by Ira Levin
A light rap sounded at the door.
“It’s about time,” he said in English, and hanging on to the phone, got up, reached, and just managed to give the doorknob the turn that unlocked it. The door opened against his hand, and the waiter with the droopy mustache came in with a napkin-covered plate and the bottle of Brahma but no glass on the tray. “Sorry it took so long,” he said. “Eleven o’clock they all run. I had to make it myself.”
“That is all right,” he said in Portuguese. “Put the tray on the bed, please.”
“I forgot the glass.”
“That is all right. I need no glass. Give me the check and the pencil, please.”
He signed the check against the wall, holding it there with his phone-hand; added a tip beyond the service charge.
The waiter went out without thanking him and belched as he closed the door.
He never should have left the Del Rey.
He sat back down on the bed, the phone whistling hollowly in his ear. He turned to steady the tray, and looked with misgiving at the yellow napkin with Miramar stamped big and black and burglar-proof in a corner of it. He took hold of it, and what the hell, whipped it away: the sandwich was thick and beautiful, all chicken, no lettuce or crap whatsoever. Forgiving the waiter, he gathered up a half of it, bent his head to meet it, and took a big delicious middle bite. God, he was starving!
“Ich möchte Wien,” an operator said. “Wien!”
He thought of the tape and what he would say to Yakov Liebermann, and his mouth was full of cardboard; he chewed and chewed and somehow got it down. He put the sandwich down and picked up the beer. It was one of the really great beers and it tasted lousy.
“Not much longer,” Cute Sexy Operator said.
“I hope. Thank you.”
“Here you are, senhor.”
A phone rang.
He grabbed another swallow and put the bottle down, wiped his hand on a jeaned knee, turned more toward the phone.
The other phone rang, and rang, and was picked up: “Ja?”—as clear as around the corner.
“Mr. Liebermann?”
“Ja. Wer’st da?”
“It’s Barry Koehler. Remember, Mr. Liebermann? I came to see you early in August, wanted to work for you? Barry Koehler from Evanston, Illinois?”
Silence.
“Mr. Liebermann?”
“Barry Koehler, I don’t know what time it is in Illinoise, but in Vienna it’s so dark I can’t see the clock.”
“I’m not in Illinois, I’m in São Paulo, Brazil.”
“That doesn’t make it lighter in Vienna.”
“I’m sorry, Mr. Liebermann, but I’ve got a good reason for calling. Wait till you hear.”
“Don’t tell me, I’ll guess: you saw Martin Bormann. In a bus station.”
“No, not Bormann. Mengele. And I didn’t see him, but I’ve got a tape of him talking. In a restaurant.”
Silence.
“Dr. Mengele?” he prompted. “The man who ran Auschwitz? The Angel of Death?”
“Thank you. I thought you meant a whole other Mengele. The Angel of Life.”
Barry said, “I’m sorry. You were so—”
“I drove him into the jungle; I know Josef Mengele.”
“You were so quiet, I had to say something. He’s out: of the jungle, Mr. Liebermann. He was in a Japanese restaurant tonight. Doesn’t he use the name ‘Aspiazu’?”
“He uses lots of names: Gregory, Fischer, Breitenbach, Rindon—”
“And Aspiazu, right?”
Silence. “Ja. But I think maybe it’s also used by people it belongs to.”
“It’s him,” Barry insisted. “He had half the SS there. And he’s sending them out to kill ninety-four men. Hessen was there, and Kleist. Traunsteiner. Mundt.”
“Listen, I’m not sure I’m awake. Are you? Do you know what you’re talking about?”
“Yes! I’ll play you the tape! It’s sitting right here!”
“Just a minute. Begin at the beginning.”
“All right.” He picked up the bottle and drank some beer; let him listen to silence for a change.
“Barry?”
Ho-ho! “I’m here. I was just drinking some beer.”
“Oh.”
“A sip, Mr. Liebermann; I’m dying of thirst. I haven’t had dinner yet and I’m so sick from this tape, I can’t eat. I’ve got a gorgeous chicken sandwich here and I can’t even swallow it.”
