by Ross Thomas
“In a bar. In Mexico.”
“So that’s where he is?” Orr said. “I’ve sometimes wondered.”
“He’s not there, but somebody who’d known him was.”
“Who?”
“A cashiered British type who said his name was Baker-Bates.”
“Gilbert Baker-Bates?” Orr’s tone was almost incredulous.
Jackson nodded.
“Gilbert Baker-Bates? The manic Major. Cashiered! Not likely, Minor. Why, poor old Gilbert’s now the rising star in the British firmament. Who ever told you that he was cashiered?”
“Somebody who lies a lot,” Jackson said.
8
The ruined castle, or Schloss, lay a mile or two out of Höchst, which made it not much more than a forty-minute drive from the center of Frankfurt. The castle has been ruined by time as well as by a couple of stray American bombs. Now no one was quite sure whom it really belonged to, although the Americans apparently had staked out their claim with a big, carefully lettered, social-looking sign that read in both English and German:
Property of U.S. Army
ABSOLUTELY NO TRESPASSING
The Germans who still lived nearby respected the sign, of course. But even had it not been there, none of them would have been likely to do much trespassing. Rumor kept them away, rumor that the castle was the sometime rendezvous of a roving band of Polish and Latvian DP’s—thieves and cutthroats all, naturally, or worse. Although none of the DP’s had been seen there in some time, few, if any, Germans were willing to take a chance. And besides, there was the sign.
Once or twice a day, at irregular intervals a U.S. Army jeep with a captain at its wheel could be seen driving slowly up to the castle and disappearing, sometimes for long intervals, behind its crumbling walls. The Germans who noticed the Captain and his irregular appearances approved of both as sound strategy. With luck, he might catch a Pole or two.
About the only thing that distinguished the castle as a castle, and not as just another bombed-out ruin, was the determinedly Gothic tower at its north end. It was nearly four stories high, with crenelated walls and an imposing enough turret that was only half destroyed. Much of the castle’s outer walls also remained standing, although there was no longer anything left for them to protect or shield.
Had the neighboring Germans been disobedient enough to ignore the warning sign, or brave enough to risk an encounter with a Polish or Latvian desperado, they might have geen surprised at the new, solid-looking wooden door that led down to the area underneath the north tower which possibly, years ago, might have been a dungeon.
And the neighboring Germans would have been more surprised had they been able to watch the American Captain use his keys on the two stout padlocks that helped chain the door shut and then follow him down the old stone steps into that dank, cavernous space which was a dungeon no longer. Now, it was apparently a warehouse for all those hard-to-come-by American items which kept the black market flourishing.
There were cigarettes, for instance. One entire wall was stacked high with cases of them—not cartons, but cases. Stacked against another wall were jerry cans of gasoline—the pink, American kind which, if found in the possession of a German, automatically meant a long jail sentence. Food was stacked against a third wall. There were ten-in-one Army rations mostly, but there were also sacks of U.S. Army flour and ten or twelve cases—again not cartons, but cases—of candy bars. About half of them were Baby Ruths. The rest were a mixed lot of Hershey Bars, Oh Henrys, Mars Bars, and Powerhouses.
Against the remaining wall was where the light came from. It was a gasoline lantern that rested on an upended regulation Army footlocker. Next to the footlocker was an Army cot neatly made up. Two more lockers formed an L at the foot of the cot. On one of them was a small, two-burner gasoline stove. Not far from the footlockers was a crudely rigged pole that held six U.S. Army dress uniforms. On two of the uniforms were a captain’s double bars. Two more bore the single silver bars of a first lieutenant. The remaining two uniforms boasted the gold oak leaves of a major.
After securely locking from the inside the door that led to the underground room, the man in the captain’s uniform used a flashlight to guide himself down the stone steps. He lit the gasoline lantern first and then carefully hung up his tunic and placed his overseas cap on a peg. He seemed to be very neat.
