The Hochmann Miniatures

by Fish, Robert L. ;

  “Need it?” Huuygens leaned forward, concerned, his smile disappearing. “Is anything wrong? Are you in trouble? Is there anything I can do? Because if there is, you only have to ask. You know that. I owe you that and much more.”

  “Good!” André’s voice returned to its former heartiness. “Then you mean I won’t have to just settle for a bottle of beer? You mean you actually intend to keep your promise and pay off the million francs?”

  Huuygens laughed aloud. “André, you character! Back to acting again, eh? You’ve pulled me in twice, and that’s bad for my reputation as a man who’s hard to fool. Just what is this business of a million francs you keep harping about?”

  “You honestly don’t remember?” The deep voice was suspicious. “Or are you still trying to weasel out of your word?” He gave the other the benefit of the doubt. “Well, let me revive your memory—and I might mention that Michel was also a witness. And since, as I said, he is now connected with the police, his word carries weight. I mention this in case.…”

  Huuygens grinned. “Will you get on with it!”

  “All right.” André’s voice lost its banter; when he continued there was a certain hesitancy in his voice, as if—having come this far—he was now doubtful of the wisdom of pressing the subject. “In the cave that night, while the rest of us were trying to keep from freezing to death—and trying even harder to keep you from blasting that damned radio until we all got caught and shot, you insisted on listening to it. And, believe me, the racket was beginning to make me nervous.” The voice paused. “Do you remember, yet?”

  Kek’s grin had faded. There was something in André’s tone, some fear of revelation coupled with some need to reveal, that was completely foreign to the lightness of their previous conversation. “I remember something. But I don’t remember what it was.…”

  “Then we go on.” André drew a deep breath. “There was a lot of static, and we were just about to rip the thing out of your hands, when a news broadcast came on, and an announcement was made. And then, suddenly, you weren’t the young boy you had been up till then; suddenly you were a man. And you said—and I think I’m pretty close, considering how long it’s been—you said: ‘I’ll kill the animal! I’ll kill him!’ And then you said—” Andre paused “—you said: ‘I’d give a million francs to have his skinny neck between my hands right now!’”

  There was a moment of silence, and then André went on, soft and a bit fearful. “Do you remember now, Kek?”

  A shock as of electricity passed through the man sitting at the desk. Despite a rigid control practiced successfully over years, his jaw clenched so tightly he could feel a shard of pain edging up his cheekbone, pressing against his temple. The gray eyes closed a moment; when they reopened they were chips of flint, set in a stone face, staring unseeingly across the darkening room.

  “Kek? Kek? Are you still there?” The deep voice cursed itself angrily. “I’m an idiot to tell you in this manner. A fool! I should be hung! Me and my damned sense of the dramatic! Kek? Kek?”

  Huuygens seemed to hear the words as if from a distance—lost in a blinding red haze of hate, a hate he thought he had conquered years before. Conquered? No, not that. But certainly controlled. He forced away the bitter rancor, attempting to bring himself under restraint, to speak naturally.

  “I’m here.” He took a deep breath, expelled it, and then took another. Slowly his jaw unlocked; his hand eased its crushing bite on the receiver. He stared at the desk with eyes as hard as obsidian. “You wouldn’t lie to me, would you, André? Not about this?”

  “I’m sorry, Kek. Honestly sorry. I’m a fool. Michel didn’t even want me to let you know at all, but I insisted. He finally agreed, but he told me to just say he’d seen the man, and leave the rest to you. But me, with my big mouth, and my damned sense of humor …!”

  Huuygens waved this aside almost wearily; his head was bent, his hand pressed over his eyes. “He’s in Lisbon?”

  “That’s right.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Positive. Or at least Michel is positive, and he was a witness at Nuremberg, remember. And while your friend was smart enough not to get caught and hung, Michel saw pictures of him there together with Bormann and the rest. Michel says it’s him, all right. Oh, I guess he’s had a bit of plastic surgery somewhere, sometime, but Michel says there isn’t any doubt.”

