Goldstein, page 48
On the first landing he held to his resolution not to look down, but at one point he inadvertently took the risk, and instantly regretted it. He held on tight to the rail and hunkered down. Below he could see Gennat talking to a man, probably the night watchman. Buddha pointed skywards and Rath tried to look the other way, up inside the structure, to dispel the feeling of vertigo. The framework’s interior was filled by an enormous steel cylinder that was in motion day and night, rising and falling, as gradually as the sun and moon, and just as inexorably, an irresistible, relentless force. Cantilevers with guide pulleys ran via tracks into the vertical steel ribs to ensure the gas bell breathed steadily. Rath thought he could see it slowly descending as the bell exhaled again, an operation that would last the entire night. The heavy telescopic bell descended at a speed that was barely discernible, compressing the gas into the network of lines and hoses that played their part in illuminating Berlin’s night sky.
When he reached the topmost maintenance gangway he saw Tornow sitting on the enormous steel bell and the gas supply for half a city. Not just anywhere, but right in its centre, on a large valve that looked like a steel tree-stump and was the same size as a comfy stool. Next to him was a rucksack.
Rath climbed onto the gas bell using one of the cantilevers. Like the maintenance gangways, the slightly domed upper surface of the gas holder was secured by a wrap-around rail.
Slowly he approached the middle of the bell. It was like ascending a little hill, steadily sloping upwards. On top of the flat, circular summit sat the former uniform officer, whose promising career as a CID inspector was over before it had begun. The man with the perfect smile: Sebastian Tornow, the fallen angel.
Rath came to a halt about a metre behind him.
Tornow, who had his back turned, took a brief glance over his shoulder, and turned around without saying anything. In his hand he held a half-finished bottle of beer.
‘I’ve come to take you away,’ Rath said.
‘You sound like the devil himself.’
‘I’m a detective inspector come to make an arrest.’
‘An arrest? It’s not forbidden to sit up here drinking beer.’
‘No.’
Tornow raised the bottle to his lips. ‘Let me finish my beer, then I’ll come with you. You know how much I’m going to miss sitting up here.’
Rath nodded. Tornow offered him a bottle. ‘You want one too?’
‘No, thank you.’ Rath shook his head. ‘You know how it is: business before pleasure . . . I’ll smoke instead.’
He took a cigarette from his case, lit it and sat next to Tornow. ‘It really is beautiful up here,’ he said, blowing pale cigarette smoke into the night sky.
‘But that isn’t why you’re here.’
‘No.’ Rath looked across at Tornow, who was staring into the distance. ‘Today is the day Die Weisse Hand is finally broken. Right now all across the city men are being arrested. You’re one of them. You’ll also be charged with the murder of Jochen Kuschke . . .’
‘Kuschke, the fool.’
‘ . . . and with acting as an accessory to the murder of Eberhard Kallweit, Hugo Lenz, Rudolf Höller and Gerhard Kubicki.’
‘I had nothing to do with Kubicki. That was Kuschke’s idea. The same goes for the boy at KaDeWe.’
‘Kuschke was in the SA himself. Why would he stab a fellow member like Kubicki?’
‘I asked him that too. Apparently to pin it on Goldstein, but there were other reasons. For Kuschke, any SA men who didn’t go along with his hero Stennes were just a bunch of fag boys. At least, that’s how he explained it to me. The fact that he was in the SA should have been a warning. Recruiting him for Die Weisse Hand was the biggest mistake I made.’
‘He was good for the dirty work, wasn’t he? Hugo Lenz for example. Or would you have managed him on your own? Did he shoot Rudi Höller too?’
‘What does it matter now? I thought we made a good team, Kuschke and I.’
‘But you were wrong.’
‘So long as he did what he was told, everything worked fine. The problems only began when he started thinking for himself. The man was a sadist, as I should have known. It was my mistake.’
‘Here was I thinking that sadism was a prerequisite for your little troop. You kill people. Just like that.’
‘We eliminate criminals. It has nothing to do with sadism.’
‘You didn’t kill Goldstein. Why?’
‘Perhaps we wanted to shake the general public awake. Show them how dangerous it is to have a gangster roaming the streets of Berlin unattended, and that the laws which allow it to happen need to be changed.’
