Private Berlin (9 page)

THE NIGHTCLUB CABARET was empty and dark except for a few workers and a man in a leotard on stage practicing a dance routine in time to an amplified
tune that Jack Morgan could not place.

Cabaret’s décor was over-the-top lavish with velvet booths and crystal chandeliers and a booming sound system.

Morgan took one look and wanted to leave for Ahrensfelde. He’d just heard from Burkhart about Mattie’s discovery of Chris’s
body, the mass grave, and the destruction of the slaughterhouse.

But Burkhart had assured him they were fine, and there was little Morgan could do there because the federal police had taken
over the investigation. He’d reluctantly decided to continue pursuing the Cassiano angle.

A burly, big-necked man stocking the bar regarded Morgan and Brecht suspiciously and asked them what they wanted. Brecht showed
him his Private badge, introduced Morgan, and asked for Maxim Pavel.

The bartender, a Russian, seemed amused and switched to stilted English, addressing Morgan: “You have office in Moscow, Mr.
Private?”

“We do,” Morgan replied.

The bartender grinned, revealing a missing tooth. He nodded at Brecht. “Good think you put this bloodsucker in Berlin. He
wouldn’t last ten minutes in Russia. They’d put a stake through his heart.”

Without a change in expression, Brecht showed his canine teeth, and said, “I bite guys like you in the neck.”

The bartender snarled at Brecht, “Get out of here before I call police or throw you in the sun.”

“Not before we talk with Pavel,” Brecht said.

“He’s not—”

“I am Pavel,” said a voice behind them.

Morgan turned to find a man coming at him from the main entrance, removing a raincoat and setting it on a chair. Pavel was
a fit, handsome man whose age was hard to peg; his skin was so taut Morgan believed he’d had plastic surgery at some point.

“What do you want?” Pavel demanded.

“We’re with Private,” Morgan said.

“Getting to be a regular thing with you guys.”

“Chris Schneider came to visit you last week?”

“That’s right,” Pavel said. “Why?”

Morgan said, “Soon after he came to see you, he was murdered and dumped in a rat-infested slaughterhouse that blew up about
two hours ago, almost killing two more of my agents.”

That threw Pavel and he shrank a little. “Blown up? Schneider’s dead?”

“Uh-huh,” Brecht said. “Where you been this morning?”

“Driving in the countryside,” Pavel said. “It calms me.”

“Anyone able to vouch for that?”

“I’m sure if a real police officer asked I could find someone.”

Morgan said, “Did Schneider ask you about Cassiano?”

“I told him that I met Cassiano once at Dance, another of my clubs.”

“No other contact?” Morgan asked.

“Other than what I see on television, no,” Pavel replied.

“What about his wife, Perfecta?” Morgan asked. “You ever met her?”

The nightclub owner hesitated, but then said, “Once. That same night.”

“So they were together?” Brecht asked.

“That’s right,” Pavel said. “A handsome couple. But now I have to oversee rehearsal and attend to other business before tonight’s
show.”

Brecht made to protest, but Morgan stopped him. “We appreciate your time, Herr Pavel.”

Pavel studied Morgan before smiling broadly. “You come back and see the show, Mr. Morgan. It’s on me.”

Morgan smiled coldly. “Drag queens aren’t my thing.”

“Cabaret is so much more than that,” Pavel said, not missing a beat. “The costumes, the makeup, the talent. It’s a great art
form.”

“I’ll be in touch if I have a change of heart.”

Outside the club, the rain had slowed to a drizzle.

Brecht said, “Somebody’s lying to us, Jack.”

Morgan nodded. “I know.”

AN HOUR LATER, Agnes Krüger exuded an almost regal bearing as she sat in the drawing room of her lavish townhome on Fasanenstrasse in the
elite Wilmersdorf district of Berlin, and listened to Mattie Engel and Katharina Doruk give an account of her husband’s extracurricular
activities.

“Three mistresses?” the billionaire’s wife said at last in a voice like an ill-tuned piano string. “And two prostitutes a
day, you say?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Katharina said. “I’m sorry.”

There was a long silence. Mattie sat numbly on a plush couch, wanting to feel sorry for the woman, but all she could think
of was how she was ever going to tell Niklas that the only man who’d ever been solidly in his life was gone.

She and Burkhart had left the explosion scene while journalists and federal agents swarmed the area. They returned to the
office where she’d met Katharina, who had told her to go home, but Mattie refused, saying she could not face Niklas yet.

