Boys from Brazil

1

EARLY ONE EVENING in September of 1974 a small twin-engine plane, silver and black, sailed down onto a secondary runway at São Paulo’s Congonhas Airport, and slowing, turned aside and taxied to a hangar where a limousine stood waiting. Three men, one in white, transferred from the plane to the limousine, which drove from Congonhas toward the white skyscrapers of central São Paulo. Some twenty minutes later, on the Avenida Ipiranga, the limousine stopped in front of Sakai, a temple-like Japanese restaurant.

The three men came side by side into Sakai’s large red-lacquered foyer. Two of them, in dark suits, were bulky and aggressive-looking, one blond and the other black-haired. The third man, striding between them, was slimmer and older, in white from hat to shoes except for a lemon-yellow necktie. He swung a fat tan briefcase in a white-gloved hand and whistled a melody, looking about with apparent pleasure.

A kimonoed checkroom girl dipped and smiled prettily, and given the hat of the man in white, tried for his briefcase. He moved from her reach, however, and addressed himself to a lean young Japanese coming at him in a smile and a tuxedo. “My name is Aspiazu,” he announced in Portuguese harshened by a slight German accent. “A private room is reserved for me.” He looked to be in his early sixties and had cropped gray hair, vivid and cheery brown eyes, and a neat gray hairline mustache.

“Ah, Senhor Aspiazu!” the Japanese exclaimed in his own version of Portuguese. “Everything’s ready for your party! Will you come this way, please? Just up these stairs. I’m sure you’ll be happy when you see the arrangements.”

“I’m happy now,” the man in white said, smiling. “It’s a pleasure to be in the city.”

“You live in the country?”

The man in white, following the blond man up the stairs, nodded and sighed. “Yes,” he said drily, “I live in the country.” The black-haired man went after him, and the Japanese went last. “The first door on the right,” he called ahead. “Will you remove your shoes before you go in, please?”

The blond man ducked to peer through an octagonal wall-opening, then braced a hand against a doorpost, raised his foot behind him, and pulled the shoe from it. The man in white put forward a white-shod foot on the hallway’s carpet, and the black-haired man crouched down and unfastened a gold buckle at the side of it. The blond man, having set both his shoes aside, opened an intricately carved door and went into a pale-green room beyond. The Japanese toed himself nimbly out of pumps. “Our best room, Senhor Aspiazu,” he said. “Very nice.”

“I’m sure it is.” The man in white pressed white-gloved fingertips against a doorpost as he watched the removal of his second shoe.

“And our Imperial Dinner for seven, with beer, not saki, and brandy and cigars after.”

The blond man came to the doorway. Small white scars darned his face; one of his ears had no lobe. He nodded and stepped back. The man in white, shorter now by more than normal heel-height, went into the room. The Japanese followed him.

The room was cool and sweet-smelling, a placid oblong silk-walled in the hazy pale green of its tatami floormats. At its center, bamboo backrests with tan-and-white-patterned cushions faced three sides of a low black oblong table set with white plates and cups; three settings and backrests at each of the table’s long sides and one at its right end. A shallow foot-well smaller than the table lay beneath it. At the room’s right end another low black table stood against the wall, two electric burners set into its surface. The wall opposite was shoji screens of black-framed white paper. “Plenty of room for seven,” the Japanese said, gesturing toward the central table. “And our best girls will be serving you. Prettiest too.” He smiled and raised his eyebrows.

The man in white, pointing at the shoji screens, asked, “What’s behind there?”

“Another private room, senhor.”

“Is it being used tonight?”

“It hasn’t been reserved, but a party might want it.”

“I reserve it.” The man in white gestured to the blond man to open the screens.

The Japanese looked at the blond man and at the man in white again. “It’s a room for six,” he said uncertainly. “Sometimes eight.”

“Of course.” The man in white strolled away toward the end of the room. “I’ll pay for eight more dinners.” He bent to study the burners in the table. His fat briefcase moved against his trouser leg.

The blond man was sliding the screens apart; the Japanese hurried to help him, or perhaps to prevent him from damaging the screens. The room beyond proved to be a mirror-image of the first room, except that its ceiling lighting panel was dark and the table beneath it was set for six, two at each side and one at each end. The man in white had turned to look; the Japanese smiled across the room at him uncomfortably. “I’ll only charge you if someone asks for it,” he said, “and then only the difference between what we charge downstairs and what we charge up here.”

The man in white, looking surprised, said, “How nice! Thank you.”

“Excuse me, please,” the black-haired man said to the Japanese. He stood just within the room, his dark suit rumpled, his round swarthy face sheened with sweat. “Is there any way of closing this?” He pointed back toward the octagonal opening in the wall. His Portuguese was Brazil-accented.

“It’s for the girls,” the Japanese explained hopefully. “To see if you’re ready for your next course.”

“That’s all right,” the man in white told the black-haired man. “You’ll be outside.”

The black-haired man said, “I thought maybe he could…” and he shrugged apologetically.

“Everything is satisfactory,” the man in white said to the Japanese. “My guests will arrive at eight o’clock and—”

“I’ll show them up.”

“No need; one of my men will be waiting below. And after we eat we’ll have a conference here.”

“You can stay till three if you like.”

“No need for that either, I hope! An hour should be sufficient. And now would you bring me please a glass of Dubonnet, red, with ice and a twist of lemon peel.”

“Yes, senhor.” The Japanese bowed.

“And is it possible to have more light? I plan to read while I wait.”

“I’m sorry, senhor, this is all there is.”

“I’ll manage. Thank you.”

“Thank you, Senhor Aspiazu.” The Japanese bowed again, bowed less deeply to the blond man, bowed hardly at all to the black-haired man, and went quickly from the room.

The black-haired man closed the door, and facing it, raised his arms high, curved his fingers, and set the tips of them on top of the doorframe as if to play a key board. He moved his hands slowly apart.

The man in white went and stood with his back to the wall-opening while the blond man went to the backrest at the end of the table and crouched beside it. He pressed its tan-and-white cushions and lifted them from the bamboo frame and put them aside. He inspected the frame, turned it over to look at its bottom, and put it aside with the cushions. He felt the tatami matting all around the end of the table; with widespread hands he explored the plaited grass, gently pressing.

Getting down on his knees, he thrust his blond head in under the table and looked into the foot-well. He bent lower, turned his head, and looked up with one blue eye at the table’s underside, scanning it slowly from end to end.

He backed from the table, took the bamboo frame, restored its two cushions, and placed the backrest at an accessible angle. Rising, he stood attentively behind it.

The man in white came, unbuttoning his jacket. He set his briefcase on the floor and turned and lowered himself carefully, finding the backrest’s arms. He folded his legs in under the table, his feet toward the foot-well.

The blond man, bending, pushed at the backrest and squared it to the table.

“Danke,” the man in white said.

“Bitte,” the blond man said, and went and stood with his back against the wall-opening.

The man in white peeled at a glove, looking approvingly at the table before him. The black-haired man, arms high, side-stepped slowly across the opening between the two rooms, fingering along the top of a projecting black lintel.

A soft tapping sounded; the blond man moved to the door and the black-haired man turned, lowering his arms. The blond man listened, and opened the door to a pink-kimonoed waitress who came in with her head bowed, holding a tin-kling glass and its tray. Her white-mittened feet whispered over the tatami.

