This Is How It Really Sounds (23 page)

The problem was, he couldn't ignore the girl. It had been a long war, with the closest thing to romance being the whorehouses in Rangoon and Kunming. Anna was the kind of pipe dream he'd hung on to in the jungle, when he'd imagined someday turning the misery and fear into stories he'd tell to impress someone intelligent, civilized, beautiful. He wasn't any of those things himself: he was a dumb farm boy from Washington State that got demolitions training because he knew how to blow up stumps and then got pretty good at killing people, yet here she was, like the secret reward he had earned by being a “hero”: A hero's wife. A spy's mistress. There was something about the unknown, the endlessly possible that she represented. And at the same time, beneath all that, she was a young girl who had been grievously wronged.

“Just for the sake of discussion, Mr. Maier, what's this Richter doing in Shanghai?”

This wasn't known, Maier answered. He had arrived several days ago and had taken up residence at the Cathay Hotel, directly below Sassoon's offices. The day manager at the Cathay was from Kiel, and he had recognized him immediately.

At this Maier's face burned slightly brighter. “Right below Sassoon, the most prominent Jew in Shanghai. As if he has done nothing wrong and can never be punished! He is mocking us! He is mocking the very idea of justice!”

Charlie didn't answer. Lots of Nazis had stood trial at Nuremberg that year; if this Richter was traveling freely, he might have been investigated and cleared. Which didn't prove anything. He'd heard through the grapevine that the geniuses at Military Intelligence were letting a lot of Nazis off in exchange for promises of future help against the Soviets. But to stay at the Cathay … “Maybe it's because he wants you to know he's here. Can you think of a reason he might want to contact you?”

Maier let his gaze roam out the window, then linger on the wedding portrait. “I cannot allow myself to hope anymore, Mr. Pico.”

Charlie doubted that was true, but he said nothing.

The shipper collapsed slightly. Without any further answer, he walked over to the liquor cart and opened the ice bucket as if to make himself a drink, then closed it again. He and his daughter looked at each other. “Let us do this, Mr. Pico: let us say you are not hired to kill him, only to watch him and find out why he is here…”

“Mr. Maier, I'm up to my ears in other business right now—”

Maier smiled and held up his hand. “Only to go to the Cathay and watch him and learn a little more about him. Find out why he is in Shanghai. Anna will go with you. I have no picture of him, but Anna will know him.”

He turned to her. She seemed extraordinarily calm and adult and expectant. “Are you sure you'll remember him? You must have been eight years old when you last saw him.”

“Nine,” she said, and her next words felt cold. “I have not forgotten his face, Mr. Pico.”

In the quiet, cultured interior of the house, the gazes of Maier and his daughter held him in place. Part of him had known as soon as Anna walked into the room what he was about to say. “I'll give it a few hours. But you can't pay me. Consider it a favor.”

At six the next morning he and Anna were both sitting in the hotel bar with coffee and French pastries, at a table that afforded a view of the lobby and the coffee shop from behind a dark wooden balustrade that screened them. The bar was closed, but Mr. Maier had cleared it with Sassoon beforehand. It should be easy to spot him. People tended to leave hotels in the morning and return before dinner to freshen up, so morning or late afternoon were both good times. Would Richter make the girl, if he hadn't seen her since she was nine years old? A Nazi on the lam would be wary, but a Nazi who'd been cleared and checked into Shanghai's foremost hotel owned by its foremost Jew didn't seem like a man who was worried about his past. Anna wore a black pillbox hat with a lace veil in case Richter glanced over at them.

They chatted awkwardly as they waited, like two people out on a date. She was shy, as an eighteen-year-old girl talking to a war veteran might be, and tense because she was about to lay eyes on the man who had taken her mother away from her. At the same time, he detected a thread of curiosity.

“Where are you from, Mr. Pico?”

“Call me Charlie, please.”

“Charlie. How did you grow up? What was your home like?”

“I grew up on a farm in western Washington. That's in the northwestern corner of the United States.”

“How was it? Did you have cows and a … a house for the cows?”