Katharina had decided to keep Chris’s appointment with Krüger’s wife. Mattie could not bear sitting still, so she’d showered
and changed in Private Berlin’s locker room, and gone along.

But now she just wanted to go home, hold Niklas, and Socrates, and cry.

“It is hard,” Agnes Krüger said, breaking the silence, and then coughing. “It is hard to learn that you do not satisfy your
husband in any way, shape, or form. Do you have names? The mistresses? Their phone numbers, addresses?”

Katharina looked pained. “We do, but—”

“What’re you gonna do, Mother?” a snide male voice said, cutting her off. “Buy them off? Cover up for him again?”

The billionaire’s wife reacted as if she’d been slapped.

Mattie startled and looked over to see a gaunt young man with grungy clothes and a scruffy beard. He was peering into the
drawing room from the hallway.

Agnes Krüger’s chin rose as if in defiance. “My son, Rudy.”

“The name’s Rude, Mother.”

“This is not the time.”

“Sounds like it is,” her son said, strolling in and taking a seat. He nodded to Mattie and Katharina. “Go on. I’d like to
hear just what old stepdad’s been up to.”

The billionaire’s wife sat even more erect in her chair.

Mattie and Katharina said nothing.

Rudy Krüger snorted. “You know what? I don’t need to know the details. I know all about Hermann. Except for his money, and
his business, his art collection and the cars, he only has one other dimension. Stepdad’s a goat, driven by his prick and
balls. And those women? They’re just holes. Even mother is a hole, a hole who completed Hermann’s façade of respectability.”

Agnes Krüger’s façade broke into rage. “Enough!” she shouted at him. “Go back to that hell
hole
you prefer to my house! Get out!”

Her son smiled and stood. “I know what you’re going to do, Mother. You’re going to figure out a way to sweep it under the
rug, and you know why?”

Agnes Krüger said nothing. She just glared at Rudy.

“Because of the money,” he told Mattie and Katharina. “With my mother and stepfather it’s always about the money.”

JACK MORGAN AND Daniel Brecht sat at the window table in a café diagonally across the street from Cabaret, debating why Cassiano would claim
he met Pavel alone when Pavel said they met with his wife.

“Perhaps a memory lapse,” Brecht allowed. “Or it’s a flaw in a cover story.”

Morgan had been looking out the window. He threw down his napkin and got up fast. “So much for rehearsal and other business.
Pavel’s on the move.”

Brecht tossed money on the table and rushed after him into the street.

Out in front of Cabaret, the nightclub owner climbed into a taxicab.

Morgan was already hailing another cab. They jumped in and told the driver to follow the cab ahead.

As they drove, Morgan began to feel the effects of jet lag. His head nodded and his brain buzzed with thoughts, wondering
if Pavel had actually had something to do with Chris’s death, wondering how Mattie Engel was taking it all.

Burkhart had said she was acting like a professional.

Morgan’s last thought before he dozed was: But how long can that last?

Several minutes later, Brecht nudged him and he jerked awake.

“Pavel’s getting out at the Hotel de Rome,” Brecht said.

Even in his groggy state, Morgan recognized the hotel. It was the most luxurious in Berlin as far as he was concerned. He
usually stayed there during his visits.

“Know anyone in security?” Morgan asked as they climbed from their taxi down the street from the hotel.

“Definitely,” Brecht said. “I helped them out last year. The American movie star. Did you see that report?”

Morgan came fully awake. “I’m so tired I forgot that happened here. Jesus, what a mess that must have been to clean up.”

“Crazy mess,” Brecht said. “Crazy, crazy mess.”

They entered a lobby with soaring ceilings and marble columns, and went to the concierge. Brecht asked to see the hotel’s
head of security.

Exactly nine minutes later, Brecht and Morgan were inside the room directly across the hall from one Pavel had reserved. They
also knew that the nightclub owner had just ordered champagne and caviar.

He was expecting someone.

Brecht unscrewed the peephole and inserted a tiny fiber-optic camera and microphone, which he connected to a transmitter linked
to his iPad.

“I pay for all that?” Morgan asked after he flopped on the king-size bed, feeling depressed again about Chris Schneider’s
death.

“Private Berlin issued,” Brecht said. “Here comes room service.”

Morgan watched the cart with the champagne and caviar arrive and then Pavel open the door to let the waiter in. He left moments
later.

“Why don’t I have one of those mini surveillance kits?” Morgan asked.