“Ah!” the man in white exclaimed happily, folding his gloves. His enthusiastic expression faltered as the waitress, a flat-faced woman, crouched beside him and moved the napkin and chopsticks from his plate. “And what’s your name, dear?” he asked with strained jollity.

“Tsuruko, senhor.” The waitress put a paper coaster down.

“Tsuruko!” With wide eyes and pursed lips the man looked to the blond man and the black-haired man, as if marveling with them at an impressive revelation.

The waitress, having put the drink down, rose and backed away.

“Until my guests come, Tsuruko, I don’t want to be disturbed.”

“Yes, senhor.” She turned and hurried close-kneed from the room.

The blond man closed the door and stepped back to his place before the wall-opening. The black-haired man turned and raised his hands to the lintel-top.

“Tsu, ru, ko,” the man in white said, drawing his briefcase close to his side. In German he said, “If she’s a pretty one what do the not-so-pretty ones look like?”

The blond man grunted a laugh.

The man in white finger-sprang the lockflap of his briefcase and opened it wide enough so that it stayed open. He tucked his folded gloves into an end of it, and leafing through the edges of papers and manila envelopes, drew from among them a thin magazine. He set it down—Lancet, the British medical journal—on the table beside his plate. Scanning its cover, he took from his breast pocket a frayed and faded petit-point eyeglass case, from which he drew a pair of black-framed glasses. Opening them, he put them on, pocketed the case and side-fingered his thin bristly mustache. His hands were small, pink, clean, young-looking. From inside his jacket he brought a gold cigarette case on which a lengthy handwritten inscription was engraved.

The blond man stood before the wall-opening. The black-haired man examined the walls, and the floor, and the serving table, and the backrests. He moved one of the middle table settings aside, spread his handkerchief in its place, and stepping up on it, opened with a screwdriver the chrome-bordered lighting panel.

The man in white read Lancet, sipping now and then at his Dubonnet, smoking a cigarette. He hissed air intently through a gap in his upper teeth. Occasionally he seemed surprised by what he read. Once he exclaimed in English, “Absolutely wrong, sir!”

The guests arrived within a period of four minutes, the first checking his hat but not his attaché case at three minutes of eight, the last at one minute after. When each made his way through waiting groups and couples to the tuxedoed Japanese, he was graciously directed to the blond man at the foot of the stairs; words were exchanged and the guest was shown upward, to the black-haired man pointing at the row of shoes beside the open door.

Six well-dressed businessmen in their middle fifties, fair-skinned, Nordic; sock-footed, they nodded politely to one another and bent to present themselves in Portuguese and Spanish to the man in white. “Ignacio Carreras, Doctor. An honor to meet you.”

“Hello! How are you? I can’t get up, I’m trapped here. This is José de Lima from Rio. Ignacio Carreras from Buenos Aires.”

“Doctor? I’m Jorge Ramos.”

“My friend! Your brother was like this right hand to me. Forgive me for sitting; I’m trapped. Ignacio Carreras from Buenos Aires, José de Lima from Rio. Jorge Ramos from right here in Paulo.”

Two of the guests were old friends, happy to see each other. “In Santiago! Where have you been?” “In Rio!” Another introduced himself with a heel-click that failed: “Antônio Paz, Pôrto Alegre.”

They lowered themselves in at the sides of the table, joking about their awkwardness, groaning; settled themselves with portfolios and attaché cases close beside; shook napkins open, named their drinks to a pretty young waitress gracefully crouching. Flat-faced Tsuruko set a steaming rolled-up washcloth before each man; the man in white and his guests scrubbed appreciatively at their hands, wiped at their mouths.

Wiping away, apparently, Portuguese and Spanish. German began to emerge; German names were exchanged.

“Ah, I know you. You served under Stangl, right? At Treblinka?”

“Did you say ‘Farnbach’? My wife is a Farnbach, from Langen near Frankfurt.”

The drinks were served, and small plates of appetizers—baby shrimp and balls of browned meat. The man in white demonstrated the use of chopsticks. The men who were adept gave guidance to those who weren’t.

“A fork, for God’s sake!”

“No, no!” the man in white laughed to the pretty young waitress. “We’ll make him learn! He has to learn!”

Her name was Mori. The girl in the plain kimono, bringing plates and covered bowls to Tsuruko at the serving table, blushed and said, “Yoshiko, senhor.”

The men ate and drank. They talked about an earthquake in Peru, and the new American president, Ford.

Bowls of clear soup were served, and more plates of food, fried and raw; tea was poured.

The men talked about the oil situation and its probable lessening of the West’s sympathy for Israel.

More food was served—strips of cooked meat, chunks of lobster—and Japanese beer.

The men talked about Japanese women. Kleist-Carreras, a thin man with a glass eye that moved badly, told a wonderfully funny story about a friend’s misadventure in a Tokyo brothel.

The tuxedoed Japanese came in and asked how everything was. “First rate!” the man in white assured him. “Excellent!” The other men agreed, in Portuguese-Spanish-German.

Melon was served. More tea.

The men talked about fishing, and different ways of cooking fish.

The man in white asked Mori to marry him; she smiled and pleaded a husband and two children.

The men climbed up from creaking backrests, stretched their arms and stood on tiptoe, patted their stomachs. A few, the man in white among them, went out into the hallway to find the men’s room. The others talked about the man in white: how charming he was, and how lively and youthful for—was it sixty-three? Sixty-four?

The first group came back; the others went.

The table was clean black, set with brandy snifters, ashtrays, and a box of glass-tubed cigars. Mori went around crouching with a bottle, feeding each snifter a bottomful of dark amber. Tsuruko and Yoshiko whispered at the serving table, disagreeing about the clearing up. “Out, girls,” the man in white said, going to his place. “We wish to speak in private.”

Tsuruko shooed Yoshiko before her; apologized passing the man: “We’ll clear up later.” Mori gave the last snifter its brandy, set the bottle on the table’s unoccupied end, and scurried toward the door, standing aside with her head bowed as the rest of the men came in.

The man in white lowered himself into his backrest. Farnbach-Paz helped him position it.

The black-haired man looked in at the door, counted the men, and drew the door closed.

The men lowered themselves into their places, gravely this time, not joking. The cigar box was passed.

The wall-opening was blocked on the other side by dark-gray suiting.

The man in white took a cigarette from his gold case, closed it, looked at it, and offered it to Farnbach on his right, who shook his bald-shaven head; but realizing he was being invited to read, not smoke, he took the case and held it out to focus on it. His blue eyes widened in recognition. “Ohhh!” He sucked air in through thick puckered lips as he read. Smiling excitedly at the man in white, he said, “How marvelous! Even better than a medal. May I?” He gestured with the case toward Kleist beside him.

The man in white nodded, smiling and pink-cheeked, and turned to put his cigarette to the flame of a lighter held waiting at his left. Squinting against smoke, he drew his briefcase nearer his side and opened it wide again. “Wonderful!” Kleist said. “Look, Schwimmer.” The man in white found and pulled from his briefcase a sheaf of papers, which he set before him, moving his brandy aside. He put his cigarette into the notch of a white ashtray. Watching handsome young-looking Schwimmer pass the case across the table toward Mundt, he took his eyeglass case from his breast pocket, the glasses from the case. He smiled at admiring smiles from Schwimmer and Kleist, pocketed the eyeglass case, shook the glasses open and slid them on. A whistle from Mundt, long and low. The man in white took up his cigarette, drew on it savoringly, and set it in the ashtray again. He squared the papers before him and studied the topmost one, reaching for his brandy. “Mm, mm, mm!”—from Traunsteiner. The man in white sipped brandy, thumbed the bottom of the sheaf of papers.

