The One From the Other (44 page)

I read the file slowly. And then I read it again. It used a lot of medical words that I didn’t understand and one or two that I did. There were lots of graphs showing the “subject’s” temperature and heart rate before and after they had put her arms inside a box containing up to a hundred infected mosquitoes. I remembered how I had thought she had been bitten by fleas or bed lice. And all that time, Henkell had been turning up at the Max Planck psychiatric hospital with his little box of death. They had given her the test vaccine, Sporovax IV, but it hadn’t worked. The way it hadn’t worked for any of the others. And so Kirsten had died. It was easily done. And very easily explained. Malaria could be written off as influenza just as easily as viral meningitis, especially in Germany, in a hospital where facilities were few. My wife had been murdered. I felt my stomach collapse in upon itself like an imploding balloon. The bastards had murdered my wife, just as surely as if they’d put a gun to her head and blown out her brains.

I looked again at her case notes. Mistakenly booked into the hospital as a single woman, and wrongly described as mentally retarded, it had been assumed that no one would really miss her. There was no mention of me. Only that she had been transferred to the General Hospital, where she had “succumbed” to the disease. “Succumbed.” They made it sound like she had just gotten tired and gone to sleep, instead of having died. As if they didn’t know the one from the other any more than they knew that I had been this poor woman’s husband. Otherwise they would surely have recorded my name in their damned file.

I closed my eyes. Not fleas or bed lice at all. But
mosquito bites.
And the insect that had bitten me during one visit to the Max Planck? A single escaped mosquito, perhaps? Perhaps that explained the so-called pneumonia I had caught following my beating at the hands of Jacobs’s friends in the ODESSA. Perhaps it had not been pneumonia at all. Perhaps it had been a mild dose of malaria. Henkell wouldn’t have been able to tell the one from the other. There was no reason at all for him to have suspected that my own fever had an “entomological vector,” as they called it, any more than there was reason for him to have known that Kirsten Handlöser was my wife. Not under those circumstances. Which was probably just as well. They might have given me Sporovax.

This put a very different complexion on things. Involving the police looked much too unpredictable now. I needed to know that these men would be properly punished for their crimes. And to know that for sure I would have to punish them myself. Suddenly it had become much easier to understand those Jewish avenger squads. The Nakam. What kind of punishment was a few years in prison for men who had committed such disgusting crimes? Men like Dr. Franz Six from the Jewish Department at the SD. The man who, back in September 1937, had sent me to Palestine. Or Israel, as we now had to call it. I had no idea what had happened to Paul Begelmann, the Jew whose money Six coveted. But I remembered seeing Six again, in Smolensk, where he had commanded a Special Action Group that had massacred seventeen thousand people. And for this he had received a sentence of just twenty years. If the new federal government of Germany had its way, he would be out on parole before he’d served even a quarter of that sentence. Five years for murdering seventeen thousand Jews. No wonder the Israelis felt obliged to murder these men.

Hearing a sound above me I opened my eyes and recognized much too late that the sound had been the hammer on a snub-nosed thirty-eight-caliber Smith & Wesson being thumbed back. The nice thirty-eight with the J-frame and rubberized grip I had seen in the glove box of Jacobs’s Buick. Only now it was in his hand. I never forget a gun. Especially when it’s pointed at my face.

“Lean back from the desk,” he said quietly. “And put your hands on your head. Do it slowly. This thirty-eight has a very light action and might easily go off if your hand goes within three feet of that Mauser. I saw your footprints in the snow. Just like Good King Wenceslas. You should have been more careful.”

I sat back in the chair and placed my hands on my head, watching the black hole of the two-inch barrel as it got closer. We both knew I was a dead man if he pulled the trigger. A thirty-eight provides a human skull with a lot of surplus ventilation.

“If I had more time,” he said, “I might be real curious as to how you got yourself out of Vienna as quickly as you did. Impressive. Then again, I told Eric not to let you have the money. You used it to get out of the city, right?” He leaned forward, carefully, and picked up my gun.

“As a matter of fact, I still have the money,” I said.

“Oh? Where is it?” He eased the hammer off my automatic and tucked it under his trouser belt.

