“We approached passport control and I genuinely thought I was going to piss myself or feint. I approached the Argentine officer and he simply beckoned me through. I don’t think he actually looked at my passport or me. I could not believe it. Janko was waved through too and when he caught up to me, he looked at my face and my sweaty shirt and started laughing like a drunken horse.
“What was Argentina like?” South America seems such a long way away. All I know about Argentina is beef and Diego Maradona.
“Neither of us spoke any Spanish and to be honest I think we were overwhelmed by the place. It was so...so grand, Europe was still rebuilding at that time but Buenos Aires looked like the future. They have a main street in the centre of the city that is enormous. Double the width of the Champs-Élysées, I would say. At first, it seemed everyone was dressed up and the cars gleamed.”
“Was everyone rich there?”
“It was strange, the day we arrived we saw a big demonstration outside our hotel which was being dealt with pretty brutally by the police. We spent about a week there and every day we were witness to some form of civil disturbance. Yet, the city was beautiful and lots of buildings were being constructed. There was money in the city but also desperate poverty. It was an inequality that was often very stark. Quite literally next door to a glorious mansion would be a square kilometre of shacks crammed with poor families.
“It took us a few days to gather our bearings with the size of the city and the culture shock. By the fourth day, we were ready to put our plan into action. Back in Europe, we had found out that Tremmick was working under an assumed name as a doctor at a private clinic in Buenos Aires so Janko had an idea. He decided that we would work as pharmaceutical representatives and we would attend a huge conference that was being held in Buenos Aires. We knew Tremmick’s firm had passes to attend the conference so we planned to offer him a great deal on drugs and arrange a private meeting to close the deal,”
“Janko spent a small fortune with a local company to arrange the stand, the paraphernalia and some young Argentinian girls to work for us. We wanted it to look as professional and as glamorous as possible. I have to confess our stand advertising FrancoPharm, our made-up company, looked superb.
“Janko had not spared anything to make it look convincing, he had paid for one of the larger booths next to Bayer on one side and Johnson & Johnson on the other side. Would it be enough to tempt Tremmick?
“His clinic, which we later found out he owned in its entirely, was a popular destination for a certain clientele. He was using a pair of Argentinian brothers as a front thus the name of the company was Clínica del Hermanos Hernández. It was styled as a high-end private medical centre catering for expatriates. Again, it was only later we found out it was mainly for reconstructive surgery for former Nazis and other fascist pigs. And boob jobs for their wives,”
“Did they attend the conference?” I ask. Gunari prepares to answer, then stops to buy us two more beers at the bar even though I’ve still got over half of my lager remaining. He brings the beers back and re-commences the tale:
“Oh yes, he was there and he wasn’t lying low. He was wearing a cream linen suit and these ridiculous Jackie Onassis sunglasses even though we were indoors. The two brothers were following him around like lapdogs and we could tell the way this relationship was structured. Perhaps it made us complacent, we thought his arrogant manner would betray him. The more I look back on it, the more I feel like he was a man who had lived a charmed life and his arrogance was part of his genetic make-up. I don’t like saying this due to his crimes he has perpetrated, but it is what made him so successful.
“He wandered around the stands like a little Mussolini, his minions picking up samples and showing them to him and he would dismiss them with a wave. He gravitated towards our stand where he saw one of our girls holding a leaflet. Tremmick started chatting to her in a very sleazy way. He invaded her personal space and was touching her arm. I could see the girl was uncomfortable. Janko told me not to say anything.
“Eventually the girl said if he had any questions to speak to us. The young girl had no idea. I mean, we didn’t have time to send her on a training course, did we? Janko and I braced ourselves for coming face to face with a monster. It had been sixteen years since I had seen the man.
“You had met him before?” I am incredulous at this. Gunari’s face clouds over, his beery redness disappears from his face.
“Yes, Ana, on a freezing morning in January nineteen forty-four, at Auschwitz camp,”
I look at Gunari, a silence suffocates the atmosphere. I can see he wants to talk but his voice catches and he looks deeply into the bottom of his beer glass. My eyes implore him to continue if only to break the soundless barrier between us. If he doesn’t speak soon I fear we may never converse again. Gunari looks back up at me and I bear witness to moisture at the corner of his eyes.
“It was the face of evil, Ana. I swear it,” Gunari again looks down but only for a second before he looks up and holds my gaze again, “I don’t think until that point I had faced the real darkness of the soul. The previous year I had been held at a detention camp near Berlin called Marzahn. that was nothing compared to arriving at Auschwitz.”
“I didn’t know you were there, Gunari,”
“Oh yes, one day at the French camp they chose my mother and father and their parents, along with all my brothers and sisters and my grandfather. They put us on a train along with other Roma families and we travelled to an unknown destination which we later found out was Marzahn. It wasn’t easy there, oh no,” Gunari runs his hand along the large scar on his neck.
“We were held there for a few months before they announced we were moving. We didn’t know where. If we had known, would we have been able to change it? Probably not.