The cigarette case came back to him, from silver-haired Hessen, blue eyes bright in his gaunt face. “What a wonderful thing to possess!”

“Yes,” the man in white agreed, nodding, “I’m enormously proud of it.” He put the case down beside the papers.

“Who wouldn’t be?” Farnbach asked.

The man in white put his snifter aside and said, “Let’s get down to business now, boys.” Tipping his cropped gray head, he pushed his glasses lower on his nose and looked at the men over them. They faced him attentively, cigars poised. Silence took the room; only a low whine of air conditioning persisted against it.

“You know what you’re going out to do,” the man in white said, “and you know it’s a long job. I’ll fill you in on the details now.” He leaned his head forward, looking down through his glasses. “Ninety-four men have to die on or near certain dates in the next two and a half years,” he said, reading. “Sixteen of them are in West Germany, fourteen in Sweden, thirteen in England, twelve in the United States, ten in Norway, nine in Austria, eight in Holland, and six each in Denmark and Canada. Total, ninety-four. The first is to die on or near October sixteenth; the last, on or near the twenty-third of April, 1977.”

He sat back and looked at the men again. “Why must these men die? And why on or near their particular dates?” He shook his head. “Not now; later you can be told that. But this I can tell you now: their deaths are the final step in an operation to which I and the leaders of the Organization have devoted many years, enormous effort, and a large part of the Organization’s fortune. It’s the most important operation the Organization has ever undertaken, and ‘important’ is a thousand times too weak a word to describe it. The hope and the destiny of the Aryan race lie in the balance. No exaggeration here, my friends; literal truth: the destiny of the Aryan people—to hold sway over the Slavs and the Semites, the Black and the Yellow—will be fulfilled if the operation succeeds, will not be fulfilled if the operation fails. So ‘important’ isn’t a strong enough word, is it? ‘Holy,’ maybe? Yes, that’s closer. It’s a holy operation you’re taking part in.”

He picked up his cigarette, tapped ash away, and carried its shortness carefully to his lips.

The men looked at one another silently, awed. They reminded themselves to draw at cigars, to sip brandy. They looked at the man in white again; he ground his cigarette in the ashtray, looked up at them.

“You’ll be leaving Brazil with new identities,” he said, and touched the briefcase at his side. “Everything’s here. Genuine stuff, not forgeries. And you’ll have ample funds for the two and a half years. In diamonds”—he smiled—“which I’m afraid you’ll have to take through customs in the uncomfortable way.”

The men smiled and shrugged.

“You’ll each be responsible for the men in one or a pair of countries. You have from thirteen to eighteen assignments each, but a few of the men will already have died of natural causes. They’re sixty-five years old. Not too many of them will have died, though, as they were in excellent health as of their fifty-second year, with no signs of incipient disorder.”

“All the men are sixty-five?” Hessen asked, looking puzzled.

“Almost all,” the man in white said. “That is, they will be when their dates come around. A few will be a year or two younger or older.” He lifted aside the paper from which he had read the countries and numbers, and picked up the other nine or ten sheets. “The addresses,” he told the men, “are their addresses in 1961 and ’62, but you shouldn’t have any trouble locating them today. Most are probably still where they were. They’re family men, stable; civil servants mostly—tax examiners, principals of schools, and so on; men of minor authority.”

“They have that in common too?” Schwimmer asked.

The man in white nodded.

Hessen said, “A remarkably homogeneous group. The members of another organization, opposed to ours?”

“They don’t even know one another, or us,” the man in white said. “At least I hope they don’t.”

“They’ll be retired now, won’t they?” Kleist asked. “If they’re sixty-five?” His glass eye looked elsewhere.

“Yes, most of them will probably be retired,” the man in white agreed. “But if they’ve moved, you can be sure they’ll have taken care to leave proper forwarding addresses. Schwimmer, you get England. Thirteen, the smallest number.” He handed a typewritten sheet to Kleist to pass on to Schwimmer. “No reflection on your abilities,” he smiled at Schwimmer. “On the contrary, a recognition of them. I hear you can turn yourself into an Englishman of whom the Queen herself wouldn’t be suspicious.”

“You do know how to flatter one, old man,” Schwimmer drawled in Oxonian English, fingering his sandy mustache as he glanced at the sheet. “Actually, the old girl’s not all that bright, y’ know.”

The man in white smiled. “That talent might very well prove useful,” he said, “though your new identity, like all the others’, is that of a German national. You’re traveling salesmen, boys; maybe between assignments you’ll have time to discover a few farmers’ daughters.” He looked at his next sheet. “Farnbach, you’ll be traveling in Sweden.” He handed the sheet to his right. “With fourteen customers for your fine imported merchandise.”

Farnbach, taking the sheet, leaned forward, his hairless brow-ridge creased by a frown. “All of them elderly civil servants,” he said, “and by killing them we fulfill the destiny of the Aryan race?”

The man in white looked at him for a moment. “Was that a question or a statement, Farnbach?” he asked. “It sounded a little like a question there at the end, and if so, I’m surprised. Because you, and all of you, were chosen for this operation on the basis of your unquestioning obedience as well as your other attributes and talents.”

Farnbach sat back, his thick lips closed and his nostrils flaring, his face flushed.

The man in white looked at his next clipped-together sheets. “No, Farnbach, I’m sure it was a statement,” he said, “and in that case I have to correct it slightly: by killing them you prepare the way for the fulfillment of the destiny, et cetera. It will come; not in April 1977, when the ninety-fourth man dies, but in time. Only obey your orders. Traunsteiner, you’ve got Norway and Denmark.” He handed the sheets away. “Ten in one, six in the other.”

Traunsteiner took the sheets, his square red face set in a grim demonstration: Unquestioning Obedience.

“Holland and the upper part of Germany,” the man in white said, “are for Sergeant Kleist. Sixteen again, eight and eight.”

“Thank you, Herr Doktor.”

“The eight in lower Germany and nine in Austria—make seventeen for Sergeant Mundt.”

Mundt—round-faced, crop-headed, eyeglassed—grinned as he waited for the sheets to reach him. “When I’m in Austria,” he said, “I’ll take care of Yakov Liebermann while I’m at it!” Traunsteiner, passing the sheets to him, smiled with gold-filled teeth.

“Yakov Liebermann,” the man in white said, “has already been taken care of, by time, and ill health, and the failure of the bank where he kept his Jewish money. He’s hunting for lecture-bookings now, not for us. Forget about him.”

“Of course,” Mundt said. “I was only joking.”

“And I’m not. To the police and the press he’s a boring old nuisance with a file cabinet full of ghosts; kill him and you’re liable to turn him into a neglected hero with living enemies still to be caught.”

“I never heard of the Jew-bastard.”

“I wish I could say the same.”

The men laughed.

The man in white handed his last pair of sheets to Hessen. “And for you, eighteen,” he said, smiling. “Twelve in the United States and six in Canada. I count on your being your brother’s brother.”

