Boys from Brazil

by Ira Levin

He came into the dormitory, fresh-smelling and cool thanks to its open roof. The grass mats were still there, lying in disarray.

  Make what you will of a few dozen grass mats, Jew-boys.

  He walked among them, remembering, smiling.

  Something sparked white against the wall.

  He went to it, looked down at it lying there in the flashlight’s beam; picked it up, blew at it, examined it on his hand. Animal claws, a circle of them; one of the women’s bracelets. For good luck? The power of the animals transferred to the wearer’s arm?

  Odd that the children hadn’t found it; surely they played in here, rolled on these mats, had disarranged them.

  Yes, good luck that this bracelet had lain here all these years so that he might find it on this night of fear and uncertainty, of possible betrayal. He clustered his fingers into it, shook it down around them, pushed at it with the wrist of his flashlight-hand; the claw-circle dropped down around his gold watchband. He shook his fist; the claws danced.

  He looked about at the dormitory, and up through its broken roof at treetops, and stars that came and went among them. And—maybe, maybe not—at his Führer watching him.

  I won’t fail you, he promised.

  He looked about—at the place where so much, so gloriously much, had already been accomplished—and glaring, said aloud, “I won’t.”

  4

  “WE’VE ONLY ELIMINATED

  four of the eleven,” Klaus von Palmen said, cutting into a thick sausage before him. “Don’t you think it’s too soon to talk about stopping?”

  “Who’s talking about stopping?” Liebermann knifed mashed potatoes onto the back of his fork. “All I said was I’m not going to go all the way up to Fagersta. I didn’t say I’m not going to go to other places, and I also didn’t say I’m not going to ask someone else to go up to Fagersta, someone who won’t need an interpreter.” He put the sausage-and-potatoed fork into his mouth.

  They were in Five Continents, the restaurant in Frankfurt Airport. Saturday night, November 9th. Liebermann had arranged for a two-hour stopover on his way back to Vienna, and Klaus had driven up from Mannheim to meet him. The restaurant was expensive—Liebermann acknowledged the reproach of invisible contributors—but the boy deserved a good meal. Not only had he checked out the man in Pforzheim, whose jump, not fall, from a bridge had been witnessed by five people, but after Liebermann had spoken to him from Gladbeck on Thursday night he had gone down to Freiburg too, while Liebermann had gone to Solingen. Besides, his look of shrewdness—the small pinched-together features and glittering eyes—at close range seemed maybe only part shrewdness and the other part malnutrition. Did any of these kids eat enough? So, Five Continents. They couldn’t talk in one of the snack bars, could they?

  August Mohr, the night watchman at the chemical plant in Solingen, had turned out to be, as Liebermann had thought he might, a civil servant by day—a custodial worker in the hospital where he had died. But fire officials had thoroughly investigated the explosion that killed him, and had traced it to a chain of mishaps they were certain couldn’t have been prearranged. And Mohr himself was as unlikely a victim of Nazi plotting as Emil Döring had been. Semi-literate and poor, a widower for six years, he had lived with his bedridden mother in two rooms in a shabby boarding house. For most of his life, including the war years, he had worked in a Solingen steel mill. Mail or phone calls from outside the country? His landlady had laughed. “Not even from inside, sir.”

  Klaus, in Freiburg, had thought at first that he was on to something. The man there, a clerk in the Water Department named Josef Rausenberger, had been knifed and robbed near his home, and a neighbor had seen someone watching the house the night before.

  “A man with a glass eye?”

  “She wouldn’t have noticed, she was too far away. A big man in a small car, smoking, was what she told the police. She couldn’t even tell what make of car. Was there a man with a glass eye in Solingen?”

  “In Gladbeck. Go on.”

  But. Rausenberger had belonged to no international organizations. He had lost both his legs below the knees in a train accident when he was a boy; as a result he hadn’t done military service or even set foot—artificial foot, that is—outside Germany. (“Please,” Liebermann chided.) He had been an efficient and painstaking worker, a devoted husband and father. His savings had been left to his widow. He had disapproved of the Nazis and voted against them, but nothing more. Born in Schwenningen. Never in Günzburg. One notable relation: a cousin, the managing editor of the Berliner Morgenpost.

