A Quiet Flame

by Philip Kerr

  We went inside, breathing a musty, mildewed air. On a table we found an old copy of La Prensa. On the front page was a picture of Perón wearing a military uniform, a white officer’s cap, white gloves, a sash in the colors of the Argentine national flag, and a big, generous grin. The lead story was something about Perón announcing his first five-year plan to boost the country’s newly nationalized industries. I showed it to Anna, pointing out the date.

  “Nineteen forty-seven,” I said. “I guess that was the last time anyone was here.”

  “I certainly hope so,” she said.

  I walked into another room and picked up an old helmet. Other rooms were no more enlightening.

  “This must have been where the soldiers relaxed,” I said.

  We went outside again, crossing the parade ground to a group of four long barracks. We went inside one. It was like a stable, except that instead of stalls there were wide wooden shelves, some of which were covered with handfuls of straw, and almost a minute had passed before I realized that these were supposed to be beds. Probably two or three people could have been accommodated on each of the shelves.

  Anna looked at me with pain in her eyes, and I could tell she had arrived at the same conclusion. Neither of us spoke. She stayed close to me and eventually took my left hand. My gun was still in my right. We went into the second barrack, which was much like the first. So was the third. I was reminded of the POW camp I had been held in by the Russians. Apart from the weather, this place looked almost grim.

  The fourth building was just a long, empty shed. The far end of the shed led down into a sort of trench that was covered with a ceiling of more barbed wire. The trench was about thirty yards long and two yards wide. We entered it and walked down into a barrack that you knew was there only when you had entered the trench. This one was divided into three chambers by two wooden walls. Each chamber was about ten feet high and thirty feet wide, and the inside walls were covered with sheets of zinc. On the ceiling were shower pipes. The door of each chamber was extra thick and could be closed from the outside by an iron locking bar. These doors were sealed with rubber gaskets around the edges. In each of the three chambers, a copper pipe entered through a wall a few inches above a tiled floor. The pipes were all connected to a large central stove in the corridor outside the chambers. By now I had a very bad feeling about this place.

  Anna was looking at the pipes on the ceiling. “So where did the water come from?” she asked, glancing around. “I didn’t see a water tank on the roof.”

  “Perhaps they took it away,” I said.

  “Why? They haven’t taken anything else away.” She glanced down at the floor. “And what are these? Tram rails? What?” She followed the tram rails to the far end of the barrack and some double doors next to a big extractor fan set in the wall. She pushed open the doors and went outside.

  “Perhaps we should leave now,” I called out, going after her. I holstered my gun and tried to take her by the hand, but she lifted it away and kept on walking.

  “Not until I understand what this place is,” she said.

  I tried to inject some calm into my voice. “Come on, Anna. Let’s go.” I wondered how much she knew of what had gone on at the camps in Poland. “We’ve seen enough, don’t you think? They’re not here. Perhaps they never were.”

  The rails led along the side of five grass-covered mounds about twenty feet wide and forty feet long. Next to these were a number of heavy-duty flatbed trolleys of the kind that might have been used in a railway yard. The trolleys were covered in rust, but the design was clear enough: each trolley could be raised to tip its cargo into one of the pits. And I was beginning to suspect what probably lay underneath the grass-covered mounds.

  “Earthworks,” I said.

  “Earthworks? No, I don’t think so.”

  “Yes,” I said. “I expect they were going to build some more of these barracks and then changed their minds.”

  It sounded pathetic. I knew perfectly well what I was looking at. And by now, so did she.

  Slowly, Anna was bending forward to look at something on the grass-covered mound that had caught her eye. She started to crouch. Then she was on her knees, glancing around, finding a piece of wood and using it to scrape at the ground around an almost colorless plant that was growing out of the pit in front of her.

  “What is it?” I asked, coming closer. “Have you found something?”

