the One from the Other (2006)

by Kerr, Philip - Bernie Gunther 04

  “I’m afraid I shall have to hang on to this for now,” he said. “Now, then. You had better tell me what prompted you to come and ask for my help.”

  “It was my own stupidity, really, Father,” I said, affecting rueful-ness. “My mother died, more than a week ago. The funeral was yesterday. At the Central Cemetery. I knew it was a risk coming back here to Vienna, but, well, you’ve only got one mother, haven’t you? Anyway, I thought I might be safe, if I stayed in the background. If I tried to keep a low profile. I wasn’t even sure the Allies were actually looking for me.”

  “And you came under your real name?”

  “Yes.” I shrugged. “After all, it’s been more than five years, and one reads things in the newspapers about the possibility of there being an amnesty for . . . for old comrades.”

  “I’m afraid not,” he said. “Not yet, anyway.”

  “Well, it turns out they were looking for me. After the funeral I was recognized. By one of my mother’s servants. He told me that unless I gave him some ludicrously large sum of money, he would tell the authorities where to find me. I thought I’d stalled him. I went back to my hotel, intending to check out and go home immediately, only to find that the International Patrol was waiting there for me already. Since then I’ve been walking around Vienna. Staying in bars and cafés. For fear that I couldn’t go and stay in another hotel or pension. Last night I went to the Oriental and allowed myself to be picked up by a girl, and spent the night with her. Not that anything happened, mind. But I couldn’t think of anywhere else to go.”

  He shrugged, almost as if he agreed with me. “Where have you been living until now? I mean outside Vienna.”

  “Garmisch-Partenkirchen,” I said. “It’s a quiet little place. No one pays me any attention there.”

  “Can you go back there?”

  “No,” I said. “Not now. The person who told me to get out of Vienna also knew where I’d been living. I doubt he’ll hesitate to inform the Allied authorities in Germany.”

  “And this girl you stayed with last night,” he said. “Can she be trusted?”

  “As long as I keep paying her, yes, I think so.”

  “Does she know anything about you? Anything at all.”

  “No. Nothing.”

  “Keep it that way, please. And she doesn’t know that you’ve come here today?”

  “No, of course not, Father,” I said. “No one does.”

  “Can you stay with her for one more night?”

  “Yes. As a matter of fact I’ve already arranged it.”

  “Good,” he said. “Because I’m going to need at least twenty-four hours to make some arrangements to get you out of Vienna, to a safe house. Is that all your luggage?”

  “It is now. The rest is in the hotel. I don’t dare go back for it.”

  “No, of course not,” he said, picking the cigarette out of his mouth. “That would be foolish. Meet me back here tomorrow afternoon at around four o’clock. And be ready to leave. Wear warm clothes. Buy some if you don’t have them. Also, between now and tomorrow I want you to have your photograph taken.” He scribbled an address on his pad, tore off a sheet of paper, and handed to me. “There’s a shop on Elisabeth Strasse, opposite the Opera House. Ask for Herr Weyer. Siegfried Weyer. He’s a friend and can be trusted absolutely. Tell him I sent you. He’ll know what needs to be done. I’ve put his phone number down there in case something happens to delay you. B26425. Keep away from the stations, telegraph offices, and the post offices. Go to the cinema. Or the theater. Somewhere dark, with lots of people. Have you much money?”

  “Enough to get by, for now,” I said.

  “Good. A weapon?”

  I hesitated, slightly surprised to be asked such a thing by a man of God. “No.”

  “It would be a shame for you to get captured now,” said Father Lajolo. “Especially now that we’re putting all the wheels in motion for you to get out of Vienna.” He opened the closet for vestments and removed the padlock from a little footlocker. Inside were several pistols. He took one out—a nice-looking Mauser—eased out the magazine with his clubby, nicotine-stained fingers, and checked that it was loaded before handing it over. “Here,” he said. “Take this one. Don’t use it unless you absolutely have to.”

  “Thank you, Father,” I said.

  He went to the back door of the sacristy, opened it, and stepped into a small alleyway that led down the side of the church, underneath some scaffolding. “When you come back tomorrow,” he said, “don’t go through the main church. Come down this alleyway, and then use this door. It won’t be locked. Just come inside, sit down, and wait.”

