Boys from Brazil

2

THE BURGGARTEN, with its pond and its Mozart monument, its lawns and walks and equestrian Emperor Franz, is near enough to the Vienna offices of Reuters, the international news agency, for correspondents and secretaries to bring their lunches there in the milder months of the year. Monday, October 14th, was a cool and overcast day, but four Reuters people came to the Garten anyway; they settled themselves on a bench, unwrapped sandwiches, and poured white wine into paper cups.

One of the four, the wine-pourer, was Sydney Beynon, Reuters’ senior Vienna correspondent. A forty-four-year-old ex-Liverpudlian with two Viennese ex-wives, Beynon looks very much like an abdicating King Edward in horn-rimmed glasses. At he stood the bottle on the bench beside him and sipped judgmentally from his cup, he saw with a sudden down-press of guilt Yakov Liebermann shambling toward him, in a brown hat and an open black raincoat.

During the preceding week or so, Beynon had received word several times that Liebermann had called and wanted him to call back. He hadn’t yet done so, though a punctilious call-returner; and confronted now with his clear though unintended avoidance of the man, he felt doubly guilty: once because Liebermann in his peak years, the time of the Eichmann and Stangl captures, had been the source of some of his best and most rewarding copy; and once because the Nazihunter made everyone feel guilty, always. Someone had said of him—was it Stevie Dickens?—“He carries the whole damned concentration-camp scene pinned to his coattails. All those Jews wail at you from the grave every time Liebermann steps in the room.” It was sad but true.

And perhaps Liebermann was aware of it, for he always presented himself as he did now to Beynon, at a step beyond the ordinary social distance, with a slight air of apology; rather, Beynon thought, like a considerate bear with something contagious. “Hello, Sydney,” Liebermann-bear said, touching his hat-brim. “Please. Don’t get up.”

Beynon’s guilt was more bothersome than his lapful of sandwich, so he made the effort anyway, half rising. “Hello, Yakov! It’s good to see you.” He put out his hand and Liebermann leaned and reached forward and wrapped it pressurelessly in the warmth of his bigger one. “Sorry I haven’t called you yet,” Beynon apologized; “I was in and out of Linz all last week.” He sat back down and sketched introductions with his cup-hand: “Freya Neustadt, Paul Higbee, Dermot Brody. This is Yakov Liebermann.”

“Oh my.” Freya wiped a bony hand along her skirt and extended it, smiling vivaciously. “How are you? What a great pleasure.” She looked guilty.

Watching Liebermann nodding and shaking hands down the line, Beynon was dismayed to see how much the man had aged and diminished since their last meeting some two years before. He was still a presence, but no longer as massive or implicit with bearish strength as he had been then; the broad shoulders seemed pulled down now by the raincoat’s scant weight, and the then-powerful face was lined and gray-jowled, the eyes weary under drooping lids. The nose at least was unchanged—that thrusting Semitic hook—but the mustache was streaked with gray and wanted trimming. The poor chap had lost his wife and a kidney or such, and the funds of his War Crimes Information Center; the losses were recorded all over him—the crushed and finger-marked old hat, the darkened tie knot—and Beynon, reading the record, realized why his inner self had blocked that return call. His guilt swelled, but he quashed it, telling himself that to avoid losers was a natural and healthy instinct, even—or perhaps especially—to avoid losers who had once been winners.

Though one wanted to be kind, of course. “Sit down, Yakov,” he invited heartily, gesturing at the bench-end beside him and drawing the wine bottle closer.

“I don’t want to disturb your lunch,” Liebermann said in his heavily accented English. “If we could talk later?”

“Sit down,” Beynon said. “I get enough of these chaps at the office.” He put his back toward Freya and pushed a bit; she ceded a few inches and turned the other way. Beynon gave the added space to the bench-end, and smiling at Liebermann, gestured at it.

Liebermann sat down and sighed. Holding his knees with big hands, he scowled down between them, rocking his feet. “New shoes,” he said. “Killing me.”

“How are you otherwise?” Beynon asked. “And how’s your daughter?”

“I’m all right. She’s fine. She has three children now, two girls and a boy.”

“Oh, that’s nice.” Beynon touched the neck of the bottle between them. “I’m afraid we don’t have another cup.”

“No, no. I’m not allowed anyway. No alcohol.”

“I heard you were in hospital…”

“In, out, in, out.” Liebermann shrugged, and turned his weary brown eyes on Beynon. “I had a very crazy phone call,” he said. “A few weeks ago. Middle of the night. This boy from the States, from Illinoise, calls me from São Paulo. He has a tape of Mengele. You know who Mengele is, don’t you?”

“One of your wanted Nazis, isn’t he?”

“One of everybody’s,” Liebermann said, “not only mine. The German government still offers sixty thousand marks for him. He was the chief doctor at Auschwitz. ‘The Angel of Death,’ he was called. Two degrees, an M.D. and a Ph.D., and he did thousands of experiments on children, twins, trying to make good Aryans, to change brown eyes into blue eyes with chemicals, through the genes. A man with two degrees! He killed them: thousands of twins from all over Europe, Jewish and non-Jewish. It’s all in my book.”

Beynon picked up half his egg-salad sandwich and bit into it determinedly.

