Cave Dwellers

by Richard Grant

  “You know what, Senator,” he said, addressing Bull by his proper title in hopes of brightening his mood. “It occurs to me that maybe we’re letting the criminals have the upper hand here.”

  Townsend came to stand by the table, still glowering. “What in the hell you talking about?”

  “I was just thinking…you know, we’ve kind of let them put you on the defensive. Everything we’ve been doing, your appearances, your press statements, even your private, off-the-record activities—it’s all been coming in reaction to what these thugs are up to. And we don’t even know what that really is. So I’m thinking, it’s you who ought to be calling the plays here. You go where you want, see whoever you feel like talking to—you don’t sit waiting for the phone to ring, if you know what I’m saying.”

  Townsend stared at him as if they’d been introduced just now and he was impatient for this stranger to explain himself. In a rather frightening tone, he said, “Go on. Whatever you’re trying to say, do it in plain damn English.”

  “All right, let’s take a look here. Ten a.m.: tour of the Krupp arms works. No point in that, we make fine weapons right at home. One o’clock: rally for Friends of the New Germany. I’d say at this point, the New Germany needs to earn your friendship, wouldn’t you?”

  Townsend grunted. So he was listening.

  “But look here—four o’clock. Tennis with Herr Hans-Bernd Gisevius of the Interior Ministry. Let’s think about this one.”

  “Interior runs the police, don’t they?”

  Toby rolled his eyes, then hoped the senator hadn’t noticed. “It’s complicated. They run some of the police. This country has more kinds of police than Carter has Little Liver Pills. But yes. But what’s also good is this venue could be very effective. Private club in the Grunewald—that’s on the west side of the city, a bunch of muckety-mucks have houses out there—so you go out in public for a little while, show the world you’re not holed up at the Adlon, then you drive out to this club and disappear again. The press are told you’re in conference with a high-ranking official from Interior. What’s all that about? Who else is in there? We aren’t saying. The Germans aren’t saying. For all anyone knows, you’re playing tennis. Then you come out and tell the reporters, ‘No comment,’ and drive back to the city and, let’s see—how about seven o’clock, prayer service at the Gedächtniskirche? With chamber music. That might set a nice tone.”

  “Damn it, Toby, I told you. I don’t give a rat’s ass about any fucking tone.”

  But his anger had dissipated. His mind was somewhere else now, away from a problematic son who for all anyone knew—for all Toby knew, anyhow—had staged his own disappearing act to get back at his dad for making him waste the summer at some Hitler Youth camp. Toby frankly wouldn’t have put it past him. Nor would he even blame Clair, especially, except for the fact that, stunt or no stunt, it was making Toby’s own lot temporarily wretched.

  “Tennis doesn’t sound so bad,” Townsend was saying. “Get the old heart pumping.”

  He stood at the center of the room rehearsing an imaginary volley, switching from forehand to backhand with little grace but much exertion, making the game look actually violent. Though Toby had never seen him play; maybe there was a row of secret graves at the Army and Navy Club where his opponents were laid to rest.

  This was the Bull Toby loved, and the one he—and America— needed. It was good to have him back.

  —

  You could say that Berlin agreed with Toby Lugan on the whole. Strolling from the Mitte to the Kreuzberg evoked in him a series of graduated emotions that ran along pretty much the same scale as an equivalent journey from Beacon Hill down to Southie. The shirts around the Tiergarten appeared to be stuffed with the same custom blend of pomposity and rectitude and moral shiftiness as those around the Boston Common. A few blocks out, you got into a purgatorial realm of strivers and worriers and clock watchers and butt sniffers, a cleanly and aspirational but fundamentally haunted world where people were afraid of losing the things they already had while still yearning painfully for more of the same, but better, newer, fancier; they aspired to graduate from middle-class anxiety to full-blown upper-class terror, to live in barricaded fortresses and send their children under guard to the very best schools to get their vowels straightened and their noses and chins reset to a proper inclination.