“I am,” Hessen said, lifting his silver head, the sharp-planed face proud. “You’ll see I am.”

The man in white looked around at the men. “I told you,” he said, “that the men are to be killed on or near the date given with each one’s name. ‘On’ is of course better than ‘near,’ but only microscopically so. A week one way or the other will make no real difference, and even a month will be acceptable if you have reason to think it will make an assignment less risky. As for methods: whichever you choose, provided only that they vary and that there’s never any suggestion of premeditation. The authorities in no country must suspect that an operation is under way. It shouldn’t be difficult for you. Bear in mind that these are sixty-five-year-old men: their eyes are failing; they have slow reflexes, diminished strength. They’re likely to drive poorly and cross streets carelessly, to suffer falls, to be knifed and robbed by hoodlums. There are dozens of ways in which such men can be killed without attracting high-level attention.” He smiled. “I trust you to find them.”

Kleist said, “Can we hire someone else to take an assignment or to help with it? If that seems the best way of bringing it off?”

The man in white turned his hands out in wondering surprise. “You’re sensible men with good judgment,” he reminded Kleist; “that’s why we chose you. However you think the job should be done, that’s the way to do it. As long as the men die at the right time and the authorities don’t suspect it’s an operation, you have a completely free hand.” He raised a finger. “No, not completely; I’m sorry. One proviso, and it’s a very important one. We don’t want the men’s families involved, either as co-victims in any sort of accident or—in the case, say, of younger wives who might be open to romantic overtures—as accomplices. I repeat: the families aren’t to be involved in any way, and only outsiders used as accomplices.”

“Why should we need accomplices?” Traunsteiner asked, and Kleist said, “You never know what you’re liable to run up against.”

“I’ve been all over Austria,” Mundt said, looking at one of his sheets, “and there are places here I’ve never heard of.”

“Yes,” Farnbach groused, looking at his single sheet, “I know Sweden but I certainly never heard of any ‘Rasbo.’”

“It’s a small town about fifteen kilometers northeast of Uppsala,” the man in white said. “That’s Bertil Hedin, isn’t it? He’s the postmaster there.”

Farnbach looked at him, his brow uplifted.

The man in white met his gaze, and smiled patiently. “And killing Postmaster Hedin,” he said, “is every bit as important—correction, as holy—as I said it was. Come on now, Farnbach, be the fine soldier you’ve always been.”

Farnbach shrugged and looked at his sheet again. “You’re…the doctor,” he said drily.

“So I am,” the man in white said, still smiling as he turned to his briefcase.

Hessen, looking at his sheets, said, “Here’s a good one: ‘Kankakee.’”

“Right outside Chicago,” the man in white said, bringing up a stack of manila envelopes between spread-open hands. He spilled them onto the table—half a dozen large swollen envelopes, each lettered at a corner with a name: Cabral, Carreras, de Lima—a snifter was snatched from the sliding rush of them.

“Sorry,” the man in white said, sitting back. He gestured for the envelopes to be distributed, and took his glasses off. “Don’t open them here,” he said, pinching his nose, rubbing it. “I checked everything myself this morning. German passports with Brazilian entrance stamps and the right visas, working permits, driver’s licenses, business cards and papers; everything’s there. When you get back to your rooms, practice your new signatures and sign whatever needs signing. Your plane tickets are in there too, and some currency of the destination countries, a few thousand cruzeiros’ worth.”

“The diamonds?” Kleist asked, holding his Carreras envelope in both hands before him.

“Are in the safe at headquarters.” The man in white homed his eyeglasses in their petit-point case. “You’ll pick them up on your way to the airport—you leave tomorrow—and you’ll give Ostreicher your present passports and personal papers to hold for your return.”

Mundt said, “And I just got used to ‘Gómez,’” and grinned. The others laughed.

“What are we getting?” Schwimmer asked, zipping his portfolio. “In diamonds, I mean.”

“About forty carats each.”

“Ouch,” Farnbach said.

“No, the tubes are quite small. A dozen or so three-carat stones, that’s all. They’re each worth about seventy thousand cruzeiros in today’s market, and more in tomorrow’s, with inflation. So you’ll have the equivalent of at least nine-hundred-thousand-odd cruzeiros for the two and a half years. You’ll live very nicely, in the manner befitting salesmen for large German firms, and you’ll have more than enough money for any equipment you need. Incidentally, be sure not to take any weapons with you on the plane; they’re searching everybody these days. Leave anything you’ve got with Ostreicher. You’ll have no trouble selling the diamonds. In fact, you’ll probably have to drive buyers away. Does that cover everything?”

“Checking in?” Hessen asked, putting his attaché case by his side.

“Didn’t I mention that? The first of each month, by phone to your company’s Brazilian branch—headquarters, of course. Keep it businesslike. You in particular, Hessen; I’m sure nine out of ten phones in the States are tapped.”

Traunsteiner said, “I haven’t spoken Norwegian since the war.”

“Study.” The man in white smiled. “Anything else? No? Well then, let’s have some more brandy and I’ll think of an appropriate toast to speed you on your way.” He picked up his cigarette case, opened it, and took out a cigarette. He closed the case and looked at it—and bringing his white sleeve to its inscribed face, briskly polished it.

Tsuruko bowed and thanked the senhor. Tucking the folded bills down into the waist of her kimono, she slipped past him and hurried to the serving table, where Yoshiko was nesting together small bowls of drying leftovers. “He gave me twenty-five!” Yoshiko whispered excitedly. “What did you get?”

“I don’t know,” Tsuruko whispered, crouching low, putting the leaning cover onto a rice bowl beneath the table. “I didn’t look yet.” With both hands she brought out the wide flat red-lacquered bowl.

“Fifty, I’ll bet!”

“I hope so.” Rising, Tsuruko hurried with the bowl past the senhor and one of his guests joking with Mori, and out into the hallway. She zigzagged her way through the other guests—handing shoehorns to one another, bending, crouching—and shouldered a swing-door open.

She carried the bowl down a narrow flight of stairs lit by wire-strung bare bulbs, and along an equally narrow corridor with walls of plastered lath.

The corridor opened into a steamy jangling kitchen where antique ceiling fans slowly turned their blades over a hubbub of waitresses, cooks, and helpers. Tsuruko in her pink kimono carried the wide red bowl among them; she passed a helper quick-chopping vegetables, and another who glanced up at her as he hauled a tray of dishes from a dripping glass-walled washer.

She set the bowl on a table where boxes of mushrooms stood stacked, and turning, took from a canvas hamper of linens a used napkin, which she shook out and spread beside the bowl on the metal tabletop. She lifted the bowl’s cover and put it aside. Within the red bowl a black-and-chrome tape recorder lay, a Panasonic with English-marked controls, the sprockets of the cassette in its windowed compartment smoothly turning. Tsuruko hovered a hand above the buttons, then lifted the recorder from the bowl and set it on the napkin. She folded the napkin-sides up around it.

Holding the wrapped recorder to her bosom, she went to a glass-paned door and took hold of its knob. A man sitting close by sewing at an apron looked up at her.

“Leftovers,” she said, flashing the napkined shape at him. “An old woman comes by.”

The man looked at her with tired eyes in a pinched yellow face; he looked down at his sewing hands.

