Christopher's Ghosts

by Charles McCarry

  Christopher said, “Finished your K. P., I see.”

  Heidi frowned. “My what?”

  “Kitchen police. You seem to get stuck with it quite a lot.”

  Her face was blank. “You noticed,” she said. She was annoyed, withdrawn, unfriendly. By the way she smoked her cigarette she warned Christopher that she didn’t want to talk.

  Nevertheless Christopher said, “May I ask you something? What’s the silence all about?”

  “Silence? What silence?”

  “About Stutzer. Why is everyone avoiding that subject?”

  “Wait a while,” Heidi said. “The conversation will get livelier.”

  “When?”

  “Soon. Probably tonight. Catching one of them always has this effect on Yeho. He thinks whatever thoughts he thinks about the past, about all the murders, about the lost six million, about what might have been—the books, the science, the music, the wealth, the kids—if everybody had gone on living, and while thinking these thoughts he talks about the weather. Then for a while he doesn’t talk at all. Then he spoils a card game or something. And then he goes back to being Yeho. And then he becomes the Memuneh.”

  “And when he’s the Memuneh, what does he become?”

  “Memuneh as you no doubt know means big boss. The term was invented for Yeho when he ran everything. Now he’s retired, in theory, but once a year he’s the big boss again, at least on this one operation.”

  “You’re saying he only runs one operation a year?”

  “That’s the arrangement. He gets a team, he gets whatever he needs, he picks the target. Usually he goes after some forgotten loathsome creature from the past like Stutzer. Tidying up. Usually, not always, he leaves our current enemies to the people now in charge. He doesn’t step on toes.”

  “And this year he picked Stutzer. Why?”

  “I guess he heard that the target had become available. A cast of thousands still tells him things. He heard something, he saw a possibility, and here we are.”

  “Including me.”

  “Obviously you’re the reason for everything, my dear. Are you blind? He’s doing this for you, for your family. Whatever sentence he’s going to impose on Stutzer is an extra. He owes you something for what you lost. He knows it was his fault. He wants to pay the debt.”

  Christopher’s back was turned to the bridge. Looking over his shoulder, Heidi saw something. Christopher turned and saw the mimes standing together. Heidi made a gesture of acknowledgment.

  “Yeho calls,” she said. “He wants you, too.” She sucked the last smoke from her cigarette, burning it down to the filter, and flicked it overboard.

  3

  Because none of their cabins, including Yeho’s, was large enough to contain five people, the team met in the hold, in the space next door to the lazaretto. Before a word was spoken, in response to two fingers lifted by Yeho, the mimes closed and locked the watertight doors at either end of the compartment, sealing in whatever words were about to be spoken.

  “By now this man we captured last night has been wondering for many hours where he is and who’s got him,” Yeho said.

  His air was professorial, reasonable, judicious. He was explaining to a class what to expect when the imaginary curtain behind him was opened and the monster in his shackles was revealed to them.

  He continued, “He may even have guessed the truth. However, no matter who’s got him, he knows his situation is not good. Because of the heat from the bulb inside the box, which is not very big, he will be very hot. He will be thirsty. He may have fouled the box. None of this comes as a shock to him. He knows we’re trying to scare him, to break him down, to make him admit he deserves worse than he’s going to get. He’s an expert, one of the most experienced people in the world when it comes to processing suspects. He probably thinks we’re amateurs compared to him. Nevertheless, now come these amateurs, who’ve got the power to set him free and also the power to torture him. He’s been expecting us. He probably expects torture. He tells himself he’s prepared for the worse but he knows he isn’t, because while he himself has never been tortured he has tortured many others and he knows that no one can stand up under torture. He may defy us, he may tell us what we want to hear, he may say nothing. Naturally he won’t tell us the truth under any circumstances. His truth is not our truth. You’ve got to realize he doesn’t think he ever did anything wrong. To him, being nailed in a box with a hot electric bulb shining on him, shining in his eyes, is a crime against humanity. To him, the only thing he ever did in his life was enforce the law. He followed a virtuous calling. He was a good policeman. This person is an idealist. He has always been an idealist. He likes himself, he admires himself because he has ideals. Why else should a person have ideals? That’s the most important thing about him. Remember that. Now come with me.”

