by Chris Petit
I hauled myself up. Soon I was lost among the stanchions. Hidden in the gridwork of metal, it was possible, almost, to feel lost. The broad struts were wide enough for standing, and there was plenty to hang on to. Below was nothing but darkness. I willed myself into believing no height was involved. A stream of traffic rolled above my head, a matter of feet away, and I drew comfort from its proximity. I had no plan, except to stay there, all night if necessary, until I could attract someone’s attention. I was sure Carswell would not take the same risk that I had.
Yet there he was, only a few yards away, on the edge of visibility. He had no need to hang on and strutted the stanchions, letting the tip of his foil drag along the metal. He had nerve where I had none. I properly understood the expression clinging on for dear life. Carswell prowled the substructure, at home with the height and the limb on which we found ourselves. He hadn’t seen me, frozen between stanchions, but he was getting closer.
The moonlight was his friend, not mine. It came out from behind a cloud, for the first time since the garden, a hanging near-full moon, casting a blue glow over the bridge. Carswell saw me and smiled. Way, way down below, I could see the river, marked by jagged lines of foam where rocks broke the surface.
Our macabre dance moved to its climax: suspense suspended, the strobe of vertigo kept at bay by the greater threat of Carswell, moving confidently forwards where I could only inch backwards.
I moved out until I was above the middle of the river. The lights of the buildings on the bank looked very far away. I saw the ghost of Allen Dulles standing, smoking his pipe, looking at the bridge from his terrace. The white churn below became more violent. I would be down there soon but pretended, with what little imagination I had left, that I was luring Carswell, and it was I who was dictating the moves.
He slipped unexpectedly, and I thought I saw him blanch, even by the pale light of the moon. I wondered if he was losing his nerve (where I had none left to lose). He advanced carefully, more human now, while I nursed that tiny slip as a cause for hope. The guard of Carswell’s foil caught the moon. He was close enough now for me to see that he carried it looped around his wrist, to leave his hands free.
Until then we had worked the space under the middle of the bridge. The sense of enclosure had become almost reassuring. Now I saw an alternative but far more exposed: a caged service ladder hanging down over the side of the bridge, up which I hoped to climb.
But the ladder was a false escape. There was no way onto it. A locked metal door prevented entry. By then I was on the outside stanchion on the edge of the drop, with Carswell closing, going for the eyes again, wanting what, a blinded Icarus? I tried dazzling him with the torch, but the battery was as good as dead—and so was I. Seeing my helplessness, Carswell laughed, not out of disdain but with genuine good humour. The laugh of a man enjoying himself. Maybe his pleasure was what dragged me back. I was beyond scared, way out in some space alone, forward-projecting my tumbling release. There was no strategy or defence, just one last desperate action.
He lunged for the eyes again. I flicked my head aside, felt the blade slice the skin, and heard Carswell’s grunt of satisfaction. For the first time since getting onto the bridge, I let go of the stanchion, grabbed Carswell’s foil with my left hand, and hung on in spite of the cord of pain burning my palm. I yanked forward, knowing the foil was attached to his wrist. My right hand was in my pocket. I flicked the blade switch of the Stanley knife. I didn’t have time to draw it clear, so I slashed upwards through the fabric of my trousers, freeing the knife, which arced up towards Carswell’s neck. Slash and away. Carswell was already starting his fall before the blade could reach his neck. He teetered then plummeted soundlessly, spiralling out into the night, watched by blue moonlight. As he tumbled, his cloak wrapped itself around his head so he would die in darkness.
With Carswell gone, I was no longer so afraid of the height, and jumping from the bridge onto the platform was a lot easier than the other way round. There was the pleasure of freaking out two dopers who were left trying to work out where I had come from.
I walked giddily up into the street, clenching my hand to hide the blood. It still wasn’t late, before eleven, with bars open and Swiss people strolling around doing their Swiss thing. I saw Dora sitting in a bar opposite Dulles’s house, waiting for Carswell. Did she see me? I don’t know. I walked on by, measuring the distance I was putting between myself and Dora and Carswell. With luck, nobody would understand Carswell’s death except for me (and him). Man dead in river, foil attached to wrist. Big mystery. Death by misadventure.
Hoover
SYRIA
Nephew,
I am glad to hear you are alive and well. Beate gave me your e-mail address. She says you are lying low and now staying with Abe, who is recovering. I mourn Sol and Manny.
My own adventure was probably less dramatic than yours. Most of it was spent in a sickbed, wondering whether Herr Viessmann was going to stick the big needle in me and finish off what he tried to do in 1945. As it was, he fed me some top-grade morphine, which was hard to come off. Konrad fancies himself as a doctor. I slept with one eye open.
