Private Berlin (Private 5)

They returned to the staircase, and again Mattie cried, “Falk!”

“Drop the gun,” Falk said from the shadows. “Toss it behind you.”

Mattie hesitated.

“Drop it if you ever want to see your son again.”

Mattie tossed the pistol back behind her. It clattered away.

“Flashlight too,” Falk said.

She complied, and then she saw her shadow and Ilona’s on the risers of the old staircase as Falk shined her light on them.

“Climb,” he said, then made that clicking noise in his throat.

Ilona panicked at the sound and tried to make a run for it. But Falk grabbed her by the hair and yanked her off her feet. She began to shriek.

“Scream all you want,” Falk snarled. “There’s no one who can hear you. We’re miles from nowhere and we have unfinished business.” He glared at Mattie. “Get upstairs. Your boy’s waiting for you.”

Mattie climbed up into the darkness with Ilona moaning behind her. They reached the landing, and Falk directed them down the hall into a room, which faced the rear of the orphanage, looking out over farmland and woods.

His flashlight cut the room, and Mattie thought she saw rope hanging from the exposed beam, before the light focused on the floor.

Falk told them to kneel. When they had, he instructed them to take off their bulletproof vests and clasp their hands behind their heads. He was behind Mattie the entire time, and she never got a good look at his face. He put zip-tie restraints on their wrists and ankles, and then came around the front of them.

In the slanted light of the flashlights brightening the room, Mattie thought that Falk’s face and head resembled a wig mannequin’s. He was bald, had no eyebrows, and his skin was strangely smooth, with ears tightly pinned back. “Don’t think you’re ever getting out of here, hmmm?” Falk said. “Your friend, Burkhart, the big guy? I put two rounds in his chest. He’s not going anywhere ever again.”

Mattie’s heart plunged ten stories. Burkhart? Dead? In her mind she saw him making Eggs Burkhart earlier that morning, and laughing at one of Niklas’s jokes.

She felt crazed with fear. “Where’s my son?” Mattie demanded.

Falk walked to a door in the corner of the room and pulled out Niklas, who was in restraints. Duct tape sealed his mouth.

“Nicky!” Mattie yelled.

Walleyed, Niklas started whining at his mother.

“Let him go!” Ilona Frei yelled. “You’ve got me. You’ve got what you want!”

Falk laughed. “And spoil my fun, Ilona? I think not.”

CHAPTER 124

MY FRIENDS, FELLOW Berliners, I light the gas lantern I brought especially for this occasion.

“You remember the lanterns, don’t you, Ilona?” I ask. “The soft wavering light where we used to play in the slaughterhouse?”

Ilona looks hypnotized, staring at the lantern, her mouth stretching against some horror playing in her schizophrenic mind before the light inside her seems to click off. She turns her head and stares at the wall, humming a child’s tune.

“You do remember,” I say and click my throat in approval.

Then I haul Mattie Engel to her feet, walk her backward, and tell her to kneel again, hands over her head. I feed a steel hook around the restraints. It’s attached to a rope that runs through a pulley I’ve attached to the beam.

“Stand up,” I say and start pulling out the slack until her arms are stretched tight.

I come around her and smile.

“There,” I say. “Now that is better, don’t you think? Hmmm?”