Once Departed

by Mack Reynolds

  “You wouldn’t do that.”

  “Why not?”

  “You’re an American. Damn it, Jones, you’ve got some responsibilities to your country.”

  The columnist hid his satisfaction. He was getting near to pay dirt. “How do I know that going along with you is to my country’s advantage? For all I know, you’ve sold out to the Russians. Remember? You’re supposed to be an ex-C.I.A. man. Who are you to tell me what my responsibilities are?” He let his voice go slightly heated.

  Digby’s face worked angrily for a moment, then he suddenly changed attitude. “Look here, Quentin Jones, I mentioned last night, I admired your articles. I’m going to tell you some things off the record.”

  Quint leaned back in his chair. They were in a corner where eavesdropping would have been impractical. “All right.”

  The former operative squirmed in his chair. Finally he said, “What do you know about Martin Bormann? Or, for that matter, Heinrich Mueller, or Doktor Stahlecker?”

  “Bormann? Hitler’s right hand man, in the final days. Hitler’s secretary for years, and the executor of his final will and testament. Toward the last they made him the Party Minister, the head of the Nazi Party. There was supposed to be some kind of mystery about his death, after Hitler committed suicide and the Red Army stormed Berlin. They never found his body but Arthus Axman, the Hitler Youth leader, claimed he saw it lying under the bridge where the Invalidenstrasse crosses the railroad tracks.” Quint thought. “Heinrich Mueller? He was the head of the Gestapo. There was some stuff about him in the papers not so long ago. When they investigated his grave, it was found to contain the bones of parts of three skeletons—none of which could have been his. I don’t think I’ve ever heard of Doktor whoever-you-said.”

  “You’ve got a good memory,” Bart Digby grudged. “The fact of the matter is, it’s never been proven that Bormann, Mueller and Doktor Stahlecker ever died. They were three of the Fuhrer’s most rabid adherents. Had they been tried at Nurenberg, all three would have gotten the noose. It couldn’t have happened to nicer people. All three were with Hitler and Goebbels right to the very end. And after Adolf Hitler killed himself they tried to escape. Okay. Stick a pin there.”

  The self professed former C.I.A. man took a deep gulp of his dark beer. “Have you heard of General Reinhard Gehlen?”

  The columnist was scowling, wondering where all this historic grubbing was getting them. But he said, “One of Hitler’s former intelligence chiefs. Now head of west German intelligence.”

  “That’s right. Look, the usual story is that the Americans and Russians were all buddy-buddy after they defeated the Nazis. And that it came as a great shock to Truman and other American leaders when the commies started pulling tricks. The fact is that both sides began pulling tricks before the war really ended. Tricks against each other. Preparing for the Cold War to come. Our people dashed in like a shot to corral Von Braun and other rocket experts, before the Soviets could get them. We also dashed in and cornered General Gehlen and his organization and put them to work for us—at the same work they had been doing for Hitler, spying on the Russians. After West Germany became a sovereign state in 1955, Gehlen stopped working for Uncle Sam and became head of the German Federal Intelligence Service.”

  “What in the devil is all this building up to?” Quint said in irritation.

  Bart Digby leaned forward, as though coming to his point. “Quint, world politics are in a delicate balance. One day a new country drops into the Soviet orbit, lines up with the Russkies. Cuba is an example. Another day, one of the other formerly neutral countries lines up with the west. Say, Iran, or Morocco, or wherever. But one hell of a lot of them remain still on the fence. Listening to our propaganda but perhaps not buying it; listening to their propaganda, and not quite buying that either. It’s nip and tuck, Quint.”

  Quint Jones said dryly, “This isn’t exactly news to me. I make my living commenting on such things as world affairs.”

  The other nodded and his voice was bitter. “I know,” he said. “That’s why you worry me. One of your typical snide columns, dropped into the mess that’s brewing now, could cause all sorts of stink.”

  Quint poured the balance of his wine into his glass and sipped it, waiting for the other to finish.