  “You haven’t seen him yourself?”

  “No.”

  “He’s living there? In Lisbon?”

  “That’s right. And apparently has been for years. Maybe ever since he left Poland, for all I know. He disappeared before the others, you remember.”

  “What name is he using?” The initial shock was now well under control; the sharp brain was beginning to function normally again.

  “Echavarria. Enrique Echavarria.” The deep voice chuckled, attempting to introduce a touch of levity into the conversation, to somehow ease the shock he knew he had caused. “What a joke! What a plaisanterie! The man apparently claims to be from Madrid, but Michel says his Spanish is awful. Atrocious. He says it sounds like it’s being filtered through a strudel.”

  At the other end of the line Huuygens recorded the important information in his brain, discarding the attempt at humor. “And how did Michel happen to see him?”

  “Your Boche friend threw a party at his villa for some of the top police officers here—and their wives, those that had them—and Michel’s superior in the department brought him along. Michel is coming along very nicely here, I tell you. I shouldn’t be surprised——”

  “A party?” Huuygens frowned at the telephone almost suspiciously. “That was rather stupid, wasn’t it? And dangerous? The man is supposed to be in hiding, and he throws a party?”

  “I’m quite sure he knew who he was inviting,” André said dryly. “After all, he was sentenced to hang over eight years ago, and he’s still around. He isn’t a complete fool, you know. You have to remember that a lot of people in Portugal sympathized with the Boches, and particularly most of the police. And I’m sure most of the people he invited—if not all of them—have collected plenty from him at one time or another, for one favor or another. After all, the testimony at Nuremberg indicated that he left Poland with money—not his, but still—and he’s undoubtedly paid to insure his safety and new identity more than once. And I’m sure the major portion of it went to the police.”

  “But, still—a party?”

  “Well,” André said slowly, reflectively, “I suppose a man can’t live alone in a big house year after year without seeing anyone. He might just as well be in Spandau prison.”

  Huuygens’s eyes narrowed even further; he paused a moment and then took a deep breath, expelling it slowly. “You say he lives alone?”

  There was a moment’s hesitation at the other end of the line. “I meant that figuratively, Kek. In Portugal nobody lives alone. He has a servant, of course, and.…” The deep voice trailed off.

  “And?”

  “And his wife.…”

  Huuygens fought against the sick hurt he thought had been wiped out years before. Control yourself! he instructed himself sternly. You are Kek Huuygens now, a man respected in the toughest of circles, a man whose nerve has been proven in many a tight spot, a man whose brain has outwitted his opponents repeatedly. Don’t start acting like a lovesick student now!

  “Kek? Kek? Are you still there?”

  “I’m still here.”

  “What do you plan to do?”

  He stared at the smooth surface of the desk without seeing it.

  “I don’t know.” He closed his eyes, squeezing them shut, pressing the lids tightly with the fingers of his free hand, trying desperately to concentrate. It was useless. He opened them again, examining the broad space of the room carefully, seeing in the growing shadows a host of ghostly figures. They froze in expectancy as his eyes tracked them down, as if breathlessly awaiting his decision. He stared them down, forcing them back into the frieze of the
wallpaper, into the still folds of the draperies.

  “André. Do you have a telephone where I can reach you?”

  “Yes. Moncada 917.” Again André attempted lightness. “Also untapped, or at least Michel tells me. Although in my case it’s only that I’m not that important.”

  Huuygens reached for his pen, marking down the number. “And when is the best time to reach you?”

  “Tell me when you’ll call. I’ll be here.”

  The strong fingers holding the pen scrawled a wavering line across the sheet of paper, returned to underscore the number several times fiercely, as if each stroke were a knife thrust across his enemy’s throat, and then tossed the pen aside, almost wearily. “Before morning. Will you be there? I have to think this thing out.”

  “I’ll be here until I hear from you. I’ll go out and get something to eat, and then I’ll come right back.” There was a moment’s hesitation. “Will you be wanting to speak with Michel?”