I have a couple of observations to make about Konrad Viessmann, apart from the obvious one that he is totally crazy. He is lonely for Willi Schmidt, lonely for the social creature he once was. He admitted sometimes that he was Willi, but denied it for the most part. He would recall jazz nights in Zurich, would remember us standing in a field watching Karl-Heinz showing off his horsemanship, but would deny categorically having been in Strasbourg on the night he tried to kill me, or in the ghetto in Budapest. He has also suppressed the truth about his escape line. In his version, anyone he helped went free. He did, however, admit to reclaiming Willi Schmidt’s account in person. The fact that there had been no money was, he said, proof that it had gone to the right people. All that was left was what was in a large deposit box: his jazz records.
He played them with tears in his eyes. ‘Look,’ he said, pointing to the old labels. ‘Victor 26536. “Ko-Ko” and “Jack the Bear”. Duke Ellington and his Famous Orchestra. This was from March 1940, before any of us met. And this one from April 1939. Commodore 526. “Strange Fruit” and “Fine and Mellow”, by Billie Holiday and Her Orchestra.’
There were others. Count Basie from June 1938. “Blue and Sentimental”, and “Doggin’ Around”; Decca 1965. Art Tatum solo piano: “Gone with the Wind” and “Stormy Weather”, from 1937, Decca 1603; and Tatum again on Decca 1850, from 1940: “Sweet Lorraine” and “Get Happy”.
I have the records with me now. Willi/Konrad left without them. Who would have guessed they would end up in Syria of all places? And as for that Tatum title on Decca 1850, did anyone ever Get Happy? The most I can say for myself is that I rode my luck.
Viessmann came to my room early one morning, as day broke. If he hadn’t found me awake, who knows. When he saw me waiting for him, he did not come in but remained in the doorway, for what felt like the longest time, saying nothing. Then he inclined his head and was gone. Straight after, his helicopter revved up and he was back up in the skies. Less than an hour later, the cavalry arrived, a bunch of fierce-looking rebels who rounded everyone up and torched the camp.
They knew I would be there. Maurice’s name was mentioned, and they looked after me pretty well, and now I am told I am across the border in Syria. It’s dry and high here, and I am being treated by a good doctor. Maybe there is more life in me than I had thought, because I feel a whole raft better since getting here. The gramophone came as well, and I am trying to educate the Kurds in the ways of Duke Ellington and Billie Holiday. There are worse ways of spending one’s last act.
My doctor is a civilised man, and we speak French. We talk about how Viessmann’s companies are well screened from anyone wishing to investigate them, how lawyers can cushion them from any moral or legal responsibility, the same as it ever was. (Are you listening, Mr Dulles?)
My doctor says they are getting reports of epidemics
breaking out in refugee camps. Some of the diseases have never been seen before. The dirtiness and unhygienic practices of the refugees are blamed.
Maybe Viessmann is still part of some black budget, and has been since 1945. Maybe that was what Bob Ballard was investigating: an old operation that everyone had forgotten about, except the operative himself.
International protest about the fate of the Kurds has been limited because of army control and a complex web of business interests. I would hazard that the whole area is being used for a top-secret social and medical experiment. Some of this is merely ‘sensitive’, known to the various governments involved in the dam project. Some of it is way off the map in terms of human rights, and known about by very, very few, and deniable because information is sketchy to nonexistent. Turkey’s role as a sponsored buffer state in global affairs is of enormous significance to Europe and the United States, which are prepared to overlook the state of its internal affairs. Given the relative inaccessibility of large parts, the country is ideal for the relocation of advanced scientific programmes which elsewhere would attract unwelcome attention.
My doctor says that they are getting fed information by Iraqi intelligence. Bear in mind that Iraq has slaughtered many of its own Kurds—to the loudly vocalised disgust of those civilised nations which choose to ignore the plight of the same people in Turkey. The dam project is a weapon: the Turks could turn off the Euphrates’ supply altogether, as it did for Syria with the Tigris for a couple of weeks. But, unlike Syria, which sponsors the Kurdish rebels, Iraq’s position is more ambivalent. Iraqi intelligence says Viessmann’s people acted as ‘consultants’ on their Kurdish problem. Through them the Iraqis acquired the chemical gases developed by I.G. Farben in the 1930s. Your old chum Carswell came up, too. He sold them British security systems, with the blessing of MI6. After that they followed the genocide trail to Turkey.
I am speculating still, based on recent observation, and Viessmann’s nostalgia for Willi Schmidt. If Viessmann has any regret, it is that his achievements have been invisible. The refugee camp became a surrogate for that other achievement: its acceptable legacy. He is a cult figure without the cult. He has closed the circle. Cure can’t come without infection, and through that he sees himself working for a better world. He is preparing for disaster, and survival. His notebook doodles: arks, floods, barbed wire, a Christlike self-portrait with a razor-wire crown of thorns. Part of him subscribes to notions of cleanliness and health relating to the old Nazi doctrines, plus he is Swiss. Willi and the clean machine: any extermination part of his programme he has learned to censor. Anyone visiting him would come away with the impression of a humane, spiritual man.
