The Wind and the Rain

by Martin O'Brien

  “We are a medical facility sponsored by the democratically elected West German government with additional support from certain powerful NATO allies. Whatever organisation you represent, please be aware that you are undermining the progress of cures for diseases such as cancer,” Beckermann, in the same pompous manner he did in his office, is preaching, “You may believe your cause is righteous and I have a lot of sympathy for people against this type of testing. Why don’t we discuss it together like adults back in my office. I promise you won’t find yourself in trouble,”

  “I’ve spent my whole life in trouble,” Gunari says with a laugh, “I think it may be yourself who is in major difficulties this evening, Dr Beckermann,”

  Beckermann’s face betrays panic, the intruders know his name. I’m not sure he expected that.

  “What do you want? If you are looking for money you are in the wrong place,”

  “I thought this was the right place for money?” Janko says, “Your colleague was seconds away from removing the eyeball of my friend Ana. Why would you rip away the sight of a healthy young girl?”

  “I don’t know where you people come from but in advanced capitalist societies humans are sovereign entities. If your friend wanted to make some money she is allowed to sell her assets and be very well rewarded,”

  “Let’s be frank, Dr Beckermann,” Gunari interjects, “All this talking is wasting time, all we need is for you to answer one simple question or else you will find yourself in a comparable situation to your friend, the late Mr Schwarzer,”

  “My late friend?” Beckermann says. The colour drains out of his face. His bloated red face is now as white as the sheets should be in this facility.

  “Yes,” Janko says and leans close to the doctor’s face, “Unfortunately, Mr Schwarzer was reticent with regards to our questioning. One thing led to another which led to another thing which led to Mr Schwarzer ceasing to be a sentient part of our world. Now Doctor, let me be explicit, if you do not tell us what we need to know we shall kill you right here in front of your staff,”

  I look around and see Hansen and the nurse are awake. They are utterly terror-stricken. Daniel the orderly is still having a snooze.

  “We visited your father in Munich, Paul Beckermann. I have to say you look very much alike. Your father is friends with Dr Albert Tremmick,” Janko says the name and it hangs heavy on our side and on Beckermann too who has once more lowered his head. Beckermann has the air of a man who probably knew at one point in his life, associating with a war criminal would come back and haunt him.

  “Now regarding Dr Tremmick,” Janko continues, “He is responsible for the mutilation and murder of many of our loved ones in the Roma community. Understandably this is not something we can tolerate. All we require from you is to confirm his address.”

  “I don’t know where he lives, Argentina I think,” Beckermann says. The atmosphere becomes even thicker. I shake my head at what I have heard. A very clever man making such a stupid comment.

  “We know that is a lie and that Dr Tremmick departed Buenos Aires soon after we encountered him in the Café Tortoni,” Janko says.

  “Why did you lie to us?” Gunari says, “According to the Gospel of Matthew ‘If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away.’ Is that why you tore out these peoples’ eyes?”

  “No, no, no. What are you talking about?”

  “Some people may say it caused you to sin. I am tempted to agree considering you lied to us when we asked you a question. Now, one more time, where does Tremmick live?”

  Silence hangs over the room like soil over a fresh grave. Seconds pass and I see he is about to reply.

  “I would never tell you, Zigeuner,” Beckermann’s bigoted defiance is remarkable. He even starts to smile at Gunari. In response Gunari lifts his hand in which he clasps a sharp medical knife. Gunari plunges the scalpel straight in to Beckermann’s right eye. The watching nurse squeals, as does Beckermann.

  In a matter of seconds Gunari is holding Beckermann’s eye up to face the remaining eye still housed in his head. Beckermann vomits down the front of his white coat. Blood courses down his face from the mangled socket and merges with the vomit to create a mottled orange mess.

  I can’t believe my own reaction. I simply stare at Beckermann and feel nothing for him. I’m not glad he has had impromptu eye surgery but nor do I feel any sympathy. This man is a monster.

