Benchley, Peter - Novel 06 (59 page)

 
          
 
The camera followed Mengele until he was
loaded into a truck full of commandos, then snapped back to the jeep, where
some new commotion was going on.

 
          
 
Three commandos were trying to wrestle a woman
out of the jeep. She was shouting, in German and English, "I am an
American! I demand to see my consul! Long live the Fourth Reich!"

 
          
 
The ABC man said, "Mengele's companion
refused to give her real name, insisting that she was Eva Braun, an American
citizen."

 
          
 
Pym felt a wave of nausea overtake him. He
closed his eyes, then forced himself to open them, saying, "It isn't true;
it can't be true."

 
          
 
The commandos dragged the woman toward the
camera. She kicked and spat and snarled like a trussed wolverine. When she saw
the camera, she lunged at it and would have struck it with her jutting chin if
the cameraman hadn't stumbled backward.

 
          
 
The image on Pym's television set was blurred
and shaky, but the face that filled the frame was unmistakable. Despite the
sunken eyes rimmed with purple cups of drawn flesh, despite the silver hair
gathered in a severe chignon, despite the spittle-flecked lips, the face with
its high cheekbones and flat forehead and potato nose belonged to no one but
Louise.

 
          
 
The woman screamed into the cameras, "Ich
bien eine Amerikaner!" and was gone.

 
          
 
"Mother of God ..." Pym felt as if
all his viscera had suddenly been flushed from him. He was dizzy and cold, and
his fingertips tingled.

 
          
 
"What is it?" Eva grabbed his arm,
for she saw that he was beginning to totter.

 
          
 
Pym let Eva help him down into a soft chair.
"That," he said, pointing feebly toward the television set,
"that woman is . . ." The words seemed reluctant to be spoken.
"... your mother!"

 
          
 
Eva's head snapped around toward the
television set, but by now a sunny young housewife was extolling the anodyne
properties of hemorrhoidal suppositories.

 
          
 
The network news came on at seven, and of
course the capture of Mengele was the lead story. Eva drew a chair close to the
television and sat riveted to the screen, absorbing Louise's every move and
utterance, as if hoping in a few seconds to assimilate a lifetime of knowledge
of the mother she had never known.

 
          
 
Pym slumped in his chair, unblinking, and the
images from the television screen were reflected by his glassy eyes. He wanted
to think, to assess risks and devise alternatives, but his brain refused to
entertain the thoughts that crowded his skull: It was still protesting that the
two-dimensional image on the screen could not, must not, be a horrid reality.

 
          
 
When the story was done, Eva turned off the
television set and swung her chair around. The sight of her father diluted her
excitement with apprehension, so instead of asking the daughterly questions
that arose naturally within her, she said only, "What does it mean?"

 
          
 
Pym sighed and opened and closed his eyes a
couple of times and, with a wry smile at Eva, said, "In a word,
trouble."

 
          
 
"Why? They've got him, they're not
interested in her. Besides, you said she's crazy. They won't give her the time
of day."

 
          
 
"She is crazy, and if they had found her
picketing a synagogue in
Alexandria
they'd dismiss her as crazy and good riddance. But this"—he waved
at the TV—"changes everything. She's not crazy any more. She's evil."

 
          
 
"Why?"

 
          
 
"Because madness on this scale isn't
excusable. You think if they found Adolf Hitler they'd lock him up as a cuckoo?
You think they'll acquit Mengele because he's insane? No. They have captured
the devil, and the devil can't be nuts. People need to believe in pure evil, just
as they must believe in the existence of pure goodness. And your mother—poor,
unhappy Louise, and I don't know why I say that because she liked being a Nazi,
it gave her something to do—will find that she has become a
devil-by-association." Pym shook his head. "It would have to be the
Israelis."

 
          
 
"What difference does that make?"

 
          
 
"If the Americans had caught them,
there'd be a huge legal tangle, and all manner of unpleasant little truths
might fall between the cracks. They'd be prevented from speaking to anyone
until they had been advised of their rights and provided with lawyers. The
Civil Liberties Union would make sure they were protected against
self-incrimination. Some magazine would pay them millions of dollars for the
exclusive rights to their stories. Your mother would be a celebrity. The whole
thing would become a gloriously bewildering circus. But the Israelis don't
observe such niceties." Pym paused. "I wonder if Louise has ever been
tortured?"

 
          
 
"You think she'll lead them to you? To us?"

 
          
 
"Not intentionally, perhaps. But yes. For
sure. The Israelis will put her under a microscope. They'll study her like a
new virus, learn everything there is to know about her. When they have what
they need—mostly the stuff about her and Mengele— they'll give the excess to
the Americans." He tried to smile. "We're the excess."

