by Philip Kerr
“Those are our VIPs,” said Henkell. “The Culex pipen. The stagnant-water variety of mosquito and therefore the most dangerous, as it carries the disease. We try to breed our own in the lab. But from time to time we have to get new specimens sent all the way from Florida. The eggs and larvae are surprisingly resilient to the low temperatures of long-distance air travel. Fascinating, aren’t they? That something so small can be so lethal. Which malaria is, of course. For most people, anyway. Studies I’ve seen show that it’s nearly always fatal in children. But women are more resistant than men. Nobody knows why.”
I shuddered and stepped away from the glass case.
“He doesn’t care for your little friends, Heinrich,” said Jacobs. “And I can’t say that I blame him. I hate the little bastards. I have nightmares that one of them will get out and bite me.”
“I’m sure they have more taste than that,” I said.
“Which is why we need more money. For better isolation chambers and handling facilities. An electron microscope. Specimen holders. New slide staining systems.” All of this was directed at Major Jacobs. “To prevent just such an accident from happening.”
“We’re working on it,” Jacobs said and yawned ostentatiously, as if he had heard all of this many times before. He took out a cigarette case and then seemed to think better of it under Henkell’s disapproving eye. “No smoking in the laboratory,” he murmured, slipping the cigarette case back into his pocket. “Right.”
“You remembered,” said Henkell, smiling. “We’re making progress.”
“I hope so,” said Jacobs. “I just wish you’d remember to keep a lid on all of this.” He had one eye on me when he said this. “Like we agreed. This project is supposed to be a secret.” And he and Henkell began to argue again.
I turned my back on them and leaned over an old copy of Life magazine that was lying on the bench, next to a microscope. I flipped the pages, giving my English a little exercise. Americans looked so wholesome. Like another master race. I started to read an article titled “The Battered Face of Germany.” There was a series of aerial pictures of what German towns and cities looked like after the RAF and U.S. 8th Air Force had finished. Mainz looked like a mud-brick village in Abyssinia. Julich, like someone had experimented with an early atomic bomb. It was enough to remind me of just how total had been our annihilation.
“It wouldn’t matter so much,” Jacobs was saying, “if you didn’t leave papers and documents lying around. Things that are sensitive and secret.” And so saying he removed the magazine from my eyes and went through the double glass doors back into the office.
I followed him, full of curiosity. So did Henkell.
Standing in front of the desk, Jacobs fished a key chain out of his trouser pocket, unlocked a briefcase, and tossed the magazine inside. Then he locked it again. I wondered what was in that magazine. Nothing secret, surely. Every week Life magazine was sold all over the world, with a circulation in the millions. Unless they were using Life as a codebook. I’d heard that was the way things like that were done these days.
Henkell closed the glass doors carefully behind him and uttered a laugh. “Now he just thinks you’re crazy,” he said. “Me, too, probably.”
“I don’t give a damn what he thinks,” said Jacobs.
“Gentlemen,” I said. “It’s been interesting. But I think I ought to be going. It’s a nice day and I could use some exercise. So if you don’t mind, Heinrich, I’m going to try to walk back to the house.”
“It’s four miles, Bernie,” said Henkell. “Are you sure you’re up to it?”
“I think so. And I’d like to try.”
“Why don’t you take my car? Major Jacobs can drive me back when he and I have finished up here.”
“No, really,” I said. “I’ll be fine.”
“I’m sorry he was so rude,” said Henkell.
“Don’t get sore,” Jacobs told him. “It’s nothing personal. He surprised me, turning up again like this, that’s all. In my business, I don’t like surprises. Next time we’ll meet at the house. We’ll have a drink. It’ll be more relaxed that way. All right, Gunther?”
“Sure,” I said. “We’ll have a drink and then go and dig in the garden. Just like old times.”
“A German with a sense of humor,” said Jacobs. “I like that.”
