LITMIR.BIZ

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      “How will you approach this policeman?”

      “Approach him?” Kosov cracked a wolfish smile. “Break him, you mean. By morning I’ll know how many times that poor bastard peeked up his mother’s skirts.”

      Hans awoke in a cell. There was no window. He’d been thrown onto a stack of damp cardboard boxes. One pale ray of light filtered down from somewhere high above. When he had focused his eyes, he sat up and gripped one of the steel bars. His face felt sticky. He put his fingers to his temple. Blood. The familiar slickness brought back the earlier events in a throbbing rush of confusion. The interrogation … his father’s stony silence … the struggle in the hallway. Where was he?

      He tried to rise, but he collapsed into a narrow space between two boxes. Rotting cardboard covered almost the entire concrete floor. A cell full of boxes? Puzzled, Hans reached into one and pulled out a damp folder. He held it in the shaft of light. Traffic accident report, he thought. Typed on the standard police form. He found the date—1973. Flipping through the yellow sheaf of papers, he saw they were all the same, all traffic accident reports from 1973. He checked the station listed on several forms: Abschnitt 53 every case. Suddenly he realized where he was.

      In the early 1970s, Abschnitt 53 had been partially renovated during a citywide wave of reform that lasted about eighteen months. There had been enough money to refurbish the reception area and overhaul the main cellblock, but the third floor, the basement, and the rear of the building went largely untouched. Hans was sure he’d been locked in the basement.

      But why? No one had accused him of anything. Not openly, at least. Who were the policemen who had attacked him? Funk’s men? Were they even police officers at all? They had said he would soon be dead weight. It was crazy. Maybe they were protecting him from the Russians. Maybe this was the only way the prefect could keep him safe from them. That’s it! he thought with relief. It has to be.

      A door slammed somewhere in the darkness above. Someone was coming—several people by the sound—and making no effort to hide it. Hans heard clattering and cursing on the stairs; then he saw who was making the noise. Outlined in the fluorescent light streaming down from the basement door, two husky uniformed men were wrestling a gurney off the stairs. Slowly they cleared a path to the cell through the heaps of junk covering the basement floor. Hans closed his eyes and lay motionless on the boxes where he’d been thrown.

      “Looks like he’s still out,” said one man.

      “I hope I killed the son of a bitch,” growled the other.

      “That wouldn’t go over too well upstairs, Rolf.”

      “Who gives a shit? The bastard broke my ribs.”

      Hans heard a low chuckle. “Be more careful the next time. Come on, we’ve got to clear a space in there for this thing.”

      “Fuck it. Just throw this filthy Jew in on top of that one. Not much left of him, anyway.”

      “Apfel isn’t a Jew.”

      “Jew-lover, then.”

      “The doctor said leave this one on the gurney.”

      “Make him clear a space,” said Rolf, pointing in at Hans.

      “Sure. If you can wake him up.”

      Rolf picked up a rusted joint of pipe from the floor and rankled the bars with it. “Wake up, asshole!”

      Hans ignored him.

      “Get up or we’ll kill you.”

      Hans heard the metallic click of a pistol slide being jerked back. Christ … Slowly he rose to his feet.

      “See,” said Rolf, “he’s not dead. Clear out a space in there, you. And be quick about it.”

      Hans tried to see who lay on the gurney, but Rolf smashed the pipe against the bars near his face. It took him forty seconds to clear a space wide enough to accept the gurney.

      “Get back against the wall,” Rolf ordered. “Go on!”

      Hans watched the strange policemen roll the man on the gurney feet-first into the cleared space, then slam the door behind him.

      “You stay away from this Jew-boy, Sergeant,” Rolf warned. “Anything happens to him, it’s on your head.”

      The pair hurried up the stairs, taking the shaft of light with them. Hans couldn’t make out the face of his new cellmate. He felt in his pocket for a match, then remembered he’d given them to Kurt in the waiting room upstairs. He put his hands on the unconscious man’s shoulders and stared downward, waiting for his eyes to adjust to the blackness, but they didn’t. Moving his hand tentatively, he felt something familiar. Shoulder patches. Surprised and a little afraid, Hans felt his way across the man’s chest like a blind man. Brass buttons … patch … collar pins … Hans felt his left hand brush an empty leather holster. A police officer! Shutting his eyes tight, he put his right hand on the man’s face and waited. When he opened his eyes again, he could just make out the lines of the face.

      My God, he thought, feeling a lump in his throat. Weiss! Erhard Weiss! For the second time tonight Hans felt cut loose from reality. Gripping his friend’s body like a life raft, he began trying to revive him. He spoke into Weiss’s ear, but heard no answer. He slapped the slack face hard several times. No response. Groping around in desperation, Hans crashed into the back wall of the cell. His palms touched something moist and cold. Foundation stones. Condensation. Rubbing his hands across the stones until they were sufficiently wet, he returned to Weiss and laved the cool liquid over his forehead. Still Weiss lay silent.

      Alarmed, Hans pressed both forefingers against Weiss’s carotid arteries. He felt pulse beats, but very faint and unbelievably far apart. Weiss was alive, but just. The jailers had mentioned a doctor, Hans remembered. What kind of doctor would send a man to a cell in this condition? The obscenity of the situation drove him into a rage as he stood by the cadaverous body of his friend. Someone would answer for this outrage! Lurching to the front of the cell, Hans began screaming at the top of his lungs. He screamed until he had no voice left, but no one came. Slipping to the floor in exhaustion, he realized that the stacks of boxes in the basement must be deadening the sound of his voice. He doubted anyone upstairs had heard even a whimper.

      Suddenly Hans bolted to his feet in terror. Someone had screamed! It took him a moment to realize that the scream had come from inside the cell. He shivered as it came again, an animal shriek of agony and terror. Erhard Weiss—who had lain like a corpse through all Hans’s attempts to revive him—now fought the straps that held him as if the gurney were on fire. As Hans tried to restrain the convulsing body, the screaming suddenly ceased. It was as if a great stone had been set upon Weiss’s chest. The young policeman’s right arm shot up and gripped Hans’s shoulder like a claw, quivered desperately, then, after a long moment, relaxed.

      Hans checked for a pulse. Nothing. He hadn’t expected one. Erhard Weiss was dead. Hans had seen this death before—a heart attack, almost certainly. He had seen several similar cases during the last few years—young, apparently healthy men whose hearts had suddenly stopped, exploded, or fibrillated wildly and fatally out of control. In each case there had been a common factor—drugs. Cocaine usually, but other narcotics too. This case appeared no different. Except that Weiss never used drugs. He was a fitness enthusiast, a swimmer. On several occasions he and his fiancée had dined with Hans and Ilse at a restaurant, Hans remembered, and once in their apartment. In their home. And now Weiss was dead. Dead. The young man who had argued so tenaciously to keep two fellow Berliners—strangers, at that—out of the clutches of the Russians.

      In one anguished second Hans’s exhaustion left him. He sprang to the front of the cell and stuck his arm through the bars, frantically searching the floor with his right hand. There—the iron pipe Rolf had brandished! Steadily Hans began pounding the pipe against the steel bars. The shock of the blows rattled his entire body, but he ignored the pain. He would hammer the bars until they

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