“I made a few inquiries regarding your client’s husband,” he said, hardly looking at me at all. In the bright afternoon sunshine his head was amber-colored, like a good bock beer, or maybe a Doppel. While he spoke, the cigarette stayed in his mouth, jerking up and down like a conductor’s baton bringing to order the riotous orchestra of hydrangeas, lavender, gentian, and irises that was arrayed in front of him. I hoped they would do what they were told, just in case he tried to kick them the way he had tried to kick the squirrel.
“At the Ruprechtskirche, in Vienna,” he said, “there’s a priest who performs a similarly charitable function for old comrades like you. He’s an Italian. Father Lajolo. He remembers Warzok only too well. It seems he turned up with a rail ticket for Güssing just after Christmas 1946. Lajolo got him to a safe house in Ebensee while they waited for a new passport and visa.”
“A passport from whom?” I asked, out of curiosity.
“The Red Cross. The Vatican. I don’t know for sure. One of the two, you can bet on that. The visa was for Argentina. Lajolo or one of his people went to Ebensee, handed over the papers, some money, and a rail ticket to Genoa. That was where Warzok was supposed to get on the boat for South America. Warzok and another old comrade. Only they never showed up. No one knows what happened to Warzok, but the other guy was found dead in the woods near Thalgau, a few months later.”
“What was his name? His real name.”
“SS Hauptsturmführer Willy Hintze. He was the former deputy chief of the Gestapo in a Polish town called Thorn. Hintze was in a shallow grave. Naked. He’d been shot through the back of the skull while kneeling on the edge of his grave. His clothes were tossed in on top of him. He’d been executed.”
“Were Warzok and Hintze in the same safe house?”
“No.”
“Did they know each other from before?”
“No. The first time they ever met would have been on the boat to Argentina. Lajolo figured both safe houses had been blown and closed them down. It was decided that what happened to Hintze had been what happened to Warzok. The Nakam had got them.”
“The Nakam?”
“After 1945, the Jewish Brigade—volunteers from Palestine who had joined a special unit of the British army—was ordered by the fledgling Jewish army, the Haganah, to form a secret group of assassins. One group of assassins, based in Lublin, took the name of Nakam, a Hebrew word meaning ‘vengeance.’ Their sworn purpose was to avenge the deaths of six million Jews.”
Father Gotovina pulled the cigarette from his lips as if to more effectively give them up to a curling sneer that ended by including his nostrils and his eyes. I daresay if there had been any muscle groups to control the ears, he would have brought them into it, too. The Croatian priest’s sneer had Conrad Veidt beat into a poor second, and Bela Lugosi a sly, broken-necked third.
“No good thing cometh out of Israel,” he said, sulfurously. “Least of all the Nakam. An early plan of the Nakam was to poison the reservoirs of Munich, Berlin, Nuremberg, and Frankfurt and murder several million Germans. You look disbelieving, Herr Gunther.”
“It’s just that there have been stories about Jews poisoning Christian wells since the Middle Ages,” I said.
“I can assure you I’m perfectly serious. This one was for real. Luckily for you and me, the Haganah command heard about the plan and, pointing out the number of British and Americans who would have been killed, the Nakam was forced to abandon the plan.” Gotovina laughed his psychopathic laugh. “Maniacs. And they wonder why we tried to eliminate the Jew from decent society.”
He flicked his cigarette end at a hapless pigeon, crossed his legs, and adjusted the crucifix around his muscular neck before continuing with his explanation. It was like having a chat with Tomás de Torquemada.
“But the Nakam were not quite ready to abandon their plans to use poison on a large number of Germans,” he said. “They devised a plan to poison a POW camp near Nuremberg where thirty-six thousand SS were interned. They broke into a bakery supplying bread to the camp and poisoned two thousand loaves. Mercifully this was many fewer than they had planned to poison. Even so, several thousand men were affected and as many as five hundred died. You can take my word for that. It’s a matter of historical record.” He crossed himself and then looked up as, momentarily, a cloud crossed the sun, placing us both in a little pool of shadow, like some damned souls from the pages of Dante.
