suddenly opened up in front of her. “Is it . . . Is it painful?”

“Painful?” he repeats. The muscle in the line of his jaw twitches lightly. “It’s instantaneous.” Slipping the brass cap back into place, he reinserts the capsule into the envelope. “Are you sure you won’t have that glass of Gilka now?”

“Wolfram, I think I may be under surveillance,” she says suddenly.

His response is unperturbed. “Yes, that’s right,” he nods. “One of the bloodhounds of the Burgstrasse Gestapo office has your scent in his nostrils. A Kommissar Lang, I think.”

Sigrid feels a jolt. “You mean you
know
this?”

“The Abwehr doesn’t exactly have a brotherly relationship with the Geheime Staatspolizei. But I try to keep a few of their number on our payroll. There’s a fellow named Rössner. Not so bad. He’s an old-time Kriminalpolizei bull, who thought the Gestapo would be good for his career. In any case, he’s been very cooperative.”

“
Cooperative
? I don’t understand what that means.”

“Keep an eye peeled for him. Medium height. Not much of a chin, but more off a belly. Ears stick out like a monkey’s. He favors a brown snap-brim fedora. You’ll spot him, I’m sure.”

“And he’s
watching
me?”

“Yes, but I pay him to have very poor eyesight. Also, he much prefers stopping off at the corner Kneipe for a short one to traipsing about town wearing out his shoe leather.”

She gazes at him with gratitude and regret. “Once again, you are my champion, Herr Leutnant,” she says.

But Wolfram only turns up his wrist to frown at his watch. “I must go,” he says. But outside, he turns to her. “Here, take this. It’s the key to the flat in the Askanischer Platz,” he tells her. “In the event that you have use of it.” The street is chilled by a sharp breeze.

“Yes. Thank you,” she tells him. “It could be handy.” And then she asks, “Will you kiss me?”

The gun sight. “Why?”

“Because I’m asking you to. Because I want you to.”

A small bob of his Adam’s apple and the gun sight lifts. He kisses her once, as if he might steal a breath from her, then breaks away. She watches him quick-march down the Ku’damm with his cane, as the clock in the Gedächtniskirche chimes the hour.

Two o’clock.

She must head for the zoo.

•   •   •

F
OR SEVERAL MINUTES
she pretends to be examining the posters placarding a
Litfass
column across the street. Paper drives are advertised. Clothing drives
. Get rid of old clothing and shoes!
A bloated toadlike face:
The Jew—The inciter of war, the prolonger of war,
the caption incites.

She is watching the street. Watching the pedestrians on the sidewalk. But there is no monkey-eared fellow with a big belly and wearing a snap-brim hat. So she crosses at the signal and enters the Zoologischer Garten through the Gartenufer gate. Passes the beaver dam, now vacant after bombing, as well as the rabbit hutches and the bear den. She has a memory of standing in front of the bear den, holding her mother’s hand, wondering if the huge brown sow, named Berlonia, frisking with her cubs, was really as hungry for bad little girls as her mother had always claimed. Now Berlonia, if it is still she, is alone. Her snout silver. She appears listless and apolitical. No matter, Sigrid is on the lookout for a different species of wild beast. For an instant, she thinks she sees him, prowling the path. But when she looks again, he is gone.

The Grosse Raubtierhaus is still intact. Still warm and smelling of animal needs. Animal hopes. She finds Ericha stationed in front of an enormous white Siberian tiger, pacing off the length of his cage. There are many words she could speak. Too many to actually fit into a workable sentence. So instead she simply asks. “Am I late?”

Gazing at the cage. “Yes.”

“I’m sorry,” she answers. Then her voice dips, and she pulls off her gloves. “There’s a man over there watching us.”

“Yes. He’s a friend. Call him Becker.”

“And what does he do, Herr Becker?”

“He says he once trafficked cocaine in Friedrichshain. Maybe that’s true. All I know is that he’s been expert at losing the Gestapo.”

Sigrid gives the man a glance. Tall, reedy, chinless. In his thirties, wearing a fur Alpiner on his head. He’s smoking while studying a racing form.