  Döring, Müller, Mohr, Rausenberger; none of them by any stretch of the imagination Nazi victims. Four of the eleven.

  “I know a man in Stockholm,” Liebermann said. “An engraver, from Warsaw originally. Very clever. He’ll be glad to go up to Fagersta. The man there, Persson, and the one in Bordeaux are the two main ones to check on. October sixteenth was the one date Barry mentioned. If neither of those two was someone the Nazis could have and would have killed, then he must have been wrong.”

  “Unless you haven’t heard about the right man. Or he was killed on the wrong day.”

  “‘Unless,’” Liebermann said, cutting sausage. “The whole thing is ‘unless’ this, ‘if’ that, ‘maybe’ the other. I wish to hell he hadn’t called me.”

  “What did he say exactly? How did it all happen?”

  Liebermann went through the story.

  The waiter took their plates and their dessert orders.

  When he had gone, Klaus said, “Have you realized that your name might have been added to the list? Even if it wasn’t Mengele, recognizing you by telepathy—which I don’t for a moment believe, Herr Liebermann; I’m surprised that you do—but if any Nazi hung up the phone, he certainly would have made it his business to find out who Barry was talking to. The hotel operator would have known.”

  Liebermann smiled. “I’m only sixty-two,” he said, “and I’m not a civil servant.”

  “Don’t joke about it. If killers were being sent out, why not give them one more assignment? With top priority.”

  “Then the fact that I’m still alive suggests they weren’t being sent out.”

  “Maybe they decided to wait awhile, Mengele and the Comrades Organization, because you knew. Or even called the whole thing off.”

  “You see what I mean about the ‘ifs’ and the ‘maybes’?”

  “Did you realize that you may be in danger?”

  The waiter put cherry cake before Klaus, a Linzer torte before Liebermann. He poured Klaus’s coffee, Liebermann’s tea.

  When he had gone, Liebermann, tearing open a packet of sugar, said, “I’ve been in danger for a long time, Klaus. I stopped thinking about it; otherwise I would have had to close the Center and do something else with my life. You’re right; ‘if’ there are killers, I’m probably on the list. So finding out is still the only thing to do. I’ll go to Bordeaux and have Piwowar, my friend in Stockholm, go to Fagersta. And if those men too can’t have been victims, I’ll check out a few more, just to be sure.”

  Klaus, stirring his coffee, said, “I could go to Fagersta; I speak some Swedish.”

  “But for you I’d have to buy a ticket, right? And for Piwowar, I won’t. Unfortunately that’s a factor. Also, you shouldn’t skip lectures so casually.”

  “I could skip every lecture for a month and still graduate with honors.”

  “Oh my. Such a brain. Tell me about yourself; how did you become so smart?”

  “I could tell you something about myself that might come as a surprise to you, Herr Liebermann.”

  Liebermann listened gravely and sympathetically.

  Klaus’s parents were former Nazis. His mother had been on close terms with Himmler; his father had been a colonel in the Luftwaffe.

  Almost all the young Germans who offered to help Liebermann were children of former Nazis. It was one of the few things that made him think God might be real and at work, if only slowly.

  “We’re awf
ul.”

  “No we’re not, we’re smashing. Ought to be doing it on film.”

  “You know what I mean. Look at us; one, two, and in the kip. Tuppence says you forgot my name.”

  “Meg for Margaret.”

  “Full name.”

  “Reynolds. Tuppence please, Nurse Reynolds.”

  “Too dark to find my purse. Will you settle for this?”

  “Mmm, yes indeed. Mmm, that’s lovely.”

  “‘Blushing shyly, she said, “It won’t be only this one night, sir, will it?”’”

  “Is that what’s on your mind?”

  “No, I’m thinking about the price of pickles. Of course it’s on my mind! This isn’t my usual modus vivendi, you know.”

  “I say. ‘Modus vivendi’!”

  “There’s a straight answer.”

  “I wasn’t trying to be evasive, Meg. I’m afraid it may be only tonight, but not because I want it that way. I have no choice in the matter. I was sent up here to…do some business with someone, and he’s laid out in your bloody hospital, on oxygen, with no visitors except the immediate fam.”

