“Barry, it’s ridiculous. Something is wrong with your tape recorder. Or else—or else they’re not the men you think they are.”
A triple-knock at the door. “Go way!” he shouted at it, covering the mouthpiece; remembered Portuguese: “I talk the long distance.”
“They’re someone else,” the phone said. “They’re playing a joke on you.”
“Mr. Liebermann, will you just listen to the tape?”
Louder knocking, a nonstop barrage.
“Shit. Hold on.” Putting the phone on the bed, he got up and stepped to the racketing door, held its knob. “What is?”
Portuguese raced, a man’s voice.
“Slow! Slow!”
“Senhor, there’s a Japanese lady here, looking for someone who looks like you. She says she has to warn you about something a man is—” He turned the knob and in the door burst a dark bull of a man that slammed him backward; he was grabbed and turned, his mouth crushed, his arm wrenched back breakingly; the Nazi of the stairs lunged with a knife six inches shiny-sharp. His head was yanked back; the ceiling slid, stained with pale-brown watermarks; his arm hurt, and his stomach deep inside.
The man in white came into the room, wearing his hat and holding his briefcase. He closed the door, and standing before it, watched the blond man stab and stab the young American. Stab, twist, pull out; stab, twist, pull out; overhand now, the red-streaked knife into white snug-shirted ribs.
The blond man, panting, stopped stabbing, and the black-haired man lowered the surprised-eyed young man gently to the floor, laid him down there half on gray rug and half on varnished wood. The blond man held his bloody knife-hand over the young man and said to the black-haired man, “A towel.”
The man in white looked toward the bed, moved to it, and set his briefcase down on the floor. “Barry?” the phone on the bed asked.
The man in white looked at the tape recorder on the night table; pressed a white fingertip to its end button. The window sprang; the cassette jumped free. The man in white picked it up, looked at it, and slipped it into his jacket pocket. He glanced at the card under the foot of the phone, took it, and looked at the black handset lying on the bed. “Barry!” it called. “Are you there?”
The man in white reached out slowly and picked the handset up; raised it, brought it to his ear. Listened with brown eyes narrowed, vein-threaded nostrils quivering. His lips opened to the mouthpiece, stayed open. And closed and clenched firmly, mustache bristling.
He put the handset into its cradle, drew his fingers away, stared at the phone. He turned and said, “I almost spoke to him. I was longing to.”
The blond man, toweling red from his knife, looked curiously at him.
The man in white said, “Hating each other so long. And he was here, in my hand! To finally speak to him!” He turned to the phone again, shook his head regretfully. Softly he said, “Liebermann, you bastard Jew. Your stooge is dead. How much did he tell you? It makes no difference; no one here will listen to you, not without proof. And the proof is in my pocket. The men will fly tomorrow. The Fourth Reich is coming. Good-by, Liebermann. See you at the door of the gas chamber.” He shook his head, smiling, and turned, putting the card in his pocket. “It would have been foolish, though,” he said. “I might have been making another tape.”
The black-haired man, by an open closet, pointed at a suitcase in it and asked in Portuguese, “Should I pack his things, Doctor?”
“Rudi will. You go downstairs to Traunsteiner. Find a back door you can open and get the car to it. Then one of you come up and help us down. And don’t tell him the boy was on the phone. Say he was listening to the tape.”
The black-haired man nodded and went out.
The blond man said in German, “Won’t they get caught? The men, I mean.”
“The job has to be done,” the man in white said, taking out his eyeglass case. “As much of it as possible, at any cost. With luck they’ll do it all. Will anyone listen to Liebermann? He didn’t believe; you heard how the boy was arguing with him. God will help us; enough of the ninety-four will die.” He put on his glasses, and taking a matchbox from his pocket, turned to the phone. He lifted the handset and read the operator a number.
“Hello, my friend,” he said cheerfully. “Senhor Hessen, please.” He glanced away, white-gloved fingers covering the phone’s mouthpiece. “Empty his pockets, Rudi. And there’s a sneaker under the bureau there. Hessen? Dr. Mengele. Everything’s fine, there’s nothing to worry about. Exactly the amateur I expected. I don’t think he even understood German. Send the boys home to practice their signatures; it was just an excitement to round off the evening. No, not till 1977, I’m afraid; I fly back to the compound as soon as we clean up. So go with God, Horst. And say it for me to the others: ‘Go with God.’” He hung up and said, “Heil Hitler.”
2
THE BURGGARTEN, with its pond and its Mozart monument, its lawns and walks and equestrian Emperor Franz, is near enough to the Vienna offices of Reuters, the international news agency, for correspondents and secretaries to bring their lunches there in the milder months of the year. Monday, October 14th, was a cool and overcast day, but four Reuters people came to the Garten anyway; they settled themselves on a bench, unwrapped sandwiches, and poured white wine into paper cups.
One of the four, the wine-pourer, was Sydney Beynon, Reuters’ senior Vienna correspondent. A forty-four-year-old ex-Liverpudlian with two Viennese ex-wives, Beynon looks very much like an abdicating King Edward in horn-rimmed glasses. At he stood the bottle on the bench beside him and sipped judgmentally from his cup, he saw with a sudden down-press of guilt Yakov Liebermann shambling toward him, in a brown hat and an open black raincoat.
During the preceding week or so, Beynon had received word several times that Liebermann had called and wanted him to call back. He hadn’t yet done so, though a punctilious call-returner; and confronted now with his clear though unintended avoidance of the man, he felt doubly guilty: once because Liebermann in his peak years, the time of the Eichmann and Stangl captures, had been the source of some of his best and most rewarding copy; and once because the Nazihunter made everyone feel guilty, always. Someone had said of him—was it Stevie Dickens?—“He carries the whole damned concentration-camp scene pinned to his coattails. All those Jews wail at you from the grave every time Liebermann steps in the room.” It was sad but true.
And perhaps Liebermann was aware of it, for he always presented himself as he did now to Beynon, at a step beyond the ordinary social distance, with a slight air of apology; rather, Beynon thought, like a considerate bear with something contagious. “Hello, Sydney,” Liebermann-bear said, touching his hat-brim. “Please. Don’t get up.”
Beynon’s guilt was more bothersome than his lapful of sandwich, so he made the effort anyway, half rising. “Hello, Yakov! It’s good to see you.” He put out his hand and Liebermann leaned and reached forward and wrapped it pressurelessly in the warmth of his bigger one. “Sorry I haven’t called you yet,” Beynon apologized; “I was in and out of Linz all last week.” He sat back down and sketched introductions with his cup-hand: “Freya Neustadt, Paul Higbee, Dermot Brody. This is Yakov Liebermann.”