Boys from Brazil (10 page)

Esther came, unsteadily carrying four thick blue-bound volumes. He pulled mail in from the side of the desk to make room for them. “Everything was organized,” she complained, setting them down.

“I'll
re
organize. Thanks.”

She tucked hair in under the side of her wig. “You should have kept Max here if you wanted translations.”

“I didn't think.”

“Should I try to find him?”

He shook his head, picked up another clipping in English:
Dispute Ends in Fatal Knifing
.

Esther, looking troubledly at the spread of clippings, said, “So many men murdered?”

“Not all,” he said, putting the clipping to his right. “Some are accidents.”

“How will you know which ones the Nazis killed?”

“I won't,” he said. “I'll have to go look.” He picked up a German clipping.

“Look?”

“And see if I can find a reason.”

She scowled at him. “Because a boy calls up and disappears?”

“Good-by, Esther dear.”

She went from the desk. “
I
would be writing articles and making some money.”

“Write them, I'll sign them.”

“Do you want something to eat?”

He shook his head.

A few of the items reported the same deaths as others; a few of the dead men were outside the age-range. Many were tradesmen, farmers, retired industrial workers, vagrants; many had been killed by neighbors, relations, bands of young hoodlums. He searched the bilingual dictionaries with his magnifying glass; a
makelaar in onroerende goederen
was a real-estate broker, a
tulltjänsteman
a customs officer. He put the can't-bes to his right, the possibles to his left. Most of the words in the Danish clippings were in the Norwegian-German dictionary.

Late in the afternoon he put the final clipping with the can't-bes.

There were eleven possibles.

He tore the list of them from the pad and started a fresh list, setting them down neatly according to the dates of death.

Three had died on October 16th: Chambon, Hilaire, in Bordeaux; Döring, Emil, in Gladbeck, a town in the Essen area; and Persson, Lars, in Fagersta, Sweden.

The phone rang; he let Esther take it.

Two on the 18th: Guthrie, Malcolm, in Tucson—

“Yakov? It's Mannheim again.”

He picked up the phone. “Liebermann speaking.”

“Hello, Herr Liebermann,” a man's voice said. “How was your trip? And did you find the reason for the ninety-four killings?”

He sat still, looking at the pen in his hand. He had heard the voice before but couldn't place it. “Who is this, please?” he asked.

“My name is Klaus von Palmen. I heard you speak at Heidelberg. Maybe you remember me. I asked you if the problem was really hypothetical.”

Of course. The shrewd-looking blond young man. “Yes, I remember you.”

“Did any of your audiences do better than we did?”

“I didn't ask the question again.”

“And it
wasn't
hypothetical, was it.”

He wanted to say it was, or to hang up—but a stronger impulse took hold of him: to talk openly with someone who was willing to believe, even this antagonistic young Aryan. “I don't know,” he admitted. “The person who told me about it…has disappeared. Maybe he was right and maybe he was wrong.”

“I suspected as much. Would it interest you to know that in Pforzheim, on October twenty-fourth, a man fell from a bridge and drowned? He was sixty-five years old, and about to retire from the postal service.”

“Müller, Adolf,” Liebermann said, looking at his list of possibles. “I know already, and about ten others besides: in Solingen, Gladbeck, Birmingham, Tucson, Bordeaux, Fagersta…”

“Oh.”

Liebermann smiled at the pen and said, “I have a source at Reuters.”

“That's very good! And have you taken steps to find out whether it's statistically normal for eleven civil servants, age sixty-five, to die violently in—what is it, a three-week period?”

“There were others,” Liebermann said, “who were killed by relations. And still others, I'm sure, that Reuters missed. And out of all of them, I think only six at the most could be…the ones I'm afraid of. Would six over normal prove anything? And besides, who keeps such statistics? Violent deaths on two continents, by age and occupation. God, maybe, would know what's ‘statistically normal.' Or a dozen insurance companies put together. I wouldn't waste the time writing them.”

“Have you spoken to the authorities?”

