“Suits me. But I’d rather not have your sister’s son-in-law in the Adlon. No disrespect to you or her, but they generally prefer it if I’m not teaching a class when I’m there.”

“Sure. We’ll think of a spot. Somewhere halfway. How about the Lustgarten?”

I nodded.

“I’ll get Richard to bring you the files on a couple of cases he’s looking at. Cold ones. Who knows? Maybe you can warm them up for him. A floater from the canal. And that poor dumb cop who got himself murdered. Maybe you read about him in the Beobachter? August Krichbaum.”

11

ONCE A HUGE, LANDSCAPED GARDEN, the Lustgarten was enclosed by the old royal palace—to which it had formerly belonged—and the Old Museum and the Cathedral, but in recent years it had been used not as a garden at all but for military parades and political rallies. I’d been part of a rally there myself, in February 1933, when two hundred thousand people had filled the Lustgarten to demonstrate against Hitler. Perhaps that was why, when they came to power, the Nazis ordered the gardens to be paved over and the famous equestrian statue of Frederick William III removed—so that they could stage even larger military parades and rallies in support of the Leader.

Arriving in that great empty space, I realized I had forgotten about the statue and was obliged to guess where it had been so that I might stand there myself and give Kriminalinspector Richard Bömer half a chance to find me in accordance with Liebermann von Sonnenberg’s arrangements.

Before he saw me, I saw him—a tallish man in his late twenties, fair-haired, carrying a briefcase under his arm, and wearing a gray suit and a pair of shiny black boots that might have been made to measure for him at the police school in Havel. Deep laugh lines bracketed a wide, full mouth that seemed on the edge of a smile. His nose was bent slightly out of shape, and a thick scar ran through one eyebrow like a little bridge over a golden stream. Except for his ears, which were unscarred, he looked like a promising, young light middleweight who had forgotten to remove his gum shield. Seeing me, he approached unhurriedly.

“Hey.”

“Are you Gunther?”

He pointed southeast, in the direction of the palace. “I think he used to face this way. Frederick William the Third, I mean.”

“Sure about that?”

“Yes.”

“Good. I like a man who holds on to his opinions.”

He turned and pointed to the west. “They moved him over there. Behind those trees. Which is where I’ve been waiting for the last ten minutes. I decided to come over here when it occurred to me that you might not know that he’d moved.”

“Who expects a granite horseman to go anywhere?”

“They’ve got to march somewhere, I guess.”

“That’s a matter of opinion. Come on. Let’s sit. A cop never stands when he can sit.”

We walked up to the Old Museum and sat on the steps in front of a long façade of Ionic columns.