NOVEMBER 10TH, 1939

CHIEF DETECTIVE INSPECTOR NEBE SAT down behind his cigarette-scarred walnut desk—the Führer’s picture looming above—and made a show of studying an 8x10 matte photograph of the wreckage of the BürgerBräuKeller. There wasn’t much to it, just the burnt-out ballroom. The print showed the two pillars behind the Führer’s podium. The one on the right had been blown half away but it had held. Not much of a bomb, so it was surprising how much damage it had caused.

“Talented …”

Nebe said and looked around for a reaction. Inspectors Brandt and Nolte were displaying worry in their usual ways. Nolte sat with his elbows on his knees feeling sorry for himself; he’d been handsome once and still used his face theatrically. Brandt was standing, chin-up and looking dedicated. Nebe hated both of them quite cordially. They had known each other too long and, like most old friends, had too much to get even for. He envied the easy friendships of American gangster movies where no one seemed to have any memories. He summoned his authority and drew an X on the hole in the right hand pillar. He held up the print and asked:

“What’s the scale on this?”

“The pillars are one meter thick.”

Brandt answered, but Nolte didn’t want to be outdone.

“Some of them … The building was put up at different times. The ballroom was added in the 1850s.”

He was trying to impress as usual, but if Brandt said that it was one meter thick, then he had actually measured it.

“Just so …”

Nebe took out a pair of calipers and began measuring. He slid a draftsman’s rule out of the middle drawer of his desk and held the calipers against it, writing down the numbers on a yellow pad.

“You want to go back down there and take another look?” asked Brandt.

“Evidence you have to get that way isn’t worth the trouble.” Nebe picked up the slide rule and did a quick calculation, then came out from behind the desk, holding the ruler and scowling triumphantly. He measured a height from the floor against the desk and marked it with a stub of chalk.

“Kneel down.”

He said it to Brandt as he wiggled the ruler and smiled.

“What for?” asked Brandt in high voice.

“You are chiseling a hole in the side of a brick and concrete pillar.”

Brandt knelt down and began to pantomime hammer and chisel. Nebe crossed his arms and waited. Brandt was genuinely stupid, which made him a pleasure to command. Nebe thought about Heinrich Mueller; that brilliant yet crude man, so brutal and tasteless that he had left the police and was now head of some Gestapo department or other. This should have been a Gestapo case; it was political and yet the Gestapo wouldn’t touch it. Something was wrong and if they knew that when the case was but hours old then they had known about it in advance. Meaning what? The men gathered there had been Alte Kampfer, old fighters who had been with the Führer since the beginning, men to whom he owed an enormous debt but who were no longer useful.

Killing them off would have been an elegant solution … But, were that the case, then why then had the Führer bothered to show up at all? He had originally cancelled and then changed his mind, why? Again the answer came: so he could have one more miraculous escape. Goebbels was already claiming divine intervention. However, it still didn’t make sense. The Führer was a brave man, certainly, but to trust his life to an infernal machine ticking away in the pillar behind him, that was an insane and pointless risk; unless there had been no risk.

Nebe shrugged it off, analysis wasn’t getting him anywhere. If it were a Gestapo plot, that would be the best reason for keeping the investigation to themselves. A Gestapo plot would have the fall guy ready and waiting, as they had done at the Reichstag fire. Yet again an answer came to him: so that whoever might try to actually solve it could be brought down. He and his colleagues were middle-aged police inspectors and as apolitical as hedgehogs. Discrediting the police to the benefit of the SS? The police were now part of the SS. He himself was now Sturmbannführer. Having received his commission in the mail, he’d even had to go out and buy a new uniform. Having his measurements taken had been humiliating. He hadn’t realized that his waist had crept up to 40 inches; his old pants were conveniently stretched out.

He shook his head. Discrediting the police to the benefit of the Gestapo? The police would fail, the case would be handed to the Gestapo and they would solve it. The case was obviously political so it rightfully belonged to them anyway. Why wouldn’t they touch it? He needed a drink. He needed a bottle. He needed to stay drunk for three days. Perhaps he was trying to get more information out of this than there was in it. The investigation manuals specifically warned against that: stick to the facts, don’t try to make sense out of human motivation or you’ll drive yourself crazy. One thing was clear: he had to get out of this fast. Perhaps he could find a doctor under indictment for insurance fraud who could recommend a drug that would mimic the symptoms of a heart attack. Insurance fraud was which department? Bunko squad? At least that would be a place to start. It would require some tact and if he moved fast he might actually get out of this alive and with his pension, which was basically the same thing.

