by Ross Thomas
Jackson stared at Eva Scheel for several moments. Finally he said, “I wasn’t trying to be flippant; I was just trying to state the problem, and believe me, there are problems. For example, you. You might be just one hell of a problem.”
“I beg your pardon.”
“You’re a friend of Lieutenant Meyer’s. Lieutenant Meyer is looking for Kurt Oppenheimer. He wants to find him and lock him up someplace. Kurt Oppenheimer’s sister and I are engaged in a conspiracy to prevent this. So the problem is to prevent what we conspire about here today from getting back to Lieutenant Meyer. I don’t think I can make it any clearer than that.”
“I have known Leah and Kurt Oppenheimer for longer than I have known Lieutenant Meyer, Mr. Jackson.”
“Sure.”
“You sound unconvinced.”
“I’m sorry.”
She gazed at him steadily for a long time without blinking. “I assure you,” she said in a low, almost passionate voice, “I would never betray two of my oldest friends to someone like Lieutenant Meyer.”
Jackson wanted to ask what was so wrong with Lieutenant Meyer, but before he could, Leah Oppenheimer said, “We can trust Eva, Mr. Jackson. We must.”
Jackson shrugged. “It’s up to you, of course. I’m sorry, but whenever anyone says, ‘Trust me,’ I tend to run very fast in the opposite direction.”
“You are very cynical for an American, Mr. Jackson,” Eva Scheel said.
“I’m very cynical for anyone, Fraülein Scheel. It keeps me from being disappointed.”
“How terribly amusing,” Eva Scheel said with a little smile. “It makes you sound so very, very young.”
“Please,” Leah said before Jackson could fire back. “Somehow I don’t think this is a time for bickering.” She looked at Jackson solemnly. “Can I take it from what you’ve said thus far that you are still going to help us, Mr. Jackson—you and Mr. Ploscaru?”
“We’ve still got a deal.”
“I understand that these new complications—my brother’s being so terribly ill—might make it more difficult for you than we had thought. My father and I discussed such a contingency before I left, and he had authorized me to increase your fee from fifteen to twenty-five thousand dollars. Is that satisfactory?”
Jackson nodded. “How is your father? I apologize for not asking sooner.”
Leah gave her head a small shake. “The operation was not a success. I’m afraid that he is permanently blind.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Thank you. It would appear that things are not going too well for the Oppenheimer family just now.” She paused and then said, “We must find my brother, Mr. Jackson. I can’t bring myself to agree with your terrible theories about the Americans and the British and the Russians. Frankly, I don’t think that any of them are interested in taking Kurt alive. They would be just as happy if he were dead. I don’t know if you remember, but when we first met I spoke of getting help for my brother. There is such a place in Switzerland, a sanitarium, a very fine one. Of course, it will be expensive. Extremely expensive.”
“I imagine.”
“Then when he is better, perhaps he could …” She stopped. “I don’t know. I don’t want to think about that just yet.”
“Don’t, dear,” Eva Scheel said, leaning over and placing a hand on Leah’s arm. “There’s no need to think about it now.”
“Okay,” Jackson said, and rose. “When we find him we’ll get him to Switzerland. That’s not as easy as it sounds, of course.”
“Of course not,” Leah said.
“I’ll talk to Ploscaru. He’ll probably have some ideas. He usually does.”
“How is Mr. Ploscaru?” Leah said. “I’m so sorry that we still haven’t been able to meet”
“Ploscaru,” Eva Scheel said. “Is that a Balkan name?”
“Romanian,” Leah said. “We have talked on the phone and corresponded, but we still have not met. I do look forward to it”
“I’ll tell him that,” Jackson said.
“I don’t mean to be overly inquisitive,” Leah said, “but could you tell me what he was doing that was so important that it would have kept him from our meeting today?”
“Sure,” Jackson said. “He was out looking for your brother.”
Eva Scheel accompanied Jackson to the foyer, opened the door for him, and held out her hand. When he took it, she said, “I really hesitate to say this again, Mr. Jackson, but you can rest assured that nothing that was said here today will get back to Lieutenant Meyer.”
