He shrugged, irritated at her directness. “Hope he wasn’t going to some fancy restaurant. He’s got three days of whiskers, smells like an outhouse, and could barely put one foot in front of the other when I last saw him.”
This only irked her more. “May I speak with your son?”
“He’s in school until three.”
“Is there a possibility that Herr Eckhardt might have come in when. . . .” She deliberately let her eyes move to the overstuffed chair. “While you were distracted?” His eyes narrowed, and she realized it was foolish to provoke him. “Would it be possible for me to go up to his room and check?” she asked, forcing a smile.
The man considered that for a moment and then shrugged. He took down a key from the rack behind him and laid it on the counter. “Suit yourself. It’s room 214.”
“Thank you.” As Emilee started for the stairs, she had another idea. “Sir, I know this is a little presumptuous”—she flashed him a warmer smile—“but if he’s not there, would you mind if I waited for him in the room? I’ve come down from Pasewalk on the train this morning. I was up at four. I’ll just maybe take a little rest while I wait.”
For some reason he found that amusing. “From Pasewalk, you say?”
“Yes. Do you know where that is?”
He ignored that. “What’s your name?”
“Emilee Fromme.”
He grunted. “He left standing instructions that if a Nurse Fromme from Pasewalk should call, I was to get him anytime day or night.”
“That’s me. I tried to call last night, but they said your phone was not working.”
“The telephone workers are on strike.”
Of course. That would explain the restaurant not answering too. “So, may I wait in his room?”
Again there was a sense that he found something very funny in her request. But then his next question took her aback. “Are you sure you want to do that?”
Emilee bristled a little. “I’m sure.”
He pushed the key toward her. “If you leave before he comes back, please bring the key back.” She took the stairs two at a time, disappearing out of his sight.
The second floor hallway was deserted. As Emilee reached the door marked 214, she stopped and listened. There was no discernible sound—not from the room, not from anywhere in the hotel. She knocked once. Then again. Nothing. Bracing herself, she unlocked the door and pushed it open.
With a soft cry she fell back a step, throwing her arm across her mouth and nose. The smell was like a blow to the face. Bewildered, she looked at the key again, and then at the room number. Yes, this was room 214. Emilee took a deep breath, pushed the door all the way open, and stepped inside. She groped for the light and flipped the switch up.
For several long seconds she just stood there, her eyes taking it all in, her mind refusing to accept what she was seeing. Then, with a low cry, she turned the light off again, backed out quickly, and locked the door again. Now she understood the man’s condescending smiles.
He was seated forward in his chair when she came back down again and laid the key on the desk. “Decided not to wait?” he drawled.
“You think that’s funny?” she snapped. “When did you last clean that room?”
“We don’t clean the rooms,” he sneered. “Not for two marks a night. We give ’em fresh bedding once a week. That’s all.”
Furious at the man, sickened by what she had seen, and disgusted to think that Hans was responsible for it, she asked one last question. “What time does your son come on tonight?”
The man thought about that for a moment and then shrugged. “Normally, ten o’clock or thereabouts. But the Frau and I have an engagement this evening, so he’ll come on shift about seven tonight.”
“I’ll be back then.” Emilee had another thought. “Is there an inexpensive hotel nearby?”
He chuckled aloud, relishing the fact that she was asking for his help. “You’re welcome to stay in Sergeant Eckhardt’s room. We’ll make an exception to our males-only policy for you, Fräulein Fromme. Just two marks a night.”
Emilee whirled and plunged out the door.
January 15, 1919, 3:25 p.m.—Imperial German Army Barracks, Finckensteinallee, Berlin
There was a brief knock on the door, and then it opened immediately. The corporal who had brought the food tray in earlier was back. He glanced at the empty tray, smiled, and looked at Hans. “Could I bring you anything else, Sergeant?”
Watching him suspiciously, Hans shook his head.
“You sure? I’ve been instructed to give you anything that we have in the mess hall.”