“Yes, we have a house for the cows.” He smiled. “It's called a
barn
! With a couple of horses and chickens and ducks and a pig.” He told her about the crops they grew: corn, alfalfa, mustard, wheat. Different crops depending on the year. Vegetables for the family and a few extra to sell. “We have a little white house, with a porch and a glider, and a big black woodstove to heat it, because there's a lot of forest around, and we have a creek on the property. It's in the foothills of the mountains. Really, Anna, it's one of the most beautiful places on earth. For a home.”

“It sounds wonderful.”

“It
is
wonderful, Anna.” He thought of his mother fetching water from the well and his sister coming back from the barn with a tin pail of milk. He thought of the dinner bell ringing, of firewood popping and a spark rocketing from the open stove when he stoked it. What you knew on the farm was that you had everything a man really needed. You had your family close by, right beside you, and food and milk and fire. The whole beautiful world revolved outside your windows, and it was the only world that mattered. The snow fell. The leaves turned green. You found a good wife and you loved up your children: “I'll probably be going back there when this Shanghai thing is over.”

She pursed her lips into a little smile, her eyes lively, as if she already knew his whole life. “Will you?” Now she changed the subject, as if embarrassed at her presumptuousness. “My father says you are a hero.”

He had thought he would impress her with the things he had done in the war, but as he looked at the young woman in front of him, his stories seemed base and violent, like something that would dirty her. “A lot of people did more than me,” he answered. His throat became thick, and he cleared it so he could continue. “It's all mixed up, really. Bad becomes good; good becomes … weakness. But then, mixed up in all of it, there's evil. And that's what you hope you're fighting.”

As if reminded, she turned to look through the balustrade at the lobby, and he followed her gaze. No one in sight yet. He asked her if she had any idea why Richter would come to Shanghai, just in case she gave away something her father hadn't, but neither of them seemed to have anything hidden. He quizzed her about the details of how to do foot surveillance that he'd given her the day before. When to follow, when to drop back. He went over the diagram with her in his notebook. He would have liked to have a couple of Chinese men for that, but he didn't want to get his friends in the KMT police involved because it might be inconvenient later. He had a driver waiting outside in case Richter got into a taxi.

Just after seven, Richter came down the stairs and made his way into the coffee shop. Anna was flustered, turned her face down and away, as if he might see her through the balustrade. “That's him.” There was an old fear in her voice.

He looked around fifty, with cropped, graying hair and a frame that had become fattened and gnarled, though it still had some of the raw energy of the athlete lingering in it. He'd probably been SS; he didn't have the look of a man who'd spent time on the eastern front, and most of those guys never came back anyway. He'd probably stayed at home keeping things under control for the Party, dealing out favors in exchange for money and women, fingering stray Jews or anyone else uncooperative for deportation. He'd seen guys like that when he'd been in Berlin in 1944: cruel, fat, vicious men romancing a string of desperate hausfraus while their husbands froze to death in Leningrad and Narva. Now he was wearing a charcoal pinstripe suit and a checked silver-colored tie, a proper businessman. In his gut, Charlie knew he was selling something. He could feel it. So who was the buyer, and what was the sale?

Richter ordered a large breakfast and ate it quickly, his head bowed down toward the plate and his jaws moving rapidly to keep up with his appetite. Not a wary man. An arrogant man, who probably reasoned that if the world hadn't seen fit to punish his crimes, they hadn't really been crimes in the first place. A stupid man. Even at twenty-two, just beginning to get into his field, Charlie knew this would be an easy job. Richter finished his breakfast and lingered over another cup of coffee as he read a German newspaper he'd picked up from the rack. He wasn't hiding anything: he was flaunting it. He made his way through the lobby without dropping off his key, and they had to hurry after him so that they didn't lose him. To Charlie's relief, he didn't get a taxi but went walking straight down the Bund, past the Customs House and the Hongkong Bank. He crossed the street and let Anna follow him for a block or two, then he gave her the sign, and she dropped back and he followed. Richter wasn't cautious. No glances behind him. No stopping at a newsstand to pick up a magazine and inventory the street. He'd spent his life doing what he wanted, and there'd never been any consequences. Why should he start worrying now?