Jackson nodded thoughtfully. “There’s not really just a hell of a lot to tell him, is there?”
“No,” she said slowly, the half smile back on her face. “As you say, not a hell of a lot.”
They said goodbye then, and Eva Scheel watched as Jackson made his way down the dimly lit stairs. So there goes the opposition, she thought. Very quick, very intelligent, and doubtless very competent, but lacking, perhaps, in a certain amount of animal cunning. It could be that the dwarf supplies that. Well, printer, she thought as she turned and closed the door, we must meet again, and soon, because now I have something to tell you. She found herself quite surprised at how much she was looking forward to it.
19
In the dream, Heinrich Himmler was only a meter away. And in the dream it was always raining as Kurt Oppenheimer slowly drew the pistol from the pocket of his SS greatcoat, the belted leather kind; aimed; and squeezed the trigger. Then, in the dream, there was always the business of deciding whether to shout it in Latin or German. Sometimes it was one and sometimes the other, but most of the time it came out in Latin—“Sic semper tyrannis”—just before he squeezed the trigger of the pistol: which he knew would never fire. And it was always about then that Himmler smiled and became someone else. He became Kurt Oppenheimer’s father, who frowned and demanded to know why his son was standing there on the street with no clothes on. After that Kurt Oppenheimer would look down at himself and discover that he was cold and wet and naked. Then he would wake up.
In reality, it had been raining that day in Berlin, and he had been wearing the stolen belted leather SS greatcoat, plus the rest of the uniform of an SS captain, and there had been a pistol in his pocket. A Lüger. He had been standing there in a group of SS officers when Himmler got out of the car.
He and the Reichsführer had looked at each other from less than a meter away. But there had been no shout, and the pistol had remained in the greatcoat’s pocket, because Kurt Oppenheimer had suddenly realized what he had long suspected: that he was afraid to die.
Sometimes when he awoke from the dream, as he did now, lying on the cot in the cellar of the ruined castle near Höchst, Oppenheimer would compare the dream with what had actually happened. In the dream he felt shame. But the shame came from standing naked in front of his father. Had it been shame he felt when he turned away from Himmler, the pistol still unfired in his pocket? No, not shame. The shame happened only in the dream. In reality, there had been that great surge of relief when he realized that he would do no dying that day.
After that January 19 of 1945, the day he had turned away from Himmler, he had also turned away from killing. He had gone back to living in the bombed-out ruins and scrounging food wherever he could. Then there was that air raid in early May. Had it been the last one of the war? He wasn’t sure, because there had been the explosion, he remembered that, and then he remembered very little until he heard the voices debating whether it was worth the effort to dig him out because he was probably already dead.
He had shouted something then, or tried to, and they had dug him out. He was unhurt except for a few scratches. He learned then that the Russians had taken Berlin and that the war was over. He told the men who had dug him out that he was very hungry and thirsty. They gave him some water, but they couldn’t give him any food, because they had none. Nobody had any food, they told him. Nobody but the Russians. If you want food, go see the Russians. Then they had laughed.
But he didn’t seek out the
Russians. They were after him, the Russians. Because of the Himmler thing. They had learned about it. How? Well, the Russians had their ways. Now they were combing the city for him. When they found him, they would arrest him and try him for cowardice. He would be found guilty and then they would shoot him. He would suffer a long time before he died.
A part of him always knew that his fears were groundless. This part of him, the mocking part, would stand aside as he cowered in some bombed-out ruin and with biting logic explain all about the irrationality of his fears. Finally, the fears began to go away and depression set in. The mocking part of him was not nearly so adept at dealing with depression. About all that this mocking self could tell him was that he was slightly mad. But then, he already knew that.
Sometimes, however, the depression would immobilize him for days at a time. He would sit, virtually motionless in whatever ruins he happened to find himself in, with his knees drawn up and his arms wrapped tightly around them. During these times he would neither sleep nor drink nor eat.
