by Ira Levin
Beynon picked up half his egg-salad sandwich and bit into it determinedly.
“He went home to Germany after the war,” Liebermann went on. “His family is rich there, in Günzburg; farm machinery. But his name began to come up in the trials, so ODESSA got him out and into South America. We found him there and chased him from city to city: Buenos Aires, Bariloche, Asunción. Since ’59 he lives in the jungle, in a settlement by a river on the Brazil and Paraguay border. He has an army of bodyguards, and Paraguayan citizenship, so he can’t be extradited. But he has to lay low anyway because groups of young Jews down there still try to get him. Some of them are found floating down the river, the Paraná, with their throats cut.”
Liebermann paused. Freya tapped Beynon’s arm and asked for the wine; he passed the bottle to her.
“So the boy has a tape,” Liebermann said, looking straight ahead, his hands on his knees. “Mengele in a restaurant sending out former SS men to Germany, England, Scandinavia, and the States. To kill a bunch of sixty-five-year-old men.” He turned and smiled at Beynon. “Crazy, yes? And it’s a very important operation. The Kameradenwerk is involved too, not only Mengele. The Comrades Organization, that keeps them safe and with jobs down there. Do you like the apples, as they say?”
Beynon blinked at him and smiled. “No, I’m afraid I don’t,” he said. “Did you actually hear this tape?”
Liebermann shook his head. “No. Just when he’s ready to play it for me, there’s a knock at the door, his door, and he goes to answer it. Bumping and thumping, and a little later the phone is hung up.”
“Perfect timing,” Beynon said. “It smells rather like a hoax, don’t you think? Who is he?”
Liebermann shrugged. “A boy who heard me speak two years ago, at his university, Princeton. He came to me in August and said he wanted to work for me. Do I need new workers? I’m only using a handful of the old ones. You know, I’m assuming, that all my money, all the Center’s money, was in the Allgemeine Wirtschaftsbank.”
Beynon nodded.
“The Center is in my apartment now—all the files, a few desks, and me and my bed. The ceiling downstairs is cracking. The landlord sues me. The only new workers I need are fund-raisers, which isn’t the boy’s field of interest. So he went down to São Paulo, his own boss.”
“Not exactly someone I’d put much faith in.”
“That’s just what I think while he talks to me. And he doesn’t have all his facts right either. One of the SS men is named Mundt, he says, and he knows about this Mundt from my book. Now, in my book I know there’s no Mundt. I never heard of a Mundt. So this doesn’t increase my confidence. But still…after the bumping and thumping, while I’m calling to him to come back to the phone, there’s a certain sound, not very loud but very clear, and it’s one thing and nothing else: it’s the sound of a cassette being dejected from a tape recorder.”
“Ejected,” Beynon said.
“Not dejected? Pushed out?”
“That’s ejected. Dejected is sad, pushed down.”
“Ah.” Liebermann nodded. “Thank you. Being ejected from a tape recorder. And one thing more. It was quiet then, for a long time, and I was quiet too, putting the bumping and thumping together with the cassette sound; and in that long quiet”—he looked forebodingly at Beynon—“hate came over the phone, Sydney.” He nodded. “Hate like I never felt before, not even when Stangl looked at me in the courtroom. It came to me as plain as the boy’s voice, and maybe it was because of what he said, but I was absolutely certain the hate came from Mengele. And when the phone was hung up I was absolutely certain that Mengele hung it.” He looked away and leaned forward, his elbows on his knees, a hand gripping his other hand’s fist.
Beynon watched him, skeptical but moved. “What did you do?” he asked.
Liebermann sat up straight, rubbed his hands, looked at Beynon and shrugged. “What could I do, in Vienna at four in the morning? I wrote down what the boy said, all I could remember, and read it, and told myself that he was crazy and I was crazy. Only who…ejected the cassette and hung up the phone? Maybe it wasn’t Mengele, but it was somebody. Later, when it was morning there, I called Martin McCarthy at the U.S. Embassy in Brasília; he called the police in São Paulo, and they called the phone company and found out where the call to me came from. A hotel. The boy disappeared from it during the night. I called Pacher here and asked him if he could get Brazil to watch for the SS men—the boy said they were leaving that day—and Pacher didn’t exactly laugh at me but he said no, not without something concrete. A boy disappearing from a hotel room without paying his bill isn’t concrete. And neither is me saying SS men are leaving because the boy told me so. I tried to get the German prosecutor in charge of the Mengele case but he was out. If it was still Fritz Bauer, he would be in for me, but the new one was out.” He shrugged again, rubbed at the lobe of his ear. “So the men left Brazil, if the boy was right, and he hasn’t been found yet. His father is down there pushing the police; a well-to-do man, I understand. But he has a dead son.”