“About forty miles from here,” I said. “We could go and get it, if you like.”

“And I could pistol-whip it out of you, Gunther. Luckily for you, I’m rather pressed for time.”

“Catching a plane?”

“That’s right. Now hand over those passports.”

“What passports?”

“If I have to ask a second time, you’ll lose the ear. And don’t delude yourself that anyone will hear the shot and give a shit. Not with that skeet range around the corner.”

“Good point,” I said. “Can I use my hand to get them? They’re in my coat pocket. Or would you prefer I tried for them with my teeth?”

“Forefinger and thumb only.” He took a step back, grabbing hold of his wrist, and extended the hand holding the gun at my head. Like he was getting ready to fire. At the same time his keen eyes glanced down at the open file I had been reading. I said nothing about the file. There was no point in putting him on guard any more than he already was. I lifted the passports out of my pocket and tossed them on top of the file.

“What’s that you’re reading?” He took the passports and then the tickets and pocketed them in his own short leather coat.

“Just the case notes on one of your protégé’s patients,” I said, closing the file.

“Hands on top of your head again,” he said.

“As doctors, I think they’re lousy,” I said. “All of their patients have a nasty habit of dying.” I was trying hard to control my anger, but my ears were burning. I hoped he would put the color in them down to the cold. I wanted to beat his face to a pulp but I could only do that if I avoided getting shot.

“That’s a price worth paying,” he said.

“Easy to say when you’re not the one paying it.”

“Nazi POWs?” He sneered. “I don’t think anyone is going to miss a few sick krauts.”

“And the guy who you brought to Dachau?” I asked. “Was he one of those Nazi POWs, too?”

“Wolfram? He was expendable. We picked you for the same reason, Gunther. You’re expendable, too.”

“But when the local supply of sick Nazi POWs dried up? They started using incurable patients in Munich’s mental hospitals. Just like the old days. They were also expendable, huh?”

“That was stupid,” said Jacobs. “A risk they didn’t need to take.”

“You know, I can understand them doing it,” I said. “They’re criminals. Fanatics. But not you, Jacobs. I know you know what they did, during the war. I saw the file in the Russian Kommandatura, in Vienna. Experiments on concentration camp prisoners? A lot of them were Jews, just like you. Doesn’t that bother you just a little?”

“That was then,” he said. “This is now. And more importantly, there’s tomorrow.”

“You sound like someone I know,” I said. “A die-hard Nazi.”

“It might take another year or two,” he continued, leaning back against the wall, relaxing just enough to make me think I stood half a chance. Maybe he hoped I would go for him, so he had the excuse to shoot me. Assuming he needed an excuse. “But a malaria vaccine is something much more important than some misplaced sense of justice and retribution. Have you any idea what a malaria vaccine might be worth?”

“There’s nothing more important than retribution,” I said. “Not in my book.”

“It’s lucky you feel that way, Gunther,” he said. “Because you’re going to play the starring role in a little court of retributive justice, right here in Garmisch. I don’t think you Germans have a word for it. We call it a kangaroo court. Don’t ask me why. But it means an unauthorized court that disregards all normal legal procedures. The Israelis call them Nakam courts. Nakam meaning ‘vengeance.’ You know? Where the verdict and the sentence come within a minute or two of each other.” He jerked his gun up in the air. “On your feet, Gunther.”

I stood up.

“Now come around the desk, into the corridor, and go ahead of me.”

He backed out of the doorway as I came toward him. I was praying for some kind of external distraction that might make him take his eyes off me for half a second. But he knew that, of course. And would be ready for it, if or when it came.

“I’m going to lock you up somewhere nice and warm,” he said, herding me along the corridor. “Open that door and go downstairs.”

I continued to do exactly what I was told. I could feel the aim of that thirty-eight squarely between my shoulder blades. From three or four feet, the bullet of a thirty-eight would have gone straight through me, leaving a hole the size of an Austrian two-shilling piece.