He lit the small gasoline stove next, opened one of the footlockers, took out a tin of tea and some sugar and an aluminum pan. He poured water from a jerry can into the pan and placed it on the stove. He next removed a teapot and a cup and saucer from the footlocker, handling them carefully because all were Meissen. After the water was boiling he put a small handful of tea into the pot, poured in the water, lit a cigarette, and then lay down on the cot. With one arm behind his head, he smoked and stared up at the ceiling and waited for the tea to steep.
When the tea was ready, he slowly drank two cups and smoked four more cigarettes. After that, he glanced at his gold Longines wristwatch. It was 3:30—almost time to go. He rose and crossed the room to yet another footlocker which rested next to the cans of gasoline. This one was locked. He removed the padlock and opened the lid. Inside were two .45 Thompson submachine guns, three .45 automatics, and two M-l carbines. There were also an S.&W. .38-caliber pistol and a Walther PPK automatic. He selected the Walther and shoved it into his right hip pocket.
After securing the padlock, he put the tunic with the captain’s bars on and selected a garrison cap. There were five gold overseas bars on his left sleeve, each indicating six months’ service outside the continental limits of the United States. On his right breast he wore a Combat Infantryman’s Badge and ribbons indicating that he had served in three battles in the European Theater and had been wounded once.
He inspected the room carefully to make sure that nothing was out of place. His eyes were a greenish blue, and they seemed to miss nothing. They looked out from a narrow face with a straight nose and thin lips that could have been either dubious or cruel or perhaps both. He was almost exactly six feet tall and slim, and his hair was that curious mixture which lies somewhere between brown and blond. It was cut short, and somewhere he had picked up a nice tan.
For the second time he checked to make sure that the gasoline stove was off. He then turned off the lamp, switched on his flashlight, patted his right hip pocket to check that the Walther was in place, and headed up the stone steps to where the jeep was parked just outside the thick wooden door.
The man who sold identities called himself Karl-Heinz Damm and, because of several judicious bribes to certain authorities, was permitted to live alone in a pleasant two-story house not six blocks from the high steel fence that the Americans had erected around the I. G. Farben complex in Frankfurt. For some reason, known only to themselves, the Americans had ignored Damm’s largely undamaged neighborhood when they were requisitioning housing. Instead, they had laid claim to the rather unpleasant and definitely lower-class area that immediately surrounded the Farben complex. Damm sometimes thought that the Americans felt more comfortable there.
Damm had acquired his house in late 1945, several months after his release from Dachau, where he had spent three awful years. An engraver by trade, he had wound up in Dachau after being convicted in 1942 of counterfeiting food-ration stamps. Because of his technical skills, the camp authorities had placed him in their administrative section—a job that gave him access to the camp records. By the time the Americans arrived at Dachau he had transformed himself into Karl-Heinz Damm, a minor trade-union official with a long record of opposition to the Nazi regime. The Americans had almost immediately offered him a job, which he had declined with thanks, giving as his excuse the grave heart condition—fully documented, of course—that he had developed as a result of the rigors of the camp.
He left Bavaria and headed almost immediately for Frankfurt, carrying with him only the carefully culled records of 100 former inmates of the camp; all of them dead, but with their deaths unrecorded
; all of them political opponents to one degree or another of the former regime; all of them from the eastern reaches of Germany where the Russians were; and all of them, of course, Aryan by birth. And that was how Damm had acquired his house. He had traded its former owner, a minor and yet-undetected war criminal, a new identity for it. Word had got around—quietly, of course; very quietly—and now Damm was doing an extremely profitable, but extremely discreet business. He also dabbled a bit in the black market. Cigarettes mostly.
Damm was one of the few Germans in 1946 who had to watch their weight. With his newly found prosperity, he had made the mistake of gorging himself on a diet that some days had gone as high as 6,000 calories. Now he was on a self-imposed diet of 1,000 calories a day, which was just enough to keep an idle man alive and allow an active man to starve slowly. It was also just 48 calories less than the official ration in the British Zone.
