“Do many people find your flippancy as offensive as I do?”
Jackson stared at Eva Scheel for several moments. Finally he said, “I wasn’t trying to be flippant; I was just trying to state the problem, and believe me, there are problems. For example, you. You might be just one hell of a problem.”
“I beg your pardon.”
“You’re a friend of Lieutenant Meyer’s. Lieutenant Meyer is looking for Kurt Oppenheimer. He wants to find him and lock him up someplace. Kurt Oppenheimer’s sister and I are engaged in a conspiracy to prevent this. So the problem is to prevent what we conspire about here today from getting back to Lieutenant Meyer. I don’t think I can make it any clearer than that.”
“I have known Leah and Kurt Oppenheimer for longer than I have known Lieutenant Meyer, Mr. Jackson.”
“Sure.”
“You sound unconvinced.”
“I’m sorry.”
She gazed at him steadily for a long time without blinking. “I assure you,” she said in a low, almost passionate voice, “I would never betray two of my oldest friends to someone like Lieutenant Meyer.”
Jackson wanted to ask what was so wrong with Lieutenant Meyer, but before he could, Leah Oppenheimer said, “We can trust Eva, Mr. Jackson. We must.”
Jackson shrugged. “It’s up to you, of course. I’m sorry, but whenever anyone says, ‘Trust me,’ I tend to run very fast in the opposite direction.”
“You are very cynical for an American, Mr. Jackson,” Eva Scheel said.
“I’m very cynical for anyone, Fraülein Scheel. It keeps me from being disappointed.”
“How terribly amusing,” Eva Scheel said with a little smile. “It makes you sound so very, very young.”
“Please,” Leah said before Jackson could fire back. “Somehow I don’t think this is a time for bickering.” She looked at Jackson solemnly. “Can I take it from what you’ve said thus far that you are still going to help us, Mr. Jackson — you and Mr. Ploscaru?”
“We’ve still got a deal.”
“I understand that these new complications — my brother’s being so terribly ill — might make it more difficult for you than we had thought. My father and I discussed such a contingency before I left, and he had authorized me to increase your fee from fifteen to twenty-five thousand dollars. Is that satisfactory?”
Jackson nodded. “How is your father? I apologize for not asking sooner.”
Leah gave her head a small shake. “The operation was not a success. I’m afraid that he is permanently blind.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Thank you. It would appear that things are not going too well for the Oppenheimer family just now.” She paused and then said, “We must find my brother, Mr. Jackson. I can’t bring myself to agree with your terrible theories about the Americans and the British and the Russians. Frankly, I don’t think that any of them are interested in taking Kurt alive. They would be just as happy if he were dead. I don’t know if you remember, but when we first met I spoke of getting help for my brother. There is such a place in Switzerland, a sanitarium, a very fine one. Of course, it will be expensive. Extremely expensive.”
“I imagine.”
“Then when he is better, perhaps he could...” She stopped. “I don’t know. I don’t want to think about that just yet.”
“Don’t, dear,” Eva Scheel said, leaning over and placing a hand on Leah’s arm. “There’s no need to think about it now.”
“Okay,” Jackson said, and rose. “When we find him we’ll get him to Switzerland. That’s not as easy as it sounds, of course.”
“Of course not,” Leah said.
“I’ll talk to Ploscaru. He’ll probably have some ideas. He usually does.”
“How is Mr. Ploscaru?” Leah said. “I’m so sorry that we still haven’t been able to meet”
“Ploscaru,” Eva Scheel said. “Is that a Balkan name?”
“Romanian,” Leah said. “We have talked on the phone and corresponded, but we still have not met. I do look forward to it”
“I’ll tell him that,” Jackson said.
“I don’t mean to be overly inquisitive,” Leah said, “but could you tell me what he was doing that was so important that it would have kept him from our meeting today?”
“Sure,” Jackson said. “He was out looking for your brother.”
Eva Scheel accompanied Jackson to the foyer, opened the door for him, and held out her hand. When he took it, she said, “I really hesitate to say this again, Mr. Jackson, but you can rest assured that nothing that was said here today will get back to Lieutenant Meyer.”
Jackson nodded thoughtfully. “There’s not really just a hell of a lot to tell him, is there?”
“No,” she said slowly, the half smile back on her face. “As you say, not a hell of a lot.”
They said goodbye then, and Eva Scheel watched as Jackson made his way down the dimly lit stairs. So there goes the opposition, she thought. Very quick, very intelligent, and doubtless very competent, but lacking, perhaps, in a certain amount of animal cunning. It could be that the dwarf supplies that. Well, printer, she thought as she turned and closed the door, we must meet again, and soon, because now I have something to tell you. She found herself quite surprised at how much she was looking forward to it.
19
In the dream, Heinrich Himmler was only a meter away. And in the dream it was always raining as Kurt Oppenheimer slowly drew the pistol from the pocket of his SS greatcoat, the belted leather kind; aimed; and squeezed the trigger. Then, in the dream, there was always the business of deciding whether to shout it in Latin or German. Sometimes it was one and sometimes the other, but most of the time it came out in Latin — “Sic semper tyrannis” — just before he squeezed the trigger of the pistoclass="underline" which he knew would never fire. And it was always about then that Himmler smiled and became someone else. He became Kurt Oppenheimer’s father, who frowned and demanded to know why his son was standing there on the street with no clothes on. After that Kurt Oppenheimer would look down at himself and discover that he was cold and wet and naked. Then he would wake up.
In reality, it had been raining that day in Berlin, and he had been wearing the stolen belted leather SS greatcoat, plus the rest of the uniform of an SS captain, and there had been a pistol in his pocket. A Lüger. He had been standing there in a group of SS officers when Himmler got out of the car.
He and the Reichsführer had looked at each other from less than a meter away. But there had been no shout, and the pistol had remained in the greatcoat’s pocket, because Kurt Oppenheimer had suddenly realized what he had long suspected: that he was afraid to die.
Sometimes when he awoke from the dream, as he did now, lying on the cot in the cellar of the ruined castle near Höchst, Oppenheimer would compare the dream with what had actually happened. In the dream he felt shame. But the shame came from standing naked in front of his father. Had it been shame he felt when he turned away from Himmler, the pistol still unfired in his pocket? No, not shame. The shame happened only in the dream. In reality, there had been that great surge of relief when he realized that he would do no dying that day.
After that January 19 of 1945, the day he had turned away from Himmler, he had also turned away from killing. He had gone back to living in the bombed-out ruins and scrounging food wherever he could. Then there was that air raid in early May. Had it been the last one of the war? He wasn’t sure, because there had been the explosion, he remembered that, and then he remembered very little until he heard the voices debating whether it was worth the effort to dig him out because he was probably already dead.
He had shouted something then, or tried to, and they had dug him out. He was unhurt except for a few scratches. He learned then that the Russians had taken Berlin and that the war was over. He told the men who had dug him out that he was very hungry and thirsty. They gave him some water, but they couldn’t give him any food, because they had none. Nobody had any food, they told him. Nobody but the Russians. If you want food, go see the Russians. Then they had laughed.