The Tenth Witness

by Leonard Rosen

  “Any message?”

  “No, he said to call, no matter how late. This Liesel of yours. She’s really that Kraus?”

  SHE WAS talking to Schmidt across the ballroom, touching his arm for punctuation as she told what must have been a very good story because Schmidt slapped his leg at one point, laughing hard enough for me to hear him over the music. Liesel’s affection for her godfather startled me. Here I was drawn to her. She adored him. Must I, in that case, take this man on as a friend? I turned my attention elsewhere when they stepped onto the dance floor.

  One could learn a great deal about Otto Kraus from the ballroom at Löwenherz. The coffered ceilings, the parade of gilt-framed mirrors suggesting Versailles, the crystal chandeliers, and the velvet-trimmed chairs all hinted at money that didn’t know what to do with itself.

  Two men to my right were puffing on Cuban cigars, observing the scene. One of them, short and rotund, looked like Kaiser Wilhelm with his waxed moustache. He was shaking his head. “Anselm flew in the string section from the Vienna Philharmonic, believe it or not. Landed them on the goddamned dunes in a helicopter.”

  The waltz ended, and Liesel broke away from Schmidt and crossed the room in my direction. She had made a definite change from her hiking clothes. Her shape-fitting black dress was cut low enough to fuel my imagination. She wore a long strand of pearls. Her hair beneath the chandeliers flashed reds and chestnut. It also tumbled to her bare, well-formed shoulders, and I found myself staring again.

  “You clean up nicely,” she said.

  I kissed her right cheek, then her left.

  “This is when you earn your rent money, Henri. That’s Mr. Bayer talking to my brother. His real name is Hans Kellerman. Do you see, with Anselm—the tall one?”

  As we edged around the dance floor, every few paces some new gray-haired eminence stopped to congratulate her. “Well done, dear! We’re so proud of you!” Compliment followed compliment until we made our way to Anselm Kraus and Herr Kellerman.

  “Why all the congratulations?” I asked.

  “Never mind that. Here, meet my brother.”

  Anselm was the star around which the people of this room turned. I had seen it before, ‘the great man effect’: guests standing near to feel the warmth of the maestro or, better still, to let something clever slip and be noticed. Kellerman had one meaty hand at Anselm’s shoulder, explaining something that required flourishes with the other hand. He stood a head taller than Kraus, who was tall—my height—and in place of a bow tie wore an onyx brooch as black as his hair. Kellerman possessed a quiescent, Cro-Magnon intensity that reminded me of Anthony Quinn, the actor: handsome but, on a bad day, potentially volcanic. He caught sight of Liesel’s hand in mine, and his color changed.

  Liesel didn’t hesitate to interrupt.

  I extended a hand to Kraus, who hesitated as if we’d been introduced via phone across a transatlantic cable. I said hello. He paused before responding as if he risked tripping over my words. I didn’t know what Liesel had said, but the man was clearly appraising me.

  “My sister says you make things, Herr Poincaré.”

  It was not an unreasonable definition of engineering. “Yes, I do.”

  “My father believed you can trust people who make things. He didn’t care if it was a chamber pot or an airplane. Industry is the proper measure of a man, he thought, preferably German industry.” Anselm was looking at his sister, not me, as he said this. “We’ll keep an open mind for the moment.”

  Was he marking territory? Laying out a grand view of the world? I said nothing.

  “Liesel also says that you designed and built the dive platform out at the Lutine.”

  “We’re hoping it’s the Lutine. But yes, my partner and I built it.”

  “And that you used Kraus steel to anchor that platform over the wreck site.”

  His hesitation had meant nothing, after all. I had made a good impression before meeting Anselm Kraus because I was clever enough to have used his steel on my platform. I invited him for a visit and offered to show him around. Liesel stood beside me, her arm looped through mine.

  Kellerman took a half step back.

  “I’ll take you up on that,” said Kraus. “My sister has told you about my love affair with that ship. I can recite all kinds of facts and figures: where she was built, her tonnage, the number and types of cannons, her captains, her capture by the British at Toulon, all the salvage attempts since 1800. But I want you to tell me everything you know—tomorrow morning, when we motor out to the platform.”