He was panicking, which was perfectly fine so long as he was the first one to do so. He would, of course, have to convince Brandt and Nolte that they were in no danger; that would be the only way to remain above suspicion. That could be a problem though because Nolte wasn’t stupid. Nebe peered out the window at the moon. It wasn’t there.

“Almost full, what is it. … Two days past?”

Brandt reached for a pocket calendar but Nebe stopped him.

“No, you keep digging.”

Nolte got up and went to check the wall calendar.

“It’s November 10th.”

Nolte tore off two sheets and squinted at the phases of the moon in the upper right hand corner.

“No. A week past, full moon was on the third.”

“Shame. Less to explain if it had happened on a full moon,” Nebe said.

Nolte’s face was indignant, which gave him a dowager’s prissiness …

“This wasn’t a loon.”

Nebe murmured evasively …

“Even so, there was that attempt last year, that Swiss theology student.”

The Gestapo had asked him his name and then cut off his head. No one had needed any theories about it. Nebe expounded.

“No one had been interested because he was just another ditsy amateur who had waded into a crowd with a little shit pistol. This attempt however is too good, too scary to live with. So, there must be some ironic trick interpretation that says that in some sense it doesn’t really count.”

“You read too much.”

Nolte was pushing, but Nebe was feeling philosophical.

“Those might be the truest words you’ve ever said.”

Brandt had no idea what they were talking about. Nolte, though, always felt the need to flaunt. …

“Was that… Hegel?”

Nebe shook his head. …

“Kierkegaard’s The Concept of Irony.”

Nolte conceded.

“So, why are you a cop?”

Nebe smiled,

“Because I’m a sadist.”

At least that part was true. He had all of the classic German books on flagellation: thousands and thousands of pages just classifying different kinds of asses. It was the most boring shit imaginable. Nebe turned to watch Brandt playing hammer and chisel. He’d keep at it until he hemorrhaged or someone told him to stop.

“How’re you doing?”

“My knees hurt. …”

There was a childlike whine in Brant’s voice, brought on by the childish game. The man was pathetic. Nebe smiled at him.

“Good.”

Brandt continued to dig away at the empty air then asked hopefully:

“Can I try this sitting down?”

Nebe was magnanimous.

“Of course you can.”

Brandt’s face lifted.

“May I?”

Nebe nodded. …

“Yes, actually it’s an order.”

Brandt sat down and began to claw the air double time.

“Much more comfortable; I’d have done it this way.”

“Shit! He wouldn’t have!”

Nolte said and he stood up and paced the center of the room intent on imposing his deductive superiority.

“Yeah? Why not?”

Brandt breathed out heavily. Nolte elaborated. …

“He would’ve had to hold his arms out straight, and they’d have tired far more quickly. If he had worked on his knees, he’d have been able to use some of the strength of his legs. We are talking about long, hard work, even for a strong man. Days, weeks … He could only work a few hours a night while the place was closed.”

Nebe gave Nolte a paternal smile he had theretofore been unable to find a use for. He flicked his eyes to Brandt. The man was still hammering at the air; teeth gritted and sweat dribbling off the end of his nose.

“You can stop now.”

Brandt got up, brushing himself off and looking peeved. Nebe inspected his two assistants.

“Either of you ever seen a scrubwoman’s knees?”

“No, thank God!” Nolte said.

“What if he had used a pillow?” Brandt asked.

Nebe pulled up Brandt’s pant leg demonstratively; Nolte raised an eyebrow noting the redness even after such a short time. Nebe smiled.

“They’d still be calloused, and if not, they’d be scarred. Come on gentlemen, maybe we’ll get lucky.”

And they set off for the holding pens in the second subbasement.

They got the political prisoners out of the tank and into a ragged formation in the corridor; lining them up against the bars of the cages. These were faces out of a political cartoon: Lenin beards and Bakunin haircuts, watery pleading eyes and chinless quivering mouths. There were a surprising number of round-lensed spectacles with gold-wire frames. These were men who knew what they were and they were trying hard to look like it. Nebe smiled at them; he liked stupid people. There was one demented character in a WWI cavalry uniform. He was standing stiffly erect, which couldn’t have been easy; the heels of his boots were so worn they were almost perpendicular to the floor. There were also several normal-looking people, either pros or there by mistake. Nebe held up his hands.

