by Ross Thomas
“I’ve seen them,” Fallon said in a flat voice.
“Good,” Oppenheimer said. “The judge has seen the documents, so we will stipulate that they have been entered as evidence. Now to get on with the prosecution. You see, Your Honor, the accused was not always an interpreter and was never, never a teacher of English or French or Latin. No, he was in a quite different business during the war—the slave-labor business. Would you care to tell us about the labor business?”
The German shook his head vigorously. The pink had gone from his face. It was now a chalkish white. “I don’t understand,” he said. “I don’t understand any of this.”
“No? You have never heard the name Oskar Gerwinat?”
Again the German shook his head. “No. Never.”
“Strange. Well, Oskar Gerwinat was in the slave-labor business. He was a contractor. By that I mean he was given contracts to feed and house the slave laborers. Well, Herr Gerwinat was an excellent businessman. He soon discovered that the less he fed his charges, the more profitable his business. If they died, from exposure or overwork or hunger, well, no matter. There were always many more where they came from: Poland, France, Holland—places like that. Herr Gerwinat was not the largest contractor in his particular field, but he had a very nice little business going, mainly in the Ruhr area. The most reliable figures estimate that two thousand three hundred fifty-four of Herr Gerwinat’s charges died from hunger or exposure or overwork—or sometimes, I would assume, all three. Now are you quite sure you have never heard of Oskar Gerwinat?”
The man charged with being Oskar Gerwinat was trembling now. “Never,” he said, and sounded as though he were choking on something. “It’s all a mistake—a terrible mistake.”
“The prosecution will now introduce new evidence,” Oppenheimer said. He took from his pocket one of the sheets that he had torn from Damm’s ledgerlike book and, without taking his eyes from the German, handed it to Fallon.
Fallon looked at it. “Hell, this is in German. I can’t read this.”
“The photograph that’s pasted on the page.”
“There’re two photos.”
“The top one.”
“Yeah, that one’s Wiese, all right.”
“Taken through a window, wouldn’t you say? But still, quite a fair likeness.”
“Yeah, it’s him, all right.”
“Now we will have the interpreter translate the evidence into English for you, Your Honor. If you’d be so kind as to hand it to him.”
The German accepted the sheet of paper and looked at it As he read, his face crumpled up so that with his nearly bald head he looked very much like a wizened infant about to cry. Then the tears did start. He sniffed, shook his head, and silently handed the sheet back to Oppenheimer.
“No? Well, there is really nothing much more here, Your Honor, than what I’ve already told you. These are the notes that a very meticulous blackmailer made for future use. But if you think that it would serve the course of justice, I will—”
“No,” the German said, and sank to his knees. The tears were still running down his face. In German he said, “Yes, yes, it’s true. It’s all true. I am Oskar Gerwinat I—”
“What’s he saying?” Fallon said.
“He just confessed that he is Oskar Gerwinat.”
“Is that what you said, Wiese?”
Wiese-Gerwinat, his head bowed, muttered, “Yes.”
“Jesus,” Fallon said.
“The accused has admitted his guilt,” Oppenheimer said with a cheerful smile, “but I do think we should still hear from defense counsel. Corporal Little?”
“Gosh, Lieutenant” Little said to Fallon. “What am I supposed to say?”
“Nothing. You’re supposed to say nothing.”
“Well, I could say that he’s always been a pretty nice old guy around here.”
“Shut the fuck up, will you Little?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Now, look,” Fallon said to Oppenheimer. “I don’t know who the hell you are, buddy, but—”
The German lunged for the Walther before Fallon could finish. Oppenheimer stepped back quickly and shot him twice in the chest. The German fell back down to his knees, whimpered something, then sprawled heavily on the floor. He twitched several times before dying.
“Jesus Christ,” Fallon whispered.
“He shot him, Lieutenant,” Private Baxter said in a shocked voice. “He just hauled off and shot him.”
