The One From the Other (43 page)

That was my new name. Father Lajolo had explained that when giving a man a new identity suitable for Argentina, the Comradeship recommended a name that implied dual South American and German nationality. Which is how I ended up being called Carlos. I had no intention of winding up in Argentina, but with two sets of police on my tail, I was hardly in a position to argue about a name.

“Herr Doktor Hausner.” Father Bandolini raised his hand in Eichmann’s direction. “This is Herr Ricardo Klement.” He turned toward the second man. “And this is Pedro Geller.”

Eichmann made no sign that he recognized me. He bowed his head curtly and then shook my outstretched hand. He looked older than he ought to have done. I estimated he was around forty-two, but with most of his hair gone, the glasses, and behind them a tired, hunted look like an animal that hears the hounds on its tail, he looked much older. He wore a thick tweed suit, a striped shirt, and a small bow tie that made him seem very clerkish. But there was nothing clerkish about the handshake. I’d shaken hands with Eichmann before, when his hands had been soft, almost delicate. But now his hands were the hands of a laborer, as if, since the war, he had been obliged to earn a living in some physically arduous way. “Pleased to meet you, Herr Doktor,” he said.

The other man was much younger, better-looking, and better turned out than his infamous companion. He wore an expensive-looking watch and gold cuff links. His hair was fair, his eyes were blue and clear, and his teeth looked as if he’d borrowed them from an American film star. Next to Eichmann, he was as tall as a flagpole and bore himself like a rare species of crane. I shook his hand and found that, by contrast with Eichmann’s, it was well-manicured and as soft as a schoolboy’s. Looking at Pedro Geller more closely, I supposed he couldn’t have been more than twenty-five, which made it hard to imagine what war crime he could have committed as an eighteen- or nineteen-year-old that now necessitated him changing his name and escaping to South America.

Geller was carrying a Spanish-German dictionary under his arm, and another lay open on the table in front of the chair where Eichmann—Ricardo Klement—had been sitting. The younger man smiled. “We were just testing each other’s Spanish vocabulary,” he explained. “Ricardo is much better at languages than I am.”

“Really?” I said. I might have mentioned Ricardo’s knowledge of Yiddish, but thought better of it. I glanced around the sitting room noting the chessboard, the Monopoly set, the library full of books, the newspapers and magazines, the new General Electric radio, the kettle and the coffee cups, the full ashtray, and the blankets—one of these had been over Eichmann’s legs. It was plain to see that these two men spent a lot of time sitting in that room. Holed up. Hiding. Waiting for something. A new passport, or passage on a ship to South America.

“We’re very lucky that there’s a priest from Buenos Aires here in the monastery,” said the Father. “Father Santamaría has been teaching Spanish to our two friends, and telling them all about Argentina. It makes a real difference going somewhere when you can already speak the language.”

“Did you have a good journey?” asked Eichmann. If he was nervous at seeing me again he did not show it. “Where have you come from?”

“Vienna,” I said. And then shrugged. “The journey was tolerable. Do you know Vienna, Herr Klement?” I offered my cigarettes around.

“No, not really,” he said, with a flicker of an eyelid. I had to hand it to him. He was good. “I don’t know Austria at all. I’m from Breslau.” He took one of my cigarettes and let me light him. “Of course it’s now called Wrocław, or something, in Poland. Can you imagine it? Are you from Vienna, Herr—?”

“Dr. Hausner,” I said.

“A doctor, eh?” Eichmann smiled. His teeth hadn’t improved any, I noticed. No doubt it amused him to know that I wasn’t a doctor. “It’ll be interesting to have a medical man around, won’t it, Geller?”

“Yes, indeed,” said Geller, smoking one of my Luckies. “I always wanted to be a doctor. Before the war, that is.” He smiled sadly. “I don’t suppose I shall ever be a doctor, now.”

“You’re a young man,” I said. “Anything is possible when you’re young. Take my word for it. I was young once myself.”

But Eichmann was shaking his head. “That was true before the war,” he said. “In Germany anything was possible. Yes. We proved that, to the world. But not now. I’m afraid it’s no longer true. Not now that half of Germany is ruled by godless barbarians, eh, Father? Shall I tell you the true meaning of the Federal Republic of Germany, gentlemen? We are simply a slit trench in the front line of a new war. A war waged by the—”

Eichmann checked himself. And then he smiled. The old Eichmann smile. As if he objected to my tie.