At forty-three, Damm was a sleek-looking man of average height, carrying perhaps twenty-five too many pounds, which were now draped in an English tweed suit that he had acquired from a once-wealthy client, a former resident of Hamburg, whom the British were especially anxious to get their hands on. The client was now enjoying his new identity and living quietly near Saarbrücken, in the French Zone.
Damm looked at his watch, saw that it was nearly 5, and set out some glasses, water, and a bottle of Johnnie Walker Scotch. Because of his diet he permitted himself only one drink a day, and the Scotch was mostly to impress his new business associate, the American Captain who called himself Bill Schmidt. Damm didn’t for one second believe that that was the Captain’s real name, but the Schmidt served to explain why the American spoke such fluent German. Schmidt’s German had an American accent, but it was detectable only to a good ear, which Damm prided himself on having.
At a minute or two after 5, Damm heard the jeep drive up. He looked out the window and watched Captain Bill Schmidt lift its hood and remove the distributor cap Damm was mildly displeased to discover that the Captain thought that his jeep might be stolen in Damm’s neighborhood.
When the Captain came in, they shook hands and the Captain said in German, “How goes it, K.H.?” Damm had long since resigned himself to being called by his forenames’ initials, which he assumed was one of those weird American customs.
“Very well, Captain, and you?” Although less than an hour after they had first met, the Captain had started addressing Damm with the familiar du, Damm still clung to the formal mode of address. The Captain didn’t seem to notice.
Captain Schmidt took off his hat and sailed it onto a couch. He then spied the Johnnie Walker and said, “My God, Scotch.”
Damm smiled, quite pleased. “I have my several sources,” he said, not seeing much use in being modest.
Damm moved over to the bottle and mixed two drinks, handing one to Schmidt. After they had toasted each other. Schmidt sprawled into an easy chair, stuck his long legs out in front of him, and said, “What have you got for me, K.H.? What have you got that’s worth twelve cases of cigarettes?”
Damm waved an admonishing forefinger. “No more Kools, though, Captain. I have a very difficult time disposing of that last case. People think they are being cheated when you trade them Kools.”
Schmidt shrugged. “They’re not supposed to smoke them. They’re currency. Smoking one is like smoking a dollar bill. Who cares what they taste like?”
“Nevertheless, no more Kools.”
“All right. No more Kools. Now what have you got?”
Damm raised his eyebrows. It gave him an arch look. “Diamonds?” he said. “What would you say to diamonds?”
“I’d say that I’d have to see them first.”
Damm reached into the pocket of his tweed suit and brought out a small drawstring bag made of leather. He handed it to Schmidt. The Captain put his drink down on a table and dumped the bag’s contents into the palm of his hand. There were twenty-four cut diamonds, none less than a carat in size.
While Schmidt inspected each diamond carefully, Damm picked up the Captain’s drink and slid a small porcelain tray under it.
“How much are you really asking, K.H.?” Schmidt said, dumping the diamonds back into the bag. Damm watched carefully to make sure that none was palmed.
“Twenty-four cases.”
“You’re crazy.”
Damm shrugged. “I must have them.”
“You know how many cigarettes there are in one case?”
“Sixty cartons to a case, two hundred cigarettes to a carton. Twelve thousand cigarettes.”
“At a dollar a cigarette.”
“That’s retail. You and I, my dear Captain, are wholesalers.”
“I’ll give you ten cases.”
“Twenty.”
“My last offer is thirteen cases.”
“And mine is seventeen,” Damm said.
“All right. Fifteen.”
“All Camels.”
“Half Camels,” the Captain said. “Half Luckies.”
“Done.”
“That’s a hell of a bargain you just made, K.H.”
“And you, my friend, have not done badly either. Currency is no longer of any use to you. You can’t send it home anymore. But diamonds. Well, diamonds are probably the most portable form of wealth. You can conceal a fortune of them in a packet of cigarettes. What else could be more valuable?”
