Pauline gave up trying to get to her office and retreated to the train station to telephone central police headquarters. All lines were busy. Back outside, the streetcars and trams had stopped running. She refused to be stymied. Berlin was her city, and she was proud to know every neighborhood and nearly every street. She had had the briefest apprenticeship of any Van Dorn field chief, but she had observed her
mentor, Art Curtis, in action and had learned by his example to cultivate friends in places both high and low.
She waded through the crowds, racking her brain for whom among her network of friends and informants in government, business, the military, police, and criminals could help her find at least the beginning of Kozlov’s trail.
She cut down to the Unter den Linden and walked a mile on the boulevard through thickening crowds. The police headquarters at Alexanderplatz was surrounded by poor and chaotic neighborhoods fought over by Reds and anti-Communists. The building looked under siege behind a wall of Freikorps trucks and police armored cars parked around it end to end.
She hurried back to the train station to send telegrams to her police contacts. Thankfully, the telegraph was working. But only one friend wired back.
PRATER.
She walked as fast as she could to the Prater Garten, a beer garden set under chestnut trees in Prenzlauer Berg. It was just far enough beyond Mitte to offer sanctuary from the tumult shaking the center of the city. Klaxons could be heard faintly, accompanied by a rumble of armored car engines, but at least the demonstrations and fights were too far off to be seen.
She spied a cadaverous man at a table under the trees and took a chair across from him. He had been the powerful Kommandeur of Berlin’s center Polizeigruppen until he resisted Freikorps demands. Desperate to regain his power, he was hungry for information. Give, Isaac Bell had taught her, and you shall receive.
“Thank you for coming,” she said.
He eyed her bleakly and puffed smoke from a cigarette in the corner of his mouth. Finally, he muttered, “The worst part of being demoted into semi-retirement is that beautiful private detectives no longer call on me for favors.”
“This must come as a great relief to your wife.”
Fritz Richter laughed out loud. “Pauline, Pauline, you always did brighten the day.”
Pauline answered him formally. “You will please remember, Herr Polizeikommandeur, that I asked for information—not favors—and I always give you information back.”
“It’s been too long a time, Fräulein Privatdetektive.”
“I’m home from the United States only this evening. You are the first old acquaintance I have called on.”
“Go back, is my advice. Make a new life in a new country. Our Germany is exploding again.”
“I don’t want a new country.”
“There’s a new one coming whether you want it or not. Our warring Nationalists and Communists and Social Democrats and National Socialists and Freikorps and Red Hundreds—a plague on all their houses—are not fighting for their supposed ideals. They are fighting for the spoils of the World War.”
“Our chief investigator told me that not ten days ago in New York.”
“How unusual. I don’t think of Americans as taking the long view. Did he tell you, too, that the winner—the best organized and most ruthless—will dictate the future of ordinary people who are trying to avoid the fight?”
“Semi-retirement has brought out the gloomy philosopher in you.”
“There will be no gracious winners, no knights in shining armor.” He signaled the waiter. “May I buy you beer, young lady?”
“No. Let Van Dorn pay.” She ordered beer and, suddenly realizing she was starving: “I haven’t eaten all day. Will you join me?”
Richter nodded and lit a new cigarette from the ember of the old. He wouldn’t eat but she ordered anyway. “Weisswurst.”
Richter raised his glass. “Prost!”
“Cheers! I’m tracking a man named Johann Kozlov who was deported last year by the Americans. He made his way back to America, where he was shot in the Cheka way.”
“Comintern. Yes?”
“I would say, yes. Who can I talk to?”
He eyed her appraisingly. “What is it worth to you?”
She returned a look that put Fritz Richter in mind of an alpine blizzard. “If I would not sleep with an important police commander for information, why would I sleep with a demoted, semi-retired old lecher?”