The best lessons were the practical ones. They were less boring and more useful. Guerrilla techniques taken from the most recent manuals of the Waffen-S.S., the Führer’s elite troops. Infiltration and exfiltration. Camouflage, map reading and using a compass. Methods for extracting information through interrogation.
And then there was Room 12 of the Alpini Army Corps in Bolzano, a gloomy building some called the Place of Evil.
There the Standartenführer would show him how to tear out fingernails, dislocate joints and strike the soles of the feet in an economical, effective way. In Room 12, Kobold learned not to be afraid of pain.
Pain was not the worst thing that could happen. The worst was waiting for the pain.
That was why Herr Wegener had left Moritz alone for so long. Locked in the tool shed of the villa by the Passer, in the bitter cold, with the shadows growing longer until they merged into the darkness of the night, and his consciousness crying out for an end to it all.
Moritz had had a task to perform. An important task. Following Marlene and telling Herr Wegener of anything unusual in her behaviour, anyone she met, whether or not by chance, which customers gave her one look too many or blatantly flirted with her. And he had to do it without being seen.
If Marlene had noticed she was being followed, Moritz should have informed him. He would have got a tongue lashing, maybe a couple of cracked ribs, nothing more.
But now . . .
13
Moritz was terrified. He sat on the floor, his head between his knees. He looked up at Wegener and began stuttering an apology. “I made a mistake . . .”
“Only one?” Herr Wegener said mockingly.
Moritz corrected himself. “Many, many mistakes, too many, Herr Wegener, and I don’t know how to apologise . . .”
Wegener took the automatic from his belt. “If you say the word ‘apologise’ one more time, I’ll put a bullet through your head. Marlene saw you. Did you realise that?”
It was pointless lying. “Yes.”
“When?”
“A couple of days ago.”
“Are you sure?”
“Maybe a week.”
“And you didn’t say anything to me.”
“I wanted to be sure, sir. I didn’t want you to . . .”
“Get any strange ideas?”
“I don’t know anything about the burglary, sir. It was an oversight on my part. I was distracted. Your wife . . . I’m as surprised as you are.”
“So you also think it was Marlene?”
Moritz swallowed a couple of times.
Wegener began pacing up and down the shed. Three steps forward, then an about-turn. “Tell me about your distraction.”
“It was because of the boredom. Frau Wegener always did the same thing every day. She’d go to work, break for lunch at one o’clock and be back by two. Then at six o’clock she’d go home. Sometimes she’d have coffee in the café next to the boutique with Herr Kerschbaumer and the other employees. Everything was very regular. Always the same route to work and back. Never a deviation.”
“She never met anyone?”
“I’d have told you.”
“You’d have reported it.”
“Of course, sir.”
Herr Wegener brought his face close to Moritz’s. “And how the fuck do you expect me to believe you?” he barked.
“I give you my word, I—”
Herr Wegener grabbed him by the hair, forced him down onto his hands and knees and banged his forehead on the concrete floor, once, twice, three times, until he drew blood. A lot of blood.
Wegener let go of him. Moritz put his hands to his forehead and rolled his eyes.
“Does it hurt?”
“I deserve it.”
Wegener took the safety catch off the gun and pointed it at him. Moritz stretched out his hands. “Please . . .”
“What’s the name of your distraction?”
Moritz replied quickly.
Too quickly.
“There’s nobody, there’s—”
Herr Wegener fired.
The bullet hit Moritz in the ankle. Georg stuck his head around the door of the shed, took a quick look and vanished. Moritz was curled in a foetal position, screaming. Wegener pressed the barrel of the gun to his temple.
“My teacher used to say that shooting isn’t a good method for obtaining information. A gunshot wound reduces the thinking process to nothing and renders a person unable to cooperate. I don’t agree. I think a bullet can produce miracles. Do you want to know how a bullet can turn into a miracle?”
“Yes, sir,” Moritz replied, his face drained of blood, dripping with sweat and tears. “How?”
“You’ll tell me the truth, and I’ll be satisfied. Georg will take you to a doctor, and you’ll have a two-week holiday. When you get back, we’ll shake hands. You’ll limp for the rest of your life, but it’s better to limp than be dead. And if that’s not a miracle, then what the hell is?”
“Helene.”
“The housekeeper?”
“We . . .”
Of course. It was obvious. The housekeeper was an attractive woman. With a little make-up, she would be more than attractive. Wegener could picture the whole thing: the intimacy that comes from working side by side, the exchange of glances, the touch of hands, a stolen kiss.
Then something more daring.
Man is programmed to keep raising the stakes. And it’s also in his nature to get bored once passion has waned. The sex becomes less steamy, the craving turns into a habit, then a bother. And so you get an idea for rekindling your desire: break up the endless hours of surveillance with the thrill of a secret meeting. Danger is the most powerful of aphrodisiacs.
Oh, yes, Wegener could picture it.
He almost didn’t hear the gunshot.
14
He found Helene at her usual place, in the villa’s kitchens. She was sitting by the stove, leafing through a book, a cheap novel with a black-and-white cover. She leaped to her feet as soon as she saw him, her index finger wedged in the pages as a bookmark. She was pale and tense, but did her best to smile at him.