“It was you, wasn't it, who pointed out that they're not so interested in Nazi-hunting these days? I spoke, but they didn't listen. Can you blame them, really, when all I could say was, ‘Maybe men will be killed, I don't know why'?”

“Then we must
find out
why, and the way to do it is to look into some of these cases. We have to investigate the circumstances of the deaths, and more important, the men's characters and backgrounds.”

“Thank you,” Liebermann said. “I figured that out for myself, back when I was an ‘I' not a ‘we.'”

“Pforzheim is less than an hour's drive from here, Herr Liebermann. And I'm a law student, the third highest in my class, quite capable of making observations and asking pertinent questions.”

“I know about the pertinent questions, but this really isn't your business, young fellow.”

“Oh? And why is that? Have you somehow secured the exclusive right to oppose Nazism? In
my
country?”

“Herr von Palmen—”

“You presented the problem in public; you should have informed us it was your exclusive property.”

“Listen to me.” Liebermann shook his head: what a German! “Herr von Palmen,” he said, “the person who presented the problem to
me
was a young man like you. More pleasant and respectful, but otherwise not so different. And he's almost certainly been murdered.
That's
why it isn't your business; because it's a business for professionals, not amateurs. And also because you might muddy things up so that when
I
get to Pforzheim the job will be harder.”

“I won't muddy things up and I'll try to avoid getting murdered. Do you want me to call and tell you what I find out or shall I keep the information to myself?”

Liebermann glared, trying to think of a way to stop him; but of course there wasn't any. “Do you at least know what information to look for?” he asked.

“Certainly I do. Who Müller left his money to, who he was related to, what his political and military activities were—”

“Where he was born—”

“I
know
. All the points that were suggested that evening.”

“And whether he could have had any contact with Mengele, either during the war or immediately after. Where did he serve? Was he ever in Günzburg?”

“Günzburg?”

“Where Mengele lived. And try not to act like a prosecutor; it's easier to catch flies with honey than vinegar.”

“I can be charming when I want to, Herr Liebermann.”

“I can't wait for a demonstration. Give me your address, please; I'll send you pictures of three of the men who are supposed to be doing the killings. They're old pictures from thirty years ago and at least one of the men has had plastic surgery, but they might come in handy anyway, in case anyone saw strangers around. I'll also send you a letter saying you're working on my behalf. Or would you rather send
me
one saying I'm working on yours?”

“Herr Liebermann, I have the utmost admiration and respect for you. Believe me, I'm truly proud to be able to be of some help to you.”

“All right, all right.”

“Wasn't that charming? You see?”

Liebermann took von Palmen's address and phone number, gave him a few more pointers, and hung up.

A “we.” But maybe the boy would manage; he was bright enough surely.

He finished making the second list, studied it a few minutes, and then opened the desk's left-hand bottom drawer and got out the folder of photos he had pulled from the files. He took out one each of Hessen, Kleist, and Traunsteiner—young men in SS uniforms, smiling or stern in coarse-grained enlarged snapshots; next to useless but the best there were. “Esther!” he called, putting them on the desk. Hessen smiled up at him, dark-haired and wolfish, hugging his beaming parents. Liebermann turned the photo over, and below the mimeographed history taped to its back, wrote:
Hair silvery now. Has had plastic surgery
.

“Esther?”

He picked up the photos, got up from the chair, and went to the door.

Esther sat sleeping at her desk, her head on her folded arms. A bowl of still water sat by her elbow.

He tiptoed over, put the photos on the desk's corner, and tiptoed on through the living room and into the bedroom.

“So where are you going?” Esther called.

Surprised that she was up and should ask, he called back, “To the bathroom.”

“I mean where are you
going
. To look.”

“Oh,” he said. “To a place near Essen—Gladbeck. And to Solingen. It's all right with you?”