  “I don’t know. I have to think.”

  “And, Kek?”

  “Yes?”

  There was a deep chuckle from the other, a remembered sound from the days of the Resistance, the revengeful sound of a man with an enemy firmly in his gunsight, and this time no chance of error from wind or distance. “We’ll be having that drink together soon, eh?”

  “Very soon,” Huuygens said quietly. “And in Lisbon.”

  “Good! I’ll be hearing from you, then.”

  “Before morning. And thank you very much, André.”

  He placed the receiver almost exactingly on its hook, stared at it a moment, and then slowly came to his feet. He walked to the bar, picked up his drink and studied it a moment, and then methodically poured it down the drain. Tonight he had a lot of thinking to do—thinking and planning. And while careful planning was the basis of his success in his profession, tonight his plan had to be even more exacting of his brain, for tonight he would be facing a personal element never present before. He was smart enough to realize the dangers such involvement might offer to his thinking. No—tonight the plan had to be perfect in every detail. The slightest error could not be tolerated; the tiniest loophole had to be firmly caulked. Nor could there be any recklessness, nor any dashing chance-taking; the stakes this time were far too high. And liquor and thinking did not mix.

  He moved to an easy chair in one corner and sank into it, leaning back, trying to force himself to relax and his mind to begin its analysis. The sun had dipped below the edge of the Bois, and the room was shadowed, but he preferred it that way. He tented his fingers, pressing them together with all his force, and then suddenly released them; the exercise was repeated several times. It was a means he often used to command his body and mind to obedience, to relax his tensions; his hands came down to the arms of the chair, resting, while his mind began to consider the problem.

  But where to begin? Which step to take first, and from the essential and irrevocable first step, which move to follow? And how could he even begin to plan that first step when, despite everything, memories continued to fight for possession of his attention, flooding his mind completely with a mad jumble of people and events and attitudes and places and—worst of all—bitter emotions? Under such circumstances, concentration was impossible!

  He squeezed his eyes shut, shaking his head angrily at himself, and then suddenly relaxed. Of course! Simply stop fighting yourself, he said to himself, let the memories come. Let them emerge from that locked vault where they had been forcibly thrust and held so many years ago. But let them come in decent order, honestly and accurately, and then let them depart, leaving your mind purged, freed of the slavery of bitterness, coldly ready to go to work.

  Where to begin? In the mud and cold of that miserable cave back of Allanche? No. That would come later. If the purposes of this self-flagellation were to be satisfied, it had to be done properly and completely. Go back to that day in the library of the Hochmann mansion, when you were waiting for Stefan, with the sound of the bombers over Warsaw echoing in the huge paneled room, and Jadzia had come in upon you.…

  3

  It had not been difficult to enter the large house undetected; ever since he and Stefan had met four years earlier as entering students in the Art College of the university, the Hochmann house had been a second home to him. He therefore used a little-known and long-abandoned door that led from an old icehouse to the small pantry adjoining the huge kitchens. The Germans were on the roads as well as in the air, and he had no intention of being detained and questioned before his mission had even started. A radio blasting from a light pole in the square in Targówek as he had come through, walking warily, approaching the bridge, had announced the passage of enemy troops through Molotov and Kielce, and said the Germans were closing in on the city. Even the government spokesman, quoted blandly by the radio, doubted if the line on the east shore of the Wisla, running erratically from Praga to Brod, could be maintained in face of the merciless bombardment.

  He paused, listening carefully. The kitchens were silent, except for the humming of the new electric refrigerator; those servants who had not already fled were probably in the upper reaches of the house, hastily packing for evacuation, or watching the tiny antics of the planes in the sky to the north from the foolish vantage point of the undereave dormers. A quick cautious step and he was at the angle of the main hallway, looking down past the large dining room and the library toward the two wide drawing rooms in the front, facing the Jez Czerniakowskie. The passage was deserted. Feeling a bit safer here in the cool dimness of the friendly corridor, and with the familiar spring of the thick carpet beneath his feet, he moved guardedly toward the front of the house, intent upon finding Stefan.