“What are you doing in São Paulo?”
“You wouldn’t take me on, so I figured I’d come down here on my own. I’m more highly motivated than you think I am.”
“It’s a question of my finances, not your motivation.”
“I said I’d work for free; who’s paying me now? Look, let’s skip that. I came down, and nosed around, and finally I figured that the best thing to do was hang out around the Volkswagen plant, the one Stangl worked at. So I did. And a couple of days ago I spotted Horst Hessen; at least I thought I did, I wasn’t sure. His hair is sort of silvery now, and he must have had some plastic surgery. But anyway, I thought it was him and began tailing him. He went home early today—he lives in the cutest little house you ever saw, with a knockout wife and two daughters—and at seven-thirty he comes out again and takes a bus downtown. I follow him into this fancy Japanese restaurant and he goes upstairs to a private party. There’s a Nazi guarding the stairs, and the party is being given by ‘Senhor Aspiazu.’ Of the Auschwitz Aspiazus.”
Silence. “Go ahead.”
“So I went around back and got to one of the waitresses. Two hundred cruzeiros later she gave me a whole cassette of Mengele Dispatching the Troops. Mengele is crystal-clear; the troops range from fairly clear to mumble-mumble. Mr. Liebermann, they’re going out tomorrow—to Germany, England, the States, Scandinavia, all over the place! It’s a Kameradenwerk operation, and it’s big and it’s crazy and I’m really sorry I got into this whole thing, it’s supposed to—”
“Barry.”
“—fulfill the destiny of the Aryan race, for God’s sake!;”
“Barry!”
“What?”
“Calm yourself.”
“I am calm. No I’m not. All right. Now I’m calm. Really. I’m going to rewind the tape and play it for you. Press the button. See?”
“Who’s going out, Barry? How many?”
“Six. Hessen, Traunsteiner, Kleist, Mundt—and two others, uh, Schwimmer and Farnbach. You heard of them?”
“Not Schwimmer and Farnbach and Mundt.”
“Mundt? You haven’t heard of Mundt? He’s in your book, Mr. Liebermann! That’s where I heard about him.”
“A Mundt, in my book? No.”
“Yes! In the chapter on Treblinka. I’ve got it in my suitcase; you want me to give you the page number?”
“I never heard of a Mundt, Barry; this is a mistake on your part.”
“Oh Jesus. All right, forget it. Anyway, there are six of them, and they’re going out for two and a half years, and they’ve got certain dates when they’re supposed to kill certain men, and here comes the crazy part. Are you ready, Mr. Liebermann? These men they’re going to kill, there are ninety-four of them, and they’re all sixty-five-year-old civil servants. How do you like them apples?”
Silence. “Apples?”
He sighed. “It’s an expression.”
“Barry, let me ask you something. This tape is in German, yes? Are you—”
“I understand it perfectly! I don’t spreche too well but I understand it perfectly. My grandmother speaks nothing but, and my parents use it for secrets. It didn’t even work when I was a kid.”
“The Kameradenwerk and Josef Mengele are sending men out—”
“To kill sixty-five-year-old civil servants. A few of them are sixty-four and sixty-six. The tape’s rewound now and I’m going to play it, and then you’re going to tell me who I should take it to, someone high-up and reliable. And you’ll call him and tell him I’m coming, so he’ll see me, and
see me quickly. They’ve got to be stopped before they leave. The first killing is slated for October sixteenth. Wait now, I’ve got to find the right place; there’s a lot of sitting down and admiring something first.”
“Barry, it’s ridiculous. Something is wrong with your tape recorder. Or else—or else they’re not the men you think they are.”
A triple-knock at the door. “Go way!” he shouted at it, covering the mouthpiece; remembered Portuguese: “I talk the long distance.”
“They’re someone else,” the phone said. “They’re playing a joke on you.”
“Mr. Liebermann, will you just listen to the tape?”
Louder knocking, a nonstop barrage.
