by Ira Levin
“Have you spoken to the authorities?”
“It was you, wasn’t it, who pointed out that they’re not so interested in Nazi-hunting these days? I spoke, but they didn’t listen. Can you blame them, really, when all I could say was, ‘Maybe men will be killed, I don’t know why’?”
“Then we must find out why, and the way to do it is to look into some of these cases. We have to investigate the circumstances of the deaths, and more important, the men’s characters and backgrounds.”
“Thank you,” Liebermann said. “I figured that out for myself, back when I was an ‘I’ not a ‘we.’”
“Pforzheim is less than an hour’s drive from here, Herr Liebermann. And I’m a law student, the third highest in my class, quite capable of making observations and asking pertinent questions.”
“I know about the pertinent questions, but this really isn’t your business, young fellow.”
“Oh? And why is that? Have you somehow secured the exclusive right to oppose Nazism? In my country?”
“Herr von Palmen—”
“You presented the problem in public; you should have informed us it was your exclusive property.”
“Listen to me.” Liebermann shook his head: what a German! “Herr von Palmen,” he said, “the person who presented the problem to me was a young man like you. More pleasant and respectful, but otherwise not so different. And he’s almost certainly been murdered. That’s why it isn’t your business; because it’s a business for professionals, not amateurs. And also because you might muddy things up so that when I get to Pforzheim the job will be harder.”
“I won’t muddy things up and I’ll try to avoid getting murdered. Do you want me to call and tell you what I find out or shall I keep the information to myself?”
Liebermann glared, trying to think of a way to stop him; but of course there wasn’t any. “Do you at least know what information to look for?” he asked.
“Certainly I do. Who Müller left his money to, who he was related to, what his political and military activities were—”
“Where he was born—”
“I know. All the points that were suggested that evening.”
“And whether he could have had any contact with Mengele, either during the war or immediately after. Where did he serve? Was he ever in Günzburg?”
“Günzburg?”
“Where Mengele lived. And try not to act like a prosecutor; it’s easier to catch flies with honey than vinegar.”
“I can be charming when I want to, Herr Liebermann.”
“I can’t wait for a demonstration. Give me your address, please; I’ll send you pictures of three of the men who are supposed to be doing the killings. They’re old pictures from thirty years ago and at least one of the men has had plastic surgery, but they might come in handy anyway, in case anyone saw strangers around. I’ll also send you a letter saying you’re working on my behalf. Or would you rather send me one saying I’m working on yours?”
“Herr Liebermann, I have the utmost admiration and respect for you. Believe me, I’m truly proud to be able to be of some help to you.”
“All right, all right.”
“Wasn’t that charming? You see?”
Liebermann took von Palmen’s address and phone number, gave him a few more pointers, and hung up.
A “we.” But maybe the boy would manage; he was bright enough surely.
He finished making the second list, studied it a few minutes, and then opened the desk’s left-hand bottom drawer and got out the folder of photos he had pulled from the files. He took out one each of Hessen, Kleist, and Traunsteiner—young men in SS uniforms, smiling or stern in coarse-grained enlarged snapshots; next to useless but the best there were. “Esther!” he called, putting them on the desk. Hessen smiled up at him, dark-haired and wolfish, hugging his beaming parents. Liebermann turned the photo over, and below the mimeographed history taped to its back, wrote: Hair silvery now. Has had plastic surgery.
“Esther?”
He picked up the photos, got up from the chair, and went to the door.
Esther sat sleeping at her desk, her head on her folded arms. A bowl of still water sat by her elbow.
He tiptoed over, put the photos on the desk’s corner, and tiptoed on through the living room and into the bedroom.
“So where are you going?” Esther called.
Surprised that she was up and should ask, he called back, “To the bathroom.”
“I mean where are you going. To look.”
“Oh,” he said. “To a place near Essen—Gladbeck. And to Solingen. It’s all right with you?”
