Garden of Beasts

older than the others climbed out. Another, younger, joined him.
    “That’s me. Who are you?”
    “I speak English better as the others. I will answer. I am Kurt Fischer and this is my brother, Hans.” He laughed at the lieutenants’ expression and said, “You are not expecting us, yes, yes. But Paul Schumann saved us.”
    He told a story about how Schumann had rescued a dozen young men from being gassed to death by the Nazis. The American had managed to round up some of them as they fled into a forest and offered them the chance to escape from the country. Some wanted to stay and take their chances but seven had agreed to leave, including the Fischer brothers. Schumann had loaded them into the back of a Labor Service truck, where they’d grabbed shovels and burlap bags and masqueraded as workers. He’d driven them through a roadblock to safety in Berlin, where they hid out for the night.
    “At dawn he droved us out to a old aerodrome outside of the city, where we got on this airplane. And here we are.”
    Avery was about to pepper the man with more questions, but at that moment a woman appeared in the doorway of the airplane. She was around forty, quite thin, as tired as the others. Her brown eyes quickly snapped up everything around her. She climbed down the stairs. In one hand was a small suitcase, in the other a book whose cover had been torn off.
    “Ma’am,” Avery said, casting another perplexed gaze at his colleague.
    “You are Lieutenant Avery? Or perhaps you are Lieutenant Manielli.” Her English was perfect, with only a slight accent.
    “I . . . well, yes, I’m Avery.”
    The woman said, “My name is Käthe Richter. This is for you.”
    She handed him a letter. He opened it and nudged Manielli. They both read:
    Gordon, Avery and Manelli (or however the hell you spell it):
    Get these people into England or America or wherever they want to go. Find homes for them, get them set up. I don’t care how you do it but make sure it happens.
    And if you’re thinking about sending them back to Germany, just remember that Damon Runyon or one of my buddies at the Sun or the Post would be pretty interested in what you sent me to Berlin for. Now that’d be one hell of a news story. Esp. in an election year.
    It’s been swell, boys,
    Paul
    P.S.: There’s a Negro living in the back room of my gym, Sorry Williams. Have the place signed over to him, however that works. And give him some dough too. Be generous.
    “There is this as well,” she said and gave Avery several tattered pages typed in German. “It’s about something called the Waltham Study. Paul said the commander should see it.”
    Avery took the document and put it in his pocket. “I’ll make sure he gets it.”
    Manielli walked to the airplane. Avery joined him and they looked into the empty cabin. “He didn’t trust us. He thought we were going to hand him over to Dewey after all and had the pilot land somewhere else before they got here.”
    “France, you think?” Manielli suggested. “Maybe he got to know it during the War. . . . No, I know. I’ll bet it was Switzerland.”
    Stung that Schumann had thought they’d renege on their deal, Avery called toward the cockpit, “Hey, where did you drop him off?”
    “What?”
    “Where did you land? To drop Schumann off?”
    The pilot frowned as he glanced at the copilot. Then he looked back at Avery. His voice echoed through the tinny fuselage: “You mean he didn’t tell you?”

E PILOGUE

S ATURDAY, 21 N OVEMBER, 1936
    A cold night in the Black Forest.
    Two men trudged through the shallow snow. They were chilled certainly, but they were men who seemed to have a destination in mind and an important task to perform once they arrived.
    Purpose, like desire, invariably numbs the body to discomfort.
    As does the powerful Austrian liquor, obstler, which they’d been drinking liberally from a shared flask.
    “How is your belly?” Paul Schumann asked his companion in German, noticing a particularly pronounced wince on the man’s mustachioed face.
    The man gave a grunt. “It hurts, of course. It will always hurt, Mr. John Dillinger.”
    After his return to Berlin, Paul had made a few subtle inquiries at the Aryan Café to learn where Otto Webber had lived; he’d wanted to do what he could to help any of the man’s “girls.” He’d gone to see one—Berthe—and learned to his shock and joy that Webber was still alive.
    The bullet that had punctured the man’s gut in