‘He wasn’t unattended. It was only through your expert help that he gave us the slip.’
‘We were watching him the whole time. Die Weisse Hand isn’t as dim-witted as Inspector Rath.’
‘With the exception of Kuschke. He was only supposed to be keeping Goldstein under surveillance, wasn’t he, not to be killing an SA man into the bargain?’
‘He wasn’t best pleased to see the man behave like a Boy Scout. So he lent a helping hand. To ensure the picture Berliners had of him was accurate.’
‘That he was a Jewish gangster? One who’s about to be exonerated in the press.’
Tornow looked into Rath’s eyes, as if he could read the inspector’s mind. ‘He’s in on this, isn’t he?’ he said, in a moment of insight. ‘Goldstein is in on this conspiracy against Die Weisse Hand!’
‘Conspiracy’s the wrong word. These are criminal proceedings, and his role is not to be underestimated. Quite simply, because he didn’t commit any of the murders your lot tried to pin on him.’
Rath thought of Simon Teitelbaum, Goldstein’s defence witness. The old man had good reason to withhold his name and address: fear of deportation. Teitelbaum was in Germany illegally. It was only after Gennat set everything in motion to grant him citizenship that he had declared himself willing to repeat the statements he had made to Rath in court.
‘You working with gangsters is nothing new,’ Tornow said, ‘but Gennat too! That was Buddha I saw down there, wasn’t it?’ Tornow pointed his beer bottle down towards Leuthener Strasse.
Rath shook his head. ‘I just can’t believe that you’d simply stab a man to death.’
‘It wasn’t simple, you’ve got it wrong there. It was unavoidable.’ He looked at Rath. ‘Believe me, I wasn’t always this cold-blooded, but time teaches you. Having a sheet of ice around your heart helps. A carapace, like after a sleet storm.’ He paused and gazed into the distance, towards the western horizon, over which the last of the daylight could still be seen, before the night finally took over. ‘The ice set in the day we found my sister Luise in the Hollandwiese, when all that remained of her was her physical shell, and the person she had been only that morning was irretrievably lost.’
‘You think that gives you the right to become just like the men who destroyed her?’
‘I’m nothing like those bastards!’ Tornow flashed him a look of such rage that Rath gave a start. ‘I never will be!’
‘You’ve become just as hard-hearted as them. Is that really worth striving for?’
‘It isn’t about whether it’s worth striving for.’ Tornow took a final gulp of beer. ‘We don’t get to choose whether we become hard-hearted or not.’
The bottle was empty. Tornow packed it inside the little leather rucksack, clinking it against another bottle. The one Rath had turned down. He stood up.
‘Let’s go back down,’ he said. ‘I don’t have to cuff you, do I?’
Tornow shook his head and stood up, shouldering the rucksack and fiddling with its clasp.
‘You’ve been very open with me,’ Rath said. ‘Why didn’t you tell me all that a few days ago? You would have spared us a whole lot of trouble.’
‘Because back then I didn’t know I was talking to a dead man.’ All of a sudden there was a pistol in his hand. ‘You’re a Catholic. You know what good it does to unburden your soul. Above all when you know that the seal of confession will be preserved.’
Rath gazed into the mouth of the pistol. It was a Mauser, he saw now, the same model he had once had. ‘Don’t do anything stupid. There’s a squad of a hundred officers waiting below. You’ve no chance of escape.’
‘Who says I want to escape. Perhaps I just want to shoot you.’
‘In front of over a hundred witnesses?’
Tornow shrugged. ‘So what? Have you forgotten that I’m already a police killer. One more won’t make any difference.’
Rath shook his head. ‘I don’t believe you.’
‘What is it you don’t believe?’
‘I don’t believe you’re cold-blooded enough to just gun me down. Besides . . .’ He pointed towards the maintenance gangway encircling them. While they had been speaking the gas dome had descended by a few centimetres. ‘At any moment this place is going to be surrounded by uniform officers with loaded carbines. If you shoot me, they’ll gun you down like a hare.’