“Shit. Hold on.” Putting the phone on the bed, he got up and stepped to the racketing door, held its knob. “What is?”
Portuguese raced, a man’s voice.
“Slow! Slow!”
“Senhor, there’s a Japanese lady here, looking for someone who looks like you. She says she has to warn you about something a man is—” He turned the knob and in the door burst a dark bull of a man that slammed him backward; he was grabbed and turned, his mouth crushed, his arm wrenched back breakingly; the Nazi of the stairs lunged with a knife six inches shiny-sharp. His head was yanked back; the ceiling slid, stained with pale-brown watermarks; his arm hurt, and his stomach deep inside.
The man in white came into the room, wearing his hat and holding his briefcase. He closed the door, and standing before it, watched the blond man stab and stab the young American. Stab, twist, pull out; stab, twist, pull out; overhand now, the red-streaked knife into white snug-shirted ribs.
The blond man, panting, stopped stabbing, and the black-haired man lowered the surprised-eyed young man gently to the floor, laid him down there half on gray rug and half on varnished wood. The blond man held his bloody knife-hand over the young man and said to the black-haired man, “A towel.”
The man in white looked toward the bed, moved to it, and set his briefcase down on the floor. “Barry?” the phone on the bed asked.
The man in white looked at the tape recorder on the night table; pressed a white fingertip to its end button. The window sprang; the cassette jumped free. The man in white picked it up, looked at it, and slipped it into his jacket pocket. He glanced at the card under the foot of the phone, took it, and looked at the black handset lying on the bed. “Barry!” it called. “Are you there?”
The man in white reached out slowly and picked the handset up; raised it, brought it to his ear. Listened with brown eyes narrowed, vein-threaded nostrils quivering. His lips opened to the mouthpiece, stayed open. And closed and clenched firmly, mustache bristling.
He put the handset into its cradle, drew his fingers away, stared at the phone. He turned and said, “I almost spoke to him. I was longing to.”
The blond man, toweling red from his knife, looked curiously at him.
The man in white said, “Hating each other so long. And he was here, in my hand! To finally speak to him!” He turned to the phone again, shook his head regretfully. Softly he said, “Liebermann, you bastard Jew. Your stooge is dead. How much did he tell you? It makes no difference; no one here will listen to you, not without proof. And the proof is in my pocket. The men will fly tomorrow. The Fourth Reich is coming. Good-by, Liebermann. See you at the door of the gas chamber.” He shook his head, smiling, and turned, putting the card in his pocket. “It would have been foolish, though,” he said. “I might have been making another tape.”
The black-haired man, by an open closet, pointed at a suitcase in it and asked in Portuguese, “Should I pack his things, Doctor?”
“Rudi will. You go downstairs to Traunsteiner. Find a back door you can open and get the car to it. Then one of you come up and help us down. And don’t tell him the boy was on the phone. Say he was listening to the tape.”
The black-haired man nodded and went out.
The blond man said in German, “Won’t they get caught? The men, I mean.”
“The job has to be done,” the man in white said, taking out his eyeglass case. “As much of it as possible, at any cost. With luck they’ll do it all. Will anyone listen to Liebermann? He didn’t believe; you heard how the boy was arguing with him. God will help us; enough of the ninety-four will die.” He put on his glasses, and taking a matchbox from his pocket, turned to the phone. He lifted the handset and read the operator a number.
“Hello, my friend,” he said cheerfully. “Senhor Hessen, please.” He glanced away, white-gloved fingers covering the phone’s mouthpiece. “Empty his pockets, Rudi. And there’s a sneaker under the bureau there. Hessen? Dr. Mengele. Everything’s fine, there’s nothing to worry about. Exactly the amateur I expected. I don’t think he even understood German. Send the boys home to practice their signatures; it was just an excitement to round off the evening. No, not till 1977, I’m afraid; I fly back to the compound as soon as we clean up. So go with God, Horst. And say it for me to the others: ‘Go with God.’” He hung up and said, “Heil Hitler.”
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.”