“He went home to Germany after the war,” Liebermann went on. “His family is rich there, in Günzburg; farm machinery. But his name began to come up in the trials, so ODESSA got him out and into South America. We found him there and chased him from city to city: Buenos Aires, Bariloche, Asunción. Since ’59 he lives in the jungle, in a settlement by a river on the Brazil and Paraguay border. He has an army of bodyguards, and Paraguayan citizenship, so he can’t be extradited. But he has to lay low anyway because groups of young Jews down there still try to get him. Some of them are found floating down the river, the Paraná, with their throats cut.”

Liebermann paused. Freya tapped Beynon’s arm and asked for the wine; he passed the bottle to her.

“So the boy has a tape,” Liebermann said, looking straight ahead, his hands on his knees. “Mengele in a restaurant sending out former SS men to Germany, England, Scandinavia, and the States. To kill a bunch of sixty-five-year-old men.” He turned and smiled at Beynon. “Crazy, yes? And it’s a very important operation. The Kameradenwerk is involved too, not only Mengele. The Comrades Organization, that keeps them safe and with jobs down there. Do you like the apples, as they say?”

Beynon blinked at him and smiled. “No, I’m afraid I don’t,” he said. “Did you actually hear this tape?”

Liebermann shook his head. “No. Just when he’s ready to play it for me, there’s a knock at the door, his door, and he goes to answer it. Bumping and thumping, and a little later the phone is hung up.”

“Perfect timing,” Beynon said. “It smells rather like a hoax, don’t you think? Who is he?”

Liebermann shrugged. “A boy who heard me speak two years ago, at his university, Princeton. He came to me in August and said he wanted to work for me. Do I need new workers? I’m only using a handful of the old ones. You know, I’m assuming, that all my money, all the Center’s money, was in the Allgemeine Wirtschaftsbank.”

Beynon nodded.

“The Center is in my apartment now—all the files, a few desks, and me and my bed. The ceiling downstairs is cracking. The landlord sues me. The only new workers I need are fund-raisers, which isn’t the boy’s field of interest. So he went down to São Paulo, his own boss.”

“Not exactly someone I’d put much faith in.”

“That’s just what I think while he talks to me. And he doesn’t have all his facts right either. One of the SS men is named Mundt, he says, and he knows about this Mundt from my book. Now, in my book I know there’s no Mundt. I never heard of a Mundt. So this doesn’t increase my confidence. But still…after the bumping and thumping, while I’m calling to him to come back to the phone, there’s a certain sound, not very loud but very clear, and it’s one thing and nothing else: it’s the sound of a cassette being dejected from a tape recorder.”

“Ejected,” Beynon said.

“Not dejected? Pushed out?”

“That’s ejected. Dejected is sad, pushed down.”

“Ah.” Liebermann nodded. “Thank you. Being ejected from a tape recorder. And one thing more. It was quiet then, for a long time, and I was quiet too, putting the bumping and thumping together with the cassette sound; and in that long quiet”—he looked forebodingly at Beynon—“hate came over the phone, Sydney.” He nodded. “Hate like I never felt before, not even when Stangl looked at me in the courtroom. It came to me as plain as the boy’s voice, and maybe it was because of what he said, but I was absolutely certain the hate came from Mengele. And when the phone was hung up I was absolutely certain that Mengele hung it.” He looked away and leaned forward, his elbows on his knees, a hand gripping his other hand’s fist.

Beynon watched him, skeptical but moved. “What did you do?” he asked.

Liebermann sat up straight, rubbed his hands, looked at Beynon and shrugged. “What could I do, in Vienna at four in the morning? I wrote down what the boy said, all I could remember, and read it, and told myself that he was crazy and I was crazy. Only who…ejected the cassette and hung up the phone? Maybe it wasn’t Mengele, but it was somebody. Later, when it was morning there, I called Martin McCarthy at the U.S. Embassy in Brasília; he called the police in São Paulo, and they called the phone company and found out where the call to me came from. A hotel. The boy disappeared from it during the night. I called Pacher here and asked him if he could get Brazil to watch for the SS men—the boy said they were leaving that day—and Pacher didn’t exactly laugh at me but he said no, not without something concrete. A boy disappearing from a hotel room without paying his bill isn’t concrete. And neither is me saying SS men are leaving because the boy told me so. I tried to get the German prosecutor in charge of the Mengele case but he was out. If it was still Fritz Bauer, he would be in for me, but the new one was out.” He shrugged again, rubbed at the lobe of his ear. “So the men left Brazil, if the boy was right, and he hasn’t been found yet. His father is down there pushing the police; a well-to-do man, I understand. But he has a dead son.”

Beynon said apologetically, “I can’t very well file a story in Vienna about a—”

“No, no, no,” Liebermann interrupted, a quelling hand on Beynon’s knee. “I don’t want you to file a story. What I want you to do is this, Sydney; I’m sure it’s possible and I hope it isn’t too much trouble. The boy said the first killing will happen the day after tomorrow, October sixteenth. But he didn’t say where. Will you have your main office in London send you clippings or reports from their other offices? Of men sixty-four to sixty-six years old, murdered or dying in accidents? Anything except natural deaths, from Wednesday on. Only men sixty-four to sixty-six.”

Beynon frowned, poked at his glasses, and looked his doubts at Liebermann.