Tornow looked to the side, which was all Rath had wanted. With a quick movement he was beside him, with both his hands on the pistol in Tornow’s right hand. A shot resounded from the Mauser, the bullet flying high into the night sky.
The two men landed on the gently sloping dome of the gas holder. There was a muffled thud as the Mauser and Tornow’s right hand crashed against the metal. While Rath focused his energies on the man’s firing arm, Tornow kicked him hard in the groin, catching him off guard. Rath felt everything go black and for a moment couldn’t breathe, but still he clasped the hand holding the weapon, slamming Tornow’s knuckles against the steel gas holder. He absorbed the kicks and punches until Tornow’s knuckles bled and he let go of the pistol. It slid a few centimetres and came to a halt. Before Tornow could retrieve it, Rath slapped it away as if it were a table-hockey puck, only to watch it skidding across the gently sloping metallic surface. It turned on its axis several times and finally, still moving at pace, slid over the edge of the gas bell. It didn’t fall into the depths, between the telescopic bell and guide framework, as Rath had hoped, but flew across the gap to land on the catwalk grating of the maintenance gangway.
Tornow ran over, diving across the floor and lying face down on the edge of the gas holder, frantically stretching to take the pistol in his grasp. Rath rose unhurriedly to his feet, ignoring the pain from the blows Tornow had dealt him, and pulled his Walther from its holster.
He had just loaded the weapon when Tornow finally reached the Mauser. He had failed to realise that the gas holder was still falling. The handrail on the maintenance gangway hadn’t moved, but the rail that fenced the edge of the gas holder continued its descent. Tornow had reached through both rails to grasp hold of the weapon. His eyes dilated when he realised that his right arm was stuck, jammed between them.
Rath needed a moment to work out what was happening. It was Tornow’s initial, barely suppressed cry of pain that alerted him.
‘Pull your hand away, for God’s sake,’ he cried.
‘I can’t! I can’t!’ Tornow’s voice was already panicked. ‘Stop the damn thing! Stop it.’
Rath looked around for an emergency switch, but that was nonsense: it was gravity pulling the gasometer down. Someone had to pump in more gas to reverse its relentless downwards motion. He climbed onto the maintenance gangway, ignoring Tornow’s cries, and called down to the others. ‘Stop it!’ he shouted, as loud as he could. ‘You need to stop the gasometer. Send it back up!’
He couldn’t tell whether they had understood. Tornow was still screaming when he climbed back onto the dome and tried to lift him out of the trap. It was hopeless.
Tornow pulled on Rath’s arm, but it was already too late. The two rails had wedged his forearm tight and wouldn’t let go.
He screamed like a banshee as the bones in his forearm broke one by one. Rath tried to pull him away, but couldn’t, the steel rails that were slowly moving apart had his arm firmly in their grip. The pistol slipped onto the catwalk grating; Tornow’s hand hung loose and strangely contorted above it.
Tornow wasn’t screaming any more. The pain had rendered him unconscious. Still, the gasometer descended relentlessly, millimetre by millimetre. Rath heard muscles and ligaments tear, bones crack, and despairingly tried again to pull him away. He didn’t think about what he was doing, just pulled and pulled, knowing all the while that it was hopeless. Then, abruptly, and with one final, ugly noise that sounded like a curtain ripping, the gasometer released the cadet, and Rath pulled his body away from the handrail.
Dismayed and exhausted, Rath gazed at the unconscious Tornow, at his right arm, or what remained of it. From the shredded stump jutted fragments of bone, torn sinews and ligaments. Blood sprayed at regular intervals onto the metal of the gas bell. Rath took his belt and bound Tornow’s arm, until the blood was no more than spitting from the horrific wound. He climbed onto the maintenance gangway, surprised, at that moment, not to experience any vertigo, and looked for Gennat and the officers below. ‘An ambulance,’ he shouted down. ‘We need an ambulance, God damnit! Quickly!’
Part III
CODA: Escape
Saturday 12th September 1931
119
The announcement that grated through the loudspeaker sounded every bit as miserable as Rath felt.
‘Attention please, the fast train from Hannover will shortly be arriving at platform 3. Please mind the platform!’