Wegener did not respond to the greeting. He walked up to her without a word, still wearing his coat, the corners of his mouth drooping.
When Helene noticed the revolver Wegener held at his side, she understood and tried to run away, but it was too late. Wegener grabbed her by her blonde plait and pushed her to the ground. She collapsed, winded by the impact.
Wegener sent the book flying with a kick, again seized Helene by the plait, which had come loose, forced her to kneel before him and pressed the automatic to her forehead.
“Right now, Georg is chopping your boyfriend to pieces. Small pieces, because the trout in the Passer are snobs and don’t chew with their mouths open. He won’t be long. Do you know what that means?”
She knew.
“It was his idea,” she said. “Moritz’s. I was getting tired of it. It was boring and never lasted long . . .” She sniffed and stared at him with cold eyes. “He wasn’t much of a lover.”
Wegener smiled. He liked coldness in a woman. It was a rare commodity.
“Did he ever tell you anything about Marlene?”
“No.”
“And did you see anything?”
Helene bit her lip.
“Georg’s nearly done,” Wegener said. “He’ll be here soon.”
“It was only an impression.”
Helene was thinking hard. She did know something, something that put her at risk of also being eaten by the trout. She was weighing the pros and cons. Should she talk and risk being killed, or keep quiet and end up like Moritz anyway?
There was only one way to tip the scales in the right direction, Wegener thought. He had learned that in Room 12. It was to keep silent. He said nothing.
Helene bowed her head. “She had someone else.”
The hand holding the revolver trembled. Herr Wegener’s voice did not. “Do you know who?”
/> Helene shook her head. “It’s just a guess.”
Herr Wegener struck her across the face with the butt of his weapon. She fell onto her side, sobbing.
“It was three weeks ago, sir. I was tidying up your study. Marlene was on the phone. I don’t think she knew I was there.” She spat blood and saliva, then hastened to say, “In fact, I’m sure she didn’t see me or hear me. She was speaking softly and twisting the telephone cord around her finger, like this . . .”
She twisted her hair between her index and middle finger, mimicking the gesture.
“What was she saying?”
“She was speaking softly. All I heard was a name.”
“What name?”
Helene stared at him. “You’re going to kill me after I tell you.”
“The name.”
“Klaus.”
Herr Wegener lowered the revolver and tucked it into his belt. He turned, went over to a large fridge humming a small distance away, opened the door and took out a bottle.
Vodka. He liked it ice cold.
“I don’t know any Klaus.”
“It’s not for you to know him, sir.”
It was a sharp reply. Herr Wegener poured vodka into two metal cups.
“Get up. Drink.”
Helene obeyed. Her face was a mask of blood. There was a swollen open wound under her earlobe.
“You’ll need stitches,” Herr Wegener murmured.
“It doesn’t hurt that much,” she said, sipping at her vodka.
“You heard her on the phone. You heard her use the name Klaus. How can you be sure it was her”– here there was a brief hesitation – “her lover?”
Helene downed the contents of the cup in a single gulp. Liquid courage. “She was smiling when she said it.”
“Is that supposed to mean something to me?”
Helene placed her fingers on her wound, lifted them to look at them, then wiped them on her apron. “There’s the smile you give the postman, the one you give a stranger on the bus. There’s the ‘How are you today, darling?’ smile. And then there’s that smile. Every woman knows it.”
Herr Wegener nodded. “The way girls smile when they’re in love?”
“Yes, sir.”
Helene was about to add something when Georg appeared. He took in the housekeeper’s bloodstained face, the bottle of vodka, then Wegener.
Wegener ignored him.
Helene shuddered.
“Can you show me the smile, please?” Wegener said to her. “That smile? I’d like to understand.”
“This is how she was smiling. Like this.”
She had a beautiful smile. Had Marlene ever smiled at him like that? He couldn’t remember.
“Carry on. I like it. Don’t stop.”
Helene continued to smile.
Wegener grabbed one of the knives from the rack next to the steel sink and plunged it between her shoulder blades. She stopped smiling. She tried to defend herself, kicking and punching him. Wegener pushed deeper, then twisted the blade.
Helene stopped kicking. A death rattle, then she stopped breathing, too.
Wegener left the room.
Georg remained. He took some black rubbish bags and bleach from under the sink. Luckily, the kitchen was the only room in the villa that wasn’t carpeted. Removing blood from carpets was a real pain. There was always the risk you would have to throw them away.
15
She closed her eyes again immediately. She had to. She was nauseous, there was a sour taste in her mouth, a slight whistling in her ears, and her head was pounding. Only her sense of smell was intact. And that was something she could not ignore.
Soot, burnt wood, cold. The cold had a specific smell. Like ozone or lightning, but more pungent and metallic, like congealed blood.
She recognised these smells. She recognised the lumps in the mattress that dug into her back, and the texture of the blankets in which she was wrapped. They meant poverty.
Soot, poverty, cold. For a moment, Marlene was swamped with memories: cows in the shed, the stench of manure, stale polenta morning and night, her father’s boots propped against the stove, her mother’s face.