“It wasn’t a hoax, Sydney. He wasn’t a boy who would do that. He’s been missing three weeks, and he wrote home regularly, called even when he changed hotels.”

“Granted he’s probably dead,” Beynon said. “But mightn’t he have been killed simply for snooping around where he wasn’t welcome, another young fellow out after Mengele? Or even have been robbed and done away with by an ordinary thief? His death in no way proves that a…Nazi plot is under way to kill men of a particular age.”

“He had it on tape. Why would he lie to me?”

“Perhaps he didn’t. The tape might have been a hoax on him. Or maybe he was misinterpreting it.”

Liebermann drew a breath, let it out, and nodded. “I know,” he said. “That’s possible. That’s what I thought myself at first. And still think sometimes. But somebody has to check a little, and if I don’t, who will? If he was wrong, he was wrong; I waste some time and bother Sydney Beynon for nothing. But if he was right—then it’s something very big, and Mengele has a reason for doing it. And I have to find something concrete, so prosecutors will be in, not out, and stop it before it’s finished. I’ll tell you something, Sydney. You know what?”

“What.”

“There’s a Mundt in my book.” He nodded somberly. “Right where he said there was, in a list of guards at Treblinka who committed atrocities. SS Hauptscharführer Alfried Mundt. I forgot him; who can remember all of them? He’s a very thin folder: a woman in Riga saw him break the neck of a fourteen-year-old girl; a man in Florida was castrated by him and wants to come testify if I catch him. Alfried Mundt. So the boy was right once, maybe he was right twice. Will you get the clippings for me, please? I’d appreciate it.”

Beynon pulled in breath, and yielded. “I’ll see what I can do.” He tucked his cup down beside him and got his notebook and pen from his jacket. “Which countries did you say?”

“Well, the boy mentioned Germany, and England, and Scandinavia—Norway, Sweden, Denmark—and the States. But the way he said it made it sound like there was other places besides that he was leaving out. So you should ask also for France and Holland.”

Beynon glanced at him, and jotted shorthand.

“Thank you, Sydney,” Liebermann said. “I’m really grateful. Anything I turn up, you’re the first to know. Not only in this, in everything.”

Beynon said, “Do you have any idea how many men in their mid-sixties die every day?”

“By murder? Or in accidents that could be murder?” Liebermann shook his head. “No, not too many. I hope not. And some I’ll be able to eliminate by their professions.”

“What do you mean?”

Liebermann wiped a hand down over his mustache and held his chin, a finger crossing his lips. After a moment he lowered his hand and shrugged. “Nothing,” he said. “Some other details the boy gave. Listen”—he pointed at Beynon’s notebook—“be sure to put down there ‘between sixty-four and sixty-six.’”

“I did,” Beynon said, looking at him. “What other details?”

“Nothing important.” Liebermann reached into his coat. “I fly to Hamburg at four-thirty,” he said. “I’m speaking in Germany till November third.” He brought out a wallet, a thick worn brown one. “So whatever you get, please mail it to my apartment so I’ll have it when I get back.” He gave a card to Beynon.

“And if you find what looks like a Nazi killing?”

“Who knows?” Liebermann put his wallet back in his coat. “I only walk one step at a time.” He smiled at Beynon. “Especially in these shoes.” He braced his hands on his thighs and stood up, looked about and shook his head disapprovingly. “Mm. A gloomy day.” He turned and rebuked them all: “Why do you eat outside on such a day?”

“We’re the Monday Mozart Club,” Beynon said, smiling and cocking a thumb back toward the monument.

Liebermann held out his hand; Beynon took it. Liebermann smiled at the others and said, “I apologize for taking away from you this charming man.”

“You can have him,” Dermot Brody said.

Liebermann said to Beynon, “Thank you, Sydney. I knew I could depend on you. Oh, and listen.” He bent and spoke lower, holding Beynon’s hand. “Ask them please from Wednesday on. To continue, I mean. Because the boy said six men was going, and would Mengele send them all at once if some will do nothing for a long time? So there should be two more killings not long after the first one—that’s if they’re working in two-man teams—or five more, God forbid, if they’re working separately. And if, of course, the boy was right. Will you do that?”

Beynon nodded. “How many killings are there to be altogether?” he asked.

Liebermann looked at him. “A lot,” he said. He let go of Beynon’s hand, straightened up, and nodded good-bys to the others. Thrusting his hands into his coat pockets, he turned and set off quickly toward the bustle and traffic of the Ring.

The four on the bench watched him go.

“Oh Lord,” Beynon said, and Freya Neustadt shook her head sadly.

Dermot Brody leaned forward and said, “What was that last bit, Syd?”

“Would I ask them to continue pulling clips.” Beynon put his notebook and pen inside his jacket. “There are going to be three or six killings, not merely one. And more besides.”

Paul Higbee took his pipe from his mouth and said, “Funny thought: he’s absolutely right.”

“Oh, come off it,” Freya said. “Nazis hating him over the telephone?”

Beynon picked up his cup and grappled at a sandwich-half. “The past two years have been awfully rough on him,” he said.

“How old is he?” Freya asked pointedly.

“I’m not sure,” Beynon said. “Oh, yes, I see. Just around sixty-five, I should think.”

“You see?” Freya said to Paul. “So Nazis are killing sixty-five-year-old men. It’s a nicely worked-out paranoid fantasy. In a month he’ll be saying they’re coming for him.”