  “Shut that nurse up,” Gunari says and I walk over to her. I am prepared to knock her out but she quietens as I approach and mumbles prayers to herself. On the other side of the room Hansen is staring at the floor. He is wonderfully portraying a man hoping that no one notices his presence, especially Gunari. He appears to be whispering something, possibly a prayer. Funny how the most immoral people find God at these times.

  “A life of breaking your oath to help people. Why do people like you do the bidding of demons?” Janko says.

  Beckermann fails to respond, he is now convulsing in the chair. The front of his coat is completely covered in the viscous blood-vomit cocktail.

  “I would like to see you in this state for ever but as we mentioned earlier, we have so little time. Do you know where Dr Tremmick lives?”

  Beckermann continues convulsing, he raises an arm up slightly. Is he pointing? No words come out of his mouth, globules of some sticky substance come out of his mouth.

  Janko looks up at Gunari who is stood behind the doctor. Gunari uses the de-eyeballing knife and brings it across the throat of Beckermann. The fine cut is almost imperceptible but eventually a line of blood advances into a torrent that soaks the floor where Beckermann is sat.

  “Let’s get out of here,” Gunari says.

  “I think we should check his office,” I say, “I think he was pointing back that way when you asked him where Tremmick lived.”

  The three of us walk back in to the main hall. The scene of half-chaos has continued. Two orderlies are trying to pin down an irate middle aged woman on a bed. Screams can be heard constantly, a macabre choir of the undead singing their hymns of horror.

  I lead us through the hall back to Beckermann’s office. Out of the corner of my eye, I am sure I see Doktor Party. He is stood against the wall and doesn’t look comfortable at all. Sadly I don’t have the time to knock him out.

  We enter the office and start looking around. Janko is searching through filing cabinets. Underneath a desk lamp I spot a black address book on his desk. I scour the book page by page, there doesn’t seem to be a normal order to it and many of the names are written in initials.

  Halfway through the book I see an interesting entry:

  A T - IMFG

  Więźniów Oświęcimia 20

  32-603 Oświęcim

  Polen

  “Janko, take a look at this,” I say, handing the book to him, “AT, could this be him?”

  “Yes, Ana, I think it is,” Janko snorts, “At least I think it gives us the best clue to find him,”

  Janko hands the book back to me.

  “Is this Poland? Where is Oświęcim?” I say. I have no idea if I’m pronouncing it right, “I’m confused, I thought he was in Monaco.”

  “I have a feeling that the address is hidden at this location here. A sick joke by sick people.”

  “How do you mean, where is it?”

  “Oświęcim is the Polish translation of Auschwitz. I believe they the information we need can be found there. It is in Auschwitz where we will discover where Tremmick now lives,”

  Ode of Thunder

  Tuesday, 6 May 1986

  The sultry heat has finally excised the pain in my joints. Quite honestly, I feel like I am thirty again and imagine myself taking an evening stroll around the gardens of Palermo or Recoleta. If I close my eyes, I can feel the cool breeze against my face as though I was sitting on a bench at Carlos Thays Park. The young Argentine girls would daringly wear their skirts above their knees, sometimes they would whisper to their friends and look at me. What a drea
m it would have been for them to be charmed and cared for by a powerful European businessman.

  Those lingering glances remain seared into my mind. The dark haired girls with their lascivious hazel eyes were unlike anything I experienced as a young man in Germany. The fatherland prized homely, upstanding women who were fine as companions to social gatherings and for raising children. But they never looked at men in that sultry manner like the Latin girls did where one could feel the stirrings down below within seconds.

  It would be an interesting study to see if the Southern European obsession with crudity and vulgarity was caused by a brain defect. The more I reflect on it I think it could be related to the weather. Without exception, the Mediterranean peoples are uniformly lazy and hot-headed. They struggle to focus on tasks for long periods and they are unable to work together to accomplish anything of note.

