Basic Law

by J Sydney Jones

“Reni confided in you, didn’t she?” Kramer hurries on. “Back in 1968, before she knew anything about your past, she came to you one weekend with a rented car and told you about a silly, noble scheme to throw leaflets from a building in Prague. And you told Gorik about it.You were the one she drove to; you whom she trusted.”

  Müller’s eyes close slowly, then re-open. There is moisture in them.

  “She was a little fool, Sam. Bound to take a fall with all her radical politics. She never understood the cynical realities of the world. Survival is the name of the game. Survival at any cost. Under any system. That’s why I did it. I wanted to teach her a lesson. To scare her away from this peace and freedom nonsense. Instead, the bomb drove her even further away from me, radicalizing her even more. You were just playing at life, all of you. I wanted to save her, protect her.”

  “Regardless of whose lives you ruined; of what innocent bystanders might be killed.”

  “She was my daughter. She came first.”

  Kramer can see Müller’s finger tightening on the trigger.

  “And so she killed herself to keep from having to turn you in. Does that make you feel proud of your daughter? Proud of her love? Or sick at the cost you made her pay?”

  He thinks he has gone too far, for Müller’s finger tightens even more on the trigger, his eyes close down to slits.

  “That is what happened, isn’t it? After learning about you and Gorik, and faced with protecting you a second time, she could no longer live with herself. She was caught in the ultimate dilemma: her love for you versus her love of justice. For what is fair. The only way out for her was to kill herself and leave a trail of clues that someone might follow back to you. That way it wouldn’t be her turning you in, but instead blind justice working its path to you.”

  Müller clenches his jaw, then slowly nods. “She was cold by the time I arrived. The memoirs were there. She left instructions for me to dispose of them as I saw fit. Does that satisfy you, Sam? Does that clear up the last mysteries before you die?”

  “Why Gorik?” Kramer asks quickly. “Why kill him?”

  A sudden grin crosses Müller’s face, “The fellow was double-dipping, wasn’t he? I assumed it could only be from him that Reni learned of my little secret. He was a paid informant for her memoirs. Yet, since reunification, I’ve been paying him quite handsomely to keep such secrets to himself. So, you see, Herr Gorik earned his death, Sam. I have no regrets there.”

  “No regrets about Gerhard, either?”

  Müller looks at Kramer quizzically for a moment.

  “Did you have him killed to keep your Nazi past a secret? What did you do, hire some of Vogel’s goons to do your dirty work for you?”

  Müller continues to stare dumbly at Kramer, and suddenly a shout breaks the silence.

  “Dive, Kramer!”

  Kramer hesitates a moment, but does not need to be told twice. Müller’s eyes are averted toward the voice momentarily and Kramer throws himself into the water. Dull explosions sound above the surface; spears of foam and bubbles crisscross his head as bullets rip past him, their trajectory skewed by the water. Kramer holds his breath as long as possible, hearing more distant explosions in the pool room above. His heart thumps in his ears, and his lungs feel about to burst. Finally, he can stand it no longer and exhales a stream of bubbles, but his oilskin jacket and the weight of the useless pistol in the pocket hold him down. He sees black dots before his eyes, thinks that he must surely die before finding air again, and then his head suddenly breaks the surface, and he is flooded in light and the loud hum of the pool heater. A pair of legs in blue worsted slacks stands above him at the edge of the pool. A quick look to the other end shows him Müller still draped in the white towel, though now it has turned crimson. He is sprawled next to the water, one hand drooping over the edge, leaking blood into the water.

  “Come on out, Kramer. It’s safe now.”

  Kramer has trouble pulling himself out, for his clothes are weighted with water. His tweed cap is slowly sinking at the far end of the pool. Kommissar Boehm reaches down and gives him a hand out of the pool.

  “He’s dead?” Kramer asks, dripping water onto the tile floor.

  “Afraid so.” Boehm’s face is pained.

  “I thought the deal was we take him alive. I get him to talk, then we take him.”

  “Some things don’t work out the way you plan, Kramer. He didn’t give me much choice. Where I was standing, he looked about ready to empty his pistol into you. But don’t thank me for saving your hide. It would be out of character.”