Beynon said apologetically, “I can’t very well file a story in Vienna about a—”
“No, no, no,” Liebermann interrupted, a quelling hand on Beynon’s knee. “I don’t want you to file a story. What I want you to do is this, Sydney; I’m sure it’s possible and I hope it isn’t too much trouble. The boy said the first killing will happen the day after tomorrow, October sixteenth. But he didn’t say where. Will you have your main office in London send you clippings or reports from their other offices? Of men sixty-four to sixty-six years old, murdered or dying in accidents? Anything except natural deaths, from Wednesday on. Only men sixty-four to sixty-six.”
Beynon frowned, poked at his glasses, and looked his doubts at Liebermann.
“It wasn’t a hoax, Sydney. He wasn’t a boy who would do that. He’s been missing three weeks, and he wrote home regularly, called even when he changed hotels.”
“Granted he’s probably dead,” Beynon said. “But mightn’t he have been killed simply for snooping around where he wasn’t welcome, another young fellow out after Mengele? Or even have been robbed and done away with by an ordinary thief? His death in no way proves that a…Nazi plot is under way to kill men of a particular age.”
“He had it on tape. Why would he lie to me?”
“Perhaps he didn’t. The tape might have been a hoax on him. Or maybe he was misinterpreting it.”
Liebermann drew a breath, let it out, and nodded. “I know,” he said. “That’s possible. That’s what I thought myself at first. And still think sometimes. But somebody has to check a little, and if I don’t, who will? If he was wrong, he was wrong; I waste some time and bother Sydney Beynon for nothing. But if he was right—then it’s something very big, and Mengele has a reason for doing it. And I have to find something concrete, so prosecutors will be in, not out, and stop it before it’s finished. I’ll tell you something, Sydney. You know what?”
“What.”
“There’s a Mundt in my book.” He nodded somberly. “Right where he said there was, in a list of guards at Treblinka who committed atrocities. SS Hauptscharführer Alfried Mundt. I forgot him; who can remember all of them? He’s a very thin folder: a woman in Riga saw him break the neck of a fourteen-year-old girl; a man in Florida was castrated by him and wants to come testify if I catch him. Alfried Mundt. So the boy was right once, maybe he was right twice. Will you get the clippings for me, please? I’d appreciate it.”
Beynon pulled in breath, and yielded. “I’ll see what I can do.” He tucked his cup down beside him and got his notebook and pen from his jacket. “Which countries did you say?”
“Well, the boy mentioned Germany, and England, and Scandinavia—Norway, Sweden, Denmark—and the States. But the way he said it made it sound like there was other places besides that he was leaving out. So you should ask also for France and Holland.”
Beynon glanced at him, and jotted shorthand.
“Thank you, Sydney,” Lieberma
nn said. “I’m really grateful. Anything I turn up, you’re the first to know. Not only in this, in everything.”
Beynon said, “Do you have any idea how many men in their mid-sixties die every day?”
“By murder? Or in accidents that could be murder?” Liebermann shook his head. “No, not too many. I hope not. And some I’ll be able to eliminate by their professions.”
“What do you mean?”
Liebermann wiped a hand down over his mustache and held his chin, a finger crossing his lips. After a moment he lowered his hand and shrugged. “Nothing,” he said. “Some other details the boy gave. Listen”—he pointed at Beynon’s notebook—“be sure to put down there ‘between sixty-four and sixty-six.’”
“I did,” Beynon said, looking at him. “What other details?”
“Nothing important.” Liebermann reached into his coat. “I fly to Hamburg at four-thirty,” he said. “I’m speaking in Germany till November third.” He brought out a wallet, a thick worn brown one. “So whatever you get, please mail it to my apartment so I’ll have it when I get back.” He gave a card to Beynon.