“It’s—it’s like a play,” said Corporal Little, who had spent a year at the University of Nebraska and was already at work on a novel about his experiences in postwar Germany. He immediately resolved to scrap what he had written and start afresh. Staring at Oppenheimer, he began to make careful mental notes.
Oppenheimer gazed down at the dead Oskar Gerwinat for a moment and looked up at Fallon. “He really deserved it, you know.”
Fallon shook his head. “You’re crazy, fella.”
Oppenheimer nodded. “Probably. Now, one of you will have to come with me for a while. Which one shall it be?”
Fallon’s quick mind immediately sensed what Oppenheimer needed. “You’re taking a hostage, right?”
“Only for a while.”
“I’ll go.”
“No, Lieutenant, I think not. You’re a bit too quick for me. I’m afraid.”
“Let me go, Lieutenant,” Corporal Little said, anxious not to miss anything that might prove useful to his literary career.
Oppenheimer nodded again. “Can you drive a jeep, Corporal?”
“Sure.”
“Good. You’ll be back within two hours—provided that the Lieutenant doesn’t make any calls for an hour.”
“No calls,” Fallon said.
“Good.”
Fallon frowned. “Let me ask you something.”
“Of course.”
“Are you really an American?”
“Would it make any difference?”
Fallon shook his head slowly. “No, not a hell of a lot, I guess. You’re not going to hurt the kid, though, are you, if I don’t make any calls for an hour?”
“No, I won’t hurt him,” Oppenheimer said. He turned to Little. “Are you ready, Corporal?”
“You bet,” Corporal Little said.
21
They were expecting the jeep at the rear entrance to the Displaced Persons camp at Badenhausen. Within three hours after Oppenheimer drove it in, the jeep would be completely disassembled and its parts sold on the black market.
The rear entrance to the DP camp wasn’t really a rear entrance. Even a fairly close inspection would not have revealed the cleverly cut high steel-mesh fence that was rolled back to let Oppenheimer drive the jeep through. The DP’s were not prisoners at the Badenhausen camp, and the jeep could just as easily have been driven through the main entrance. But then some of the UNRRA officials might have seen it and started asking questions. Whether other DP’s saw it didn’t matter. Nearly everyone had his own fiddle going, in most cases it was common knowledge, and informers were dealt with by being informed on. If that didn’t work, there were always the three Poles who, for a fair price, would administer a sound beating.
After the Greek and the Latvian rolled the fence back into place, Oppenheimer got out of the jeep without a word and headed for the small shed that housed the operations of Kubista the Czech. Although Oppenheimer heard the jeep when they started the engine and drove it off, he gave it no farewell glance. For Oppenheimer, that part of his life was over. Now he would become someone else, and already he was ridding himself of the Americanisms he had so carefully acquired.
Oppenheimer smiled slightly as he remembered the young American Corporal’s almost interminable, sometimes sympathetic, and always naive questions as they had driven away from the Opel plant. Oppenheimer had answered most of them with questions of his own.
Are you really an American, sir? Could an American have done what I did? Sir, do you mind if I ask you how you felt when you d
id it? Is it always necessary to feel something, Corporal? Was that the first time you ever did anything like that, sir? Shouldn’t your question really be whether it will be the last time? You mean you’re going to do it again, sir? I don’t know, Corporal; should I? Do you mind if I ask you this, Lieutenant? Do you sort of think of yourself as a kind of avenging angel? I’m not sure that I believe in angels anymore, Corporal. Do you?
And then there had been the final question when, six miles away from the Opel plant, Oppenheimer had stopped the jeep to let Corporal Little out.
“I don’t know how to ask this one, sir,” Corporal Little had said as he got out from behind the wheel and Oppenheimer slid over under it.
“You mean am I crazy?”
“Well, yes, sir, that’s kind of what I had in mind.”
“As a bedbug,” Oppenheimer had said, remembering one of Sergeant Packer’s expressions.
Little had nodded thoughtfully as if that were just the answer he had wanted.
“Well, hell, sir, good luck, I guess.”
“Why, thank you, Corporal. Thank you very much.”
