Private Berlin (Private 5)
Carl Gottschalk looked pained and pitying when he said, “Unfortunately, she does, High Commissar.” He placed a photocopied document in front of Dietrich. “This is your application to become a trainee cadet at the GDR’s Ministry for State Security as Hans Dietrich Frommer, son of Conrad Dietrich Frommer.”
Dietrich gazed in disbelief at the document. “This isn’t real. They—”
“That document is very real,” his supervisor stated flatly. “After Frau Engel and Inspector Weigel came to me with Ilona Frei, I petitioned the Federal Commissioner for the Stasi Archives to do a rapid search for us. She balked at first, but when I told her it concerned an ongoing murder investigation, she agreed to help us.”
Carl Gottschalk’s face turn
ed stony as he placed another paper in front of Dietrich. “This is a copy of your application to Berlin Kripo, six months after you changed your name and thirteen months after the wall fell. You did not mention the name change on your application. You did not disclose anything about the year you spent as a member of the East German secret police, Hans. Nor did you disclose your father’s long involvement. You wrote in your application that your father was a carpenter, a conveniently dead carpenter.”
Dietrich sighed and said nothing at first. Then he looked up at them all, a broken man. “I hid who I was because I wanted to be a policeman, as my father had been, and my grandfather had been. I did not care for politics. I still do not. I have only wanted to be one thing my entire life—a policeman.”
The high commissar explained that he had spent just eleven months as a recruit to the Stasi.
“I laid down my weapon after I was ordered to go to Gethsemane Church. I heard what they wanted me to do there, and I walked away. I’d heard about people shredding paper as well. So I walked away three weeks before the wall fell and joined the protests.”
“Why lie, then?” Carl Gottschalk demanded.
“It was a strange time after the wall fell, Carl, remember?” Dietrich said. “I had no job. Little food. No place to live. And there were many people from the East who wanted revenge on anyone associated with the Stasi, and they were right to want it. I had done nothing wrong, but even so I could read the writing on the wall. Being a member and son of the Stasi would only hurt me in the new Germany. So I lied.”
“What about the slaughterhouse?” Mattie asked. “Did you suspect it had been used as a torture chamber? Or did you know?”
Dietrich took a deep breath and said, “Suspected.”
The high commissar described a night when he was in his early teens. His father came home drunk. He got on the phone and Dietrich overheard the colonel’s side of the conversation.
“He was ranting and raving about all sorts of things,” Dietrich recalled. “But then I heard him saying that he feared being caught up in what he called, quote, ‘barbaric secrets’ associated with the auxiliary slaughterhouse in Ahrensfelde. He also said that he would not go down for, quote, ‘that man.’”
“Who was he referring to?” Mattie asked.
“I don’t know.”
“Did you ever ask him?” Inspector Weigel asked.
Dietrich cleared his throat. “I did, Weigel. Twice. Both times within the last five days. The first time he told me to stay away from the slaughterhouse. The second time he had a stroke and died.”
“Who else knew about the slaughterhouse other than your father?” Mattie asked. “Do you know who he was talking to that night?”
“I don’t know for sure,” the high commissar replied. “But I suspect it was one of the men who helped bury my father yesterday.”
CHAPTER 109
INSIDE A FOURTH-FLOOR room at the Hotel de Rome, Jack Morgan paced, checked his watch, and glanced back and forth at the television and Daniel Brecht’s iPad.
The television sportscaster was giving a spirited report on the manner in which Cassiano, in a rare afternoon match, had completely dissected the Düsseldorf defense, scoring four goals, two of them singlehandedly.
Brecht’s screen, meanwhile, showed the exterior hallway, and the interior of the adjacent hotel room where Perfecta stood in a sheer white nightgown, looking in the mirror and tending to her makeup.
“I still can’t understand why she went for Pavel’s scam,” Georg Johansson said. “I mean look at her. She could have anything she wanted.”
Morgan shrugged. “I assume there’s more to this than she’s telling us. There always is. But twenty million euros is a solid motive for crime, no matter how beautiful you are.”
“Here we go,” Brecht said, gesturing at the hallway feed, which showed an irate Maxim Pavel storming past the camera.
They heard him pounding on the door offscreen and through the other feed inside Perfecta’s hotel room.
The Brazilian model did not move, but then Brecht said, “Answer the door. Get him to talk.”
Perfecta had a radio bud in her ear. “I can’t,” she whispered.