Six Graves to Munich

by Mario Puzo

  The first morning von Osteen arrived before the others he put a cigarette in Rogan’s mouth and lit it. Then he spoke, not questioning, but explaining his own position. He, von Osteen, was doing his duty for the Fatherland by interrogating Rogan. Rogan was not to think it was a personal thing. He had an affection for Rogan. Rogan was almost young enough to be the son he never had. It distressed him that Rogan was being stubborn. What possible purpose could such childish defiance have? The secret codes in Rogan’s brain would no longer be used by the Allies, that was certain. A sufficient time had elapsed to render useless any information he gave them. Why could not Rogan end this foolishness and save them all suffering? For the torturers suffered with the tortured. Did he think they did not?

  Then he reassured Rogan. The questioning would end. The war would end. Rogan and his wife Christine would be together again and happy again. The fever of war and murder would be over, and human beings would not have to fear each other any longer. Rogan was not to despair. And von Osteen would pat Rogan’s shoulder comfortingly.

  But when the other interrogators sauntered into the room von Osteen’s manner would change. Again he became the chief interrogator. His deep-set eyes bored into Rogan’s eyes. His melodious voice became harsh, strident. Yet curiously enough it was the harshness of a strict father with a note of love for his wayward child. There was something so magnetic, so powerful in von Osteen’s personality that Rogan believed the role von Osteen played: that the interrogation was just; that he, Rogan, had brought the physical pain upon himself.

  Then had come the days when he heard Christine’s screams from the next room. On those days von Osteen had not arrived early in the morning, had always arrived last. And then there was that terrible day when they had let him into the next room and showed him the phonograph and the spinning record that preserved Christine’s agony. Von Osteen had said smilingly, “She died on the first day of torture. We’ve tricked you.” And Rogan, hating him at that moment with such intensity, had become ill, bile spilling out of his mouth onto his prison clothing.

  Von Osteen had lied even then. Genco Bari said that Christine had died during childbirth, and Rogan believed Bari. But why did von Osteen lie? Why did he wish his people to seem more evil than they actually were? And then Rogan, remembering, realized the brilliant psychology behind von Osteen’s every word and deed.

  The hatred he felt for those who had killed his wife had made him want to stay alive. He wanted to stay alive so that he could kill them all and smile down at their own tortured bodies. And it was this hatred, this hope for revenge, that had crumbled his resistance and in the following months made him start giving his interrogators all the secret codes he could remember.

  Von Osteen started coming early again, the first one in the interrogation room. Again he began to console Rogan, his voice magnetic with understanding. After the first few days he always unshackled Rogan’s arms and legs and brought him coffee and cigarettes for breakfast. He kept assuring Rogan that he would be set free as soon as the codes were completed. And then one morning he came in very early, closed and locked the door of the high-domed room behind him, and said to Rogan, “I must tell you a secret which you must promise not to reveal.” Rogan nodded. Von Osteen, his face grave and friendly, said, “Your wife is still alive. Yesterday she gave birth to a baby boy. They are both doing well, they are both being well cared for. And I give you my solemn word of honor that the three of you will be united when you have finished giving us all the information we need. But you must not breathe a word of this to the others. They may cause trouble, since I am exceeding the bounds of my authority by making you this promise.”

  Rogan was stunned. He searched von Osteen’s face to see if the man was lying. But there was no doubting the kind sincerity in the German’s eyes, the gentle goodness that seemed to be the very essence of his facial bones. Rogan believed. And the thought that Christine was alive, that he would see her beautiful face again, that he would hold her soft slender body in his arms again, that she was not dead and under the earth—all this made him break down and weep. Von Osteen patted him on the shoulder, saying softly in his hypnotic voice, “I know, I know. I am sorry I could not tell you sooner. It was all a trick, you see, part of my job. But now it’s no longer necessary and I wanted to make you happy.”

  He made Rogan dry his tears, and then he unlocked the door to the interrogation room. The other six men were waiting outside, coffee cups in their hands. They seemed angry at being shut out, angry that their leader was in some way allied to their victim.

