The Alex Kovacs Series Box Set

by Richard Wake

  But, first, the money. It being Sunday, the easiest thing to do was just let myself into the empty bank and clean out my account and my safe deposit box. Between the two of them, there was enough money to live on comfortably for an indefinite period of time -- and Swiss francs were, as my banker friends liked to say, as good as gold but a lot lighter. You could exchange them in any big city. And if I wanted to make an even larger withdrawal than was justified by my account balance, there was nothing to stop me. I mean, what was Groucho going to do about it?

  I let myself in and locked the door behind me. It was about 11 a.m., and I had not seen a person on the street outside. I decided against taking more than I was entitled to receive, but I did file a half-assed expense report for the trip to Paris and dropped it on Marta's desk.

  That report, the withdrawal slip that emptied my account, and a note were now in a neat pile. I used Marta's typewriter to bat it out:

  Marta,

  I have resigned as president of Bohemia Suisse. Until a new president is appointed, you are to continue as before, paying yourself and Anders. As my final act, I grant you both a 10 percent raise, effective immediately.

  Anything you cannot handle, and I don't imagine there will be anything, write to the address in London that is in the emergency file. In fact, write to London anyway and tell them that you have received this letter and are ready for any instructions.

  Alex

  I did not offer Marta any explanations, partly because I didn't think I owed her one but mostly because I didn't have one that I felt authorized to provide. So I pulled the letter from the typewriter's roller -- I always loved that sound -- and added it to the stack on Marta's desk. Then, after replacing the cover on her typewriter, I added one final flourish to my departure. Grabbing the diary, the sainted diary, I opened it and turned to today's page. Being a Sunday, it was blank. With my best penmanship, I wrote a single word and wrote it big enough to come close to filling the space. One word: Fin.

  It was when I was replacing the cap on my pen that I looked up and first noticed Marta standing there. The second thing I noticed was the pistol she was aiming at me. I was honestly dumbfounded.

  "Close your mouth and stand up," she said.

  I complied as instructed, mouth first and then legs.

  "Hands up, fingers laced behind your head," she said.

  Done and done.

  "Now let's walk into your office," Marta said. She looked down at the diary because she always looked down at the fucking diary. This time, she saw what I had written, the one word: Fin.

  "Oh, that's perfect," she said. "That will fit in just right. I wish I had thought of it, but you made sure I didn't have to."

  I walked ahead of her into the office and sat in my chair, as instructed. My hands remained on my head. Marta shut the office door behind her, the leather soundproofing panels now mocking me. They wouldn't eliminate the noise of a pistol, not entirely, but someone outside would likely just take the muffled blast for a car backfire a couple of blocks away.

  "That a Luger? A Nazi gun?" I said.

  "You thought you were so smart," she said. "Like anybody who didn't think about it for five minutes wouldn't see that you being president of a bank made no real sense."

  I wondered if there had been signs about Marta that I had missed, but there hadn't been -- though, to be honest, it wasn't as if somebody working undercover for the Nazis was likely to have a swastika tattooed on her forehead. Still, I had never seen her out of the office doing anything, no less anything subversive. And in the office, she was just an overly-efficient pain in the ass, a perfect bank employee. The truth was, the fact that she and I sparred about stuff made her less concerning. If she had been an undercover agent trying to get close to me, she would have been fawning instead.

  I had no idea what to do, so I opted for conversation in the hope that delay would be my ally.

  "So how long have you known?"

  "Almost from the start," she said. "You really are an amateur. I mean, that radio--"

  "What radio?"

  "Grow up, Herr Kovacs. Please."

  Marta had killed Gregory. There, mystery solved, although it seemed likely that I would take the solution to my grave.

  "But why? Why Gregory? If you knew so much about me, you must have known he was just the radio operator."

  "He was involved," she said. There was no emotion in her voice, a matter-of-factness that was chilling.

  "But that's bullish--"

  "Enough. I have no problem explaining the operation now, given your current predicament. Herr Fessler had to die first. It had to look like a robbery so that the sensibilities of the Swiss police would not be offended. But they would know, deep down. Ruchti would know. And now you will be found to have committed suicide at your desk, overcome by the guilt of involving Herr Fessler in your venture and seeing him killed. I was going to force you to write a note, but your final addition to the diary will take care of that."

  She actually smiled as she recounted the plan.

  "Between now and tomorrow, my task will be play-acting a believable response to finding your body -- a scream, but not too much of a scream. I'm not sure Anders will be tough to fool either way. And then, when the police arrive, I will point out the latest entry in the diary, which ideally will be splattered just a bit with blood and brains. The homicide detectives will happily accept the story they have been handed. Ruchti will be the only one who figures out the guilt-about-Fessler part. It'll be the first thing he thinks of. You're an amateur, and you just couldn't take it."

  Marta began to walk toward me, around to my side of the desk. The shot would have to be close enough to my temple that it appeared believable as a suicide. This would be my only chance.

  As she approached, the telephone on my desk rang. It was likely Ruchti. I had left him a note, asking him to call me at the office around noon on Sunday, mostly because I thought he might have some advice about the best routes out of the country.

