Garden of Beasts
Jeffery Deaver
Paul Schumann had a tough introduction to life and a resolute approach to death. And he had no choice but to join in this latest scheme. A trip to Germany to take out, for the last time, one of God's mistakes. In Berlin, Reginald Morgan would look out for him, making sure the entry and exit arrangements – and all points in between – were covered off. Fortunately Otto Webber all too readily recognised a man who also lived on the edge, survived through his wits.
Reinhard Ernst had his own plans – nothing short of schemes that would see Germany magnificent again, even if it might have to wait the short time it would take for a storm to crash around Hitler. Battered by all these events, but with a doggedness that comes from experience, Inspector Willi Kohl tracked a killer and watched as his country slid further into Hitler’s paranoid state.
Set a thief to catch a thief; set a killer to ‘ice’ a killer
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What do you do when your family business is threatened? The New York ‘muscle’ men can see rich pickings and they want some. Your father tells them to go take a running jump. What would you expect to happen next? Yup. He’s broken, finished. But they hadn’t reckoned with a young Paul Schumann. He finds them, takes them out. Much to the approval of the more civilised among New York’s villainous underbelly. Suddenly, he discovers he’s carved out a career for himself.
A tip-off about the whereabouts of his latest target turns out to be a set-up. Paul Schumann is caught cold. Luckily it’s only someone who wants to make use of his very dependable and specialised services. Naval Intelligence have a plan. Well you have to do something if you want to stop Germany re-arming. Hitler is in the ascendance and one man, Reinhard Ernst, is driving the push toward military supremacy. He has to be killed.
It could be a severe test of Paul Schumann’s mettle, of whether his enemy is a match for him, and for all the plans.
A life on the Ocean wave
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The deal: you go to Germany, take out Ernst, come home. The outlook is bleak. A betrayal has given Naval Intelligence all the evidence they needed of your single moment of carelessness. Go to the chair for that killing or have the slate wiped clean and get paid handsomely for doing what they want. No choice – you are in their hands and the timing is perfect.
Berlin is host to the 1936 Olympic Games. Your cover - you are a Sports Reporter attached to the American team. Looking for news stories will give you licence to leave the Olympic Village and go into the city. Then our agent in Berlin will assist.
So it’s off to join the American athletes for the ten-day voyage, along with your two minders – to make sure you get there – and a German spy. A man who overhears their careless conversations. But did his warning message about the plot and the threat to the ambitions of the Third Reich get through?
Olympic games
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Difficult to know who are friends and who are foes? Not in Germany in 1936. Everything is covered by a mantle of fear that puts a darkness in the soul. Where even reading Goethe’s poems and talking about his life has become an offence. Once your name is on the list then it is only a matter of time before there is that ominous knock on the door, and a harsh and unpromising future. No-one is safe from informers and betrayal.
Sometimes there doesn’t even need to be a list – Hitler's Brownshirt thugs and their violence rules the streets. Only a foolish man would stand up to them.
It takes a black marketeer to make sure Paul stays out of trouble – easier said than done when there is already one lifeless body about. A Stetson hat and a distinctive green tie are just as much a giveaway of identity as fingerprints.
Careful in all other regards, Paul takes up with a woman who is not what she seems to be. And he discovers that a planned photo-shoot at the Olympic stadium is not what he thought it was either.
Still, he'd be in serious trouble if he forgot what he had come to Germany to do.
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Beyond the Book