Farnbach paused outside the hotel. Admiring the luminous blue-violet twilight, which the clerk had assured him would stay as it was for hours, he pulled his gloves on, turned up his fur collar, and snugged his cap down more warmly over his ears and the back of his head. Storlien wasn’t as cold as he had feared, but it was cold enough. Thank God this was his northernmost assignment; Brazil had made an orchid of him. “Sir?” His shoulder was tapped. He turned, and a black-hatted man taller than he offered an identity card on his palm. “Detective Inspector Löfquist. May I have a word with you, please?”
Farnbach took the card in its leather-and-plastic holder. He pretended to have more difficulty reading it in the twilight than he in fact had, so as to give himself at least that moment to think. He handed the card back to Detective Inspector Lars Lennart Löfquist, and putting a pleasant smile (he hoped) in front of the alarm and confusion inside him, said, “Yes, of course, Inspector. I’ve only been here since noon; I’m sure I haven’t broken any laws yet.”
Smiling too, Löfquist said, “I’m sure you haven’t.” He put the card-holder away inside his black leather coat. “We can walk while we talk, if you’d like.”
“Fine,” Farnbach said. “I’m going to take a look at the waterfall. That seems to be all one can do around here.”
“Yes, at this time of year.” They started across the hotel’s cobbled forecourt. “Things are a little livelier in June and July,” Löfquist said. “We have sun all night then, and quite a few tourists. By the end of August, though, even the center of town is dead after seven or eight, and out here it’s practically a graveyard. You’re German, aren’t you?”
“Yes,” Farnbach said. “My name is Busch. Wilhelm Busch. I’m a salesman. There’s nothing wrong, is there, Inspector?”
“No, not at all.” They passed through an arched gateway. “You can relax,” Löfquist said. “This is entirely unofficial.”
They turned toward the right, and walked side by side along the shoulder of the crushed-stone road. Farnbach smiled and said, “Even an innocent man feels guilty when he’s tapped on the shoulder by a detective inspector.”
“I guess that’s so,” Löfquist said. “I’m sorry if I worried you. No, I just like to keep an eye out for foreigners. Germans in particular. I find them…enlightening to talk with. What do you sell, Herr Busch?”
“Mining equipment.”
“Oh?”
“I’m the Swedish representative of Orenstein and Koppel, of Lübeck.”
“I can’t say I’ve heard of them.”
“They’re fairly big in the field,” Farnbach said. “I’ve been with them fourteen years.” He looked at the detective walking along at his left. The man’s upturned nose and pointy chin reminded him of a captain he had served under in the SS, one who had begun interrogations with exactly this disarming bullshit of “nothing to worry about, it’s entirely unofficial.” Later had come the accusations, the demands, the torture.
“And is that where you come from?” Löfquist asked. “Lübeck?”
“No, I’m from Dortmund originally, and I live now in Reinfeld, which is near Lübeck. When I’m not in Sweden, that is. I have an apartment in Stockholm.” How much, Farnbach wondered, did the son of a bitch know, and how in God’s name had he found it out? Had the whole operation been blown? Were Hessen and Kleist and the others facing the same situation r
ight now, or was this his own private failure?
“Turn in here,” Löfquist said, pointing toward a footpath into the woods at their right. “It leads to a better vantage point.”
They entered the narrow path and followed its near-night darkness uphill. Farnbach unbuttoned the breast of his coat, concerned about getting his gun out quickly if worse came to worst.
“I’ve spent some time in Germany myself,” Löfquist said. “Took ship from Lübeck once, as a matter of fact.”
He had switched to German, and fairly good German. Farnbach, disconcerted, wondered whether there might really be nothing to worry about; was it possible that Lars Lennart Löfquist wanted only a chance to use his German? It seemed too much to hope for. In German too, he said, “Your German’s very good. Is that why you like speaking with us, to get a chance to use it?”
“I don’t speak to all Germans,” Löfquist said, his voice charged with suppressed merriment. “Only former corporals who’ve put on weight and call themselves ‘Busch’ instead of Farnstein!”
Farnbach stopped and stared at him.
Smiling, Löfquist took his hat off; looked up and moved aside into better light; and laughing now, faced Farnbach and gave himself the substitute mustache of an extended finger.