Those words brought Hans’s head up. “Mess hall? Where am I?”
The answer was immediately regretful. “Sorry, Sergeant, I’m not allowed to say.”
“Is this a jail?”
The corporal smiled but shook his head. “Someone will be in to talk to you very soon. Are you sure there’s nothing else I can get you?”
More than anything, it was the politeness and the respect that were confusing him. Hans had never been in a prison or jail before, but he had talked to men who had, and they hadn’t been treated with anything other than the utmost contempt. “Uh . . . could I get some more aspirin?”
“Yes. In fact, the medical officer said you can have something stronger if you’d like.”
Medical officer? A full meal with second helpings? Mess hall? A corporal in army uniform? What was this place? The door to his room was locked from the outside, but there were no bars on the window. No uniformed prison guards.
Pushing all of that away, Hans shook his head. Tempting as it was to get something stronger, he didn’t want anything drugging his mind. Not yet. “Aspirin will be fine.”
With a curt nod, the young man left the room. Five minutes later he was back with aspirin and a glass of water.
When he left, Hans sat back, trying to sort it out. He gave up trying to figure out where he was or what was going on. But as his thoughts turned to the “voice” in the trees, he went back to the idea of the DTs. That made sense. No, that was the only thing that made sense. He simply refused to accept that it was some kind of spiritual prompting from his mother. Or, on the other hand, maybe it was God yanking him around. And yanking it was. One minute Hans had six or seven hundred marks in hand. The next, he was lying face down on the sidewalk with a pistol grinding into his cheekbone. One of the men in his unit back in France had once called God “the Divine Trickster.” There might be something to that.
Hans lay back on the cot and closed his eyes, too tired to care anymore. Just as he was drifting off to sleep again, he heard a key turn in the lock. He pulled himself up to a sitting position, wincing as the pain shot through his whole upper body. But when he saw who had stepped into the room, Hans leaped to his feet, stifling a cry. Then he saluted. Colonel von Schiller was standing before him, a sardonic smile on his face. The corporal was right behind him, hands extended in front of him. Laid across them was a set of army fatigues, folded and neatly pressed, including fresh underwear and socks. A file folder rested on top of the pile.
The corporal laid the uniform on the foot of the bed and then handed von Schiller the folder. He stepped out of the room and reappeared a moment later carrying a wooden, military-issue chair. He set it down beside the colonel. “Anything else, sir?”
“Yes, Jürgens. As soon as I’m finished, I want you to take Sergeant Eckhardt to the bathroom and let him take a shower. Find him a razor and shaving soap. A hairbrush, too.” The colonel turned to Hans. “You don’t have to shave, but I’m guessing you prefer to be clean shaven.”
“I . . . Yes, I do.” How would he have guessed that?
“Good. So do I. Thank you, Corporal. I’ll call you if I need you.”
As Jürgens left, the colonel turned back to Hans and nodded curtly. “At ease, Sergeant.”
Hans was too stunned to respond. He gaped at the man, feeling as though the earth had just been yanked out from beneath his feet. He
wondered if this was why he was not in jail. The colonel wanted to even the score for what Hans had done to his wife.
An amused smile curled around the officer’s mouth. “At ease, Sergeant Eckhardt,” he said more forcefully, gesturing with his hand. “Please, sit down.”
Hans spread his feet apart and clasped his hands behind him in the classic at-ease posture. “I prefer to stand, sir,” he said.
The colonel glanced at the uniform. “I hope that’s the right size. But I suppose it’ll have to do until we can get your other one cleaned.”
Hans said nothing. His brain was in such a whirl, he didn’t dare open his mouth.
The officer moved the chair so it faced Hans directly and then sat down. “You may as well sit, soldier. No one’s going to shoot you. At least, not yet.” He seemed to find that idea amusing.
Hans slowly sank down onto the cot.
