Six Graves to Munich Page 4

  Moltke was terrified. He started running clumsily down the alley. Rogan ran beside him, sprinting easily, as if the two of them were trotting together for exercise. Coming up on the Austrian’s left side, Rogan drew the Walther pistol from his shoulder holster. Still running, he fitted the silencer onto the barrel. He felt no pity; he considered no mercy. Moltke’s sins were etched in his brain, committed a thousand times in his memory. It had been Moltke who had smiled when Christine screamed in the next room, and who had murmured, “Come, don’t be so much a hero at your poor wife’s expense. Don’t you want your child to be born?” So reasonable, so persuasive, when he knew that Christine was already dead. Moltke was the least of them but the memories of him had to die. Rogan fired two shots into Moltke’s side. Moltke swooped forward in a falling glide; and Rogan kept running, out of the alley and onto a main street. The next day he took a plane to Hamburg.

  In Hamburg it had been easy to track down Karl Pfann. Pfann had been the most brutal of the interrogators, but in such an animallike way that Rogan had despised him less than the others. Pfann had acted according to his true nature. He was a simple man, stupid and cruel. Rogan had killed him with less hatred than he had killed Moltke. It had gone exactly according to plan. What had not gone according to plan was Rogan’s meeting the German girl Rosalie, with her flower fragrance and her curious lack of emotion and her amoral innocence.

  Now lying beside her in his Hamburg hotel room, Rogan ran his hands lightly over her body. He had told her everything, sure that she would not betray him—or perhaps in the hope that she would, and so end his murdering quest. “Still like me?” he asked.

  Rosalie nodded. She held his hand to her breast. “Let me help you,” she said. “I don’t care about anyone. I don’t care if they die. But I care about you—a little bit. Take me to Berlin and I’ll do anything you want me to.”

  Rogan knew she meant every word. He looked into her eyes and was troubled by the childlike innocence he saw there, and the emotional blankness, as if murdering and making love were, to her, equally permissible.

  He decided to take her along. He liked having her around, and she would be a real help. Besides, there didn’t seem to be anything or anyone else she cared about. And he would never involve her in the actual executions.

  The next day he took her shopping on the Esplanade and in the arcade of the Baseler Hospitz. He bought her two new outfits that set off the pale rose skin, the blue of her eyes. They went back to the hotel and packed, and after supper they caught the night flight to Berlin.

  CHAPTER 4

  Several months after the war ended, Rogan had been flown from his VA hospital in the United States to U.S. Intelligence headquarters in Berlin. There he had been asked to look at a number of suspected war criminals to see if any of them were men who had tortured him in the Munich Palace of Justice. His case was now file number A23,486 in the archives of the Allied War Crimes Commission. Among the suspects were none of the men he remembered so clearly. He could not identify a single one, so he was flown back to the VA hospital. But he had spent a few days wandering around the city, the rubble of countless homes giving him a measure of savage satisfaction.

  The great city had changed in the years since then. The West Berlin authorities had given up trying to clear away the seventy million tons of ruins which the Allied bombers had created during the war. They had pushed the rubble into small artificial hills, then had planted flowers and small shrubs over them. They had used the rubble to fill foundations for towering new apartment houses, built in the most modern space-conserving style. Berlin was now a huge steel gray rat warren of stone, and at night that warren showed the most vicious nests of vice spawned by ravaged postwar Europe.

  With Rosalie, Rogan checked into the Kempinski Hotel on the Kurfürstendamm and Fasanenstrasse, perhaps the most elegant hotel in West Germany. Then he made a few telephone calls to some of the firms with which his company did business, and he set up an appointment with the private detective agency that had been on his payroll for the past five years.

