SATURDAY, JUNE 17, 1944–SUNDAY, JUNE 18, 1944
“Goddamn it, where have you been?” Vogler was completely beside himself. “We’ve taken apart the entire building you disappeared into—nothing! No Inspector Oppenheimer!”
This meant his cover was blown. Oppenheimer stood in the hallway of the Zehlendorf house, still in his coat. So he would have to come up with another way of visiting Hilde in the future. “I went for a walk to clear my head,” was Oppenheimer’s lame reply, which sounded even absurder given the fact that he was holding two umbrellas and a pair of shoes in his hand.
“I don’t care what you do as long as you tell me where you are! He’s struck again.”
Oppenheimer felt the blood freeze in his veins. As usual, Hoffmann had said nothing in the car when he had brought him here. “Already?” he asked in anguish.
“Yes, already! Traudel Herrmann, the wife of a Gruppenleiter. She was reported missing a few hours ago. Leave your coat on. You’re going straight to Köpenick.”
He hasn’t killed her yet. We can still stop it, Oppenheimer thought when he stood in the Herrmanns’ living room. It seemed that the Gruppenleiter was a vain man. There were photographs of him in his full SS uniform everywhere—in full dress, as the saying went. There he stood, his chest proudly pushed out above the beginnings of a paunch, a well-built man in his prime with steel helmet and combat pack. Almost no one would have recognized this man in the huddled bundle in the armchair. His body seemed to have shrunk over the last few hours, his face was red with anxiety, his gaze already a little glassy as if he’d already tried unsuccessfully to comfort himself with hard liquor.
“Please try to remember,” Oppenheimer addressed him once more. “Every tiny detail can be important. When exactly did you come home last night?”
“I didn’t look at my watch,” Herrmann said hoarsely. “It must have been around three in the morning. At first, I noticed that the car was parked at the side of the road. I wondered why Gustav—he’s our chauffeur—hadn’t put the car into the garage. That’s negligent. You never know what’s going to happen if you just leave it outside. Gustav is usually very conscientious. I decided to speak to him about it in the morning. Then I went straight to bed and fell asleep.”
“You and your wife have separate bedrooms?”
“Exactly. Silke hadn’t put out my pajamas, but I was so tired that I didn’t really think about it much. I just flaked out.”
“Silke is…”
“Our maid. We haven’t had her long.”
“What happened this morning?”
Herrmann got up and went over to his cocktail cabinet. He poured himself a cognac. “It was just a couple of hours later. Marga Kriegler, my wife’s friend, finally managed to rouse Silke. She said she’d tried to reach us several times during the night after the alarm, but no one had answered. She told us that Gustav had been beaten up, that a stranger had taken our car and kidnapped my wife. Initially, I didn’t want to believe her, but Traudel wasn’t in her room, and Silke hadn’t seen either of them yet either. So I called the police. I’ve been sitting here ever since waiting for something to happen.”
“Have you moved the car?”
“No, it’s exactly there where I found it.”
The car, at least, was a lead. Oppenheimer stepped outside into the rain, Vogler close behind.
“What did Mrs. Kriegler say?” Oppenheimer asked. “When did the stranger disappear with Mrs. Herrmann?”
“Around midnight.”
“So three hours at most. Three hours to move the woman and park the car here again. Why did he take the risk of bringing it back?”
“Maybe a limousine like this would be too conspicuous in his neighborhood,” Vogler said.
“Good point,” Oppenheimer concurred. Then he turned to the vehicle. “Has anyone secured the evidence in the car yet?”
“I wanted you to look at it first.” Vogler opened the rear passenger door. Oppenheimer leaned across the seats.
“Leather, that’s good. Maybe he left some fingerprints. Hmm. A fight took place. I presume that this tuft of hair belongs to Mrs. Herrmann.” Oppenheimer showed Vogler some hair he’d found on the back seat. “Do you have an envelope?”
