Babylon Berlin, page 48
The police seal on the attic flat in the rear building had long since been removed, but the place still hadn’t been rented out, since Frau Steinrück alias Sorokina had paid half a year in advance. One evening Rath had seen Ilja Tretschkov hurrying across the yard. He dashed out of his flat and tried to catch up with the Russian, but by the time he made it outside Tretschkov had disappeared.
That was a week or two ago now. Rath couldn’t help thinking back to it as he opened his front door and heard a noise upstairs. It couldn’t be the Liebigs. The communists went to bed early. Rath didn’t think long before quietly ascending the steps.
He had heard right. There was someone in the attic flat.
There was light coming into the stairwell through the crack in the door. He heard quiet steps. Had Tretschkov come to clean again? It was already past midnight.
Rath decided to knock.
It took some time, but at last the door opened slightly and he found himself looking into the eyes of a beautiful woman.
Svetlana Sorokina. She had dyed her hair black.
‘Good evening,’ he said. ‘I saw the lights were on and…’
‘Well?’
‘We haven’t met.’ He stretched a hand through the door. ‘Lennartz, Peter Lennartz. I’m the new caretaker.’
‘Ingeborg Steinrück.’
‘I’d like to speak to you a moment, Fräulein Steinrück.’
‘At this hour?’
‘I urgently need a few signatures. You were never at home when…’
‘I was away.’
She seemed suspicious, but opened the door. Rath went inside. The flat hadn’t changed since his previous visit.
‘So, Herr Lennartz, if you could show me the papers I need to sign, we can get this over with. I’m tired.’
In the electric light Rath could see how beautiful she was. It almost knocked him off his feet.
‘I lied to you,’ he said. ‘My name isn’t Lennartz, just as yours isn’t Steinrück. I’m Gereon Rath and I work for the CID, Countess Sorokina.’
‘I know your name,’ she said harshly. ‘You’re the policeman who issued a warrant for me! What do you want? To arrest me?’
‘To talk to you. I…’
Suddenly he was staring down the barrel of a gun.
‘Don’t worry. I’m not going to betray you,’ he said. ‘Now put that thing away.’
‘Why should I believe you?’
‘Because I’ve helped you many times already.’
‘Not that I’m aware of. Put your hands in the air, and don’t try anything. I’m a proficient markswoman.’
Rath obeyed. ‘I found your hiding place in Delphi and kept quiet. I know it was your hairdryer that ended up in Selenskij’s bathtub, and I also know you were in Yorckstrasse when Nikita Fallin fell from the fourth floor. Yet I haven’t put you on the list of murder suspects.’
‘Am I supposed to be grateful for that?’
‘It would be enough if you stopped waving that pistol in front of my face.’
‘I don’t owe you anything,’ she said. ‘I didn’t kill those two men. Even if they deserved it. I wanted to kill them, I admit, but you can’t be punished for intent alone.’
‘No,’ Rath said. He tried hard not to show his surprise. Was she telling the truth? ‘Then why were you at Yorckstrasse when Fallin died? It was you who lured him into the trap.’
‘I was waiting for him a floor higher, that much is true. I wanted to shoot him, just like I wanted to shoot Selenskij. But when I arrived at the house here, the police were already outside the door. I didn’t find out he was dead until a day later.’
‘So how did your hairdryer end up in the bathtub?’
‘I didn’t throw it in, anyway.’
‘And you didn’t cause Fallin’s fall either?’
‘When I called him, he was leaning over the banister. I wanted to pull the trigger, but then he fell, and I ran downstairs after him. I swear I’d have shot him, if he had still been alive, but there was a man crouching beside him who said Fallin was dead.’
‘My colleague.’
‘At any rate, I got away. I had a pistol in my handbag after all.’
Rath considered for a moment. There was someone else who might be interested in seeing the two Russians dead: Bruno Wolter. The pair had become a security risk and he must have disposed of them, before attempting to lay the blame at the Countess’s door.