Dermot Brody, leaning forward again, asked Beynon, “Are you really going to get the clips?”

“Of course not,” Freya said, and turned to Beynon. “You aren’t, are you?”

Beynon sipped wine, held his sandwich. “Well, I did say I’d try,” he said. “And if I don’t, he’ll only come pestering me when he gets back. Besides, London will think I’m working on something.” He smiled at Freya. “It never hurts to give that impression.”

Unlike most men his age, sixty-five-year-old Emil Döring, once second administrative assistant to the head of the Essen Public Transport Commission, had not allowed himself to become a creature of habit. Retired now and living in Gladbeck, a town north of the city, he took especial care to vary his daily routine. He went for the morning papers at no regular hour, visited his sister in Oberhausen on no particular afternoon, and passed the evenings—when he didn’t decide at the last moment to stay home—at no one favorite neighborhood bar. He had three favorite bars rather, and chose among them only when he left the apartment. Sometimes he was back in an hour or two, sometimes not until after midnight.

All his life Döring had been aware of enemies lying in wait for him, and had protected himself not only by going armed, when he was old enough, but also by keeping his movements as unpredictable as possible. First there had been the big brothers of small schoolmates who had unjustly accused him of bullying. Then there had been his fellow soldiers, dullards all, who had resented his knack for ingratiating himself with officers and getting easy and safe assignments. Then there had been his rivals at the Transport Commission, some of whom could have given lessons in treachery to Machiavelli. Could Döring tell you stories about the Transport Commission!

And now, in what should have been his golden years, when he had thought he could finally lower his guard and relax, stow the old Mauser in the night-table drawer—now more than ever he knew himself to be in real danger of attack.

His second wife Klara, who was, as she never tired of reminding him in subtle ways, twenty-three years younger than he, was having, he was positive, an affair with their son’s former clarinet teacher, a despicable near-faggot named Wilhelm Springer who was even younger than she—thirty-eight!—and at least half Jewish. Döring had no doubts whatsoever that Klara and her faggot-Jew Springer would be delighted to get him out of the way; not only would she be a widow, but a rich one. He had over three hundred thousand marks (that she knew about, plus five hundred thousand that nobody knew about, buried in two steel boxes in his sister’s backyard). It was the money that kept Klara from divorcing him. She was waiting, and had been since the day they married, the bitch.

Well, she would go right on waiting; he was in fine health and ready for a dozen Springers to spring at him from alleyways. He went to the gym twice a week—not on regular afternoons—and sixty-five or no, was still damn good at man-to-man wrestling even if he wasn’t so great any more at the man-to-woman kind. He was still damn good and his Mauser was still damn good; he liked to tell himself that, smiling as he patted the nice big hardness through the underarm of his coat.

He had told it to Reichmeider too, the surgical-equipment salesman he had met here at the Lorelei-Bar last night. What a pleasant fellow that Reichmeider was! He had really been interested in Döring’s Transport Commission stories—had almost fallen off his stool laughing at the outcome of the ’58 appropriation business. Talking to him had been a bit awkward at first because of the erratic way one of his eyes moved—it was obviously artificial—but Döring had soon got used to it and told him not only about the appropriation business but about the state investigation of ’64 and the Zellermann scandal too. Then they had got to a more personal level—five or six beers had gone down the hatch—and Döring had opened up about Klara and Springer. That was when he had patted the Mauser and said what he said about himself and it. Reichmeider couldn’t believe he was actually sixty-five. “I’d have sworn you were no more than fifty-seven, tops!” he had insisted. What a nice chap! It was a shame he was only going to be in the area for a few days; lucky, though, that he was staying in Gladbeck rather than in Essen proper.

It was to meet Reichmeider again, and tell him about the rise and fall of Oskar Know-It-All Vowinckel, that Döring had come back to the Lorelei-Bar tonight. But nine o’clock had long since passed and no Reichmeider, despite their clear understanding of the night before. There were a lot of noisy young men and pretty girls, one with her teats half out, and only a few old regulars—Fürst, Apfel, what’s-his-name—none of them good listeners. It was more like a Friday or Saturday than a Wednesday. A soccer game tided back and forth on the television; Döring watched it, drank slowly, and looked through the mirror at those gorgeous young teats. Now and then he leaned back on his stool and tried to catch a glimpse of newcomers by the door, still hoping Reichmeider would make his promised appearance.

And make it he did, but most strangely and suddenly, a hand gripping Döring’s shoulder, a skew-eyed urgency of whispering: “Döring, come outside quickly! There’s something I have to tell you!” And he was gone again.

Confused and puzzled, Döring flagged for Franz’s attention, threw a ten down, and pushed his way out. Reichmeider beckoned intently, withdrawing a ways down Kirchengasse. A handkerchief was wrapped around his left hand as if he had injured it; chalky dust streaked the legs and shoulders of his expensive-looking gray suit.

Hurrying to him, Döring said, “What’s up? What happened to you?”

“It’s you things are liable to happen to, not me!” Reichmeider said excitedly. “I’ve been stumbling through that building they’re demolishing, down the street in the next block. Listen, what’s-his-name, that fellow you told me about, the one who’s fooling around with your wife!”

“Springer,” Döring said, thoroughly puzzled but catching Reichmeider’s excitement. “Wilhelm Springer!”