  For their first lunch together in Berlin, he took Rosalie to a restaurant called the Ritz that served the finest Oriental food. He noticed with amusement that Rosalie ate a huge amount of food with huge enjoyment. They ordered bird’s nest soup, which looked like a tangle of vegetable brains stained with black blood. Her favorite dish was a combination of red lobster pieces, white pork chunks, and brown shards of nutmegged beef, but she found the barbecued spare ribs and the chicken with tender snow peas delicious. She sampled his shrimp with black bean sauce and nodded her approval. All of it was accompanied by several helpings of fried rice and innumerable cups of hot tea. It was an enormous lunch, but Rosalie put it away without any effort. She had just discovered that there was other food in the world besides bread, meat, and potatoes. Rogan, smiling at her pleasure, watched her finish off what was left on the silver-covered platters.

  In the afternoon they went shopping along the Kurfürstendamm, whose brightly lit store windows trailed off into gray, empty storefronts as the boulevard approached the Berlin Wall. Rogan bought Rosalie an expensive gold wristwatch with a clever roof of precious stones that slid back when its owner wanted to know the time. Rosalie squealed with delight, and Rogan thought wryly that if the way to a man’s heart was through his stomach, then the way to a woman’s heart was paved with gifts. But when she leaned over to kiss him, when he felt her soft, fluttering mouth on his own, his cynicism vanished.

  That evening he took her to the Eldorado Club, where the waiters dressed as girls and the girls dressed as men. Then on to the Cherchelle Femme, where pretty girls on the stage stripped as casually as if they were in their own private bedrooms, with intimate wriggles and vulgar scratches. Finally the girls danced before huge mirrors wearing only long black hose and saucy red caps on their heads. Rogan and Rosalie ended up at the Badewanne in Nürnburg Strasse. They drank champagne and ate small, thick white sausages from large platters, using their fingers and wiping their hands on the tablecloth, like everyone else.

  By the time they got back to their hotel suite Rogan was almost sick with sexual desire. He wanted to make love immediately, but Rosalie, laughing, pushed him away and disappeared into the bedroom. Frustrated, Rogan took off his jacket and tie and started to mix a drink at the little bar that was part of every suite. In a few minutes he heard Rosalie call, “Michael,” in her soft, almost adolescent-sweet voice. He turned toward her.

  On her blond head was a new hat he had bought her in Hamburg, a lovely creation of green ribbon. On her legs were long black net stockings that reached almost to the tops of her thighs. Between the green hat and black stockings was Rosalie—in the flesh. She came toward him slowly, smiling that intently happy smile of a woman roused to passion.

  Rogan reached for her. She eluded his grasp, and he followed her into the bedroom, hastily pulling off the rest of his clothes on the way. When he reached for her this time, she did not move away. And then they were on the king-size bed, and he could smell the rose fragrance of her body, feel the petal-velvet skin as together they sank into an act of love that blotted out the hoarse night noises of Berlin, the plaintive cries of the animals imprisoned in the Tiergarten just below their windows, and the ghostly images of murder and revenge that haunted Rogan’s vulnerable brain.

  CHAPTER 5

  Rogan wanted his first contact with the Freisling brothers to be casual. The next day he rented a Mercedes, drove it to the brothers’ gas station, and had the car checked. He was attended to by Hans Freisling, and when Rogan went to the office to pay his bill, Eric was there, in a leather chair, checking oil-storage accounts.

  The brothers had both aged well, perhaps because they had been unattractive to begin with. Age had tightened their loose, sly mouths; their lips were not so thick. They had become smarter in their dress and less vulgar in their speech. But they had not changed in their treachery, though it was now petty larceny instead of murder.

  The Mercedes had
been checked out that day by the rental agency and was in perfect condition. But Hans Freisling was charging him twenty marks for some minor mechanical adjustments and telling him his fan belt would have to be replaced. Rogan smiled and asked him to replace it. While this was being done he chatted with Eric, and mentioned that he was in the computer manufacturing business and would be staying in Berlin for some time. He pretended not to see the sly, greedy interest on Eric Freisling’s face. When Hans came in to tell him that the fan belt had been changed, Rogan tipped him generously and drove away. After he parked the Mercedes in front of his hotel he checked under the hood. The fan belt had not been changed.

