Six Graves to Munich

by Mario Puzo

  “No,” Rogan said. He and Rosalie returned to the car.

  Back in their room, Rosalie asked, “What will you do now?”

  “I’ll have to gamble,” he said. “I’ll go to Sicily and track down Genco Bari. If everything works out OK, I’ll fly to Budapest and see about Wenta Pajerski. Then I’ll come back to von Osteen here in Munich.”

  Rosalie said, “What about your entry visa? Bailey will have that canceled.”

  Rogan said drily, “I used to be in the spy business too. I’ll find a way to get a phony passport or a phony visa. And if Bailey gets too close, I’ll just have to forget he’s a fellow American.”

  Rosalie said, “What about me?”

  He didn’t answer her for a long time. “I’m making arrangements so that you’ll get enough money to live on every month. A trust fund that will go on, no matter what happens.”

  “You’re not taking me with you?” Rosalie asked.

  “I can’t,” Rogan said. “I’d have to get you papers. And I’d never be able to lose Bailey if I took you along.”

  “Then I’ll wait for you here in Munich,” she said.

  “OK. But you have to get used to the idea of my not being around some time. The chances are a million to one against my making it all the way. They’ll nail me for sure when I get von Osteen.”

  Gratefully she leaned her head against his shoulder. “I don’t care,” she said. “Just let me wait for you; please let me wait for you.”

  He stroked her blond hair. “Sure, sure,” he said. “Now will you do something for me?”

  She nodded.

  “I was looking at the map,” Rogan said. “We can drive to Bublingshausen in four hours. I think it would be good for you to see it again. Will you go back?”

  He felt her whole body go tense, her back arch in terror. “Oh, no,” she said. “Oh, no!”

  He held her quivering body close. “We’ll drive through very quickly,” he said. “You’ll see how it is. Now. Then maybe you won’t see so clearly how it was before. Maybe everything will blur. Try. I’ll drive through very fast, I promise. Remember, that’s the first thing you told the doctor—that you wanted to go back to Bublingshausen?”

  Her body had stopped shaking. “All right,” she said. “I’ll go back. With you.”

  CHAPTER 10

  The next morning they loaded the Opel with Rogan’s things. They had decided that from Bublingshausen they would drive on to Frankfurt, where Rogan could catch a plane to Sicily and look for Genco Bari. Rosalie would take the train back to Munich and wait for Rogan there. Rogan had reassured her. “When I finish in Sicily and Budapest I’ll come back here for Osteen. And I’ll come straight to the pension, first thing.” In this he had lied. He planned to see her again only if he killed von Osteen and managed to stay free.

  The Opel sped along the German roads. Rosalie sat as far away from Rogan as possible, huddled against her door, head turned away. Near midday Rogan asked, “Do you want to stop for lunch?” She shook her head. As they came nearer and nearer to Bublingshausen, Rosalie hunched farther and farther down in her seat. Rogan swung the Opel off the main autobahn, and then they were entering the city of Wetzlar, whose great optical works had been the original target of the American bombers that had killed her father and mother. The Opel moved slowly through the heavy city traffic, then finally came to the yellow sign, with its arrow pointed toward the suburban road, that read “Bublingshausen.” Rosalie buried her face in her hands so that she would not be able to see.

  Rogan drove slowly. When they entered the village he studied it carefully. There were no scars of war. It had been completely rebuilt, only the houses were no longer made of gingerbread wood, but of concrete and steel. Children played in the streets. “We’re here,” he said. “Look up.”

  Rosalie kept her head in her hands. She didn’t answer. Rogan made the car go very slowly, easier to control; then he reached over and pulled Rosalie’s blond head out of her hands, forcing her to look at her childhood village.