  “All right,” Digby said. “One of the current commie propaganda blasts is that the West is encouraging the reemergence of Hitlerism. That West Germany’s government is full of former Nazis such as General Gehlen. That more and more of the old Hitler team are out from cover and slipping into prominent positions. If they could sell the world on this, they’d have made a strong point with liberals and progressives everywhere, and one hell of a lot of liberals are coming to power in these new Asian and African countries, not to speak of Latin America.”

  “Okay,” Quint said. “Drop the other shoe.”

  Digby looked into his eyes. “Quint, if the commies found Martin Bormann, Hitler’s former right hand man, and put over the story that Bormann was trying to set up a new neo-Nazi group, and that the West Germans—and behind them the United States—were supporting him, the fat would be in the fire.”

  Quint chuckled. “That’s quite an if.”

  Bart Digby dropped his bomb. “The evidence is that Martin Bormann, and probably Doktor Stahlecker, are somewhere here in Spain.”

  Quint stared at him.

  The other said emptily, “If so, we’ve got to get to him first. We’ve got to get him and either retry him, or, better still, execute the sentence he was given in absentia. It’s the only way to prove we hate the Nazi dream just as much as anyone else.”

  After Bart Digby had left, Quint sat for awhile over Fundador and a cup of black coffee. The other had painted an interesting picture, and the American columnist wondered just how much of it was to be completely believed. He couldn’t quite swallow Digby’s contention that he had resigned from the C.I.A. On the face of it, the man was vitally interested in this possibility of Martin Bormann being in hiding in Spain. And a man without a job doesn’t usually involve himself in such poorly remunerative matters.

  Of course, there was also the possibility that Bart Digby had resigned—or been fired, as Mike Woolman had it—from the C.I.A. and was not peddling his services elsewhere. Nobody as yet had mentioned why the Central Intelligence Agency and Bartholomew Digby had parted ways. Was it because his superiors had caught him delving into matters of which they didn’t approve?

  If the story he had told about Martin Bormann was correct, there was still another angle. It wasn’t exactly a new idea. In fact, it was sometimes told about Hitler himself. That Hitler had lived, that he had been smuggled out of collapsing Berlin, and by submarine been taken to the Argentine, or some such, where he remained in hiding waiting his chance to regain power. The trouble with that particular bit of fantasy was that immediately before his suicide, Hitler, a badly wounded, mentally shaken man who dragged one foot as he walked, had celebrated his fifty-sixth birthday. Persons who had been present described him as senile, his head and hands shaking continually. Had he escaped, even in this condition, how old would he be in 1968? Seventy-nine years of age. Not exactly the time of life to start regaining an empire. The same applied to Bormann who had probably been somewhere in his forties at the time of his disappearance. He wouldn’t be exactly a young man twenty-five years after.

  Quint grimaced and finished his double shot of cognac. He considered another. No, foul it! If he was ever going to get any work done, he’d have to get back to the apartment. He hated to work in the afternoon, particularly after he’d had a few drinks, but he had to get cracking.

  He paid his bill, and started back to the car. Traffic was lighter, but already beginning to resume volume. He darted a look at his watch. He’d been in the German restaurant talking to Bart Digby for longer than he had thought. He’d have to get a move on, or the whole day would be shot.

  It wasn’t in the cards. When he got back to the parked Renault, it was to find Mike Woolm
an leaning against it, obviously waiting for him.

  Quint said, “Gangway, Buster. I haven’t any time for the likes of you. This downtrodden proletarian has to get back to the sweatshop and get exploited by the bloodsucking capitalists.”

  “Put a good title on that,” Mike said, “and think up a snappy ending, and you could sell it. What’d you find out?”

  Quint looked at him warily. “What’d I find out about what?”

  Mike sighed. He pulled the morning edition of the Madrid Pueblo from his jacket pocket and slapped it smartly against his knee. “Look,” he said, “come on up to Chicote’s, and I’ll buy you a drink.”

  “Never touch the stuff,” Quint told him. “I’ve got to get back and do some work.”

  “I’ll tell you what I know, if you tell me what you know,” Mike said.

  Quint looked at him sourly. “If my poor sainted mother knew I hung around with bad influences like you… okay, let’s go.”