           
 
"You said they can't find out anything
about us."

 
          
 
"No, I didn't. I said the Americans
wouldn't bother to dig deep enough if they thought she was just some neo-Nazi
nut. But now she's not a neo-Nazi; she's a real Nazi. And it's not the
Americans, it's the Israelis, who don't have any liberal qualms about squeezing
a stone till it bleeds. Her marriage is bound to surface. So is the fact that
she had a child. A child she named after Hitler's mistress."

 
          
 
Eva froze. "I didn't know," she
said.

 
          
 
"No. I didn't want you to."

 
          
 
"What do we do?" Eva looked around
the room as if, afraid, she was trying to locate precious things to gather for
her escape. "Do we run?"

 
          
 
"I don't know. I have to have time to
think. I—"

 
          
 
The phone rang.

 
          
 
Pym let it ring three times, urging his mind
to scan all possible callers and to prepare responses. Then he picked up the
phone.

 
          
 
"Teal." The voice sounded tight.
Upset.

 
          
 
"Mallard." Pym hoped the two
syllables sounded easy, casual.

 
          
 
"We've got a problem."

 
          
 
My God! Pym thought. Already? How could they
possibly know this soon? Did they have a mole planted in the Israeli commandos?
Had they already interrogated Louise and made the connection? Impossible! But
they had. Don't waste your time wondering how. Do something. Do what?
Acknowledge? Deny? Don't be surprised. Seem to be in control.

 
          
 
He said, "I know. But I wouldn't—"

 
          
 
"You do?" Teal was audibly shocked.
"How? Who contacted you?"

 
          
 
"Ah . . ." Don't say you saw it on
television, Pym commanded himself. Not privileged enough. "Peter
Jennings."

 
          
 
"Peter Jennings? Peter Je— the TV guy?
Holy mothering jesus! How did he find out? Why did he call you?"

 
          
 
"It's not exactly a secret any
more," Pym said. "I mean, they had a pool crew down there."

 
          
 
Silence. Pym wondered if Teal had hung up.
Then, "What's going down here, man? You been into the bourbon?"

 
          
 
"What? Don't be—" Suddenly Pym
realized that Teal wasn't talking about the Mengele story, he knew nothing
about Louise. He had another problem, a new problem about which Pym knew
nothing. Pym didn't know whether to be

 
          
 
alarmed or relieved. "I think our wires
are crossed," he said. "Please start again. Tell me what the problem
is."

 
          
 
Teal's voice dropped several decibels as he
said, "It looks like B-twelve's gone bad."

 
          
 
Once again, Pym's mind rebelled. It had
received Teal's message, but it would not process it. Access denied. Will not
compute. "What do you mean?" he asked.

 
          
 
"The goods the hostess has been receiving
over the past week or so have been . . . tainted."

 
          
 
"Tainted how? How can they . . . how can
she tell?"

 
          
 
"She can tell, take my word. The stuff
stinks, man."

 
          
 
"But ... it can't be ... I don't
..." Pym didn't know what to say, what to do, what to feel, except that he
felt he would like to cry—not from sorrow or regret but from overload, as if to
shed tears would be somehow to ease his burdens. "What can I do?"

 
          
 
Teal said, "We have to find out a couple
things. Has he really gone sour, or was he just caught in a routine
sweep?"

 
          
 
"Sweep? What kind of sweep?"

 
          
 
"Once in a while, when a supplier thinks
his goods are being . . . diverted, shall we say ... by unauthorized persons,
he'll send out a batch coded with little marks for each of his conduits. When
the diverted goods surface, he sees which mark shows up on them, and bingo!
He's got the bad guy. Maybe this is what happened to B-twelve, he just got
unlucky. But maybe he's been sending tainted goods all along. Maybe he was working
for the competition from day one."

 
          
 
"No," Pym said definitely. "Not
a chance."

 
          
 
"It doesn't matter, for him. Either way,
his ass is grass."

 
          
 
"It is?"

 
          
 
"Sure, man. The hostess'11 never use him
again. I mean, you don't hire a man who's poisoned your well. And you can bet
on it, his wholesalers will know about him in a day or two, if they don't
already."

 
          
 
"Why? Will the . . . hostess . . .
tell?"

 
          
 
"No way. Those marked goods are in
circulation. They'll be coming home pretty soon." Teal paused, then
continued in a tone of congenial menace. "But I tell you what, man, you
better hope that that's what did happen, 'cause that's the good news. The bad
news is if the hostess decides that B-twelve has been a rotten apple all along,
that he's been working for the competition. She's gonna be mighty unhappy with
the caterer that sent her bad goods, and for all I know she might just decide
that that caterer's been working for the competition, too, and has been out to
screw her from the opening gun."