“And if you find what looks like a Nazi killing?”
“Who knows?” Liebermann put his wallet back in his coat. “I only walk one step at a time.” He smiled at Beynon. “Especially in these shoes.” He braced his hands on his thighs and stood up, looked about and shook his head disapprovingly. “Mm. A gloomy day.” He turned and rebuked them all: “Why do you eat outside on such a day?”
“We’re the Monday Mozart Club,” Beynon said, smiling and cocking a thumb back toward the monument.
Liebermann held out his hand; Beynon took it. Liebermann smiled at the others and said, “I apologize for taking away from you this charming man.”
“You can have him,” Dermot Brody said.
Liebermann said to Beynon, “Thank you, Sydney. I knew I could depend on you. Oh, and listen.” He bent and spoke lower, holding Beynon’s hand. “Ask them please from Wednesday on. To continue, I mean. Because the boy said six men was going, and would Mengele send them all at once if some will do nothing for a long time? So there should be two more killings not long after the first one—that’s if they’re working in two-man teams—or five more, God forbid, if they’re working separately. And if, of course, the boy was right. Will you do that?”
Beynon nodded. “How many killings are there to be altogether?” he asked.
Liebermann looked at him. “A lot,” he said. He let go of Beynon’s hand, straightened up, and nodded good-bys to the others. Thrusting his hands into his coat pockets, he turned and set off quickly toward the bustle and traffic of the Ring.
The four on the bench watched him go.
“Oh Lord,” Beynon said, and Freya Neustadt shook her head sadly.
Dermot Brody leaned forward and said, “What was that last bit, Syd?”
“Would I ask them to continue pulling clips.” Beynon put his notebook and pen inside his jacket. “There are going to be three or six killings, not merely one. And more besides.”
Paul Higbee took his pipe from his mouth and said, “Funny thought: he’s absolutely right.”
“Oh, come off it,” Freya said. “Nazis hating him over the telephone?”
Beynon picked up his cup and grappled at a sandwich-half. “The past two years have been awfully rough on him,” he said.
“How old is he?” Freya asked pointedly.
“I’m not sure,” Beynon said. “Oh, yes, I see. Just around sixty-five, I should think.”
“You see?” Freya said to Paul. “So Nazis are killing sixty-five-year-old men. It’s a nicely worked-out paranoid fantasy. In a month he’ll be saying they’re coming for him.”
Dermot Brody, leaning forward again, asked Beynon, “Are you really going to get the clips?”
“Of course not,” Freya said, and turned to Beynon. “You aren’t, are you?”
Beynon sipped wine, held his sandwich. “Well, I did say I’d try,” he said. “And if I don’t, he’ll only come pestering me when he gets back. Besides, London will think I’m working on something.” He smiled at Freya. “It never hurts to give that impression.”
Unlike most men his age, sixty-five-year-old Emil Döring, once second administrative assistant to the head of the Essen Public Transport Commission, had not allowed himself to become a creature of habit. Retired now and living in Gladbeck, a town north of the city, he took especial care to vary his daily routine. He went for the morning papers at no regular hour, visited his sister in Oberhausen on no particular afternoon, and passed the evenings—when he didn’t decide at the last moment to stay home—at no one favorite neighborhood bar. He had three favorite bars rather, and chose among them only when he left the apartment. Sometimes he was back in an hour or two, sometimes not until after midnight.
All his life Döring had been aware of enemies lying in wait for him, and had protected himself not only by going armed, when he was old enough, but also by keeping his movements as unpredictable as possible. First there had been the big brothers of small schoolmates who had unjustly accused him of bullying. Then there had been his fellow soldiers, dullards all, who had resented his knack for ingratiating himself with officers and getting easy and safe assignments. Then there had been his rivals at the Transport Commission, some of whom could have given lessons in treachery to Machiavelli. Could Döring tell you stories about the Transport Commission!
And now, in what should have been his golden years, when he had thought he could finally lower his guard and relax, stow the old Mauser in the night-table drawer—now more than ever he knew himself to be in real danger of attack.