She opened the door and went out into an areaway. A cat sprang from garbage cans and fled toward a far-off passage end of streetlights and neon.

Tsuruko closed the door behind her and leaned into darkness. “Hey, are you there?” she called softly in Portuguese. “Senhor Hunter?”

A figure hurried from the side of the passage, a tall lean man with a shoulderbag. “You do it?”

“Yes,” she said, unwrapping the recorder. “It’s still going. I couldn’t think which button turns it off.”

“Good, good, no difference.” He was a young man; his fine-featured face and crinkly brown hair caught the door’s light. “Where you put that?” he asked.

“In a rice bowl under the serving table.” She gave the recorder to him. “With the cover leaning against it so they wouldn’t see.”

He tilted the recorder toward the door and pressed one of its buttons and another; a high-pitched twittering sang. Tsuruko, watching, moved aside to allow him more light. “Near of where they sit?” he asked her. His Portuguese was bad.

“From here to there.” She gestured from herself to the nearest garbage can.

“Good, good.” The young man pressed a button, stopping the twittering, and pressed another: the voice of the man in white spoke in German, distantly, an echo surrounding it. “Very good,” the young man said, and stopped the voice with another button. He pointed to the recorder. “When you begin this?”

“After they finished eating, just before he sent us out. They talked for almost an hour.”

“They leave?”

“They were going when I came down.”

“Good, good.” The young man tugged at the zipper of his blue-and-white airline bag. He was wearing a short blue denim jacket and blue jeans; he looked to be about twenty-three, North American. “You are a big helper to me,” he told Tsuruko, fitting the recorder into the bag. “My magazine is very happy when I bring home a story about Senhor Aspiazu. He is the most famous maker of the cinema.” Reaching to his hip, he brought out a wallet and opened it toward the light.

Tsuruko watched, holding the balled napkin. “A North American magazine?” she asked.

“Yes,” the young man said, separating bills. “Movie Story. A very important magazine of the cinema.” He smiled brightly at Tsuruko and gave bills to her. “One hundred and fifty cruzeiros. Many thanks. You are a big helper to me.”

“Thank you.” She glanced at the bills and smiled at him, bobbed her head.

“Your restaurant smells like a good one,” he said, pocketing his wallet. “I am in much hunger while I wait.”

“Would you like me to get something for you?” She tucked the bills into her kimono. “I could—”

“No, no.” He touched her hand. “I eat at my hotel. Thanks. Many thanks.” He gave her hand a squeeze, and turned and went long-legging into the passage.

“You’re welcome, Senhor Hunter,” she called after him. She watched for a moment, then turned and opened the door and went in.

They had a round of complimentary drinks at the bar, persuaded to do so less by the pleadings of the tuxedoed Japanese—who introduced himself as Hiroo Kuwayama, one of Sakai’s three owners—than by the presence there of a novel electronic ping-pong game; and this proved so engaging that another round was ordered and drunk, and still another debated upon but decided against.

At about eleven-thirty they went en masse to the checkroom to collect their hats. The kimonoed girl, giving Hessen his, smiled and said, “A friend of yours came in after you, but he didn’t want to go upstairs uninvited.”

Hessen looked at her for a moment. “Oh?” he said.

She nodded. “A young man. A North American, I think.”

“Oh,” Hessen said. “Of course. Yes. I know who you mean. Came in after me, you say.”

“Yes, senhor. While you were going up the stairs.”

“He asked where I was going, of course.”

She nodded.

“You told him?”

“A private party. He thought he knew who was giving it, but he was wrong. I told him it was Senhor Aspiazu. He knows him too.”

“Yes, I know,” Hessen said. “We’re all good friends. He should have come up.”

“He said it was probably a business meeting and he didn’t want to break in. Besides, he wasn’t dressed right.” She gestured down her sides, regretfully. “Jeans.” She fluttered slim fingers at her throat. “No tie.”

“Oh,” Hessen said. “Well, it’s a shame he didn’t come up anyway, just to say hello. He went right out again?”

She nodded.

“Oh well,” Hessen said, and smiled and gave her a cruzeiro.

He went and spoke to the man in white. The other men, holding hats and attaché cases, gathered around them.

The blond man and the black-haired man went quickly toward the carved entrance doors; Traunsteiner hurried into the bar and came out a moment later with Hiroo Kuwayama.

The man in white put a white-gloved hand on Kuwayama’s black shoulder and talked earnestly to him. Kuwayama listened, and drew in breath, bit his lip, wagged his head.

He spoke and gestured reassuringly and hurried off toward the rear of the restaurant.

The man in white waved the other men sharply away from him. He moved to the side of the foyer and put his hat and his briefcase, less fat now, on a black lamp table. He stood looking toward the rear of the restaurant, frowning and rubbing his white-gloved hands together. He looked down at them, and put them at his sides.

From the rear of the restaurant Tsuruko and Mori came, in colorful slacks and blouses, and Yoshiko, still in her kimono. Kuwayama hustled them forward. They looked confused and worried. Diners glanced at them.

The man in white curved his mouth into a friendly smile.

Kuwayama delivered the three women to the man in white, nodded to him, and moved aside to watch with folded arms.

The man in white smiled and shook his head sorrowfully, ran a gloved hand back over his cropped gray hair. “Girls,” he said, “a really bad thing has come up. Bad for me, I mean, not for you. Fine for you. I’ll explain.” He took a breath. “I’m a manufacturer of farm machinery,” he said, “one of the biggest in South America. The men who are with me tonight”—he gestured back over his shoulder—“are my salesmen. We got together here so I could tell them about some new machines we’re putting into production, give them all the details and specifications; you know. Everything top secret. Now I’ve found out that a spy for a rival North American concern learned about our meeting just before it started, and knowing the way these people work, I’m willing to bet he went back to the kitchen and got hold of one of you, or even all of you, and asked you to eavesdrop on our conversation from some…secret hiding place, or maybe take pictures of us.” He raised a finger. “You see,” he explained, “some of my salesmen formerly worked for this rival concern, and they don’t know—the concern doesn’t know—who’s with me now, so pictures of us would be useful to them too.” He nodded, smiling ruefully. “It’s a very competitive business,” he said. “Dog eat dog.”

Tsuruko and Mori and Yoshiko looked blankly at him, shaking their heads slightly, slowly.

Kuwayama, who had moved around beside and behind the man in white, said sternly, “If any of you did what the senhor—”

“Let me!” The man in white threw an open hand back but didn’t turn. “Please.” He lowered the hand, smiled, and took half a step forward. “This man,” he said good-naturedly, “a young North American, would have offered you some money, of course, and he would have told you some kind of story about it being a practical joke or something, a harmless little trick he was playing on us. Now, I can fully understand how girls who are not, I’m sure, being vastly overpaid—You aren’t, are you? Is my friend here vastly overpaying any of you?” His brown eyes twinkled at them, waiting for an answer.

Yoshiko, giggling, shook her head vehemently.

The man in white laughed with her, and reached toward her shoulder but withdrew his hand short of touching her. “I didn’t think so!” he said. “No, I was pretty damn sure he isn’t!” He smiled at Mori and Tsuruko; they smiled uncertainly back at him. “Now, I can fully understand,” he said, getting serious again, “how girls in your situation, hard-working girls with family responsibilities—you with your two children, Mori—I can fully understand how you could go along with such an offer. In fact, I can’t understand how you couldn’t go along with it; you’d be stupid not to! A harmless little joke, a few extra cruzeiros. Things are expensive these days; I know. That’s why I gave you nice tips upstairs. So if the offer was made, and if you accepted it, believe me, girls: there’s no anger on my part, there’s no resentment; there’s only understanding, and a need to know.”

