Private Berlin (Private 5)

n the coughing subsided, Hariat Ledwig spit into a tissue and dropped it in a trashcan set among the books.

“What do you want?” the old woman croaked suspiciously.

Mattie identified herself, showed her the Private badge, and then said, “I met your second cousin’s son, Darek, out at the old Waisenhaus 44 building. He suggested I come talk to you.”

Hariat Ledwig now turned highly guarded. “Who do you work for? The state?”

“No, I…”

The old woman picked up the magnifying glass and shook it at Mattie. “I was not a part of any forced adoptions. Never. Not once. I can prove it.”

Mattie understood what she was talking about. During the communist reign in East Germany, children were sometimes taken from parents thought disloyal. The children’s names were changed, and then they were given over to families deemed true to the state.

“That’s not why I’m here, Frau Ledwig,” Mattie assured her. “And there is no client. I’m just trying to find out about a very dear friend of mine who lived at Waisenhaus 44 in the seventies and eighties.”

Hariat Ledwig watched Mattie the way a cobra might a mongoose. “Your friend’s name?”

“Chris, uh, Christoph Schneider.”

The old woman blinked. Confusion and then pain rippled through her.

She started coughing again, hard and spastic convulsions, and she would not meet Mattie’s gaze.

When the fit eased, Mattie said, “Did you know Chris?”

Hariat Ledwig seemed in some kind of internal battle, but then she glanced sidelong at Mattie and said, “I had nothing to do with whatever happened to that boy. Absolutely nothing.”

CHAPTER 57

MATTIE FELT A pit opening in her stomach. She stared at the woman who’d run Waisenhaus 44 and said, “What happened to Chris?”

“I don’t know,” Hariat Ledwig whispered.

“You do.”

The old woman shifted painfully. “I don’t. Why are you here? Why now?”

“Because Chris was murdered last week.”

Hariat Ledwig’s eyes unscrewed a moment as if she’d fallen into some time warp. Then she said, wheezing, “I’d always hoped he’d be safe and live a long life. I’d hoped they all would…I…I did nothing but try to help him as best I could, but it was beyond me. I was a good person caught in an impossible situation!”

The old woman blubbered these last words: “I’m innocent.”

“Innocent of what?” Mattie demanded. “Was Chris abused in your orphanage?”

Hariat Ledwig forced herself to sit straighter. “Absolutely not. Whatever it was, it happened before he came, before they all came to Waisenhaus 44.”

“All?”

The old woman hesitated, but then, between hacking fits, she described the snowy winter night of February 12, 1980.

A car and a police van came. A man got out of the rear of the car. He told Hariat Ledwig that he was with the state. Three girls and three boys between the ages of six and nine had been found wandering the streets of East Berlin. Waisenhaus 44 was the only orphanage around with vacancies.

The children appeared to be in shock when they arrived. They clung to each other obsessively. Most had violent nightmares, and would wake up screaming for their mothers. Two of the girls were sisters and rarely let the other out of their sight. They all feared men.

Over the course of years, Hariat Ledwig tried to coax out of them what had happened, but every time she did, they’d become terrified and refuse. The only thing Chris ever said about it was that some things were best forgotten.

“So I did,” the old woman croaked. “From then on, I saw to their care as best I could. Made sure they were fed and clothed and educated. Some of the six did better than others, Chris and Artur probably the best.