Her mother’s face made her open her eyes wide and accept reality. Her mother had been (crazycrazycrazy) dead for a long time, and she didn’t want to think about her. Not now. Not ever.
Even with her eyes open, it was almost impossible to distinguish reality from memory. The room in which Marlene had just woken was exactly like the one where she had spent the first years of her life. Walls covered in pine, a narrow window, a polished wardrobe, stale smoke. Even the rickety chair on which her jacket lay was almost identical to the one on which, as a child and a teenager, she had kept her clothes folded.
As soon as the sense of déjà vu faded, the pain came. She lifted her hands to her forehead and felt the texture of a bandage. She pressed gently. A moan escaped her lips.
She remembered.
The Mercedes skidding, the fir trees so distinct they looked fake, the crash, the blood on the steering wheel, then a series of grainy images: a man in a black hat bending over her, picking her up and heaving her over his shoulder. A man with very pale blue eyes.
As he walked through the snow he sang softly.
She could not remember the words to the lullaby, only the tone in which the man had sung them. A gentle tone.
The pain subsided.
Marlene took a closer look around. There was a candle on the bedside table, but nothing to light it with. Light barely filtered through the closed blinds on the window. She noticed that there was dry moss stuffed under the window frame: an old trick for stopping draughts. She blew gently, and her breath condensed into a small cloud.
Old tricks aren’t always the best. A coherent thought at last.
Come on, you can do it.
Lifting herself from the bed and placing her feet on the floor was torture; bending down and putting on her shoes, agony. Getting up made her so dizzy; it took all her willpower to get it under control.
She had never felt so weak.
She staggered to the chair and felt her padded jacket. The pouch with the sapphires was still there, safe in the inside pocket. Thank goodness. Those gemstones were the only thing she could rely on. Marlene did not know where she was or who had brought her here. She did not even know what time it was, she realised. Her watch had stopped, and she couldn’t tell the time of day by peering through the blinds. There was too much snow.
It was important to know the right time. A lot of things depended on it.
But first, she had to get out of here.
She opened the door.
“Anybody there?”
No answer.
She risked a few steps in the dark.
“Anyone there?” she said again in a louder voice.
Still no answer.
She saw a staircase and a glow of warm light coming from below.
Once again, that sense of déjà vu. But no recollection, no dream. There was a simple explanation. A fork, she told herself, is a fork, even at the North Pole. A fork consists of a handle for holding and prongs for skewing. A maso consisted of a barn, a water fountain, racks for brown bread, a room for smoking speck (you need three things to make speck, her father always said: salt, smoke and clean air), an outside toilet, a shed for the animals, a cellar for storing wine and oil and – the most important room – the Stube.
A maso would always be a maso, even at the North Pole.
She went down the creaking stairs, making sure she held firm to the banisters. At the bottom was the Stube, exactly as she had expected it to be. A table with a bench against the wall and a couple of rickety chairs. A sturdy larchwood door almost hidden under the stairs, which probably led to the cellar where wine and oil were stored. Different timber to break up the monotony of the pinewood walls. A large, soot-darkened pot simmering on the fire.
Seen one, seen them all.
Or almost.
The mess and filth of t
his Stube provided further proof that, no, she wasn’t dreaming. And it wasn’t a memory either. Not even when times were bad had Mamma allowed so much dirt to accumulate. Whenever Mamma lost her mind she would do nothing but clean, clean then clean some more.
But Mamma was dead, and Marlene didn’t want to think about her. Ever again.
Instead, she focused on the stuffed animals strewn all over the room: on the mantelpiece, the shelves, on top of the cupboards. They were not trophies to flatter a hunter’s vanity. They had a specific name: Vulpendingen. Marlene had heard of them but had never actually seen one. There were about twenty here.
A Vulpendingen was a joke. A non-existent animal, stuffed by assembling random pieces of game, with the sole purpose of surprising the viewer and having a laugh. The ones heaped up around her were seriously amazing.
A fox with a chough’s wings and a bushy, glossy squirrel’s tail. A grouse with a stone marten’s head and the tiny wings of a wren. A wolf’s head with bat wings instead of ears. That one must be quite old, Marlene thought. Wolves and bears had been extinct for almost a century in South Tyrol.
She went closer and touched its muzzle. In the warmth of the Stube, the wolf seemed almost to be breathing.
She kept stroking it while her eyes searched for a clock. There was always a clock in a Stube. A clock and a calendar.
Seen one, seen them all.
So they had to be there, hanging on the wall somewhere. Except that she couldn’t find them.
Once again, this maso was different.
Shit.
It was important to know what time it was. She had calculated a narrow window for her escape. Moreover, depending on the time, she would be able to tell what Wegener was doing, work out who he was in the process of “interrogating” and the information he would be obtaining.
The scrapyard? Moritz? Or worse?
In order to work it out, though, she needed a clock, and in this Stube there were Vulpendingen, plus a hundred or so statuettes of animals carved in wood – a goat, an eagle, a bull, a wolf, squirrels in various poses, a whole litter of sows and smiling piglets and a large ibex with a broken horn thrown in a corner next to the firewood – but no clocks.
Sanctuary Page 5