“Bait?”
The dwarf nodded. “For our trap.”
“Of course. Hell yes. Why didn’t I think of that?”
Ploscaru smiled. “You’re not quite with me yet, Minor.”
Jackson turned to the bottle and poured some more whiskey into his glass. “I didn’t think it showed.” He turned back. “Tell me.”
“We’re going to be quite busy this afternoon and evening.”
“Doing what?”
“Why, baiting our trap.” Ploscaru used a forefinger to stir the marks around. “This is what we were paid for the contents of the cellar this morning. There are approximately one hundred thousand German marks here — about five hundred American dollars. Provided, of course, that we could change them for dollars, which we can’t. Still, one hundred thousand marks is quite a tidy sum, and that’s what we’ll offer.”
“What’re we buying?”
“Betrayal.”
“From a Judas, I take it.”
“Yes, I suppose you could say that.”
“Who’ll sell out Oppenheimer.”
The dwarf looked at Jackson surprised. “Oh, heavens, no. I’m sorry, Minor, but you do have such a logical mind. We really must work on that when we get the chance. But for now, let’s start from Square One. What facts do we have?”
“Hardly any.”
“No, we have several. The first is that somewhere in either Bonn or Godesberg is young Oppenheimer’s next intended victim, right?”
Jackson nodded.
“Good. Now, if I recall what you told me correctly, we have a partial address for that victim.”
“You mean what that American officer in the Opel plant remembered?”
“Yes.”
“That’s no partial address.”
“A fragment, then. It was a low number, wasn’t it — in the teens?”
Again, Jackson nodded.
“And it was on Something-strasse.”
“That’s right.”
“Now, just who do you think young Oppenheimer’s next victim will be?”
“I haven’t the faintest idea.”
Ploscaru shook his head in mild exasperation. “Of course you do.”
“Okay. He’d probably have been a Party member with something to hide.”
“A reasonably high party member — one who had the necessary funds to buy his new identity. Or hers. It could be a woman. Now, then: before the war, what were Bonn and Godesberg noted for?”
“Not much.”
“Exactly. Not much. They were both quiet places with hardly any industry; particularly suitable for what?”
Jackson shrugged. “Okay, what?”
“Why, retirement, my boy. Retirement. Many people, even a number of British, retired here simply because it’s such a somnolent place.”
“Dull.”
“Indeed. Dull. Now, then: what does retirement suggest?”
“Age?”
“Good. But something else, too. Money. You have to have money to retire here comfortably. Quite a bit of money, in fact. Now, we can safely assume, I think, that young Oppenheimer’s intended victim has money and that he or she is living comfortably and privately. Privacy, of course, suggests a house, possibly even a villa. So, our search is narrowed to someone who lives quite comfortably and privately in a house or villa with a low number in the teens on Something-strasse.”
“Or in one room up in a garret. It could be that way too, Nick. Your theory’s fine up to a point. But it could be that whoever bought his new identity from that guy who was selling them — Damm, wasn’t it? Well, maybe he or she had only just enough money for that and nothing else. Take that interpreter at the Opel plant, for instance. He didn’t have any money.”
Ploscaru shook his head. “Anonymity, Minor. You’re forgetting anonymity. Without money, a big city is best for that. With it — well, with it you swim with the other fish: one retired person among many. What could be more anonymous?”
Jackson grinned. “It’s all hunch, isn’t it, Nick?”
The dwarf thought about it for a moment and then shrugged. “I prefer to call it intuition — with a strong underpinning of facts.”
“Or guesses.”
“All right. Guesses. But here’s something that we don’t have to guess about. And that’s the sheer joy and delight that the average German finds in assuming the role of informer. They positively dote on it, you know. Children turn in their parents; wives their husbands; brothers their sisters, and so on. They do it for money, for revenge, for personal gain, and probably just because it makes them feel good. During the war, informing was almost a major industry. It still is, except that now they inform to the Americans or the British or what-have-you, because if they do, they might get the job or the room of the person they inform against. So that’s what we do this afternoon. We go looking for informers.”
“Where?”
“In cafés, bars, Bierstuben — everywhere. We pass the word that we’re looking for a former Party bigwig — such a delightful word; is it English or American?”
“Both, I’d say.”
“Yes, well, we pass the word along, acting properly mysterious, of course, and mention ever so casually that whoever performs this patriotic service will be suitably rewarded — and at that point we might even flash a little money. And finally, we set a deadline.”
“For when?”
“Say, midnight?”
“All right. Midnight.”
The dwarf sighed. “I do wish, Minor, that you had a more, well, gregarious personality, like mine. It’s such a help in this kind of work. You’re so terribly reserved for an American.”
“I always thought I was friendly as hell.”
“Just a bit more bonhomie wouldn’t be at all amiss.”
“Golly, Nick, I’ll sure try.”
“I know you will.”
“What about our yellow-haired chaperon? Who gets him?”
“He can’t follow us both, can he?”
“Not very well.”
Once again, the dwarf sighed. “Leave him to me.”
“Okay. And we’ll meet back here when — around eleven?”
“No later, I’d think.”
“And if this doesn’t work, Nick, what then?”
“Why, we try something else, of course.”
“What?”
The dwarf grinned. “I really have no idea.”
It had cost Kurt Oppenheimer another one of his diamonds to get to Bonn. The diamond had gone to the captain of a Dutch barge that was heading for Cologne with a load of much-needed grain. The barge had been twice searched, once by the Americans and once by the British, but the captain was an experienced smuggler, which was how he had survived the war, and hiding one rather thin man had presented no problem at all.
The barge had anchored for the night on the west bank of the Rhine just opposite the section of Bad Godesberg known as Mehlem. The captain was rowing Oppenheimer to shore in a small skiff. Neither of them spoke. When the skiff reached the shore, Oppenheimer jumped out. He turned to look at the barge captain, who stared at him for several moments, then shrugged and started rowing back out into the Rhine. Oppenheimer scrambled up the river-bank.
A trolley took him into the center of Bonn, and after that it took him nearly an hour to find exactly what he was looking for.
The whore he decided on wasn’t the youngest he had noticed, or the prettiest, or possibly the cleanest. She stood in a dark doorway, a woman not far from forty, and offered her wares in a hoarse, tired, almost disconsolate voice — as though business were bad and she really didn’t expect it to get any better.
Oppenheimer had walked past her once, and now he came back. The whore remembered him.