‘There was I thinking you had a higher opinion of me.’
‘Let’s not misunderstand each other. I’m extremely grateful for your help a couple of months back, allowing yourself to be arrested like that.’
‘I had your word you’d get me off, and for some reason I believed you. It worked out in the end.’
‘I think it was the second part of our agreement that did it.’
‘My new business relationship? You’ll understand if I don’t divulge individual details, but it is lucrative, you’re right in that sense. Above all, because I won’t be pulling chestnuts out of the fire for other people any longer. Say hello to Herr Marlow for me.’
‘I will.’ Rath lit a cigarette. ‘In spite of everything, I’ll be relieved when there are several million cubic kilometres of water between us.’
‘Let’s drink to that.’ Goldstein filled a line of champagne glasses in front of him. ‘Our ship sets sail tomorrow morning.’
Rath lifted his glass. ‘Here’s to making your train, and the steamer tomorrow.’
The men drank. Marion just sipped. When the music came to an end, noise on the streets broke through. Loud cries. Men chanting something. Rath was surprised. The Communists didn’t normally march in this area.
But they weren’t Communists.
A troop of brownshirts marched past the windows, shouting something Rath couldn’t make out. ‘What was that you said? A crazy city? Just when you think it can’t get any worse with these idiots…’ he pointed towards the brownshirts outside. ‘…they go and surprise you all over again.’
There was a sudden, deafening crash as a chair was thrown through the window. The glass shattered into a thousand pieces, as a cold wind blew through the room and the chanting became louder still. Wir ha-ben Hun-ger! Wir wol-len Ar-beit! We are hungry! We want work! The door flew open and half a dozen brownshirts looked around aggressively. They couldn’t have been more than twenty years old.
‘Are you from the Glaziers’ Guild?’ Goldstein asked.
An old man near the entrance was knocked over along with his chair. A terrified waiter dropped his tray, there was a clatter and all was still. Everyone in the room stared at the intruders. A chair was thrown across the room. People ducked. A woman was struck on the head and fell to the ground, holding her hands over her bleeding face. The brownshirts bellowed with laughter.
Goldstein stood up with Rath and everyone else at their table. ‘In this town the street gangs wear uniforms,’ he said to Sally, planting himself in front of them.
‘How about you lot scram and notify your insurance company so that they can start repairing the damage?’
The shouting stopped, and the brownshirt who had thrown the chair squared up to Goldstein. He was a thin, dark-haired man who looked like a Tunisian carpet dealer’s apprentice. ‘Don’t get involved, friend. This is none of your business! It’s the Jews we’re after!’
‘What if I happen to be one?’
‘You don’t look like one.’
‘You don’t look Aryan, and your queer Führer definitely not. Is it true what people say? That you lot are a bunch of queers?’
Goldstein was ready. He blocked the man’s punch and dealt him a right hook to the chin, knocking him to the floor. He pulled the Remington from his pocket. ‘Stay where you are,’ he shouted, ‘and put your hands up.’
The first two brownshirts obeyed, the three behind likewise. All five stared anxiously at the barrel of the gun.
‘Let’s get out of here,’ Goldstein whispered to Rath, ‘there are more of them outside, a whole army. We can’t fight them all.’
Rath pulled Sally Epstein and Marion Bosetzky behind him, while Goldstein kept the brownshirts in check. Amazing how an automatic weapon concentrated the mind. But as they reached the rear exit a second windowpane shattered and two shots rang out. It had started again. The inside of Café Reimann was done for. Rath just hoped most patrons would escape in one piece.
Running through a series of rear courtyards leading to Knesebeckstrasse, he knew his hopes would be dashed. There were brownshirts everywhere, as well as a number in Young Stahlhelm uniform. Hundreds of them; everywhere chanting and shouting, accompanied by the sound of smashing glass.
Deutsch-land erwa-che! Ju-da verrek-ke! Germany awake! Die Jew!
Together with Goldstein, Marion and Sally Epstein, Rath made his way to the taxi rank on the Ku’damm. Strangely, they were left to themselves. Perhaps Goldstein looked too Aryan and Marion too blonde. On the Ku’damm, real-life hunting scenes were playing out in front of them. Innocent passersby fled crazed SA hooligans, who pursued them and beat them with long sticks until they lay on the ground bleeding. The uniformed thugs didn’t even shy away from beating women and old men.
Marion fell behind to fix one of her shoes. Rath heard her cry out and looked back to see an SA man grab her by the hair and raise his stick. Goldstein reached for his weapon as someone said: ‘Let her go, man,’ almost horrified. ‘She’s blonde!’
With that they were on the lookout for new victims. Rath wondered how many blond Jews and black-haired Teutons were walking the streets. Hopefully a lot.
‘Kill the Jews!’ Social envy and racial hatred: a toxic combination.
Goldstein remained astonishingly calm.
‘Don’t you take this sort of thing personally?’ Rath asked.
‘Very much. I hope your police arrive soon to lock these cry-babies up.’
‘I’m a police officer too.’
‘You think if you show your identification they’ll toddle off?’
‘I was thinking more of my Walther,’ Rath said.
‘If you pull out your gun, it’ll be a bloodbath.’
‘My colleagues will be here soon,’ Rath said, more to reassure himself. ‘That will put an end to it.’
Two uniformed officers were already there, but weren’t about to step in. They observed the goings-on cautiously, behaving as if they had mistakenly wandered into the Schlesische Viertel and were at the mercy of Communists and criminal gangs. Only, this wasn’t East Berlin, it was the Ku’damm, and scenes like this were unprecedented.
It shocked Rath to see this elegant, middle-class neighbourhood morph into a riot scene. Other pedestrians were shocked too, not believing their eyes until the toe of a brown boot caught them, or a fist landed in their face, until they had a bloodied nose or broken ribs.
The taxi rank was deserted. Either the taxi drivers had decided to protect their precious vehicles, or they were all gone, hired by fleeing pedestrians. They had to keep going. Marion took off her high heels and ran in stockinged feet next to Goldstein.
Then Rath saw something that gave the lie to later reports of a spontaneous uprising led by young unemployed men. This wasn’t a disaffected populace, not even a mob of brownshirts running wild. They were advancing systematically, giving each other signals, whistling and waving. The commanders were directing them like troops in battle.
The general’s vehicle looked unreal in the middle of it all, a chauferred open car being driven down the Ku’damm. In the back sat a man wearing a Navy cap with gold braid trimming like an admiral, and a brownshirt who looked like his aide-de-camp. The man with the Navy cap kept asking for the vehicle to stop, waving over a Scharführer here, a Gruppenführer there, and distributing orders.
Rath made a mental note of the number plate before hurrying after Goldstein and his friends, shepherding them inside the U-Bahn. He hoped it wouldn’t prove to be a trap, and was relieved to see no brownshirts below ground. Everything seemed normal. If it hadn’t been for the harried faces of fellow passengers, he might have thought what was happening above was a bad dream.