“Euro technology,” Brecht said. “Hasn’t made it to LA yet.”

“I forgot I live at the end of the universe,” Morgan said, throwing his arm over his eyes. “I’m going to snooze. Wake me up
if…”

Private’s owner drifted off. Right on the edge of sleep, just before falling, Brecht tapped him on the shoulder. “Pavel’s
got a visitor.”

Morgan groaned and opened his eyes blearily to see Brecht showing him the iPad. A woman in a long, dark trench coat and a
floppy rain hat stood with her back to the camera outside the door across the hall.

They heard Pavel’s muffled voice through the door. “Who is it?”

“I have delivery for you,” the woman replied in a soft Portuguese accent as she fumbled with the belt of her raincoat.

They heard the dead bolt thrown.

The woman looked both ways, and then shrugged the raincoat off.

Morgan sat upright. She was magnificently naked when the door opened.

Pavel’s eyes went wide with delight. “Delivery accepted.”

She stepped into his arms. The door closed behind them.

“Who is that goddess?” Brecht asked. “I didn’t see her face.”

Morgan shook his head in disbelief. “I didn’t see it either, but I’d recognize that teardrop Brazilian rear anywhere. That,
my friend, was Perfecta.”

WHEN THE FRONT door to Agnes Krüger’s town house in Wilmersdorf slammed shut, the billionaire’s wife regained her composure and bearing.

“My son fancies himself an anarchist and an artist,” she said. “He despises my husband for his money.” She smiled sourly.
“But he doesn’t refuse the ten thousand euros Hermann deposits in his account every month.”

She laughed caustically and then looked at Mattie. “You have children?”

“One,” Mattie said. “A son.”

“Rudy is an only child as well,” she began. She hesitated and then said, “But he’s not why you are here.”

“No,” Katharina said. “We’re here because Chris Schneider is dead.”

That shocked the billionaire’s wife. “Dead? How? He was such a young man!”

Katharina gave her the bare bones of the circumstances. Mattie listened to her report as if it were arriving from outer space,
incomprehensible even to her.

“In a slaughterhouse?” the billionaire’s wife said. “Why?”

“We don’t know,” Mattie replied. “We’re hoping you might help.”

“Where has Hermann been the last few weeks?” Katharina asked.

Agnes Krüger fidgeted in her chair. “He was here in Berlin for the most part, I believe. Ask his secretary.”

“I did,” Katharina said. “She said he’s off on business.”

“Or tending to his mistresses.”

“Doesn’t he live here with you?” Mattie asked.

Her face flickered painfully. “Hermann has a bed here. He uses it from time to time. Comes and goes as he pleases. Doesn’t
give a damn if I’m in it or not.” Agnes Krüger looked closely at Mattie, who’d somehow won her trust. “You know, he wasn’t
always like this. At least I don’t think so. This belief that anything goes came with the money.”

“Where did you meet?” Mattie asked.

“Here in Berlin shortly after the wall fell. He was making his first fortune bringing textiles into the newly liberated east
as fast as he could. I worked for him as his secretary. Rudy was just a baby. My first husband had deserted me, and, well,
Hermann is a good talker.”

“Who knows how to make money,” Katharina said.

“He came to capitalism naturally. It suited him.”

“I don’t understand,” Mattie said.

“He grew up in East Berlin, but as soon as the wall fell he was in motion.”

“Same thing with Chris.”

She studied Mattie again. “He was more than a colleague to you.”

For the second time in twenty-four hours, Mattie wondered if she was that transparent, but she said, “My ex-fiancé.”

“Oh, dear,” the billionaire’s wife said, her hand traveling to her lips. “I’m so sorry for you, Frau Engel.”

Mattie nodded, swallowing hard at the loss pulsing in her.

There was a pause and another painful flicker in her skin before Agnes Krüger said, “And you think my husband might have been
involved in his death?”

“What do you think?” Katharina asked. “Is he capable of it? Would he have reason? Would Chris’s knowing about all the women,
and being ready to reveal them to you, drive him to murder?”

The billionaire’s wife was still for several moments, and then she turned, disgusted. “On this my son is correct: Hermann’s
soul is black.” She hardened. “You should know that there have been rumors about Hermann.”

“What kind of rumors?” Mattie asked.

Agnes Krüger gazed at Katharina and Mattie in turn before saying, “You’d have to talk with Rudy for any particulars, but evidently
people who cross my husband have a way of disappearing or dying in convenient accidents.”