  Liesel shrugged. “I forgot that I promised Friedrich a trip to Harlingen on the early ferry. I’m afraid you’ll have to put up with my brother.”

  Kraus looked me up and down. “That’s a damn fine-looking tuxedo!”

  The three of us laughed. Kellerman, missing the joke, excused himself.

  seven

  At dinner, Liesel was obliged to sit beside her brother. Theresa was in charge of the seating and shoehorned me between two more of Liesel’s uncles by long association, Eckehart Nagel and Franz Hofmann.

  Nagel, a physician from Buenos Aires, sat to my right. He was a lean, aristocratic man, perfectly bald with a well-shaped head and fluent enough in French to give me a rest from my substandard German.

  “Liesel told me all about you this afternoon,” he said. His voice held an unmistakable note of approval, as if it were his right and privilege to pass judgment. He asked about the engineering business, and explained how he returned to Germany on occasion to consult with a few patients who insisted on seeing him.

  “But after the war . . . pfff.” He waved a hand. “Germany was done. I wanted a new start. So we moved. The best thing I ever did!”

  Schoolchildren know that Germans didn’t resettle in Buenos Aires in 1946 for a change of climate. But I let it go and made the acquaintance of Franz Hofmann, a gray and gaunt man with food stains on his jacket and patches of white stubble he’d missed shaving. I’d seen him shuffle through a waltz with Anselm’s wife. Off the dance floor, he used a cane, and I was shocked at the strength of his grip as we introduced ourselves. He could have pulled me into a grave.

  Uncle Franz, I later learned, had suffered a stroke, and Anselm’s family had provided a room at their home in Munich and here on Terschelling. He had no one else, apparently, and the Krauses were nothing if not loyal. Nagel whispered in my ear, “He’s a shadow of his former self. He was a magnificent man.”

  This was a German-speaking crowd, men and women of distinct generations: snowy-haired contemporaries of Otto in their sixties and seventies, and gray-flecked friends of Anselm in their early to mid-forties. It wasn’t a generous thought, but I wondered how the elders would have reacted had I lobbed a Heil Hitler into the room. They had voted for Hitler, after all; nearly everyone did who wanted to avoid a visit from their local Storm Troopers.

  I don’t remember the dinner, save for the fact that I was pleased not to be eating rabbit. Over coffee, Anselm stood at one end of a very long table and boasted about his sister and how she had founded the Kraus Family Charities.

  “It’s the Kraus one-two punch,” he said. “Take Uganda, for example. When I learned of their iron ore deposits, I struck a deal with President Amin to dig two mines. Liesel met with the ministries of health and education to build schools and hospitals. We have all won in Uganda—the president, Kraus Steel, and the children! So tonight, just for a moment, and without letting it go to our heads, let’s celebrate and feel good about ourselves. Cheers to you all!”

  On cue, a waiter rolled out Anselm’s birthday cake.

  LATER, AFTER fending off more congratulations with polite thank you’s, Liesel walked me onto the terrace. We were holding hands when I felt the first, painful cramping in my calf—the weather changing, just as Alec promised.

  I glanced at my watch. The dive would begin in eight hours. It would be raining, not that the divers cared. The wind and wave action would be another matter if sand kicked up over the wreck
and cut visibility.

  “Let’s walk,” she said.

  She was exhausted from the morning’s hike and all the attention that evening. But given all the talk of Uganda, I had to learn if she’d met Idi Amin. In those days, you couldn’t not know the man’s reputation.

  “Yes, we’ve met. Several times.”

  “And?”

  “He’s charming for a butcher. But what am I going to do? There’s a hundred thousand million tons of high-grade iron ore in the east and southwest of Uganda—and a countryside filled with illiterate children and people dying of dengue fever. Anselm’s in Uganda, like it or not; and I try to do some good wherever he does business. That’s the model, and sometimes I have to hold my nose.”

  She felt me wincing.

  “Oh, please. Would you let children die because Amin’s a pig? It’s better to accommodate the pig and save the farm.”