  Kramer looks over to Müller’s crumpled body, smells the cordite in the air through the chlorine.

  “It’s over, Kramer,” Boehm says, looking at the crumpled form of Müller now. “Over and done with.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  “So you’re back?” Kate doesn’t take her hands off the keyboard as Kramer enters the door to the office.

  He hangs his cap and jacket before saying anything. “I still have a job?”

  Kate smiles, then nods. “I got your story out this morning to Marty. He thought it was, quote ‘fucking marvelous’ unquote.”

  Kramer stands with his back against the door and hands in the pockets of his bagged out cords. “Thanks, Kate. I mean it.”

  “Jesus, don’t get maudlin first day back. It was a good story. The last of the war criminals brought to justice and our bureau chief in on the kill. Marty figures we’ll increase circ by four or five points on the strength of it.”

  “Great.”

  “Come on, Kramer. Why so glum-looking? It’s over. You can go back to fudging stories from CNN now.”

  He forces a smile; there’s still a sour taste in the back of his throat. One way to get rid of the past: kill all the players off.

  “Too bad you couldn’t pin anything on that Vogel creep,” Kate says. “I’d love to see his slick ass in jail.”

  “Nothing to pin, it turns out,” Kramer tells her. “I’ve got a follow-up, but it’s a sidebar. Not the main story. Müller was our man all along. The thugs he hired to do his dirty work have probably done a scamper to Iraq by now, though.”

  He looks around the office. Nothing’s changed. Palms and fancy new furniture look just the same as they did before he went tilting at windmills, though he feels fundamentally altered. Reni’s final legacy—he cares once again. He’s not sure what he cares about, but at least the facility is there, functioning.

  “I imagine my desk is swamped,” he says, heading toward his office. And he is right. He spends the next few days crawling out of the mountain of paper on his desk; stories from stringers and news wires all sorted neatly by Kate into urgent and less urgent mounds. He rails at it at first, but soon settles down to the task. It keeps his mind from wandering where he does not want it to go just now. Focuses himself on a job. He knows he has to make a decision about Reni’s memoirs soon, but not now. Not until things have settled, until he can see clearly again.

  Two weeks later, Kramer raises a glass of beer in a toast: “To Reni and Gerhard.”

  The others do the same, saying the names with a hushed reverence as if not wanting to invoke spirits or remind themselves too profoundly of the reason for this gathering. Glasses and steins are knocked together, the beer drunk. Then there is a good thirty seconds of uncomfortable silence.

  “They going to feed us sometime?” Margit looks around the crowded Viennese gasthaus, trying to spot a waiter.

  Kramer is suddenly happy Rick decided to bring her along.

  “They’re going to serve it family-style in a few minutes,” Kramer explains to her. “It’s all arranged.”

  “You mean I don’t get to order?” She glares at Rick. “I hope you told them I’m a vegetarian.”

  Kramer and Maria exchange amused glances; his stomach does a minor flip-flop at her smile.

  “Thi
s is not exactly tofu heaven,” Randall says by way of warning.

  Rick pats Margit’s hand. “I’m sure there will be something for you to eat.”

  She grins at him lasciviously. “I love it when you talk dirty to me.”

  No more muffled speech for Rick. His bandages are off, but the scars look like ridged pink worms on his face and hands.

  Helmut sits quietly through all this, Kramer notices, peering at them through his round glasses, just as he used to back in 1968.

  “It’s too bad Katia couldn’t make it,” Kramer says to him.

  Helmut shrugs and settles back in his chair. “To be frank with you, she did not want to come. Nor did she think that I should come. Why have you brought us all together, Sam?”

  Maria looks at Helmut out of the corner of her eye. They have not said a direct word to one another yet.

  “It’s called a reunion,” Randall says, preempting Kramer’s response. “The idea is to have fun. You remember that concept, don’t you?”

  “You know,” Margit says, staring at Randall, “you’re sort of cute. Weird, but cute.”

  Randall nods to her. “Your lady friend has excellent taste, Rick.”