“But what am I saying? None of it matters now. Not anymore. Today has no meaning. For us, today does not exist any more than yesterday. For us, there is only tomorrow. Tomorrow is all that’s left.” For a moment his smile grew slightly less bitter. “Just like the old song says. Tomorrow belongs to me. Tomorrow belongs to me.”

THIRTY-NINE

The monastery beer was excellent. It was what they called a Trappist beer, which meant it was made under strictly controlled conditions and only by Benedictine monks. The beer they produced, which was called Schluckerarmer, was copper-colored, with a head like an ice cream. It had a sweet, almost chocolaty taste and a strength that belied its flavor and origins. And it was a lot easier to imagine it being drunk by American soldiers than austere and God-fearing monks. Besides, I had tasted American beer. Only a country that had once prohibited alcohol could have produced a beer that tasted like fortified mineral water. Only a country like Germany could have produced a beer strong enough to make a monk risk the wrath of the Roman Catholic Church by nailing ninety-five theses to a church door in Wittenberg. That was what Father Bandolini told me, anyway. Which was just one reason why he preferred wine.

“If you ask me, the whole Reformation can be blamed on strong beer,” he opined. “Wine is a perfect Catholic drink. It makes people sleepy and complicit. Beer just makes them argumentative. And look at the countries that drink a lot of beer. They’re mainly Protestant. And the countries where they drink a lot of wine? Roman Catholic.”

“What about the Russians?” I asked. “They drink vodka.”

“That’s a drink to help you find oblivion,” said Father Bandolini. “Nothing to do with God at all.”

But none of this was as interesting as what he told me next. Which was that the monastery’s beer truck was leaving for Garmisch-Partenkirchen later that same morning. And that I was welcome to accompany it.

I fetched my coat and my gun, but I left the bag with my money in my room. It would have looked odd to have taken it with me. Besides, I had a key to the door. And I was coming back for my new passport. Then I followed the Father to the brewery where the truck was already being loaded with beer crates.

There were two monks manning the truck, which was an old two-cylinder Framo. Each man was a testament to the mesomorphic, manly qualities of the beer. Father Stoiber, bearded and quite obviously bibulous, had a belly like a millstone. Father Seehofer was as burly as a kiln-dried barrel. There was room for the three of us in the cab of the truck, but only when we exhaled. By the time we reached Garmisch-Partenkirchen, I felt as thin as the sausage in a Saxon pastor’s sandwich. But it wasn’t just a tight squeeze. The Framo’s small, 490cc engine delivered only fifteen-brake horsepower and, with my extra weight, we struggled a bit on some of the icy mountain roads. And it was just as well that Stoiber, who had seen action in the Ukraine through the worst of a Russian winter, was an excellent driver.

We drove into town, not from the north through Sonnenbichl, but up from the southwest, along Griesemer Strasse and in the cold shadow of the Zugspitze, to that part of Partenkirchen where most of the Americans were based. The two monks told me they had deliveries for the Elbsee Hotel, the Crystal Springs Hotel, the Officers’ Club, the Patton Hotel, and the Green Arrow Ski Lodge. They dropped me at the junction of Zugspitzstrasse and Bahnhofstrasse, and looked slightly relieved when I told them I would try to make my own way back to the monastery.

I found the street of old Alpine-style villas where Gruen and Henkell had performed some of their more recent experiments. I couldn’t remember the number, but the villa, with its Olympic skier fresco, was easy enough to find. In the distance I heard the muffled gunshots from the skeet range, just like before. The only difference was that there was a lot more snow on the ground. It was heaped on top of and around the gingerbread houses like powdered icing sugar. There was no sign of Jacobs’s Buick Roadmaster, just a pile of horse dung on the street where it had been parked. I had seen several sleighs around town and I was banking on getting one to take me up to Mönch, at Sonnenbichl, when I’d finished snooping around the villa.

