Private Berlin (Private 5)

I hold it one minute, then take up the slack on the film reel and gingerly rewind. It holds. I set the reel back in the box and put the box neatly in the middle of the other microfilm boxes I have stacked beside it.

I get up, take my briefcase, and head toward the door.

“Are you returning today, professor?” the clerk asks.

“Of course,” I reply. “A quick supper, and then back.”

I can’t help it. I make that clicking noise in my throat, and smile.

I make another clicking noise as I go out the door to the archives, flashing on that picture of Christoph as a boy.

You didn’t have a chance, I think. And none of the others do either.

CHAPTER 45

MATTIE WALKED TO the front gate of the German Federal Archives. Inside the gatehouse, the guards were checking the briefcase of an elderly man in a long raincoat and a Bavarian hat whose hands shook as if he had a neurological disorder, like Parkinson’s disease, but not.

Mattie knew what Parkinson’s looked like. Her mother had died of it. This rhythm of tic and tremor was different, however, and for some reason it made her feel odd. Still, Mattie could not help pitying the old man as he took back his briefcase and returned his researcher pass.

Mattie never got a good look at his face, but for reasons she could not explain, she watched him shuffle down the sidewalk before showing the guards her badge and ID and turning over her weapon.

She walked across the campus and found the archival reading room, where she asked one of the clerks how best to track down the files of an East German orphanage called Waisenhaus 44.

The clerk frowned, and then went over to another archivist and had an intense conversation.

She returned and said, “Those files are out with a researcher already.”

That surprised Mattie and she instantly scanned the room. “Which one?”

Flustered, the clerk said, “It’s not our policy to…”

Mattie leaned over the counter, flashing her Private badge.

“This is a murder investigation,” she said softly. “Which one?”

The archivist’s brow knitted and she pointed over at a desk in the far left corner. “He was sitting over there, but then he went down to the microfilm room.”

“What does he look like?” Mattie demanded.

“An older man. A professor at Heidelberg, I think. He’s got Parkinson’s. You can’t miss him.”

“I just did,” Mattie groaned. “Did you touch those boxes after he left?”

“He wore cotton gloves, if that’s what you’re thinking,” the clerk said. “You don’t think he killed someone, do you? He couldn’t. He’s got Parkinson’s. He told me so himself. I don’t think that old man could hurt a fly.”

CHAPTER 46

TRYING NOT TO hyperventilate, I drive until I am well east of the archives before I tear off the wig.

My friends, I recognized the woman at the archives gate. She was the same woman I saw with the big bald guy outside the slau

ghterhouse. There are dozens of pictures of her on Christoph’s hard drive.

Her name is Mattie Engel. She and Christoph had been lovers, engaged I believe. She and Chris worked for Private. She has a son, Niklas.

She’s looking for me, and that makes me agitated. But there’s more. Her face—it’s true, she resembles my mother, and that makes me infuriated.

For an instant I fight the urge to clean out all my money and flee Berlin and all of Germany for that matter.