"Sei ferne von falschen Sachen. Den Unschuldigen und Gerechten sollst du nicht erwürgen; denn ich lasse den Gottlosen nicht Recht haben." 2. Buch Mose 23:7
"Keep thee far from a false matter; and the innocent and righteous slay thou not: for I will not justify the wicked." Exodus 23:7
* * *
Reichssicherheitshauptamt (Reich Main Security Office) – SS-Obergruppenführer Fritz Bauman
Amt V: Kriminalpolizei (Criminal Investigation Department) – SS-Gruppenführer Heinrich Weiß
Kriminalpolizeileitstelle Gau-Hitlerstadt (Hitlerstadt Criminal Investigation Control Center) – Polizeipräsident Kurt Meißner
Direktion V (Directorate V): Hakenkreuzberg, Horst-Wessel-Stadt, Neukölln – Kriminaldirektor Jörg Vogler
Inspektion A: Mord und Körperverletzung (Homicide Inspectorate) – Kriminalrat Joachim Stassen
Kriminalkommissar Adolf Dahm
Kriminalinspektor Matthias Hartmann
Kriminalobersekretär Gerd Flügel
Kriminalobersekretärin Franziska Meester
Kriminalkommissar Horst Rasmussen
Kriminalinspektor Helmut Müller
Kriminalinspektor Max Weigl
Kriminalobersekretärin Paula Wagner
Kriminalkommissar Sepp Wimmer
Kriminalkommissar Gerd Engdahl
Kriminalinspektor Hans Breitner
Kriminalobersekretär Wolfgang Wätzlich
"Keep thee far from a false matter; and the innocent and righteous slay thou not: for I will not justify the wicked." Exodus 23:7
* * *
Reichssicherheitshauptamt (Reich Main Security Office) – SS-Obergruppenführer Fritz Bauman
Amt V: Kriminalpolizei (Criminal Investigation Department) – SS-Gruppenführer Heinrich Weiß
Kriminalpolizeileitstelle Gau-Hitlerstadt (Hitlerstadt Criminal Investigation Control Center) – Polizeipräsident Kurt Meißner
Direktion V (Directorate V): Hakenkreuzberg, Horst-Wessel-Stadt, Neukölln – Kriminaldirektor Jörg Vogler
Inspektion A: Mord und Körperverletzung (Homicide Inspectorate) – Kriminalrat Joachim Stassen
Kriminalkommissar Adolf Dahm
Kriminalinspektor Matthias Hartmann
Kriminalobersekretär Gerd Flügel
Kriminalobersekretärin Franziska Meester
Kriminalkommissar Horst Rasmussen
Kriminalinspektor Helmut Müller
Kriminalinspektor Max Weigl
Kriminalobersekretärin Paula Wagner
Kriminalkommissar Sepp Wimmer
Kriminalkommissar Gerd Engdahl
Kriminalinspektor Hans Breitner
Kriminalobersekretär Wolfgang Wätzlich
ONE
The apartment on Schernerstraße wasn’t much to look at it. Typical post-war construction – solid, thick, ugly. There would be a basement bunker for the tenants, built in the all-too-brief period between victory in the east and the rise of the nuclear threat from the west.
Kriminalobersekretärin Franziska Meester climbed the steps to the entrance and looked left and right. This was an old habit before entering a building, a habit from the days when she had been Wachtmeisterin Meester and it had been her business to knock doors down and enter, gun drawn. Now the only time she drew her gun was twice a year to qualify at the firing range.
Her glance revealed a few things, none surprising or of much interest. Schernerstraße was in the heart of not-quite-middle-class neighborhood not very far from Görlitzer Bahnhof. The lights were on in many of the nearby buildings. Of course they were. The shot would have woken most of the neighbors, and the police sirens would have woken the rest. The curtains of all the windows were closed, of course. At least they appeared to be closed.
Germans knew how to look without being seen.
Ziska pushed the door open and strode into the tiny foyer of the apartment. A desk, empty, to her left. Mailslots with old-fashioned brass nameplates to her right. A few doors ahead. One to the stairs, one to the superintendent’s office, one to the first floor apartments.
She climbed the stairs up to the third floor. Where to go next would have been obvious even if she didn’t have the apartment number already. There was a cluster of police, green-uniformed Ordnungspolizei officers and a single plainclothes Kriminalpolizei inspector, in the doorway and hallway around 3B.
Ziska nodded at her fellow Kripo inspector, Kriminalkommissar Adolf Dahm. He was her senior by ten years and three grades, and the closest thing to a partner she had in their squad.
They exchanged almost fifty words a day sometimes.
“Meester.”
“Dahm.” A beat. “What do we have?”
Dahm, a tall, slightly portly man who had left most of his humanity – if he’d ever had any – in the East, gave Ziska a faint smile. “You have a dead elderly man.”
Ziska stared, then nodded. I have. My first case as lead inspector. She smiled just a little. At last.
Four months in Directorate V Homicide and finally her first case as the lead investigator.
Dahm stepped back to clear the doorway.
Ziska nodded again and then entered the apartment.
