by Philip Kerr
“I’m not going to kill you,” I panted. “I’m not going to kill you, because I want you to listen. My name is not and never has been Eric Gruen. At some stage in the future, if it’s humanly possible, I’m going to kill that man. My name is and always has been Bernhard Gunther. I want you to remember that name. I want you to tell that name to whichever fanatic is in charge of Haganah these days. So that you’ll remember it was Bernhard Gunther who told you that Adolf Eichmann is still alive. And that you owe me a favor. Only the next time you look for Eichmann, it had better be in Argentina, because that’s where we’re both headed. Him for obvious reasons. And me because Eric Gruen—the real Eric Gruen—has framed me to look like him. Him and your friend Jacobs. And now I can’t afford to take the risk of staying here Germany anymore. Not now that this has happened. Understand?”
He bit his lip and nodded.
I finished dressing. I helped myself to Shlomo’s shoulder holster and buttoned the Colt into it. Then I searched the big man’s pockets, taking money, cigarettes, and a lighter. “Where are the car keys?” I asked.
Aaron put his hand into his pocket and tossed them to me, covered in blood. “It’s parked all the way down the drive,” he said.
“I’m taking your car and I’m taking your boss’s gun. So don’t try to follow me. I’m pretty handy with this thing. Next time I see you I’m liable to finish the job.” I lit two cigarettes, put one in Aaron’s mouth and one in my own, and started down the hill toward the house.
“Gunther,” he said. I turned. He was sitting up, but looking very pale. “For what it’s worth,” he said, “I believe you.”
“Thanks.” I stayed put for a moment. There was more blood coming from his leg than I had imagined there would be. If he stayed there he would bleed or freeze to death.
“Can you walk?”
“I don’t think so.”
I got him onto his feet and helped him back down to the house. There I found some sheets and started fixing a tourniquet around his leg. “I’m sorry about your two friends,” I said. “I didn’t want to kill them. But I had no choice. It was them or me, I’m afraid.”
“Zvi was okay,” he said. “But Shlomo was a bit of a head case. It was Shlomo who strangled those two women. He wanted to kill every Nazi that ever existed, I think.”
“Can’t say as I blame him, really,” I said, finishing off the bandage. “There are too many Nazis still walking around as free as air. Only I’m not one of them, see? Gruen and Henkell murdered my wife.”
“Who is Henkell?”
“Another Nazi doctor. But it would take too long to explain. I have to get after them. You see, Aaron, I’m going to do your job for you, if I can. I’m probably too late. I’ll probably end up getting killed myself. But I’ve got to try. Because that’s what you do when someone murders your wife in cold blood. Even though it was finished between us, she was still my wife and that has to count for something. Doesn’t it?” I wiped my face with the remainder of the sheet and went to the door, pausing only to check the phone. It was dead.
“The phone isn’t working,” I said. “I’ll try to call an ambulance for you when I get a chance. All right?”
“Thanks,” he said. “And good luck, Gunther. I hope you find them.”
I went outside, walked down the drive, and found the car. There was a warm-looking leather coat in the back. I put it on and sat in the driver’s seat. The car was a black Mercury sedan. The fuel tank was almost full. With its five-liter engine it was a good, fast car with a top speed of over a hundred kilometers an hour. Which was approximately the speed I was going to have to do if I was going to make Rhein-Main before midnight.
I drove back via the lab in Garmisch-Partenkirchen. Jacobs had cleared out the filing cabinets. But I wasn’t interested in the files. Instead I went back down to the cellar to collect a couple of the packages and paperwork that were—I hoped—going to gain my entry to the U.S. airbase. It wasn’t much of a plan. But I remembered something Timmermann, the Stars and Stripes driver who had taken me from Vienna to the monastery at Kempten, had told me about American security being almost nonexistent. That’s what I was relying on. That and an urgent package for Major Jacobs.
After telephoning to get an ambulance for Aaron, I drove west and north toward Frankfurt. It was a city I knew little about except that it was five hundred kilometers away and full of Amis. The Amis seemed to like Frankfurt even more than they liked Garmisch. And Frankfurt liked the Amis. Who could blame them? The Amis had brought jobs and money, and the city—once seen to be of little importance—now had the reputation of being one of the most affluent places in the Federal Republic. Rhein-Main Air Base, just a few miles south of Frankfurt, was America’s principal European air transport terminal. It was from Rhein-Main that the city of Berlin had been kept supplied during the famous “Operation Vittles” airlift from June 1948 to September 1949. Without the airlift, Berlin would have become just another city in the Russian Zone. Because of Rhein-Main’s strategic importance, all roads to and from Frankfurt had been very quickly repaired after the war, and were the best in Germany. And I made good progress as far as Stuttgart, when the fog came down, a real sea of mist that had me cursing at the top of my voice like a human foghorn, until I remembered that planes couldn’t fly in fog. Then I almost cheered. With fog like that there were was still half a chance that I could make it in time. But what was I going to do when I got there? I had the forty-five automatic of course, but my appetite for shooting people had diminished a little after what had happened at Mönch. Besides, shooting four, possibly five people in cold blood had only limited appeal. And even before I had reached the airbase just after midnight, I had already concluded I could not shoot the two women. For the others I would just have to hope they wanted to make a fight of it. I tried to banish all such considerations from my mind as I pulled the car up outside the main gatehouse to the airport. I switched off the engine, collected my paperwork, straightened my tie, and walked toward the security guard. I hoped that my English would be equal to the lie I had been rehearsing during the course of my six-hour journey.