  That night in his cell Rogan dreamed of Christine and the baby son he had never seen. Oddly enough the baby’s face was very clear in his dream, fat and pink-cheeked, but Christine’s face was hidden in shadows. When he called to her she came out of the shadows, and he could see her, see that she was happy. He dreamed of them every night.

  Five days later it was Rosenmontag, and when von Osteen came into the room he was carrying an armful of civilian clothing. He smiled a genuinely happy smile and said to Rogan, “Today is the day I keep my promise to you.” And then the other six men crowded into the room. They congratulated Rogan as if they were professors who had helped him graduate from school with honors. Rogan started putting on the clothes. Genco Bari helped to knot his tie, but Rogan kept his eyes on von Osteen, asking a mute question with his eyes, asking if he would see his wife and child. And von Osteen understood and nodded his head, secretively, reassuringly. Someone clapped the fedora on Rogan’s head.

  As he stood there looking at their smiling faces he realized one of them was missing. Then he felt the cold muzzle of the gun against the back of his neck and the hat tilted forward over his eyes. In that one-millionth of a second he understood everything and sent a last despairing look at von Osteen, crying out in his mind, “Father, Father, I believed. Father, I forgave all your torture, your treachery. I forgive you for murdering my wife and giving me hope. Save me now. Save me now.” And the last thing he saw before the back of his skull exploded was von Osteen’s gentle face contorting into a devil’s mocking laugh.

  Now lying in bed beside Rosalie, Rogan knew that killing von Osteen just once would not be enough to satisfy him. There should be a way of bringing him back to life and killing him over and over again. For von Osteen had searched out the very essence of the humanity in both of them, and for no more than a joke, betrayed it.

  When Rogan awoke the next morning Rosalie already had breakfast waiting for him. The room had no kitchen, but she used a hot plate to make coffee and had brought some rolls. While they ate she told him that Klaus von Osteen was not sitting in court that day but would be sentencing a convicted prisoner the next morning. They reviewed everything she knew about von Osteen—what she’d told Rogan before he’d gone to Sicily and what she’d learned later. Von Osteen was a powerful political figure in Munich and had the backing of the U.S. State Department for a higher climb to power. As a judge, von Osteen had a twenty-four- hour guard at his home and when he went outside. He was without personal guards only in the Munich Palace of Justice, which swarmed with its own complement of security police. Rosalie also told Rogan about her job as a nurse’s aide in the Munich Palace of Justice.

  Rogan smiled at her. “Can you get me in there without my being seen?”

  Rosalie nodded. “If you must go there,” she said.

  Rogan didn’t answer for a moment. Then he said, “Tomorrow morning.”

  After she had gone off to work, Rogan went out to do his own errands. He bought the gun-cleaning packet he needed to disassemble and oil the Walther pistol. Then he rented a Mercedes and parked it a block away from the pension. He went back up to the room and wrote some letters, one to his lawyer in the States, another to his business partners. He put the letters in his pocket to post after Rosalie came home from work. Then he took apart the Walther pistol, cleaned it thoroughly, and put it back together again. He put the silencer in a bureau drawer. He wanted to be absolutely accurate this last time, a
nd he was not sure he could get close enough to compensate for the loss of accuracy the silencer caused.

  When Rosalie came home he asked, “Is von Osteen sitting tomorrow for sure?”

  “Yes.” She paused a moment, then asked, “Shall we go out to eat, or do you want me to bring something into the room?”

  “Let’s go out,” Rogan said. He dropped his letters into the first post box they passed.

  They had dinner at the famous Brauhaus, where the beer steins never held less than a quart and twenty kinds of sausages were served as appetizers. The evening paper, Tagenblatt, had a story about the killing of Wenta Pajerski in Budapest. The democratic underground believed responsible for the murder had been smashed by a series of secret police raids, the paper reported. Fortunately, the bomb had injured no one but the intended victim.

  “Did you plan it that way?” Rosalie asked.

  Rogan shrugged. “I did my best when I booby-trapped the chess piece. But you can never tell. I was worried one of those waitresses might get a stray fragment. A lucky thing Pajerski was a big guy. He soaked it all up.”

