The Tenth Witness (Henri Poincare Mystery) (22 page)

“It’s a beautiful couch.”

“Dora was here this morning. Have you looked in the kitchen?”

I had. It was spotless.

She leaned against the banister and sipped her Scotch. Couples strolled in the garden, and we watched just as we had on other evenings. But this time, Liesel could find no pleasure in it. “Chittagong and Uganda pay for all my comfort,” she said, more to the treetops than to me.

After a while, I asked about the
Times
reporter.

“The same parasite from Uganda. He’s coming after us, Henri. He arrived in Bangladesh before I did. He called me for a comment, then left his card at my hotel with a note on the back—’In case you have an attack of conscience and want to talk.’ ” We left the balcony.

“I can’t stand this, Henri. Come to bed.”

“Liesel—”

“No more talk.” She threw back her drink. “I want to think about something else.” She set the glass down and corrected herself. “No, I don’t want to think at all. Don’t leave tonight.” She studied the Rothko that hung above her fireplace, with its pulsing volcanic reds and oranges. I followed her eyes across the open space of her apartment with its blond wood and polished steel.

Night was falling in Munich. But the sun never set on Kraus Steel. Somewhere in Asia, Africa, South America, or Eastern Europe, at that very hour, men and boys were putting their lives at risk for pennies so that Liesel could enjoy her white leather couch and her Rothko. She knew it. She knew that I knew it. She said nothing as she surveyed her apartment.

What I did that night was more an act of mercy than lovemaking. She pulled me on top of her and placed my hand at her throat. “Squeeze,” she said.

I removed my hand and kissed her.

“No. Choke me. I need it.”

“I won’t,” I said. “Shh.”

She found no peace until she slept. Even then, she tangled the sheets and shuddered. I never knew that one could cry while sleeping. But that night Liesel cried. She called for her parents in her dreams, and all I could do was hold her.

V
IKTOR
S
CHMIDT
finally got his wish and visited the dive platform. Anselm remained behind in Munich to deal with the fallout from the latest
Times
article, an above-the-fold photo of the sixteen-year-old who had died at the breaking yard. It ran beneath a thirty-point headline:
MORE
DEATH
AT
KRAUS
STEEL
. Apparently, the Kraus manager in Chittagong knew the child had lied about his age and put him on the night shift to avoid queries from government inspectors.

Before heading north with Liesel and Schmidt, I called on Anselm to deliver my final report on the salvage of circuit boards. He apologized for not making the weekend trip with the family, but he had fires to put out. “It’s a public relations nightmare, Henri. I’ll be there for the end-of-season hike onto the flats. I’ve never missed that since we started, back when my father was still alive. No matter what, I’ll be there.”

He felt the heft of the report and approved. “Do I have a reasonable prospect for success in salvaging gold?”

“You do,” I said. “But read the section on safety.”

He skimmed the report, and I reread the
Times
article, one of the three copies he’d placed on his desk. The reporter had focused almost entirely on the events at Chittagong, but he referenced the mine collapse, and in the final paragraph hinted at a broader investigation underway into Kraus’s Third World facilities. It was a horror show and, for once, Anselm seemed dwarfed by events. A portrait of Otto Kraus loomed above the fireplace in his office, his right hand grasping a bar of steel and his left resting on a globe of the world. I couldn’t have worked with those eyes pinned on me.

He looked up from my report. “A gold salvage could be Chittagong all over again. More accidents, more headlines?”

“It doesn’t have to be. But, yes, it could.”

He thought for a bit. “I’m not breaking a single law, you know. Not in Uganda, not in Bangladesh, not in any of my facilities worldwide. I’ve directed my lawyers and managers to observe all local labor and environmental regulations. We’re compliant. We’ve broken no laws.”

“I understand.”

He walked to the window, where he could see Friedrich piloting the Stuka. “These countries beg me to open my facilities, Henri. My yards bring cash to their economies. I give their people something to do other than scratch the dirt trying to feed their families on a few miserable rows of corn and milk from swaybacked cows. I’m helping, you know.”

He wanted to believe it. He turned back to the lawn and watched his son. Franz Hofmann shuffled and tapped across the patio with his cane. He saw Anselm and waved, then called: “That sprinkler head’s fixed. Good as new!”

Anselm thanked him.

“The old ways are gone, Henri, and I don’t think it’s always for the best. Children don’t learn at their father’s knee these days.” He waved to Friedrich. “When I was his age, I was walking the factory floor with Otto. The men would take off their caps and bow.”

“Why?”

Anselm turned abruptly.

“Those were difficult days, and the workers knew damned well he was doing the best he could for them. He was more than their employer. He was their leader and protector. That made a huge impression on me—the respect they showed my father. There were soldiers everywhere. These men were scared, of course, but they loved their work. Even I could see it. Now I spend my life in an office, and I’d need to get in a car and drive for hours to the nearest steel mill. In those days, I could open the window and smell smoke from the stacks. You should go to Salzgitter one day. It was a child’s paradise.”

What world was he recalling? I could barely hold back from shaking Anselm into an honest account of the war. Otto’s adoring laborers were slaves. One was named Isaac Kahane. They removed their caps because those who didn’t would get rifle-butted in the gut.

I stood in his office achingly close to Isaac. Earlier that week, I had tried to contact the remaining witnesses who’d signed the affidavit. I reached no one. Too many years had passed, and they were gone. Yet here I stood with someone who had lived at the Reichswerke and breathed the same polluted air that Isaac breathed. Surely, Anselm the man knew what Anselm the child could not: that those hollow-eyed souls in their funny, striped uniforms had no love for his father, or for any part of a system that had destroyed their world.

“I learned at Papa’s knee,” he said.

