His second thought, which he spoke aloud, was “I’ll need to look under the bandage.”
Von Ewigholz nodded and tried to shift his body to allow better access to the wound, grunting in what Oskar imagined must be considerable pain. The bandage was thick and had been skillfully applied; Oskar hated to mess with it. His training in battlefield medicine did not go very far.
He called out to Anna in the main compartment: “Go see if they’ve got rubbing alcohol, or any kind of liquor, and first-aid supplies. They must have.” When she’d gone, he turned to Clair. Now distraught, nearly frantic, he needed a task: to be useful, to help. “What kind of clothing have you got?”
Clair stared back at him, his gaze so perplexed that Oskar wondered if he’d spoken in German by mistake. Then the boy seemed to get it—fresh bandages—and stood to open the closet where his bags were stored. Oskar ran a hand over the prisoner’s forehead. Warm and wet, but not blazing as you’d expect if the wound had gone septic. Von Ewigholz was watching him closely, and for an instant Oskar had an uncanny feeling that the man was able to read his thoughts, or at least to track them by his changing expression. The two of them stayed like that, eyes locked, mutually calculating, until Anna came thumping down the ladder carrying bottles of various colors and shapes, the younger boatman trailing behind like an ominous, mumbling shadow.
“All right,” Oskar said, “let’s see what we’ve got.”
The wound was less hideous than other bullet wounds Oskar had seen—but most of those had been in photographs, the sole exception being the result of an accidental discharge that had carried off the top of a cadet’s head while he was cleaning a Mauser. This was really two wounds in one: the bullet had entered just under the lowest rib and exited a few inches away, to the rear and farther to the side. No vital organs were involved, and Dr. Ruhmann had done a good, workmanlike job with the closing and stitching. But the patient hadn’t been allowed to keep still long enough for the tissue to seal, and Oskar could see, once he’d swabbed the blood away, where the sutures had been strained, and a couple had torn away completely. The surrounding flesh was bruised and swollen—but again, to Oskar’s eye, not alarmingly so.
“How bad?” said von Ewigholz.
“Not so bad,” said Oskar, “though it needs cleaning. And some of the stitches—”
Von Ewigholz nodded. “I’ll do it myself, if you like.”
Oskar shook his head. “Better let me. I expect it will hurt.”
“Ha!” he said, with a grim, stoic smile.
The war-movie hero, thought Oskar. And his name is Hagen, after all. Chanting poetry while he bleeds to death.
Anna came closer, holding out a glass she’d half-filled with brownish liquid. “I don’t know what this is, maybe rum,” she said to the SS officer. “Don’t sailors drink rum? Anyway, you better have it. I’m not sure this one knows what he’s doing.”
Von Ewigholz held the glass with both hands and, to avoid sitting up, poured the contents into his mouth. “None of you,” he said, choking it down, “knows what you’re doing.”
Anna took the glass back, gave him a cursory glare and left the compartment. In her place loomed the young boatman, proffering a metal case whose scarlet cross sign had faded to the color of rust.
“Just put it there,” said Oskar, pointing to a spot on the floor. “I’ll call you if I need help. Now,” he told von Ewigholz, “try to keep still.”
The SS man nodded and watched with what seemed a detached sort of interest as Oskar sorted through the medical supplies, picking out a needle and suture thread that was stiffened with age. “Were you trained for this?”
“Not much,” said Oskar.
“It’s the same with us.” Von Ewigholz lay back, staring reflectively at the overhead decking. “It’s odd, but one doesn’t think of getting hurt, not in our service. One thinks of dying heroically.”
You may get your chance, Oskar thought. We all may. But not this morning.
