I was lucky to survive the war, but I too am guilty. I took the gold that Roddeck and his men buried in the forest by Neuville. Since then I have been tormented by feelings of guilt. Now approaching death myself there are matters I would like to set straight; above all I would like to free the name Benjamin Engel from the mire with which Achim von Roddeck has besmirched it.
I would like, therefore, dear comrade, to propose a meeting. It will not be to your disadvantage.
So, Engel was alive, but did not realise that he, Grimberg, had tried to kill him. Had planned to eliminate the last witnesses.
Now, having finally enticed Engel into the open, what choice did he have? Of course he had gone to Berlin. And of course he hadn’t told Roddeck, the traitor, who might be responsible for Wosniak’s death.
After taking a week’s holiday from the quarry he had told Käthe he had business to attend to. As he had a year ago when he and Wosniak met Roddeck to outline the plan which had turned Achim von Roddeck into a celebrated author. If everything worked out, he wouldn’t be returning to Elberfeld. Not to the quarry, not to Käthe, not to the wreckage of his former life. He was in his mid-forties with time to start afresh, and soon he would have money too. With the help of a trench mirror, he focused on the lectern. The paper had billed Roddeck as speaking on the revival of German literature, but there was no sign of him. The space between the two SA men was empty.
The younger of the two brownshirts approached the microphone. ‘German students! Our action is directed against the un-German spirit.’
His voice was on the verge of cracking, his R’s rolling like his eyes. No skilled orator, he was a youngster trying to pass himself off as a tribune… but, where was Roddeck?
‘Against class struggle and materialism, for a people’s community and idealist view of life,’ the Nazi student said, holding a pile of books aloft. ‘I consign the works of Karl Marx and Kautsky to the flames!’
He stepped from the lectern and threw the books onto the fire. The crowd looked on with no jeering, no applause, nothing. The next student, with more books under his arm, approached the microphone. ‘Against decadence and moral decay. For discipline and decency in family and state. I consign the works of Heinrich Mann, Ernst Glaeser and Erich Kästner to the flames.’
These were the fire incantations that had been billed in the paper, but where was Roddeck? What was happening? Why weren’t they sticking to the script? He felt uneasy. He had to tread carefully.
The incantations continued, and more books were cast into the flames. With the mention of the name Remarque came the first hints of applause. Remarque was one of Roddeck’s competitors, whose books would never again be sold in Germany. Grimberg didn’t feel envy. He was no longer under obligation to Roddeck but, still, had to tread carefully. Since learning that the corpse Roddeck had identified as Captain Engel was in fact Heinrich Wosniak, he refused to put anything past the man. Roddeck might be a coward, but you underestimated him at your peril. He could be cold-blooded when the occasion demanded.
105
Achim von Roddeck was sweating. Pushing his way through the crowd outside the Opera House, he worked his way towards Behrenstrasse and the Dresdner Bank. From the square he heard the crackle of flames and the chatter of students. Time and again he turned around, but there was no sign of the captain. He searched his coat pocket for his old service Luger, which he had carried since they’d stood down his police protection; the same gun he had used to silence the hysterical recruit Wegener, earning him the enduring respect of his men.
He gripped the gun in his pocket and released the safety catch. What few pedestrians he encountered behind the Opera House were heading in the other direction, towards the fire. His watch told him he was ahead of schedule, and perhaps that would give him an advantage.
Midnight, Engel had said, in the decommissioned branch of the Linden tunnel, directly beneath the square where the books were being burned. The access ramp had been filled when the square was repaved, and trams could only pass through the eastern branch, on the other side of the Opera House.
He could scarcely contain himself. What had Engel written in his letter? Time to get even. He didn’t say whether he meant the gold or some other debt, but that didn’t matter. Roddeck intended to get even in his own way, and finally put an end to the fear, but the worst thing in war was not being able to see your enemy. When you didn’t even know if he would attack. When all you knew was that he was there. He had felt this way for months, but now his enemy, Engel, was about to reveal himself.
Two pairs of parallel tracks issued from Französischer Strasse, and swept elegantly past the eastern side of the Opera House towards the access ramp down into the tunnel’s east branch. He had passed through several times on the number 12, but could he just walk inside? Signs forbade it, and there wasn’t much room between the track and tunnel wall. He descended into darkness.
There was no sign of any trams, but still he felt uneasy. Reaching the end of the ramp, he took a flashlight from his coat pocket. It was time to put an end to his fear of Engel’s revenge, of the truth. Having gone out on a limb with his lies, he had sold them to a believing world. Grimberg’s idea was, ‘If you’re going fishing, you need to bait the hook. A man like Engel… you have to appeal to his sense of honour.’
So Roddeck had added a chapter to his war memoirs, detailing an episode which had been shrouded in silence since March 1917, throwing mud at Engel while clearing everyone else, especially himself and Grimberg, who had wanted to kill the loathsome captain from the start, long before they had made their strike.
But Engel had let their appeal go unchallenged for weeks, even the murders they sought to pin on him. Grimberg had shown his faithful Heinrich what was to be done, and Wosniak’s first task was to simulate his own death so that he could slip into the role of Todesengel. When, at first, things hadn’t gone to plan Roddeck had been forced to take matters into his own hands and really spell it out. Almost at once, the press pounced on the story of the murdering captain, and soon the police had come to believe it, too. Excepting, perhaps, Inspector Rath, whose scepticism had been a nuisance from the start. Still, no one at Alex listened to a man like that these days.
The journalist, on the other hand, was another matter. His never-ending telephone calls… ‘How certain are you that Benjamin Engel is dead? Is the body you identified really that of your former captain?’ Sadly, Roddeck could not complain about him to the police commissioner, and he didn’t dare call the newspaper. Best to let sleeping dogs lie.
He could see a glimmer at the end of the tunnel, on the other side of Unter den Linden, where the electric trains emerged by the Singakademie and continued above ground. In the daytime he might have been able to switch off his torch, but now, a quarter of an hour before midnight, the only light came from the gas lamps.
To his left was a row of steel columns and, beyond, another tram line. He must have missed the turnout that led into the decommissioned, western branch of the tunnel, where Engel had suggested they meet. He shone his torch back in the direction he had come. The columns extended to a solid wall where the tracks diverged. To the left, arrow-straight, the eastern tunnel, the route he had taken; to the right and describing a westward curve, the western tunnel, leading to the Opera Square, directly beneath the fire.
Climbing over a low wall between two steel columns, he began tracing the redundant line back into the darkness, his flashlight beam dancing above rusty metal, puddles, and a scurrying rat. Noises from outside were strangely unreal down here, the echo merging them into one. Strains of the brass band accompanied by intermittent jeering and the sounds of traffic, his own footsteps and drops of water splashing out of sight had a dreamlike quality.