“I knew that was it!” Reichmeider exclaimed. “I knew I wasn’t mistaken! What luck that I just happened to—Listen, I’ll explain everything. I was coming along this street here, heading this way, and I had to take a leak, simply couldn’t hold it in. So when I came to the building, the one they’re demolishing, I went into the alley beside it; but it was too light there, so I found an opening in the doors they’ve got walling the place and slipped inside. I did what I had to, and just as I’m ready to come out again, two men come and stop right at the place where I came in. One calls the other one Springer”—he nodded his head slowly, affirmingly, as Döring drew breath—“and that one says to the first one things like, ‘He’s in the Lorelei right now, the old bastard.’ And, ‘We’ll beat the shit out of that fat prick.’ I knew Springer was the name you’d mentioned! That is your way home, isn’t it?”

Döring, his eyes shut, breathed deeply and swallowed a portion of his fury. “Sometimes,” he whispered, and opened his eyes. “I go different ways.”

“Well, they’re expecting you to go that way tonight. They’re waiting there, both of them, with sticks of some kind, caps pulled down over their eyes, collars turned up; exactly as you said last night, Springer planning to spring from an alley! I went through the building and found a way out on this side.”

Döring pulled in another deep breath and clapped a hand gratefully to Reichmeider’s dusty shoulder. “Thank you,” he said. “Thank you.”

Smiling, Reichmeider said, “I’m sure you could lick both of them with one hand tied behind your back—the other fellow’s a skinny little nothing—but the wisest thing, of course, is simply to go home another way. I’ll go with you if you’d like. Unless, that is, you’d rather get rid of this Springer once and for all.”

Questioningly, Döring looked at him.

“It’s a golden opportunity, really,” Reichmeider pointed out, “and he’ll only come at you another night if you don’t. It’s quite simple; you walk down there, they attack”—he glanced down at Döring’s coat and smiled skew-eyed at him—“and you let them have it. I’ll be a few steps behind, to serve as your witness, and in the unlikely event that they give you any real trouble”—he leaned close and pulled his lapel out to show a holstered gun-butt—“I’ll take care of them and you’ll be my witness. Either way you’ll be rid of him, and the most you’ll have to pay is getting hit with a stick once or twice.”

Döring stared at Reichmeider. He put his hand to his coat, pressed the hardness within. “My God,” he said wonderingly, “to actually use this thing!”

Reichmeider unwrapped the handkerchief from his hand and blew at a bloody scrape on the back of it. “It’ll give that wife of yours something to think about,” he remarked.

“My God,” Döring exulted, “I hadn’t even thought of that! She’ll faint at my feet! ‘Oh say, Klara, do you remember Wilhelm Springer, Erich’s clarinet teacher? He jumped me in the street tonight—I can’t imagine why—and I killed him.’” He clutched his cheeks delightedly and whistled. “My God, it’ll kill her too!”

“Come on, let’s do it!” Reichmeider urged. “Before they lose their nerve and run away!”

They hurried down Kirchengasse’s dark decline. Bright headlights swept up and raced past them.

“Who says there’s no justice, eh?”

“‘Fat prick’? Oh, you shitty little faggot, I’m going to get you right through the heart!”

They crossed deserted Lindenstrasse; walked slowly now and quietly, close against shuttered storefronts. And came to four stories of stonework building, dark and broken-topped against moonlit sky, footed at front and side with rough-built passages of lumber and painted doors. Reichmeider drew Döring into the side passage’s blackness. “You stay here,” he whispered; “I’ll go through and make sure he didn’t have ten others joining them.”

“Yes, you’d better!” Döring got out the gun.

“I know the way now and I have a penlight; I won’t be long. Stay right here.”

“Don’t let them see you!”

Away already, Reichmeider whispered, “Don’t worry.” The passage appeared, plank-roofed and door-walled in bobbing dim light. Reichmeider’s tall thin silhouette strode into it, and turned to the inner wall and was gone, leaving blackness.

Alert and excited—and needing to pee—Döring held the wonderfully weighty Mauser, so many years carried and now to be used! He brought it closer to the passage’s opening and inspected it in faint light from Lindenstrasse; caressed a hand along its smooth barrel, carefully pushed its safety catch down into the ready position.

He moved back against the wall where Reichmeider had put him. What a friend! What a real man! He would take him to dinner tomorrow night, at the Kaiserhof. And buy him something too, something gold. Cuff links maybe.

He stood in the now-growing-visible passage with the gun big in his hand; thought about shooting its death-bullets into Wilhelm Springer.

And—after police business—going home and telling Klara. Die, bitch.

There would even be stories in the papers! Retired Transport Commission Administrator Slays Attackers. A picture of him too. Television interviews?

He really had to pee. The beer. He pushed the safety catch back up and returned the gun to its neatly receiving holster. He turned to the wall, unzipped his fly, drew himself out; spread his feet wide and let go. What relief!

“Are you there, Döring?” Reichmeider called softly from above.

“Yes!” he answered, looking up at planks. “What are you doing up there?”

“It’s easier to get across on this level. There’s all kinds of crap down below. I’ll be with you in a minute. Stay there. The light’s gone out and I won’t be able to find you if you move around.”

“Did you see them?”