Schmidt leaned forward in his chair. In his left hand he held the bag of diamonds. He tossed them up a few inches and caught them as his right hand moved slowly back to his hip pocket.
“Well, one thing I could think of, K.H., would be a new identity.”
Damm grew very still. For a few moments he didn’t breathe. He felt suddenly cold, and then the flush started. He could feel it spreading over his face. He knew the American could see it. There was a harsh sound, and he realized with some surprise that it had come from him. It had been a sigh—a long, sad, bitter one. Damm forced his mind to work. It was a quick mind, a facile one. He. had used it often enough before to extricate himself from more difficult positions than this. This was nothing. He made himself smile, although he knew the smile must look ghastly.
“But not for yourself, of course.”
“No, of course not,” Schmidt said. “I’m quite content with being who I am.”
He doesn’t talk the same, Damm thought. There’s no more American accent, none at all. He licked his lips. “For a friend, then?” he said. “Perhaps a relative?”
The Captain took the Walther out and pointed it at Damm. “I want the records. All of them.”
“We could share, of course,” Damm said quickly. “There is enough for all, and besides, I’ve been thinking of taking in a partner. An American partner would be perfect.”
“You don’t understand.”
“No?”
“I want the records that you keep yourself. I want the real names and current addresses of those to whom you’ve furnished new identities. And their new names too, of course.”
The first thing Damm thought was blackmail. It wouldn’t be the first time it had occurred to him, but until now he had been content to wait until his prospective victims could attain a level of prosperity that would make it worthwhile. But perhaps the American was right. Perhaps the time for blackmail had already arrived.
“It would be perfect,” he said, speaking rapidly. “I furnish the records and you make the approach. It could be quite profitable.”
“I want the records now,” Schmidt said. “All of them.” He waved the gun—a careless yet curiously threatening motion.
“Yes, of course,” Damm said and rose slowly. “I keep them in the safe in the bedroom.”
Schmidt watched while the kneeling man opened the small safe. Damm took out a ledgerlike book and started to close the safe. “Leave it open,” Schmidt said.
“Yes, yes, I’ll leave it open.”
Damm handed Schmidt the ledger. They returned to the living room, where the Captain used the pistol to wave Damm i
nto a chair. Damm watched as Schmidt went through the ledger. Schmidt looked up once and smiled. “You keep excellent records.”
“I think you’ll find everything in order.”
“Very thorough,” Schmidt said, and placed the ledger on the table by his drink.
He stared at Damm for a moment and said, “I’m not an American. You must have realized that by now.”
Damm nodded vigorously. “Your accent—you don’t have it anymore. I have a good ear for accents. Very good.”
“My name,” the Captain said, “is Kurt Oppenheimer.”
“I’m very pleased to meet you,” Damm said, and felt foolish.
“I’m a German and also a Jew. A German Jew. At one time I was a Communist, although I no longer think that I am.”
“Look, we can still do business.”
“I simply thought you would like to know,” Kurt Oppenheimer said, and shot Damm twice in the heart. The force of the bullets slammed Damm deep into his chair. He felt the pain and the shock, but neither kept his mind from working. The problem now was how to get himself out of this mess. He was still working on it forty-five seconds later when he died.
Kurt Oppenheimer put the Walther back into his hip pocket. He picked up the leather sack of diamonds, hesitated a moment, then shrugged and stuffed them into another pocket. He opened the ledger and counted the names of those to whom Karl-Heinz Damm had sold new identities. There were thirty-two names. He tore half of them out of the ledger, folded them, and put them into a pocket. He would take care of these himself. The other half he would leave for the Americans, who might get around to them and, then again, might not.
He looked around the room, inspecting it quickly but carefully with his blue-green eyes which missed nothing. There were fingerprints on his glass, but the Americans were welcome to them. He moved over to the body of Damm and felt his pulse. My German thoroughness, he thought, and then quickly went out the front door, got into the jeep, and drove off.
Ten minutes later, he was standing at the bar of the American officers’ club in the I. G. Farben complex.