 

Farnbach paused outside the hotel. Admiring the luminous blue-violet twilight, which the clerk had assured him would stay as it was for hours, he pulled his gloves on, turned up his fur collar, and snugged his cap down more warmly over his ears and the back of his head. Storlien wasn't as cold as he had feared, but it was cold enough. Thank God this was his northernmost assignment; Brazil had made an orchid of him. “Sir?” His shoulder was tapped. He turned, and a black-hatted man taller than he offered an identity card on his palm. “Detective Inspector Löfquist. May I have a word with you, please?”

Farnbach took the card in its leather-and-plastic holder. He pretended to have more difficulty reading it in the twilight than he in fact had, so as to give himself at least that moment to think. He handed the card back to Detective Inspector Lars Lennart Löfquist, and putting a pleasant smile (he hoped) in front of the alarm and confusion inside him, said, “Yes, of course, Inspector. I've only been here since noon; I'm sure I haven't broken any laws yet.”

Smiling too, Löfquist said, “I'm sure you haven't.” He put the card-holder away inside his black leather coat. “We can walk while we talk, if you'd like.”

“Fine,” Farnbach said. “I'm going to take a look at the waterfall. That seems to be all one can do around here.”

“Yes, at this time of year.” They started across the hotel's cobbled forecourt. “Things are a little livelier in June and July,” Löfquist said. “We have sun all night then, and quite a few tourists. By the end of August, though, even the center of town is dead after seven or eight, and out here it's practically a graveyard. You're German, aren't you?”

“Yes,” Farnbach said. “My name is Busch. Wilhelm Busch. I'm a salesman. There's nothing wrong, is there, Inspector?”

“No, not at all.” They passed through an arched gateway. “You can relax,” Löfquist said. “This is entirely unofficial.”

They turned toward the right, and walked side by side along the shoulder of the crushed-stone road. Farnbach smiled and said, “Even an innocent man feels guilty when he's tapped on the shoulder by a detective inspector.”

“I guess that's so,” Löfquist said. “I'm sorry if I worried you. No, I just like to keep an eye out for foreigners. Germans in particular. I find them…enlightening to talk with. What do you sell, Herr Busch?”

“Mining equipment.”

“Oh?”

“I'm the Swedish representative of Orenstein and Koppel, of Lübeck.”

“I can't say I've heard of them.”

“They're fairly big in the field,” Farnbach said. “I've been with them fourteen years.” He looked at the detective walking along at his left. The man's upturned nose and pointy chin reminded him of a captain he had served under in the SS, one who had begun interrogations with exactly this disarming bullshit of “nothing to worry about, it's entirely unofficial.” Later had come the accusations, the demands, the torture.

“And is that where you come from?” Löfquist asked. “Lübeck?”

“No, I'm from Dortmund originally, and I live now in Reinfeld, which is
near
Lübeck. When I'm not in Sweden, that is. I have an apartment in Stockholm.” How much, Farnbach wondered, did the son of a bitch know, and how in God's name had he found it out? Had the whole operation been blown? Were Hessen and Kleist and the others facing the same situation right now, or was this his own private failure?

“Turn in here,” Löfquist said, pointing toward a footpath into the woods at their right. “It leads to a better vantage point.”

They entered the narrow path and followed its near-night darkness uphill. Farnbach unbuttoned the breast of his coat, concerned about getting his gun out quickly if worse came to worst.

“I've spent some time in Germany myself,” Löfquist said. “Took ship from Lübeck once, as a matter of fact.”

He had switched to German, and fairly good German. Farnbach, disconcerted, wondered whether there might really
be
nothing to worry about; was it possible that Lars Lennart Löfquist wanted only a chance to use his German? It seemed too much to hope for. In German too, he said, “Your German's very good. Is that why you like speaking with us, to get a chance to use it?”

“I don't speak to
all
Germans,” Löfquist said, his voice charged with suppressed merriment. “Only former corporals who've put on weight and call themselves ‘Busch' instead of Farnstein!”

Farnbach stopped and stared at him.

Smiling, Löfquist took his hat off; looked up and moved aside into better light; and laughing now, faced Farnbach and gave himself the substitute mustache of an extended finger.