I wasn’t exactly sure of what I thought I might find. From the tenor of my last conversation with Eric Gruen, it was hard for me to know if he and the others had already left the area. But the possibility that they hadn’t was strong, since they could hardly have expected me to effect an escape from Vienna so quickly. Vienna was a closed city and not easy to get in or out of. Gruen had been right about that. All the same, he would surely have been aware that the money he had given me, by way of compensation, made my return to Garmisch, at the very least, reasonably possible. And if they were still in the area they would certainly have taken some precautions with their security. I tightened my hand on the gun in my pocket and went around to the back of the house to look in the window of the laboratory. With the snow in the garden up to my knees, it was just as well I had bought boots and gaiters in Vienna. The snow around Mönch would be even deeper.

There were no lights on in the villa. And there was no one in the lab. I pressed my nose closer to the window, close enough to see through the double glass doors into the office beyond. That was deserted, too. I selected a handy-looking log from a neat pile of fire-wood underneath the balcony and glanced around for a window to knock in. The piles of snow behind me muffled the noise of breaking glass nicely. Deep snow is a burglar’s best friend. Carefully I chipped out a few jagged edges that had stayed in the frame and then put my hand in, lifted the catch, opened the window, and climbed inside. Glass crunched under my feet as I jumped down to the laboratory floor. Everything was just as it had been before. Nothing had been moved. All was hot and still. Except the mosquitoes, of course. These became more agitated as I laid the palm of my hand on the glass side of their habitat to check how warm it was. It felt just right, which is to say even warmer than the room, which was saying something, of course. They were all doing just fine. But I could fix that. And reaching behind each tank I switched off the heaters that kept these deadly little bugs alive. With a broken window letting freezing cold air into the lab, I figured they would all be dead in a few hours.

I opened and closed both sets of glass doors and went into the office. Straightaway I understood that I had not come too late. Far from it. On the blotter in the center of Gruen’s desk were four new American passports. I picked one up and opened it. The woman I had known as Frau Warzok, Gruen’s wife, was now Mrs. Ingrid Hoffman. I looked at the others. Heinrich Henkell was now Mr. Gus Braun. Engelbertina was Mrs. Bertha Braun. And Eric Gruen was now Eduard Hoffman. I started to write down the new names. Then I just pocketed all four passports. They could hardly go anywhere without them. Nor without their air tickets, which were also on the blotter. These were U.S. military tickets. I checked the date, the time, and the destination. Mr. and Mrs. Braun and Mr. and Mrs. Hoffman were leaving Germany that night. They were all booked on a midnight flight to Langley Air Force Base in Virginia. All I had to do was sit down and wait. Someone—Jacobs, probably—would surely be along quite soon to collect these tickets and the passports. And when he came, I would make him drive me up to Mönch, where, with three fugitives from Allied Justice cornered, I would take my chances and call the police in Munich. Let them sort it out.

I sat down, took out my gun—the one given to me in Vienna by Father Lajolo—worked the slide to put one up the spout, thumbed off the safety, and laid the weapon on the desk in front of me. I was looking forward to seeing my old friends again. I thought about smoking a cigarette and then decided against it. I didn’t want Major Jacobs smelling the smoke as he came through the front door.

Half an hour passed and, becoming a little bored, I decided to poke around the filing cabinet; when, eventually, I spoke to the police, it might look better if I had some documentary evidence to support what I was going to tell them. Not that Gruen and Henkell had experimented on Jews at Dachau. But that they had continued their medical experiments on local German POWs. They wouldn’t like that any more than I did. If, by some chance, a court wasn’t inclined to indict Gruen, Henkell, and Zehner for what they had done during the war, no German court could have ignored the murders of German servicemen.

The manila files were quite meticulous, being neatly arranged in alphabetical order. There were no records of what had happened before 1945, but for every person who had been infected with malaria since then, there was a detailed set of case notes. The first one I examined from the top drawer of the cabinet was for a Lieutenant Fritz Ansbach, who had been a German POW receiving treatment for nervous hysteria in the Partenkirchen hospital. He had been injected with malaria in the last days of November 1947. Within twenty-one days he had developed the full-blown disease, at which point the test vaccine, Sporovax, had been injected into his bloodstream. Ansbach was dead seventeen days later. Cause of death: malaria. Official cause of death: viral meningitis. I read several other files from that drawer. They were all the same. I left them out on the desk, ready to take with me when I went to Mönch. I had all that I needed. And I almost didn’t open the middle drawer in that evil filing cabinet at all. In which case I would never have come across the file labeled “Handlöser.”