The Apocalypse Watch (48 page)

The door opened, revealing a slender old man with thinning white hair and wearing thick-lensed glasses. “Yes, please?” he said in a soft, wavering voice with barely a trace of an accent.

“My name is Wesley Sorenson and I’m from Washington, D.C., Mr. Schneider. We have to talk, either here or in far less comfortable quarters.”

The old man’s eyes grew wide, what color there was in his face leaving it. He started to speak several times but choked on the words. Finally, he became clear. “
Ach
, it has taken you so long, it was so long ago.… Come in, I’ve been expecting you for nearly fifty years.… Come, come, it is too warm out, and the air-conditioning is expensive.… Nothing matters now anyway.”

“We’re not so far apart in years, Mr. Schneider,” said Sorenson, walking into a large Victorian foyer and following the Sonnenkind recipient into the shadowed living room, filled with overstuffed furniture. “Fifty years is not that long for either of us.”

“May I offer you some schnapps? Frankly, I could use one or two, probably more.”

“A short whisky would be sufficient, if you have it. Bourbon would be nice, but it doesn’t matter.”

“Oh, but it does, and I do have it. My second daughter
is married to a man from one of the Carolinas, and he prefers it.… Sit, sit, I shall disappear for a minute or two and bring us our libations.”

“Thank you.” The Cons-Op director suddenly wondered whether he should have arranged for a weapon. He had been away from the field too long! The old son of a bitch could be finding one of his own. Instead, Schneider returned, carrying a silver tray, glasses and two bottles on it, without any bulges in his clothing.

“This will make things easier,
nicht wahr
?” he said.

“I’m surprised you expected me at all,” observed Sorenson once their drinks were in front of them, his on a coffee table, the German’s on the arm of an easy chair across from him. “As you say, it was so many years ago.”

“My young wife and I were part of the fanatical youth of Germany at the time. All those torchlit parades, the slogans, the euphoria of being the true master race of the world. It was all quite seductive, and we were seduced. We were assigned our mission by the legendary Heinrich Himmler himself, who thought ‘long range,’ as we say today. I honestly believe he thought we would lose the war, but he was totally devoted to the thesis of Aryan superiority. After the war we did as we were ordered by the Odessa. And even then, we still believed.”

“So you petitioned, accepted the immigration of one Janine Clunitz, later Clunes, and adopted her?”

“Yes. She was an extraordinary child, far more intelligent than Johanna and me. Every Tuesday night from the time she was eight or nine, men would come for her and drive her to someplace else where she was—I suppose the word is
indoctrinated
.”

“Where was this place?”

“We never found out. In the beginning she was only given sweets, ice cream, and so on while blindfolded. Later, as she grew older, she simply told us that she was being trained in our ‘glorious heritage,’ those were the words she used and, naturally, we knew what they meant.”

“Why are you telling me this now, Mr. Schneider?”

“Because I’ve lived in this country for fifty-two years. I
cannot say it is perfect, no nation is, but it is better than what I came from. Do you know who lives across the street from me?”

“How could I?”

“The Goldfarbs, Jake and Naomi. Jews. And they were Johanna’s and my best friends. And down the block, the first negro couple to buy a house here. The Goldfarbs and we gave them a welcoming party, and everyone came. And when a cross was burned on their lawn, we all got together, hunted the hooligans down, and had them prosecuted.”

“Hardly the agenda of the Third Reich.”

“People change, we all change. What can I tell you?”

“How long has it been since you were in contact with Germany?”

“
Mein Gott
, those idiots keep calling twice, three times a year. I tell them I’m an old man and to leave me alone, for I am no longer involved. I must be in their computers or whatever the new technical machines order them to do. They keep track of me; they never let go, never stop threatening me.”

“There are no names?”

“Yes, one. The last caller a month ago was nearly hysterical, shouting at me that a Herr Traupman might order my execution. ‘What for?’ I asked. ‘I’ll be dead soon anyway and your secret will die with me.’ ”

Claude Moreau was driven down the Leopoldstrasse by his man in Munich who had reconnoitered the apartment house where Elke Mueller, the former Frau Traupman, lived. To save Moreau’s time, the secret Deuxième office in the Königinstrasse had telephoned Madame Mueller, explaining that a high-ranking member of the French government wished to discuss a confidential matter with her which could be to her financial advantage.… No, the caller had no idea what the confidential matter was, except that it would in no way compromise the eminent lady.