No answer. He peed on, looking at a crack between pale doors. Would Reichmeider be able to get down all right without the light? And had he seen Springer and the other, or was he still on the way? Hurry, Reichmeider!

A pattering above; he looked up again. Gravel or something falling on the planks. They burst in at him with thunder behind them; and wondering, hurting, he died quickly.

The last time he had spoken at Heidelberg—in 1970, that was—the auditorium had been a splendid old cathedral of blackened oak, crowded even beyond its thousand-seat capacity. This time it was a new sand-colored oyster shell for five hundred, very modern and well designed, with the last two rows empty. The speaking was much easier, of course, like talking in someone’s large living room. Real eye-to-eye contact with all these bright young kids. But still…

Well. It was going along nicely, as it had every night so far. German audiences, young ones, were always the best; really caring, attending, concerned about the past. They made him be his best, finding genuine feeling again where American and English audiences, less involved, allowed him to lapse into mechanical delivery of memorized lines. Speaking German made a difference too, of course—the freedom to use natural words rather than cope with “was” and “were” (and “dejected” and “ejected” are you getting the clippings for me, Sydney?).

He snapped himself back into it. “In the beginning I only wanted vengeance,” he told an intently watching young woman in the second row. “Vengeance for the deaths of my parents and sisters, vengeance for my own years in the concentration camps”—he spoke to the farther rows—“vengeance for all the deaths, for everyone’s years. Why had I been spared if not to exact vengeance?” He waited. “Vienna certainly didn’t need another composer.” The usual small uplift of relieved laughter came; he smiled with it and chose a brown-haired young man on the far right (he looked a little like Barry Koehler). “But the trouble with vengeance,” he told him, trying not to think about Barry, “is that, one, you can’t get it, not really”—he looked away from the Barry-like young man, to the whole audience—“and two, even if you could, would it be of much use?” He shook his head. “No. So now I want something better than vengeance, and something almost as hard to get.” He told it to the young woman in the second row: “I want remembrance.” He told it to all of them: “Remembrance. It’s hard to get because life goes on; every year we have new horrors—a Vietnam, terrorist activities in the Middle East and Ireland, assassinations”—(ninety-four sixty-five-year-old men?)—“and every year,” he drove himself on, “the horror of horrors, the Holocaust, becomes farther away, a little less horrible. But philosophers have warned us: if we forget the past, we are doomed to repeat it. And that is why it’s important to capture an Eichmann and a Mengele; so that they can—” He heard what he had said, was lost. “A Stangl, I mean,” he fumbled. “Excuse me, I was indulging in some wishful thinking there.”

They laughed a little, but it was no good, it had broken the build; he tried to restore it: “And that’s why it’s important to capture an Eichmann and a Stangl,” he said. “So that they can be made to stand trial—not necessarily to convict them, no—but so that witnesses can be brought forward, to remind the world, and especially to remind you, who weren’t even born yet when these things happened, that men no different on the outside from you and me can commit under certain circumstances the most barbarous and inhuman atrocities. So that you”—he pointed—“and you—and you—and you—will take care to see that those circumstances shall never again be permitted to arise.”

The End. He bent his head; applause flooded at him and he withdrew a step from the lectern, keeping title to it with a hand touching a rounded corner. He waited, breathing hard, then stepped forward, grasped the lectern again with both hands, and faced the applause into spattering near-silence. “Thank you,” he said. “If you have questions now, I’ll do my best to answer them.” He looked around, chose and pointed.

Traunsteiner, leaning forward over a tightly held steering wheel, fired his car full-speed at the back of a gray-haired man walking on the road’s shoulder. Swelling close in the headlight’s explosive radiance, the man turned, raised a folded magazine above his eyes, back-stepped. The car’s fender bowled him up and away. Fighting a smile, Traunsteiner swerved the car back full onto pavement, barely missing a white-on-blue intersection warning. Braking, and braking more, he swung the car screechingly left into a wider road posted Esbjerg—14 Km.

“Mainly by contributions,” Liebermann said, “from Jews and other concerned people all over the world. And also by my income from writing and from engagements such as this.” He pointed to a hand in the back row. A young woman stood up, pink-faced and plump; she began asking what he saw was going to be the Frieda Maloney question.

“I can see,” the young woman said, “that it’s important to get the key people put on trial, the ones who held high positions. But aren’t you still motivated by vengeance in a case like Frieda Maloney, a rank-and-file guard who gets dragged back here after being an American citizen for so many years? Whatever she did during the war, hasn’t she made up for it by what she’s done since? She was a very useful citizen there. Teaching and so on.” The young woman sat down.

He nodded and stayed silent for a moment, smoothing his mustache down thoughtfully—as if he had never been asked the question before. Then he said, “I gather from your question that you’re aware that a woman who has been a nursery-school teacher, and a finder of homes for homeless babies, and a good housewife, kind to stray dogs, can also have been—the self-same woman!—a ‘rank-and-file’ concentration-camp guard, guilty, perhaps—her trial, when it finally takes place, will tell us—of mass murder. I ask you now: would you be aware of this somewhat surprising possibility if Frieda Altschul Maloney hadn’t been found and extradited? I don’t think so, and I don’t think it’s an unimportant possibility for you to be aware of. Neither does your government.”