  She sat back on her haunches and I saw that it wasn’t a plant at all, but a child’s hand—a decomposed, partly skeletal human hand. Anna shook her head, whispered something, and then, putting her hand to her mouth, tried to stifle the emotion rising in her throat. Then she crossed herself.

  I said nothing. There was nothing I could say. The purpose of the camp was now clear to us both. These mounds were mass graves.

  “How many, do you think?” she said finally. “In each one?”

  It was my turn to be nervous now. I was looking around for some sign that we might have been observed. A death camp was more than I had bargained for. Much more. “I dunno. Maybe a thousand. Look, we really should leave. Now.”

  “Yes, you’re right.” She found a handkerchief and wiped her eye. “Just give me a minute, will you? My aunt and uncle are probably buried in one of these pits.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  “Can you honestly think of a better explanation?”

  “Look,” I said. “The people who are buried here. You don’t know that they’re Jewish. They could be Argentines. Political opponents of the Peróns. There’s no reason to suppose—”

  “That’s a gas chamber in there,” she said, looking back at the barrack from which we had just emerged. “Isn’t it? Come on, Gunther. You were in the SS. You of all people should be able to recognize one.”

  I said nothing.

  “I never heard of Perón’s political opponents being gassed,” she said. “Shot, yes. Tossed out of a plane. Yes. But not gassed. Only Jews get gassed. This place. This camp. Is a place of death. That’s why they were brought here. To be gassed. I can feel it. Everywhere. I could feel it in that dummy shower-barrack. I can feel it here, most of all.”

  “We have to leave,” I said.

  “What?”

  “Now. If they catch us here, they’ll kill us for sure,” I said. I took her arm and lifted her up. “I never expected this, angel. Really, I didn’t. I’d never have brought you here if I’d even suspected that it was this kind of place. I thought it might be a concentration camp. But never a death camp. Not that. This is much more than I ever bargained for.”

  I took her back to the hole in the fence.

  “Christ,” she said, “no wonder this is such a big secret. Can you imagine what might happen if people outside Argentina ever find out about this place?”

  “Anna. Listen to me. You have to promise you’ll never mention this. At least not so long as you remain in this country. They’d kill us both, for sure. The quicker we’re away from here, the better.”

  Entering the trees again, I started to run. And so did she. At least now, I thought, she had grasped the true gravity of our situation. I threw away the wire cutters. We found the hole we had made in the first, exterior fence. We started running back to where we had left the jeep.

  I smelled them first. Or rather, I smelled their cigarettes. I stopped running and turned to face Anna.

  “Listen,” I said, holding her by the shoulders. “Do exactly what I say. There are men looking for us on this road.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because I can smell their tobacco.”

  Anna sniffed the air and then bit her lip.

  “Take off your clothes.”

  “What are you talking about? Are you mad?”

  “Maybe they won’t find the hole we made in the fence.” I was already undressing. “Our best chance is to make them think that we stopped here to make love. That’s the story we’ve got to stick to. If they think that’s all that we were doing,
they might just let us go. Come on, angel. Strip.”

  She hesitated.

  “No one who’s just seen what we’ve just seen would strip and have sex in the woods, now would they?”

  “I told you we should have come back and done this in darkness,” she said, and started to undress.

  When we were both naked, I wrestled my way between her thighs and said, “Now, sound like you’re enjoying it. As loud as you can.”

  Anna moaned loudly. And then again.

  I started to thrust my pelvis at her as if not just her sexual satisfaction and mine depended on this charade, but our lives as well.

  22

  TUCUMÁN, 1950

  I WAS STILL thrusting away between Anna’s thighs when I heard a twig break on the forest floor behind me. I twisted around to see some men. None of them were wearing uniforms, but two of them had rifles slung over their shoulders. That was good, I thought. At the same time, I grabbed something with which to cover our nakedness.