“Senhor,” Mori protested, “I give you my word, nobody offered me anything or asked me to do anything.”

“Nobody,” Tsuruko said, shaking her head; and Yoshiko, shaking hers, said, “Honestly, senhor.”

“As proof of my understanding,” the man in white said, holding his jacket-front from him and reaching into it, “I’ll give you twice what he gave you, or twice what he only offered.” He brought out a thick black crocodile billfold, split it open, and showed the inside edges of two sheaves of bills. “This is what I meant before,” he said, “about it being a bad thing for me but a good thing for you.” He looked from one woman to another. “Twice what he gave you,” he said. “For you, and the same amount also for Senhor…” He jerked his head back toward Kuwayama, who said, “Kuwayama.” “So he won’t be angry with you either. Girls? Please?” The man in white showed his money to Yoshiko. “Years have been spent on this—on these new machines,” he told her. “Millions of cruzeiros!” He showed his money to Mori. “If I know how much my rival knows, then I can take steps to protect myself!” He showed his money to Tsuruko. “I can speed up production, or maybe find this young man and…get him onto my side, give money to him as well as to you and Senhor—”

“Kuwayama. Come on, girls, don’t be afraid! Tell Senhor Aspiazu! I won’t be angry with you.”

“You see?” the man in white urged. “Only good can come! For everyone!”

“There’s nothing to tell,” Mori insisted, and Yoshiko, looking at the bent-open billfold with its sheaves of bills, said sadly, “Nothing. Honestly.” She looked up. “I would tell, gladly, senhor. But there’s really nothing.”

Tsuruko looked at the billfold.

The man in white watched her.

She looked up at him, and hesitantly, with embarrassment, nodded.

He let his breath out, looking intently at her.

“It was just the way you said,” she admitted. “I was in the kitchen, when we were getting ready to serve you, and one of the boys came to me and said there was a man outside who wanted to speak to someone serving your party. Very important. So I went out, and he was there, the North American. He gave me two hundred cruzeiros, fifty before and a hundred and fifty after. He said he was a reporter for a magazine, and you made films and never gave interviews.”

The man in white, looking at her, said, “Go on.”

“He said it would be a good story for him if he found out what new films you were planning. I told him you were going to talk with your guests later on—Senhor K. told us you were—and he—”

“Asked you to hide and listen.”

“No, senhor, he gave me a tape recorder, and I brought it in, and brought it out to him when you were done talking.”

“A…tape recorder?”

Tsuruko nodded. “He showed me how to work it. Two buttons at once.” With both her forefingers she pressed air before her.

The man in white closed his eyes and stood motionless except for a slight side-to-side swaying. He opened his eyes and looked at Tsuruko and smiled faintly. “A tape recorder was in operation throughout our conference?” he asked.

“Yes, senhor,” she said. “In a rice bowl under the serving table. It worked very well. The man tried it before he paid me, and he was very happy.”

The man in white took in air through his mouth, licked his upper lip, allowed the air out, and closed his mouth and swallowed. He put a white-gloved hand to his forehead and wiped it slowly.

“Two hundred cruzeiros altogether,” Tsuruko said.

The man in white looked at her, moved closer to her, and drew in a deep breath. He smiled down at her; she was half a head shorter than he. “Dear,” he said softly, “I want you to tell me everything you can about the man. He was young—how young? What did he look like?”

Tsuruko, uneasy in their closeness, said, “He was twenty-two or -three, I think. I couldn’t see him clearly. Very tall. Nice-looking, friendly. He had brown hair in close little curls.”

“That’s good,” the man in white said, “that’s a good description. He was wearing jeans…”

“Yes. And a jacket the same—you know, short blue. And he had a bag from an airline, on a strap.” She gestured at her shoulder. “That’s where he had the recorder.”

“Very good. You’re very observant, Tsuruko. What airline?”

She looked chagrined. “I didn’t notice. It was blue and white.”

“A blue-and-white airline bag. Good enough. What else?”

She frowned and shook her head, and remembered happily: “His name is Hunter, senhor!”

“Hunter?”

“Yes, senhor! Hunter. He said it very plainly.”

The man in white smiled wryly. “I’m sure he did. Go on. What else?”

“His Portuguese was bad. He said I was a ‘big helper’ to him; all kinds of mistakes like that. And his pronunciation was wrong.”

“So he hasn’t been here very long, has he? You’re being a ‘big helper’ to me, Tsuruko. Keep going.”

She frowned, and gave an impotent shrug. “That’s all, senhor.”

He said, “Please try to think of something else, Tsuruko. You have no idea how important this is to me.”

She bit at a knuckle of her fisted hand, and looking at him, shook her head.

“He didn’t tell you how to get in touch with him in case I should arrange another party?”

“No, senhor! No! Nothing like that. Nothing. I would tell you.”

“Keep thinking.”

Her distressed face suddenly brightened. “He’s at a hotel. Does that help you?”

The brown eyes looked questioningly at her.

“He said he would eat at his hotel. I asked him if he wanted some food—he got hungry waiting—and that’s what he said, he would eat at his hotel.”

The man in white looked at Tsuruko and said, “You see? There was something else.” He stepped back, and looking down, opened his billfold. He drew out four hundred-cruzeiro bills and gave them to her.

“Thank you, senhor!”

Kuwayama came closer, smiling.

The man in white gave him four bills, and one each to Mori and Yoshiko. Putting his billfold inside his jacket, he smiled at Tsuruko and reprimanded her: “You’re a good girl, but in the future you should give a little more thought to your patrons’ interests.”

“I will, senhor! I promise!”

To Kuwayama he said, “Don’t be hard on her. Really.”

“Oh no, not now!” Kuwayama grinned, withdrawing his hand from his pocket.

The man in white took his hat and his briefcase from the lamp table, and smiling at the bowing women and Kuwayama, turned from them and went toward the men who stood waiting, watching him.

His smile died; his eyes narrowed. Reaching the men, he whispered in German, “Fucking cock-sucking yellow bitch, I would cut her teats off!”

He told the men about the tape recorder.

The blond man said, “We checked the street and all the cars; no young North American in jeans.”

“We’ll find him,” the man in white said. “He’s a loner; the groups that are still active are all Rio and Buenos Aires men. And he’s an amateur, not only by reason of his age—twenty-two or -three—but also because he gives the name ‘Hunter,’ which is English for Jäger; no one with experience would bother with such jokes. And he’s stupid, or he wouldn’t have let the bitch know he’s at a hotel.”

“Unless,” Schwimmer said, “he isn’t at one.”

“In which case he’s smart,” the man in white said, “and I hang myself in the morning. Let’s find out. Hessen, our Paulista who allows himself to be followed by an amateur ‘hunter,’ will now make amends by giving each of you the name of a hotel.” He looked at Hessen, who looked up from an examination of his hat. “A hotel good enough to serve food at late hours,” the man in white told him, “but not so good as to discourage the wearing of jeans. Put yourself in his place: you’re a boy from the States who’s come down to Paulo to hunt for Horst Hessen or maybe even Mengele; which hotel would you stay at? You’ve got money enough to overbribe waitresses—I don’t think the bitch lied about the amount—but you’re romantic; you want to feel you’re a new Yakov Liebermann, not a comfortable tourist. Five hotels, please, Hessen, in order of likelihood.”