  For example, the Spanish had a tough, morally conservative leader for four decades and achieved barely nothing of note compared to the glory of the Spanish empire in centuries long gone. Now Spain is nothing but a cheap holiday destination for the hard-working people of the North. It wasn’t war that resulted in the Spanish existing to serve the industrious Northern Europeans but pure economics.

  Europe would have no economy if it wasn’t for the entrepreneurial, daring spirit of the Germanic tribes. It’s not a coincidence that the greatest nations in modern history have been built on the Germanic and Scandinavian races. Anglo-Saxon is the word experts use to describe the economic revolutions that occurred in the United Kingdom, Germany and the United States. All three nations achieved greatness on the back of the same genetic code.

  The phone rings. It startles me out of my reverie and I drop the glass I’m holding. The glass clanks off the top of the table and splashes me with scotch across my pale grey trousers and then rolls sadly from the table onto the floor, and cracks into a few large pieces. I pick the empty shards off the floor and place them back on to the table and cut my hand on the final piece.

  “Shit!” I exclaim and pick up the telephone receiver, “Yes? What is it?”

  “It’s Paul,” his voice sounds frail.

  “How many times do I have to tell you to not ring this number? For the love of God Paul, how stupid can you be?” That’s it, this is definitely the time to remove this excess baggage from my life.

  “They killed Karl, Albert. They killed my boy,” Paul says and caves in to sobbing. What is he on about, who killed Karl?

  “I don’t understand what you mean. Paul, calm down and tell me what has happened,” I reply. Beckermann takes a few seconds to respond. I can picture him in his grubby apartment wiping tears away with his chubby fingers.

  “I don’t know much, I’m going to travel over there now. Two men have breached security at the clinic and murdered my boy.”

  “Who was it?” I say.

  “I have no idea, all I know is that they both spoke German and French. Dr Hansen phoned me up and told me a few things but he said he is going on leave Berlin today. He refused to answer my questions. He...he said that they...they ripped his eyeball straight out of the socket.” Beckermann bursts into tears once again. Which is understandable if what he is saying is true.

  “Who are the two men?” Beckermann doesn’t respond, “Mossad agents? Homeless people? Ossis? Tell me Paul!”

  Beckermann continues sobbing quietly. The man needs to get off the phone if he isn’t going to speak. This is no way for adults to work out a productive solution. The most likely explanation is that the attackers are Mossad agents. But if they were at the clinic then that would indicate they don’t know where I am or they would have come straight to me. Compared to me, the rest are small fry.

  Worst case scenario is that it will take them a couple of days to discover where I am. Karl didn’t have a clue where I am living so he will not have been able to give me up. Neither does Paul. Only Schwarzer knows my address and he hasn’t said anything amiss on the daily phone call, although he has sounded a bit hoarse for the last couple of days.

  The Israelis bandits will come hunting within a day or two. Thus, it is finally time to leave Monaco and put my exit strategy in place over the next few days. If I leave by Sunday at the latest that leaves me time to put my affairs in order.

  Paul continues sobbing and I tell him that I will telephone him later on. I can’t bear to listen to him crying. Each sob feels like a stabbing pain in my ear. I hang up the phone and wander to the kitchen to clean my hand up. The blood is congealing around the wound at the base of my palm. How I detest the dark kitchen with its tiny window overlooking the street. It has always reminded me of an Einliegerwohnung, somewhere to park an unavailing elderly relative until they die.

  Times like this are a reminder that I should have emulated Verschuer and become a respectable part of the establishment. I could have made a name for myself as an internationally renowned scientist spending my life researching and writing books. I could have travelled the world and felt the spotlight upon me as the main man at conferences giving speeches and signing books. People would be hanging off my every word and politicians would be wanting photographs taken alongside me. Dr Tremmick, Germany’s greatest living scientist.

  Instead, I devoted my life to radical, unpopular research and kept a low profile. Some of my acquaintances said I was a madman to take so many precautions regarding my personal safety. Yet, once more, maniacs have hunted me down. And once again I will have to make an escape, hopefully with less danger than when I hurried out of the Café Tortoni twenty-five years ago. I can’t help but laugh out loud at the escape I made that night.