  "It's Ruchti, I'm pretty sure," I said.

  The phone rang. Twice. Three times.

  "We're meeting for coffee. If I don't answer, he'll just come over. His office isn't a five-minute walk."

  Four times. Five times.

  "Okay, answer. Just get rid of him."

  Six times. Seven. In one motion, I reached for the telephone receiver, picked it up, and clubbed Marta's arm with it. She screamed, and the pistol fell out of her hand, skittering along the desktop and then onto the carpet. I dove for it and reached it easily before Marta, her path blocked by the desk. At which point, I marched her out of my office and to her desk. I made her sit, put the diary beside her, and considered. I could just retype the letter, adding a passage about how it was never going to work between us. It wouldn't take five minutes. Then it would be her blood and her brains on the diary. It wouldn't be perfect -- what was she doing in the bank on a Sunday? -- but it would be good enough. Anders would find her body on Monday morning, and the case would be closed by sundown. They'd look for me for an interview, but I would be long gone. They would go to the emergency file and contact London, but at that point, maybe Ruchti would get involved and just shut it down.

  All of this went through my head in about 10 seconds. Finally, my thought process was interrupted by Marta.

  "You don't have the guts," she said.

  At which point, I shot her in the temple.

  For Gregory.

  I couldn't believe how calm I was. Because there was splatter on the typewriter cover, I opted just to add a hand-written postscript to my note: "It never would have worked between us." Then I gathered the small piles of big bills that I had taken from the vault and stuffed them into a briefcase. I was looking back at Marta's desk -- the gun now in her right hand, her head on the blotter with plenty to blot -- surveying the grisly tableau. I had not disturbed anything, I was pretty sure. It was going to work.

  It was as I turned to the door that I saw Anders facing me, with a pistol drawn. Two emp
loyees, two guns. At that moment, the boss of the year award seemed out of the question.

  54

  The oddest things can cross your mind sometimes. There I was, facing another pistol, and all I could seem to notice was that Anders was wearing a flat cap and a light gray jacket with a zipper. I was pretty sure I had never seen him without the blue blazer.

  That he and Marta had been working together for the Nazis -- I couldn't believe it. Well, I could believe it, especially Anders -- but how had Groucho allowed his precious Bohemia Suisse to be infiltrated by Nazi spies, and how had he allowed me to be exposed? The incompetence at the head of this operation would be a story for the history books, provided that somebody other than Goebbels had a chance one day to write the history books.

  It was so strange, being more consumed by my disdain for Groucho and his bosses and their bosses than by the pistol aimed at me. It was in the midst of that pointless reverie when Anders asked me, "Are you okay?"

  I wasn't sure I had heard him correctly.

  "Uh, yeah."

  At which point, he lowered the pistol and placed it into his jacket pocket. So I had heard him correctly.

  "Wait, what?"

  Anders laughed -- another first. Then he told me his story. As it turned out, he had suspected that Marta was working for the Nazis -- "months ago," he said -- and began trying to keep an eye on her.

  "But I couldn't do it 24 hours a day," he said. "And so I was late the night your friend was killed. I did get there after I heard the police radio, but it was too late. I have to believe she killed him."

  I told Anders that Marta had willingly confessed when she thought she had me trapped and dead. I explained what happened after that. He took it all in, then walked over to Marta's desk and did a quick survey of the scene.

  "It'll play," he said.

  "What do you mean?"

  "As long as you didn't track any blood or body parts around the carpet, I think the police will buy this. And I don't think you did."

  He stopped for a second, folded his arms.

  "Or we could go another way," he said. "You write up a new withdrawal slip for you, and another one for Marta -- she has a small account. Had. You leave them on my desk with a note that explains nothing, only that you were resigning as the president of the bank, and that Marta was resigning, and that I should contact London and all that. People will figure you ran away together, lovers fleeing the war."

  "Or some such shit."

  "Too hokey?"

  "I don't know," I said. "It does take the police out of the equation."

  "That's what I was thinking. She has no family, at least not here. I don't know if anybody would even notice she was gone."

  "But what about her clothes? And her passport."

  Anders slipped on a pair of gloves and walked back over to Marta's desk. Her purse was on the floor at the side of the desk. He made sure he wasn't stepping in any blood splatter, and then reached over, and opened it, and began to rifle through.

  "Voila," he said, producing the passport with a flourish.

  "But no clothes from her flat? No suitcase."

  "It's not perfect, but it's good enough," Anders said. "Lovers in wartime. It'll play."

  "And the body?"

  "I can take care of that," he said. "And besides -- once I get the carpet cleaned up, it won't even matter. Remember, nobody's going to think she's dead. Nobody's going to be looking for a body. They figure the two of you for a villa outside Lisbon."

  "But what about the age difference?"

  "How old are you?" he said.

  "40."

  He paged through the passport. "She's only 44."

  "That's a hard goddamn 44."

  He laughed. The bullet and the blood had made it even harder. "I'll say it again -- lovers in wartime. Fuck it."

  We talked a little about the logistics of dead body removal. He said he could get her out the back door, rolled up in a rug or something. I told him I didn't know there was a back door. He looked at me as if I were an idiot.