TWENTY-SIX
When they first make you a cop they put you on a beat. They make you walk so you have enough time to notice things. No one ever notices much from the inside of a stripe wagon traveling at thirty miles an hour. “Flatfoot” and “gumshoe” are words that come at you when you wear hobnailed boots. If I had left Henkell’s laboratory in the Mercedes, I would never have glanced in the window of Major Jacob’s Buick and I would never have seen that he had left it unlocked. Nor would I have looked back at the villa and remembered that it was impossible to see the road and the car from the office window. I didn’t like Major Jacobs, in spite of his approximate apology. That was no reason to search his car, of course. But then, “snooper” is another word for what I do and what I am. I am a professional sniffer, an oven-peeper, a nosey parker, and I was feeling very nosy about a man who had dug up my back garden in search of Jewish gold and who was sufficiently secretive—not to say paranoid—to lock away an old copy of Life magazine in order to stop me from looking at it.
I liked his Buick. The front seat was as big as the bunk in a Pullman sleeping car, with a steering wheel the size of a bicycle tire and a car radio that looked like it had been borrowed from a café jukebox. The speedometer said it went up to one hundred twenty miles per hour, and with its straight eight and Dynaflow transmission, I figured it was good for at least a hundred of that. About a yard away from the speedometer, on the sunny side of the dash, was a matching clock, so you’d know when it was time to go and buy more gas. Below the clock was a glove box for a man with bigger hands than Jacobs had. Actually it looked like a glove box for the goddess Kali with room for a couple of garlands of skulls as well.
I leaned across the seat, thumbed it open, and raked around for a moment. There was a snub-nosed thirty-eight-caliber Smith & Wesson—a J-frame with a nice rubberized grip. The one he had pointed at me in Dachau. A Michelin road map of Germany. A commemorative postcard to celebrate Goethe’s two hundredth anniversary. An American edition of The Goebbels Diaries. A Blue Guide to northern Italy. Inside the Blue Guide, at the pages for Milan, was a receipt from a jeweler’s shop. The jeweler’s name was Primo Ottolenghi, and the receipt was for ten thousand dollars. It seemed reasonable to assume that Milan had been where Jacobs had sold the box of Jewish valuables dug up in my back garden, especially since the receipt was dated a week or so after his stay with us. There was a letter from the Rochester Strong Memorial Hospital, in the State of New York, itemizing some medical equipment delivered to Garmisch-Partenkirchen, via the Rhein-Main Air Base. There was a notepad. The first page was blank, but I could just make out the indentation of what had been written on the previous page. I tore off the first few pages in the hope that later on I might shade up whatever Jacobs had written down.
I returned everything else to the glove box, closed it, and then glanced over my shoulder at the backseat. There were copies of the Paris edition of the Herald and the Süddeutsche Zeitung, and a rolled-up umbrella. Nothing else. It wasn’t much, but I knew a little more about Jacobs than before. I knew he was serious about guns. I knew where he was likely to hawk the family heirlooms. And I knew he was interested in Joey the Crip. Maybe that kraut Goethe, too, on a good day. Sometimes knowing only a little is a preface to knowing a lot.
I got out of the car, shut the door quietly, and, keeping the River Loisach on my right, walked northeast, in the direction of Sonnenbichl, taking a shortcut through the grounds of what had once been the hospital and was now being turned into an R&R center for American servicemen.
I started to think about returning to Munich to pick up the threads of my business. I decided that, in the absence of any new cl
ients, I might see if I could find any trace of the last one. Perhaps I would go back to the Holy Ghost Church and hope that she turned up there. Or speak to poor Felix Klingerhoefer at American Overseas Airlines. Perhaps he could remember something about Britta Warzok other than that she had come from Vienna.
The walk back to Mönch took longer than I had bargained for. I had forgotten that a lot of the walk, most of it in fact, was uphill, and even without a knapsack on my back I was something less than the happy wanderer by the time I crept into the house, crawled onto my bed, unlaced my shoes, and closed my eyes. It was several minutes before Engelbertina realized I had returned and came to find me. Her face told me immediately that something was wrong.