  In the lazaretto the silence, except for the thump of diesel engines deeper in the ship, was almost as complete as the darkness. The box, glowing through its many cracks and fissures as if light were seeping through the very pores in the wood, seemed to be suspended in midair. Christopher wondered if Yeho had staged this trompe l’oeil as a mock religious experience: Lucifer imprisoned and giving up his light.

  Followed by Christopher, whom he ignored, Yeho strode across the deck and flung open the judas hole. A wave of heat came out of the aperture. Stutzer uttered a little groan as if grateful for the cooler air that flowed inward. Christopher laid a hand on the outside of box. It was hot to the touch. It had not occurred to him that one light bulb burning in an unvented space could produce such scorching heat. Through the judas hole he saw that Stutzer was wide awake, with intelligence in his eyes. He dripped with sweat, some of it faintly bloody where his skin had scraped against the rough wood or come into contact with one of the bent-over nails that protruded from the boards. He covered what was left of his sexual organs with cupped hands. With his ravaged face, his disheveled hair, his suffering eyes, his protruding rib cage, his all but fleshless bones, his flaccid muscles, his hairless skin, his seeping wounds, he looked like anyone but Lucifer.

  Yeho, standing well back in the darkness and off to the side where the light from the box could not reveal him, studied Stutzer at length. Then he closed the judas hole and taking Christopher by the arm, drew him away from the box. In a voice so low that Christopher had to bend over to hear the words, he said, “This is something for one person to do. Two is no good.”

  What did Yeho mean? That one person should talk to Stutzer, one person should shoot him, one person should set the box on fire? Christopher had no notion of Yeho’s intentions, except that his fundamental purpose still seemed to be to exasperate. Christopher took a deep breath, then another. His patience revived.

  He said, “Fine, Yeho. Go first.”

  “Go first?”

  “Talk to him, but leave something for me to talk to when you’re through.”

  Yeho jumped in his skin in surprise or indignation or both, or something else if he was acting again. “What kind of a remark is that?” he said. “That’s something you should say to a Stutzer.”

  In a flat tone of voice Christopher said, “Yeho.”

  Mimicking the tone Yeho said, “Paul.” He loaded the name, speaking it for the first time, with resentment. What had he ever done to deserve such a sting of the serpent’s tooth?

  As if speech was no longer to be considered as a way of communicating with Christopher, Yeho turned his back on him and strode back to the box. He stopped before it for a long moment, collecting himself. Then he rapped sharply three times on the top of the box and opened the judas hole. By its light Christopher saw that a low chair had been placed in front of the box. Yeho sat down in it so that the light shone directly on his face. He let Stutzer look at him for a long moment.

  Then he said, “Life is long, Herr Standartenführer. You are in the hands of the Jews.”

  4

  Standing in darkness behind the box, Christopher could see Yeho’s face by the light from
the judas hole, but not Stutzer’s. The two were talking to each other in German, Yeho’s voice soft and reasonable, Stutzer’s changing by stages from shrill anger to bluster to a reasonableness so studied that it seemed to be mockery. Finally only Stutzer talked, a long soliloquy in which he told the story of his life—his parents, his childhood, his schooldays, the unjust discrimination he had suffered as the son of a man who was small in the world, everything but the parts that had nailed him into the box.

  For a long time Yeho did not interrupt. Finally, hours after the conversation began, he began to confide. He spoke in low tones, confidentially, and Stutzer replied in kind. Christopher caught a word here and there. In the final hour, Yeho and Stutzer whispered to each other, parties to an understanding so secret, so delicate that no one else on earth could be privy to it.

