“Try this.”
Kohler took out a bottle of Steinhagen and poured me half a water glass. I drained it in one gulp, the glass rattling in my fingers. He doled out a lesser dose and I sat there in silence, sipping now, feeling a little more together.
“Pretty close, hah?”
I just nodded, and Kohler smiled sourly. “Well, it proves we’re not exempt, that’s one thing.”
“Glad to be of service.” I managed to light a cigarette without dropping the match. “So where does this leave us?”
Kohler sipped thoughtfully at his schnappes.
“Well, we know it’s the Nips, which puts us one step ahead. The only question is why.”
“What do you mean, why? Hell, we should’ve thought of them right away, they’ve got a perfect motive, even better than the Axists, and von Leeb warned us how anxious they’d be to get hold of this and rub Heydrich’s nose in the mess. How would the whole war party look if it was proved their leader couldn’t even finish off the Jews?”
I thought my reasoning was pretty good for a guy who’d almost been karated to death an hour ago, but Kohler didn’t look impressed.
“Sure, sure, it would be a big propaganda coup. But not that big. Not big enough to kill for, and on our territory.” He shook his head impatiently. “Christ, Bill what happened tonight alone could trigger an international incident, not to mention sabotaging Grauber’s plane or however they got rid of him. The Nips wouldn’t gamble at those stakes just to make Heydrich a laughingstock in the hierarchy, they’d have to be out of their minds.”
All this palace intrigue was beginning to lose me.
“All right, Ed, hold on, let’s forget motives and politics for a minute and just look at what we’ve got. A Jap spy tried to kill me tonight, and unless there are two parallel disposal teams wandering around that means it was the Japs who took out Fiske and Grauber. They know what we’re trying to do and they’re trying to stop us. Whatever their reasons, they want this Jew for themselves. What do we do about it?”
“For one thing, you stay here tonight, I’ve already posted extra men downstairs.” He grimaced wearily. “Then tomorrow we lay this whole fucking time bomb in von Leeb’s lap and let him defuse it. There’s not much else we can do.”
I spent a restless night on a couch in the office next to Kohler’s, catching snatches of half-sleep that always dissolved into a mask coming off in my hands, a mask covering a leering bleached skull. The skull was trying to tell me something but somebody always grabbed it from me and ran away to bury it, and I kept wandering around a park trying to dig it up but all I’d find were bodies, Fiske’s, a young Jap, somebody in pilot’s goggles. Just as I uncovered the fourth grave I’d always wake up without discovering who was in it. Me, probably.
Kohler mercifully woke me at seven, looking as if he hadn’t even tried to sleep. He handed me a carton of coffee and a doughnut, then walked over to the window and stood looking out across the Battery.
“The lab didn’t find anything,” he said without turning around “Fingerprints have all been surgically removed. No papers or laundry marks, of course, just five thousand marks in cash and some car keys we’re trying to trace. I sent a telephoto to Washington but they’ve got no make on him, he must have come in just for the assignment, probably a trade or diplomatic cover. We’re checking that out now, but don’t count on anything.”
“I’m not.” I finished the coffee and got up. “Lend me a razor and then let’s get to the Adlon.”
We drove over in Kohler’s battered old Ferrari, and the bright sunny weather gave me a little lift, but not much. The desk clerk was fitted out like an admiral and addressed us down the bridge of his nose until we asked for von Leeb, when he shot to attention.
“Yes, gentlemen, Herr Professor von Leeb is in the Fuhrer Suite, I shall escort you personally.” He snapped his fingers and a lesser functionary scurried over to take his place behind the reception desk while the Admiral goose-stepped us across the lobby to the elevators.
“It’s a great honor to have an Alte Partei Kameraden in the hotel,” he gushed as we hissed up fifty floors. “A great honor. We had hoped to arrange a reception, invite the mayor and local gauleiters, but Herr Professor von Leeb insisted on absolute privacy.” The little greedy eyes darted speculatively. “He is, perhaps, traveling incognito? On a matter of state, perhaps?”
“Perhaps.” The doors whispered open on a marble-floored reception hall strewn with potted palms and imitation Greek statuary. The Admiral strutted to a door at the far end of the room and pushed a button on the wall. Inside, chimes pealed out what sounded like the first stanza of the Horst Wessel Lied.
“Once, in 1958 I believe, we were honored by the presence of Reichsmarshall Goering. It was shortly before his untimely passing, perhaps you remember the parade the city held for him. A truly magnificent occasion, such pomp, such pageantry…”
Von Leeb’s squeaky voice shrilled from an intercom grill in the wall.
“Ja?”
“Professor, there are two gentlemen to…”
“Haider and Kohler, Professor,” I cut in.
There was a buzz, and the Admiral swung the door open, then tried to squeeze in after us. Von Leeb stood ten feet away in the sunken living room, staring out the French windows, a shabby flannel robe swirling around his bare ankles. He turned around slowly, and didn’t look too overjoyed to see us.
“You may go, Herr Westphall. I wish no calls put through until I notify you.”
“Yes, of course, Herr Professor. Is there anything I can do, some champagne possibly…”
“You may go.” One mottled hand chopped in dismissal, and he turned his back on all of us again.
The Admiral backed out, bobbing his head obsequiously, and Kohler and I walked through the areaway and down three steps into the main room. It was quite a layout, everything done up in the black, red and white of the Party emblem, dominated by a giant crystal chandelier in the shape of a swastika that ended up looking more like a glass fan than anything else. A giant romanticized portrait of the Fuhrer on horseback hung over the fireplace, but I wasn’t sure if that was decor or if von Leeb carried it around with him everywhere he went. The carpet was soft and white as a fall of fresh snow, and as we padded across the room I had the feeling I should take my shoes off, like entering an Odinist temple. We stopped a couple of feet away from the Professor, but he still didn’t turn around, just stood there staring out across his private roof garden at the Manhattan skyline.
“An ugly city.” He sounded tired. “Those skyscrapers, we should have torn them down after Liberation. Jewish architecture, phallic, decadent, the quintessence of nomadic alienation. Aryan architecture must be rooted in the earth, cyclopean but organic, not these steel fingers poking at the sky…”
His words trailed off and creakily, as if it was an effort, he turned around.
“Give me your report.”
I let Kohler do the talking, all except the incident with the Jap which I summarized, and von Leeb never said a word. I’d expected him to react with mounting anger, even fear, but he grew increasingly animated as we talked, and at the end he was positively beaming.