"What do you mean?"

Krieger shrugged. "That's what happens when one's denied maternal love. All of us men need that motherly tit. And when we don't get it, woe to the world. Lack of tit, my friend, is what turns men into monsters."

FORTY-FIVE.

Birth certificates were more easily accessible than address registries. Still, the wheels of bureaucracy ground slowly, requiring Berg to fill out another set of forms and wait for approval. It wasn't until the following morning that the curvaceous redhead located the requested birth certificate.

"How is your colleague?"

"I haven't stopped by the hospital this morning."

She studied his face. "Rough night?"

Berg's smile told her nothing. Sleep was a series of nightmares. After several hours of dealing with the devil, he finally gave up. Right now, coffee was stoking the engine. How long that would last was anyone's guess. He put a thermos down on the wood-scarred table. "I have my tea. I'm fine."

"It is verboten to drink in here, Herr Inspektor. You might spill on the documents."

Berg held back a sigh. "All right."

"I'll turn my back, Herr Inspektor." The redhead raised an eyebrow. "Just make sure I don't see anything."

After she left, Berg opened the folder. A single document stared back at his bleary eyes. Rolf Josef Schoennacht was born in March 1885, making him forty-five, consistent with the valet's assessment. His father was listed as Gunnar Schoennacht; his mother was Della Weiss. Rolf was a full-term baby weighing just under four kilos and stretching over fifty centimeters. He came into existence at three-thirty in the afternoon.

Gunnar was fifty-two at the time of his son's entrance into the world; Della's date of birth put her at eighteen.

Berg stopped to reflect: fifty-two and eighteen.

Naughty, naughty.

Then he thought of Margot. Her death had been investigated and closed, the murder reported as a whore stealing from her pimp (the desk clerk) after stealing and murdering two of her customers (Hitler's thugs). It was easy enough to snow officials because nobody gave a damn about the victims. He rarely thought about Margot when he was awake, but obviously he was thinking of her now: He knew because he had broken out in a ripe, cold sweat.

If Della had been eighteen when the child was born, she was only seventeen when the boy was conceived. Oskar Krieger had described Gunnar Schoennacht as a stiff prig. Krieger had stated that even gossiping hens understood why Della Weiss couldn't live with that man as husband and wife. How could any eighteen-year-old be attracted to a stuffed shirt old enough to be her grandfather?

It was likely that the marriage had been arranged. Older men made good catches for young girls because they had prestige and money. Often the men were less demanding sexually. Sometimes they were widowers with children from a previous marriage. . . .

Had there been another wife before Della?

It took Berg a few minutes to locate the redhead. Her desk was at the end of the hallway. Her nameplate stated that she was Ilse Reinholt. She looked up, half-glasses sliding down her sharp-edged nose. "Finished?"

"I need more information, Fraulein Reinholt. Everything you have on a man named Gunnar Schoennacht, his birth certificate, marriage certificate or certificates-I think there may be more than one-and finally, his death certificate, if there is one."

She stood up. "I'll get you the necessary papers to fill out for the request." She started to leave but Berg held her arm.

"Is there any way that we could . . ."-he cleared his throat-"just . . . disregard this little bit of bureaucracy . . . just this once?"

Ilse was aghast. "That is impossible! The clerk will not give me what you ask for unless I have the proper forms."

Berg made a face. "Um . . . perhaps the clerk will go to lunch and you will have an opportunity to borrow the files?"

"He eats at his desk. We all do. It's very efficient."

"It is good to be efficient." Berg was still holding her arm. Lightly, though. She could have broken away if she had so desired. He smiled, boyishly. "He must use the toilet, Fraulein Reinholt."

Again she stared at him.

"This one time only, I swear. I can't afford to lose another day waiting for some clerk to rubber-stamp the endless forms that we must fill out before we blow our noses."

"You weren't born here, were you?"

"I'm from Westphalia."

"I don't mean Munich, I mean Germany. You weren't born in Germany."

Berg smiled. "I was born in Denmark, but my family moved to Munster when I was three."