His second wife Klara, who was, as she never tired of reminding him in subtle ways, twenty-three years younger than he, was having, he was positive, an affair with their son’s former clarinet teacher, a despicable near-faggot named Wilhelm Springer who was even younger than she—thirty-eight!—and at least half Jewish. Döring had no doubts whatsoever that Klara and her faggot-Jew Springer would be delighted to get him out of the way; not only would she be a widow, but a rich one. He had over three hundred thousand marks (that she knew about, plus five hundred thousand that nobody knew about, buried in two steel boxes in his sister’s backyard). It was the money that kept Klara from divorcing him. She was waiting, and had been since the day they married, the bitch.
Well, she would go right on waiting; he was in fine health and ready for a dozen Springers to spring at him from alleyways. He went to the gym twice a week—not on regular afternoons—and sixty-five or no, was still damn good at man-to-man wrestling even if he wasn’t so great any more at the man-to-woman kind. He was still damn good and his Mauser was still damn good; he liked to tell himself that, smiling as he patted the nice big hardness through the underarm of his coat.
He had told it to Reichmeider too, the surgical-equipment salesman he had met here at the Lorelei-Bar last night. What a pleasant fellow that Reichmeider was! He had really been interested in Döring’s Transport Commission stories—had almost fallen off his stool laughing at the outcome of the ’58 appropriation business. Talking to him had been a bit awkward at first because of the erratic way one of his eyes moved—it was obviously artificial—but Döring had soon got used to it and told him not only about the appropriation business but about the state investigation of ’64 and the Zellermann scandal too. Then they had got to a more personal level—five or six beers had gone down the hatch—and Döring had opened up about Klara and Springer. That was when he had patted the Mauser and said what he said about himself and it. Reichmeider couldn’t believe he was actually sixty-five. “I’d have sworn you were no more than fifty-seven, tops!” he had insisted. What a nice chap! It was a shame he was only going to be in the area for a few days; lucky, though, that he was staying in Gladbeck rather than in Essen proper.
It was to meet Reichmeider again, and tell him about the rise and fall of Oskar Know-It-All Vowinckel, that Döring had come back to the Lorelei-Bar tonight. But nine o’cl
ock had long since passed and no Reichmeider, despite their clear understanding of the night before. There were a lot of noisy young men and pretty girls, one with her teats half out, and only a few old regulars—Fürst, Apfel, what’s-his-name—none of them good listeners. It was more like a Friday or Saturday than a Wednesday. A soccer game tided back and forth on the television; Döring watched it, drank slowly, and looked through the mirror at those gorgeous young teats. Now and then he leaned back on his stool and tried to catch a glimpse of newcomers by the door, still hoping Reichmeider would make his promised appearance.
And make it he did, but most strangely and suddenly, a hand gripping Döring’s shoulder, a skew-eyed urgency of whispering: “Döring, come outside quickly! There’s something I have to tell you!” And he was gone again.
Confused and puzzled, Döring flagged for Franz’s attention, threw a ten down, and pushed his way out. Reichmeider beckoned intently, withdrawing a ways down Kirchengasse. A handkerchief was wrapped around his left hand as if he had injured it; chalky dust streaked the legs and shoulders of his expensive-looking gray suit.
Hurrying to him, Döring said, “What’s up? What happened to you?”
“It’s you things are liable to happen to, not me!” Reichmeider said excitedly. “I’ve been stumbling through that building they’re demolishing, down the street in the next block. Listen, what’s-his-name, that fellow you told me about, the one who’s fooling around with your wife!”
“Springer,” Döring said, thoroughly puzzled but catching Reichmeider’s excitement. “Wilhelm Springer!”
“I knew that was it!” Reichmeider exclaimed. “I knew I wasn’t mistaken! What luck that I just happened to—Listen, I’ll explain everything. I was coming along this street here, heading this way, and I had to take a leak, simply couldn’t hold it in. So when I came to the building, the one they’re demolishing, I went into the alley beside it; but it was too light there, so I found an opening in the doors they’ve got walling the place and slipped inside. I did what I had to, and just as I’m ready to come out again, two men come and stop right at the place where I came in. One calls the other one Springer”—he nodded his head slowly, affirmingly, as Döring drew breath—“and that one says to the first one things like, ‘He’s in the Lorelei right now, the old bastard.’ And, ‘We’ll beat the shit out of that fat prick.’ I knew Springer was the name you’d mentioned! That is your way home, isn’t it?”