  At last they shook hands through the judas hole. Yeho pointed a finger at the box. Before stepping into the light Heidi and the mimes covered their heads and faces with black hoods and offered one to Christopher. He said no. The mimes, perfectly rehearsed, took the box to pieces, first the top and then the four walls, which fell to the floor all at once like the panels of a magician’s box. The bulb, lying on the floor now, provided the only light and with the whole locker to fill, it was no longer its former blinding self. In its weakened glow Stutzer stood up, naked and gleaming with sweat. His face was in shadow. As before he covered his mutilated parts with a cupped hand. In the last twenty-four hours he had not stood up or moved more than an inch or two. Now he lost his balance and staggered. Yeho did not touch him—in fact he drew back to avoid contact—but in a solicitous tone he said, “Careful of the nails, Franz. Don’t move.”

  The mimes vanished. Heidi shined a flashlight into Stutzer’s face. He blinked and raised a skeletal arm to shield his eyes, but he wore a pleasant expression—the vestige, Christopher supposed, of the look of deep sincerity he had been wearing to win Yeho’s trust. Christopher heard water being drawn into tin buckets offstage. The mimes returned, each lugging two large slopping pails. Yeho pointed another finger and the mimes poured the water over Stutzer, emptying three buckets over his head and flinging the last bucket at his fouled buttocks and groin. Some of the water splattered onto the electric bulb and it popped and sparked. By the smell of it, the water was warm and in the darkness Stutzer gasped softly in pleasure. Heidi and the mimes surrounded him and trained flashlights on him. One of the mimes threw Stutzer a large white Turkish towel. After he had dried himself he tied the towel around his waist. Another towel flew through the darkness. Stutzer snatched it from the air and draped it over his head and shoulders like a monk’s hood.

  With all his attention concentrated on Stutzer, Christopher had lost track of Yeho. Now he felt a hand on his arm. Yeho said, “Come, we’ll talk for a minute.”

  Christopher said, “What about him?”

  “He’s yours now, a promise is a promise, but you should know what’s what before you talk to him.”

  Yeho was being an uncle to Christopher. His voice, his manner, even the pressure of his hand suggested affection, trust, a special connection. He seemed to be telling Christopher that whatever resentment he might have felt earlier, whatever cross words may have been spoken, were now forgotten.

  Christopher said, “So what is what?”

  “Not here,” Yeho said.

  “Why not?”

  “He has ears.”

  “Me too, but I couldn’t hear what you said to him or what he was saying to you when I was six feet away.”

  “He was telling his story. Everybody has a story he wants to tell.”

  “So they say. But what were you whispering to him? What promises have been made? I don’t want to turn my back and have him disappear.”

  Another impertinence. It was too much to bear. Yeho shrugged and threw up his hands. It was too dark to see this, but Christopher sensed the gestures. Yeho sighed heavily. He said, “You’re telling me you don’t trust me?”

  “Nothing personal, Yeho. I just want to talk to him.”

  “Look who’s talking about personal. So what do you want to do first, listen to me or talk to him?”

  “I want to hear what you’ve got to tell me. I don’t want to hear it down here. We can do it on deck.”

  “What about him?”

  “We’ll take him with us.”

  “In the towels?”

  “He looks like he could use some fresh air. So can I. Yeho, I don’t want to be in a confined space with him, where I can smell him. Not for another minute.”

  Across the room Heidi and the mimes continued to hold Stutzer in the beams of their flashlights. Wrapped in his white towels, his face obscured by the cowl, he looked a hundred times less sinister than he had looked twenty years before as a tailor’s dummy.

  In a voice heavy with resignation, Yeho said, “You want to go upstairs, we’ll go upstairs.”

  It was a long way up. Heidi led the way at her usual scamper. The mimes handled Stutzer. In his bare feet and weakened state he had trouble with the ladders and by the time they reached the deck he was badly out of breath. The moon was full again tonight. A torpid sea sparkled in its light. Christopher found the North Star. The ship was moving westward now, but very slowly. The usual stream of shipping flowed by in the distance, lights burning. A mile or two to the north he saw an island and recognized its silhouette—Bornholm, the Danish island he and Rima had almost reached.