  What happened then surprised him. She turned on him with anger and said, “This is not my village. You’ve made a mistake. I don’t recognize anything here.” But then the street made a turn, heading out toward open country, and there were the fenced-in plots of ground, private gardens, each gate with its owner’s name printed on a varnished yellow board. Wildly Rosalie turned her head to look back at the village, then at the gardens. He could see the recognition dawning in her eyes. She started fumbling with the door handle and Rogan stopped the car. Then Rosalie was out and running across the road onto the grassy earth of the gardens, running awkwardly. She stopped and looked up into the sky, and then finally she turned her head toward Bublingshausen. Rogan could see her body arch with her inward agony, and when she crumpled to the ground he got out of the car and ran to her.

  She was sitting awkwardly, legs splayed out, and she was weeping. Rogan had never seen anyone weep with such grief. She was wailing like a small child, wailing that would have been comical if it had not been so powerfully wrung from her guts. She tore at the earth with her painted fingernails, as if she were trying to inflict pain on it. Rogan stood beside her, waiting, but she gave no sign that she knew he was there.

  Two young girls, no more than fourteen, came down the road from Bublingshausen. They carried gardening sacks over their arms and they chatted gaily together. They entered the gates of their families’ gardens and began digging. Rosalie raised her head to watch them, and they gave her curious, envious glances. Envious of her fine clothes, envious of the obviously wealthy man who stood beside her. Rosalie stopped weeping. She tucked her legs beneath her and put a hand on Rogan’s leg to make him sit on the grass beside her.

  Then she cradled her head against his shoulder and wept quietly for a very long time. He understood that finally now, for the first time, she could grieve for her lost father and mother, her brother in his cold Russian grave. And he understood that as a young girl she had gone into some terrible shock that prevented her from consciously accepting her loss, but that had instead driven her into schizophrenia and the asylum. She had a chance now to get over it, Rogan thought.

  When she had finished weeping, Rosalie sat for a while staring at the village of Bublingshausen and then at the two young girls digging in their gardens. The girls kept glancing up at Rosalie, devouring her expensive clothes with their eyes, coolly inspecting her beauty.

  Rogan helped Rosalie to her feet. “Those two girls envy you,” he said.

  She nodded and smiled sadly. “I envy them.”

  They drove on to Frankfurt and Rogan returned the car to the rental agency office at the airport. Rosalie waited with him until takeoff time. Before he walked down the ramp, she said to him, “Can’t you forget the rest of them; can’t you let them live?”

  Rogan shook his head.

  Rosalie clung to him. “If I lose you now it would be the end of me. I know it. Please let the others go.”

  Rogan said gently, “I can’t. Maybe I could forget about Genco Bari and the Hungarian, Wenta Pajerski. But I could never forgive Klaus von Osteen. And since I have to kill him, I have to kill the others. That’s the way it is.”

  She still clung to him. “Let von Osteen go,” she said. “It doesn’t matter. Let him stay alive and then you’ll stay alive, and I’ll be happy, I can live happily.”

  “I can’t,” he said.

  “I know. He killed your wife and he tried to kill you. But everybody was trying to kill each other then.” She shook her head. “Their crime against you was murder. But it was everybody’s crime then. You would have to kill the whole world to get your revenge.”

  Rogan pushed her away from him. “I know all that, everything you’ve just said. I’ve thought about it all these years. I might have forgiven them for killing and torturing Christine. I might have forgiven them for torturing and trying to kill me. But von Osteen did something that I can never forgive. He did something to me that makes it impossible for me to live on th
e same planet with him, as long as he’s alive. He destroyed me without bullets, without even raising his voice. He was crueler than all the others.” Rogan paused, and he could feel the blood begin to pound against the plate in his skull. “In my dreams I kill him, and then I bring him back to life so I can kill him again.”

  They were calling the number of his flight over the loudspeaker. Rosalie kissed him hurriedly and whispered, “I’ll wait in Munich for you. In the same pension. Don’t forget me.”

  Rogan kissed her eyes and mouth. “For the first time I hope I come through it alive,” he said. “Before, I didn’t care. I won’t forget you.” He turned and walked down the ramp to the plane.

  CHAPTER 11

  Flying over Germany in twilight, Rogan could see how the country had rebuilt itself. The rubbled cities of 1945 had sprung back with more factory smoke-stacks, taller steel spires. But there were still ugly scabs of burned-out sections visible from the sky, the pockmarks of war.

