A Quiet Flame

by Philip Kerr

  “Isn’t it? I don’t know.”

  “These girls know what they’re doing, believe me.” He rolled an emaciated little cigarette and held the match up to his mouth. The roll-up crackled into flames like a tiny forest fire. With one chuckling puff he managed to consume almost a third of it.

  “So where would I go?” I asked, affecting nonchalant curiosity. “If I was thinking of picking it off the tree, like you describe.”

  “One of the pesar poco joints down at the portside in La Boca,” he said. “Of course you would have to be introduced by a member.” He lifted his whole mug in the air in a big self-satisfied grin. “Like me.”

  Restraining my first impulse—to introduce his jaw to a short uppercut—I smiled and said, “That’s a date, then.”

  “Mind you,” he said, “the fruta inmadura scene is not what it used to be. Immediately after the war, the country was flooded with underweight baggage. That’s what we used to call the really fragile fruit that was coming from Europe. Little Jewish virgins escaping to a better life, they imagined. All of them looking for the caballero blanco. A few found one. Some grew up and went on the game. The rest? Who knows?”

  “Who knows, indeed? The way I hear it, some of those illegal Jews got themselves picked up by the secret police. And disappeared.”

  Melville pulled a face and shook his head. “Everyone disappears at one time or another in Argentina. It’s a national bloody pastime. The porteños get depressed about all kinds of shit. And then they take off for a while. Sooner or later most of them turn up again, without a word of explanation. Like nothing happened. As for the Jews, well, it’s my own experience they’re an especially melancholy lot. Which, if you don’t mind me saying so, is largely the fault of your own countrymen, Hausner.”

  I nodded, conceding the point, which was well made.

  “Now, take Perón,” he said, warming to his theme. “He was vice president and secretary of war in the government of General Edelmiro Farrell. Then he disappeared. His colleagues had arrested him and put him in jail on Martín García Island. Then Evita organizes some mass demonstrations of popular support, and a week later he’s back. Six months after that, he’s the president. He disappears. He comes back. It’s a very Argentine story.”

  “Not everyone has an Evita,” I said. “And not everyone who disappears comes back, surely. You can’t deny that the jails are full of Perón’s political opponents.”

  “You can’t make an omelet without breaking a few eggs. Besides, most of those people are Communists. Do you want to see this country handed over to the Communists like Poland and Hungary and East Germany? Like Bolivia?”

  “No, not at all.”

  “Well, then. You ask me, they’re doing the best they can. This is a fine country. Perhaps the finest country in the whole of South America. With excellent prospects for economic growth. And I’d much rather live in Argentina than in Britain. Even without the unripe fruit.”

  Melville flicked the pungent roll-up into the street. It was something I’d dearly like to have done to him.

  “What are you doing here anyway, Melville?” I asked, trying to conceal the exasperation I felt with him. “I mean, what is it that you do? Your work. Your job.”

  “I told you before,” he said. “Obviously you weren’t listening.” He laughed. “But there’s no great mystery about what I do for a living. Unlike some I could mention.” He shot me a look as if to say he meant me. “I work for Glasgow Wire. We supply a range of stock fencing and wire products to cattle ranchers all over the Argentine.”

  I tried to stifle a yawn and failed. He was right. He had told me before. It was just that I’d seen no reason to think it was something I ought to remember.

  “It sounds boring, I know,” he said wryly. “But there wouldn’t be a beef industry in this country without galvanized-wire products. I sell it in fifty-meter rolls, by the pallet. The Argie cattlemen buy miles of the stuff. They can’t get enough of it. And not just the cattlemen. Wire is important to all sorts of people.”

  “Really?” This time the yawn got the better of me.

  Melville seemed to regard my apparent disinterest as a challenge.

  “Oh, yes. Why, just a few years ago, one of your own countrymen awarded me quite a large contract. He was an engineer working for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. What was his name, now? Kammler. That’s right. Dr. Hans Kammler. Ever heard of him?”

  The name itched a little, although I couldn’t think why.

  “I had several meetings with your Mr. Kammler at the San Martín Palace, in Arenales. An interesting man. During the war he was a general in the SS. I expect you knew him.”

