Basic Law

by J Sydney Jones

  She pauses, taking her hand out of Kramer’s and looking at him. “She said you two were together for a time.”

  “For a time,” Kramer says. “It didn’t work out.”

  “No,” Maria replies. “I never thought it would. You two were light-years apart. Reni has … had a worldly type of ambition that precludes real closeness. The type of person to have connections rather than friends.”

  Kramer says nothing, waiting for her to continue. Randall pats her shoulder consolingly.

  “But that is unkind,” she quickly adds. “Reni was good enough to come and see me when I requested it. Though there was trepidation in her eyes. I could see that when she came in here.”

  “You waited a long time to get in touch with her,” Kramer says.

  “Yes.” Maria holds her head between her hands for a moment, then looks up, first at Randall and then at Kramer. “I didn’t want to get in touch with her; with any of you, truth be told. The memories were too painful.” She fixes Kramer in her gaze. “Gerhard is dead, too? Together?”

  Kramer shakes his head. “Reni was killed in Germany. Gerhard was shot a couple of days ago in Crete. I’m sure it’s the same person behind both deaths.”

  “Poor lovable Gary,” Maria says. “He was harmless, really. If he knew anything, it was quite by accident, you can be sure of that.” She sits back in the chair, saying nothing for a time.

  “So why?” Kramer persists. “What did you want to talk to Reni about?”

  She ignores this, taking the story at her own pace. “I didn’t want to dredge up the past, you see. I really just wanted to get on with a new life. So many years wasted. I felt like Kaspar Hauser coming out of the root cellar into the light of day. But it wouldn’t work. To put the past away, I had to settle things finally.”

  “The car bomb?” Kramer says.

  She jerks her head to him. “So you knew?”

  “Helmut suspected it might be something like that. But that’s only recently.”

  “Helmut.” She says his name softly. “He left me there. Police swarming all around.” She goes into herself for a moment, then sighs again. “But there was nothing he could do but try and save himself. They knew, you see. The police here. Somebody had told them. And somebody had set the bomb under that car, timed to go off in Prague.”

  “Who?” It is almost a scream from Kramer.

  She moistens her lips, looking straight ahead.

  “Reni, of course. That’s why I called her. I had to confront her with it. To get it out of me once and for all.”

  Kramer thinks of this for a time. “How could you know it was her?”

  “I overheard them, you see. Sorry. I don’t mean to sound so mysterious. It’s just that there were so few people in my life for so many years, that I got accustomed to referring to them by pronouns. I mean my warden, my interrogator, the man who handled my case from the beginning. I heard him talking once early on in the questioning. He was German and spoke to a colleague over the phone, thinking I wouldn’t be able to make out his language. And he said quite clearly, ‘Müller set it. We have that all taken care of. It’s all been arranged. Absolute secrecy on that front.’”

  “But that could mean anything,” Kramer says.

  “No, Sam,” she replies. “Not anything. It was at a crucial part of the interrogation. I got the feeling that my warden’s masters were getting nervous. That they thought this might backfire into some sort of international incident against the Prague regime, rather than against the West. My interrogator was convincing him not to worry, that Müller was the one who set it. That Reni could be trusted to keep her mouth shut.”

  “But why?” Kramer asks. “What would have been in it for her?”

  Maria shakes her head. “We were all great leftists then. Maybe Reni actually believed the party line.”

  “No way,” Kramer says. “I lived with her, loved her. I knew her.” But Eva Martok’s revelations have already made him question how well he knew Reni.

  “Well, whatever Reni’s reasons, it was her,” Maria says. “I’m sure Gorik said ‘Müller’ over the phone.”

  Randall and Kramer blurt out together, “Gorik?”

  “My interrogator. The one who let the name slip. He was with East German intelligence, but was posted in Prague. I would see him from time to time. You see, I never confessed. I think it was a point of pride with him that he could force a confession out of me. Nothing so crude as physical torture, though. Only the carrot of freedom dangled in front of me if I would invent a confession for the world.”