He nodded. ‘Sounds plausible to me. In the meantime the dust appears to have settled on the matter. Homicide have been looking into other cases for quite some time.’
‘So why are you paying me a visit?’
‘You haven’t been here for a long time. I’m your neighbour.’
The astonishment suited her.
‘Believe me, I’m not trying to trick you. The case is closed. Even the police know Fallin and Selenskij got what they deserved. Can I lower my hands? My arms are beginning to hurt.’
She nodded. Nevertheless, a tiny bit of suspicion remained in her eyes. She kept hold of the pistol.
‘I’ve just made some tea,’ she said. ‘Would you like a cup?’
‘Yes, but no rum please.’
A short time later they were sitting at her small kitchen table drinking tea. She had to get a second chair from the bedroom.
‘You’re the only person who knows what happened with the gold,’ Rath said. ‘Did it ever leave the Soviet Union? Or did the Red Fortress get it after all?’
‘You’re very inquisitive.’
‘Occupational hazard, but the question is private in nature.’
‘The Red Fortress doesn’t exist anymore,’ she said. ‘The organisation still calling itself that doesn’t merit the name.’
‘What about the gold?’
‘In its rightful place.’
‘Marlow found the hiding place, didn’t he? Even without the map. And he gave you your share?’
‘The gold has long since been sold. Everyone got what they were entitled to.’
‘Marlow most of all.’ Rath nodded. ‘So the deal has already taken place. Then can you tell me how you smuggled it?’
‘Why do you want to know?’
‘Because I don’t understand. I assume it was in the tank wagons.’
‘Correct. Only the outer wall of the tanks was steel. On the inside they consisted of a thick layer of gold.’
‘How did it get there? The cars didn’t come from Russia, they came from East Prussia.’
‘They were built in Russia though.’
‘Sorry?’
‘My family didn’t exploit serfs, but was involved in industry. That’s where the Sorokins’s fortune comes from. In St Petersburg we owned a rail wagon factory. By the time the war began, my father had already invested a large percentage of his assets in gold. When the Bolsheviks staged their coup, he had it melted. After that a whole series of tank wagons were built, whose actual worth only very few people knew about.’
‘But they weren’t built to the Russian track gauge.’
‘No. That way the Bolsheviks wouldn’t get it into their heads to confiscate them for their own purposes. Father wanted to get them out of the country, there had been orders placed for all of them from abroad, from family friends.’
‘One of whom was from East Prussia.’
‘Correct.’
‘So the gold has been in Germany for years?’
‘No. During the Civil War normal trade was impossible. Then the communists started making trouble, so it took almost ten years before the wagons were finally allowed to cross the border. Foreign capital makes even the Bolsheviks weak.’
‘The buyers were Vereinigte Ölmühle Insterburg?’
‘The company belongs to a good friend. He was in on it.’
‘So why didn’t he just send the wagons to you in Berlin?’
‘Someone would have noticed. Too many people knew about the gold. Some people knew who I was and were waiting for me to make a move.’
‘What about the rest of your family?’
‘No longer alive.’
‘So everyone was circling around you like vultures?’
‘That’s why Alexej and I arranged this spectacle. We thought if everyone was concentrating on the cargo, no-one would be paying any attention to the wagons.’
‘Which is why Marlow had to order chemicals in Leningrad when he could have got them far cheaper along the Rhine…’
She smiled, and it looked as if she hadn’t done so for a long time.
‘The chemical company he ordered them from also used to be a Sorokin factory,’ she said. ‘It was all pretty obvious – but then it was supposed to be.’
A little later Rath was climbing the stairs back down to his flat. There were a thousand different thoughts milling around his head. But he knew what he had to do; he knew exactly what he had to do. He wanted to feel comfortable in his own skin again.