“Eric had a telegram,” she explained. “From Vienna. His mother is dead. He’s rather upset about it.”
“Really? I thought they hated each other.”
“They did,” she said. “I think that’s part of the problem. He realizes he won’t ever be able to make it up with her now. Not ever.” She showed me the telegram.
“I don’t think I should be reading his telegram,” I said, reading his telegram all the same. “Where is he now?”
“In his room. He said he just wanted to be left alone.”
“I can understand that,” I said. “Your mother dies, it’s not like losing a cat. Not unless you’re a cat.”
Engelbertina smiled sadly and took my hand. “Do you have a mother?”
“Naturally I used to have one,” I said. “A father, too, if memory serves. Only somewhere along the way I seem to have lost them both. Careless of me.”
“Me, too,” she said. “That’s something else we have in common, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” I said, without much enthusiasm. As far as I was concerned, there was only one thing we seemed to have in common, and that was what went on in her bedroom, or mine. I looked at Gruen’s telegram again. “This suggests that he has come into a considerable fortune,” I said.
“Yes, but only if he goes to Vienna to see the lawyers in person and claims it,” she said. “And somehow I can’t see that happening. Not in his present condition. Can you?”
“Just how sick is he anyway?” I asked her.
“If it was just the use of his legs he had lost, he wouldn’t be so bad,” she said. “But he lost his spleen as well.”
“I didn’t know that,” I said. “Is that serious?”
“Losing your spleen increases your risk of infection,” she said. “The spleen is a kind of blood filter and reserve supply. That’s why he runs out of energy so easily.” She shook her head. “I really don’t think he could make it to Vienna. Even in Heinrich’s car. Vienna’s almost three hundred miles away, isn’t it?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “It’s a long time since I was in Vienna. What’s more, when you do get there it seems even farther away than you had bargained for. If you know what I mean. There’s something about the Viennese I don’t like. They turn out a very Austrian sort of German.”
“You mean like Hitler?”
“No, Hitler was a very German sort of Austrian. There’s a difference.” I thought for a moment. “How much money is involved, do you think? With Eric’s family, I mean.”
“I’m not exactly sure,” she said. “But the Gruen family owned one of the largest sugar factories in Central Europe.” She shrugged. “So it could be quite a lot. Everyone has a sweet tooth, don’t they?”
“They do in Austria,” I said. “But that’s as sweet as they ever get.”
“Aren’t you forgetting something?” she said. “I’m Austrian.”
“And I bet that makes you really proud,” I said. “When the Nazis annexed Austria, in 1938, I was living in Berlin. I remember Austrian Jews coming to live in Berlin because they thought Berliners would be more tolerant than the Viennese.”
“And were they?”
“For a while. The Nazis never really liked Berlin, you know. It took them a long time to bring the city to heel. A long time and a lot of blood. Berlin was just the showcase for what happened. But the real heart of Nazism was Munich. Still is, I shouldn’t wonder.” I lit a cigarette. “You know, I envy you, Engelbertina. At least you have a choice between calling yourself an Austrian and calling yourself a Jew. I’m a German and there’s nothing I can do about that. Right now it feels like the mark of Cain.”
Engelbertina squeezed the hand she was still holding. “Cain had a brother,” she said. “And in a way, so do you, Bernie. Or at least someone who looks a lot like your brother. Maybe you can help him. That’s your job, isn’t it? Helping people?”
“You make it sound like a very noble calling,” I said. “Parsifal and the Holy Grail and five hours of Wagner. That’s not me at all, Engelbertina. I’m more your beer mug kind of knight with three minutes of Gerhard Winkler and his Regent Classic Orchestra.”
“Then make it something noble,” she said. “Do something better. Something selfless and unmercenary. I’m sure you can think of a noble thing you could do. For Eric, perhaps.”
“I don’t know. Where’s the profit in doing something selfless and unmercenary?”