Vogler pulled out an envelope, and Oppenheimer placed the hair inside. Then he turned to the back seat. “There is blood here. Doesn’t look good. But it’s just a few drops. Mrs. Herrmann was overpowered and immediately removed from the car.”
When he finally turned to the driver’s seat, he paused. “Hello.”
“What’s the matter?” Vogler wanted to know.
Oppenheimer bent down and pulled out a pocketknife. Then he asked Vogler for a second envelope and scraped something off the brake pedal. He straightened up again and examined the substance in the envelope.
“Clay,” he said.
Vogler also looked at the contents of the envelope. “Quite a large piece.”
Oppenheimer took a piece of the dried mud and rubbed it between his fingers. He remained standing on the damp pavement for almost a minute, staring at the clay between his fingers. Then he had an inspiration.
“Very good. This is what we’ll do,” he said to Vogler and pointed to the vehicle. “Secure the evidence immediately. Then we need a search party, tracker dogs, all available personnel. I think I have an idea where to find our perpetrator.”
There was another alarm in the evening, but Oppenheimer didn’t even notice. He was up all night, pacing up and down the living room in the Zehlendorf house while Vogler gave orders by radio from the cellar to round up all available men for the search parties. The rain had stopped a few hours before, and when Oppenheimer finally walked across the fields with one of the search parties in the early hours of the morning, the air was still cold but already carried the scent of a breaking summer day.
The clouds had disappeared. The first delicate gleam of dawn could already be made out in the distance. It was going to be a gorgeous, sunny day today, the kind of day that used to be known as Kaiserwetter, weather fit for an emperor. However, Hitler’s ascent to power had also had impacts on general linguistic usage, and so people now called a day with blue skies and sunshine Führerwetter.
The search party that Oppenheimer had joined was combing the area north of Köpenick. Additional troops were located on the edge of the city in Treptow and Schmöckwitz. Farther north, a group was searching the area around Dahlwitz. Time was of the essence, as the first city residents would soon be setting off toward the suburbs on their weekend trips. Within a few hours, the extensive forest region would be teeming with day-trippers wanting to leave the rubble of the city center behind them and recharge their batteries in the open countryside or heading to the racecourse in Happegarten.
“We’re looking for a building on the outskirts of the city,” Oppenheimer told the men. “The remoter, the likelier it is to qualify as the murder scene.” The victim’s screams couldn’t be heard from there, he thought.
The first train juddered across the rails. Meanwhile, they had managed to cut across the forest to a desolate marshland.
“It’s the famous needle in the haystack,” Vogler said. He placed his hands on his hips and looked toward the area of garden allotments that stood out from the nearby forest edge in the morning mist. “Are we in the right place?”
Oppenheimer also stopped. Although it wasn’t that warm yet, he was already sweating. He wiped his face with his handkerchief. “The perpetrator only had three hours to kidnap Mrs. Herrmann, get her out of the car, lock her in his hideout, and then drive back to Köpenick to drop off the car. He didn’t have much time. He must be somewhere here in the district. The lump of clay that I found on the brake pedal contained neither stone nor chalk. The city center is full of that. Bombed-out houses and rubble piles everywhere. The perpetrator cannot have spent time in the middle of town.”
“The area is bloody big. Gruppenleiter Herrmann wants to recruit a troop from the Hitler Youth in Köpenick to help with the search.”
“Excellent idea. They know their way around secret hideouts better than anyone. I’m guessing they are not going to be told that this is a murder case?”
“That’s taken care of. I gave Herrmann specific instructions.”
“Good. We can hardly search the entire area. We’ll just have to hope that we get lucky.”
Oppenheimer was just about to take off his coat when they suddenly heard barking noises just a few meters away. Both men started.
“They’ve found something,” Vogler said and ran straight through the reeds toward the dog handlers. They were outside a wooden shed. When Oppenheimer finally arrived, Vogler had already gone into the hut. He came out looking disappointed. “Nothing, completely empty. It wasn’t even locked.”