“I see,” Sigrid says, thoughtfully. “And where did you find a gentleman with such a skill?”

“You know the rules,” Ericha reminds her. Then, staring forward, she says, “I spoke to Rudi. He told me what happened in the street.”

“And what do you think it means?” Sigrid asks.

“I think it means Kozig panicked. He recognized Franz from the Grosse Hamburger Strasse and assumed the worst.”

“But that doesn’t explain how the Sipo came out of the woodwork.”

A shrug. “Maybe they thought they were onto something and were simply shadowing Franz to see what turned up.”

“There’s also another explanation.”

“That Franz betrayed us?”

“You think that’s impossible.”

“I think nothing is impossible. But it makes no difference now. Besides, he knew only so much.”

“He knew about
you
,” Sigrid points out.

“I’ve already switched to a different location. Even if the Gestapo
did
turn him, their information will be useless to them.”

“So. What next?’

“We continue as planned, what else?”

Sigrid takes a breath. She looks into the tiger’s face, and the tiger looks back. “I have something for you,” she tells the girl, and hands her the box. “But don’t read it until you have the necessary privacy.”

Ericha takes the box. Lifts the lid on it, then closes it again. “That’s quite a joke,” she says without smiling.

“Not mine. But appropriate, I think. It contains everything that’s required.”

“Everything that’s required,” she repeats vacantly, turning her attention toward the tiger. “Do you feel sympathy for him?”

“For the tiger?”

“For the tiger in a cage.” She gives a shallow sigh. “When I was a child, I thought I
was
a tiger. My mother assumed it was a game. That I was pretending. So at first she indulged me. Then she became frustrated when I wouldn’t stop. And then angry, I remember, when I refused to use a knife and fork at the table, because tigers ate with their paws and fangs. She exploded. It was the first time she struck me. The first time,” she says. “But not the last.” And then she stares into Sigrid’s face. And Sigrid sees the tiger in it.

“Ericha, you know I must ask you.”

“It was a trap,” Ericha announces, cutting her off.

Sigrid turns her head. “What?”

“The address on the cigarette card. That’s what you were going to ask about, correct? The abortionist? It was a trap. I spotted them as soon as I stepped off the tram. A pair of them in the front seat of a sedan, waiting.”

Sigrid is feeling an abyss open up in her. “You’re
sure
?”

“You think by now I can’t recognize the Sipo when I see them, Frau Schröder? I’m sure. Very sure. It was a black Mercedes 260D. The standard Gestapo hearse. I pretended to be waiting to catch a transfer just to see what would happen. Then there comes a woman, alone, going up the steps and through the door. They wait for a few minutes. Give her time to pay her money, I suppose. That must be part of the arrangement, so they can get their cut. Anyway, they wait for another moment, then out of the car they come. Tossing away their cigarette butts. Up the steps and through the door, too. I wait until I see them reverse the process, out of the door and down the steps, only now they have the woman between them in wrist manacles and she is sobbing. She collapses at the bottom of the steps, so they drag her on her knees into the rear of the car.”

“Ericha,”
Sigrid whispers, her eyes steaming.

“I don’t blame you,” Ericha says, staring back at the pacing tiger. “I don’t blame you,” she repeats. “I only,” she says, but then can’t say any more. The tears roll coldly down her cheeks, until Sigrid envelops her.

•   •   •

W
ALKING DOWN THE
T
AUENZIEN
S
TRASSE
, she keeps her arm clamped around Ericha’s shoulder. Becker is close behind, but, crossing at the light, she picks up something else behind them as well. A feeling. A presence. She risks a glance at the dusky shadows of pedestrians, head bent against the cold, and for an instant she catches him. Far back, but there.

“What is it?” Ericha asks.

“Nothing.”

“You’ve started walking faster. Is there trouble?”

“It’s nothing.”

“We should split up.”