  Chicote’s, one of the half dozen most famed bars in the world, is located at No. 12, Jose Antonio, about a hundred yards up the street from where Quint had parked. They made their way in that direction.

  Something there is about a score or so saloons throughout the world that gives them a soul, the very soul of the city in which they dispense the beverage that sooths. Sloppy Joe’s in Havana, Pat O’Brien’s in New Orleans, Harry’s in Venice, the Raffles Bar in Singapore, the Crystal in Tombstone, McSorley’s in New York. Each of these are the cities in which they exist. Pat O’Brien’s is New Orleans; Harry’s New York Bar, in Paris, is the Paris of the expatriate American. Just as Dean’s in Tangier, was Tangier, and the city and Dean’s died together, it was never the same after the old bartender passed away.

  So it is that Chicote’s is Madrid’s bar. Internationally famed, wherever the drinking set bend elbows. And what made it so? The endless publicity given gratis by such as Papa Hemingway in his stories? The personality of the original Chicote himself? The fact that the place is the hangout of the most beautiful whores in Spain? The fabulous liquor museum in the basement—the largest collection of alcoholic drinks in the world? Perhaps all of these things.

  Be that as it may, when Quint Jones and Mike Woolman pushed their way through the door, emerging from the white glare of the afternoon sun of Spain into the dim cool of the large bar, it wasn’t in search of any of the establishment’s claims to fame other than its liquor. Spanish laws are lax, if not non-existent, when it comes to beverages, but there is no record of a customer ever complaining of cut whisky, or a phonied up vintage date on his wine bottle in Chicote’s.

  Mike darted a nervous glance around the Spanish equivalent of a cocktail lounge, which made up the first large room as you entered from the street. The long bar was beyond. Aside from half a dozen lackadaisical tarts, sitting alone at their tables, empty coffee cups before them and awaiting a trade that seldom developed this time of day, the lounge was empty.

  Mike banged himself with his paper and said, “Let’s get in a corner here. Some of the bartenders speak English.”

  They found a table, Quint ordered Fundador and Mike, Veterano cognac.

  Quint grunted at the other’s choice of brandy. “That stuff’s too sweet,” he said, as the waiter poured the double shot.

  “Thank God you don’t have to drink it,” Mike said.

  When the waiter was gone, Quint sipped his drink and said, “Okay. You tell yours first.”

  The newsman said, “Nothing startling but it backs some of the possibilities I brought up this morning. You know Albrecht Stroehlein, the plump, weepy eyed ex-Gestapo lad who claims he used to be buddy-buddy with Hitler back in the old beerhall days.”

  “So?”

  “So, I’ve been checking on him. Up until a couple of months ago he was on his uppers. Worked for a while as a waiter on the Costa del Sol, begged handouts from more prosperous Nazi refugees, that sort of thing. But then he went up to Berlin.”

  “Berlin!” Quint said. “I thought he was wanted for war crimes.”

  “Evidently, somebody’s had a change of mind. When he returned, he got himself nicely outfitted, rented a swank apartment, started eating in Horcher’s. That sort of thing.”

  Quint said, “West Berlin, or East Berlin?”

  Mike thought about that, rubbing the bottom of his chin nervously. “I wouldn’t know. Maybe I can find out. Actually, Berlin is the big clearing house for European espionage these days.”

  Quint said, “Listen, is it possible that Stroehlein knew personally such bigwigs as Martin Bormann, Heinrich Mueller, Doktor Stahlecker? Knew them well enough so that if he saw one of them today, he’d recognize him?”

  Mike Woolman’s eyes went empty. He picked up his drink and tossed it back. “Uh huh,” he said. “It’s most likely. Start talking, friend.”

  “I can’t. I promised it was off the record. But I can tell you this. Ronald Brett-Home talked Marty and Ferd Dempsey into throwing that party with Ferencsik as guest of honor. He also got them to spread the word that it was open house—everybody welcome. But none of those secret agents you mentioned this morning were invited. They all crashed. They all took advantage of the open house deal.”