  “I think Sam wants us all to like one another again,” Maria suddenly suddenly, looking straight down at her glass of beer. “He’s a sentimentalist.”

  She looks up at Kramer with those liquid eyes of hers, and he thinks he might agree to anything she says.

  “I’ve been accused of it on occasion,” he says.

  Maria turns to Helmut. “I imagine he thinks it is a pity for old friends to lose one another in a highly unfriendly world. I feel the same way.”

  Helmut cuts his eyes from Maria’s for a moment, then looks straight at her, returning her open smile. Randall is sitting between Maria and Helmut, but they manage to link hands across him.

  “I’m sorry, Maria …” Helmut begins.

  “No,” she says. “Nothing to be sorry for. You couldn’t have helped me in Prague. It was all arranged. All set up.”

  Helmut holds her hand as if reluctant to let it go. Finally, their hands drift apart and Randall leans forward again, elbows on the table.

  “What I don’t get,” he says, “is the purple car.”

  The others look confused for a moment, and then the waiter brings a platter of golden, flaky schnitzels, setting it in the middle of the large, round table. A cloth covers the dark wood, stitched in golden threads representing hops. A heavy wrought-iron chandelier is overhead; dark wainscoting on the walls. The pleasant hum of voices and click of silverware against dishes comes from other tables.

  Margit looks disappointedly at the platter of schnitzels for a moment, “I hope those aren’t veal. You ever see how they raise calves?”

  Then the same waiter brings more platters of deep-fried mushrooms and cheese, and a huge bowl of salad made from fresh butter lettuce from Israel.

  “That’s more like it,” she says, reaching a blue-fingernailed hand out to retrieve one of the crusty, steaming mushrooms and plop it into her mouth with sexual ferocity, nostrils flaring and eyes rolling as if in orgasm.

  Rick doesn’t seem to notice or, if he does, is only amused while the rest of the men look on in a sort of dumb, numb awe.

  “What purple car?” Rick says as they all begin helping themselves.

  “You explain, Sam,” Randall says as he spears a hefty schnitzel with his fork.

  “I guess it’s our red herring,” Kramer says, looking at each of the other five in turn; Maria to his immediate left, then Randall, Helmut, Margit, and Rick to his right. “A bad color scheme, I know, but it kept us diverted enough so that we never focused on Reni’s father.”

  “Could you perhaps take it from the beginning for those of us unfamiliar with the players?” Helmut says in his stilted English. “So Reni really did kill herself?”

  Kramer nods. “Right. That’s where it all started for me.” He looks to his left. “And for Randall. She killed herself because she couldn’t bring herself to turn her father in for his Nazi past or for his spying for former East Germany. But she left tantalizing little clues around for me to follow. She even left a message for Randall so he would come knocking on my cage if I was too lazy to self-start.”

  “It’s like she was still here,” Rick says. “Like she stage-managed the whole thing, even tonight’s reunion.”

  “Maybe,” Kramer allows. In fact, it was one of her last wishes, expressed in the letter to him, that he gather the old gang one last time.

  Margit cuts a large section of baked cheese, wrapping melted tentacles of it around her fork and stuffing it into her mouth, chewing happily. She swallows and looks skeptically at Kramer.

  “She loved her father that much?” she says. “After learning all she did about him?”

  “I don’t know if it’s love we’re talking about here,” Kramer says. “More like an obsession.”

  He can still see the wall of photos at Inheritance, the minute recording of her life with her father, the paucity of photos with the other men in her life.

  Margit drinks some beer, wipes the foam from her mouth with her wrist. “I would have turned the bastard in.” She looks at Maria. “He ruined your life.”

  Maria is about to speak, thinks better of it and merely smiles at Margit.

  “So all right,” Helmut says. “Reni finds out about her father twice, cannot deal with it, ends her life, but leaves clues that might lead you,” he nods at Kramer, “to Herr Müller. But what about this purple car?”

  Kramer is still looking at his mental picture of Reni’s photo wall.

  “Sam?” Helmut says again.