The apartment house was grand, the apartment itself grander still, a fulsome mixture of baroque and art deco.
Elke Mueller matched her surroundings, a tall, imperious woman in her seventies, her coiffed dark hair streaked with whitish-gray, her face angular, her features aquiline. She was obviously a woman not to be trifled with; it was in her eyes, wide and bright and bordering on the hostile or suspicious, or both.

“My name is Claude Moreau, madame, and I’m with the Quai d’Orsay in Paris,” said the chief of the Deuxième Bureau in German, having been ushered into a sitting room by the uniformed maid.

“It’s not necessary to speak
die Deutsche
, monsieur. My French is fluent.”

“You greatly relieve me,” lied Moreau, “for my German is barely adequate.”

“I suspect it’s more than that. Sit down across from me and explain this confidential matter if you will. I can’t imagine why the government of France has the slightest interest in me.”

“Forgive me, madame, but I suspect that you might.”

“You’re impertinent, monsieur.”

“I apologize. I only wish to be clear and speak the truth as I perceive it.”

“Now you’re admirable. It’s Traupman, isn’t it?”

“Then my gentle suspicion was correct, no?”

“It was, of course. There could be no other possible reason.”

“You were married to him—”

“Not for long, as marriages go,” interrupted Elke Mueller swiftly, firmly, “but far too long for me. So his filthy little chickens are coming home to roost, is that it?… Don’t look so surprised, Moreau. I read the papers and watch television. I see what’s happening.”

“About those ‘filthy chickens’? May I inquire about them?”

“Why not? I left the incubator coop over thirty years ago.

“Would it be impertinent of me to ask you to amplify—only what’s comfortable for you, naturally.”

“Now you’re a liar, monsieur. You’d prefer that I be terribly uncomfortable, even bitterly hysterical, and tell
you what a horrible man he was. Well, I can’t do that, whether it’s true or not. However, I can tell you that when I think of Traupman, which is rarely, I’m filled with disgust.”

“Oh …?”

“Oh, yes, your amplification. Very well, you shall have it.… I married Hans Traupman rather late. I was thirty-one, he thirty-three, and a very successful surgeon even at that age. I was struck by his medical brilliance and believed there was a good man beneath his rather cold exterior. There were flashes of warmth that excited me, until I soon realized it was all an act. Why he was attracted to me became evident quite rapidly. I was a Mueller from Baden-Baden, the richest landowners in the area, also socially prominent, and gave him access to the circles he so desperately wanted to be a part of. You see, his parents were both doctors, but not really attractive people, and certainly not very successful, their practices relegated to clinics serving the lower economic classes—”

“If I may,” Moreau broke in, “did he use his position as your husband to further his social ambitions?”

“I just told you that.”

“Then why did he risk a divorce?”

“He didn’t have much to say about it. Besides, after five years he had made the inroads he needed, and his skills accomplished the rest. In deference to the Mueller family, I agreed to a so-called amicable divorce—simple incompatibility, neither party charged with anything. It was the biggest mistake I made, and my father, before he died, soundly criticized me for it.”

“May I ask why?”

“You don’t know my family, monsieur, and Mueller is a common name in Germany. I will explain for you. The Muellers of Baden-Baden opposed the criminal Hitler and his gangsters. The
Führer
didn’t dare touch us because of our holdings and the loyalties our several thousand employees accorded us. The Allies never understood how frightened Hitler was of domestic dissent. Had they understood, they might have developed tactics within Germany that could have shortened the war. Like Traupman, the
little thug with a mustache reached far beyond his grasp, mixing with people he had admired from afar, but who never accepted him. My father always claimed Hitler’s diatribes were the rantings of a frightened man, driven to eliminate by murder the slightest opposition, as long as there were no consequences. However, Herr Hitler, through conscription, made sure my two brothers were sent to the Russian front, where they were killed, more likely by German bullets than Soviet.”

“Hans Traupman, please?”