  “Yes, Father.”

  “Until tomorrow, then.”

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  The next day I left Vienna. My driver was a German named Walter Timmermann. He was from Vienna but lived in Pfungstadt, near Darmstadt. He drove a truck for the U.S. Army delivering copies of The Stars and Stripes, the American army newspaper, from its printing presses in Griesheim, to Salzburg and Vienna. The truck was a Dodge three-ton cargo truck with canvas sides and U.S. Army livery, which meant that it was never searched by the military police of any of the four powers. On the way back to Germany, the truck carried unsold copies of the previous edition so that these could be pulped and used again. And it was among these that I hid when we were crossing from one zone of occupation into another. The rest of the time I sat in the cab with Timmermann and listened as he talked, which, he said, he liked to do because most of the time he was driving he was usually on his own, and it could get a bit lonely on the road at times. That suited me just fine as I had little or nothing to say to anyone. He had served in the Luftwaffe during the war, at Griesheim, which was how he had come to be there when the war ended. And how he had come to start driving for the Amis some two years earlier.

  “They’re not so bad to work for,” he said. “Once you get to know them. Most of them just want to get home. Of the four powers, they’re the best people to work for. But probably the worst soldiers. Seriously. They don’t give a damn about anything. If the Russians ever attack they’ll walk right on through Germany. The security on the bases is nonexistent. Which is how I get away with so much. All those Amis have some kind of racket going. Booze, cigarettes, dirty books, medicines, women’s hosiery, you name it, I’ve hauled it for them. Believe me, you’re not the only illicit cargo this truck is moving.”

  He didn’t say what the truck’s illicit cargo was on this occasion, and I didn’t ask. But I did ask him about Father Lajolo.

  “I’m a Roman Catholic, see?” he said. “And the father, he married me and my wife when he was at a different parish, during the war. Saint Ulrich’s, in the Seventh District. My wife, Giovanna, she’s half Italian, too, see? Half Austrian, half Italian. Her brother was in the SS, and Father Lajolo helped get him out of Austria after the war. He’s living in Scotland now. Can you believe it? Scotland. Plays golf all the time, he says. The Comradeship got him a new name, a home, a job. He’s a mining engineer in Edinburgh. No one will ever think of looking for him in Edinburgh. So, ever since then, I’ve helped the father out when he wanted to move an old comrade somewhere those Reds can’t get their bloody hands on him. You ask me, Vienna’s finished. It’ll go the same way as Berlin. You mark my words. One day, they’ll just roll their tanks in and nobody will do a thing to stop them. The Amis think it won’t ever happen. Either that or they just don’t care. None of this would have happened if they’d made a peace with Hitler. If they hadn’t forced that unconditional surrender on us. We’d still have a Europe that looked like Europe, not next week’s Soviet republic.”

  It was a long journey. On the road from Vienna to Salzburg there was a speed limit of only forty miles an hour. But in the villages and small towns it was as low as ten miles an hour. By the time I had endured several hours of listening to Timmermann’s opinions of the Reds and the Amis, I was ready to ram a copy of The Stars and Stripes down his throat.

  At Salzburg we
got on the Munich autobahn and our speed increased. Soon we were across the German border. We drove north and then west, through Munich. There seemed little point in getting out of the truck in Munich. I didn’t doubt that Jacobs would make sure the police were waiting for me there. And until the Comradeship was able to provide me with a new identity and passport, my best course of action seemed to be to stay where I was being taken. We drove on through Landsberg before turning south to Kempten, which nestles in the foothills of the Alps, in the Allgäu region of southwest Bavaria. My journey finally ended at an old Benedictine monastery in the hills outside Kempten. This was temptingly close to Garmisch-Partenkirchen, which, Timmermann told me, was just sixty-five miles to the west of Kempten, and I knew it would not be long before I was tempted.

  The monastery was a fine Gothic building with pink brick walls and two high pagoda-like bell towers that dominated the snow-covered landscape for miles around. But it was only when you drove through the main gate that you perceived the true size of the place and, as a corollary, the wealth and power of the Roman Catholic Church. That there should be such a huge Catholic monastery in such a small and out-of-the-way place like Kempten made me aware of just what resources and manpower were at the command of the Vatican and, by extension, the Comradeship. And I wondered what was in it for the Church, providing a ratline for old Nazis and escaping war criminals like myself.