  The sound of voices coming from the front drawing room made him pause uncertainly; the person speaking, of course, was Stefan, but the high, slightly stuttering pitch that usually made him smile a bit in pity now sounded rather imperious. Poor Stefan! Still, he was Jadzia’s brother, and that counted for something. In fact, he realized, it counted for everything. He started forward and then stopped again, suddenly this time. There had been a response in German, authoritative but not argumentative. His eyes narrowed as he moved automatically to the wall as if for protection; he scanned the empty hallway once again, quickly, intently, and then stepped into the library, closing the door silently behind him. Whatever the reason for a German-speaking visitor, his own presence must remain undisclosed until the other had left and he could see Stefan alone. The hastily formed student committee needed money to fight the enemy, and his assignment had been to contact Stefan. Since the death of the old Count and Countess Hochmann the year before, Stefan was a very rich young man. And despite some of his rather wild notions and his tremendous inferiority complex, he was still his friend, still his future brother-in-law, and more important at the moment, he was still a Pole.

  The library was sunny, with the drapes pulled wide, giving out onto a lovely view of the formal gardens beyond, running down to the edge of the lake. He moved to the windows and began tugging the drapes shut; one of them refused to close and he abandoned it, stepping back, instead, from its view. It was odd how, in the quiet of the huge book-lined room, the steady drone of the planes above seemed almost peaceful; they might have been a local flying club out for an afternoon’s sport, or a particularly large swarm of bees investigating the roses. Even the dull booming coming from the center of the city to the north did not appear threatening, but more like a fireworks at a festival fair.

  It was all too appallingly sudden, he thought desperately. We have not been permitted the time to appreciate its true horror or its terrifying reality. To us, in our shock, it is still playacting, simply because it cannot and must not be what it really is. In the evening, when the warm September sun has set, it will prove to have been for our entertainment, rather than our destruction; and the characters will wipe the grisly greasepaint from their furrowed faces and then go home; and the ruins will cease to smoke and will spring back up, possibly e
ven refurbished; and the dead will climb smilingly to their feet and return, perhaps even a bit reluctantly, to the weary business of their everyday lives.

  He turned from the somnolent and falsely peaceful view offered by the recalcitrant drape, and began making the rounds of the room restlessly. The murmur of voices from the drawing room beyond could still be heard faintly. The door of the library opened suddenly, unexpectedly, frighteningly, but before he could react to the shock of panic and try to seek some sort of shelter, he saw with relief that it was unnecessary. Jadzia had come into the room and was moving with that purposeful, boyish stride of hers toward the desk before the fireplace, lightly humming a tune; it struck him as odd in view of the tragedy of the day. She paused, the tune fading, surprised at finding the drapes closed, and then swung about. He saw her blanch at sight of him, catch her breath, and then hastily return to close the door and bolt it. He frowned curiously as he walked toward her.

  “Darling; what’s the matter?”

  “Mietek! You fool! What are you doing here?” His arms went out to her but she stepped back, her green eyes furious. “Keep your hands off me! You have to get out of here at once! Mietek! Are you listening to me?”

  Mietek. Mietek Janeczek. After fifteen years it was even difficult to remember one’s own name. Certainly, today it was extremely doubtful if he would look up at hearing it called out in a restaurant or on the street, or pay particular attention at hearing it mentioned on the radio. Still, there was no denying it had been the name he had been born with, had grown up with. Mietek Janeczek—even the name sounded strange, but no more strange than the picture of that young, innocent, foolish boy who carried it.…

  Despite the rebuff and the tenseness of the moment, he could not help but feel a tendency to smile. He had seen Jadzia in her furies before, although never one directed at himself. It always struck him as comical to see a beautiful girl in her late teens so angry as to stamp her tiny foot. She looks like a small child deprived of a favorite toy, he thought; or a sleek cat of its dinner.