  They were on the foredeck. On the deck above, officers and seamen were at their stations on the bridge, but the rest of the deck was deserted. Heidi and the mimes tended to Stutzer. After his climb he was wheezing asthmatically.

  To Yeho Christopher said, “I don’t think he’s going to overhear us.”

  Yeho, unresponsive and glum, waited until Stutzer was a little quieter, then snapped his fingers and made a gesture. The mimes walked Stutzer, who now seemed to be too weak to do anything without assistance, to the bow of the ship and helped him to lower himself to the deck. Rather than sitting he fell to one knee. The others, standing in a semicircle, still wore their black hoods. Stutzer tugged his white cowl into place and bowed his head. They looked like mummers posing for a Lenten procession.

  Yeho took Christopher’s arm. “We’ll walk while we talk,” he said, “I’m stiff after all that sitting.”

  From the moment Heidi and the mimes put on their hoods Christopher had believed that Yeho was going to let Stutzer live. If he was going to die, why protect their identity? Let him live for what purpose, live where, live how, live why?

  Yeho had the Eastern habit of lightly holding hands with a confidant while they talked. Fingertips touching, he and Christopher walked back and forth across the deck. For the first few transits, Yeho seemed to be gathering his thoughts. He kept silent or at least wordless while making small, apparently involuntary noises—clearing his throat, muttering to himself in whatever language he happened to be thinking in at the moment, coughing.

  At last he said, “I guess you’ve figured it all out, but I want to be sure you understand what’s happening and why it’s happening.” He looked up brightly into Christopher’s blank face. “Also why it’s for the best.”

  Christopher waited for him to go on. Yeho had been speaking German to Stutzer most of the night and he spoke German now. He spoke guardedly, so that Stutzer could not overhear. The wind was rising, so some of his words were blown away.

  In English Christopher said, “Can he understand English?”

  “I don’t think so,” Yeho said. “Why would he? Did he ever speak English to you or your mother and father or”—he paused—“anyone else you knew?”

  “No.”

  “So what’s your point?”

  “If we speak English you can talk louder and I’ll be able to hear you.”

  Christopher steered Yeho to the narrow stairs that led to the bridge deck. They sat down together, Yeho perched two steps above Christopher so that they could look into each other’s eyes.

 
“What we need now is tea,” Yeho said. He pointed a finger at Heidi. Even in the dimness she picked up the signal and when he made a drinking motion, went inside to fetch what he wanted. As though things could not go on without her, they waited in silence for Heidi to come back. Although Christopher could hear diesel engines idling and smell their exhaust, the Olaster was not moving under power, but was being carried along on the current. At last Heidi came back with a tray of steaming tea glasses. Yeho took one and drained it. Christopher handed him his own untouched glass.

  Yeho said, “You don’t want it?”

  “He doesn’t like it,” Heidi said.

  “Is that true?” Yeho asked, amazement in his voice. He said, “To tell you the truth I’ve got a little sore throat, all that talking to the Standartenführer. The tea helps. Why don’t you like it?” He was making small talk. He seemed loath to come to the point.

  Christopher said, “To me, sometimes, the tea seems a little too sweet. Yeho, it’ll be morning soon.”

  Yeho said, “Okay. I’m going to tell you everything. You can ask questions, but if something is missing it’s because I don’t know what goes in that pigeonhole or I forgot it. Okay?”

  “Fine. But please remember that I already know the story of his life. There’s no need to go over it again.”

  “So what interests you?”

  “His future.”

  “Easy,” Yeho said. “He thinks we’re going to put him back on shore. He’s going to work for us—make that pretend to work for us.”

  “Why?” Christopher asked.

  “He says he hates the communists because they castrated him.”

  “You believe him?”

  “What is truth? It’s a temptation to let him think we believe him. We could put him in place, let him work for us for a while, then tip off MfS, and bingo he’d be back in the gulag being whipped and starved and worked to death, his worse nightmare.”