The guard looked too warm and well fed to be alert. He wore a green gabardine coat, a beret, a muffler, and thick green woolen gloves. He was blond and blue-eyed and about six feet tall. The name plate on his coat read “Schwarz,” and for a moment, I thought he was in the wrong army. He looked more German than I did. But his spoken German was about as good as my spoken English.
“I have some urgent package for a Major Jonathan Jacobs,” I said. “He was scheduled to fly out to the States at midnight tonight. To Langley Air Force Base, in Virginia. The major is stationed in Garmisch-Partenkirchen and the packages arrived for him after he had already left to catch his plane.”
“You’ve driven all the way from Garmisch?” The guard looked surprised. And he was looking closely at my face. I remembered the hammer blow I had received from Shlomo. “In this fog?”
I nodded. “That’s right. I ran off the road a while ago. Which is how I got this bruise on my head. Lucky it wasn’t worse, really.”
“That’s one hell of a drive.”
“Sure,” I said modestly. “But take a look at this paperwork. And these packages. It’s all really urgent stuff. Medical supplies. And I promised the major that if they arrived after he had left, then at least I would make an attempt to make sure they caught up with him.” I smiled nervously. “Perhaps you could check if that flight has taken off yet?”
“Don’t need to. Nothing’s flying tonight,” said Schwarz. “Even the birds are grounded. On account of this damned fog. Been like this since late this afternoon. You’re in luck. You’ve got plenty of time to catch your major. Nothing’s going out of here until the morning.” But he carried on checking through his paperwork anyway. Then he said, “Looks like there are only four supernumeraries on that Langley flight.”
“Supernumeraries?”
“Nonmilitary passengers.”
“Dr. Braun and h
is wife, and Dr. Hoffmann and his wife,” I said. “Right?”
“That’s right,” said the guard. “Your Major Jacobs escorted them through here about five or six hours ago.”
“If they’re not flying tonight,” I asked, “where would they be now?”
Schwarz pointed across the airfield. “You can’t see it now because of the fog. But if you drive down there and bear left you’ll see a five-story airport building. With the words ‘Rhein-Main’ down one side. Behind is a small hotel attached to the main air force barracks. Which is probably where you’ll find your major right now. Happens a lot with that midnight flight to Langley. On account of the fog. Yes, sir, I expect they’re all tucked up for the night. As snug as a bug in a rug.”
“As snug as a bug in a rug.” I repeated the phrase with a kind of fascination for the dexterity of the English language. And then a grim fascination with an idea that suddenly came to me. “Yes, I see. Well, I’d better not disturb him, had I? He might be asleep. Perhaps you could direct me to the cargo bay for that flight. I’ll leave the package there.”
“Next to the barracks. Can’t miss it. All the lights are on.”
“Thanks,” I said, heading back to my car. “Oh, and by the way. I’m from Berlin originally. Thanks for what you did there. The airlift? As a matter of fact, that’s half the reason I bothered to drive all the way here tonight. Because of Berlin.”
Schwarz grinned back at me. “No problem,” he said.
I got back into the car and drove into the airbase, hoping that this small show of sentiment would forestall any suspicions the Ami might possibly entertain about me after I had gone. It was something I had learned as an intelligence officer during the war: The essence of deception is not the lie that’s told but the truths that are told to support it. I meant what I’d said about the airlift.
The Rhein-Main airport building was a white, Bauhaus-style edifice of the kind the Nazis hated, which was probably the only reason to like it. To me it was just big windows, blank walls, and a lot of egalitarian hot air. Looking at it you sort of imagined that Walter Gropius would have an apartment on the top floor with a lavatory wall expertly doodled on by Paul Klee. I parked my car and my cultural Philistinism and maneuvered one of the packages out of the backseat. Then I saw it. Jacobs’s green Buick Roadmaster, with the white-wall tires, parked just a few places away from where I’d left the Mercury. I was in the right place all right. I tucked the package under my arm and walked toward the building. Behind me, on the edge of the fog, stood several C-47 airplanes and a Lockheed Constellation. All of them looked bedded down for the night.
I went through a side door and found myself in a cargo area that was the size of a large factory. A roller conveyer ran the length of its sixty or seventy yards and there were multiple sets of folding doors that gave onto the runways. Several forklift trucks were parked where they had stopped, and dozens of luggage carts and cargo cages containing kitbags and suitcases, army backpacks, duffel bags and footlockers, parcels and packages, stood around like an airlift that was waiting to happen. There were consignments for almost everywhere in the United States—from Bolling AFB in Washington to Vandenberg in California. A radio was playing quietly somewhere. In the doorway of a small office an American serviceman with a Clark Gable mustache, a set of greasy overalls, and a hat like a tea cozy sat on a box marked “Fragile” smoking a cigarette. He looked tired and bored. “Can I help you?” he said.