"Doesn't matter," she said dismissively. "You are still a Dane."

"Some would consider that a compliment."

"And some do not." Her smile was slow. "You know, Herr Inspektor . . ." She rubbed her stomach. "I eat the same lunch day in and day out: sausage with mustard. Sometimes I eat it with potato salad, sometimes cabbage salad." She sighed. "I wonder what it's like eating lunch in one of those fancy restaurants in the old city."

As much as Berg wanted the information right away, he wasn't going to bankrupt himself to get it. Restaurants were for special occasions, not for some woman attempting to freeload a meal. "I wouldn't know, Fraulein Reinholt. Those establishments are way beyond a policeman's budget."

Ilse quickly reassessed her options. "Yes, I'm sure they are overpriced for what they serve. I'd be just as happy with a quick lunch at Das Kochelhaus."

"Well, you are in luck, Fraulein Reinholt. I am hungry myself. Perhaps you'd like to join me for lunch?"

"What a nice invitation, Inspektor." Her smile glowed like a gaslight. "Wait here. I'll get my coat and hat."

SHE WAS HIS AGE, although she looked younger. Likes scores of women in their thirties, she had had a fiance, but he had come back from the war without a set of legs. A year later, he died of influenza. After that, she had lost her taste for love.

Certainly not her taste for food, Berg thought. She wolfed down a plate of schnitzel served with potato salad, beet salad, and two slices of rye bread. She washed her meal down with two pints of beer, then ordered some apple compote for dessert. By the time she had finished her meal and tale of woe, an hour had passed and it was time to get back to work. On the walk back to the Stadthaus, she asked about Storf. Berg's response was one of guarded optimism.

"I'd still like to visit him. When I was eighteen, I took special training and volunteered to go into the fields. But then my brother was lost in the first battle at Ypres and my family said no. I suppose the thought of their young daughter tramping up the Marne was too much for them to bear. There was enough work for me to do behind the lines."

Absently, Berg nodded.

"Your mind is elsewhere, Inspektor."

The sharpness of her tone made him focus. "I suspect it is, Fraulein Reinholt, and I apologize."

"What are you thinking about?"

"Work."

"And that is usually what you think about?"

"Thinking about work is preferable to thinking about the war."

GUNNAR SCHOENNACHT had first married at forty-four. His bride, Lily, was twenty-five at the time of her nuptials. Ten months later, she pushed out what was to be the first of four children before her demise six years later. She had succumbed to puerperal fever-childbed fever-making Gunnar a widower with four small children at the age of fifty. Two years later, Della Weiss took over the role of wife and mother, bearing her own child eight months after the wedding.

How difficult that must have been! An eighteen-year-old American girl in a foreign land, trying to settle into a life of hearth and home with an old, no-nonsense Bavarian, saddled with the responsibilities of five children.

How had this happened to her?

Then, ten years later, she took the almost unheard-of action of divorcing, losing her son in the process. How desperate she must have been to break free of Gunnar's bonds.

Or maybe it had been Gunnar who had initiated the legal action.

Berg thought about Rolf Schoennacht, and about Julia, who was at least twenty years younger than he was.

Like father, like son.

Berg skimmed through Gunnar Schoennacht's divorce papers, through the court documents that gave him sole custody of Rolf, ten years old at the time of the divorce, twenty by the time Della left for Russia. At that age, he was old enough to make his own decisions. Berg wondered if he had tried to contact his mother before she left Munich. And what did any of this have to do with Rupert Schick and the murders?

Was Rolf assuming the identity of his younger half brother, the product of an adulterous union between his mother and Dirk Schick . . . or possibly even another man? Oskar Krieger had said that the boy didn't look at all like his father. Was Rolf acting out his fury at women because his own mother had been branded a fallen woman with loose morals?

Berg flipped through the last of the documents, then stopped short. Staring back at him was a third marriage certificate.

Two years after divorcing Della Weiss, Gunnar Schoennacht had remarried. So Rolf had not only a mother considered a fallen woman to contend with, but also a stepmother. And unlike Gunnar's first set of children, he had no full-blooded brothers and sisters with whom to share his misery.

