The Eighth Dwarf (30 page)

“For when?”

“Say, midnight?”

“All right. Midnight.”

The dwarf sighed. “I do wish, Minor, that you had a more, well, gregarious personality, like mine. It's such a help in this kind of work. You're so terribly reserved for an American.”

“I always thought I was friendly as hell.”

“Just a bit more bonhomie wouldn't be at all amiss.”

“Golly, Nick, I'll sure try.”

“I know you will.”

“What about our yellow-haired chaperon? Who gets him?”

“He can't follow us both, can he?”

“Not very well.”

Once again, the dwarf sighed. “Leave him to me.”

“Okay. And we'll meet back here when—around eleven?”

“No later, I'd think.”

“And if this doesn't work, Nick, what then?”

“Why, we try something else, of course.”

“What?”

The dwarf grinned. “I really have no idea.”

It had cost Kurt Oppenheimer another one of his diamonds to get to Bonn. The diamond had gone to the captain of a Dutch barge that was heading for Cologne with a load of much-needed grain. The barge had been twice searched, once by the Americans and once by the British, but the captain was an experienced smuggler, which was how he had survived the war, and hiding one rather thin man had presented no problem at all.

The barge had anchored for the night on the west bank of the Rhine just opposite the section of Bad Godesberg known as Mehlem. The captain was rowing Oppenheimer to shore in a small skiff. Neither of them spoke. When the skiff reached the shore, Oppenheimer jumped out. He turned to look at the barge captain, who stared at him for several moments, then shrugged and started rowing back out into the Rhine. Oppenheimer scrambled up the river-bank.

A trolley took him into the center of Bonn, and after that it took him nearly an hour to find exactly what he was looking for.

The whore he decided on wasn't the youngest he had noticed, or the prettiest, or possibly the cleanest. She stood in a dark doorway, a woman not far from forty, and offered her wares in a hoarse, tired, almost disconsolate voice—as though business were bad and she really didn't expect it to get any better.

Oppenheimer had walked past her once, and now he came back. The whore remembered him.

“Change your mind, handsome?”

He smiled. “Perhaps.”

“You won't be sorry.”

“You have a room?”

“Of course I have a room.”

“A quiet room?”

One badly drawn eyebrow went up. “How quiet?”

“Very quiet—the kind that the police never bother.”

“It's quiet enough.”

“How much?”

“It depends. If you want French tricks, that's extra.”

“For all night.”

“You have cigarettes?”

“Yes.”

“American?”

“Yes.”

“Two hundred cigarettes for all night.” It was her starting price. She had no idea that it would be paid. It never had been.

“Agreed.” He handed her a ten-dollar bill. She looked at it suspiciously. “You said two hundred cigarettes.

“That's for our refreshments. Some wine or
Schnapps.
And some food. Anything. All right?”

“Yes.”

“We'll go to your room first. Then you can go back out and buy the wine and other things.”

She nodded. “This way.”

Like the whore, the room was none too clean, but it had a bed and a chair and a table. It was on the third floor of an old building. Oppenheimer put his briefcase down on the table and looked around. “It's fine,” he said.

“It stinks,” the whore said.

The printer had walked most of the way from the Autobahn to the ferry that would take him across the Rhine to Bad Godesberg. In Frankfurt, he had bribed a truck driver to let him ride in the rear with a load of turnips. It had been an uncomfortable trip, but far safer than the train. Once across the river, he could rest his throbbing knee in the Gasthaus where Eva Scheel had instructed him to stay. She had said that the owner of the Gasthaus was a sympathizer. A silent one, hoped Bodden, who was in no mood for a political discussion.

The Gasthaus was a half-timbered affair of eleven rooms with a bar and a sign that said it had been established in 1634. The proprietor's wife showed Bodden to his room, and her only comment was, “There's no heat, but the bed is warm.”