“After that they stuck to murder, pure and simple. With the help of Jews in British and American intelligence they set up a documents center in Linz and Vienna and started to track down so-called war criminals, using the Jewish emigration organization as a cover. At first they followed men as they were released from POW camps. They were easy to watch, especially with tip-offs from the Allies. And then, when they were ready, they started with the executions. In the beginning they hanged a few. But one man survived and after that it was always the same modus operandi. The shallow grave, the bullet in the back of the head. As if they were seeking to copy what all those Order battalions had done in eastern Europe.”
Gotovina allowed himself a thin smile of something close to admiration. “They’ve been very effective. The number of old comrades assassinated by the Nakam is between one and two thousand. We know this because some of our Vienna group managed to catch one of them and, before he died, he told them what I just told you. So you see, it’s the kikes you have to be careful of now, Herr Gunther. Not the Brits, or the Amis. All they care about is communism, and on occasion, they’ve even helped to get our people out of Germany. No, it’s the Jew boys you have to worry about, these days. Especially the ones who don’t look like Jew boys. Apparently the one they caught and tortured in Vienna, he looked like the perfect Aryan. You know? Like Gustav Froelich’s better-looking brother.”
“So where does all this leave my client?”
“Weren’t you listening, Gunther? Warzok’s dead. If he was still alive he’d be doing the tango and that’s a fact. If he was there, she’d have heard, believe me.”
“What I mean is, where does all that leave her in the eyes of the Roman Catholic Church?”
Gotovina shrugged. “She waits a while longer and then petitions for a formal judicial process, to determine whether or not she is considered free to enter into a second marriage.”
“A judicial process?” I said. “You mean with witnesses and stuff like that?”
Gotovina looked away in disgust. “Forget it, Gunther,” he said. “The archbishop would have my collar if he knew even a tenth of what I just told you. So there’s no way I’m ever repeating any of this. Not to a tribunal of canon law. Not to her. Not even to you.” He stood up and stared down at me. With the sun behind him he looked hardly there at all, like a silhouette of a man. “And here’s some free advice. Drop it now. Drop the whole case. The Comradeship doesn’t like questions and they don’t like sniffers—even sniffers who think they can get away with it because they once had a tattoo under their arms. People who ask too many questions about the Comradeship end up dead. Do I make myself clear, sniffer?”
“It’s been a while since I was threatened by a priest,” I said. “Now I know how Martin Luther felt.”
“Luther nothing.” Gotovina was beginning to sound more irate. “And don’t contact me again. Not even if David Ben-Gurion asks you to dig a hole in his garden at midnight. Got that, sniffer?”
“Like it came from the Holy Inquisition with a nice little ribbon and a lead seal with Saint Peter’s face on it.”
“Yeah, but will it stick?”
“That’s why it’s lead, isn’t it? So people stay warned?”
“I hope so. But you’ve got the face of a heretic, Gunther. That’s a bad look for someone who needs to keep his nose out of things he should leave alone.”
“You’re not the first person to tell me that, Father,” I said, standing up. I’m more equal to the task of being threatened when I’m on my feet. But Gotovina was right about my face. Seeing his basilic
a-like head, and his cross, and his collar made me want to go straight home and type out ninety-five theses to nail on his church door. I tried to appear grateful for what he had told me, even a little contrite, but I knew it would just come out looking recusant and unfearing. “But thanks anyway. I appreciate all your help and good advice. A little spiritual guidance is good for us all. Even unbelievers like myself.”
“It would be a mistake not to believe me,” he said coldly.
“I don’t know what I believe, Father,” I said. Now I was just being willfully obtuse. “Really, I don’t. All I know is that life is better than anything I’ve seen before. And probably better than anything I’ll see when I’m dead.”