  We walked along a stone balustrade. The dune grasses were bending before a rising breeze. The moon danced on the water, and I considered every kind of romantic entanglement.

  “I’m glad you almost drowned,” she said. She stopped and straightened my bow tie. “No, that came out wrong. I’m glad that what happened, happened. I’m glad you’re here.”

  “The experiment . . . it’s going well so far?”

  She smiled. “Yes, Herr Poincaré.”

  “And Mr. Bayer . . . he’ll survive? He didn’t look pleased.”

  “I saw him later with one of the servers, an island girl. I suppose he’ll have a guest to his room tonight, after all.”

  There are no words to describe the pulse that shot through me as we kissed. That afternoon, when she led our group off the flats and turned to congratulate us, I thought, Here is a woman who could make someone very happy. Earlier that evening, as she crossed the ballroom heading in my direction, I realized that that someone could be me. When our lips touched, I found myself in full adolescent free fall. It was preposterous. I knew it and had no interest in stopping it.

  I told her I was leaving for Hong Kong.

  “When will I see you next? We’re returning to Munich in a few days.”

  I had no pressing business in Munich, but Munich it would be.

  eight

  My father had called to tell me that Isaac Kahane, my own uncle by long association, had died. He was old and failing; we had all expected it, but just the same the news came as a shock.

  On the balcony, I thought of him as clouds slowly blotted the moon. Here was Isaac in his bow tie on a favorite bench at the park, reading Le Monde; here, a five-year-old running, watching the man grow bright with a smile. He’d clear a spot and say, “Henri, come sit and tell me all about it.” The “it” didn’t matter. Life and our nearness mattered. He took interest in all that I said. I was precious to him and knew it in the way a child knows these things.

  He had lost six sons in the war. And his wife. Freda had lost two children and her husband. They found each other in the summer of 1945 and decided the world was too dangerous and hateful a place to risk raising and loving children again. What a surprise, then, that the child who lived in the apartment upstairs on rue Jeanne d’Arc should melt their blighted hearts.

  I was the beneficiary of their loss.

  It took little time to discover that Isaac’s great weakness was butterscotch. I’d save my allowance and go to the confectioner’s as often as I could. Isaac, in turn, would accept my candy as long as I ate some with him; then he’d dip into his pockets for some treasure that always came with a story. Here was the pen the Tsar used to proclaim freedom for the serfs. Here, a cat’s-eye marble so perfect it once started a war. I believed these stories, and once I was old enough to know they were stories, I believed in them, in their power to summon Isaac and Freda when I wanted them near.

  LEGS SET wide, one hand steady at the helm and the other resting on twin throttles, Anselm Kraus gunned his sleek runabout, Blast Furnace, hard through the waves. Strong winds out of the northwest had collided with a flood tide running from the southeast, creating a vicious chop.

  I shivered behind the windscreen, my stomach in knots.

  “You should have told me about the seasickness!” he yelled over the engines. “I’ve got medicine back at Löwenherz.”

  At that early hour, all I could see of him was his chest and face, lit from below by the dim, orange lights of the instrument panel. Apart from that, the world was black. And, in my sea-sickened state, spinning.

  “The Lutine,” he called. “Why salvage her now?”

  Even contemplating an answer turned my stomach. He directed me to a compartment beneath my seat, where I found a bottle of soda water. Blast Furnace slammed through some waves and skimmed the tops of others, bucking and heaving. I leaned overboard and retched, trying to make a joke of the fact that Alec’s and my first substantial job should be at sea. I knew all about my weak stomach; still, I hadn’t hesitated when writing the Lloyd’s proposal.

  “Cheer up, Henri! No one ever died of seasickness. I’ll give us some throttle to take some motion out of the boat. Come on, take your mind off it. Talk. Why does Lloyd’s think it can salvage the Lutine now, after all the other salvage attempts? And what the hell does my sister see in a Frenchman?”

  I looked at him and threw up.

  “Oh—I see,” he said, listening to me retch. “It’s your charm.”

  In between bouts of hanging my head over the side of the boat, I explained the technologies that had given Lloyd’s the confidence to undertake the project: side scan sonar, vacuum hoses that pumped sand through a screen that would catch the smallest artifacts, improvements in the design of scuba gear and underwater lights.