He fetched the keys to the caretaker’s flat from the shed. Lennartz had started to repaper the flat, but left the poky grey corner where he did his paperwork. Everything looked the same as always. Schäffner’s old typewriter was still there, it was part of the inventory. Rath sat down and took a few leaves of paper from the drawer. Then he wrote it all down, the whole story. From the perspective of the simple SA Scharführer Hermann Schäffner. With every letter that he typed he felt his heart grow lighter.
In the distance were the eight chimneys of Klingenberg power station and the great hall of Görlitzer station amidst the sea of houses that formed Kreuzberg. Finally Rath was able to savour the view. It was the same as before, only this time unaccompanied by feelings of dizziness, as a large balustrade prevented visitors to the rooftop restaurant from plunging onto Hermannplatz below.
The new Karstadt department store had opened today to an indescribable hullaballoo. Rath had requested a meeting with Weinert and the journalist had suggested the roof garden because he had business there anyway. The Karstadt building seemed suitable. Perhaps because the whole story had started here when this department store was still just a building site, a building site on whose scaffolding he had chased Franz Krajewski. Where Bruno Wolter had saved his life. DCI Bruno Wolter, whom the commissioner had posthumously decorated for his bravery a few days ago.
Hermannplatz had changed its appearance. The sand-coloured colossus dominated the square and seemed as out of place here as an Aztec pyramid. As two Aztec pyramids. This twin-towered example of modern gigantomania in Neukölln, of all places, where only weeks before the police and communists had been engaged in bloody street fighting! Rath doubted that the huge store would lend a touch of New York to the workers’ district. Nevertheless, the residents of Berlin had been awaiting its opening with feverish anticipation for weeks and loved the store from day one. The rooftop restaurant in particular, it seemed.
Rath had trouble finding Weinert in the crush, but in amongst the pushing and shoving the journalist had actually managed to get them a seat, and one with a prime view at that. Was it due to his press card? Perhaps he had just had coffee with Herr Karstadt himself.
The journalist had reserved the seat opposite with his coat. Weinert stood up to greet Rath and as he did so a brash type almost snatched away his chair. A stern glance sent him on his way again. The men sat down.
‘I’ve ordered you a coffee,’ Weinert said. ‘It takes forever for a waiter to come.’
Rath nodded. In the confusion of voices around them, it was hard to make oneself understood. It was scarcely believable that anyone was being served at all in the chaos. Still, the waiters were weaving their way through the crowds with trays raised like circus artists.
‘Nice quiet spot, this,’ Rath said.
Weinert laughed. ‘We’re less conspicuous here than we would be in an isolated clearing in the middle of a wood.’
‘That could be. Every sensible person is somewhere other than here today.’
A waiter placed two pots of coffee on the table, settled up and disappeared straight back into the crush.
‘You wanted to speak to me?’ Weinert asked. ‘Do you have something for me at last?’
Rath lit a cigarette before replying.
‘I do.’
Weinert looked surprised. ‘Really?’
‘It’s not what you think.’
‘Of course not. Birds of a feather flock together.’
‘You’ll just have to deal with the fact that you’re barking up the wrong tree. It’s a part of everyday police life.’
‘I’m not a policeman, I’m a journalist.’
‘With a little too much imagination.’
‘This weapons trafficking is real. Rifles and submachine guns with police and Reichswehr serial numbers are being used for Stahlhelm reserve duty training exercises. My informant isn’t just some crazy, you know.’
‘You’ve been getting on my nerves for weeks with this crap.’
‘Yeah, because you’re suddenly praising an officer to the skies who has more dirt on him than a Kashubian swineherd!’
‘DCI Wolter died in hospital as a result of injuries sustained in the execution of his duty.’
‘You sound like a prayer mill, do you know that? Wolter was a staunch Stahlhelmer, even Zörgiebel didn’t deny that. And he belonged to a network of old war comrades. I know that from Behnke.’
‘The Stahlhelm is a league of front soldiers. Lots of police officers served in the war.’
