Waiting for the train, I tapped the box, anxious to know what it contained, but I dared not pull anything out here. What if Rudolf had stuffed expensive jewelry in there? Or cocaine? Or a bizarre sexual instrument?
I took the subway back toward the courthouse at Moabit, staring at my reflection in the window glass while the train careened through darkness.
I climbed endless courthouse steps and pushed open the absurdly tall doors designed to make us feel that law was a grand process and justice about more than the skill of your lawyer. The trial had started. The judge gave me a censorious look from his carved bench, a relic of richer times before the war. Any other day I would have cared, but today I returned his stare without apology.
About one hundred spectators stuffed the courtroom, but I slipped past them and crammed myself onto the press bench, next to Philip Henker from the Berlin Börsen Courier. He nodded a greeting, his jowls drooping like a mastiff’s.
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