The Arms Maker of Berlin Read Online Free PDF Page A

collaborated there, hashing out scholarly problems during hikes and fishing trips. The old man, in spite of his limp, could be quite the outdoorsman when the spirit moved him, stalking the trails in his leather bomber jacket.
    The best part had always come when they arrived back at the house. Nat sank into the leather couch and breathed in the aroma of wood smoke and grilled trout. Then, after dinner, Viv served as moderator while Gordon and he talked shop. Until the drinks began piling up. Always the drinks.
    Now those images were joined by the thought of the old boxes, looming like an oracle, awaiting only the right command before yielding their secrets. He wondered if he would be able to view them without Neil or someone else looking over his shoulder. Maybe they would even let him make copies. He had packed his camera and tripod just in case.
    Nat slept again, and this time the sun woke him. They were almost there, working their way past towns with names evoking real estate scams and Indian war councils—Green Glen, Naugatuck Falls, Wopowog. Shuttered tourist cabins huddled in the woods by thawed lakes, awaiting summer.
    “Your rental is parked at the house,” Neil said. “Here are the keys.”
    When they reached the turn for the gravel road that led to Gordon’s driveway, Nat borrowed Neil’s cell phone to call ahead.
    “Viv? Hope I didn’t wake you. I’m headed up the drive.”
    “Thank God you’re here. They’ve got me surrounded. I’ll put some coffee on.”
    So they hadn’t yet told her about his arrangement with the FBI. Poor Viv.
    “Sounds great. Be right in.”
    He snapped the phone shut and braced for the worst.

THREE
    Berlin
    A NOTHER DREAM of Liesl, his first in years.
    As always, her image fled before Kurt Bauer could hold it, chased from his eyelids by the chill martial gray of a Prussian morning. A blink, a sigh, and she was gone. Throw open the lace curtains and perhaps he would see the last wisp of her spirit, racing across the dim rooftops of Charlottenburg. And if he ever caught up to her, how would she greet him? With a smile of gratitude? A glare of accusation? Love? Forgiveness?
    Downstairs, a loud voice echoed in the foyer. A door rattled shut.
    Now Kurt knew what had brought on the dream. Nearly sixty-four years ago he had been awakened by the very same noises on the day he learned Liesl was gone—slammed doors, shouting messengers. All that remained to complete the sequence was the tread of slippers as his father, Reinhard, plodded upstairs to break the news. The old man had relayed it with the clacking dispassion of a stock ticker, as if he were announcing a pay cut down at his factory.
    Kurt’s father had just come in from the rain, having gone out to buy a newspaper, knowing that the weather would hold the bombers at bay. He had peeled off his wet woolen socks and laid them on the big tile furnace to dry. Their vapors had preceded him up the stairs, and to this day Kurt associated the smell of wet, baking wool with death. It turned his stomach like the stench of a rotting corpse. He insisted that his wife, Gerda, buy him only cotton socks, much to her puzzlement.
    Like the vast city he lived in, Kurt lay down each night with a host of unwanted shadows—guilt, loss, regret, the pain of old wounds. Bleak visions poured from within like smoke from a brick chimney.
    The guilt, he believed, was unwarranted. He attributed its staying power less to his own actions than to his homeland’s tormented psyche. Here they pushed atonement as if it were a commodity, force-feeding it via the leftist media like some miserable brand of muesli, until you couldn’t stomach another bite. At least today’s young people, for all their faults, were wising up to that con. Never let them make you pay for something you hadn’t bought.
    The front door slammed again. Then silence, until he heard Gerda’s house slippers scraping down the hall toward the kitchen.
    “Who was it?” he called out, his