“I hear you’ve been seeing a lot of Apolonia lately?”
“It’s not a secret.” Jack shrugged. “She’s a good listener.”
“I hope you aren’t telling her things you shouldn’t be?”
“Of course not, what do you take me for? We have things in common. The war, family, missing home.”
“I get it, mate, just be wary, okay?”
“I know. You can trust me.”
Bill wondered to himself if that were true. He sucked on his pipe as they strode up the street. They were heading, yet again, into the French sector. The Spree gently lapped behind them as they headed north, away from both it and relative safety. The French might well be on the lookout for them.
“I was just thinking that perhaps someone went after you the same night as they came for me? It’s just a theory.”
“Well, I was with Apolonia that night.”
“All night?”
“You found me there in the morning, didn’t you?”
Bill nodded. He seemed to dodge that question, he thought. “I guess we won’t know then. It’s too dangerous for you to go home and check. If they want us, they are bound to be watching there.”
Jack agreed, and the two men continued on their way. Bill glanced across at Jack, and wondered just how well did he know his friend?
They continued the rest of their walk, in relative silence.
The shop was closed. Bill looked down the fancy street. It was a Friday morning, but it was still quiet. Pretty much the only people who could shop around here were soldiers and diplomats. The gleaming storefronts were too expensive for the average Berliner to even look into. They mostly had bigger concerns than a new hat or getting a book re-bound.
“It’s locked,” Jack muttered as he rattled the door. “Luckily, I brought my own key.” He grinned, pulling out the half-brick he’d gathered up from a bombed-out building on their way to the bookshop. He carefully wrapped a handkerchief around it.
“What’s that all about?” Bill shook his head and sniggered. “Just chuck it through the glass.”
“To deaden the sound.” Then in one movement, he punched it forwards, through the thin glass door, which shattered into four or five large pieces and smashed loudly onto the ground, narrowly missing Jack. “O kurwa!” he exclaimed and jumped back.
“Well, that went well,” Bill added, checking to see if they had, as he suspected, now woken the dead, as well as the rest of the neighbourhood. “Let’s just get this done.”
They knew exactly where they were going. They moved swiftly into the store, drawing their guns as they did so. The broken glass crackled under their feet as they walked. They rounded the last bookshelf behind the counter and headed immediately to the rear area where the thin man had his workshop. Bill approached the bookshelf at the back, half filled with books, all neatly aligned, which was slightly out of place in the otherwise disordered workshop, and picked up a large leather-bound book at random.
Without warning, the backroom door swung open, spilling the dark back area in a dull-crimson light. The tall, thin man was silhouetted like some strange lanky creature from outer space. He looked almost surprised as Jack, who was nearly knocked off his feet as the door was flung open. Bill instinctively moved to use the bookcase as a kind of half-cover. That caused the heavy book to fall to the floor with a thud, making the thin man flinch and wince, as if Bill had pulled the trigger of the snub-nose Colt revolver pointed his way.
“What the … where the hell did you two come from?” he spluttered, as he looked at Jack regaining his balance.
“Sit down, before I knock you down,” replied Jack, visibly agitated from having been quite literally wrong-footed.
“Look, I don’t know what …”
Jack cut short his protestations by grabbing him tightly by his throat. The defiant skeleton just stared indignantly back at him. Jack pointed at him with his free hand, then placed his finger on his lips and released his grip on the man’s throat.
“What’s your name?” Bill demanded, his gun still trained on the man. “Your real name, I mean.”
The tall stick-man looked past Bill, at the now-open book on the floor and, realising the game was up, replied, simply, “Klein.”
“Mr Small. How ironic,” sniggered Jack.
“Gerd Klein. I guess you don’t work with Müller after all, then.”
“We’ll get back to that, Klein,” Bill said as he struggled to gather up the large book from the floor with his left hand. “I assume these books are all like this one?”
The book was open on another image of a nude woman. Bill didn’t care to look at it too closely. He only saw the dead-eyed stare and the overwhelming sadness in her eyes.
“Are these all full of such filth?”
“I cater for a very specific clientele.”
“Yes, those sick in the head, but you’d know all about that, wouldn’t you?” Jack held up the photograph of Katya taken in the Auschwitz brothel.