  “Gorik’s dead, too,” Kramer says. “Hit-and-run in Berlin.”

  She does not respond to this; it is as if the news of deaths have numbed her momentarily.

  “What did you say to Reni when you saw her?” Randall suddenly asks.

  Maria thinks about this for a moment. “Well, the truth, I guess. I mean we talked about old times for a bit, picking up the traces. But then I just couldn’t stand it any longer. I had to tell her I knew. That I had overheard Gorik use her name in a phone conversation.”

  “What did she say?” Kramer says.

  “Nothing. That was the strange thing.”

  “She didn’t deny it?” Randall says.

  “No. But her eyes … they were terrified. It was like the bottom had fallen out of her world. As if her last idol had failed her.”

  She looks from Randall to Kramer. “Don’t worry. I didn’t kill her or have her killed. The need for vengeance was drained from me by my tenth year in prison. I had to dream of positive things in order to survive. A love of revenge would have dried me up, would have killed me, boxed up like I was in prison.”

  But it doesn’t make sense to Kramer. Okay, say Reni set the bomb and that Maria’s knowing it and confronting her with it drove her to suicide. How to explain Gerhard’s death then? No, whoever was eliminating witnesses or memory is still a player, Kramer figures.

  “Anything else about her visit that you can remember?” Kramer says.

  She shakes her head. “Just those eyes, empty and terrified. I told her it was okay; that I wasn’t interested in retribution. I just wanted to know why she did it, but she wouldn’t respond. Finally, she left. One thing she did say—‘I’m so awfully sorry I can’t give you the years back, Maria.’ Something like that, anyway. It was the closest she came to an apology. The closest Reni could come.”

  They huddle together in silence for a time, thinking their separate thoughts. Kramer steals a glance at Randall.

  “It really doesn’t make any sense,” Randall says, looking up suddenly and catching Kramer’s eyes. “Reni was not my favorite person, but I can’t see her setting a bomb and sending a good friend to prison, all for the sake of some dubious propaganda coup.”

  “I’m sure I heard Gorik right,” Maria says. “I didn’t want to believe it, either.”

  “And that was the last time you saw Reni?” Kramer asks.

  “Yes.” Suddenly, she leans forward in the chair and then rises. “But not the last word I had.”

  She crosses to her desk, goes around to the drawers, and opens the top one under the writing surface. Her hand comes up with an orange envelope.

  “You see, I was expecting you,” she says to Kramer. “Reni told me to. In the event you came here, I was to give you this.”

  She hands the envelope to Kramer. He takes it and feels a weight heavier than paper in it. Looking inside, all he sees is a key, short and fat. Turning the envelope on end and shaking the key out, he sees it has a few simple notches cut in it and the number 301A etched on the grip end. A white paper tag attached by a string through the hole in the top of the key has an inscription: Bank Austria.

  Kramer holds the key in his palm for a moment, realizing with a thudding heart that it might well unlock the mysteries of this case. Randall looks over his shoulder at it.
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  “Looks like it belongs to a safe-deposit box,” Randall says.

  “No other message with this?” Kramer asks Maria.

  She stands, her fingertips on the desk. “Only a note telling me I should give this to you when I see you.”

  Kramer looks at the postmark on the envelope. It was mailed October 23. Just about the time of Reni’s death. He begins to get the uncomfortable feeling that Reni had been scheming one last time; had set one of her elaborate plans for them all. Got you last.

  “Looks like we need to get back to Vienna, Sam,” Randall says.

  Kramer nods, curling his fingers over the key and then shoving it into his right front pants pocket along with his car keys.

  “You can’t stay the night?” Maria says. “I have a tiny apartment, but there are a couple of extra sleeping bags.”

  There is nothing more that Kramer would like to do at the moment. Looking at Maria with the light in back of her shining golden through her hair, he would love to fold her in his arms and lie with her forever; to be at peace for once. Before, he’s always looked for excitement in women; with Maria he senses the calm that he longs for.

  “We can’t,” he says. “But I’ll be back. I promise.”