Farnbach was astonished. “Oh my God!” he gasped. “I thought of you just a second ago! I guess I—My God! Captain Hartung!”
The two shook hands enthusiastically, and the captain, laughing, embraced Farnbach and clapped him on the back; then jammed his hat back on and grasped Farnbach’s shoulders with both hands and grinned at him. “What joy to see one of the old faces again!” he exclaimed. “I’m liable to cry, God damn it!”
“But…how can this be?” Farnbach asked, thoroughly confused now. “I’m…astounded!”
The captain laughed. “You can be Busch,” he said; “why can’t I be Löfquist? My God, I’ve got an accent! Listen to me; I’m really a fucking Swede now!”
“And you are a detective?”
“That I am.”
“Christ, you threw a scare into me, sir.”
The captain nodded regretfully, patting Farnbach’s shoulder. “Yes, we still worry that the ax might fall, eh, Farnstein? Even after all these years. That’s why I keep an eye out for foreigners. I still dream once in a while that I’m hauled up on trial!”
“I can’t believe it’s you!” Farnbach said, not yet composed. “I don’t think I’ve ever been so surprised!”
They walked on up the path.
“I never forget a face, I never forget a name.” The captain laid an arm over Farnbach’s shoulders. “I spotted you standing by your car, at the gas station on Krondikesvägen. ‘That’s Corporal Farnstein in that elegant coat,’ I said; ‘I’ll bet a hundred kronor.’”
“It’s Farnbach, sir, not ‘stein.’”
“Oh? Well, ‘stein’ is close enough, isn’t it, after thirty years? With all the men I commanded? Of course, I had to be absolutely certain before I could speak. It was your voice that clinched it; it hasn’t changed at all. And drop the ‘sir,’ will you? Though I have to admit it’s nice hearing it again.”
“How in the world did you wind up here?” Farnbach asked. “And a detective, of all things!”
“It’s no great story,” the captain said, taking his arm from Farnbach’s shoulders. “I had a sister who was married to a Swede, on a farm down in Skåne. After I was captured I escaped from the internment camp and got over by ship—Lübeck to Trelleborg; that was the sailing I mentioned—and hid out with them. He wasn’t too keen on it. Lars Löfquist. A real s.o.b.; he mistreated poor Eri something awful. After a year or so he and I had a big row and I accidentally finished him. Well, I simply buried him good and deep and took his place! We were the same type physically, so his papers suited me, and Eri was glad to be rid of him. When someone who knew him came by I bandaged my face and she told them a lamp had exploded and I couldn’t talk too much. After a couple of months we sold the farm and came up north here. To Sundsvall first, where we worked in a cannery, which was awful; and three years later, here to Storlien, where there were openings on the force and jobs for Eri in shops. And that’s it. I liked police work, and what better way to get wind if anyone was looking for me? That roaring you hear is the fall; it’s just around the bend. Now what about you, Farnstein? Farnbach! How did you become Herr Busch the affluent salesman? That coat must have cost you more than I make in a year!”
“I’m not ‘Herr Busch,’” Farnbach said sourly. “I’m ‘Senhor Paz’ of Pôrto Alegre, Brazil. Busch is a cover. I’m up here on a job for the Comrades Organization, and a damned crazy job it is too.”
Now it was the captain’s turn to stop and stare, astonished. “You mean…it’s real? The Organization exists? It’s not just…newspaper stories?”
“It’s real, all right,” Farnbach said. “They helped me get settled there, found me a good job…”
“And they’re here now? In Sweden?”
“I’m here now; they’re still down there, working with Dr. Mengele to ‘fulfill the Aryan destiny.’ At least that’s what they tell me.”
“But…this is marvelous, Farnstein! My God, it’s the most exciting news I’ve—We aren’t done! We won’t be beaten! What’s going on? Can you tell me? Would it violate orders to tell an SS officer?”
“Fuck orders, I’m sick of orders,” Farnbach said. He looked for a moment at the startled captain, then said, “I’m here in Storlien to kill a schoolteacher. An old man who’s not our enemy and who can’t possibly affect the course of history by so much as a hair. But killing him, and a lot of others, is a ‘holy operation’ that’s going to bring us back to power somehow. So says Dr. Mengele.” He turned and strode away up the path.