  “All right. I was in the SS. Satisfied?”

  Melville smacked his thigh with the flat of his hand. “I knew it,” he said triumphantly. “I just knew it. Course it doesn’t matter to me what you did. The war’s over now. And we’re going to need Germany if we’re to keep the Russians out of Europe.”

  “What would the Ministry of Foreign Affairs need with a large quantity of wire fencing?” I asked.

  “You’d better ask your General Kammler,” said Melville. “We met several times, he and I. The last time at a place near Tucumán, where I delivered the wire.”

  “Oh, right,” I said, my curiosity relaxing a little now. “You must mean the hydroelectric plant run by the Capri Construction Company.”

  “No, no. They’re a client of mine, it’s true. But this was something different. Something much more secret. My guess is that it was something to do with the atom bomb. Of course, I could be wrong. But Perón’s always wanted Argentina to be the first nuclear power in South America. Kammler used to refer to the project as memorandum something or other. A number.”

  “Eleven? Directive Eleven?”

  “That’s right. No, wait. It was Directive Twelve.”

  “You’re sure about that?”

  “Quite sure. Either way, it was all top-secret stuff. They paid well over the odds for the wire. Largely, I suppose, because we had to deliver the stuff to a valley in the middle of nowhere in the Sierra de Aconquija. Oh, it was easy enough as far as Tucumán itself. There’s quite a reasonable railway from Buenos Aires to Tucumán, as you probably know. But from there to Dulce—that was the name of the facility they were building up there, after the river of the same name, I suppose—we had to use mules. Hundreds of mules.”

  “Melville. Do you think you could point the place out on a map?”

  He smiled uncertainly. “I think I probably said too much already. I mean, if it is a secret nuclear facility, they might not care for me telling people exactly where it is.”

  “You have a point there,” I admitted. “They’d probably kill you if they found out you’d told someone like me about it. In fact, I’m quite sure of it. But on the other hand”—I lifted my jacket clear of the shoulder holster I was wearing and let him see the Smith that was nesting there—“on the other hand, it isn’t so good, either. In a moment, you and I are going to walk to the bookshop across the street. And I’m going to buy a map. And either your brains or your finger is going to be on it by the time I leave.”

  “You’re joking,” he said.

  “I’m German. We’re not exactly famous for our sense of humor, Melville. Especially not when it comes to killing people. We take that sort of thing quite seriously. Which is why we’re so good at it.”

  “Suppose I don’t want to go to the bookshop,” he said, looking around. The Richmond was busy. “You wouldn’t dare shoot me here, in front of all these people.”

  “Why not? I’ve finished my coffee. And you’ve thoughtfully taken care of the check. It certainly won’t spoil my morning to put a bullet in your head. And when the cops ask me why I did it, I’ll simply tell them you resisted arrest.” I took out my SIDE credentials and showed them to him. “You see, I’m sort of a cop, myself. The secret kind that doesn’t usually get held to account.”

  “So that’s what you do.” Melville uttered h
is manic laugh. Only now it was more of a nervous laugh. “I was kind of wondering.”

  “Well, now that your curiosity has been satisfied, let’s go. And try to remember what I said about the German sense of humor.”

  In the Figuera bookshop on the corner of Florida and Alsina, I bought a map of Argentina for a hundred pesos and, taking Melville by the arm, walked him onto Plaza de Mayo, where, in full sight of the Casa Rosada, I unfolded the map on the grass.

  “So let’s have it,” I said. “Where exactly was this place? And if I find you’ve lied to me, I’m going to come back like Banquo in that play of yours, Scotsman. And I’m going to make your hair a lot more red than it is now.”

  The Scotsman moved a forefinger north from Buenos Aires, past Córdoba and Santiago del Estero, and west of La Cocha, where Eichmann was now living.

  “About here,” he said. “It’s not actually marked on the map. But that’s where I met Kammler. Just north of Andalgalá there are a couple of lagoons in a depression near the basin of the Dulce River. They were building a small railway when I saw the place. Probably to make it easier to move materials up there.”