  And then the Kreuzberg. Ah, this bloody, teeming, pug-ugly netherworld of deeply shadowed “backcourts” whose streets ran the wrong way and addresses were merely hopeful suggestions, whose open windows broadcast a running melodrama of laughter and curses and sobs and the occasional gunshot, whose clocks were right only twice a day, at quitting time and last call, whose walls were out of plumb but stood regardless, gravity could go stuff itself, building inspectors too, and Toby loved all of it just as he loved Southie. These were his people, and the sight of them in the streets—moving or going nowhere, perplexed, out of breath, dyspeptic, smiling insensibly, lost in thought, plotting their next caper, dreaming of a good meal, fearful of being recognized, fired with lust for that girl in the shop window, gutted with regret over things that should never have been said—made Toby’s heart swell with universal sympathy and his fist clench with a strange and jealous anger. He didn’t know where this anger came from or at whom he should direct it. He thought there was something right about this world and wrong about the other one, where he was forced to live. He felt someone ought to be made to pay for this discordance. And he also knew that feeling like this was crazy.

  His meeting with Standartenführer Kohlwasser had been set for eleven at something called the Black Shoe. Now it was eleven-sixteen, according to his Timex. If such a place actually existed, it apparently did so without benefit of a sign. Not above asking for directions, Toby accosted the nearest passerby, who turned out to be a boy no older than twelve, dressed in clothes passed down, you had to presume, from a much larger brother. The boy knew just where Toby meant and pointed down the block, but this was mostly one anonymous shopfront after another, so in the end he led Toby in person to the proper address and waited courteously for whatever reward might be offered. The minority counsel of the Senate German Affairs Subcommittee knew many facts about exchange rates and monetary policy and balance-of-payments schedules but had no idea how much to tip an urchin who’d done him a kindness. The smallest bill in his pocket was a five-mark note, but what the hell, there but for the grace. The boy looked as though he’d just gotten enough money to bail his dad out, and Toby felt better about himself.

  The Black Shoe was much the same inside as out, which was piss-poor. It was half full, which seemed slightly odd, since by conventional reckoning it was well past breakfast and too early for lunch. Toby expected to find Kohlwasser sitting by himself at a table in the back, probably facing the door, and was right on both accounts. As before, at the Trigilaw, he was wearing civilian clothes, a tasteful gray suit with a tie striped English-style in green and brown. Neither of them wasted time on social niceties; Toby took the only other chair, and Kohlwasser snapped his fingers to summon a waitress. She popped right over, looking tired but a little frantic, as if she’d been at it since dawn. She awaited their order incuriously—two whiskeys, water on the side—and when she turned away, Toby got the impression that she’d already forgotten them, if she’d seen them at all. Two whiskeys back table, that’s all she needed or wanted to know. A pair of gentlemen in expensive clothes, one of them possibly foreign, would seem less real to her than the phantoms dancing at the edges of her vision.

  On the table in front of Kohlwasser was a manila envelope fastened with a string. He let it sit there without comment, leaving Toby to wonder whether he should ask about it or pretend not to have noticed. His companion waited until the drinks came and then for a while longer, meanwhile striking up a bit of a conversation. Toby played along, though he guessed they were just warming up, volleying back and forth. The real game was in the envelope, and it would open when they actually started playing. The driv
e to the Grunewald was hours away.

  “Have you any news,” Kohlwasser began, “about our mutual friend Herr Kaspar?”

  Toby was surprised, having expected he’d lead with Clairborne—out of common decency, if nothing else. Express his concern, best wishes, Let me know if there’s anything…“How would I know anything new about Kaspar?”

  “Well.” Kohlwasser lifted his glass, swirling the contents as though to check for impurities. “He contacted you previously, in Washington. As you described it, he sought you out. Perhaps he might’ve done so again.”

  “Sorry. Haven’t heard from him.”

  “Or perhaps you’ve been contacted by someone else.”

  “Who would that be?”

  “I couldn’t say. We don’t know who Kaspar was working for, do we? I think it’s safe to assume he was reporting to someone. Whoever it may have been, there’s every reason to suppose they’ll try again. With a different messenger, this time. Someone more…persuasive than Kaspar, who sounds like something of an idiot. Again, judging from your own description.”