“That sounds like atheism, Gunther. Always a dangerous thing in Germany.”
“That’s not atheism, Father. That’s just what we Germans call a worldview.”
“Leave such things to God. Forget the world and mind your own business, if you know what’s good for you.”
I watched him walk as far as the edge of the park. The squirrel came back. The flowers relaxed. The pigeon shook its head and tried to pull itself together. The cloud shifted and the grass brightened up. “Saint Francis of Assisi he is not,” I told them all. “But you probably knew that already.”
FIFTEEN
I went back to the office and telephoned the number Frau Warzok had given me. A low, growling, possibly female voice that was a little less guarded than Spandau Prison, answered and said that Frau Warzok was not at home. I left my name and number. The voice repeated them back to me without a mistake. I asked if I was speaking to the maid. The voice said she was the maid. I put the phone down and tried to picture her in my mind’s eye, and each time she came out looking like Wallace Beery in a black dress, holding a feather duster in one hand and a man’s neck in the other. I’d heard of German women disguising themselves as men in order to avoid being raped by the Ivans. But this was the first time I ever had the idea that some queer wrestler might have disguised himself as a lady’s maid for the opposite reason.
An hour went by like so much traffic outside my office window. Several cars. A few trucks. A USMP motorcycle. They were all going slowly. People went in and out of the post office on the other side of the street. There was nothing very quick about what was happening in there, either. Anyone who had ever waited for a letter in Munich knew that in spades. The cabbie at the cabstand out front was having an even slower time of it than I was. But unlike me he could at least risk going to the kiosk for some cigarettes and an evening newspaper. I knew that if I did that I’d miss her call. After a while I decided to make the phone ring. I put on my jacket and walked out of the door, left it open, and headed for the washroom. When I got to the washroom door, I paused for several seconds and only imagined myself doing what I would have done in there; and then the telephone started to ring. It’s an old detective’s trick, only for some reason you never see it in the movies.
It was her. After the maid, she sounded like a choirboy. Her breathing was a little loud, like she’d been running.
“Did you come up a flight of stairs?” I asked.
“I’m a little nervous, that’s all. Did you find out something?”
“Plenty. Do you want to come here again? Or shall I come by your house?” Her business card was in my fingertips. I put it up to my nose. There was a faint scent of lavender water on it.
“No,” she said firmly. “I’d rather you didn’t do that, if you don’t mind. We have decorators here. It’s a little difficult, right now. Everything is covered in dust sheets. No, why don’t you meet me in the Walterspiel at the Hotel Vier Jahreszeiten.”
“Are you sure they take marks there?” I asked.
“As a matter of fact they don’t,” she said. “But I’m paying so that needn’t concern you, Herr Gunther. I like it there. It’s the only place in Munich where they can mix a decent cocktail. And I’ve a feeling I’m going to need a stiff drink regardless of what you tell me. Shall we say in one hour?”
“I’ll be there.”
I put the phone down and worried a little about the alacrity with which she had forbidden me to come to the house in Ramersdorf. I was a little worried that there might be another reason she didn’t want me there that wasn’t necessarily connected with what was under my fingernails. That maybe she was holding out on me in some way. I resolved to check out her address in Bad Schachener Strasse as soon as our meeting was concluded. Maybe I would even follow her.
The hotel was just a few blocks south of me, on Maximilianstrasse, near the Residenztheater, which was still under reconstruction. From the outside it was big but unremarkable, which was remarkable given that the hotel had almost completely burned down, following a bombing raid in 1944. You had to hand it to Munich’s construction workers. With enough bricks and overtime they could probably have rebuilt Troy.