“What was going on? The dogs picked up on something!” Oppenheimer said.
The dog handler looked embarrassed. Finally, one of them pointed toward the nearby bushes.
“It can happen with the animals,” he said with a sheepish shrug.
Oppenheimer lowered his head in disappointment. A dead rabbit lay in the bushes.
Oppenheimer was on his feet almost the entire Sunday. The Pervitin helped him through it. He had taken a pill every four hours to combat the symptoms of fatigue. When their efforts hadn’t brought about a result by late afternoon, Vogler almost had to force him to allow Hoffmann to drive him home. Oppenheimer finally agreed when he realized that he hadn’t had any sleep for thirty-six hours. They had been unlucky. There had been no quick solution.
As the work would continue the next day, he had to pace himself. He knew that his body would reclaim the missed sleep. He wasn’t all that young anymore after all.
When he went into the kitchen looking dejected, Lisa was already waiting for him with a worried expression.
Oppenheimer sat down on the nearest chair. “The case. I was busy. Did Hoffmann tell you what was going on?”
“He just said that you’d be late, nothing more. What happened? Is it over now?”
“No. Not for a long time. The next few days are going to be difficult.” He leaned back in his chair, exhausted. Then he placed the new pair of shoes on the table. “Here, these are from Hilde. I need to stuff them with paper so that they fit me.”
He gave Lisa a tired look as she sat down next to him with two cups of coffee substitute. She stared into her brew for a few seconds and then said, “I guessed the investigation wasn’t over yet. Hilde mentioned something along those lines.”
Suddenly wide awake, Oppenheimer pricked his ears. “You spoke to Hilde?”
“Not only spoke. She was here a few hours ago.”
“Here at ours?”
“You should have seen Old Schlesinger. He was beside himself with curiosity. Hilde finally told him that she was my sister from Leipzig. She had an important message.”
“What was it?”
“She said that Dot and Anton accepted your conditions.” Then she lowered her voice. “They want to talk to you. You’re to head down toward Hansa Bridge at ten o’clock tomorrow evening. They will make contact. Hilde said that those two are going to get us out of the country. Is that right, Richard? Is there a way to get out?”
He leaned over toward Lisa. “It is possible. The intelligence services are behind it, but it is a bit precarious.”
Over the last few years, Oppenheimer and Lisa had often talked about leaving Germany. His sister had fled to Paraguay with her husband. Judging by her letters, she was managing quite well, as he was an engineer and after some initial difficulties had managed to secure a job. However, Oppenheimer doubted that there was much demand for criminal inspectors from Berlin there. And when, with a heavy heart, Oppenheimer finally decided to turn his back on Germany, it had been too late. They had managed to get a British visa, but when Hitler invaded Poland shortly afterward, the borders were closed off. Later, there had been an option to get to America via Shanghai, but the Oppenheimers hadn’t been able to find anyone in the USA to put up the $400 and the travel expenses. Now, out of the blue, there was an additional option. However, he didn’t know what Lisa thought of the plan. So he asked her, “What do you think? Would you want to leave?”
“I would do anything for us to be able to leave this dreadful place,” Lisa said with unfamiliar vehemence. “I no longer want to be a German. All this madness. I hate the people here.”
Oppenheimer had to smile. “Now you almost sound like Hilde. The problem is that I have to inform Dot and Anton of the results of the investigation. But the murder cases have been classified as secret.”
“Just do it. Otherwise, you’ll never get out of here. Although Vogler treats you with respect, they’re still using you. I know you’d like to believe it, but these members of the master race will never accept you as an equal. You’re not one of them, and you never will be.” Then she looked him straight in the eye. “Don’t feel too safe in the presence of SS members, Richard. Don’t forget who you are and where you come from. It’s not a betrayal if you pass information about the investigation on to the intelligence services. This is not the time for loyalty. We should take up the offer and flee.”