  “And now there is only von Osteen,” Rosalie said. “Would it make any difference if I told you that he seems like a good man?”

  Rogan laughed harshly. “It wouldn’t surprise me,” he said. “And it doesn’t make any difference.”

  They didn’t speak about it, but they both knew it could well be their last evening together. They didn’t want to go back to their room with its green sofa and narrow bed. So they drifted from one great barnlike beer hall to another, drinking schnapps, listening to the happy Germans singing, watching them gulp countless quarts of beer at long wooden tables. The huge Bavarians wolfed links of fat little sausages and washed them down with towering, frothy steins of golden beer. Those who were momentarily sated fought their way through thick, malt-reeking crowds to the marbled bathrooms, to make use of the special vomiting bowls big enough to drown in. They vomited up all they had consumed, then fought their way back to the wooden tables and clamored for more sausages and beer, only to return to the bathrooms and get rid of it once again.

  They were disgusting, but they were alive and warm, so warm their heat made the huge beer halls hot as ovens. Rogan kept drinking schnapps while Rosalie switched to beer. Finally, having drunk enough to be sleepy, they started walking to their pension.

  When they passed the parked Mercedes, Rogan told Rosalie, “That’s the car I rented. We’ll take it to the courthouse tomorrow morning and park it near your entrance. If I don’t come out you just drive away and leave Munich. Don’t come looking for me. OK?”

  “OK,” she said. Her voice was tremulous, so he held her hand to keep her from crying. She pulled her hand away, but it was only to take the key from her purse. They entered the pension, and as they mounted the stairs she took his hand again. She released it only to unlock the door to their room. She entered and switched on the lights. Behind her, Rogan heard her gasp of fright. Seated on the green sofa was the Intelligence agent Arthur Bailey; closing the door behind them was Stefan Vrostk. Vrostk held a gun in his right hand. Both men were smiling a little.

  “Welcome home,” Bailey said to Rogan. “Welcome back to Munich.”

  CHAPTER 18

  Rogan smiled reassuringly at Rosalie. “Go and sit down. Nothing is going to happen. I’ve been expecting them.” He turned to Bailey. “Tell your fink to stash his weapon and you do the same. You’re not going to use them. And you’re not going to stop me from doing what I have to do.”

  Bailey put away his gun and motioned to Vrostk. He said to Rogan very slowly, very sincerely, “We came to help you out. I was just worried that maybe you’d gone kill-crazy. I thought you might just start blasting away if you found us here, so I figured I’d get the drop and then explain.”

  “Explain away,” Rogan said.

  “Interpol is on to you,” Bailey said. “They’ve hooked you up with all the murders, and they’re processing copies of all your passport photos. They traced you to Munich; I got the Teletype in my Munich branch office just an hour ago. They think you’re here to kill somebody, and they’re trying to find out who. That’s the only thing you’ve got going for you. That nobody knows who you’re after.”

  Rogan sat on the bed opposite the dusty green sofa. “Come off it, Bailey,” he said. “You know who I’m after.”

  Bailey shook his head. His lean, handsome face took on a worried look. “You’ve become paranoiac,” he said. “I’ve helped you all along. I haven’t told them anything.”

  Rogan leaned back on the pillow. His voice was very calm. “I’ll give you this much credit. At the beginning you didn’t know who the seven men in the Munich Palace of Justice were. But by the time I came back you had a dossier on every one of them. When I saw you a few months ago, the time you came to tell me to lay off the Freisling brothers, you knew all seven. But you were not going to let me know. After all, an intelligence network operating against the Communists is more important than an atrocity victim getting his revenge. Isn’t that how you Intelligence guys figure?”

  Bailey didn’t answer. He was watching Rogan intently. Rogan went on. “After I killed the Freisling brothers you knew nothing would stop me. And you wanted Genco Bari and Wenta Pajerski knocked off. But I was never supposed to get away from Budapest alive.” He turned to Vrostk. “Isn’t that right?”

  Vrostk flushed. “All arrangements were made for your escape. I cannot help it if you are a headstrong person who insists on going his own way.”