Just as the woman was leaving, Bodden asked her the time. She told him that it was a quarter to ten and left, closing the door behind her. Bodden sat down on the bed and started massaging his knee. The long walk had done it no good, although the pain was not nearly so severe as it had been just after the dwarf had smashed it with the pistol.

You have three-quarters of an hour, Bodden told himself as he lay down on the bed. You can use it to rest your leg and think about the dwarf and all the nasty things that you would like to do to him. And the money. You can think about that, too, and how you're going to spend it.

Against all regulations, Lt. LaFollette Meyer had given both Leah Oppenheimer and Eva Scheel a ride to Bonn in the Army's 1946 Ford. He had dropped them off at the Park Hotel in Bad Godesberg and gone in search of Gilbert Baker-Bates.

The two women had had dinner in the hotel and afterward had gone to their rooms. At ten o'clock that night Eva Scheel went downstairs and inquired at the desk for directions to the Gasthaus that had been established in 1634. It was not a long walk, she was told—not more than thirty minutes. She thanked the desk clerk and started back up the stairs to her room so that she could get her fur coat. If she had brought the coat with her, she might have turned the other way and noticed the dwarf as he moved across the lobby and into the hotel bar.

Outside the Park Hotel the yellow-haired man leaned against a wall and waited for the dwarf to come out. While he waited, Von Staden counted up the number of bars, cafés, and hotels that Ploscaru had ducked into and out of that night. Fifteen so far, he thought. This one would make sixteen. He wondered, as he had wondered all evening, what the dwarf was doing. There had been no opportunity to find out. Tomorrow, he promised himself; tomorrow I will revisit each place and ask. They'll remember him. People always remember a dwarf.

He recognized the fur coat first. She came out and stood on the steps in the hotel's dim light as if trying to decide which way to go. Von Staden got a good look at her profile and then turned quickly away. It was the little rabbit, all right—the one who had lost him in the rubble near the Golden Rose in Frankfurt. The Major had been unhappy about that, Von Staden remembered. Most unhappy. Well, which was it to be tonight, the dwarf or the rabbit?

Because Von Staden had a quick, logical mind, he made his choice almost immediately. He knew where the dwarf had been that night and where he was staying. All the cafés and bars and hotels were carefully written down. They could wait until tomorrow. Tonight he would follow the little rabbit. And this time he would not let her lose him so easily.

At a few minutes past eleven o'clock that night, Bodden and Eva Scheel came out of the Gasthaus and turned right toward the Rhine. They walked slowly, because Bodden's knee had grown stiff. Bodden had to favor the knee, and in doing so he limped slightly.

Across the street, shielded by the dark and the trunks of the old trees, Von Staden felt his excitement mount. Despite the chill in the air, he was sweating slightly. Well, printer, he thought, where did you acquire the limp? And what have you and the little rabbit to talk about? That would be even more interesting.

The sight of Bodden when he came out of the Gasthaus with Eva Scheel had been almost a shock to Von Staden. He had to force himself to hang back. Only when the pair had reached the Rhine and turned right down a path did he allow himself to cross the dark street.

At the thick bushes, he hesitated. Then slowly he edged around them onto the path.

It was a rock that hit Von Staden in the temple, although he never knew it. Nor did he feel himself being dragged down the steep bank and shoved into the water. He drowned two minutes later. He didn't feel that either.

After Bodden climbed back up the riverbank and rejoined Eva Scheel, he said, “A bad business.”

“He was the only one who could connect us.”

“You're positive?”

“I'm positive.”

Eva Scheel was wrong about that, of course. Maj. Gilbert Baker-Bates could also connect her with the printer. But he wouldn't do that for nearly ten hours, and by then it had all fallen apart.

28

When Jackson got back to his room on the third floor of the Bad Godesberg Hotel that night, it was 11:15 and thirteen persons had queued up outside the dwarf's door. Seven were men; six were women. A few of them looked shamefaced. Several others seemed almost arrogant. All studiously ignored one another.