“Katya was different. She was special. Look, whatever you think of me, I did everything I could for that girl. She would never have survived if I hadn’t got her assigned there.”
“We know what happened in that place. You think being raped daily, month after month, was helping her?”
“She’s alive, isn’t she?” he grunted back.
Jack thrust his gloved fist square into Klein’s face. The pathetic man’s head whipped back like his slender neck was made of rubber. He looked up at Jack, and tears welled in his eyes.
“Please, you don’t have to hurt me. I’m no soldier, really, I’m barely a man. I know I did wrong, but you don’t understand what it was like then. I love Katya, and it was the only way I could keep her safe. She was only there due to bad luck. Please, I was only part of the administration there.”
“Did this administrative role involve many visits to the camp brothel?” Bill interrupted, placing down the book onto the workbench and flicking through various photographs of different women in the same drab room as Katya, all in various states of undress. “Part of your job there, or more of a hobby, would you say?”
“I admit, I did take photos in the brothel there, but a great many of the books are filled with more willing models from before the war. I still get girls who knew me before the war coming to have the photographs taken. That red bound copy, there, is full of my latest work,” he stated proudly, like it was the final dissertation for his PhD or something.
“So, you got this job in the SS, as you already had a questionable reputation?”
“I was a well-known photographer here in Berlin, yes. Before the Nazis, the city was full of cheap bars, flophouses and good-time girls. They loved making some extra cash on the side, and I was always on the lookout for models for my particular style of photography. I had a very large client list, including politicians. I couldn’t get enough new material.” He noticed Bill was grimacing. “What, you don’t like looking at naked girls?”
“There is a difference between taking pictures of a paid prostitute and the kind of photos you took in Auschwitz, Klein.”
“How? They earned the right to a better life. Better food, even alcohol. They were willing participants.”
“They were forced to do whatever they had to, to survive.”
“No different to most of the people of this city under the Weimar Republic then. Money was fast becoming worthless, no jobs, crippled economy and a government unwilling to sort out the problems. The whole country going to the wall.”
“You and I both know there is a difference. How does this all fit into what you are doing here now for the fat priest?”
“Hasi? The useless fat shit.”
“Hasi?” Bill repeated, surprised. Jack looked quizzically at him. “It’s a pet name, like what you’d call your girl,” Bill added, by way of explanation.
“That’s just his nickname. It’s sarcastic, as he’s so repugnant.”
“So, you are helping this Hasi with this ID business.”
“I just take the photos and make the IDs, but you already know this. He pays well and I use the money to fund my other activities. He’s working for some guy who runs the show and has the money and contacts apparently. Quite why this mystery businessman chose Hasi to work with, I’m sure, I have no idea.”
“He’s not really a priest then?”
“Ha! That fat prick would need some praying to balance out his past, I can tell you. I was unfortunate enough to meet him when I arrived at Ravensbrück in January of forty-five. We fled there just before the Russians arrived in April. Most of the others were captured, but I let Hasi hide with me at my parents’ house on Lake Wannsee until it had died down a bit. I lost touch with him for a few months until he showed up one day with a proposition.”
“And, what was that?”
“He had some deal with this mystery man who he said was protected by the cops. He said I could come back and run my father’s print shop, in return for producing the ID documents they needed, and that I could do whatever work I wanted on the side with protection from the cops.”
“So, Müller knows you and Hasi are ex-SS?”
“Of course, he knows.”
“This ID racket, it’s not to enable ex-Nazis to flee, is it? We know the new documents are genuine, and that the details are correct.”
“There are a dozen forgers in this city who will produce fake ID for you to get to Spain. No, we are giving them their identities back.”
“To prove they were Nazis?”
“Times change. Evidently, it’s not the crime it used to be.”
“What do they use these IDs for?”
“No idea. Get jobs as cops?” he ventured, sarcastically.
“Are they being recruited by the Americans?”
“Maybe. I never ask.”
The sound of crackling glass broke the hanging silence as Bill was wondering what he ought to ask next. Jack moved quickly and silently to the edge of the bookcase. Bill peered out as best he could into the dark shop and could see a shadowy figure looking around the doorway and inspecting the wrapped rock that had done the damage.
He glanced back at Klein, just as the spindly pornographer pressed the little Walther under his own chin and pulled the trigger.