‘But not all of them train young people for a paramilitary organisation. So that one day the Reichswehr, when it’s big and strong enough again, can call on enough trained soldiers. The Reichswehr itself comprises almost only officers. The ordinary soldiers are being cultivated by the right-wing paramilitary groups like the Stahlhelm, Scharnhorstbund, Wiking and the rest of them. They’re all being fed by the Reichswehr and their financiers from the armament industry. The same goes for the Nazis with their SA.’
‘That’s a problem for the Reichswehr rather than the Prussian police.’
‘There are links to the police, or at least there were. I know it, I just can’t prove it. The police aren’t as democratic as the social democrats would have it.’
‘The police aren’t political. It’s their job to maintain law and order.’
Weinert shook his head. ‘Don’t tell me you still believe that.’
Rath blew a final cloud of smoke across the table and stubbed out his cigarette. During the last few weeks, he had told himself over and over again that Bruno Wolter had got the punishment he deserved. In truth, he had never believed it. The commissioner had made Wolter into a hero and the press had swallowed his story. A story that kept the Stahlhelmers who had been at the station that night in check. If they wanted to question the official police version of events, they’d have to damage the reputation of their own man, the hero Bruno Wolter. That it didn’t happen was down to Rudi Scheer, who might no longer have access to weapons in the Department of Building Regulations at Charlottenburg, but remained an important figure in the Stahlhelm. In the meantime Rath knew that, had Wolter survived, his fate would have been similar, demoted but not punished. The commissioner had never intended anything else. It meant a man like Major General Seegers went completely unchallenged. A total farce. Only, Rath couldn’t discuss it with Weinert.
Still, there were other ways.
Deal with official business first.
‘Do you know the Deutsche Bank Branch Office on Reichskanzlerplatz?’
Weinert nodded. ‘Pretty flash isn’t it?’
‘Rich customers. Big cash deposits. The Nordpiraten are hoping to pull a job there, a big one – like the job on Wittenbergplatz…’
‘Like the Brothers Sass?’
‘Only not as successful. My colleagues from C Division are going to catch them red-handed. If you position yourself in good time tonight with a few photographers, you’ll get some nice snaps.’
‘Not exactly the revelation to end all revelations.’ Weinert seemed only moderately enthusiastic.
‘A whole Ringverein is being taken out of circulation. There ought to be some spectacular photos. It’ll make your boss happy, believe me.’
‘Your boss too.’ Weinert’s index finger drew a headline in the air. ‘Berlin’s police in fight against organised crime.’ He stood up and stretched out a hand. ‘I have to go. Thanks for the tip-off Gereon.’
‘Wait!’
Weinert stopped in his tracks. Rath passed him a black file with the typed confession of a simple SA Scharführer.
‘What’s that?’
‘No idea. Someone must have forgotten it. Perhaps there’s something interesting inside. About arms trafficking for instance.’
Weinert finally seemed to understand. His face lit up. ‘Do you think?’
‘Well, I wouldn’t be handing it in to lost property if I were you.’
‘If the information is correct.’
Rath shrugged his shoulders. ‘That’s for you to decide. You’re the journalist. I’m a police officer.’
Weinert waved the file. ‘If there’s anything I can do for you – let me know.’
Rath didn’t have to think long. ‘Do you need your car tomorrow?’
‘If you dare show your face again in Nürnberger Strasse, you can have it.’ Weinert laughed and turned round.
Rath gazed after the journalist until he had disappeared into the crowd. He stayed at the table and lit another cigarette. Sometimes you had to lie to reveal the truth. Weinert was all fired up for this story; he would write it, that much was certain.
Rath’s gaze wandered over the sea of houses. He still didn’t know what to make of this city, but in summer Berlin definitely had its charm. It was completely different from the winter. Perhaps it wasn’t so bad here after all.
Now he just had to persuade Charly to take a drive out to the country with him tomorrow. That was the trickiest part, but he would manage it somehow.
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