The captain, confused, watched him go, then hurried angrily after him. “Damn it, what’s the idea?” he demanded. “If you can’t tell me, say so! Don’t give me—Was it all shit? That’s a lousy trick to pull on me, FarnBACH!”
Farnbach, breathing hard through his nostrils, came out onto a small balcony of jutting rock, and grasping its iron railing with both hands, gazed bitterly at a broad sheet of shining water that sheared down torrentially at his left. He followed the gleaming water-sheet down and down into its thundering foaming basin, and spat at it.
The captain yanked him around. “That’s a lousy trick to pull,” he cried, close and loud against the fall’s thunder. “I really believed you!”
“It wasn’t a trick,” Farnbach insisted. “It’s the truth, every word of it! I killed a man in Göteborg two weeks ago—a teacher too, Anders Runsten. Did you ever hear of him? Neither did I. Neither did anyone. A complete nonentity, retired, sixty-five. A beer-bottle collector, for God’s sake! Bragged to me about his eight hundred and thirty beer bottles! I…shot him in the head and emptied his wallet.”
“Göteborg,” the captain said. “Yes, I remember the report!”
Farnbach turned to the railing, held it, and stared at rock wall across the thundering twilit chasm. “And Saturday, I’m to do another one,” he said. “It’s senseless! Insane! How could it possibly…accomplish anything?”
“There’s a definite date?”
“Everything is extremely precise!”
The captain stepped close to Farnbach’s side. “And your orders were given to you by a ranking officer?”
“By Mengele, with the Organization’s endorsement. Colonel Seibert shook our hands the morning we left Brazil.”
“It’s not only you?”
“There are other men, in other countries.”
Grasping Farnbach’s arm, the captain said angrily, “Then don’t let me hear you say again ‘Fuck orders’! You’re a corporal who’s been assigned a duty, and if your superiors have chosen not to tell you the reason for it, then they have a reason for that too. Good Christ, you’re an SS man; behave like one! ‘My Honor Is Loyalty.’ Those words were supposed to be engraved on your soul!”
Turning, facing the captain, Farnbac
h said, “The war is over, sir.”
“No!” the captain cried. “Not if the Organization is real and working! Don’t you think your colonel knows what he’s doing? My God, man, if there’s a chance in a hundred of the Reich being restored, how can you not do everything in your power to help make it happen? Think of it, Farnbach! The Reich restored! We could go home again! As heroes! To a Germany of order and discipline in this fucked-up undisciplined world!”
“But how can the killing of harmless old men—”
“Who is this teacher? I’ll bet he’s not as harmless as you think! Who is he? Lundberg? Olafsson? Who?”
“Lundberg.”
The captain was silent for a moment. “Well, I’ll admit he seems harmless,” he said, “but how do we know what he’s really up to, eh? And how do we know what your colonel knows? And the doctor! Come on, man; stiffen your spine and do your duty! ‘An order is an order.’”
“Even when it makes no sense?”
The captain closed his eyes, breathed deeply; opened his eyes, glared at Farnbach. “Yes,” he said. “Even when it makes no sense. It makes sense to your superiors or they wouldn’t have given it to you. My God, there’s hope again, Farnbach; will it come to nothing because of your weakness?”
Frowning uneasily, Farnbach moved to the captain’s side.
The captain turned to stay facing him. “You won’t have any trouble at all,” he said. “I’ll point Lundberg out to you. I can even tell you his habits. My son had him for two years; I know him very well.”
Farnbach snugged his cap down. He smiled quizzically and said, “The Löfquists…have a son?”
“Yes, why not?” The captain looked at him, and flushed. “Oh,” he said; and coldly: “My sister died in ’57. And then I married. You have a dirty mind.”
“Forgive me,” Farnbach said. “I’m sorry.”
The captain thrust his hands into his pockets. “Well!” he said, still flushed. “I hope I’ve managed to put some starch back into you.”