It instantly reminded Ziska of her Oma’s apartment in Wilreich, a quiet suburb of Antorf in the northwest Reich. Neat as a pin. Old fashioned furniture, all dark and solid wood. Oma Jolijn had a crucifix on the wall, this apartment had a plain cross.
And there he was, the tenant.
He was sitting on an old wooden chair next to an old wooden table.
He was smiling.
His age was upwards of eighty, Ziska guessed. A tall man, skinny, gaunt, even, with liverspotted skin and just a trace of a snow white mustache above his lips. There was perhaps a hint of illness to him, but it was hard to tell.
His brains were splattered across the floor and part of the wall.
An old-fashioned Walther pistol, a P72 instead of the P96 Ziska had carried in her Navy days or the P10 she carried now, was still in the dead man’s hand, loosely held by limp fingers. The hand and the gun rested on the table. Ziska guessed only the table kept the gun in the hand – it was too early for rigor mortis to set in, far too early. If not for the table, the hand would be at the man’s side and the gun on the floor.
She wondered if it had been intentional on the man’s part.
“Who is he?” Ziska asked.
“Gottlieb Visser,” one of the Orpo uniforms said. “Pensioner. No wife.”
“Children?”
“Still looking into that.”
Of course. Germanic efficiency. Ziska kept that subversive thought to herself. “Who called it in?”
“Next door neighbor. Arnold Wentz.”
“Where is he?”
“Sent him to the station.”
“Mm.” Ziska circled the body. She saw there was an open book on the table, and a piece of yellow paper atop it, a few inches from the hand holding the pistol. “Was the door locked when you got here?”
“Yes.”
“Windows?”
“They don’t open. Painted shut.”
“Mm.” Ziska turned her attention to the note and the book. The paper had just a few words on it, written in the elegant penmanship of a bygone age.
Ik zie ze zelfs als mijn ogen nu open zijn
Ziska knew what it meant. She remembered Oma Jolijn’s Dutch lessons, given when she was deposited in Wilreich for weekends as a little girl. Given in secret and at some risk. Not physical risk, but the risk of Oma never seeing her granddaughter again. Ziska’s parents were devoted Germanics. ‘Tribalism’ would have been anathema to them.
The note said I can see them even when my eyes are open now.
As for the Bible... Ziska picked it up. The header said Hebreeuwse Bijbelboek Ezechiël 25. The words at the bottom of the page caught her eye.
Ik zal wraak nemen en hen zwaar straffen voor wat zij hebben gedaan. En wanneer dit gebeurt, zullen zij weten dat Ik de Here ben.
“And I will execute great vengeance upon them with furious rebukes; and they shall know that I am the Lord, when I shall lay my vengeance upon them.”
“What’s all that, anyway?” the uniform – Sauer, that was his name – asked.
“It’s a Bible. Do you know the Bible?”
Sauer shrugged. “I know the Sagas.”
Same age, different worlds.
Ziska shut the Bible and set it back down on the table.
“What about the note?” Sauer asked.
Now Ziska shrugged. “I don’t know. Something for the linguists.” She turned to Dahm, who was still standing in the doorway. “What do we know about him?”
“Not very much. He was in the army.”
“Mm,” Ziska said. Almost half of all Germanics had been in the army. She had served in the navy, manning a radar station down in Kressensteinstadt (Baku, once upon a time) before getting out and joining the police.
“Iron Cross First Class.”
“Oh?”
“He threw it in the garbage in the kitchen.”
“Oh.”
Dahm shook his head. “Crazy old man.”
I can see them even when my eyes are open now.
Ziska filled up her notepad with the raw and fine information of the crime scene. And yes, suicide was a crime, although one with a very, very low conviction rate. She stayed while first the medical examiner and then the lab techs came and went, none lingering long for an obvious suicide.
Later, after clocking out and many hours after typing up her report at the Directorate V station in Horst-Wessel-Stadt, Ziska drove to the Army Archives down in Potsdam. After much delay and much paperwork, she was given Visser’s records, including a grainy photocopy of his Wehrpass, his old military ID.
She skimmed over the Wehrpass. It had his racial group, Pure Nordic, his place of birth, Nimwegen in Gelderlandgau, his date of birth, May 28, 1925, and other trivialities. It also listed his war record.
It was a real war record, the War in the East before it guttered down to skirmishes with desperate and deluded partisans sneaking west over the Urals. Visser had been conscripted not long after the old Netherlands had been reunited with the Reich, and assigned to the 203rd Security Division on the Eastern Front.
He’d earned commendations at Kleine-Michelstadt (Mikhnova) and Möser (Mozhaysk) and his Iron Cross as a guard supervisor at Luschberg KZ outside old Moscow. There was a green star appended to his Iron Cross citation.
At that point, Ziska shut the folder and hurriedly carried it back to the archivist. “Thank you,” she said, then left the Army Archives behind.
A green star meant Special Duties.
I can see them even when my eyes are open now.
Ziska knew her history. 1.7 million people had died in Luschberg.
Back at the station, she stamped the Visser file CASE CLOSED and passed it to her supervisor. She went home, she drank, she tried not to think about it again.
I can see them even when my eyes are open now.
