Rosa Read Free

outside the windowed cafeteria that was Aschinger’s, the hawkers of neckties and sponges and fruit brandies in front of Fabische’s on the corner (“A suit, mein Herr ? Take one, Ready-To-Wear!”), and the usual mayhem of cabs, horsedrawn carts, and pedestrians darting in and out of one another’s ways. Rosenthaler Platz had taken no time off to breathe during the revolution; why should it do so now?
    “Well,” said Hoffner as they maneuvered their way through the crowd, “I can see why you raced back to get me.”
    “The building site, Herr Inspector.”
    Fichte led Hoffner up toward the subway excavations. The fencing around the northern tip of the square had been there for almost a year, a promise from the Kaiser that his capital would be home to the finest trams and underground trains in Europe. Few Berliners took notice anymore of the wooden slats that sprouted up around the city, most Stdters resigned to the ongoing renovations that had been a part of their lives for the past twenty-five years. Wilhelm’s insecurity about his chosen city had led him, over time, to reinvent her as a paean to grandeur in the architecture of her monuments, churches, government buildings, stores, hotels, and, yes, railway stations. It was said of Berlin that even her bird shit was made of marble.
    Then again, the slats did make for nice advertising space. A large placard of a cigar-smoking goblin peered down at Hoffner as he followed Fichte toward the site. The lime-green skin against the cerise background, at first off-putting, quickly became hypnotic. The creature had an almost maniacal smile, the cigar evidently just that good to take him to the edge of sanity, although why a goblin would need any kind of stimulus for that sort of behavior had always puzzled Hoffner. A cigar, though, would have been nice right about now.
    Fichte and Hoffner moved out into the square, jumping the tram rails as they sidestepped a cab, its goose-squawk horn eliciting a growl from Fichte. A single patrolman stood guard atop the wooden ramp that led up to what, until recently, had been the boarded-up entrance to the pit behind the fencing. He put out a hand as Hoffner and Fichte approached.
    “It is forbidden, meine Herren. ” The man’s German had the precision of working-class Berlin, the extended roll of the r ’s a pompous display of office. He kept his woolen short-coat buttoned to the neck, its band collar sporting the single stripe of a constable, his lip-brimmed helmet topped by the ubiquitous silver imperial prong. “Please turn around—” The man caught himself as soon as he recognized Fichte. “Ah, Herr Detective.” There was nothing apologetic in the tone.
    Hoffner knew this type, a Schutzi-lifer who considered the very existence of the Kripo a slap in the face, even if, every year for the past fifteen years, he had applied and been rejected for transfer. Still, it was the chain of command. Order had to be preserved. The man stepped aside.
    Hoffner nodded. “Patrolman.”
    A white-gloved finger smoothed through a perfectly pruned moustache. “Detective.”
    Hoffner moved past the man and began to make his way down a second ramp behind the fencing. As he did so, he turned his head and corrected, “Detective Inspector. ”
    Inside, the building work was far more extensive than one might have imagined from the square. An area, perhaps twenty meters by ten, extended to the far fencing, most of it still earth. Closer in, however, stood the top staging of a tower of wooden scaffolding that dug deep into the ground. From their vantage point, Fichte and Hoffner could see only a fraction of the edifice, its depth apparent only once they stepped out from the ramp and moved to the ladder at its center. A second patrolman stood directly behind the small hole of an entrance. Hoffner looked at the man, then peered down the shaft. “Must be a good fifteen meters,” he said. Police lamps, recently attached, hung along the rungs, all the