He stood with Kirie in the queue, waiting to buy a platform ticket. They had already checked in Charly’s luggage but, even so, her nervousness was driving him mad. He had accompanied her to the station as a matter of course . . . but something told him it was a bad idea, and not just because he hated goodbyes.
‘Come on,’ she said, for at least the twenty-third time, ‘or we’ll miss the train.’
He rolled his eyes, but the gesture was only seen by the man at the counter, who assumed it was directed at him.
‘Hold your horses! I’ll be with you soon.’ First he had to supply tickets to a family of five.
Rath winked at Charly and waved the ticket as if he had won first prize in the lottery, but she seemed to have left her sense of humour at home. Perhaps she had stowed it in one of the three suitcases that were making the long journey with her.
They made for platform two where the train to Paris (via Magdeburg, Hannover, Cologne and Brussels) was scheduled to depart in twenty minutes. Kirie pulled on her lead excitedly, sensing, as usual, that something wasn’t quite right.
Potsdamer Bahnhof was where Rath had begun his own fateful journey, arriving in the crisp cold of March 1929. It was where he had received and taken leave of his few visitors since then; and it was where, in a station locker, he had deposited evidence that no one must ever find.
Yet never before had he felt so out of place.
They walked along the platform, hoping to avoid the crowds. Charly looked at her watch. ‘Where has Professor Heymann got to?’
‘The train doesn’t leave for fourteen minutes. It hasn’t even arrived yet.’
She wasn’t listening, but rummaging in her handbag, looking for her passport for the umpteenth time.
‘In the side pocket,’ he said. ‘Next to the ticket.’
He couldn’t bear it any longer, and didn’t know how he would manage the next quarter of an hour until her professor showed up. He had to take his leave now while they were still alone and a private, intimate goodbye was still halfway possible.
‘Kirie and I had better go. We don’t want everyone to find out that . . . you know.’
Charly nodded wistfully. She leaned down and ruffled Kirie’s black fur. ‘Well, my darling, look after this one for me,’ she said. ‘I’m glad he’s still got you at least.’
She stood up straight and looked at Rath. He could hardly bear her gaze. ‘Let’s keep it brief,’ he said. ‘I hate long goodbyes.’
She nodded.
He took her in his arms. ‘I love you,’ he whispered in her ear, as a shrill whistle sounded from the platform opposite. He wondered if he had ever told her before, remembering an old saying: that love disappears as soon as you give it a name. You should never talk about love, simply live it. He could no longer remember which clever person laid claim to it, but all of a sudden it seemed horribly plausible.
‘What did you say?’ Charly asked, looking at him through eyes which seemed strangely different. The whole situation felt unreal.
‘Nothing important,’ he said, giving her a quick peck on the cheek. She hadn’t heard, perhaps that was a good sign. ‘So!’ he adopted a confident smile. ‘Safe trip. I’ll call you tomorrow in the hotel.’
She nodded, but looked straight through him, as if she hadn’t processed what he said. ‘Oh, look, there’s Guido,’ she said and waved over Rath’s shoulder. ‘How nice of him.’
Guido, the grinning man? Rath looked around. Him as well! Time to leave, before her friend Greta showed up too.
He embraced her so tight it was as if, for a fraction of a second, he never wanted to let go, and kissed her. She didn’t reciprocate, probably because Guido was already close by. Rath looked at her for a final time, her face, her eyes, and turned around. He couldn’t bear it, couldn’t bear to stand here with Guido to wave her off. Greta, too, had always despised him. Charly must see that! He had pictured their goodbye differently. He didn’t know how, exactly, just differently. The lump in his throat grew larger.
He met Guido with a mumbled greeting, and proceeded towards the milling mass in the station concourse, not wanting to turn around in case he triggered some catastrophe, like Orpheus or Lot’s wife.
Passing through the platform barriers he gave in and, though he didn’t turn into a pillar of salt, and Charly didn’t glide off, never to be seen again, part of him felt as if they had parted for good. She didn’t even gaze after him. Instead she chatted animatedly with Guido, who gave her a friendly hug and handed her a package, a book most likely, for the long journey. All of which reminded Gereon that he hadn’t got her anything. Whatever, he had no idea about books, and you didn’t give someone flowers at a train station . . .