  “Harrington?”

  “That’s the chap. When I call in and report I can’t get to him, I’ll probably be pulled right back down to London. We’re dreadfully short of staff at present.”

  “Will you come back when he recovers?”

  “Not likely. I’ll be onto another case by then; someone else’ll take over. Assuming he does recover. It’s iffy, I gather.”

  “Yes, he’s sixty-six, you know, and it was quite a bad attack. He has a strong constitution, though. Ran round the green every morning at eight sharp; you could set your watch. They say it helps the heart, but I say it harms it at that age.”

  “It’s a pity I can’t get to him; I’d have been able to stay here a fortnight at the very least. Do you think we could get together at Christmas? We close up shop then; can you get free?”

  “I might be able…”

  “Lovely! Would you? I have a flat in Kensington, with a bed a mite softer than this one.”

  “Alan, what business are you in?”

  “I told you.”

  “It certainly doesn’t sound like selling. Salesmen don’t have ‘cases.’ Except the carrying kind, and I didn’t notice any of those, not that I had much time to. Selling what, eh? You’re not really a salesman at all, are you?”

  “Clever Meg. Can you keep a secret?”

  “Of course I can.”

  “Truly?”

  “Yes. You can trust me, Alan.”

  “Well—I’m with the Inland Revenue. We’ve had a tip that Harrington has bilked us out of something like thirty thousand quid over the past ten or twelve years.”

  “I don’t believe it! He’s a magistrate!”

  “They’re the ones, more often than you’d think.”

  “My Lord, he’s Civic Virtue on a pedestal!”

  “That’s as may be. I was sent to find out. Y’ see, I was to put a transmitter into his home, a ‘bug,’ and monitor it from my room here, see what I could pick up.”

  “Is that the way you blighters operate?”

  “Standard procedure in cases like this. I have the warrant in my briefcase. His hospital room would have been even better than his home. A chap’s a bit nervous in hospital; tells the wife where the loot is hidden, whispers a word or two to his solicitor…But I can’t get in to plant the bloody thing. I could show the warrant to your director, but like as not he’s Harrington’s pal; he’ll drop a word and it’s Johnny-out-the-window.”

  “You bastard. You ruddy old bastard!”

  “Meg! What are—”

  “You think I don’t see what the game is? You want me to plant your whatsit for you. That’s why we ‘happened’ to meet so accidentally. Fed me your line of—Oh Christ, I should have known you were up to something, Handsome Harry falling for a fat old cow like me.”

  “Meg! Don’t say that, love!”

  “Get your hands off. And don’t call me ‘love,’ thank you. Oh Christ, what an ass I am!”

  “Meg dear, please, lie back down and—”

  “Keep off! I’m glad he did you out of something. You buggers get too much from us as it is. Ho! There’s a joke. Remind me to laugh.”

  “Meg! Yes, you’re right, it’s true; I was hoping you’d lend a hand, and that is why we met. But it isn’t why we’re up here now. Do you think I’m so loyal to the bleeding Rev that I’d bed down with someone I wasn’t keen on, just to get a wretched little twister like Harrington? And want to go on doing it for a fortnight or more? He’s nothing compared to most we go after. I meant every word I said, Meg, about preferring large women, and mature ones, and wanting you to come stay with me at Christmas.”

  “Don’t believe one bloody word.”

  “Oh Meg, I could…tear my tongue out! You’re the best thing that’s happened to me in fifteen years, and now I’ve spoiled it all with my stupidity! Will you just lie back down, love? I’m not going to mention Harrington ever again. I wouldn’t let you help me now if you begged me.”

  “I shan’t, so don’t worry.”

  “Just lie back down, love—that’s the girl—and let me hold you and kiss these nice big—Mmmmm! Ah, Meg, you’re really heaven! Mmmmm!”

  “Bastard…”

  “You know what I’ll do? I’ll call in tomorrow and tell my super that Harrington’s mending and I think I’ll be able to plant the bug in a day or two. Perhaps I can stall him till Thursday or Friday before he pulls me back. Mmmmm! I’m queer for nurses, did y’ know that? My mum was one, and so was Mary, my wife. Mmmmm!”