  She smiles, lifting her hands from the desk and folding her arms over her breasts, hugging herself.

  “Sure.”

  “Believe me, okay?” Kramer searches out her eyes, but she is looking down at manuscripts on her desk.

  Kramer and Randall leave the building and cross the square by the Starý Židovský Hřbitov. The smell of water from the river is strong; a sharp wind has come up, cutting through Kramer’s jacket. He still has not put the wool liner in.

  Looking at the tumble of stones in the cemetery for a moment, Kramer remembers it is said that there are more than a dozen layers of burials there, and he believes it the way the ground on top has subsided. Tombstones lean against one another under the bare trees like broken and plundered megalithic tombs. Someone has painted a red swastika on the entrance.

  Suddenly, his eye is struck by something else. A purple car turns into the square, cruising close to the curb, headed straight for them. It bounces up onto the sidewalk, and Kramer just has time to shove Randall out of the way, both of them falling against the entrance to the cemetery as the car speeds past, narrowly missing them. It stops only yards away, and Kramer does not waste time seeing who gets out. He’s up and running, Randall in back, into the cemetery.

  Not again, he thinks, running along the dirt path between stones. Not bloody again.

  A spray of dust and chips flies off a stone to his right; he can hear Randall’s feet in back of him, his heavy breathing getting further and further away. Another spray of stone chips to his left and suddenly he realizes they’re shooting. But he hasn’t heard shots. He dives off the path into a clutter of tombstones that lay tumbled against one another like a child’s building blocks. Randall has tripped on the path, then scrambles to the other side, protected by stones. Kramer can see the two men moving toward them, the barrels of the pistols in their hands elongated. Silencers, he thinks. That’s why they dare to come after us in the middle of the day. Silent death.

  But you don’t have to be a victim this time, he tells himself. Don’t have to be the fox running from the hunters. He feels a knot in his stomach. Another fusillade of shots rips through the bushes near his tombstone, tears at the rock surface, and pings off the metal fence in back of him. He shuts down his mind as he pulls a Walther out of his coat pocket, flicks the safety off. Keeping his head well below the top of the stones, he rolls right. He holds the pistol in both hands ahead of him, elbows steady on the wet ground, then pulls off two quick shots that buck the gun up in his hands and set his ears ringing. The shots are wide, but they make the shooters take cover. Pigeons flap away at the sharp report as Kramer rolls back to safety.

  “Sam, did you bring the other gun? Toss it to me.”

  Randall is huddled in back of a griffin-surmounted tombstone. His voice gives his location away. A shower of rock splinters fills the air and silenced bullets rip through brush on both sides of him.

  “Sam? You hear me?”

  Kramer rolls to his right again, but this time they’re waiting for him. Bullets thud into the earth in front of him, and he scrambles back to cover behind his stone.

  Kramer takes the second pistol out of his pocket, snicks the safety off, and then tosses it across the path. Randall bobbles it, finally catching it against his stomach.

  “How do I use it?” he says.

  “Pull the trigger,” Kramer yells.

  “Isn’t there a safety or something?”

  “It’s off.”

  “Jesus! You trying to kill me, Sam?”

  Kramer rolls left this time, toward the path; shooting wild, but shooting. Making enough noise to be heard above the growl of traffic outside the cemetery. He sees Randall examine his gun, then has no more time for thinking as bullets kick mud at him and he rolls for cover once again. Shots ring out from Randall’s position now. Kramer looks across the path; Randall is opening and closing his jaw as if to make his ears pop.

  “Keep shooting, Randall!” Movement to his far right makes Kramer swing around toward the fence, nearly pulling off a quick round at a small boy with big eyes, wearing jeans and a University of Prague sweatshirt, who is watching him like a television. Kramer waves him away, out of the line of fire. The kid doesn’t move.

  Kramer makes a dive across the path to take the trajectory of bullets away from the kid. He lands hard, knocking the breath out of himself. Bullets rip leaves over his head and more shots ring out from Randall’s position only yards away. Kramer shoots and rolls for cover and then hears a metallic clicking to his left, from Randall’s position.