My own fantasies for dealing with Viessmann were pathetic and juvenile. I wanted him to flatter my ego for having figured him out. The point about men like Willi and Konrad (I am starting to think of them as separate) is that there is no specific denouement, because there is nothing to uncover beyond a series of links. People like Willi and Konrad are assimilated. They are not sacrificial figures. Willi has been living in deep cover for years. No high-tech wizardry, pussycats, or beautiful assistants in luxury redoubts; just somewhere clapped-out, way off the map, a few huts, and a sense of quiet medical purpose. Perhaps he has convinced himself that he is leading a saintly life. Perhaps he really believes he is in the business of cure. Or perhaps Carswell was the truly nasty one, as you suggest. Apart from Willi’s attempt to kill me, he was never nasty in a one-on-one way, unlike Carswell. Willi was genocidally nasty. Willi was a dreamer.
From your cryptic account, I do not fully comprehend what happened to Carswell. Beate says he was found floating in the river with a fencing foil. The police are saying he probably jumped, except nobody saw. Tell me when you see me. I guess I will be leaving here soon. My doctor says I will be fit enough to travel after a couple more days’ rest.
The truth is, I am a fêted figure here, through my association with Karl-Heinz. In the crazy way of things, everything connects up, from all the way back, and the joke was that Willi and Karl-Heinz continued to move in an invisible tandem, working different sides of the fence. Willi’s route took him to the Turks, and Karl-Heinz’s, thanks to Himmler’s astrologist, took him to the Kurds. It’s still a pretty small world. Karl-Heinz offered his services to the people-smuggling industry, which was how he learned what was happening to the Kurds, which was why he got whacked.
He was a man who did many bad things, but I miss him. That said, he poses something of a moral dilemma, even from beyond the grave. His latest adventure—posthumously bequeathed—is one of blood and prophecy, and raises again the spectre of anti-Semitism. I am sure that Karl-Heinz the romantic would see it only in terms of historical sweep, and destiny.
As a measure of my current standing, I got taken to meet the next warrior leader. The Chosen One. He’s just a kid, several years off coming of age, but regarded locally as a new messiah. The boy was moved to Syria on Karl-Heinz’s instructions, apparently against the interpretation of the prophecy, which was nearly the cause of a civil war. (If the Kurds have no one else to fight, they fight themselves.) But then, only days later, the village where the boy had been was taken over by the army, everyone rounded up, and never seen again. So Karl-Heinz became the big local hero.
I am an old rationalist. I don’t believe in anything. The Chosen One, I told myself, was just a scruffy kid, until I looked into his eyes. It is a bit late in life to be getting superstitious, but since the meeting I have been haunted by an overwhelming foreboding. I wonder what I should do with this knowledge. It sounds preposterous to say that I believe I hold history’s destiny in my hands. Maybe the prophecy would be better for being denied. I know just from seeing the boy’s eyes that they are witnesses-in-waiting to hundreds of thousands of deaths. If someone could have killed the child Himmler or the child Saddam in the certainty that it was the right thing to do, should they have done so?
There I am, looking at the boy they say is going to be the next great warrior leader come to establish the new world order. It’s just one big rolling story, and maybe Karl-Heinz was right in believing that the next stage has been in place all along. Another million deaths, with millions more to follow. The joke is, I suspect it is one of Allen Dulles’s slush funds that will pay for it, and Dulles, that consummate anti-Semite, will be having the last word, as usual.
I know what I want to do, which is to come back and fetch Beate and head south, like we planned, before it all slides away, sit in the sun, and try and find a little peace of mind. What would you do?
Acknowledgments
Of the many books consulted, the following were referred to most:
Eichmann in Jerusalem by Hannah Arendt (Faber and Faber, London, 1963)
Hitler’s Secret Bankers by Adam LeBor (Pocket Books, London, 1997)
IBM and the Holocaust by Edwin Black (Little, Brown and Company, London, 2001)
Jews for Sale: Nazi-Jewish Negotiations, 1933–1945 by Yehuda Bauer (Yale University Press, New Haven and London, 1994)
Maskerado by Tivadar Soros (Canongate, Edinburgh, 2000)
Nazi Gold by Ian Sayer and Douglas Botting (Granada, London, 1984)
The Politics of Genocide: The Holocaust in Hungary by Randolph L. Braham (Wayne State University Press, Detroit, 2000)
The Secret War Against the Jews by John Loftus and Mark Aarons (St. Martin’s Griffin, New York, 1997)
The Summer That Bled by Anthony Masters (Michael Joseph, London, 1972)
The Swiss, the Gold, and the Dead by Jean Ziegler (Harcourt, Brace and Company, New York, 1998)
Thanks also to Adam LeBor, Liz Jobey, Lynn Ritchie and Richard Williams. Hoover’s name was taken from my late uncle, Gustav van Hover, known to all as Hoover, with whom there are no similarities, apart from name, country of origin and emigration to the United States. Thanks also to my agent Gillon Aitken, for his patience, and my editors Tim Binding, George Lucas and Ben Ball, whose insight, thoroughness and attention to detail made this
a much better book. A special thanks, as always, to Emma Matthews for her unfailing judgement, care and support.