  “Ah…”

  “You mayn’t like me, but your nipple does.”

  “Did you really mean it about Christmas, bastard?”

  “I swear I did, love, and any other time we can manage. Maybe you could even move to London; have you ever thought of doing that? There are always posts for nurses, aren’t there? That was Mary’s experience.”

  “Oh, I couldn’t. Not just pick up and move. Alan? Could you…really stay a fortnight?”

  “I could get away with more than that, if I had the bug in; I’d have to wait till he’s out of the tent and talking to people…But I’m not going to let you do it, Meg; I meant it.”

  “I already know—”

  “No. I won’t risk spoiling our relationship.”

  “Oh bosh. I already know you’re a bastard, so what difference will it make? I want to help the government, not you.”

  “Well…I suppose I shouldn’t stand in the way of getting my job done.”

  “I thought you’d come round. What must I do? I can’t wire things.”

  “There’s no need to. You simply bring a package into his room. The size of a sweet box. It is a sweet box actually, nicely done up in flowered paper. All you do is unwrap it, put it close to his bed—on a shelf or night table or such, the closer to his head the better—and you open it.”

  “That’s all? Just open it?”

  “It goes on automatically.”

  “I thought those things were tiny.”

  “The telephone ones. Not this kind.”

  “It won’t make a spark, will it? The oxygen, you know.”

  “Oh no, it can’t possibly. Just a microphone and a transmitter under a layer of sweets. You mustn’t open it until you have it in the right place; it doesn’t do to jiggle it around too much once it’s broadcasting.”

  “Do you have it ready? I’ll put it in tomorrow. Today, I should say.”

  “Good girl.”

  “Fancy old Harrington a tax cheat! What a stir it’ll make if he’s brought up on charges!”

  “You mustn’t breathe a word of this to anyone until we have evidence.”

  “Oh no, I’d never; I know that. We must assume he’s innocent. It’s quite exciting! Do you know what I’m going to do after I open the box, Alan?”

  “I can’t imagine.”

  “I’m going to whisper something into it, someth
ing I’d like you to do to me tomorrow night. In exchange for my helping. You will be able to hear, won’t you?”

  “The moment you open it. I’ll be listening with bated breath. Whatever can you be thinking of, you wicked Meg? Oh yes…ooh, that feels very nice indeed, love.”

  Liebermann went to Bordeaux and Orléans, and his friend Gabriel Piwowar went to Fagersta and Göteborg. None of the four sixty-five-year-old civil servants who had died in those cities was any more imaginable as a Nazi victim than the four who had already been checked out.

  Another batch of clippings and tear-offs came in, twenty-six this time, six of them possibles. There were now seventeen, of which eight—including the three of October 16th—had been eliminated. Liebermann was certain Barry had been wrong, but reminding himself of the gravity of the situation if, he decided to check out five more, the ones most easily checked. Two in Denmark he delegated to one of his contributors there, a bill collector named Goldschmidt, and one in Trittau, near Hamburg, to Klaus. Two in England he checked out himself, combining business with pleasure—a visit with his daugher Dena and her family, in Reading.

  The five were the same as the other eight. Different, but the same. Klaus reported that the Widow Schreiber had propositioned him.

  A few more clippings came in, with a note from Beynon: Afraid I can’t justify this to London any longer. Has anything come of it?

  Liebermann called him; he was out.

  But he returned the call an hour later.

  “No, Sydney,” Liebermann said, “it was only wild geese. Thirteen I checked, out of seventeen that could have been. Not one was a man the Nazis would plan to kill. But it’s good I checked, and I’m only sorry that I put you to so much trouble.”

  “Not a bit of it. The boy hasn’t turned up yet?”

  “No. I had a letter from his father. He’s been down there twice, in Brazil, and twice to Washington; he doesn’t want to give up.”

  “Pity. Let me know if he finds anything.”

  “I will. And thank you again, Sydney.”

  None of the final few clippings was a possible. Which was just as well. Liebermann turned his attention to a letter-writing campaign aimed at getting the West German government to renew attempts to extradite Walter Rauff—responsible for the gassing of ninety-seven thousand women and children and living then (and now) under his own name in Punta Arenas, Chile.