  “Any more bullets, Sam?”

  Plenty, Kramer thinks. All in the car. Well done. He pokes his head up momentarily, pulls off another round, then hears the sickening click of his own empty chamber with the next.

  He’s down and covered, his back to the tombstone. It’s cold as death and he wonders what to do now. He’s about to start using his vocal cords when he hears the high wail of a siren in the distance. Another round of silenced shots tears through the foliage between him and Randall as the sirens get closer and closer. Kramer hears rustling in the brush from the shooters, a scrambling of footsteps. Here it comes, he thinks. Coming for us to finish the job. The gun is warm and useless in his hands. He looks to Randall who is still working his jaw, trying for hearing.

  But the sound of steps is not coming toward them. Kramer looks around the side of the rock just in time to see the backs of the two men racing out of the cemetery and heading for their car.

  “Come on, Randall.”

  Kramer is up, but Randall stays huddled behind his tombstone. Kramer goes to him and shakes him. Randall looks up with wide eyes.

  “You okay?”

  Randall shakes his head, taps at his right ear with the palm of his hand. “My ears.”

  “Come on.” Kramer hears the car start. “They’re getting away.”

  But Randall stays put. “I rather think that we should let them.” He aims toward the sky and pulls the trigger of his empty pistol again.

  The sirens grow louder and louder; clearly they are headed for the cemetery.

  The squealing of tires comes from near the entrance as the shooters’ car pulls away.

  “Time we get lost,” Kramer says. “I don’t feel like explaining to the Prague police what we’re doing holding a shoot-out in their town.”

  Kramer pockets his gun, wiping the dirt from his jacket. Randall gets to his feet and does likewise. The kid is still staring at them as they leave the cemetery, and Kramer puts his fingers to his lips, smiling at the boy. The kid looks at him once more, then turns and races out of the square. Kramer and Randall do the same, running past sho
cked-looking pedestrians coming out of hiding places in doorways; one step ahead of the police cars converging from two directions. They stop running after two blocks and blend into the other pedestrians of the Old Town, a couple of day-trippers ogling the sights.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  The train pulls into Franz-Josefs-Bahnhof at 6:12 the next morning. As the brakes screech, Kramer opens the curtains on his sleeping compartment, one of only four on the slow milk-run from Prague. He casts bleary eyes at the huge, gray, unbroken mass of the Karl Marx-Hof apartment complex across the tracks, then makes his way to the exit. Kramer looks back and forth along the short concrete platform before descending: no waiting party.

  He left his easily traced car with Randall, who stayed in Prague at Maria’s in case the goons decided to come back. But Kramer doubts they will. Like me, he figures, they must feel the search drawing to an end. They must know the lines are converging. As he walks briskly along the platform, Kramer taps his pants’ pocket. The key to the safe-deposit box is there.

  Another look along the platform; no suspicious-looking people, only the station master in a long blue cape and red-tipped signal baton looking like a kid dressed in play clothes. In the main hall, the station coffee shop is open, and Kramer ducks in for a quick cup. He’s got time to kill before the bank opens; no going home or to the office.

  They know my routines, he tells himself as he sips on the mocha he ordered, standing at the bar. They know my addresses and friends. So all the old familiar haunts are off-limits.

  He finishes the coffee and notices some fresh brioches under a plastic lid on the zinc counter and orders another cup and a roll to go with it this time. The night train has given Kramer plenty of time to think; plenty of time to try to put things together. The killers, for instance. He thinks he recognized one of them yesterday—the huge no-neck bodyguard in civvies at Vogel’s headquarters. The one who had frisked him.

  Was he the same one in Crete? Kramer wonders. He can’t be sure, for there it had all been surprise and terror. Distances were greater, as well. But he figures it’s a safe working hypothesis to assume the man was one of those who killed Gerhard. Which would place Vogel right in the center of things: Reni’s murderer; Gorik’s, too. But why?