Oppenheimer knocked on the door of the shed and went in after the voice in German said, “Enter.” Inside, the room seemed to be half jumble sale and half printing plant. Several metal bins lined one wall. They were filled with civilian clothing—suit coats, pants, vests, and shoes—none of which seemed to match. One bin was filled with nothing but men’s hats. Near the bins on a wooden pole hung an assortment of U.S. Army uniforms—Eisenhower jackets, officer’s pinks, trench coats, field jackets, leather flying jackets, fatigues, OD’s, and even two WAC uniforms.
The wooden pole hung with Army garments more or less divided the jumble sale from the printing operation, which was composed of a small hand press, paper of various weights and qualities, and a wide assortment of rubber stamps. Samples of some of the hand press’s legitimate efforts were tacked up on the walls: mostly official camp regulations and proclamations.
Next to the engraving bench sat Kubista the Czech, the camp printer, clothing merchant, and master forger. He was a gaunt man of average height who just escaped being emaciated. He looked up when Oppenheimer came in; nodded his long, narrow head; and said, “I see we have demoted ourselves to lieutenant.”
“It makes a change,” Oppenheimer said. “I shall miss being an American officer. It was a rather carefree life.”
“I have your new life here for you,” Kubista said, reached into a drawer, and brought out a small stack of wallet-size documents. He dealt them off one by one. “Your basic identification card, of course; your interzonal pass; your British Zone ration books; rent receipts; some wartime odds and ends that could be useful for verisimilitude; and three letters from your lover, who lives in Berlin and misses you rather desperately.”
Oppenheimer went through the documents one by one. He smiled at his new name. “Ekkehard Fink. The finch. Did you know that Fink has a rather unpleasant connotation in English?”
“No.”
“It means informer, I think.”
“I must remember that. There are many around here to whom it could be applied.”
“Probably.”
“Even I have been tempted.”
“Oh?”
“Twice recently. Here,” he said, rising and taking a dark blue suit from a nail. “Try this on. Over there on the chair are a shirt, tie, shoes, and the rest of it. We’ll pick you out a hat and overcoat later.”
Oppenheimer started removing his uniform. “Tell me about your temptation.”
Kubista reached into his pocket and brought out a pack of Chesterfields. He lit one, inhaled deeply, blew the smoke out, and looked at his cigarette with pleasure. He had deep-set, moist brown eyes that stared out from behind thick, wire-framed spectacles. What was left of his hair was white. His nose was long and thin and wandered a bit where it had been broken by a camp guard in 1942. He had an old man’s sunken mouth which caved in on itself because most of his teeth were missing. He looked sixty. He was thirty-eight.
“What an indescribable luxury is American tobacco.”
“One of the few currencies that can be either consumed or spent with equal pleasure,” Oppenheimer said. “Tell me about your temptation.”
“Yes, that. The first occurred yesterday morning. A German. He came to buy a bicycle, and after he found one that suited him he made very discreet inquiries about obtaining documents and was directed to me. It turned out that he was a printer—and a good one, if I’m any judge. We had quite a nice little chat. He claimed to be looking for a long-lost brother. Younger brother. It seemed that he had heard that this young brother, a bad sort, was posing as an American officer. My new printer friend wanted to find him and put him on the path to righteousness and redemption. I didn’t believe him for a second, and he didn’t expect me to. He did mention a sum of money. Quite a nice sum. He seemed rather well off, did my printer friend.”
Oppenheimer finished knotting his tie. “What did you reply?”
“I told him I would have to ask around. He said he would be back tomorrow.”
“And the second tempter?”
“Ach, that one. Well, he’s one of us. A thief. Quite a good one, as a matter of fact. He’s a Romanian who pretends to be an Estonian. He made no bones about whom he was looking for—an American officer who recently might have bought himself some new identifications. He also mentioned a sum of money, although he was not nearly so generous as the printer. I told him the same thing. That I would make inquiries.”
Oppenheimer nodded and slipped on the suit coat. “Too bad you don’t have a mirror.”