In fact, I didn’t think so. Whoever that man in the portrait was, whether or not he ultimately saved lives, as director of a mill built on slave labor he had to walk the factory floor and look his Jews and Slavs and gypsies in the eye before flushing them down the toilet. Nazis did that, and I doubted Anselm’s soul was black enough.

“Will you teach Friedrich the business?” I asked.

He turned away from the window and thought for a moment. “What would I do, bring him to watch me in my office, sitting behind a desk? These days, Kraus Steel is located everywhere
but
Munich. Nothing real happens here any longer.”

“Then take Friedrich to Chittagong,” I said. “Let him see what you do. Let him learn at his papa’s knee.”

He studied my expression. “You’re being ironic. Say what you mean.”

I
had
said it. With all my heart I wanted Anselm to take him. I wanted the child to see that hellhole and ask: Papa, why are these men in rags? I wanted the misery of his own workers to shake Anselm back into himself, the other self I had seen and admired. But I knew he wouldn’t be taking Friedrich to Bangladesh or his other yards anytime soon.

He folded the newspaper on his desk, obscuring the face of the boy who’d been crushed. “The
Times
article missed the obvious,” he said. “Dangerous work is dangerous. People get hurt. You join the army and go to war, you expect casualties. If you work in a mine, you expect cave-ins. Breaking yards are inherently dangerous places, Henri. No one’s holding a gun to these people’s heads. They
choose
to leave the farm and break down ships. We pay them. We’re legal. But even so, on occasion, accidents happen.”

“They do,” I said. “You’re right.”

He handed me a check for the completed report and I left quickly, mourning the loss of this man. I didn’t want to believe he’d accepted death as a price of doing business. This was Anselm the CEO speaking. Where was the man who raced across the open sea on
Blast Furnace,
laughing like a child, the one who danced his daughter around the ballroom at Löwenherz?

From the cast of his eyes and his weariness of spirit, I knew he was suffering. His justifications had a rehearsed feel, as if he were presenting them to a group of investors. He wasn’t lost completely, I decided. He couldn’t be. Otherwise, what was left for Friedrich to learn at his papa’s knee? That with work dispersed across a wide world in the most desperate of places, a factory owner no longer had to look anyone in the eye before flushing the toilet? Anselm didn’t believe it, and surely he didn’t want Friedrich believing it.

thirty

“T
reasure!” they cried. “A treasure ship!”

The look on the faces of Friedrich and Magda as they climbed onto the barge was nearly reason enough to have built it. What compares to the wonder of a child? Through their excitement, just as through their father’s weeks earlier, I saw the barge anew.

“Show us! Are those really cannons? Can we touch them?”

Liesel’s reaction was barely less winning. She laughed for their joy and for her own; and after taking a brief inventory of the sheds, the crane, and a sluice that was pouring tons of sand through a screen as we climbed aboard, she glanced my way with profound approval. I felt a surging affection for her.

Theresa had been timid on
Blast Furnace
during the crossing from Löwenherz. On the barge, she continued to wear her life jacket and insisted the children wear theirs. For his part, Schmidt looked unimpressed. For all the enthusiasm he’d expressed earlier, he was oddly solemn.

Alec emerged from the crew’s quarters with a clipboard, binoculars, and a floppy hat that shielded him from the August sun. He was talking with the conservator, Hillary Gospodarek. They headed our way, and I thought I saw him place a familiar hand at the small of her back. I managed the introductions as Friedrich and Magda, losing patience, demanded to climb on the cannons and then see the treasure.

Gospodarek extended a hand to both children and set off with Theresa, Liesel, and Schmidt. When they were out of hearing range, Alec pressed me for news about the trip to Argentina. I had put him off, earlier, when I called to update him on our new contracts.

“How good was Buenos Aires?” he asked. “Excellent or superb?”

I told him about the
madres
and the taxi driver.

“Let me guess, Henri. You walked away from it. If we hadn’t just gotten these other contracts, I’d throw you off this barge.”

As would have been his right. But I had a vote, too, and I wanted him to understand: “Alec, they drug some of the people they kidnap and drop them out of helicopters at sea. While they’re alive. That’s what they’ll fund with the gold from the salvage. I couldn’t let us be a part of that.”

“What planet were you born on?” he said. “The generals will get their gold with or without our help. Better that it’s with. If you’re so bent on foiling them, get the money and fight some other way.”

“With my personal navy and air force?”

“Write an article or a book. Scream all you want, but take the money
first
.”

I produced Anselm’s payment for the completed lab work. “It evens out in the end,” I said. But I wasn’t so sure, because I couldn’t tell which pocket Anselm had taken that money from: earnings he intended to make from the gold salvage, which he might or might not choose to run as a toilet? Or present earnings from Chittagong and Uganda, which
were
toilets? I had no way of knowing. I could have been purer-hearted and refused the check, but it turned out I wasn’t
that
pure. I accepted Anselm’s money because we needed it. And I accepted it because I didn’t want him or Liesel thinking I held myself above them.

But I
was
holding myself above them. And what friendship, or marriage, could endure that?

Alec stared at the check.

“He paid you this for two months’ work?”

“Plus the initial check. Generous, right?”

“No. It’s stupidly generous. What’s with this guy?”

We heard squealing across the barge, where Gospodarek let the children climb on the cannons. Liesel and Theresa helped them to balance while Schmidt watched the crane operator, who swung a long, oxidized rail over a growing pile of metal.

“We found a submarine,” said Alec, pointing to the crane. “A U-boat, if you can believe that, blown open from the inside. Two explosions, forward and aft. Our divers came up so excited I went down to see for myself.”

“
You?
”

“It’s shallow enough so that if the scuba gear failed, I could get to the surface. No decompression issues on this dive.”