  There were three of them, and they were dressed for riding. They wore blue shirts, leather vests, denim trousers, riding boots, and spurs. The man without a rifle had a silver belt buckle as big as a breastplate, an ornate-looking gun belt, and over his wrist was looped a short, stiff leather whip. He was more obviously Spanish than his companions, who appeared to be mestizos—local Indians. His face was badly pockmarked, but he had a quiet confidence in his manner that seemed to indicate his scars didn’t matter to him.

  “I would ask what you are doing here,” he said, grinning, “only it seems obvious.”

  “Is it any business of yours?” I said, dressing quickly.

  “This is private property,” he said. “That makes it my business.” He wasn’t looking at me. He was watching Anna put on her clothes, which was almost as pleasurable a sight as watching her take them off.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “We got lost. We stopped to look at the map and then one thing led to another. You know how it is, I expect.” I glanced around. “It seemed like a nice, quiet spot. No one around.”

  “You were wrong.”

  Then, out of the trees, came a fourth man, riding a fine white horse and very different from the other three. He wore an immaculate white short-sleeved shirt, a black military-style cap, a pair of gray riding breeches, and black boots that were as shiny as the gold watch on his slim wrist. He had a head like a giant bird of prey.

  “The fence has been cut,” he told the pockmarked gaucho.

  “Not by us,” said Anna.

  “Claims they stopped here for a quiet fuck,” said the head gaucho.

  Silently, the man on the white horse rode around us while we finished dressing. My holster and gun were still on the ground somewhere, only I hadn’t been able to find them.

  He said, “Who are you, and what are you doing in this part of the country?”

  His castellano was better than mine. There was something about his mouth that made it better for speaking Spanish. The size and shape of the chin governing the mouth caused me to suspect that maybe there were a couple of Habsburgs in his family. But he was German. That much I was certain of, and instinctively I knew this must be Hans Kammler.

  “I work for the SIDE,” I said. “My identification is in my coat pocket.”

  I handed the coat to the head gaucho, who quickly found my wallet and handed it to his boss.

  “My name is Carlos Hausner. I’m German. I came here to interview old comrades so that they can be issued the good-conduct passes they’ll need to obtain an Argentine passport. Colonel Montalbán at the Casa Rosada will vouch for me. So will Carlos Fuldner and Pedro Geller at Capri Construction. I’m afraid we got a bit lost. As I was saying to this gentleman, we stopped to take a look at the map and, I’m afraid, one thing led to another.”

  The German on the white horse looked through my wallet and then tossed it back to me before turning his attention to Anna. “And who are you?” he asked.

  “His fiancée.”

  The German looked at me and smiled. “And you say you’re an old comrade.”

  “I was an officer in the SS. Like you, Herr General.”

  “It’s that obvious, is it?” The German looked disappointed.

  “Only to me, sir,” I said, clicking my heels together and hoping that my show of Prussian obsequiousness might excuse Anna and me.

  “A job with SIDE, a fiancée.” He smiled. “My, you have settled in here, haven’t you?” The horse shifted under him and he wheeled it around so that he could keep staring down at us. “Tell me, Hausner. Do you always bring your fiancée along when you’re on police business?”

  “No, sir. The fact is, my castellano is fine in Buenos Aires. But out here it lets me down sometimes. The accent is a little difficult for me to understand.”

  “Most of the people in this part of the world are of Guaraní stock,” he said, speaking German at last. “They are an inferior Indian race, but on a ranch, they have their uses. Herding, branding, fence mending.”

  I nodded toward the barbed-wire fence. “Is this your fence, Herr General?”

  “No,” he said. “But my men keep an eye on it. You see, this is a high-security area. Few people ever venture this far down the valley. Which leaves me with something of a dilemma.”

  “Oh? What’s that, sir?”

  “I should have thought that was obvious. If you didn’t cut the fence, then who did? You see my problem.”

  “Yes, sir.” I shook my head awkwardly. “Well, we certainly haven’t seen anyone. Mind you, we haven’t been here that long.”

  “Perhaps. Perhaps.”

  The horse lifted its tail and did what horses do. He didn’t seem to believe my story, either.