It got better in early June after he killed the rat. He killed it with a stone, skinned it, cooked it, and ate it. For nearly a week after that he lived on rats. They gave him enough strength to go poking about in the destroyed building in which he found himself. In a heap of rubble that once had been a bathroom he discovered a piece of broken mirror and looked at his reflection for the first time in more than a month. He started laughing. It went on for a long time, the laughter, and although at the end it may have turned into a kind of hysteria, when it was all over he felt better. Much better.
In fact, he felt so much better that he dug around in the rubble of what had been the bathroom and found a straight razor, a brush, and a cracked, gilt-embossed shaving mug with just a bit of soap left in its bottom. He walked three blocks to the nearest water, brought back a large tin of it, and shaved off his beard, cutting himself only twice in the process.
He didn’t eat rats after that. Instead, he stole food when he could, and when he wasn’t doing that he wandered aimlessly about Berlin. After a week or so of this he no longer even trembled at the sight of a Russian soldier, although somewhere far deep inside he remained totally convinced that each Russian soldier had orders to arrest him on sight. When his mocking self told him, for at least the hundredth time, that this was madness, he would reply, sometimes aloud, “Well, it just possibly could be true.”
On July 2, 1945, he noticed a group of gawkers standing at a corner, so he joined them, as he nearly always did. The object of the gawkers’ curiosity was a jeep. In it were two American soldiers, obviously lost. They were the first American soldiers that the gawkers had seen, and they belonged to the Second Armored Division, which had finally entered Berlin that morning.
One of the soldiers was a big man of about thirty with flaming red hair. He wore a carefully trimmed pirate’s beard and the stripes of a master sergeant. Next to him, behind the wheel, was another sergeant, a three-striper with smart, bitter eyes and a mouth that snapped open and shut like a purse.
The red-haired Master Sergeant was examining a map. The other Sergeant was smoking a cigarette. He flicked the butt away and watched idly as the gawkers scrambled for it.
“I told you that was the wrong fuckin’ turn,” he said to the Master Sergeant.
“Ask them,” the Master Sergeant said.
“Ask ’em what?”
“Ask if any of these good burghers speak English.”
The three-striper stood up in the jeep. “Any of you fuckers speak English?”
It could have been because he was bored, or because he was curious, or simply that he had never spoken to an American soldier, but Kurt Oppenheimer found himself saying, “I speak English.”
“Git over here, boy,” the three-striper said.
Oppenheimer moved over to the jeep. The man with the red beard examined him with greenish-blue eyes that seemed to be filled with a private kind of laughter.
“We are, I’m afraid, a trifle lost.”
“Perhaps I can help.”
“Do you know Berlin?”
“Fairly well.”
“We are trying to get to Dahlem.”
“You’re going in the opposite direction.”
“I told you we took the wrong fuckin’ turn,” the three-striper said.
“You speak very good English,” the red-bearded Sergeant said.
“Thank you.”
“Doesn’t he speak good English?” the red-bearded man said to the Sergeant behind the wheel.
“Like a fuckin’ Limey.”
“We’re going to need someone.”
The three-striper nodded glumly. “Might as well be him.” He stared at Oppenheimer. “Whadda they call you, boy—Hans or Fritz?”
“Hans, I think,” Kurt Oppenheimer said.
“Git in the jeep, Hans; you’re hired.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“My name is Sergeant Sherrod,” the red-bearded man said. “My associate here, Pecos Bill—”
“My name ain’t Pecos Bill. I wish to fuck you’d quit callin’ me Pecos Bill. My name is James Robert Packer from Abilene, Texas, and my friends, which you’re gittin’ to be not one of, call me either Jim or J.R.—I don’t give a shit which, as long as it’s not Jim Bob or Jimmy Bobby; but you can even call me that, long as you quit callin’ me Pecos Bill.”
“You through?”
“I’m through.”
“Good.” Sergeant Sherrod turned back to Oppenheimer. “Pecos Bill here and I are in need of a guide, interpreter, and dog robber. Are you familiar with the expression dog robber?”
“No.”
“It means factotum.”
“Servant.”
“Not quite,” Sergeant Sherrod said, “but close. Americans don’t have servants. They have hired hands, the girl who lives in, mother’s helpers, and maids, but seldom servants. The British have servants; the Americans have help. A subtle distinction which I think we need explore no further, at least for the moment.”