THE VAMPIRE DID NOT DISAPPOINT
BERLIN, KREUZBERG: THAT EVENING
The Cabaret Trigilaw was already crowded, with an hour yet to go before midnight. Standartenführer Kohlwasser had chosen a table near the front but off to one side, allowing a close view of the stage and concealed from the prurient eyes of other patrons by a miniature jungle of potted palms and a climbing Monstera deliciosa—“delicious monster,” a perfect emblem for this place. Kohlwasser, having given the matter some thought and changed his mind twice, had elected to come in civilian clothes: a suit of nappy beige linen, tailored in what he’d been assured was the au courant New York style, not the boring cut they wore in Washington. He shared few beliefs with the poison dwarf Goebbels, but he did agree about the power of conveying a message by using symbolism—and the message he wished to give his American guests was: Here is Berlin! Here is the new Rome, the seat of an empire that will rule from the Baltic to the Mediterranean, from the Pyrenees to the Carpathians and, who knows, maybe someday the Urals. And this, gentlemen, is how we enjoy ourselves in the new Rome, how we drink and dance and screw—as though there will be no regrets for the next thousand years.
Ordinarily, yes, you would wear the black tunic for that sort of thing. But with Americans, you just didn’t know. How did they feel about uniforms with death’s-heads and lightning runes? Did such things offend their Christian sensitivities or their admiration of the lone cowhand in his white hat? You couldn’t be sure. But you did know that after a shoot-out and a mumbled prayer, they liked to visit the saloon. So here we are, gentlemen: I give you the Cabaret Trigilaw, the greatest saloon in the entire world!
His guests were late, but he’d expected that. And at last here they came, stumbling toward him, their eyes still adjusting—five of them, six if you counted the journalist Greimer. Kohlwasser sucked his tongue in distaste, but such was the business; you couldn’t be too choosy about collaborators, usefulness being the only metric that mattered. Yes, over here, see what a good table I’ve reserved for you! The very best! The Americans were half-drunk already, perhaps a little more than half. Greimer nudged them along like an irascible hound put in charge of cloddish sheep. Catching Kohlwasser’s eye, he signaled, by tipping his head, which of the new arrivals was of particular interest. Kohlwasser—on his feet now, arms extended, welcoming everyone, yes, yes!—gave a quick nod back, but as it happened, this tip was unnecessary. He’d recognized his man from the surveillance photographs, and at this range there was no mistaking the burly, rubicund Toby Lugan.
“So happy you could make it,” Kohlwasser said once his guests had reached the table. He indicated a chair next to his own and Lugan accepted, dropping his full weight onto it with such force that Kohlwasser wondered if this was a test. Let’s see what your German chairs are made of! In any case, the chair didn’t splinter, the other Yanks distributed themselves and Greimer was left at the distant end alone, which appeared to suit him well enough. He could see everything from there and even scribble secret notes or make use of the miniature camera Kohlwasser had provided, to his boundless and childish delight. Here, see, it hides just beneath your lapel, the lens peeks through the buttonhole, you work the shutter by pressing your party pin. Incredible!
“Who’s the singer?” Lugan said, louder than was required with his mouth so very close to the Standartenführer’s ear.
A curious thing: until that moment, Kohlwasser hadn’t been conscious of any singer or music or, indeed, anything at all outside the tunnel of his attention. It was a wonderful thing, his ability to focus, to stare down the tunnel at some perplexing object until it wilted under his gaze, laying bare whatever tawdry mysteries it had been concealing. But at times this gift was inconvenient.
“This singer, she’s a nobody,” he told Lugan. “The real talent comes on later. Look, here’s a waiter, what shall we have to drink? Is anyone hungry? How about oysters and champagne? And maybe some company—why not have some girls sent over? What do you say?”
He looked at Lugan, but
instead of boozy agreement he found…impatience? The jowls drawn tight in annoyance? Or was it only discomfort, the Irish Catholic (per his background file) feeling wrong-footed in a place like the Trigilaw? Too late to fret about that now. The game was on, the players fielded, the crowd already panting with excitement. And the music—now that he was hearing it, what a calamity it was, someone’s idea of naughty wit: take a boyish ditty, a Pathfinders’ hiking song, Here we go up the mountain, tra-la-la, and thrust it into the painted mouth of an all-but-naked chanteuse—what mountain could she be thinking of, meine Herren? Some of the Americans—petty salesmen, by the look of them, submanagers at a kitchen-appliance store—found this amusing indeed, but not Lugan. The minority counsel of the German Affairs Subcommittee had not crossed a fucking ocean for this. He looked annoyed, and no wonder.