  The general nodded sharply at the head gaucho. “You’d better bring them along.” He spoke in castellano, and it seemed evident that neither the head man nor the two Guaraní spoke any German.

  We walked back to where we’d left the jeep. Three horses were waiting patiently for their riders. The two Guaraní mounted up and took the third horse’s bridle, while the head gaucho climbed in the back of the jeep. I noticed that his holster was unbuttoned, and decided he looked like the type who might be quick on the draw. Besides, under his belt was a knife as long as Chile.

  “Just stick to the story,” I told Anna in Russian.

  “All right. But I don’t think he believed it.”

  She climbed into the passenger seat, lit a nervous-looking cigarette, and tried to ignore the head gaucho’s brown eyes on the back of her head. “Who was that Nazi, anyway?”

  “I think he’s the Nazi who built that camp,” I said. “And many others like it.” I climbed into the driver’s seat, took the cigarette from her mouth, puffed it for a moment, and then put it back, only it didn’t stick. Her jaw was hanging down like the ramp on a truck. So I put the cigarette in my own mouth.

  “You mean?”

  “That’s exactly what I mean.” I started the jeep. “Which makes him extremely dangerous. So do exactly what I say and maybe we’ll live to know better than to tell the tale.”

  The head gaucho tapped me impatiently on the shoulder. “Drive,” he said in castellano. He pointed farther up the road toward the three horsemen and the high Sierra.

  I put the jeep in gear and drove slowly along the road.

  “It’s just one man,” said Anna. “Why don’t you throw him out or something? We could easily escape three men on horses, couldn’t we?”

  “For one thing, this man behind me is armed to the teeth. And for another, so are all his friends, and they know this country much better than me. Besides, I lost my gun back there in the trees.”

  “That’s what you think,” she said. “It’s under my bra strap, between my shoulder blades.”

  “Anna, listen to me. Promise you won’t do anything stupid. You don’t know what you’re up against. These men are professionals. They handle guns every day. So let me deal with it. I’m sure we can talk our way out of this.”

 
“That man, the general,” she said. “If he really did what you said he did, he deserves to be shot.”

  “Sure he does. Only he’s not going to be shot, unless it’s by someone who knows what they’re doing.”

  The head gaucho pushed his head between us. From the smell of his breath, I guessed he was a stranger to the toothbrush. “Shut up talking German and drive,” he said fiercely. For added emphasis, he produced his knife and pressed the tip under my ribs. I felt like a horse who had been pricked with a spur.

  “I get the point,” I said, and put my foot down.

  SITTING ON THE EDGE of a mountain slope with an excellent view of the valley below, it was more like a little piece of old Heidelberg than a ranch—tesserae of handsome wooden chalets, ivy-wrapped castle-style turrets, and a small chapel complete with a bell tower. Under the arch of the main building was a huge wooden tun that, from the bottles beside it, looked like it was filled with red wine. On the cobbled courtyard in front was an ornamental circular garden with a bronze fawn leaping through a facsimile cliff-edge waterfall, and I almost expected to see the Student Prince soaking his head under it after a night on the beer. My surprise at seeing a corner of Baden-Württemberg in Argentina was quickly overtaken by the sight of a familiar face. Walking toward me, his hand held out in front, was my old detective sergeant, Heinrich Grund. To my relief, he seemed pleased to see me.

  “Bernie Gunther,” he said. “I thought it was you. What brings you up here?”

  I pointed at the head gaucho with whom Grund had been speaking just a minute or two before. “Him,” I said.

  Grund shook his head and laughed. “Same old Bernie. Always in trouble with the powers that be.”

  Even after almost two decades, he looked like a boxer. A retired boxer. He was grayer than I remembered. There were deep lines in his face. And more of a stomach in front of him. But he still had a face like a welder’s mask, and a fist as big as a speedball.

  “Is that what he is?”

  “González. Oh, yes. He’s the estate manager. Runs everything around here. He seems to think you might have been spying.”