Chapters (50)
- Praise
- Title Page
- Copyright Page
- Dedication
- Epigraph
- ONE
- TWO
- THREE
- FOUR
- FIVE
- SIX
- SEVEN
- EIGHT
- NINE
- TEN
- ELEVEN
- TWELVE
- THIRTEEN
- FOURTEEN
- FIFTEEN
- SIXTEEN
- SEVENTEEN
- EIGHTEEN
- NINETEEN
- TWENTY
- TWENTY-ONE
- TWENTY-TWO
- TWENTY-THREE
- TWENTY-FOUR
- TWENTY-FIVE
- TWENTY-SIX
- TWENTY-SEVEN
- TWENTY-EIGHT
- TWENTY-NINE
- THIRTY
- THIRTY-ONE
- THIRTY-TWO
- THIRTY-THREE
- THIRTY-FOUR
- THIRTY-FIVE
- THIRTY-SIX
- THIRTY-SEVEN
- THIRTY-EIGHT
- THIRTY-NINE
- FORTY
- FORTY-ONE
- FORTY-TWO
- EPILOGUE
- AUTHOR’S NOTE
- Teaser chapter
SIXTEEN
Walking down Marstallstrasse onto Maximilianstrasse, I was already thinking of how I was going to spend the next day. It was going to be a day without Nazi war criminals and Red Jackets and crooked Croatian priests and mysterious rich widows. I was going to spend the morning with my wife, apologizing for all my earlier neglect of her. I was finally going to call Herr Gartner, the undertaker, and provide him with the words I wanted on Kirsten’s memorial tablet. And I was going to speak to Krumper and tell him to drop the price on the hotel. Again. Maybe the weather at the cemetery would be fine. I didn’t think Kirsten would mind if, while I was in the garden of remembrance where her ashes were scattered, I got a little sun on my face. Then, in the afternoon, maybe I’d head back to that art gallery—the one next to the Red Cross building—and see if I could sign up for a crash course in art appreciation. The kind where a slim but attractive younger woman takes you by the nose and escorts you around a few museums and tells you what’s what and what’s not, and how to tell when a chimpanzee painted one picture and a fellow wearing a little black beret painted another. And if that didn’t pan out, I would head to the Hofbrauhaus with my English dictionary and a packet of cigarettes and spend the evening with a nice brunette. Several brunettes probably—the silent kind, with nice creamy heads and not a hard-luck story between them, all lined up along a bartop. Whatever I ended up doing I was going to forget all about the things that were now bothering me about Britta Warzok.
I had left my car parked a few blocks east of the Vier Jahreszeiten, pointed west toward Ramersdorf, in case I fancied the idea of checking out that address she’d given me. I didn’t fancy it much. Not on top of two Gibsons. Britta Warzok had been right about that much, at least. The Vier Jahreszeiten did serve an excellent cocktail. Near the car, Maximilianstrasse widens into an elongated square called the Forum. I guess someone must have thought the square reminded them of ancient Rome, probably because there are four statues there that look vaguely classical. I daresay it looks more like the ancient Roman Forum than it once did, because the Ethnographic Museum, which is on the right side of the square as you go toward the river, is a bombed-out ruin. And it was from this direction that the first of them came. Built like a watchtower and wearing a badly creased, beige linen suit, he walked meanderingly toward me with his arms spread wide, like a shepherd trying to intercept escaping sheep.