  He was in Palermo and checked into its finest hotel before midnight, already starting his search. He had asked the hotel manager if he knew anyone in the city by the name of Genco Bari. The hotel manager had shrugged and spread his arms wide. Palermo, after all, had over 400,000 people. He could hardly be expected to know all of them, could he, signore?

  The next morning, Rogan contracted a firm of private detectives to track down Genco Bari. He gave them a generous retainer and promised them a large bonus if they were successful. Then he made the rounds of those official bureaux he thought might help him. He went to the United States consulate, the Sicilian chief of police, the publishing office of Palermo’s biggest newspaper. None of them knew anything of or anyone named Genco Bari.

  It seemed impossible to Rogan that his search would not be successful. Genco Bari must be a wealthy man, a man of substance, since he was a member of the Mafia. Then he realized that this was the hitch. Nobody, no one at all would give him information on a Mafia chief. In Sicily the law of omertà ruled. Omertà, the code of silence, was an ancient tradition of these people: Never give information of any kind to any of the authorities. The punishment for breaking the code was swift and sure death, and not to be risked to satisfy the mere curiosity of a foreigner. In the face of omertà the police chief and the firm of private detectives were helpless in their quest for information. Or perhaps they, too, did not break the unwritten law.

  At the end of the first week, Rogan was about to move on to Budapest when he received a surprise caller at his hotel. It was Arthur Bailey, the Berlin-based American Intelligence agent.

  Bailey held out a protesting hand, a friendly smile on his face. “I’m here to help,” he said. “I found out you’ve got too much drag in Washington to be pushed around, so I might as well. Of course I have my selfish motive, too. I want to keep you from accidentally ruining a lot of our groundwork in setting up information systems in Europe.”

  Rogan looked at him thoughtfully for a long moment. It was impossible to doubt the man’s sincerity and warm friendliness. “Fine,” he said at last. “You can start off helping me by telling me where to find Genco Bari.” He offered the lean American a drink.

  Bailey sat down, relaxed, and sipped his Scotch. “Sure, I can tell you that,” he said. “But first you have to promise that you’ll let me help you all the way. After Genco Bari you’ll go after Pajerski in Budapest and then von Osteen in Munich, or vice versa. I want you to promise to follow my advice. I don’t want you caught. If you are, you’ll wreck Intelligence contacts it’s taken the United States years and millions of dollars to set up.”

  Rogan didn’t smile or act particularly friendly. “OK. Just tell me where Bari is—and make sure I get a visa for Budapest.”

  Bailey sipped his drink. “Genco Bari is living in his walled estate just outside the village of Villalba in central Sicily. The necessary Hungarian visas will be waiting for you in Rome whenever you’re ready. And in Budapest I want you to contact the Hungarian interpreter at the United States consulate. His name is Rakol. He’ll give you all the help you need and arrange your exit from the country. Fair enough?”

  “Sure,” Rogan said. “And when I get back to Munich do I contact you, or will you contact me?”

  “I’ll contact you,” Bailey said. “Don’t worry. I’ll be able to find you.”

  Bailey finished his drink. Rogan saw him to the elevator and Bailey said casually, “After you killed those first four guys, that gave us enough of a lead to break your Munich Palace of Justice case wide open. That’s how I know about Bari, Pajerski, and von Osteen.”

  Rogan smiled politely. “That’s what I figured,” he said. “But since I found them by myself, it doesn’t matter what you found out. Right?”

  Bailey gave him an odd look, shook hands, and just before getting into the elevator said, “Good luck.”

  As Bailey knew the whereabouts of Genco Bari, Rogan realized that everyone else must have known too—the police chief, the private detectives, probably even the hotel manager. Genco Bari was one of the big Mafia leaders of Sicily; his name was no doubt known throughout the country.