The dwarf's door was unlocked. When he entered the room, Jackson discovered that the furniture had been rearranged. The table that Ploscaru had counted the marks on was now in the center of the room. On it was the money, neatly stacked. Next to the money was a student's lamp, twisted so that its light would shine full into the face of whoever sat down in the single chair drawn up in front of the table. Behind the table were two straight chairs. Ploscaru was in one of them.

“Jesus, Nick, the only thing you've forgotten is the rubber hose.”

“Atmosphere, Minor. Atmosphere.”

“You've got it looking like the back room at Gestapo headquarters.”

“Do you think so? That was just the touch I tried for.”

Jackson nodded toward the door. “Are they
all
…” He didn't finish his sentence because the dwarf started nodding happily.

“All. Each one has someone to inform against. Isn't it delightful?”

“We're going to be up all night.”

“Did you recognize any of them?”

Jackson ran the faces through his mind. “Two or three, I think.”

“How many places did you visit?”

“About twenty.”

“Good. I went to almost as many. Now, then, I think you should usher them in and out and sit here beside me and look grim and mysterious. I'll do the interrogation—unless, of course, you'd like to.”

“No, I'll just look grim and mysterious and frown a lot.”

“Shall we begin?”

“Sure.”

The first informer was a man of about forty-two. He had a pale, doughy face with eyes like wet raisins. The eyes lit upon the stacked money and never left it. Jackson waved the man into the chair with a silent gesture and then took his own chair behind the table, remembering to frown sternly.

“You have something to tell us, I believe,” the dwarf said.

“My name is—”

The dwarf interrupted. “We're not interested in your name.”

The man blinked, but kept his eyes on the money and started again. “There is this man who should be arrested.”

“Why?” the dwarf asked.

“After the war he lied.”

“About what?”

“About me.”

“What lie did he tell about you?”

“He said I was a member of the Party.”

“Were you?”

“No.”

“The truth. We will not pay for lies.”

“Well, I was a member, but only for a short while.”

“How long?”

“Five years. I lost my job. This man informed on me and I lost my job. He got it. The British gave it to him.”

“What job was it?”

“It was with the bursar's office at the university. I was an accountant. He got my job by lying.”

“He was a member of the Party?”

“No, but he was more of a Nazi than I ever was. He hated the Jews. He used to go to Cologne with his Nazi pals and beat them up. I know. He told me about it.”

“And now he has your job?”

“Yes.”

“You seem to know him well.”

“I should,” the man said. “He's my cousin.”

The dwarf sighed and turned to Jackson. “One hundred marks.”

Jackson counted out one hundred marks and handed them to the man.

“One hundred? I heard it was one hundred thousand.”

“Only for the right information.”

“Wait—I can tell you some other things about him.”

Jackson was around the table now. He took the man by the elbow and steered him to the door. “You're an American, aren't you?” the man said.

“That's right.”

“Tell the other Americans about my cousin. The British don't care. Tell the other Americans about him. Maybe they'll put him in jail. That's where he belongs.”

“Fine,” Jackson said. “I'll tell them.”

The next man to sit at the table before the money had a neighbor whom he despised. After that it was a woman whose brother-in-law had bilked her out of some property. Another man claimed that his wife was cheating on him with someone who, he charged, was a war criminal. Further questioning revealed that the wife's lover was actually the husband's boyhood friend. They both were trolley motormen and had been for years.

It went on much like that until the twelfth person entered the room. She was younger than the rest had been, not much more than twenty-two or twenty-three. She was not especially pretty—her protruding teeth kept her from being that—but her body was well fed, almost voluptuous. She loosened her thin black coat and breathed deeply, either out of nervousness or so that the two men could admire her large breasts. Neither Ploscura nor Jackson recognized her as anyone he had talked to as they made their rounds of cafes and bars earlier that evening.

“Who sent you, Fräulein?” Ploscaru asked.

“A friend,” she said. “He told me you would not need to know my name.”

“That's right.”

“He said you are looking for a man.”

Ploscaru nodded.

“A bad man—an evil man.”