“I have some late cargo for the Langley flight,” I said.
“There ain’t nobody around, ’cept me. Not this time of night. ’Sides, that flight ain’t going out till morning now. ’Cause of the fog. Hell, no wonder you guys didn’t win the war. Getting planes in and out of this place is a bitch.”
“I would like that explanation better if it didn’t let that useless fat bastard Hermann Göring off the hook,” I said, ingratiatingly. “Blaming it all on the weather, like that.”
“Good point,” said the man. He pointed at the package under my arm. “That it?”
“Yes.”
“You got any paperwork for it?”
I showed him the paperwork I had brought from Garmisch. And repeated the explanation I had made at the gatehouse. He looked at it for a while, scrawled a signature on it, and then jerked a thumb across his shoulder.
“About fifty yards down there is a cargo cage with ‘Langley’ chalked on the side. Just put your package in there. We’ll get to it in the morning.” Then he went back in the office and closed the door behind him.
It took me about five minutes to find the cargo bay for Langley, but longer to find their luggage. Two Vuitton steamer trunks were standing on their ends beside one of the cages, like two New York skyscrapers. Both were helpfully labeled “Dr. and Frau Braun” and “Dr. and Frau Hoffmann.” The padlocks were cheap ones that anyone with a half-decent penknife could have opened. I had a good penknife and I had both trunks opened in a couple of minutes. Some of the best thieves in the world are ex-cops. But that was the easy part.
Open, the trunks looked more like pieces of furniture than luggage. In one half was a clothes rail with a little silk curtain and matching hangers; and in the other a set of four working drawers. It was the guard at the gatehouse who had given me the idea of what to do. The idea that a bug could be snug in a rug. And not just a rug. But also the drawer in a nice, big cozy steamer trunk.
I opened the packing case and removed the insectary from its nest of straw. Then I removed the mosquito cages that themselves resembled small wooden steamer trunks. Inside, the insects buzzed and whined irritably, as if they were full of complaint at having been cooped up for so long. Even if the adults didn’t survive the journey to the States, I had no doubt, from what Henkell himself had told me, that the eggs and their larvae would. But there was no time to use the sucking tubes. I placed a cage inside one of the drawers and then stabbed at the fine net of the cage wall with my knife before quickly withdrawing my hand from the drawer and shutting it and the trunk tight again. I did the same with the second insectary and the second trunk. I wasn’t bitten. But they would be. And I wondered if being bitten by several dozen malaria-carrying mosquitoes would prove to be just the right incentive needed for Henkell and Gruen to make their vaccine work after all. For everyone’s sake I hoped so.
I returned to the car, and seeing the green Buick again, I thought it a great shame that Jacobs would escape. Out of habit I checked the door, and as before, it wasn’t locked. Which looked too tempting to ignore. So I fetched an insectary from the second package on the back seat of the Mercury and laid it on the floor behind the driver’s seat. Once again I stabbed through the cage wall, and then quickly slammed the car door shut.
Of course it wasn’t the revenge I had imagined. For one thing I wouldn’t be around to see it. But it was the kind of justice that Aristotle, Horace, Plutarch, and Quintilian would have recognized. And perhaps even celebrated, in some axiomatic way. Small things have a habit of overpowering the great. And that seemed good enough.
I drove back to the monastery, where Carlos Hausner had a bag of money waiting for him. And, eventually, a new passport and a ticket to South America.
EPILOGUE
Several months passed at the monastery in Kempten. Another fugitive from Allied justice joined us and, in the late spring of 1950, we four crept across the border to Austria and then into Italy. But somehow the fourth man disappeared and we never saw him again. Perhaps he changed his mind about going to Argentina. Or perhaps another Nakam death squad caught up with him.
We stayed in a safe house in Genoa, where we met yet another Catholic priest, Father Eduardo Dömöter. I think he was a Franciscan. It was Dömöter who gave us our Red Cross passports. Refugee passports he called them. Then we set about applying for immigration to Argentina. The president of Argentina, Juan Perón, who was an admirer of Hitler and a Nazi sympathizer, had set up an organization in Italy known as the DAIE, the Delegation for Argentine Immigration in Europe. The DAIE e
njoyed semidiplomatic status and had offices in Rome, where applications were processed, and Genoa, where prospective immigrants to Argentina underwent a medical examination. But all of this was little more than a formality. Not least because the DAIE was run by Monsignor Karlo Petranovic, a Croatian Roman Catholic priest who was himself a wanted war criminal, and who was protected by Bishop Alois Hudal, who was the spiritual director of the German Catholic community in Italy. Two other Roman Catholic priests assisted our escape. One was the Archbishop of Genoa himself, Giuseppe Siri; and the other was Monsignor Karl Bayer. But it was Father Dömöter we saw most of all at the safe house. A Hungarian, he had a church in the parish of Sant’Antonio, not very far from the DAIE offices.