Crossing his legs and revealing highly polished, knee-high boots, von Schiller watched Hans steadily for several seconds. Hans forced himself to submit to the scrutiny. Finally, the officer shook his head. “Monika said that you were beat up by some other soldiers. Freikorps?”
“I didn’t ask, but probably. They wore army uniforms and had army-issued weapons.”
“Uh-huh. When I first saw you, I thought you might have been run over by a tank.”
“It felt like it, sir. There were four of them. They were waiting for me at my hotel.”
“And what had you done that brought them to your hotel?” Then even as the colonel finished the question, he waved his hand as if brushing it aside. “Never mind. We’ll get to that soon enough. All right now, Sergeant. We have a lot to talk about, but let’s start with how you came to rob my wife and what made you change your mind and give the money back to her.” His eyes suddenly went very cold. “And I would encourage you to be completely forthright in your answers. If I catch you lying. . . .” He gave an enigmatic shrug. “Well, you’ll wish that I turned you over to your Freikorps comrades. Verstehen?”
“Yes, sir.”
“I’m guessing this story begins before you and Monika met in the park. So why don’t you start wherever you think will be most helpful to me?”
Talk about sensory overload. Hans was having a hard time keeping up with this man. He was career army. He had a rod of steel down his back. There was no question about that. But for a man whose wife had been robbed at gunpoint by the person sitting before him, the colonel seemed amazingly unperturbed.
Hans hesitated. Where should he start? How far back should he go?
As all of that was going through his mind, he kept glancing at the folder on the colonel’s lap. He had to assume that it was his army personnel folder. If so, von Schiller knew a lot about Hans already. He decided not to hold much back.
So he began to speak softly but without rushing, beginning when he had been caught in the artillery shelling of their own forces and was severely wounded. “When I woke up,” he concluded, “I was in the Army Hospital in Pasewalk.”
“Was that when you won the Iron Cross?”
So the colonel had read his file. “No. That came from the Battle of Verdun.”
“They say you carried a fellow soldier out of harm’s way, even though he was dead.”
“I couldn’t be sure he was dead, sir. I did what anyone would have done.”
Von Schiller grunted something, opened the file again, and scanned it quickly. “Two battle ribbons. Verdun and the final defense of the Siegfried Line, ja?”
“Yes, sir.”
“I see that’s also where you earned a letter of commendation from your battalion commander.”
“Yes, sir.”
“So it was on the Siegfried line where you were earned the Verwundetenabzeichen, the Medal for the Wounded?”
“Yes, sir.”
“How badly were you hit?”
Hans touched the scar next to his eye. “They thought for a time that I might be blind. A few days after I woke up, the war was over.”
Von Schiller closed the folder and dropped it on the floor. His eyes were locked with Hans’s. Hans wasn’t sure what was going on here, but for the first time he had the tiniest glimmer of hope. He thought what he saw in the colonel’s eyes was respect. He went on with his story. He told the colonel about the closure of the Ministry of War and the loss of his severance pay. Von Schiller nodded from time to time but said nothing. Hans told him about the job at Bayerischer Biergarten, Fritzie’s offer to have him “ride shotgun,” and their confrontation with Karl and his men.
“How much did you take from them?”
“All of it,” Hans said quietly. “About forty-five hundred marks.”
Von Schiller gave a low whistle. “No wonder they came looking for you.”
“We thought we had covered ourselves. I convinced my partner that there was no way they could identify us. But I was wrong.” He reached up and touched his cheek. “As you can see.”
“What about your partners?”
“One’s in the hospital, and the restaurant was torched.”
Von Schiller seemed satisfied. “All right. That brings us up to this morning. Go on.”
For a moment, Hans was tempted to skip the part about scavenging for food, but suddenly he wanted the colonel to know. He wanted him to know how utterly desperate he was. That he was not the kind of man who accosted vulnerable women and stole from them. So he described it all—even the dog—in flat, unemotional tones. To his surprise, von Schiller only nodded.