“You look very nice,” Kubista said. “Poor but respectable.”
“I turned the jeep over to your associates.”
“Excellent.”
“And then there is this.” He opened the palm of his hand. In it lay a diamond, slightly more than a carat in weight.
“Well,” Kubista said, picking up the stone and holding it up to the light. “I was not expecting this.”
“I am hoping that it will buy silence,” Oppenheimer said. “Not total silence, only partial silence.”
Kubista nodded. “You are wise. Too many are already making inquiries. Soon the American authorities will be making them.”
“And you will have something to tell them.”
“Good.”
“But first you can sell what you know to your printer friend and to the Romanian.”
“Even better. But how much can I sell them?”
“You can sell them where I’ve been, but not where I’m going.”
Kubista smiled. “The cellar in the old castle.”
Oppenheimer nodded.
“Is your immense store of cigarettes included?”
“Unfortunately, yes.”
Kubista smiled again. “Then I will adjust my price accordingly.”
By the time Lieutenant Meyer and Major Baker-Bates got there, the U.S. Constabulary, with their lacquered blue-and-yellow helmet liners, were swarming over the Opel plant at Russelsheim like so many potato bugs.
The Constabulary was what the Army had come up with when it suddenly discovered that it had not many more than 150,000 troops to keep order in its zone of occupation and menace the Russians at the same time. What it lacked in numbers it decided to make up for in visibility.
Immediately scrapped was the Eisenhower jacket, which made what troops there were look like so many gas-station attendants—unless they were six feet tall and had a male model’s physique. The Ike jacket was replaced with a brass-buttoned blouse on whose left shoulder was a 2½ inch gold disk patch bordered in blue. When they weren’t wearing their flashy helmet liners, members of the Constabulary had to wear visored service caps. On their feet were highly polished paratroop boots, and the final touch of what someone had decided was class came in the form of a Sam Browne belt. Hanging from the belt was a .45-caliber automatic.
It was all mostly for show, but since the Germans admired nothing
as much as a snappily turned-out soldier, a jeepful of Constabulary troops zipping through a village could keep the American presence very much in the German mind. They were called the Constabulary because someone had remembered that that was what the Army had called its troops when it had occupied the Philippines after the war with Spain. It also had a nice semi-police-state ring.
The body of the dead Oskar Gerwinat had been removed from Lieutenant Fallon’s office by the time a Constabulary captain ushered in Meyer and Baker-Bates. Lieutenant Fallon had already told his story to some CID types, who were still hanging around waiting for him to get his breath so he could tell it twice and probably three times. Reluctantly they agreed to let Meyer and Baker-Bates have their crack at Fallon, but only after Meyer dropped the names of a couple of USFET generals who, he claimed, were expecting a full report within the hour.
The first thing Meyer did was show Fallon the photograph of Kurt Oppenheimer. Fallon studied it carefully, then looked up and said, “Yeah, that’s the guy. He’s German, huh?”
“He’s German,” Meyer said.
“Well, he sure talks one hell of a good brand of American.”
“Tell us about it, Lieutenant,” Baker-Bates said. “Start at the beginning and tell it just as you remember it.”
So Fallon told it again, and after he got to the point where Oppenheimer had introduced his “evidence” in the form of one of the pages that he had ripped from the blackmailer Damm’s ledgerlike book, Lieutenant Meyer interrupted.
“It was just a page?”
“Yeah, a page with two photographs on it.”
“But there was also information on it?”
“Sure, but I couldn’t read it because it was in German.”
“This information. Was it typed or written?”
“It was written.”
“In ink?”
“Yeah, sure, ink.”
“Okay,” Meyer said, “go on.”
So Lieutenant Fallon went on, and when he was through, Lieutenant Meyer brought him back again to the page that had been torn from Damm’s ledger. In fact, Lieutenant Meyer opened his briefcase and took out the ledger itself.
“Take a look at this, Lieutenant, and see if the page that you saw is like the pages in this ledger.”