  Quint finished his own drink and made circular motions over his glass to the waiter, in the way of ordering a couple more of the same. He went on, “Another thing. You’re possibly right about our sneaky friend Joe Garcia. He came up to the place not long after you left, and hinted around that it would be best if I watched myself. That if I didn’t keep my nose clean I might be bounced out of Spain.”

  “Uh huh,” Mike said. “But back to this Martin Bormann and the other missing Nazis.”

  “Can’t. Off the record.”

  “Look here, Quint, damn it, what did Bartholomew Digby tell you at lunch?”

  “How’d you know I had lunch with Digby?”

  Mike Woolman grinned nastily at him, while the waiter filled up their glasses. When that worthy was gone, he said, “I located your leak at the Embassy.”

  “What are you talking about?” Quint growled.

  “You know what I’m talking about: Ester. You bewitched the poor girl with your cheap gigolo charm and whenever you want some inside information, like where does C.I.A. man Bartholomew Digby usually eat his lunch, she finds out for you.” Mike Woolman shook his finger. “Very sneaky, my friend. And very un-American.”

  Quint grunted. “Evidently, Ester is springing leaks in all directions these days, if you’ve got to her too. Anyway, Digby made me promise to keep our discussion under the hat.”

  “And you agreed,” Mike said disgustedly. “You bastard, I think you did it on purpose. You’re in no hurry for your material. You can let it accumulate for months before you use it. But I’ve got to be in a continual hurry, trying to get a beat before one of the other agencies gets it first.”

  Quint grinned at him. “I gave you all I have that I’m not honor bound to keep secret. What else have you got?”

  Mike came to his feet, disgusted. “I ought to tell you to get lost, but there’s one other item. Remember I said the local police seemed to be holding the lid on something? Something the Brett-Home murder seemed to be connected with?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Well, it seems the tourist bureau is on their necks. Tourism is currently Spam’s biggest source of hard currency. If anything happened to keep the hordes of visitors out of the country, Franco’s new economic plans would fall flat as the Big Leap Forward in China. They simply can’t let anything get into the news that would scare tourists away.”

  “Come on, come on. Drop the other shoe.”

  Mike said, “There’s been a wave of Jack the Ripper type murders in Madrid for the past six months and more. Probably quite a bit more. Some monster is loose.”

  Chapter Four

  After Mike had gone, Quint sat for a time, finishing his drink. He’d tried to get the newsman to stay on and bat the breeze some more, but Mike had some sort of deadline to meet.

&
nbsp; Ordinarily Quint wasn’t much of one to drink alone, and he liked the other’s companionship and knew that Mike liked his. As a matter of fact, Mike was envious of what must of looked to him like an easy way of making a living, and a good living at that, but it wasn’t a spiteful envy. They were as good friends as Quint ever became friends with anyone.

  He thought about that. There were friends and friends. There was probably no one in the foreign colony of Madrid with more surface friends than Quentin Jones. People like Martha Dempsey, who called him one of her special boy friends. People like Joe Garcia, who could be called upon to do the minor favors. People like Dave Shepherd, the expatriate American homosexual who lived in Spain because they were more tolerant of his breed than at home.

  But how many friends did he have who’d be there in the clutch?

  He waved to the waiter for a refill.

  How many? Probably Mike was the nearest thing to it. All his alleged charm didn’t buy him loyalty in the clutch, loyalty when all the chips were down.

  He took up his new drink. Hell, face it, he wasn’t going to get any work done today. It was already well past five o’clock, and he’d had too many drinks. He should have known better than to start before lunch. Ordinarily, he never drank until afternoon. How’d he get started?

  Oh, yeah. That scuffle with the damned Spanish detective. It had unnerved him, and he’d taken a shot of cognac. Foul it, he’d never get back to work today.

  He grunted in self-deprecation. Today? If he didn’t look out, he’d wind up on one of his three day binges and louse up the whole week. Steve Black, his agent, would hit the roof. He had his work cut out, keeping Quint on the mark.

  Quint grunted, remembering the last time. Afterward Steve had insisted that he do up about a dozen columns, timeless columns that could be slipped in upon emergency. Bits that had nothing to do with current events but dwelt on the American Civil War, changing fashion, eating habits throughout the world, or some such.