“No. No, we’re not splitting up.” Hurrying Ericha down the steps to the U-Bahn platform, they catch a train as it is about to leave the station. The doors close. She searches the car and sees that Becker has made it aboard, standing, holding on to a handle, eyes still glued to his racing form. But no sign of Egon in pursuit of her.

“Where are we going?” Ericha whispers.

“Never mind,” Sigrid tells her. “You’ll find out.”

•   •   •

T
HE FLAT
in the Askanischer Platz is cold, and the air inside is stale. Sigrid turns on a lamp by the bed, illluminating the room’s drabness in the pale output of a wartime lightbulb. Without Wolfram in the bed, the place seems squalid. “Sit,” she commands Ericha, and sets about lighting the coke stove. It stinks of coal dust and sulfur but produces a few fingers of warmth. Ericha draws in a breath and holds it before finally exhaling.

“We’re getting them out,” the girl says, sluggishly crawling out of her coat. “The mother and her children.”

“When?”

“In three days.”

“And how will it happen?” Sigrid asks from the window, peering around the edge of the bulky blackout curtain.

“They’ll take the train to Dresden first, then from Dresden to Lübeck. It’s the longest way, but the cheapest. Also the safest. The Gestapo comb the express trains. Anyway, that’s how we have it arranged. I’ll meet them at the Nollendorfplatz, pass on their documents, and escort them to Anhalter Bahnhof. The intercity to Dresden leaves from platform B at five past two.”

“Then this spot is perfect. You can stay here till then,” Sigrid says. Down in the street, ghost lights illuminate the arches of the station’s façade. She tries to catch Egon’s figure in the settling twilight, but figures populating the Saarlandstrasse are no more than silhouettes. “I don’t see your man Becker,” she says.

“He’s out there,” Ericha assures her leadenly. “Whether you see him or not.”

“You should tell him to be on the lookout for a man with a brown snap-brim who has a pair of ears that stick out. He could be Gestapo.”

But Ericha says nothing in response to this. Only stares into the air.

“What time have you arranged to meet them?” Sigrid asks.

“What?”

“What time have you arranged to meet them? The woman and her children.”

“An hour before the train. But I should mention. There’s been an addition.”

“An
addition
?”

“Not another U-boat. Just a man who needs to get out of the country.”

Sigrid suddenly feels off kilter. “But we have no papers for an
addition
. No plans. No money for the passage . . .”

“He has his own resources. We are simply to transport him to Lübeck with our group and get him on the ship for Sweden.”

Sigrid narrows her eyes. “Say that again?”

“Why? I think you must have heard me.”

“Heard you, yes. But the way you put it: ‘We are simply to transport him’? Are you following
orders
?”

She frowns “No. Of course not orders. But I’ve made connections with another group. A better-funded group, with a much broader network. Not just in Berlin. We can increase our effectiveness tenfold if we work with them.”

“Work with or
for
them?”

“It’s cooperation.
Please
, Sigrid.”

“I don’t understand.”

“You don’t have to understand
,
”
the girl suddenly bites. Her eyes flash blankly, and then cool. “I’m sorry,” she offers. “I’m sorry, I just can’t answer questions. It
is
what it
is
,” she says. “Can you accept that?”

Sigrid looks into the girl’s face. She looks suddenly childlike.

“Yes,” Sigrid whispers. “Yes, of course I can. If that’s what you need me to do.” Ericha holds her gaze for an instant longer, then turns away.

“I’m very thirsty,” the girl says with a small swallow. “Do you think,” she asks, “that I could get a glass of water?”

“Water?” Sigrid repeats. Then stands quickly. “Yes. Yes, I’ll bring it to you.” She goes into the small kitchenette across from the bath. There’s a window over the sink and a large rip in the blackout curtain. As she fills a water glass from the tap, she can see a flicker of light down in the alleyway. A match touching a cigarette, which glows red and then vanishes.

Ericha accepts the water glass without words, and Sigrid watches her drain it in two long drinks, then takes away the emptied glass and sets it on the nightstand.

“You must rest,” Sigrid tells her. She expects resistance to this, but is surprised when Ericha slumps sideways on the mattress.