He looked at the others. “When Hessen names your hotel,” he said, “you’ll take a box of matches from that bowl there and go outside and repeat the name to a taxi driver. When you reach the hotel you’ll find out whether or not they have there a tall young North American with brown hair in close curls, who recently came in wearing blue jeans, a short blue denim jacket, and a blue-and-white airline shoulderbag. You’ll then phone the number on the matchbox. I’ll be here. If the answer is yes, Rudi and Tin-tin and I will be right over; if the answer is no, Hessen will give you the name of another hotel. Everything clear? Good. We’ll have him in half an hour and he won’t even be through listening to his damned tape. Hessen?”

Hessen said to Mundt, “The Nacional,” and Mundt said, “The Nacional” and went to get a matchbox.

Hessen said to Schwimmer, “The Del Rey.”

And to Traunsteiner, “The Marabá.”

To Farnbach, “The Comodora.”

To Kleist, “The Savoy.”

He listened for about five minutes, then he stopped, rewound, and started again from where they finished admiring whatever the hell they were admiring and “Aspiazu” said “Lasst uns jetzt Geschäft reden, meine Jungens” and sure enough got down to business. Business! Jesus!

He listened to the whole thing through this time—saying “Jesus!” and “God almighty!” now and then, and “Ooh you fuck, you!—and after the clonk and the long silence that had to be the waitress bringing the bowl downstairs he stopped and rewound partway and replayed a few bits and pieces, just to make sure it was really there and he wasn’t spaced out from hunger or something.

Then he paced as much as the room allowed, shaking his head and scratching the back of it, trying to figure out what the fuck to do in this hotbed of who-knows-who-isn’t-one-of-them-or-at-least-being-paid-by-them.

There was only one thing to do, he finally decided, and the sooner the better, never mind the time-difference. He brought the recorder over to the night table and put it by the phone; got his wallet out and sat down on the bed. He found the card with the name and number on it, tucked it under the foot of the phone, and picked up the handset, pocketing his wallet. He asked for the long-distance operator.

She sounded cute and sexy. “I’ll call you when I get it.”

“I stay on the telephone,” he said, not trusting her not to go out and samba someplace. “Hurry, please.”

“It’s going to take five or ten minutes, senhor.”

He listened to her giving the number to an overseas operator and rehearsed in his head what he would say. Assuming, of course, that Liebermann was there and not off speaking somewhere or running down a lead. Be home, please, Mr. Liebermann!

A light rap sounded at the door.

“It’s about time,” he said in English, and hanging on to the phone, got up, reached, and just managed to give the doorknob the turn that unlocked it. The door opened against his hand, and the waiter with the droopy mustache came in with a napkin-covered plate and the bottle of Brahma but no glass on the tray. “Sorry it took so long,” he said. “Eleven o’clock they all run. I had to make it myself.”

“That is all right,” he said in Portuguese. “Put the tray on the bed, please.”

“I forgot the glass.”

“That is all right. I need no glass. Give me the check and the pencil, please.”

He signed the check against the wall, holding it there with his phone-hand; added a tip beyond the service charge.

The waiter went out without thanking him and belched as he closed the door.

He never should have left the Del Rey.

He sat back down on the bed, the phone whistling hollowly in his ear. He turned to steady the tray, and looked with misgiving at the yellow napkin with Miramar stamped big and black and burglar-proof in a corner of it. He took hold of it, and what the hell, whipped it away: the sandwich was thick and beautiful, all chicken, no lettuce or crap whatsoever. Forgiving the waiter, he gathered up a half of it, bent his head to meet it, and took a big delicious middle bite. God, he was starving!

“Ich möchte Wien,” an operator said. “Wien!”

He thought of the tape and what he would say to Yakov Liebermann, and his mouth was full of cardboard; he chewed and chewed and somehow got it down. He put the sandwich down and picked up the beer. It was one of the really great beers and it tasted lousy.

“Not much longer,” Cute Sexy Operator said.

“I hope. Thank you.”

“Here you are, senhor.”

A phone rang.

He grabbed another swallow and put the bottle down, wiped his hand on a jeaned knee, turned more toward the phone.

The other phone rang, and rang, and was picked up: “Ja?”—as clear as around the corner.

“Mr. Liebermann?”

“Ja. Wer’st da?”

“It’s Barry Koehler. Remember, Mr. Liebermann? I came to see you early in August, wanted to work for you? Barry Koehler from Evanston, Illinois?”

Silence.

“Mr. Liebermann?”

“Barry Koehler, I don’t know what time it is in Illinoise, but in Vienna it’s so dark I can’t see the clock.”

“I’m not in Illinois, I’m in São Paulo, Brazil.”

“That doesn’t make it lighter in Vienna.”

“I’m sorry, Mr. Liebermann, but I’ve got a good reason for calling. Wait till you hear.”

“Don’t tell me, I’ll guess: you saw Martin Bormann. In a bus station.”

“No, not Bormann. Mengele. And I didn’t see him, but I’ve got a tape of him talking. In a restaurant.”

Silence.

“Dr. Mengele?” he prompted. “The man who ran Auschwitz? The Angel of Death?”

“Thank you. I thought you meant a whole other Mengele. The Angel of Life.”

Barry said, “I’m sorry. You were so—”

“I drove him into the jungle; I know Josef Mengele.”

“You were so quiet, I had to say something. He’s out: of the jungle, Mr. Liebermann. He was in a Japanese restaurant tonight. Doesn’t he use the name ‘Aspiazu’?”

“He uses lots of names: Gregory, Fischer, Breitenbach, Rindon—”

“And Aspiazu, right?”

Silence. “Ja. But I think maybe it’s also used by people it belongs to.”

“It’s him,” Barry insisted. “He had half the SS there. And he’s sending them out to kill ninety-four men. Hessen was there, and Kleist. Traunsteiner. Mundt.”

“Listen, I’m not sure I’m awake. Are you? Do you know what you’re talking about?”

“Yes! I’ll play you the tape! It’s sitting right here!”

“Just a minute. Begin at the beginning.”

“All right.” He picked up the bottle and drank some beer; let him listen to silence for a change.

“Barry?”

Ho-ho! “I’m here. I was just drinking some beer.”

“Oh.”

“A sip, Mr. Liebermann; I’m dying of thirst. I haven’t had dinner yet and I’m so sick from this tape, I can’t eat. I’ve got a gorgeous chicken sandwich here and I can’t even swallow it.”

“What are you doing in São Paulo?”

“You wouldn’t take me on, so I figured I’d come down here on my own. I’m more highly motivated than you think I am.”

“It’s a question of my finances, not your motivation.”