  He rented a car to drive the fifty-odd miles to Villalba. It struck him that he would quite possibly never leave this island alive, and that the last criminals would remain unpunished. But that didn’t seem to matter so much now. As it did not matter that he had made up his mind not to see Rosalie again. He had arranged for her to receive money from his estate once she had been in touch with the office. She would forget about him and make a new life. Nothing mattered at the moment except killing Genco Bari. And Rogan thought about that man in the Italian uniform. The only man of the seven in the high-domed room in the Munich Palace of Justice who had treated him with any genuine warmth. And yet he, too, had taken part in the final betrayal.

  On that final terrible morning in the Munich Palace of Justice, Klaus von Osteen had smiled in the shadows behind his great desk, as Hans and Eric Freisling had urged Rogan to change into his “freedom clothes.” Genco Bari had said nothing; he’d merely looked at him with gentle pitying eyes. Finally he had crossed the room and stood in front of Rogan. He had helped Rogan knot his tie, had patted it securely inside Rogan’s jacket. He had distracted Rogan so that Rogan had never seen Eric Freisling slip behind him with the gun. Bari, too, had taken a hand in the final humiliating cruelty of the execution. And it was because of Bari’s humanity that Rogan could not forgive him. Moltke had been a selfish, self-serving man; Karl Pfann, a brutal animal. The Freisling brothers were evil incarnate. What they had done could be expected, springing as it did out of their very natures. But Genco Bari had exuded a human warmth, and his taking part in torture and execution was a deliberate, malignant degeneracy; unforgivable.

  Now driving through the starry Sicilian night, Rogan thought of all the years he had dreamed of his revenge. How it had been the one thing that had kept him from dying. And when they had thrown him on the pile of corpses stacked outside the Munich Palace of Justice, even then when his shattered brain oozed blood and flickered with only a tiny spark, how that tiny spark had been kept alive by the energy of sheer hatred.

  And now that he was no longer with Rosalie, now that he planned not to see her again, his memories of his dead wife seemed to flood back into his being. He thought, Christine, Christine, you would have loved this starry night, the balmy air of Sicily. You always trusted and liked everyone. You never understood the work I was doing, not really. You never understood what would happen to all of us if we were captured. When I heard your screams in the Munich Palace of Justice, it was the surprise in your screams that made them so terrifying. You could not believe that human beings did such terrible things to their fellow human beings.

  She had been beautiful: long legs for a French girl, with rounded thighs; a slim waist and small shy breasts that grew bold beneath his hand; lovely soft brown hair like overflowing silk; and charmingly serious eyes. Her lips, full and sensual, had had the same character and honesty as he’d seen in her eyes. />
  What had they done to her before she died? Bari, Pfann, Moltke, the Freislings, Pajerski, and von Osteen? How had they made her scream so; how had they killed her? He had never asked any of the others because they would have lied to him. Pfann and Moltke would have made it seem less terrible; the Freisling brothers would have invented gory details to make him suffer even now. Only Genco Bari would tell him the truth. For some reason Rogan was sure of this. He would finally learn how his pregnant wife had died. He would learn what had caused those terrible screams, the screams that the torturers had recorded and preserved so carefully.

  CHAPTER 12

  He reached the town of Villalba at 11:30 p.m. and was surprised to find it brilliantly lighted, hundreds of colored lanterns strung in arches over every street. From gaily decorated wooden booths lining the cobblestone pavements, villagers offered hot sausages for sale, and wine, and thick Sicilian pizza squares with oily anchovies buried in a rich bed of tomato sauce. The smell filled the night air and made Rogan ravenous. He stopped the car and devoured a sandwich of sausage until his mouth felt on fire from the hot spicy meat. Then he moved to the next booth to buy a glass of tart red wine.

  He had come to Villalba on the birthday of the town’s patron saint, Saint Cecilia. As was the custom, the people of the town were celebrating the birthday of their saint with a great fiesta that would last three days. Rogan had arrived on the evening of the fiesta’s second day. By this time everybody, including some of the small children, was drunk on the new, tart Sicilian wine. They greeted Rogan with open arms. And when they heard him speak his almost perfect Italian the wine merchant, a huge fat man with big mustaches who said his name was Tullio, embraced Rogan.