  My heightened sense of self-preservation that I possess was on high alert the moment we entered the Peluqueria bar. The two men from FrancoPharm were wearing the same suits as they were the day prior. They appeared surprised to see me, possibly because I was so late. A man of high esteem such as myself would never have arrived early for a meeting with a couple of upstart French braggarts.

  I could smell stale sweat and it was hot inside the small room. The room felt even smaller due to the walls being covered with posters, multiple mirrors and almost-black wood panelling. I was puzzled that there was only three chairs in the room. One, at the head of the table and one on either side. Presumably I was obliged to sit in the middle with the Hernández boys by each side of me.

  It meant the two men had no seat of their own. What had they been doing for the last hour? Standing around waiting for me or possibly something more sinister?

  “Good evening, gentlemen,” I said to the men in Spanish. They nodded in response and gestured to the three of us to sit down. The big man was very edgy, his hand touched the large scar on his neck and I became certain that I had met this man before. I could not remember where though but I knew that there was no legitimate reason for me to stay here. We took our seats and I ensured I kept my chair pulled quite far back from the table. The room was narrow and Federico and Miguel would hopefully be able to block off any potential attacks.

  The table contained a few empty boxes of drugs and a few leaflets. I stared right at the old man who simply smiled at me so I fixed my gaze on the big man. He avoided eye contact and his edgy demeanour further deadened the heavy atmosphere.

  “Are you not sitting down?” I said to them in French. The two men looked at each other and started chuckling. The older man made a remark about preferring to do his business standing up. I stood up and examined the scene. My mind was very clear, this was a set up.

  “No business will be completed here today,” I said and sat back in the chair. The strange men glanced at each other and for a moment I could see desperation etched on their faces. At that moment Miguel must have sensed the danger as he leapt out of the chair in the direction of the bigger man.

  As the fight began, I took my chance to escape. I reached the door and heard a piercing yelp. In the doorway I turned to see the scarred beast stabbing a syringe in to Miguel’s neck. Miguel collapsed in to the table headfirst and on to the
floor. After witnessing that, I ran out of the barbershop and back in to the main room. A couple of tango dancers were moving around in front of the stage and the male half looked annoyed as I streaked past them both.

  I was aware that the music had stopped. Whether that was literally at that second or when Miguel shrieked I cannot determine. I turned around and saw the two men appear in the hall with blood dripping from their hands. The two men Federico had hired went over to attack them along with a few regulars. Staying at the cafe would be madness so I stepped out into the street.

  I had the option of running towards Plaza de Mayo or Avenida 9 de Julio. I heard footsteps running towards my direction from the direction of Plaza de Mayo which caused me to hesitate. Instead of running away in the opposite direction I spotted the sign for the Piedras underground station.

  Leaping down the stairs four at a time brought me to the bottom where I jumped over the ticket barrier. A train was already pulled up in the station and I boarded with seconds to spare. A man and a woman with tanned skin and a Jewish look about them were face to face with me as the doors closed. The train began to depart and the two Jews said something to each other and then ran back out upstairs out of the station.

  God only knows how many agents were involved in this situation. The next station was Avenida de Mayo and I made the decision to disembark and attempt to catch a taxi. My flat in Recoleta was nowhere near any Subte stations and I had to return home as soon as possible. I was caught in two minds about heading back to my residence but based on the balance of probabilities the Israelis probably didn’t know my actual address. Ultimately it was a risk I would have to take.

  I disembarked and left the station and came out on to the immense, wide Avenida 9 de Julio. I spotted a couple of taxis not twenty metres away. Upon opening the car door I glanced behind me. What I saw could be classed as the most surreal moment in my life. The couple I had been staring at through the train window had ran up to their car which was parked directly behind the taxi I was about to enter. As they began getting in to their car they looked at me and their faces betrayed as much surprise as mine. It would have been darkly amusing if they weren’t on a mission to end my life.