Kohlwasser touched him lightly on a muscled forearm. When Lugan looked, he gave him a faint nod that meant Watch this. Then he raised his other hand, the index finger pointing at the ceiling, and made a little circle there, like he was stirring something upside down.
The owner materialized like the evil spirit he was. A short, oily man in expensive clothes, Glewitz smoothed an emerald cravat with one hand while resting the other on the back of Kohlwasser’s chair. “Herr Standartenführer,” he purred, lowering his head reverently. “How can I make your visit more enjoyable?”
“You can strangle that singer, for a start. Who else have you got lined up for tonight? These gentlemen have come all the way from America.”
“Ah, indeed?” Glewitz made a show of astonishment and switched to English, which was somehow more obscene than his German. “So very far, just to visit our little nightclub here? Well, we must show you something extraordinary! I wonder…but no, never—or perhaps? Oh my!” He screwed up his face as though striving to fend off an idea so diabolical he might die from uttering it aloud. Shifting his head to a spot midway between Kohlwasser and Lugan—whom he understood, by instinct, to be the object of tonight’s courtship—he whispered, “Do you think…der Vampir?”
“Yes,” said Kohlwasser. “I think that will do nicely.”
Glewitz straightened, tugged at his cravat, muttered under his breath and finally—perhaps overdoing it—crossed himself. “I shall do it, then. I shall…awaken him. It may take some time.” Turning crisply to face Lugan, his tone now solicitous, he said, “May I recommend, sir, something stronger than champagne. We have some very fine whiskeys, very long in the cask, that I might—”
Lugan surprised them by laughing, his head tossed back, his stomach quaking. They were putting on a show for him, and he was enjoying it. “Sehr gut, mein kleiner Freund,” he said, fluidly but with a Boston burr. “Whiskey und Vampir. Geht’s gut!”
Glewitz pulled out a huge handkerchief—emerald to match the cravat—and wiped his oily brow, and it seemed to Kohlwasser this was not merely for effect. Then he scurried off to wake the vampire while the band launched into a medley of inoffensive dance tunes. A waiter arrived with Irish whiskey, or at least something approximately the right color in a bottle labeled Tullamore Dew. Lugan splashed it into a pair of glasses, one for himself and one for Kohlwasser. He drained it back and poured another, sliding his chair uncomfortably close.
“Tell me what you know,” he said, “about a little shit named Erwin Kaspar.”
—
Interrogation was in Kohlwasser’s line of work, and he believed he was good at it. He prepared himself in advance, drew up a list of questions, made notes in anticipation of likely responses—the first would be a lie, followed by an effort at misdirection, followed by lies that grew progressively worse, desperate lies, lies that pleaded and bargained and wantonly sobbed for credence. And in the end, when there was nothing left: the truth.
But all that depended on a set of circumstances that, in the normal order of things, was easily arranged: that Kohlwasser would be the person asking the questions, not the one answering them.
He’d chosen tonight’s venue on the assumption—a safe one, surely—that in a place like the Trigilaw, he’d enjoy a home-court advantage. He’d chosen Greimer to make the dangle on the even safer assumption that it would put Lugan at ease. People like Greimer, journalists of shaggy mien and adjustable ethics, starved for readership, ever scrabbling for the mythic Big Scoop—Lugan must encounter them every day. When a man like Greimer shows up dropping hints about a source in the Security Service, the holy Sicherheitsdienst, you don’t necessarily believe him—not without some tangible proof, some scrap of paper with a red stamp on it, which Kohlwasser had provided—but neither do you think too hard about it. You don’t suspect a trap. Men like Greimer don’t lay traps; they lick at whatever’s left in them when the trapping’s done.
Why, then, did Kohlwasser find himself being asked a question like this, in a tone like this, before he’d managed to pose a single question of his own?
Well, all right. So here we are.
“Erwin Kaspar,” he repeated. “Should I recognize this name? Is this someone you’d like me to check on for you? Here, let me write it down.”
He made to reach for a notepad in his pocket, but Lugan stopped him with a large paw on his wrist.
“Have a drink, Helmut,” the man said. “I think we have some talking to do.”