“He was the total Nazi,” said Madame Mueller quietly, turning her face toward the afternoon sunlight that streamed through the window. “It was strange, almost in-human, but he wanted power, simply power, beyond the rewards of his profession. He would recite the discredited theories of a superior Aryan race as if they were considered infallible, although he had to know they were not. I think it was the bitter resentment of the rejected young man who could not walk among the elite of Germany, in spite of his growing reputation, because he simply was a coarse, unlikable person.”

“You’re leading to something else, I think,” said Moreau.

“Yes, I am. He began to hold meetings at our house in Nuremberg, meetings with people I knew were unreconstructed National Socialists, Hitler fanatics. He sound-proofed the cellar, where they met every Tuesday—I was not permitted to attend. There was a great deal of drinking and from our bedroom I could faintly hear shouting and ‘
Sieg Heils
’ and the Horst Wessel song, over and over. This went on for three years, until the fifth year of our marriage, and finally I confronted him—why I did not do so earlier, I simply don’t know.… Affection, no matter how dwindling, does involve protection. I shouted at him, accusing him of dreadful things, of trying to bring back the horrors of the past. And on a Wednesday morning, after one of those terrible nights, he said to me, ‘It doesn’t matter what you think, you rich bitch. We were right then and we’re right
now
!’ I left the next day. Does that amplify enough for you, Moreau?”

“It certainly does, madame,” replied the head of the Deuxième. “Can you recall any of the men or women at those meetings?”

“It was more than thirty years ago. No, I cannot.”

“Even one or two of the ‘unreconstructed Nazis’?”

“Let me think.… There was a Bohr, a Rudolf Bohr, I believe, and a former, very young colonel in the Wehrmacht named Von Schteifel, I think. Other than those two, my memory leaves me. I remember them only because they were frequent visitors for lunch or dinner, where no politics were discussed, but I saw them getting out of their cars through my bedroom window.”

“You have been of enormous help, madame,” said Moreau, getting up from his chair. “I’ll not disturb you any longer.”

“
Stop
them,” whispered Elke Mueller harshly. “They’ll be the death of Germany!”

“We’ll remember your words,” said Claude Moreau, walking into the foyer.

At the Deuxième headquarters in the Königinstrasse, Moreau exercised his privileges and ordered Paris to reach Wesley Sorenson immediately.

Sorenson was on the plane back to Washington when his Sky-Pager buzzed. He got out of his seat, walked up to the telephone on the first-class bulkhead, inserted his card, and reached his office.

“Hold on, Mr. Director,” said the operator in Consular Operations. “I’ll call Munich and patch you through.”

“
Allô
, Wesley?”

“Yes, Claude?”

“It’s
Traupman
!”

“Traupman’s
the key
!”

They had spoken simultaneously. “I’ll be in my office in roughly an hour,” said Sorenson. “I’ll call you back.”

“We’ve both been busy,
mon ami
.”

“You can bet your French ass!”

D
rew lay beside Karin in the bed in her room at the Bristol Hotel, their being together a reluctant concession on the part of Witkowski. They had made love, and were now experiencing the comfortable after-glow of lovers who know they belong with each other.

“Where the hell are we?” said Latham, having lighted one of his infrequent cigarettes. The smoke curled above them.

“It’s in Sorenson’s hands now. You have no control.”

“That’s what I don’t like. He’s in Washington and we’re in Paris and that goddamned Kroeger is on another planet.”

“Drugs could extract information from him.”

“The embassy doctor says we can’t do anything in that area until he stabilizes from the gunshot wounds. The colonel’s as mad as I’ve ever seen him, but he can’t override the medicine man. I’m not exactly sanguine either; every twenty-four hours we lose makes the bastards harder to find.”

“Are you so sure of that? The neos have been entrenching themselves for over fifty years. What difference can a single day make?”

“I don’t know, maybe another Harry Latham. Let’s say I’m impatient.”

“I can understand. Is there any strategy where Janine is concerned?”

“You know as much as I do. Sorenson said to keep cold and silent, and let the Antinayous know we had Kroeger. We’ve done both and left word at Wesley’s office that his instructions were carried out. Signed, Paris.”