That could make a man very angry.

Gunnar, at the age of sixty-four, walking down the aisle a third time. There weren't any other marriage or divorce certificates after number three. Apparently, Gunnar stayed married to his bride until he died at the age of seventy-seven in 1910. No records of children from the final union; Gunnar either couldn't reproduce or had no desire to.

The third wife's name was Hannah. At the time of her marriage, she was thirty-two years old, probably a widow herself or an old maid. Suddenly, Berg gasped out loud, clutching the paper as he read the name over and over and over.

Hannah Schoennacht.

Hannah Schoennacht nee Hannah Weiss.

Way too much a coincidence.

Della, Dirk, and Rupert Schick were long gone and buried in that vast ice cap known as the Soviet Union. A death certificate had been filed for Gunnar Schoennacht, but none was there for Hannah.

Hannah Weiss Schoennacht.

She'd be about sixty-five if Berg could find her.

That turned out to be the easy part. Her address was listed in the current city registry.

FORTY-SIX.

The address was located just a few short blocks from Der Blumengarten rooming house, the last known living quarters of Marlena Druer. It was an area of old, shuttered tenements, of rutted streets and backwater. Hannah Schoennacht's building was the exception. Recently constructed of flat gray stone, the apartment complex had four stories with a peaked red roof and an arched entrance. Basic in design but the structure had indoor plumbing, gas lines for the kitchen, glass windows, and electricity.

The woman lived on the third floor. Her white hair was tied into a bun, and her cheeks were smooth and plump. She was compact, thick in the arms and neck. A short-sleeved plum wool dress curved around a generous bosom, a dense middle, and wide hips. Short legs were covered by black stockings, and on her feet were black rubber-soled walking shoes. With a forest-green shawl draped over her shoulders, she looked like an eggplant.

After Berg identified himself as a police Inspektor, she invited him inside. Her smile was wide, revealing tea-stained teeth. They may have been discolored, but they were all her own. The one feature that showed life's vicissitudes was milky eyes-hooded, red-rimmed, and tired. They said that her sixty-five years on earth had been long and hard.

The flat was warm, the windows revealing the city's steely sky. The furniture had seen better times. The sofa and chairs were faded and lumpy, but cheered by the multicolored crocheted afghans thrown over their backs. Doilies in all shapes and sizes abounded, concealing the torn upholstery and covering scarred tabletops. Mounted on the walls on either side of the couch was a set of double-decker light fixtures in which round white glass balls holding electric lightbulbs were on top, and candle-shaped gaslights ringed the bottom. Both were shining equally bright, indicating that the woman had converted the bottom set over to electricity. Hanging between the sconces was a sepia-tinted portrait-an old man in military dress standing next to a zaftig young bride with big eyes. It could have been father and daughter, but Berg knew better. A radio was perched in the corner of the room, leaking out snippets of static-laced polkas.

Without asking, Hannah had put on the kettle. It whistled almost immediately, and she brought in tea and cookies. Berg sat on the edge of a chair.

"Sugar? Milk?"

"A little milk if you have it."

"I do, and it's fresh."

Berg smiled. "I'm sure it is."

She poured him a glass and added a spot of milk. "I just went to the Viktualienmarkt this morning. I go every morning. It's not that I don't trust the icebox, but there's just no substitute for fresh. My husband, Herr Schoennacht, used to say that."

"He did, did he?"

"Every day. He loved his fresh seed roll and coffee." She paused a moment, then handed him the glass of hot tea. "He's passed on . . . my husband . . . but I still hear him talking to me. Sometimes it's as though he is right next to me."

"How long were you married?" Although he knew the answer, he had to make conversation.

"Thirteen years."

Berg had been married longer than that. "A long time. When did he pass on?"

"Almost twenty years ago."

"Your husband was Gunnar Schoennacht, correct?"

She regarded him with faraway eyes. "You knew him?"

"No, Frau Schoennacht, I didn't have the pleasure. But I have met your son, Rolf Schoennacht."

"Ah." A pause. "Rolf."