He looked around—at hands springing up, including the hand of the Barry-like young man. He looked away from him (not now, Barry, I’m busy) and pointed at a shrewd-looking blond young man at dead center. (“There are ninety-four of them,” Barry’s telephone voice insisted, “and they’re all sixty-five-year-old civil servants. How do you like them apples?”)

A new question was coming at him. “But Frieda Maloney hasn’t even been indicted yet,” the blond young man was saying. “Is our government really so interested in pursuing Nazi criminals? Is any government in the world today, even the Israeli? Hasn’t there been a decline of interest, and isn’t that one of the reasons why you haven’t been able to reopen your Information Center?”

So who tells you to pick the shrewd-looking ones? “First of all,” he said, “the Center is temporarily in smaller quarters, but it’s still open. People are working; letters come in, advisories go out. As I said before, we’re funded by private individuals and in no way dependent on any government. Secondly, though it’s true that both German and Austrian prosecutors are no longer as…responsive as they once were, and Israel has other more pressing problems, the cause of justice hasn’t yet been deserted. I have it on good authority that Frieda Maloney will be indicted sometime in January or February, and brought to trial soon after. The witnesses have been found, a difficult and time-consuming job in which the Center played a part.” He looked at raised hands again, bright young faces—and suddenly realized exactly what he was looking at. A gold mine, for God’s sake! Right in front of him!

Here in this luminous oyster shell were nearly five hundred of the smartest young people in Germany, the cream of their generation, and he was trying to figure the thing out alone, one old fool with one tired brain. Dear God!

Ask them? Crazy!

He must have pointed at someone; the neo-Nazism question had been asked. “Two factors are necessary for a resurgence of Nazism,” he recited quickly, “a worsening of social conditions till they approximate those of the early thirties and the emergence of a Hitler-like leader. Should both these factors come into being, neo-Nazi groups around the world would of course become a focus of danger, but at the present time, no, I’m not particularly alarmed.” Hands sprang up, but he raised his hand against them. “Just a minute, please,” he said. “I’d like to interrupt the questions for a moment—and ask one instead of answering.”

The hands fell away. The bright young faces looked at him expectantly.

Crazy! But how could he not try to make use of such brain-power?

He gripped the lectern with both hands, took a breath, thought. “I want,” he said to the oyster shell full of such excellent pearls, “to borrow your brains to solve a problem. A hypothetical problem that a young friend presented to me. I’m very anxious to solve it, so much so that I’m willing to cheat a little and get help.” Small laugh. “And who could help me better than students of this great university and their friends?”

He let go of the lectern and stood straight, looked at them casually—a man offering a hypothetical problem, not a real one.

“I’ve told you about the Comrades Organization in South America,” he said, “and about Dr. Mengele. Here’s the problem my friend presented. The Organization and Dr. Mengele decide that they want to kill a large number of men in different countries of Europe and North America. Ninety-four men, to be exact, and they’re all sixty-five years old and civil servants. The killings are to take place over a two-and-a-half-year period, and there’s a political motivation for them, a Nazi motivation. What is it? Can you find an answer for me? Who are these men? Why are their deaths desirable to the Comrades Organization and Dr. Mengele?”

The audience of young people sat uncertainly. A hum of whispering grew among them. A cough broke out; another cough echoed it.

He took the lectern—casually. “I’m not joking with you,” he said. “This problem was put to me. As an exercise in logic. Can you help me?”

They leaned to one another, and the hum of whispering intensified, became the buzz of ideas being hazarded.

“Ninety-four men,” he said slowly, guidingly. “Sixty-five years old. Civil servants. In various countries. Two and a half years.”

A hand came up, and another.

Hoping, he took the first; a few rows back, left of center. “Yes?”

A young man in a blue sweater stood up. “The men hold positions of responsibility,” he said in an unexpectedly high-pitched voice. “Their deaths will directly or indirectly bring about the worsening of social conditions you just referred to, creating a more suitable climate for a rebirth of Nazism.”

He shook his head. “No, I don’t think so,” he said. “Could the killing of highly placed men go on for months, let alone two and a half years, without attracting attention and causing investigation? No, the men must be low-echelon civil servants. And at sixty-five they’ll more than likely be retiring anyway, so removing them from their jobs can’t possibly be the object of killing them.”

“Why kill them at all?” a voice called from the right rear. “They’ll soon die naturally!”

He nodded. “That’s right,” he said. “They’ll soon die naturally. So why kill them at all? That’s what I’m asking you.” He pointed at the second hand that had come up, at the rear center; other hands were up now.

A tall young man stood and said, “They’re Nazi sympathizers without families, who’ve left their life savings to Nazi groups. It’s murder for money. There’s some reason why they need funds now rather than five or ten years from now.”

“That’s possible,” he said, “though it seems unlikely. As I mentioned before, the Comrades Organization has enormous wealth that it smuggled from Europe before the war’s end.” He pulled his pen free of his breast pocket and clicked its top. “Still, it’s a possibility.” He turned over one of his note cards on the lectern, and on the back of it wrote: Money? He raised the pen and pointed with it to the right.

A young woman with glasses and long brown hair stood up. “It seems much more likely to me,” she said, “that the men are anti-Nazi rather than pro-Nazi, and obviously there’s a connection of some kind between them. Could they be members of an international Jewish group that threatens the Comrades Organization in some way?”

