Red Square - Martin Cruz Smith [145]
“The Schiller house,” Peter said. “This is it. This is what my grandfather sold out for, this ruin.”
Arkady asked, “Has he seen it?”
“Boris Benz brought him a photograph of it. Now he wants to move back in.”
On both sides, the block was lined with mansions similar in design and disrepair to the Schiller house. Some worse. One was as masked by ivy as an ancient tomb. Another was posted VERBOTEN! KEIN EINGANG!
Peter said, “This used to be Banker’s Row. Every morning they would all go to Berlin, every evening return. These were cultured, intelligent people. They had a modest portrait of the Führer. They closed their eyes when the Meyers disappeared from this mansion over here or the Weinstein family vanished from that house over there. Later, they could get those houses for a good price. Well, you can’t tell where the Jews lived today, can you? Now my grandfather wants us to trade with the devil again for this.”
A balcony door opened and a woman in a white cap and apron backed out with a wheelchair that she turned around. She put on the brake and sat down for a cigarette, mistress of all she surveyed.
“What are you going to do?” Arkady asked.
Peter pushed open the gate. “I should take a look, don’t you think?”
The driveway had once been laid in cobblestones and led to a reception arch of pillars. Now two ruts cut through the weeds, and one of the pillars had long since suffered a collision and been replaced by a standing sewer pipe. The front door had a red cross and a RUHIG! sign for quiet, but it was open and the sound of radios and the smell of antiseptic drifted out. There was no reception desk. Peter’s inspection tour took them down a hall of dark mahogany to a ballroom turned into a mess hall and an enormous kitchen divided by cinder blocks into a small kitchen with steaming vats of soup and a second area of tiled baths and toilet stalls.
Peter tried the soup. “Not bad. They have good yellow potatoes in East Germany. I was in Potsdam last night, but I didn’t get here.”
“Where were you?”
“In the archives of the Potsdam City Hall, looking for Boris Benz.” He let the ladle drop and moved on. “There’s not enough of him,” he said. “I tap into the federal computer and I see his driver’s license, Munich residence, marriage license. I see his registered ownership of a private company called Fantasy Tours, with work, insurance and medical records in order, because his employees are examined for venereal disease once a month by law. What does not show up is his local education or work history.”
“You told me that Benz was born here in Potsdam and that many East German records weren’t transferred yet.”
Peter bounded up the stairs. “That’s why I came here. But there are no records at all here for Boris Benz. It’s one thing to plug a name into a computer file; you’re only adding one more blip to the screen. It’s more difficult to insert a name on an old, meticulously written school roll. As for work or military records, they don’t matter if you’re not looking for work or a loan from the bank. It only proves that Boris Benz has more money than personal history. Ah, this must have been the master bedroom.”
They looked into a ward with five cots on a side. Some of the beds were occupied by patients attached to IVs. Family photographs and crayon drawings were taped to the walls. The sheets looked clean and the parquet floor was mopped to a shine. Four elderly women in housecoats were playing cards. One of them looked up. “Wir haben Besuch!” Visitors!
Peter nodded approvingly at each resident. “Sehr gut, meine Damen. Sch