Surprisingly, he turned in to the Shanghai Club. They'd be serving breakfast at that hour, though one would think that an ex-Nazi wouldn't be the most welcome guest. Of course, anyone could be anything in Shanghai. Richter could pass himself off as a Catholic priest if he wanted.

He signaled Anna to catch up with him, marked the time in his notebook, then retreated across the street.

“Do you know anyone at the Shanghai Club he might be meeting?”

“No.”

“Let's wait here for a few minutes, let him get settled. Then I'm going to go in, and I want you to stand over by that delivery truck and wait. Change that hat for your other one and put on that scarf. If Richter comes out before I do, follow him.”

“What will you do if you see him inside?”

“I don't know! Maybe I'll walk right up to him and introduce myself!” He laughed at her puzzled expression.

He waved at the doorman and passed inside. The club was still cool and sluggish in the early morning. The long bar was untended, and the restaurant was empty. In the front section a Chinese waiter with a silver coffeepot was moving among the leather armchairs and couches. Richter had to be there among the high-backed chairs that faced the other direction.

Charlie took out a cigarette and moved quickly toward the waiter. “Say, have you got a light?”

The waiter pulled out a lighter, and, as Charlie looked past it, he noticed Richter's back. Facing him, now impossible to ignore, was Matthias Vorster, the Afrikaaner who'd spent the whole war in Shanghai. He could see a brief flash of annoyance cross Vorster's face. They had no choice but to greet each other.

“Charlie! Good morning, my friend!”

“Matthias!” He stepped over to shake hands with Vorster, then nodded cordially at the Nazi. Vorster introduced him as a friend from Holland.

Richter stood up and shook his hand heartily, smiling. “
Amerikaner
…” He gave him a thumbs-up: “Number one!”

Vorster spoke for him. “Karl had a tough time during the war, Charlie. All the Jews did under the Nazis.”

That was a hard one to swallow, but Charlie kept a straight face. “So I've heard.”

Richter seemed to pick up a word here and there. “Nazis—!” He scowled. “Bad!”

He hadn't wanted this job, but Richter was tipping the balance here. He spoke directly to the German, knowing Vorster would translate. “What brings you to Shanghai, Herr Richter?”

The query went back and forth between Vorster and Richter.

“He's looking for some relatives. They escaped Germany in 1936, and he heard that they arrived here. He has news about one of their family. Maybe you know them. The man's name is Hermann Maier.”

Charlie grimaced and shook his head from side to side. “No. I can't say I do know a Hermann Maier. But I'll bet the Jews have got a club of some sort where you could ask. That'd probably be a good place to start. They all know each other.”

Vorster relayed it to the other man, and a short conversation went on between them. Of course Richter couldn't go to the synagogue. They'd make him in five minutes. Vorster was likely his bird dog on this. Probably old business associates during the war.

“What kind of news is it? Good news?”

“Very good news. The mother of the family was separated from the others. But she survived the war.”

That was it then: some sort of shakedown to separate Maier from some more money in exchange for the whereabouts of his wife. Except the wife was certainly dead. He could see that by one look at Richter's swollen, stupid face. “That's news anyone would be glad to hear. It's very kind of Mr. Richter to make the trip all the way to Shanghai to find him and tell him.”

“He is joining relatives in Australia, so it is on the route.”

“Well, I know a couple of fellows of the Jewish persuasion that I can ask. Where is Mr. Richter staying?”

“It's easiest if you just tell me, Charlie. Karl is at the Grosvenor now, but he wants to change. And thank you, my friend.”

He'd found out what he needed. “It's a pleasure.” He stood and stuck out his hand. “Mr. Richter: Good luck.”

When he came out he glanced across the street at Anna and then walked a block before waiting for her to catch up. He told her what had happened, and the expression that came across her face was haunting. A mix of childish happiness, flooded instantly by tides of suspicion and hope and pain. “But Anna, he's lying.”