  Maria touches his forearm, bringing him back to the discussion at hand.

  “Sorry. The purple car. It kept turning up everywhere we searched. It was a purple car in Berlin that killed Gorik, Müller’s East German control. One may have been parked outside Reni’s house around the time she … died. A similar car almost ran me down in Bad Lunsburg. But it turns out that they were all coincidence. Kommissar Boehm even tracked one to Vogel.”

  “Who?” Margit asks, setting her fork down hard.

  Kramer repeats the sentence.

  Margit sucks her lips, looking at Rick and running a forefinger up his arm playfully, then finally looks back to Kramer.

  “You mix with very strange company, Kramer,” she says.

  Two hours later, after finishing the heavy meal and consuming several pints of beer and a couple of thimbles full of Hungarian peach brandy each, the six of them gather outside the gasthaus, under the glow of a streetlamp.

  “We should have gone Dutch,” Helmut is still protesting.

  “You pick up the tab next time,” Kramer says. Tonight has pretty well topped out the plastic, but what the hell. Cost accountancy has never been his strong suit. He figures it was worth every groschen the meal cost to get old friends together again.

  “It was great, Sam,” Margit says, grabbing him in her strong arms and squeezing him like a melon she is testing for freshness. “We must do it again. Munich next time. Right, Rick?”

  Rick is feeling the effects of the booze after a long period of abstinence and can only manage a nod of his head.

  “Come on, lover.” Margit grabs his hand. “Time to tuck you in.”

  Helmut shakes hands all around, pecking Maria’s cheek lightly. “Time for me to sleep, as well. I’ve got an early flight tomorrow.” He is about to hurry off after Rick and Margit, who are headed up the street to the pension where Kramer has booked rooms for them, but stops and flashes a broad smile. “It really was great seeing you again. We’ll stay in touch, right?”

  “Right,” Kramer and Randall say in unison, and then they all laugh.

  “Seriously?” Helmut says.

  “Most adamantly and seriously,” Maria answers him in an all-b
usiness tone of voice.

  Helmut jogs up the street to catch Margit, who is swaying as she tries to guide Rick along the pavement. Kramer, Randall, and Maria stand silently for a time, watching as Helmut catches the others up and swings Rick’s left arm over his shoulders, helping to half-carry him along.

  “He ain’t heavy,” Randall begins singing the old song.

  Maria, between the two of them, suddenly wraps her arms around their shoulders. “I want to sleep at your place tonight, okay, Sam? It’s too lonely at the pension.”

  “Sure.” Kramer likes the feel of her thin arm draped over his shoulder. “I’ll take the couch. Randall, you get the floor.”

  “Hey, we toss for it,” Randall says.

  Maria looks up into Kramer’s face. “I mean with you, Sam.”

  “Whoa,” Randall says, and whistles lowly.

  A mischievous grin passes over Maria’s face. “Aren’t I awful? The brazen hussy. But if there’s one thing I learned from all those years in prison, it’s to not wait for what you want. Life is long, desire short.”

  “A philosopher,” Randall jokes.

  Kramer is looking into her face, searching out her eyes, trying to examine his own feelings, trying to figure out if he really wants the roller coaster of emotional attachment to begin once again.

  “I’d like that,” he finally says. Then to Randall, “And no jokes.”

  “I wasn’t thinking of any,” Randall says. “Looks like I’ll be using that pension room.”

  He has the flat back in a semblance of shape; even dug the nails out of the wooden Madonna in the hall. Maria scampers off to the bedroom while Kramer uses the facilities.

  She is already under the eiderdown when Kramer enters the darkened bedroom. The streetlight outside plays on the white coverlet like a harvest moon.

  She wriggles her feet under the covers. “Hurry, Sam. The sheets are freezing.”

  He strips quickly, his back to Maria, then jumps in beside her, feeling a pocket of warm air and then the velvety smoothness of her thigh against his. She is on her back, eyes closed and smiling up at some secret images or thoughts. On his left side, he props his head in his hand and looks down at her face. There is a lovely luminosity to it, as if the hard years only worked to soften her, to complete her.