  “Yeah, probably,” I said, folding up the map and sliding it into my pocket. “If you’ll take my advice, you won’t mention this to anyone. Probably they’d kill you before killing me, but only after torturing you first. Luckily for you, they already tortured me and it didn’t work, so you’re in the clear from my end of this conversation. The best thing you could do now would be just to go away and forget you ever met me. Not even across a chessboard.”

  “Suits me,” Melville said, and walked quickly away.

  I took another good look at the map and told myself Colonel Montalbán would have been disappointed in me: I really wasn’t much of a detective. Who would ever have thought that Melville—the bore in the Richmond bar—might turn out to hold the key to the whole case? I was almost amused at the accidental way I had managed to obtain the clue to what Directive 12 was, and where it had been implemented. But Melville was wrong about one thing. Directive 12 had nothing to do with a secret nuclear facility, and everything to do with the empty file from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs that Anna and I had found in the old Hotel de Inmigrantes. I was certain of that.

  20

  BUENOS AIRES, 1950

  I TELEPHONED ANNA and told her to meet me for lunch at around two o’clock, at the Shorthorn Grill on Corrientes. Then I drove to the house in Arenales, where von Bader and the colonel were waiting for me. After what Isabel Pekerman had told me at the Club Seguro, I knew I was probably wasting my time, but I wanted to see how the two of them behaved without her. And how their story would sound in the light of what I now knew. Not that I knew anything very much for sure. That would have been too much to expect. I supposed that von Bader was planning to go to Switzerland and that Evita wasn’t about to let him go until the real baroness produced Fabienne.

  There were a number of reasons why the real baroness might have disappeared with Evita’s daughter. Always supposing that Fabienne really was Evita’s daughter. Some of it was to do with the Reichsbank’s accounts in Zurich, but I couldn’t see how exactly. The bottom line of it was that I’d been led in a merry dance by Colonel Montalbán. I knew what his motives were for having me reopen a twenty-year-old murder investigation. He’d explained these to me quite clearly. But the only possible explanation for his not telling me that Fabienne had gone into hiding with her mother was that he knew for sure that they were hiding out with one of the old comrades. In any event, he had a reason for arranging the charade involving Isabel Pekerman. The colonel wasn’t the kind of man who did anything without a good reason.

  “Won’t your wife be joining us?” I asked von Bader as he closed the door of the drawing room behind us.

  “I’m afraid not,” he answered coolly. “She’s at our weekend house, in Pilar. I’m afraid this has all been a dreadful strain for her.”

  “I’m sure it must have been,” I said. “Still. That makes it easier, I suppose.” Seeing his blank face, I added, “To talk about Fabienne’s real mother with you now.” I let him squirm for a moment and then said, “The president’s wife told me all about it.”

  “Oh, I see. Yes, it does.”

  “She said your daughter overheard the two of you arguing, and then ran away.”

  “Yes. I’m sorry I had to mislead you a little, Herr Gunther,” said von Bader. He was wearing a different suit but the same look of easy affluence. His gray hair had been trimmed since last we’d met. His fingernails were shorter, too, but bitten rather than manicured. And bitten down to the quick. “But I was, still am, very worried that something might have happened to her.”

  “Is Fabienne close to her stepmother, would you say?”

  “Yes. Very. I mean she treats my wife like she’s her real mother. And to everyone who knows us, that’s the way it’s always been. Evita has had very little to do with her daughter until comparatively recently.”

  I looked at Colonel Montalbán. “What made you think she might have chosen to hide out with a German family? And in case you didn’t recognize it, Colonel, that’s a straight question of the kind that deserves a straight answer.”

  “I think I can answer that, Herr Gunther,” said von Bader. “Fabienne is a very sophisticated little girl. She knows a great deal about the war and what went on and how it is that so many Germans such as yourself have chosen to live here in Argentina. You might even say that Fabienne was a National Socialist. She herself would say that she was. My wife and I sometimes argued about that.