  Toby took a sip of whiskey, or whatever it was. It didn’t taste like poison, which was all he cared about. “Maybe not an idiot. An amateur, I’d say. But if you don’t mind my asking, Standartenführer: what are you worried about, exactly? You say these people, whoever they are, will try again. Try what again? Talking to me? Hell, I’ll talk to anybody. That’s what I’m doing on a fact-finding mission. Can’t find many facts if I don’t listen to what people have to say.”

  Kohlwasser seemed mightily annoyed by this, which gratified the hell out of Toby. There was just something about this smug bastard in his prep-school tie—

  “The people we’re talking about,” Kohlwasser said, his voice hard as a sidewalk, “are cold-blooded murderers. And this should concern you, Mr. Lugan, because it seems likely that these same people are involved in the kidnapping of your senator’s son.”

  Toby felt sweat gathering on his forehead. He said, “Tell me what you know. Not what’s likely.”

  “Very well,” said Kohlwasser, who at least had the courtesy not to seem pleased by having shaken Toby’s composure. He was all business now, leaning forward in his chair. “We know this: Our so-called Erwin Kaspar, at the time you saw him on the ship, was traveling under the name Stefan Sinclair with a woman, slightly older, purportedly his wife. After leaving the ship, they joined two other people and departed from Bremerhaven in a motorcar. One of the passengers was Clairborne Townsend. The other was a German officer—from the SS, it amazes me to say—and these four traveled together at least as far as Bremen. There, we believe, they made contact with a Resistance cell, and in the struggle that ensued one person was killed and at least one wounded. We don’t know precisely what happened; the interrogations are ongoing. Now, from this point, I’m afraid, we lose a bit of clarity. We have a sighting two days later in the town of Hameln—Kaspar, the woman and young Townsend, aboard a riverboat and to all appearances enjoying themselves.”

  “On a fucking boat?” Toby said.

  “And enjoying themselves. This is something to think about.”

  “It damn well is.”

  “The next sighting—and the last, I’m afraid—is some distance upriver, in a village called Polle. There the boat was halted for a routine inspection. The papers of Herr and Frau Sinclair were verified and—”

  “Wait,” Toby said. “You’re claiming your people had them and let them go?”

  Kohlwasser shook his head. “At this point, the boy hadn’t been reported missing. The crime in Bremen was being investigated, but no suspects had been identified. And here’s another thing: there was no sighting this time, at Polle, of the Townsend boy. There were two other passengers, a nurse and her patient, their true names unknown. We also have, if you’re counting, Mr. Lugan, two missing police officers along with their automobile. Clearly these outlaws are violent and determined people. You can be sure we’ve mounted a considerable effort to capture them. There’s no doubt we’ll succeed, and soon. But now I hope you can understand why I need to know anything you can tell me, especially about unusual approaches from any quarter. We simply don’t know what’s happening here, or who may be at the root of it.”

  “But it’s the Socialists, isn’t it? That’s what it says in the papers.”

  “There are Socialists involved, yes. One of them was killed in Bremen. But this raises more questions than it answers, when you think about it. I’m afraid the situation remains murky.”

  Toby wiped his forehead with his sleeve. Kohlwasser snapped his fingers for more whiskey, calling after the waitress, “And some napkins, please.”

  “Now, tell me if I’ve got this straight,” Toby said. “Clairborne was last seen—”

  “In Hameln.”

  “Right. Then poof—he vanishes. And your SS man, he’s vanished too. So you’re thinking—just tell me, there’s no need to be namby-pamby—they’re dead? Maybe both, or one dead but not the other? Go on, I’d rather hear it from you. I’ve got to figure—”

  And now at last, the manila envelope came into play.

  Jesus H. Christ, thought Toby, watching Kohlwasser’s fingers as they unwound the string from the closure. How many damn times can you wind one string around a button like that? And what now?

  “Now here, I’m afraid,” said Kohlwasser, “is where the situation becomes even murkier. Let’s go back to the ship. Not the riverboat—the Robert Ley, crossing the Atlantic.”