“The morning after we arrived, they lined up all the Roma children including myself and we were inspected by the guards and some of the doctors. It was very cold and I was dressed only in a light shirt and trousers with no shoes. They went across the line checking on us like we were cattle. I was at the end of the line and eventually, this little, wiry man dressed in full medical whites was eye to eye with me. Considering I was only ten years old or so I didn’t know if he was very small or if I was big for my age.
“He eyeballed me but unlike the others who looked at the floor, I held my gaze. I was in no mood to back down. His breath smelt like scotch even though it can’t have been later than nine o’clock. He broke off eye contact and tried touching my ear. I batted his hand away and I felt a wounding pain in my kidneys. One of the guards had rammed his rifle in my back so hard it made me cry immediately. I couldn’t halt the flow of tears, the shame of it now disgusts me.
“I looked at Tremmick and I saw a little smile develop. I knew that this man in front of me was a dangerous individual. The things I witnessed over the next few months would only confirm it. He treated people like animals yet he was the one with zero humanity.
“Sixteen years later I had come full circle. He approached our table where myself and Janko were casually leaning, I expended more energy on keeping my legs standing upright than in any of the boxing fights I had been in. He walked over to us and the first thing I noticed was that the same smell of scotch as he exhaled. The memories washed over me, I had tried to block it out of my mind but I couldn’t. I was back amongst the stench of burning and death. Somehow I stayed standing.
“Tremmick spoke to us in German to which we both played dumb, Janko especially. He inquired about our stock in staccato French, his accent would have been funny if it hadn’t been for the context. I informed him that we were selling cut-price anaesthetics which piqued his interest.
“He looked at me in a queer way and I am sure he was staring at my scar on my neck. I was sure he recognised me but I couldn’t see how that could be realistically possible. After a few more questions we had tempted him into a possible sale and arranged a meeting with him and his colleagues a day later.
“We had booked out a private room at the Café Tortoni, a beautiful Parisian-style bar, not far from Avenida del Mayo. Our plan was simple, or so we thought. A little demonstration of our merchandise. Tremmick would lean in and we would stab him with a syringe and inject him with a little bit of his own medicine - sodium cyanide. We felt confident we could take on his goons and then we planned to escape by ferry to Uruguay and then back to France.
Gunari starts chuckling and realises his beer glass is empty so he heads for another refill. My head is beginning to spin. Whether this is due to the booze or tonight’s revelations it’s hard to pinpoint. Gunari returns with two more steins filled with beer for us both. I neck the remains of my second and take a sip from the fresh glass. It is excellent beer, fair play to the Bavarians.
“We set up the room at the back of the Café Tortoni with a few samples on a table. We placed seats at the front with the two on either side of the central one set back a little bit. Janko thought that would serve two purposes: it would make Tremmick feel like the most important man in the room and it would give us a tiny bit more time to apply the fatal dose.”
“But you might not have been able to escape from there, was it busy?”
“Yes, it was always busy. Ultimately as long as we killed Tremmick we didn’t care if we didn’t make it out or not. You may call it a suicide mission and you may be right.”
“Did he show up?” I ask.
“Yes, but he was an hour late. He showed up in the room as we prepared to pack our stuff up and leave. We were all set to think of a new plan. He came in and wished us a good evening in Spanish.
“We gestured to Tremmick and the two Hernández brothers to sit down and they did so in the expected way. Tremmick looked edgy and I could see he was staring at us.
“‘Are you not taking a seat?’ he asked us in French. Janko and I had failed to place chairs down for ourselves. In our planning, we had become too caught up in worrying about everything that we missed something basic like that.
“‘Oh’ Janko said, ‘We prefer to do business standing up, here why not take a look at what we have in stock?’ Tremmick began to lean over the table. I was waiting behind with one hand under the table holding the syringe.
“Only a little further and I would have plunged it into his neck but he sat back in his chair and said ‘No business will be completed today’. Janko and I swapped looks and then one of the Hernández brothers leapt out of his chair for Janko. Tremmick ducked away and ran out of the door.
“Janko was grappling with the brother when I stuck the syringe in his neck. He went limp straight away. At the same time, the other brother tackled me around the waist and took the wind out of me. Janko punched him a few times and pulled him off me.
“I gathered my bearings and we delivered a hiding to him knocking him out. We rushed out of the room into the main bar where the commotion had caused the band to stop playing and for the patrons to see what was going on. We caught a glimpse of Tremmick running out.
“A couple of goons were blocking our path so I had to deal with them with some old school boxing lessons. A few people tried grabbing us to prevent us from leaving but Janko smashed a wine bottle and attacked anyone who came near us. We managed to escape outside. We couldn’t see where he had gone. The streets were busy with people and traffic and the Piedras metro station was next to us. He could have gone anywhere.
“We didn’t know what to do so we headed back to our hotel, we packed up our stuff and caught the ferry to Montevideo in Uruguay, which took a few hours. We laid low for a few days and didn’t read anything in the newspapers about the incident so we flew back to France.”
“That is an amazing tale Gunari,” I say, “I can’t believe it. You should write a book,”
Gunari shakes his head, drinks his beer and says “The publisher would probably turn it down as too far-fetched,”
“I hope tomorrow is less eventful,” I reply and take a big gulp from my beer. Gunari simply smiles.