  The truck stopped and I got out. I was in an inner court that was as big as a military parade ground. Timmermann led me into a doorway, through a basilica the size of an aircraft hangar, with an altar that only a Holy Roman Emperor might have thought modest. I thought it looked as gaudy as a Polish Christmas cake. Someone was playing the organ and a choir of local boys was singing sweetly. But for an overpowering smell of beer that filled the air, the atmosphere seemed predictably holy. I followed Timmermann into a small office, where we were met by a monk. He had the look of someone who enjoyed a glass of beer. Father Bandolini was a big man with a large stomach and the hands of a good butcher. His hair was short and silver-colored, which seemed to match the gray in his eyes. He had a face as strong as anything I had seen carved on a totem pole. He met us with bread, cheese, cold meats, pickles, a glass of the beer brewed in the monastery, and some warm words of welcome. Shooing me closer to the fire, he asked if our journey had been difficult.

  “No problems at all, Father,” said Timmermann, who soon excused himself as he wanted to get back to Griesheim that night.

  “Father Lajolo tells me that you’re a doctor,” said Father Bandolini, after Timmermann had left. “Is that right?”

  “Yes,” I said, dreading the possibility that I might be asked to perform some medical procedure that would reveal me as a fraud. “But I haven’t practiced medicine since before the war.”

  “But you are a Roman Catholic,” he said.

  “Of course,” I said, thinking it best that I seemed to agree with the creed of the people who were helping me. “Although not a very good one.”

  Father Bandolini shrugged. “Whatever that is,” he said.

  I shrugged back. “Somehow I always imagined that monks were probably good Catholics,” I said.

  “It’s easy to be a good Catholic when you live in a monastery,” he said. “That’s why most of us do it. There’s not much temptation in a place like this.”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “The beer is excellent.”

  “Isn’t it?” He grinned. “It’s been brewed here to the same recipe for hundreds of years. Perhaps that’s why many of us stay.”

  His voice was quiet and he was well-spoken, which made me think I might have misheard him when, after I finished eating, he explained that the monastery—and, in particular, the St. Raphael Community that was based there—had been helping German Catholic émigrés since 1871, and that many of these had been non-Aryan Catholics.

  “Did you say ‘non-Aryan Catholics’?”

  He nodded.

  “Is that just a fancy Church term for an Italian?” I asked.

  “No, no. That’s what we used to call the Jews we helped. Many of them became Catholics, of course. But some others we just called Catholics in order to persuade countries like Brazil and Argentina to take them.”

  “Wasn’t that rather dangerous?” I said.

  “Oh yes. Very. The Gestapo in Kempten had us under surveillance for almost a decade. One of our brethren even died in a concentration camp for helping Jews.”

  I wondered if the irony of his helping Eric Gruen, the vilest of war criminals, was apparent to him. I soon learned that it was.

  “It is the will of God that the Saint Raphael Community should help those who once organized its persecution,” he said. “Besides, it’s a different enemy now, but one no less dangerous. An enemy that regards religion as an opiate poisoning the minds of people.”

  But none of this was as surprising as what was to follow.

  I was to be accommodated not in the cloister, with the rest of the monks, but in the infirmary, where, Father Bandolini assured me, I would be much more comfortable. “For one thing,” he said, leading me across the huge quadrangle, “it’s a lot warmer there. Fires are permitted in the rooms. There are comfortable armchairs and the bathroom facilities are superior to anything in the cloister. Your meals will be brought to you, but you’re free to join us for Mass in the basilica. And let me know if you seek absolution. I’ll send a priest to you.” He opened a heavy wooden door and led me through a chapter house into the infirmary. “You won’t be on your own,” he added. “We have two other guests staying with us at the moment. Gentlemen like yourself. They’ll probably show you the ropes. Both of them are waiting to emigrate to South America. I’ll introduce you. But don’t worry. We don’t encourage the use of old names here, for obvious reasons. If you don’t mind I’ll use your new name. The name that will be in your passport when eventually it arrives from Vienna.”

  “How long does that usually take?” I asked him.