“I said I’d work for free; who’s paying me now? Look, let’s skip that. I came down, and nosed around, and finally I figured that the best thing to do was hang out around the Volkswagen plant, the one Stangl worked at. So I did. And a couple of days ago I spotted Horst Hessen; at least I thought I did, I wasn’t sure. His hair is sort of silvery now, and he must have had some plastic surgery. But anyway, I thought it was him and began tailing him. He went home early today—he lives in the cutest little house you ever saw, with a knockout wife and two daughters—and at seven-thirty he comes out again and takes a bus downtown. I follow him into this fancy Japanese restaurant and he goes upstairs to a private party. There’s a Nazi guarding the stairs, and the party is being given by ‘Senhor Aspiazu.’ Of the Auschwitz Aspiazus.”

Silence. “Go ahead.”

“So I went around back and got to one of the waitresses. Two hundred cruzeiros later she gave me a whole cassette of Mengele Dispatching the Troops. Mengele is crystal-clear; the troops range from fairly clear to mumble-mumble. Mr. Liebermann, they’re going out tomorrow—to Germany, England, the States, Scandinavia, all over the place! It’s a Kameradenwerk operation, and it’s big and it’s crazy and I’m really sorry I got into this whole thing, it’s supposed to—”

“Barry.”

“—fulfill the destiny of the Aryan race, for God’s sake!;”

“Barry!”

“What?”

“Calm yourself.”

“I am calm. No I’m not. All right. Now I’m calm. Really. I’m going to rewind the tape and play it for you. Press the button. See?”

“Who’s going out, Barry? How many?”

“Six. Hessen, Traunsteiner, Kleist, Mundt—and two others, uh, Schwimmer and Farnbach. You heard of them?”

“Not Schwimmer and Farnbach and Mundt.”

“Mundt? You haven’t heard of Mundt? He’s in your book, Mr. Liebermann! That’s where I heard about him.”

“A Mundt, in my book? No.”

“Yes! In the chapter on Treblinka. I’ve got it in my suitcase; you want me to give you the page number?”

“I never heard of a Mundt, Barry; this is a mistake on your part.”

“Oh Jesus. All right, forget it. Anyway, there are six of them, and they’re going out for two and a half years, and they’ve got certain dates when they’re supposed to kill certain men, and here comes the crazy part. Are you ready, Mr. Liebermann? These men they’re going to kill, there are ninety-four of them, and they’re all sixty-five-year-old civil servants. How do you like them apples?”

Silence. “Apples?”

He sighed. “It’s an expression.”

“Barry, let me ask you something. This tape is in German, yes? Are you—”

“I understand it perfectly! I don’t spreche too well but I understand it perfectly. My grandmother speaks nothing but, and my parents use it for secrets. It didn’t even work when I was a kid.”

“The Kameradenwerk and Josef Mengele are sending men out—”

“To kill sixty-five-year-old civil servants. A few of them are sixty-four and sixty-six. The tape’s rewound now and I’m going to play it, and then you’re going to tell me who I should take it to, someone high-up and reliable. And you’ll call him and tell him I’m coming, so he’ll see me, and see me quickly. They’ve got to be stopped before they leave. The first killing is slated for October sixteenth. Wait now, I’ve got to find the right place; there’s a lot of sitting down and admiring something first.”

“Barry, it’s ridiculous. Something is wrong with your tape recorder. Or else—or else they’re not the men you think they are.”

A triple-knock at the door. “Go way!” he shouted at it, covering the mouthpiece; remembered Portuguese: “I talk the long distance.”

“They’re someone else,” the phone said. “They’re playing a joke on you.”

“Mr. Liebermann, will you just listen to the tape?”

Louder knocking, a nonstop barrage.

“Shit. Hold on.” Putting the phone on the bed, he got up and stepped to the racketing door, held its knob. “What is?”

Portuguese raced, a man’s voice.

“Slow! Slow!”

“Senhor, there’s a Japanese lady here, looking for someone who looks like you. She says she has to warn you about something a man is—” He turned the knob and in the door burst a dark bull of a man that slammed him backward; he was grabbed and turned, his mouth crushed, his arm wrenched back breakingly; the Nazi of the stairs lunged with a knife six inches shiny-sharp. His head was yanked back; the ceiling slid, stained with pale-brown watermarks; his arm hurt, and his stomach deep inside.

The man in white came into the room, wearing his hat and holding his briefcase. He closed the door, and standing before it, watched the blond man stab and stab the young American. Stab, twist, pull out; stab, twist, pull out; overhand now, the red-streaked knife into white snug-shirted ribs.

The blond man, panting, stopped stabbing, and the black-haired man lowered the surprised-eyed young man gently to the floor, laid him down there half on gray rug and half on varnished wood. The blond man held his bloody knife-hand over the young man and said to the black-haired man, “A towel.”

The man in white looked toward the bed, moved to it, and set his briefcase down on the floor. “Barry?” the phone on the bed asked.

The man in white looked at the tape recorder on the night table; pressed a white fingertip to its end button. The window sprang; the cassette jumped free. The man in white picked it up, looked at it, and slipped it into his jacket pocket. He glanced at the card under the foot of the phone, took it, and looked at the black handset lying on the bed. “Barry!” it called. “Are you there?”

The man in white reached out slowly and picked the handset up; raised it, brought it to his ear. Listened with brown eyes narrowed, vein-threaded nostrils quivering. His lips opened to the mouthpiece, stayed open. And closed and clenched firmly, mustache bristling.

He put the handset into its cradle, drew his fingers away, stared at the phone. He turned and said, “I almost spoke to him. I was longing to.”

The blond man, toweling red from his knife, looked curiously at him.

The man in white said, “Hating each other so long. And he was here, in my hand! To finally speak to him!” He turned to the phone again, shook his head regretfully. Softly he said, “Liebermann, you bastard Jew. Your stooge is dead. How much did he tell you? It makes no difference; no one here will listen to you, not without proof. And the proof is in my pocket. The men will fly tomorrow. The Fourth Reich is coming. Good-by, Liebermann. See you at the door of the gas chamber.” He shook his head, smiling, and turned, putting the card in his pocket. “It would have been foolish, though,” he said. “I might have been making another tape.”

The black-haired man, by an open closet, pointed at a suitcase in it and asked in Portuguese, “Should I pack his things, Doctor?”

“Rudi will. You go downstairs to Traunsteiner. Find a back door you can open and get the car to it. Then one of you come up and help us down. And don’t tell him the boy was on the phone. Say he was listening to the tape.”

The black-haired man nodded and went out.

The blond man said in German, “Won’t they get caught? The men, I mean.”

“The job has to be done,” the man in white said, taking out his eyeglass case. “As much of it as possible, at any cost. With luck they’ll do it all. Will anyone listen to Liebermann? He didn’t believe; you heard how the boy was arguing with him. God will help us; enough of the ninety-four will die.” He put on his glasses, and taking a matchbox from his pocket, turned to the phone. He lifted the handset and read the operator a number.

“Hello, my friend,” he said cheerfully. “Senhor Hessen, please.” He glanced away, white-gloved fingers covering the phone’s mouthpiece. “Empty his pockets, Rudi. And there’s a sneaker under the bureau there. Hessen? Dr. Mengele. Everything’s fine, there’s nothing to worry about. Exactly the amateur I expected. I don’t think he even understood German. Send the boys home to practice their signatures; it was just an excitement to round off the evening. No, not till 1977, I’m afraid; I fly back to the compound as soon as we clean up. So go with God, Horst. And say it for me to the others: ‘Go with God.’” He hung up and said, “Heil Hitler.”