  “It’s all about the technology,” I managed. “If this salvage doesn’t work, Lloyd’s will wait another hundred years for better technology.”

  Behind Kraus, a dull line at the horizon cracked open like the eye of a drunk after a bad night. Soon I’d be able to attach a body to Anselm’s face, which meant that soon I, too, would be visible.

  He drove the boat hard and, after a few minutes, the sky brightened and he got a good look at me. “Good God, you’ve puked all over my new foul weather gear. Hose it off or buy me another set!”

  I saluted him and drank my soda water, looking for Isaac’s ghost in the darkness.

  “My sister doesn’t make friends easily,” said Kraus. “But here you are, and I got all of two hours of sleep because she found some man who happens to be connected to the Lutine. It’s my Achilles’ heel, you know. Actually both are: my sister and that ship. I’m forty-two, and my mind’s been stuck on the wreck since I was six. Once, my father had to send a boat to rescue me. I took an underpowered skiff out here because I wanted to be near her. I must have thought the Lutine would rise from the deep if I called her name. It means tormentress, you know. Lutine. Fitting as hell.”

  We hit a wave.

  “Did you drown?”

  “Damn near! By the time they found me, I was half swamped in a sea snottier than this one. Just so you know, I love my sister but you’re not the reason I’m out in this slop at five in the morning. I need to be near that wreck. You’re not offended, I hope. I give you a ride, you get me closer. It’s how business gets done.”

  Despite the seasickness, I enjoyed his company. Anselm’s passion for the Lutine explained a great deal about Friedrich’s passion for his Stuka. What a fine thing it was, I thought, for a son to resemble his father this way.

  We hit another wave that sent us sailing through the air. Anselm whooped when we landed with a satisfying thwack. “Really,” he said. “This little boat could take on a hurricane. And you truly look like hell.”

  I retched again.

  “You know, I tried checking you out, but I couldn’t find a damn thing on P&C Engineering or Consulting or whatever you call yourselves. Do you people even exist?”

  “I’m here,” I said. “We’re small. But yes, we exist.”

  “How small?”

  “Two
of us for the moment.”

  “My father started small. You have to begin somewhere. What’s your next job?”

  “The canal authority in Bruges. Repairs. After that, nothing just yet. I’m fishing, you might say, and in a few days I leave for Hong Kong to bid on a project. We’ve made the final cut. The job could launch us.”

  The prospect of steady work lingered in the salt air for a time, as Anselm worked the throttle and studied a confused sea. The wheel on Blast Furnace had a knob at six o’clock, which he grabbed and spun hard as a wave the size of a two-story building rose off our stern and threatened to swamp us. Anselm spun the wheel hard and surfed down its face, whooping again.

  “How old are you?” he called.

  “Twenty-eight. And I honestly don’t see how I can make it another year. I feel awful.”

  “Right on schedule, Henri. I like it that you’re going fishing in the East. I’ve got a ship-breaking yard in Hong Kong. Viktor Schmidt is going out there in a few days to check on some things. If your visits overlap, he should show you around. Manufacturing’s moving east, you know. I can hire twelve men in Hong Kong for the price of one in Germany, and China’s going to be even cheaper. Deng Xiaoping has positioned the country to take on textiles and manufacturing. I’ve met him, you know.”

  I stared.

  “So Liesel’s dating a younger man!”

  “We’ve known each other for forty-eight hours, Anselm. Let’s see if she takes my call when I return from Hong Kong.”

  “She’ll take your call.”

  “And you know this because?”

  “Because I saw the way she looks at you. You’re French, but I’ll make an exception for that because you build things.”

  The bow exploded through a wave that sprayed Kraus full on. He roared. “All of Asia is opening,” he said, clearing the brine from his eyes. “Last week I signed an agreement with the new regime in Cambodia to build another ship-breaking yard. That’s an even sharper deal for labor. Pol Pot is having currency problems just now. We’ll set up, then Liesel will follow in a few months. Hospital clinics, schools. You know the drill.”