“And,” he concluded, “I know there’s no excuse for what I did, but when your wife looked at me and wrinkled her nose up as if she’d just stepped in something disgusting, it was the last straw.” He reached up and rubbed at his eyes. “But I still can’t believe I robbed a countess.”
The colonel jerked forward. “She told you she was a countess?” He was incredulous.
“Yes,” Hans said slowly, “the Countess von Schiller, of the Leipzig von Schillers.”
Von Schiller was shaking his head, half in wonder, half in amusement.
“She also told me she was a widow.”
“Yeah, she told me that. What else did she tell you about me? About her?”
Hans was staring at him as he went on slowly. “She said that you were killed in the Battle of the Somme. That the money was your house payment for the bank. She said they were going to foreclose on your house if she didn’t get it paid today.”
And then, to Hans’s utter amazement, the colonel threw back his head and laughed. “Ah, Monika, Monika, Monika.” It was said with amazement, affection, and . . . yes, even pride.
Hans just stared at him.
Then von Schiller sobered, and there was a hint of anger in those cold, grey eyes. “So, she told you she was a starving war widow, trying to stall off a foreclosure on our house, and yet you still robbed her. If you’re the innocent victim of circumstance, as you say, robbing her sounds like a pretty cold and calculating thing to do.”
Hans shook his head. “It’s hard to explain.”
“Well, I suggest you try, because you, my friend, are teetering on a very thin wire at this moment. Why did you rob her if you believed her story?”
Hans sat back. That was a very good question. He took a quick breath and began. “In the first place, I had no intention of stealing anything from her. I asked her if she could spare me ten marks so I could get something to eat. She refused, saying that she wasn’t rich. That she had very little money. And then, I . . . I happened to mention I was the son of a milchbauer, and she actually recoiled, like she was afraid I might touch her or something. She told me to go away. But it was the way she said it.” His eyes couldn’t meet the colonel’s. “That was exactly what I had said to the dog. And with that same kind of contemptuous tone. That did it. That was when I decided I would take ten or twenty marks from her whether she liked it or not.”
“It must have been a jolt when you found more than seven hundred marks.”
“I couldn’t believe
it. Then I realized she had been lying to me. But when I confronted her on it, she started on that whole thing about you being dead and needing to take the money to the bank. But as I looked at her, I realized that something didn’t add up. Her clothes, her purse, her boots, the gold necklace. The diamond ring. Everything about her reeked of money. Any trace of feeling sorry for her went out the window. Even if she was a widow. Even if it was true about the mortgage payment. I just snapped.”
The colonel stood up. “So what made you come back? You were away clean. She really believed that you had a pistol and would shoot her if she moved. She was terrified.”
Hans wasn’t about to tell him about the voice, but he sensed that this was an important point to the colonel. He studied his hands as he spoke. “Sir, I was raised in a good family, believe it or not. My parents are simple farmers, but they are honest folk. As I was walking away from her, it hit me just how far I had fallen. Taking money from a war widow. At least, that’s what I believed.”
“Go on.”
Hans raised his head. “May I speak freely, sir?” The colonel gave him a curt nod. “Your wife is a beautiful woman, and even though things didn’t add up, she was still utterly convincing.” Hans gave a short, bitter laugh. “Hey, if I had happened to have any money on me, I probably would have ended up giving it to her. I mean, something was obviously wrong with her life. Why else would a woman like that be walking alone in the park at that hour of the morning?”
For a moment, Hans thought he had crossed the line. Anger flashed across the colonel’s face, but then he sighed. “The money was not to pay the bank,” he said. “We own clear title to our home. Actually, it was to pay for a new dress.”
“A dress! For seven hundred marks?” Hans cried, dumbfounded.
“That and a few other things. Our regiment commander is retiring, and there’s a big banquet for him next week. Monika found this dress, but they had to do some alterations. She was to pick it up today. I promised her that Alfred would take her to get it this morning.”
He stopped, looking at Hans closely. “You’re not a native Berliner, are you?”
“No, I’m from Bavaria.”