  "Are you a Swiss spy?" I said.

  "No."

  "An anything spy?"

  "No."

  "Then why are you doing this, running these risks?"

  "This might sound corny, but it's because I am a proud Swiss," he said. "My country is so worried about not offending anyone and staying neutral. All we seem to care about is doing what's best for business. We do that, and we convince ourselves that we're just doing it to protect our people, as a manner of self-preservation. But in doing it, in protecting ourselves, we ignore the assault on decency, and all that is evil that the Nazis represent. I just can't accept that trade-off. So this is what I can do."

  At that point, I really felt like a shithead for all of the cracks I had made about the Swiss army when I first met him. I'm not sure I had been in the presence of true patriotism in all of my time in Switzerland, but now I was.

  "Look, you need to go," he said. I rewrote the note again, this time by hand. I checked Marta's account balance from the master record book and withdrew what was in there. Cash in hand, I offered it to Anders -- "for cleaning expenses, if nothing else," I said. He refused, insisting that everything he needed was in the storage closet. For me to push any further would have been insulting, so I just added the stack to what was already in the briefcase.

  For more than a year, I hadn't been able to stand being in Anders' presence. Part of me wanted to know if he really disliked me. He sensed the question without me having to ask it.

  "I never hated you," he said. "After I figured out what you were doing, I actually admired you. But before that, I just thought you were a dilettante. I mean, come on? Being president of this place is like being the madam at a whorehouse. You just polish the brass and take your cut of everything that walks through the door, and--"

  He stopped himself, mid-thought.

  "Herr Kovacs -- I will call you Alex, this one time -- you need to go," Anders said. "And I mean, really go. Do you have any idea where?"

  I didn't have an answer.

  55

  My flat was cold and dark. The light in the entrance hall had burned out. My first thought was to knock on the door of the superintendent in the basement and get a replacement bulb. Then I thought, no. I was leaving in hours, probably.

  I almost didn't see the envelope that had been shoved under the door. It lay on the green checkerboard tile, with "Alex" written in a precise, tight printing style. It was from Manon.

  I tore it open, and moved into the living room, near a window, and read:

  My dearest Alex,

  I don't know how to say this other than just to say it: I am leaving Zurich. By the time you read this, I will be gone. I am going home to Lyon.

  There are a dozen reasons, but you are not one of them. You are the only reason that I almost decided to stay. I don't know if you believe me, but I have loved you almost from the very beginning. If I have not always shown it, that is because of the stress I have been under, and because of the profession we have chosen, and because I sometimes am not as nice as I need to be. But I have loved you, and I do love you. It is important to me that you know that.

  At the same time, I must go. I cannot work for the fools in French intelligence anymore. I cannot risk my life anymore for idiots who cannot make a decision, who are too afraid to take any action, even when faced with a disaster created by that very indecision. When I told them, they replied that I could not resign, that it would be like desertion in the army. Well, the hell with that. My government deserted me a long time before I deserted my government. Hell, for all I know, my government won't even exist in another week.

  In Lyon, I can be with my family again, and that seems more important now than ever. I also have been in communication with some old contacts there, and there already is talk of forming resistance cells against the Germans. If we are in a position where we are forced to fight for our city, house by house, I will. If our government capitulates and there is a German occu
pation instead, I will be there for sabotage, for resistance propaganda, for whatever. If I cannot again work for the French government, or its successor, or whatever old men are put in charge, I can still work for France.

  My advice to you, my dear Alex, is to go to America. Go now. You have lost two countries already, taken too many risks, and now lost a great friend. You deserve to get away from this, from Hitler, from all of it. You have a good heart, Alex. It deserves a rest.

  Just know that what we had was real. It is a love I will always cherish. The only thing wrong was our timing.

  With all my love,

  Manon

  I cried as I read it a second time. Then I just collapsed onto the couch, barely moving, the letter stuck in my left hand.

  She was right. The reason she was leaving was the reason I needed to leave. Like her, I could not work for these people anymore, leaders incapable of listening and acting. And she was right -- I was exhausted already, and the real fight was just beginning. Besides, this whole business had changed me. I had just killed a person and didn't even feel the least bit bad about it. That stunned me, in a way. It was self-defense, but not entirely. I might have thought of a different way out if I hadn't reacted so emotionally to her taunt. You don't have the guts. Well, fuck her. That was my reaction then and, for the most part, it was still my reaction hours later. That might have worried me as much as anything.

  And on top of all that, there was Werner Vogl, my favorite Gestapo captain. Regardless of what Peter Ruchti said, I wasn't sure that I was out of Vogl's reach in Zurich. He might be in Warsaw now, but as the German army moved west and stayed west -- and that indeed appeared to be happening -- you had to believe that Vogl could be following. The idea of having Vogl occupy a permanent space in my consciousness was both tiring and terrifying.

  Manon was right, too, that America made the most sense. Get the train and just keep going south -- to Geneva, to Marseille, to Barcelona and Madrid and Lisbon. Then to one of those Pan Am Clipper ships and to New York. To safety and calm. To a new life. To peace.