Private Berlin (Private 5)

“Hallo there?” I call pleasantly.

Greta stands at the stove in a galley kitchen about six feet from me. She’s rolling bacon onto a paper towel on a plate. She looks up. “All done?”

“Yes, no problem with toilet. Must be neighbors.” I hold out the clipboard. “You sign that I am here, make trip, for Banter, okay?”

Greta steps toward me. And then I can’t help it. Being this close to her pleases me more than I’d anticipated, and I make that clicking noise in my throat.

Puzzlement and then disbelief twist through Greta’s face.

“You know me, Greta, hmmm?” I say. “A long time and still you know me.”

She’s paralyzed with terror, but I’m thrilled and fluid when I drop the clipboard and launch myself at her.

Greta grabs the skillet and throws the bacon grease at me. It scalds my face. But that only serves to infuriate me.

She starts to scream, but I knock the pan from her hand and jam my fist into her mouth before she can get out much more than a squeal.

She looks at me wide-eyed and makes soft whimpering noises.

“You remember, don’t you, Greta?” I ask in a hoarse whisper. “All the fun we used to have? You and your mother, hmmm?”

CHAPTER 62

BURKHART PARKED THE Private car down the street from Greta Amsel’s apartment building just as an older man in a blue jumpsuit and matching cap left by the front door, carrying a toolbox.

Mattie was trying Greta Amsel’s number for the third time. No answer. The workman climbed into a dark-blue panel van.

Mattie was barely conscious of him. She was running through the information Burkhart had given her on the way over.

The counterterrorism expert had discovered no other documents regarding the auxiliary slaughterhouse in Ahrensfelde. He’d looked in the Berlin city archives and in records repositories in Ahrensfelde, and there was nothing more than what they’d found already.

People in the area immediately surrounding the blasted abattoir told Burkhart that they’d already spoken to Risi Baumgarten’s agents and knew nothing about the place other than they’d thought it represented a hazard to their children.

Then Burkhart had stopped for lunch at a café not far from the slaughterhouse and met a retired shopkeeper and his lady friend.

The shopkeeper grew up on a farm that used the slaughterhouse. He said a man he knew only as “Falk” ran the place, and he described Falk as an alcoholic with a bitter and gloomy attitude.

Falk had a son who worked at the abattoir too. He couldn’t remember the younger Falk’s name, but he remembered that he was in his late teens the last time he saw him, and very smart despite limited schooling.

The shopkeeper’s lady friend told Burkhart that she walked by the abattoir in the late seventies, late at night, and thought she heard a woman screaming, but it could have been a pig squealing. Pigs are smart, she told Burkhart. They know when there’s killing going on. She told her late husban

d about the incident, and he’d told her to plug her ears from now on.

The blue workman’s van began to pull out.

“You want to knock on the door?” Burkhart asked.

“We’re here, right?” Mattie said, climbing out.

The van drove past them. They barely gave it a glance.

They tried the buzzer to Greta Amsel’s apartment twice. No answer.

“Let’s come back tomorrow,” Burkhart said.

An older gentleman walked up behind them. “Who are you looking for?”

“Greta Amsel,” Mattie said.