“Oh, Lordy, how long’s this shit gonna go on?” Sergeant Packer asked nobody in particular.
“You were never a Nazi, were you, Hans?” Before Oppenheimer could reply, Sergeant Sherrod continued. “An idle question, I realize, but in recent months Pecos Bill here and I have inquired of perhaps three hundred citizens of the Reich whether they were ever members of the Nazi Party, and to a man, they have declared that they were not. This leads one to the interesting question of who’s been minding the store these past few years.”
“I am a Jew,” Oppenheimer said.
Sergeant Sherrod grinned. “Another rare species. If you agree to work for us, Hans, you’ll be paid in cigarettes. You can fatten yourself up on U.S. Army rations, and we can probably scrounge you some different clothes, which although not stylish, will be somewhat better than the rags and tatters that you’re now wearing. Well, sir, what do you say?”
“You’re quite serious, aren’t you?” Oppenheimer said.
“Totally.”
“I accept.”
“Git in, boy,” Sergeant Packer said.
The gawkers watched glumly as Oppenheimer climbed into the back of the jeep. As they drove off, the red-bearded Master Sergeant turned and offered Oppenheimer a Pall Mall. It was with a luxurious sense of well-being that Oppenheimer accepted a light and drew the smoke down into his lungs.
“How much are American cigarettes bringing on the black market, Hans?” Sergeant Sherrod asked.
“I have no idea.”
“That, I think, will be your first assignment,” the red-bearded man said with a smile. “To find out”
During the next few weeks Oppenheimer learned that the two American Sergeants had one simple objective: to make $50,000 each on the Berlin black market. He also learned that they both knew exactly what they would do with the money.
Sergeant Packer was going to buy a certain ranch with his, just outside of Abilene. The Sergeant, who had taken a liking to Oppenheimer and occasionall
y referred to him as “a pretty good little old Jew boy,” often described the ranch in loving detail. The descriptions were so graphic that it became almost as real to Oppenheimer as his own former home in Frankfurt. Sometimes, in his dreams, the two places became blurred.
But Oppenheimer took more than a dream from Sergeant Packer. He also took from him his accent and his detailed knowledge of the city of Abilene, Texas. Both, Oppenheimer felt, might prove useful someday, although he wasn’t at all sure how.
The red-bearded Master Sergeant’s dreams were of a somewhat different nature. Before enlisting in the Army, Sergeant Sherrod had been an assistant professor of economics at the University of California at Los Angeles. Twice he had turned down a battlefield commission. His postwar dreams were clearly mapped out—provided he reached his $50,000 black-market goal.
“With half of it, I intend to buy oceanfront lots,” he sometimes told Oppenheimer. “I don’t care much which ocean, as long as it’s warm—Spain, Southern California, Florida, Hawaii, and maybe even the Caribbean will do. The remaining twenty-five thousand I intend to plunk into something called IBM, which is a stock I am convinced will make spectacular gains during the next few years. Then, after a few more years of penury in Academe, I will be able to tell the world to go fuck itself—to use one of Pecos Bill’s more graphic expressions.”
“You know what he is, don’t cha, Hans?” Sergeant Packer said.
Oppenheimer shook his head. “No. What?”
“He’s a fuckin’ Communist, that’s what.”
“Are you, Sergeant?”
The red-bearded man smiled. “A renegade Marxist perhaps, but scarcely a Communist. There’s a difference, you know.”
“Yes,” Oppenheimer said. “I know.”
By the time the Russians were given the plates, the two Sergeants had made perhaps $5,000 each, mostly from cigarettes whose sales Oppenheimer had negotiated in the thriving black market that had sprung up in the Tiergarten.
“I don’t understand,” Sergeant Packer had said. “You mean to say we just gave those fuckers the plates to print up their own money?”
“Exactly. Our Secretary of the Treasury, Mr. Morgenthau, seems to believe that nothing is too good for our gallant Russian allies, including the privilege of printing their own money, which we, of course, eventually will have to redeem. From what I understand, the Russians intend to pay off their troops with it.”