  “The reason the colonel wanted you to search among our old comrades here in Argentina is really quite simple. Because it was Fabienne herself who had suggested she might run away and seek sanctuary with one of them. She was often threatening it after the discovery that Evita was her real mother. Fabienne could be cruel like that. She said who better to hide her than one who was himself in hiding. I know this seems a strange thing for a father to say about his own daughter, but Fabienne is a very charismatic sort of girl. Her photographs don’t do her justice. She is quintessentially Aryan and, among those who have met her, there is general consensus that the Führer himself would have been captivated by her. If you ever saw Leni Riefenstahl in The Blue Light, Herr Gunther, you’ll know the sort of thing.”

  I’d seen the picture. An Alpine picture, they called it. The Alps had been the best thing in it.

  “To that extent, she is truly Evita’s daughter. Since you’ve met her, I assume you will know what I’m talking about.”

  I nodded. “All right. I get the picture. She’s everyone’s little sweet-heart. Geli Raubel, Leni Riefenstahl, Eva Braun, and Eva Perón all rolled into one precocious siren. Why didn’t you level with me before?”

  “We weren’t at liberty to do so,” said the colonel. “Evita didn’t want her secret to be told to anyone. Her enemies would use this kind of information to destroy her. However, eventually I persuaded her to talk to you about it, and now you know everything.”

  “Hmmm.”

  “What does that mean?” asked the colonel.

  “It means maybe I do and maybe I don’t and maybe I’m used to not expecting to know the difference. And besides, she’s his daughter, so why would he want to lie about it, except that people will lie about anything, of course, and on any occasion, except when there’s a month with an X in it.” I lit a cigarette. “These old comrades that she met. Did they have names?”

  “About a year ago,” said von Bader, “my wife and I held a garden party to welcome many of the old comrades to Argentina.”

  “Very hospitable of you, I’m sure.”

  “One of my former colleagues was in charge of the guest list. Dr. Heinrich Dorge. Formerly, he was aide to Dr. Schacht. Hitler’s finance minister?”

  I nodded.

  “Fabienne was the star of the party,” said her father. “She was so fresh, so captivating that many men seemed to quite forget why they were here. I remember she sang a nu
mber of old German songs. My wife played the piano. Fabienne moved many of them to tears. She was remarkable.” He paused. “Dr. Dorge is dead, I’m afraid. He had an accident. Which means we are unable to remember everyone who was there. Certainly there must have been as many as one hundred and fifty old comrades. Possibly even more than that.”

  “And you think she’s hiding with one of them, is that it?”

  “I’d say it was a strong possibility.”

  “One that is still worth checking,” added the colonel. “Which is why I would like you to keep going with your previous inquiry. There are still a great many names you haven’t yet spoken to.”

  “True,” I said. “But look here, it’s my guess that if she hasn’t been found it’s because she’s no longer in Buenos Aires. The chances are she’s somewhere in the country. Tucumán, perhaps. There are lots of old comrades up there, working for Capri on the dam at La Quiroga. Maybe I should go and look for her up there.”

  “We already did,” said the colonel. “But why not? Perhaps we missed something. When can you leave?”

  “I’ll catch the evening train.”

  THERE WERE ONLY two dishes on the menu at the Shorthorn Grill: beef with vegetables, and beef on its own. There was a lot of beef displayed on skewers in the window, and pictures of various beef cuts—cooked and uncooked—hung on the roast-beef-colored walls. A steer’s head surveyed the restaurant and its patrons with glassy-eyed bewilderment. As fast as the beef was cooked and carried to the tables, it was eaten, in companionable silence, as if beef were something much too serious to be interrupted with conversation. It was the kind of place where even your shoe leather felt a little nervous.

  Anna was sitting in a corner, behind a table covered with a red-checked cloth. Above her head was a lithograph featuring a gaucho roping a steer. There was pain in her eyes, but I didn’t think it was because she was a vegetarian. As soon as I sat down, a waiter came over and heaped some beef sausage and red peppers onto our plates. Most of the other waiters had eyebrows that met in the middle; our waiter had eyebrows that had already mated. I ordered a bottle of red wine, the kind I knew Anna liked, made of grapes and alcohol. When he’d gone, I laid my hand on top of hers.