“And when you’re locked up,” he said, coming downstairs behind me and switching on the light as we went, “I’m going to telephone some people I know in Linz. Some friends of mine. One of them used to be CIA. But now he’s Israeli intelligence. That’s how they like to think of themselves anyway. Assassins. That’s what I call them. And that’s how I use them.”

“I suppose they’re the ones who killed the real Frau Warzok,” I said.

“I wouldn’t shed any tears for her, Gunther,” he said. “After what she did? She had it coming.”

“And Gruen’s old girlfriend, Vera Messmann?” I asked. “Did they kill her, too?”

“Sure.”

“But she wasn’t a criminal,” I said. “What did you tell them about her?”

“I told them she’d been a guard at Ravensbrück,” he said. “That was a training base for female SS supervisors. Did you know that? The British hanged quite a few of the women from Ravensbrück—Irma Grese was just twenty-one years old—but some of them got away. I told the Nakam that Vera Messmann used to set her wolfhounds on Jews to tear them to pieces. Stuff like that. Mostly the information I give them is good. But now and then I slip someone onto the list who’s not a real Nazi. Someone like Vera Messmann. And now you, Gunther. They’ll be really pleased to get you. They’ve been after Eric Gruen for a long time. Which is why they’ll have all the relevant documents proving you’re Gruen. Just in case you thought you could argue your way out if it. An Allied public trial in Germany would have been more clear-cut. But really it’s not the German government who are making great efforts to track down war criminals. It’s not even the Allies. We’ve got other fish to fry. Like the Reds. No, the only people who are really keen to track down and execute wanted war criminals these days are the Israelis. And once they figure they’ve killed Eric Gruen, we’ll close the file on him. And so will the Russians. And the real Eric Gruen will be in the clear. That’s where you come in, Gunther. You’re going to take the fall for him.” I reached the bottom of the stairs. “Open the door in front of you and go inside.”

I stopped.

“Or, if you prefer, I can shoot you in the calf, and we’ll just have to hope that you don’t bleed to death in the three or four hours it takes for them to get here from Linz. Your choice.”

I opened the cellar door and walked inside. Before the war I might have tackled him. But I was quicker then. Quicker and younger.

“Now sit down and put your hands on your head.”

Once again I obeyed. I heard the door close behind me and, for a moment, I was plunged into darkness. A key turned in the lock, and then the light was switched on from the outside.

“Here is something to think about,” Jacobs said through the door. “By the time they get here, we’ll be well on our way to the airport. At midnight tonight, Gruen, Henkell, and their two lady friends will be on their way to a new life in America. And you’ll be lying facedown in a shallow grave somewhere.”

I said nothing. There seemed nothing left to say. To him at least. I hoped the Israelis coming from Linz could speak good German.

FORTY

I heard Jacobs moving around upstairs for a while and then everything went quiet. I stood up and kicked at the door, which helped get some of the anger and frustration out of me but did nothing to aid my escape. The cellar door was made of oak. I could have kicked it all day and not even scratched it. I looked around for some sort of tool.

The cellar had no windows and no other doors. There was a central-heating radiator the size of a coiled anaconda and as hot as a lightbulb. The floor was concrete, with walls to match. Some old kitchen appliances were heaped in one corner, and I supposed that part of the laboratory upstairs had once been the villa’s kitchen. There were several pairs of skis, boots, and poles; an old toboggan; some ice skates; and a bicycle with no tires. I practiced using one of the skis as a sort of pikestaff and decided that it might serve as a useful weapon if the Israelis coming to see were armed only with the strength of the Lord. If they had guns, I was in trouble. I abandoned a similar plan to use the blade of an ice skate for the same reason.

As well as an assortment of junk there was a small wine rack containing some dusty-looking bottles of Riesling. I smashed the neck off one and drank the contents without much pleasure. There’s nothing worse than warm Riesling. By now I was feeling warm myself. I removed my coat and my jacket, smoked a cigarette and turned my attention to several largish packages that were ranged on either side of the radiator. All of them were addressed to Major Jacobs and labeled “U.S. Government. Urgent Laboratory Specimens.” Another label read: “Extreme caution advised. Handle with care. Store in a warm place only. Danger of infectious disease. Contains live insectary. Should only be opened by trained entomologist.”