Special Delivery
Thursday, 1 May 1986
Munich Town Hall shoots out of the ground towards heaven like mutant stalagmites. I can’t avert my eyes from the sheer grandness of the building. We are sat out at a cafe in a big square, which Gunari has been telling me is called Marienplatz. The huge town hall leers over dominantly, highlighting my insignificance.
I order a glass of white wine, Janko’s tip was a Silvaner, a Bavarian local wine. He may be a mad old chatterbox but he knows his wine. I spoke to him an hour ago by telephone when I confirmed the plan that we were proceeding with.
“It’s high risk,” he said.
I contemplated a snappy Arnold Schwarzenegger comeback like “If anything, it’s low risk for me” but instead I replied with, “Yeah, maybe,”
I can’t believe this plan will work. The hours of discussions about subtle ways of infiltrating the German postal service have come to nothing. Subtlety will take a back seat this evening.
“Right I’m off to pick up the van,” Gunari stands, stretches and places a hand on my back, “I’ll pick you up outside the huge white church, you can’t miss it when you exit the station. Any issues when I arrive we leave immediately and think of another plan,”
“It might be too late by then,” I say. Gunari nods and walks off to the Marienplatz U-Bahn station. I wait until he disappears before finishing my wine and following the same route to the U-Bahn station.
The platform is thronged with people, jabbering tourists, bookish students and pent-up workers mingling together. I can feel my pulse racing and I try to perform some breathing exercises which isn’t easy especially when some spotty youth spills some of his currywurst sauce on my arm. I give him a death-stare and he becomes immediately apologetic.
The train stops at Odeonplatz station, my stop is the one after. The train fills up with even more people, including what appears to be half of the student population in West Germany. The clumsy sausage spiller nearly repeats his mistake so he tries moving away through the crowded train when he knocks into someone else who actually lectures him on his inability to stand still and eat his sausage.
Despite the journey lasting only a few minutes it seemed to me to last a good fifty-five minutes. The warmth and smell of curried pork pieces are making me feel sick. The train pulls up at the next step and I look out of the window to double-check we are at Universität station.
Heading out of Universität station, over the road stands an incredible white stone church. The brightness of the stone dazzles me against the rich blue sky. It stops me dead in my tracks and a man bundles into the back of me.
“Oh sorry,” he says apologetically despite it being all my fault, “You’re not the only person I’ve seen that happen to,” and the man walks off smiling to himself.
I guess this is the church Gunari said he would pick me up from. I walk across the road and the sign outside confirms it is St Ludwig church. I check the time and I notice I have half an hour to kill so I decide to take a look inside.
Compared to the busy St Mark’s in Venice, this church is a haven of tranquillity. Despite the city buzz outside, it is completely still in here. I am conscious of my trainers squeaking when I walk even though it appears that I am the only person in here.
The church is wide and very high, light is beaming in through the windows but I can’t see any stained glass. The ceiling is painted blue which makes me feel even more serene. At the far end is an altar with a huge painting at the back. God is sitting on his clouds while below angels are lifting some people up to heaven whilst demons are grabbing and scrapping down below. The sheer scale could be aptly described as biblical. The time it must’ve taken to paint astounds me.
I exit the church, shielding my eyes from the dazzling sunshine. I put on my sunglasses quite literally at the moment Gunari pulls up in a red, Opel van with more scratches than your average zookeeper.
“Let’s go,” he says, rather needlessly considering the first part of our plan is to go. I jump
in the passenger seat and Gunari manoeuvres the van back into the busy early afternoon traffic.
“Everything all set?” Gunari asks.
“Yes, I’ve got the map and the other bits and pieces. Is this van going to hold up? It’s falling apart,”
“It’s the best that a thousand marks can buy with twenty-four hours notice. It might not achieve Janko’s high standards but it should fulfil our needs,” Gunari is buzzing, and I have to say, so am I. We are meandering through traffic approaching Beckermann’s apartment but adrenaline is coursing through my veins. I need to keep this together.
We pull over the road from Beckermann’s and our timing is good. Too good, some might say as we need to pull away almost immediately. The fat man comes out of his apartment building’s door, makes a cursory look in both directions and starts waddling towards the post office right on queue.
Beckermann is a genuinely huge figure, despite his age and slight hunching of the shoulders he still towers above everyone else on the pavement. He is dressed in a simple grey cardigan and black trousers. He holds the letter in his left hand and he is holding a cigarette in the other.
“Describe the letter Ana,” Gunari says. I pull out my recently purchased and calibrated Bresser binoculars and line up Beckermann from our position in the traffic thirty metres behind him.
“Standard manilla envelope, it looks A4 size,”
“What about the writing, can you see it?”
“It looks...it’s black writing and quite large. He’s moving too much. Wait, wait. I can see the city on the address, it’s in big block capitals,” I keep staring at the bewitching envelope hypnotically swaying and filling my field of vision. And then it’s almost like someone whispers the solution in my ear, “It’s Berlin. It’s Berlin, Gunari!”
“Can you see any more?”
“I can’t see anything else, he’s moving his chubby arm too much,”
“It narrows it down, do you think you would recognise the envelope again?”
The Wind and the Rain Page 10