  “It might take several weeks,” he said. “After that you’ll need a visa. Probably it will be Argentina you’re going to. Right now everyone’s going there, I believe. The government there is very sympathetic to German emigration. Then of course you’ll need passage on a ship. The Comradeship will organize that, too.” He smiled encouragingly. “I think you should reconcile yourself to being with us with for a month or two at least.”

  “My father lives near here,” I said. “In Garmisch-Partenkirchen. I should like to see him before I leave the country. It’ll be my last chance I think.”

  “You’re right, Garmisch is not all that far away. As the crow flies, fifty or sixty miles. We deliver our beer to the American army base down there. They’ve a real taste for beer, those Amis. Perhaps you could go with the beer truck on our next delivery. I’ll see what I can do.”

  “Thank you, Father, I appreciate it.”

  Of course, as soon as I had my new identity and passport I was going to head for Hamburg. I’d always liked Hamburg. And it was as far away as I could get from Munich and Garmisch and whatever I was going to do in Garmisch, without actually leaving Germany. There was no way on earth that I was going to end up on a slow boat to a banana republic like the old comrades to whom I was about to be introduced.

  Father Bandolini knocked quietly on a door and then opened it to reveal a cozy little sitting room, and two men taking it easy in armchairs with the newspapers. There was a bottle of Three Feathers on the table and an open packet of Regents. A good sign, I thought. On the wall was a crucifix and a picture of Pope Pius XII wearing what looked like a beehive on his head. Maybe it was the little rimless glasses and the ascetic face, but there was always something about the pope that reminded me of Himmler. The pope’s face was also quite like the face of one of the two men who were in the room. The last time I had seen him was January 1939, and he’d been standing between Himmler and Heydrich. I remembered thinking him to be a relatively simple, intellectually uninteresting sort of man, and even now, I
found it hard to believe that he could be the most wanted man in Europe. To look at he was quite ordinary. He was sharp-faced, narrow-eyed, with somewhat prominent ears, and, above a small Himmler-like mustache—always a mistake—a longish nose on which sat a pair of black-framed glasses. He looked like a Jewish tailor, which, I knew, was a description he’d have hated because the man was Adolf Eichmann.

  “Gentlemen,” said Father Bandolini, addressing the two men seated in the monastery’s guest sitting room. “I’d like to introduce you to someone who will be staying with us for a while. This is Herr Doktor Hausner. Carlos Hausner.”

  That was my new name. Father Lajolo had explained that when giving a man a new identity suitable for Argentina, the Comradeship recommended a name that implied dual South American and German nationality. Which is how I ended up being called Carlos. I had no intention of winding up in Argentina, but with two sets of police on my tail, I was hardly in a position to argue about a name.

  “Herr Doktor Hausner.” Father Bandolini raised his hand in Eichmann’s direction. “This is Herr Ricardo Klement.” He turned toward the second man. “And this is Pedro Geller.”

  Eichmann made no sign that he recognized me. He bowed his head curtly and then shook my outstretched hand. He looked older than he ought to have done. I estimated he was around forty-two, but with most of his hair gone, the glasses, and behind them a tired, hunted look like an animal that hears the hounds on its tail, he looked much older. He wore a thick tweed suit, a striped shirt, and a small bow tie that made him seem very clerkish. But there was nothing clerkish about the handshake. I’d shaken hands with Eichmann before, when his hands had been soft, almost delicate. But now his hands were the hands of a laborer, as if, since the war, he had been obliged to earn a living in some physically arduous way. “Pleased to meet you, Herr Doktor,” he said.

  The other man was much younger, better-looking, and better turned out than his infamous companion. He wore an expensive-looking watch and gold cuff links. His hair was fair, his eyes were blue and clear, and his teeth looked as if he’d borrowed them from an American film star. Next to Eichmann, he was as tall as a flagpole and bore himself like a rare species of crane. I shook his hand and found that, by contrast with Eichmann’s, it was well-manicured and as soft as a schoolboy’s. Looking at Pedro Geller more closely, I supposed he couldn’t have been more than twenty-five, which made it hard to imagine what war crime he could have committed as an eighteen- or nineteen-year-old that now necessitated him changing his name and escaping to South America.