“Everybody drop your pants. Yeah, I think I’m in love. Drop your pants!”

He said that doing his best Jimmy Cagney imitation. He loved American gangster movies.

They all dropped their trousers, shuffling and humiliated as his eyes ran along the line of knees. Knees like eggs, knees like goat skulls, knees scalloped with knobs of tendon. There was one without a kneecap. The leg was stiff. That let him off. Then Nebe’s eyes stopped on a set of knees that were heavily scabbed. He looked up slowly to meet the wonderful smile of Georg Elser. Nebe found himself smiling too.

“Nothing personal …”

After having said that he wondered what he had meant by it.

“Alright … Solitary, suicide watch, continuous surveillance.”

Two turnkeys shooed the other prisoners back into the pens and then lifted Georg by the elbows and carried him away.

“Don’t you want to question him now?”

Brandt suggested, tactfully. How could he possibly realise that, no, obviously Nebe did not want to question him at that moment.

“Let the day crew get the background. They need the experience.”

“But if he confesses, they’ll take the credit.”

Brandt was trying too hard to be helpful. Nebe would have loved nothing more than for someone else to come along and take the glory! He could even protest over the head of the Gruppenführer and, maybe, be forced into early retirement. That would be beautiful. He didn’t say any of that, of course.

“We caught him, it’s our case. At ease. You’re dismissed, momentarily. We’ll meet you upstairs.”

Then Nebe and Nolte went up the narrow backstairs to the property room. It had a window like a post office, facing the corridor, and the clerk was as nondescript as any postal employee. Nebe was feeling his oats.

“What did he have on him?”

“Who?”

The clerk’s question was stoically non-judgmental and Nebe suddenly realized he had forgotten to get the name, but Nolte magically produced the identification. The property clerk handed over a large manila envelope with Georg’s belongings inside. They dumped them on the ledge in front of the window and Nebe poked through them, scowling professionally. There were some lovingly machined little metal parts, one that looked very much like a trigger; the inevitable family pictures, too retouched and faded even to be used as identification, nothing more than the echo of a life trying valiantly to be forgotten. Nolte picked up the dog-eared play with a haughty scoff.

“What do you bet he’s a communist?”

But Nebe’s attention was drawn to the postcard of Hitler orating at the BürgerBräuKeller. In the picture, there were the two pillars behind the podium, almost obscured by a huge Nazi flag. The pillars went up through both floors, though the balcony to the roof. On the right-hand pillar, just above the floor of the balcony, a circle had been drawn in pencil. The pencil mark had faded; it had been drawn months, maybe years before. He showed it to Nolte and they both smirked. It was over. Extracting the names of accomplices was simply a matter of technique and it was a technique that always worked.

“And that is that …”

Nebe said it with almost with post-coital languor and turned to begin a triumphant saunter back to the squad room. Nolte hadn’t moved. Nebe noticed and took it as an invitation for a lecture.

“Just routine police work,”

Nebe was waving the postcard.

“Not like the movies. Filmmakers love ingenuity because they want to believe that there is an easier way to solve a problem than hard work.”

Nolte was looking embarrassed and patient, so Nebe stopped talking.

“Von Eberstein will be delighted.”

Nolte was suggesting, with the low cunning that defined him, that they call the Munich Polizei Prasident immediately. Nolte was playing the same role as Brandt: trying to wheedle him away from making obvious mistakes. Clearly they had no idea just how useful such obvious mistakes could be when manipulated properly. Normally, they were never that interested. They both must have been very scared.

“When we’re ready; when we can actually answer the questions obvious enough even for him to have thought of.”

Insulting a mutual superior was supposed to imply camaraderie, but Nolte still looked worried in a motherly way. Nebe turned and started walking with Nolte one step to the right and two steps behind.

Von Eberstein was a political appointee, always undesirable. Worse, the man was married to a Jewess, but being of the nobility he was absolutely untouchable. It was in the worst possible bad taste to even mention it. Still, it did indicate a chronic other-worldliness. The man could not be relied upon for anything, except of course that he wouldn’t take responsibility for the case unless he was convinced that it had already been solved. Perhaps that was the answer: convince him that the case was solved, have him take full credit, and then watch it blow up in his face. Entertaining!