“I think I would know of such a group,” he said, “and I’ve never heard of any group of any kind whose members are all sixty-five.”

The young woman stayed standing. “Maybe their being sixty-five now isn’t what’s important,” she said. “The…connection might have been established when they were younger, when they were all thirty-five or twenty-five. Maybe they were all involved in a certain military action in the war, and killing them is an act of revenge.”

“Some are German,” he said, “and some are English and American, and some are Swedes, who were neutral. But—”

“A U.N. patrol!” someone called.

“They’d have been too old,” he answered, and looked again to the long-haired young woman, who had sat down. “But that’s an interesting point,” he said, “about sixty-five not being the significant age, for of course they’ve all been the same ages all their lives, so that opens the door to other possibilities. Thank you.”

He wrote: Link at earlier age?—and someone called out, “Are they natives of those countries or only living there?”

He looked up. “Another good point,” he said. “I don’t know. Perhaps they were one nationality originally.” Where born? he wrote. “This is good, keep it up!” He pointed.

A young man sitting cross-legged in the front row said, “They’re people who help you, your major contributors.”

“You flatter me. I’m not that important and I also don’t have ninety-four major contributors. Of any age.” He pointed elsewhere.

The Barry-like young man: “When does the two-and-a-half-year period begin, sir?”

“Two days ago.”

“Then it ends in the spring of 1977. Is there an important political event scheduled to take place then? Maybe the killings are going to be announced, as a show of strength, or a warning.”

“But why these particular men? Yet again an interesting point. Does anyone know of an important event, political or otherwise, scheduled for the spring of 1977?” He looked around.

Silence, and heads shaking. “My graduation!” someone called. Laughter and applause.

Spring ’77? he wrote, and smiling, pointed.

The young man in the blue sweater again, with his high-pitched voice: “The men aren’t highly placed themselves, but their sons, who are in their forties, are. And the men are to be killed so that their sons will have to neglect important work to attend their funerals.”

Derision. Booing and hoots of scorn.

“That’s slightly far-fetched,” he said, “but still, there’s the germ of something to think about. Are the men related to important people, or associated with them somehow?” He wrote: Relations? Friends?—and pointed.

The shrewd-looking blond young man stood up. Smiling, he said, “Herr Liebermann, is this really only a hypothetical problem?”

Never pick this boy again. A stillness expanded through the auditorium. “Of course it is,” he said.

“Then you must ask your friend to give you some more information,” the shrewd-looking young man said. “Not even the great brains of Heidelberg can solve his problem without at least one more relevant fact about the ninety-four men. Given the information we have now, we can only speculate blindly.”

“You’re right,” he said, “more information is needed. But the speculation helps; it suggests possibilities.” He looked around. “Does anyone have any more speculation?”

A hand came up at the left rear; he pointed at it.

An elderly man stood up, white-haired and frail-looking—a faculty member or perhaps a student’s grandfather. Leaning on the back of the seat before him, he said in a firm and contemptuous voice, “Not one of the suggestions made so far has recognized Dr. Mengele’s presence in the problem. Why is he introduced if the killings are only political killings of the conventional kind, which the Comrades Organization could engineer without him? He is introduced, obviously, because of his medical background, and I therefore suggest a medical aspect to the killings. They might, for instance, constitute the covert testing of a new means of killing, and the men would therefore have been chosen precisely because they’re old, unimportant, and no menace to Nazism. A testing program would also explain the lengthy time-span. In the spring of 1977 the real killings would begin.” He sat down.

Liebermann stood looking at him for a moment, and then he said, “Thank you, sir.” To the whole audience he said, “I hope for your sake this gentleman is one of your professors.”

“He is,” several voices assured him bitterly, and the name Geirasch was spoken.

WHY M.??? he wrote—and looked up again in the man’s direction. “I don’t think a testing program would be limited to civil servants,” he said, “or even carried out in this part of the world rather than in South America, but you’re surely right about there being a specific reason for Dr. Mengele’s involvement. Can anyone think of one?” He looked around.

The young people sat silently.

“A medical aspect to the ninety-four killings?” He looked to the long-haired young woman; she shook her head.

The Barry-like young man shook his, and so did the young man in the blue sweater.

He hesitated—and looked to the shrewd-looking blond young man, who smiled at him and shook his head.

He looked at his card on the lectern:

He looked at the audience. “Thank you,” he said. “You haven’t solved the problem, but you’ve given me suggestions that may lead to the solution, so I’m grateful to you. We’ll go back now to your questions.”

Hands sprang up. He pointed.

A young woman next to the Barry-like young man stood up and said, “Herr Liebermann, what’s your opinion of Moshe Gorin and the Jewish Defenders?”

“I’ve never met Rabbi Gorin, so I have no opinion of him personally,” he said automatically. “As for his Young Jewish Defenders; if they’re defending, fine. But if, as is sometimes reported, they’re attacking, then not so fine. Brown shirts are never good, no matter who’s wearing them.”

And silver-haired Horst Hessen, sweating in bright sunlight, raised large binoculars to his blue eyes and watched a bare-chested man in a white sun hat riding a power mower slowly across a vivid green lawn. A flagpole flew an American flag; the house beyond was a neat one-story box of glass and redwood. A black cloud shot with leaping orange replaced the man and the mower, and a thud of explosion came bluntly through distance.