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, and 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?”