I walked through the front door ready to give the place the benefit of my extensive hotel-keeping experience. Inside was lots of marble and wood, which matched the faces and expressions of the penguins working there. An American in uniform was complaining loudly in English about something to the concierge, who caught my eye in the vain hope that I might sock the Ami in the ear and make him pipe down a bit. For what they charged a night I thought he would probably just have to put up with it. An undertaker type in a cutaway coat came alongside me like a pilot fish and, bowing slightly from the hip, asked if he could help me with something. It’s what the big hotels call Service, but to me it just looked officious, as if he was wondering why someone with shoulders like mine would have the nerve to even think I could go rub them with the kind of people they had in there. I smiled and tried to keep the knuckles out of my voice.
“Yes, thank you,” I said. “I’m meeting someone in the restaurant. The Walterspiel.”
“A guest in the hotel?”
“I don’t believe so.”
“You’re aware that this is a foreign currency hotel, sir.”
I liked it that he called me sir. It was decent of him. He probably threw it in because I’d had a bath that morning. And probably because I was a little too large for him to throw his weight at.
“I am aware of it, yes,” I said. “I don’t like it, now that you mention it. But I am aware of it. The person I’m meeting is aware of it, too. I mentioned it to her when she suggested this place on the telephone. And when I objected and said I could think of a hundred better places, she said it wouldn’t be a problem. By which I assumed she meant that she was in possession of foreign currency. I haven’t actually seen the color of her money yet, but when she gets here, how about you and I search her handbag, just so you can have some peace of mind when you see us drinking your liquor?”
“I’m sure that won’t be necessary, sir,” he said stiffly.
“And don’t worry,” I said. “I won’t order anything until she actually shows up.”
“From February next year, the hotel will be accepting deutschmarks,” he said.
“Well, let’s hope she gets here before then,” I said.
“The Walterspiel is that way, sir. To your left.”
“Thank you. I appreciate your help. I used to be in the hotel business myself. I was the house bull at the Adlon in Berlin for a while. But you know what? I think this place has got it beat for efficiency. No one at the Adlon would ever have had the presence of mind to ask someone like me if he could have afforded it or not. Wouldn’t have crossed their minds. Keep it up. You’re doing a fine job.”
I went through to the restaurant. There was another doorway out onto Marstallstrasse and a row of silk-covered chairs for people waiting for cars. I took one look at the menu and the prices and then sat down on one of the chairs to await my client’s arrival with the dollars, or foreign exchange coupons or whatever else she was planning to use when she handed over the ransom-money rates they were asking in the Walterspiel. The maître d’ flicked his gaze on me for a second and asked if I would be dining that night. I said I hoped so and th
at was the end of it. Most of the jaundice in his eye was reserved for a large woman sitting on one of the other chairs. I say large but I really mean fat. That’s what happens when you’ve been married for a while. You stop saying what you mean. That’s the only reason people ever stay married. All successful marriages are based on some necessary hypocrisies. It’s only the unsuccessful ones where people always tell the truth to each other.
The woman sitting opposite me was fat. She was hungry, too. I could tell that because she kept eating things she brought out of her handbag when she thought the maître d’ wasn’t looking: a biscuit, an apple, a piece of chocolate, another biscuit, a small sandwich. Food came forth from her handbag the way some women bring out a compact, a lipstick, and an eyeliner. Her skin was very pale and white and loose on the pink flesh underneath and looked like it had just been plucked clean of feathers. Big amber earrings hung off her skull like two toffees. In an emergency she’d probably have eaten them as well. Watching her eat a sandwich was like watching a hyena devour a leg of pork. Things just seemed to gravitate toward her strudel hole.
“I’m waiting for someone,” she explained.
“Coincidence.”
“My son works for the Amis,” she said, thickly. “He’s taking me to dinner. But I don’t like to go in there until he comes. It’s so expensive.”
I nodded, not because I agreed with her but just to let her know I could. I had the idea that if I stopped moving for a while she would have eaten me, too.
“So expensive,” she repeated. “I’m eating now so that I don’t eat too much when we go in. It’s such a waste of money, I think. Just for dinner.” She started to eat another sandwich. “My son is the director of American Overseas Airlines, on Karlsplatz.”