“Oh, I can tell you,” she said. “If you’ve got the time and patience to listen. And the willingness to make a change in your life.”
I knew she was talking about religion. It wasn’t one of my favorite topics of conversation, especially with her. “No, but maybe there is something I could do,” I said, quickly changing the subject. “Something sort of noble. At least, it’s as noble an idea as I’m capable of thinking up without a couple of drinks inside me.”
“Then let’s hear it,” she said. “I’m in the mood to be impressed by you.”
“My dear girl, you are always in the mood to be impressed by me,” I said. “Which I am unable to account for. You look at me and you seem to think I can do no wrong. I can and I do.” I paused for a moment and then added: “Tell me, do you really think I look a lot like Eric?”
She nodded. “You know you do, Bernie.”
“And there was just his mother, right?”
“Yes. Just his mother.”
“And she didn’t know he was in a wheelchair?”
“She knew he’d been badly injured,” she said. “But that’s all. Nothing more specific.”
“Then answer me this,” I said. “Do you think I could pass for him? In Vienna. With his family lawyers.”
She looked me square in the face and thought about that for a moment and then started to nod. “That’s a great idea,” she said. “As far as I know, he hasn’t been back to Vienna in twenty years. People can change a lot in twenty years.”
“Especially the last twenty years,” I said, wiggling my fingers. “I used to be the church organist. Where’s his passport?”
“It’s a brilliant idea,” she said enthusiastically.
“It’s not very noble,” I said.
“But it’s practical. And maybe in this particular situation, practical is better than noble. I’d never have thought of something like that.”
Engelbertina stood up and opened a bureau from which she removed a manila envelope. She handed me the envelope.
I opened it and took out a passport. I checked the date and the photograph. The passport was still valid. I studied the photograph critically. Then I handed it to her. She looked at the picture and then ran her fingers through my hair as if checking out the amount of gray there and wondering if perhaps it was too much. “Of course, we’d have to change your hairstyle,” she said. “You’re older than Eric. The funny thing is, though, you don’t look much older. But, yes, you could pass for him.” She bounced a little on the edge of my bed. “Why don’t we ask him what he thinks?”
“No,” I said. “Let’s wait awhile. Let’s wait until this evening. Right now he’s probably too upset to think clearly about anything very much.”
TWENTY-SEVEN
“It’s a crazy idea,” said Eric Gruen, when I had finished describing my suggestion to him. “The craziest idea
I ever heard of.”
“Why?” I asked. “You say you’ve never met the family lawyer. He doesn’t know you’re in a wheelchair. I show him your passport, and he sees an older, thicker version of the person in the photograph. I sign the papers. You get your estate. What could be simpler? Just as long as there’s no one who really remembers you.”
“My mother was a very difficult woman,” said Gruen. “With very few friends. It wasn’t just me with whom she had a problem. Even my father couldn’t stand her. She didn’t even go to his funeral. No, there’s just the lawyer. But look here, they know I’m a doctor. Suppose they ask you a medical question?”
“I’m collecting an inheritance,” I said. “Not applying for a job at a hospital.”
“True.” Gruen inspected the contents of his pipe. “All the same, there’s something about it that I don’t like. It feels dishonest.”
Engelbertina adjusted the rug over his legs. “Bernie’s right, Eric. What could be simpler?”
Gruen looked up at Henkell and handed him his passport. Henkell had yet to offer an opinion on my scheme. “What do you think, Heinrich?”
Henkell studied the photograph for a long moment. “I don’t think there’s any doubt that Bernie could easily pass for an older version of you, Eric,” he said. “And there’s no doubt that the money would be useful for our research. Major Jacobs is being difficult about buying that electron microscope we asked him for. He says we’ll have to wait until the spring of next year, when his department will get some new budgets.”
“I’d forgotten that,” said Gruen. “You’re right. The money would be very useful, wouldn’t it? My mother’s money could easily underwrite our work.” He laughed bitterly. “My God, she’d hate that.”