  Go back to the what? Toby stared impassively as Kohlwasser pinched one corner and then lifted the envelope, spilling the contents onto the table. Now he was looking at a pile of photographs, some blurry and others sharp, most black and white but a few in the vivid, unreal colors of modern film, reds that glowed like lacquer and blues that seemed to be laid on with burnished metal. One of the latter caught Toby’s eye and made him wonder what the hell he was meant to see here. Three middle-aged women in bathing suits, poorly focused and off-center? The swimming pool tilting behind them?

  “In this kind of investigation,” said Kohlwasser, “where we have difficulty identifying key suspects and establishing a motive, we start casting our net more widely. We go outward, we go backward, we scoop up bits and pieces of anything that might be evidence, because we don’t know in this instance what real evidence will look like. Sometimes we find things that are interesting in themselves but have no bearing on the case. Sometimes we hit on something that makes the situation immediately clear. And other times, Mr. Lugan, we find things that make the whole business more complicated.”

  Toby guessed he was referring to the photographs. But if so, he seemed happy for now to let the images speak for themselves. Kohlwasser sat sipping his whiskey and, God damn him, straightening his tie, leaving Toby to make of them what he could. Was this some kind of puzzle—let’s see if your eyes are as sharp as ours? To hell with that.

  “All right,” said Toby, taking no care to hide his exasperation, “so we’ve got some pictures somebody took on the boat. Not a professional, obviously. Here we are by the pool, smiling for the camera. Here’s hubby playing badminton: see, he’s missed the shot and looks so mad—the kids’ll love this one. And here we are out on deck at night, you could probably even see something if I could get this flashbulb to work. Tell me what I’m looking at, Helmut. I don’t have time for this.”

  “Ah!” From Kohlwasser’s expression, you’d have thought Toby was being clever. “But that’s just the point, Mr. Lugan. It’s not what you’re looking at—I should say, it’s not what the photographer was looking at. It’s what the lens captured inadvertently. Remember, we’re on an ocean liner, the ship is crowded, it’s hard to find time to oneself, there are always other people about.”

  “I was there,” said Toby testily.

  “Indeed you were. And you’ll find yourself in some of these photos. Not because you posed for any—you probably weren’t aware a picture was being taken—and not because the camera was aimed at you on purp
ose. Rather, because on a ship with many people and many cameras, such accidents are unavoidable. Now if you will, Mr. Lugan, look at the photos again.”

  He started with the color shot by the swimming pool, tilted at a crazy angle, as though the ship had just heeled hard to starboard. Here were the three women, behind them a kid running with a big inflated ball—you shouldn’t run on deck, your ma should’ve told you that—and in the pool near the edge of the frame were two pallid figures, young men, apparently horsing around, one trying to drag the other under the water.

  “Ah,” said Toby. “Okay, there’s Clairborne. Who’s the other guy?”

  “That would be SS-Obersturmführer von Ewigholz, assigned to accompany young Townsend on the voyage. I believe Clairborne calls him Hagen. I’d imagine you two must have met.”

  “Hagen. Right.” Toby halfway remembered a pro forma introduction, one of a great many. Truth be told, Clair and Toby tended to keep out of each other’s path, but there was no sense in going into that with Kohlwasser.

  He moved on to badminton. Fat man whiffing the birdie, onlookers laughing or trying their level best not to. Give the guy points for trying, was Toby’s view. It was easy to spot Clair this time, though the boy had drawn a hand across his mouth, probably to mask a shit-eating grin. Let’s see you pick up a racket, wiseass. The German stood there with an arm around his shoulders. Good buddies, or at least making out to be. Toby personally doubted Clair had ever been buddies with anyone in his life.

  “Look, Helmut,” he said. “I see you’ve got quite a few pictures of Clairborne, and that’s fine, the one we’ve got is hardly what I’d call a good likeness. But could you just maybe give me some, you know, captions here? I already know the boy was on the damn boat.”

  Kohlwasser’s sigh reminded Toby of teachers he’d had, the ones who liked to say, There’s no such thing as a stupid question until you provided an exception.