It was fascinating, actually. How did Lugan know his first name? Here is a man who knows things—message received. Kohlwasser raised his glass cautiously; the whiskey might or might not have been Irish, but it wasn’t so bad. When he took a second, more liberal swallow, Lugan looked satisfied. He eased off somewhat, settling back in his chair and showing a momentary interest in what the band was up to. American popular music, Kohlwasser guessed. Typical Glewitz pandering. He looks at a table of Yankee tourists and sees dollar signs in bad suits.
“This fellow Kaspar,” Lugan said conversationally, “he comes up to me one evening a few months back. Right off the boat, or so I gathered. But here he is, smack in the middle of Embassy Row, sticking out like a debutante at a hookers’ convention. Might as well’ve sewn a big S on his back. Cover story about a trade mission, pretty shabby work, not up to your usual standards of fine German spycraft.”
Kohlwasser almost rose to this but demurred. This was good, the man was talking now; he understood that in this sort of business, there must be an exchange.
“Says to me he’s got some information, but it’s very sensitive. Can’t hand it over to just anyone. Says he’s hoping to contact certain parties in our government. Who the hell’s he talking about? And what kind of information?”
“That would have been my question, Mr. Lugan. Precisely that. You must have asked him, I should imagine?”
“Didn’t even have to ask him. He was dying to tell me how big this was. Only, I don’t think he knew the answer himself. Not really. I think he was an errand boy. All they’d given him was a little teaser, a little something to whet my appetite. Something like—”
And in one big hand, like a magic trick, a sheet of paper appeared, the same paper Kohlwasser had slipped Greimer several hours earlier.
“I’ll tell you the truth,” Lugan said, letting it fall to the table, open and face-up, the header—BÜRO DES REICHSFÜHRERS-SS—blaring like a headline. “The truth is, you people are making me feel like I’m a hound dog or something. Toss a little red meat my way and expect I’ll slaver all over it. And you know what—I hate to admit this, but it worked the first time. I snapped it right up and trotted over to a big shot’s house with it, all proud of myself. And then what happened? I’ll tell you: not a damn thing. There was no follow-up. Young Kaspar disappeared, and whatever he wanted to tell me, or give me, or club me over the head with, I never heard another peep about it. Tried to get back in touch, but it was funny: nobody’d seen him around. Must’ve gone back to Germany—sorry, sucker. I tell you, I felt like some kind of idiot. That doesn’t happen to me very often, and I don’t care much for it.”
Lugan poured himself another drink but for a few moments
only stared into it.
“How can I help you, Mr. Lugan?” Kohlwasser said. “What did you come here for tonight?”
“What did I come here for.” The veins on the man’s neck were as fat and lively as baby snakes. “I’ll tell you what I came here for. I’d like to know what’s going on with you people. It’s my job, you understand that? I work for the Senate German Affairs Subcommittee, and this big shot I mentioned, he’s the ranking member, if that means anything to you. It’s our business to know what’s happening over here and how that affects the relations between our two countries. And we’re trying to do our jobs properly, but you people aren’t making it easy. Leaking secret military documents—okay, fine, we’ll take it, or we’ll go steal it ourselves, but please, don’t go drawing us into whatever little intrigues you’ve got going on over here. Left hand, right hand, we don’t know what the fuck we’re shaking. And now here you are tonight, with some new pot on the stove. I’m not interested, Standartenführer. And what the hell is in this bottle?”
Kohlwasser had made a decision, about halfway through Lugan’s impassioned diatribe, and it was to let the man talk. He could sift the real message from all the attendant bluster later on. For now, he’d listen politely. He waited until he was fairly sure the man was finished, for the time being; then he said, “As it happens, Mr. Lugan, I’m eager to learn more about this young Kaspar myself. From what you’ve told me, and from what I’ve been able to pick up on my side, I believe he was likely an agent provocateur. What I’d like to know is, on whose behalf? Who sent him to Washington? What were they hoping to accomplish?”
Lugan stared at him. His eyes were bleary with drink, but Kohlwasser sensed that this was the man’s normal operating condition. He was that dangerous creature, an intelligent brute. And sure enough, when he spoke again, he came right to the key point:
“What you’ve been able to pick up on your side?” Lugan’s jaw moved as though he were tasting the words. “So you’re looking for Kaspar yourselves.”
Cave Dwellers Page 18