The Diplomat's Wife(84)
“The devastation…” I gesture upward with my head. “I had no idea.”
“You should have seen it a year ago,” he replies. “At least now, with money pumping in from the West, they are starting to rebuild. But it’s going to take a long time.” We turn another corner. “This is it. Oranienburger Strasse.” The right side of the street is dominated by a massive domed building. “That’s the New Synagogue,” he adds as we approach. I look up, not answering. In our village, the synagogue was a single room, no larger than our house, with a lace curtain separating the area in the back where the women sat. Our synagogue in London is larger than that, of course, but even it is dwarfed by the cathedral-size one now before me. The brown-brick facade climbs high into the air, topped by a wide dome. Two narrower towers, identical in design, flank the main structure. But the building is in a horrible state of disrepair. The entire eastern wall of the synagogue is missing. The arched stained-glass windows have been shattered, reduced to jagged shards. Soot blackens the front doorway of the synagogue, as though there had been a fire.
It is Friday night, I realize. Before the war, the synagogue would have been filled with hundreds, even thousands of Jews, chanting the Sabbath prayers. Instead, the synagogue lies silent, a ghost of its former self. Are there any Jews left in Berlin? I wonder. Sadness rises up in me. “We should keep moving,” Paul says in a low voice, looking furtively over his shoulder. Following his gaze, I see a man walking a dog on the far side of the street watching us curiously. Have we been followed? No, I realize quickly. The man is simply puzzled by the fact that we are interested in the synagogue. Berlin does not have tourists now. We walk farther down the street past the synagogue. “He’s gone,” Paul says.
I turn back. Across the street, as Emma said, is a tiny used bookstore in front of an apartment building. “There it is.”
We cross the street. As we approach the bookshop, Paul grabs my arm. “This way,” he mouths, pulling me into a narrow passageway beside the bookshop, separating it from the adjacent building. At the back of the passage, there is a wood door with a high glass window. Paul stands on his toes, peering through. “Looks like a lobby of some kind. The apartment must be upstairs.”
I notice a button beside the door. “Here goes nothing,” I say, pressing it. There is no response. “Maybe it’s broken.” I push it again.
Paul presses his ear against the door. “It definitely works. I can hear it. Well, no one’s answering. What do you want to do?”
I hesitate. “We can’t give up. We have to find him.” I turn the doorknob and the door opens. Inside, a single bare bulb casts dim light across the tiny foyer. Paint peels from the walls. “Hello,” I call, stepping through the doorway. My voice echoes back at us. Paul points toward a narrow metal staircase leading upward. The stairs groan beneath us as we climb them. At the top, there is a short corridor, leading to an open door. “Hello,” I call again. As we near the doorway, I see that the frame is splintered, one of its hinges ripped away. An uneasy feeling rises in me. Someone has broken in.
Paul grabs me by the shoulder, pulling me behind him. I notice for the first time that he has pulled out his gun, holding it low to his waist. “Wait here,” he mouths, stepping forward. He enters the apartment, then disappears from view around a corner. “No…”
“What is it?” Unable to wait any longer, I race through the door. “Oh, my goodness…” The apartment is in complete disarray. A brown sofa lies toppled backward, its cushions ripped open. In the small kitchen off to the right, shattered glass and dishes litter the floor.
Paul walks to a desk in the corner of the room. The roller top is open and papers are strewn across the desktop, chair and floor. “This is Marcelitis’s apartment,” he says, picking up a piece of paper and scanning it. “My guess is that Marcelitis had a visit from the police.”
I walk to the kitchen table, where a cup of coffee lies spilled. “Still warm,” I say, touching the liquid. “You think he’s been arrested?” Paul nods. An uneasy tingle crawls up my spine. I turn back toward him. “Do you think it was because of…” I begin, then stop again. Paul has opened the desk drawer and begun rummaging through it. Then he drops to his hands and knees and starts tapping on the hardwood floor by the desk, his ear close to the ground. “What are you doing?”
“Looking for the cipher,” he replies, sliding away from the desk and tapping on the floor again.
“You really think he would leave it here?”
“I think I want to make…” He stops, then pulls a small pocketknife from his coat and begins to pry at one of the floorboards. I walk toward him as he raises the board, revealing a hollow compartment. “Aha!” he exclaims, pulling several sheets of folded paper from the ground. Setting the papers aside, he reaches into the hole once more. His face falls.
“No cipher?” He shakes his head. Picking up the papers, he unfolds them and scans the top sheet. He replaces the floorboard, tapping the nails back into place with the handle of the pocketknife. Then he stands, still holding the papers.
“What are you doing with those?”
“Taking them, of course. We can’t leave them here. They contain key information about Marcelitis’s work. I don’t want the police finding these if they decide to come back and search more thoroughly.”