  Rogan said contemptuously, “You lousy bastard. I went by the consulate just to check you out. There was no car waiting, and the whole neighborhood was crawling with cops. You tipped them off. I was never supposed to get to Munich; I was supposed to die behind the Iron Curtain. And that would have solved all your Intelligence problems.”

  “You’re insulting me,” Bailey said. “You’re accusing me of having you betrayed to the Communist secret police.” His voice held a tone of such sincere outrage that Rosalie glanced doubtfully at Rogan.

  “You know, if I were still a kid in the war you would have fooled me just now. But after the time I spent in the Munich Palace of Justice I see through guys like you. I had you all the way, Bailey; you never fooled me for a second. In fact, when I came to Munich I knew you’d be waiting, and I thought of tracking you down and killing you first. Then I figured it wouldn’t be necessary. And I didn’t want to kill someone just because he got in my way. But you’re no better than those seven men. If you’d been there you’d have done what they did. Maybe you have. How about it, Bailey? How many guys have you tortured? How many guys have you murdered?”

  Rogan paused to light a cigarette. He looked directly into Bailey’s eyes when he started to speak again. “The seventh man, the chief interrogator, the man who tortured my wife and recorded her screams, is Judge Klaus von Osteen. The highest- ranking federal judge in Bavaria. The politician with the brightest future, maybe the next chancellor of West Germany. Backed by our State Department. And in the pocket of the American Intelligence apparatus. So you can’t afford to have him killed by me, and you certainly can’t have him arrested for war crimes.”

  Rogan stubbed out his cigarette. “To keep me from killing von Osteen, to keep the story of his being a Gestapo man a secret, I had to be destroyed. You ordered Vrostk to betray me to the Hungarian secret police. Isn’t that right, Bailey? Simple, airtight, cleanhanded, just the way you sincere Intelligence types like it.”

  Vrostk said in his arrogant-sounding voice, “What is to stop us from silencing you now?” Bailey gave his subordinate a weary look of impatience. Rogan laughed.

  “Bailey, tell your fink why he can’t,” Rogan said, amused. When Bailey remained silent Rogan went on, speaking directly to Vrostk. “You’re too stupid to figure out what I’ve done, but your boss knows. I’ve sent letters to people in the States I can trust. If I die, von Osteen will be exposed, American diplomacy will be discredited. American Intelligence here in
Europe will get it in the neck from Washington. So you can’t kill me. If I’m captured—same thing. Von Osteen will be exposed, so you can’t inform on me. You have to settle for breaking even. You have to hope that I kill von Osteen and nobody ever finds out why. I won’t insist on your helping me. That would be asking too much.”

  Vrostk’s mouth hung open in shock. Bailey stood up to go. “You’ve got it figured out pretty good,” he said to Rogan. “Everything you said is true, I won’t deny it. Vrostk took his orders from me. But everything I did was part of my job, to get my job done. What the hell do I care about your getting your revenge, getting your justice, when I can help our country control Germany through von Osteen? But you’ve made all the right moves, so I have to stand aside and let you do what you have to do.

  And I have no doubt that you’ll get to von Osteen, even though there’ll be a thousand cops looking for you tomorrow morning. But you’ve forgotten one thing, Rogan: You’d better escape after you kill him.”

  Rogan shrugged. “I don’t give a damn about that.”

  “No, and you don’t give much of a damn what happens to your women either.” He saw that Rogan had not understood. “First, your pretty little French wife that you let them kill, and now this fraulein here.” He jerked his head toward Rosalie, who was sitting on the green sofa.

  Rogan said quietly, “What the hell are you talking about?”

  Bailey smiled for the first time. He said softly, “I mean that if you kill von Osteen and then you get killed, I put your girl through the wringer. She gets accused as an accessory to your murders, or she gets put away in that insane asylum. The same thing happens if von Osteen lives and gets exposed by your letters after you’re dead. Now, I’ll give you an alternative. Forget about killing von Osteen and I’ll get you and the girl immunity for everything you’ve done. I’ll get it fixed so the girl can enter the States with you when you go back. Think it over.” He started to leave.