  Rogan made it a point to visit the gas station every few days in the Mercedes. The two Freislings, other than chiseling him on gas and oil, were showing an extraordinary friendliness. They had some other angle to work on him, Rogan knew, and wondered what it was. Certainly they had him pegged for a pigeon. But then he had plans for them too, he thought. Before he killed them, however, he would have to get from them the identity and whereabouts of the other three, especially the chief interrogator. Meanwhile he did not want to appear anxious and scare them off. He threw his money around as bait and waited for the Freislings to make their move.

  The next weekend the hotel desk called early on Sunday evening to inform him that two men wished to come to his room. Rogan grinned at Rosalie. The brothers had taken the bait. But it was Rogan who was surprised. The two men were strangers. Or rather, one was a stranger. The taller of the two Rogan recognized almost immediately as Arthur Bailey, the American Intelligence agent who had interrogated Rogan about his “execution” and had asked him to identify suspects in Berlin more than nine years before. Bailey was studying Rogan with impassive eyes as he showed his identification.

  “I just read up on your file, Mr. Rogan,” Bailey said. “You don’t look anything like your photographs anymore. I didn’t recognize you at all when I first saw you again.”

  “When was that?” Rogan asked.

  “At the Freisling gas station a week ago,” Bailey said. He was a lanky midwestern type, his drawl as unmistakably American as were his clothes and posture. Rogan wondered why he hadn’t noticed him at the gas station.

  Bailey smiled gently at him. “We think the Freislings are East German agents, just as a sideline. They are hustlers. So when you showed up there and got friendly we checked you out. Called Washington, checked your visas and all that. Then I sat down and read your file. Something else clicked, and I went to the back files of the daily papers. And finally I figured it all out. You managed to track down those seven men in Munich, and now you’ve come back to knock them off. There was Moltke in Vienna and Pfann in Hamburg. The Freisling brothers are next on your list—right?”

  “I’m here to sell computers,” Rogan said warily. “That’s all.”

  Bailey shrugged. “I don’t care what you do; I’m not responsible for law enforcement in this country. But I’m telling you now: Hands off the Freisling brothers. I’ve put in a lot of time to get the goods on them, and when I do I’ll bust up a whole East German spy setup. I don’t want you knocking them off and leaving me with a blind trail.”

  Suddenly it was clear to Rogan why the Freisling brothers had been so friendly to him. “Are they after my data on the new computers?” he asked Bailey.

  “I wouldn’t be surprised,” he said. “Computers—the new ones—are on the embargo list to Red countries. But I’m not worried about that; I know what you want to give them. And I’m warning you: You do, and you have me for an enemy.”

  Rogan stared at him coldly. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, but let me give you some advice: Don’t get in my way or I’ll run right over you. And there isn’t a damn thing you can do to me. I’ve got pipelines right into the Pentagon. My new computers are more important to them than any crap you can drag up with a two-bit spy apparatus.”

  Bailey gave him a thoughtful look, then said, “OK, we can’t touch you, but how about the girlfriend?” He jerked his head toward Rosalie sitting on the sofa. “We can sure as hell cause her a little trouble. In fact, one phone call and you’ll never see her again.”

  “What the hell are you talking about?”

  Bailey’s lean, angular face took on an expression of mock surprise. “Didn’t she tell you? Six months ago she escaped from a mental hospital on the Nordsee. She was committed in 1950 for schizophrenia. The authorities are still looking for her—not very hard, but looking. One phone call and the police pick her up. Just remember that.” Bailey paused, and then said slowly, “When we don’t need those two guys anymore I’ll tell you. Why don’t you skip them and go after the others that are still left?”

  “Because I don’t know who the other three are. I’m counting on the Freisling brothers to tell me.”

  Bailey shook his head. “They’ll never talk unless you make it worth their while, and they’re tough. You’d better leave it to us.”

  “No,” Rogan said. “I have a surefire method. I’ll make them talk. Then I’ll leave them to you.”

  “Don’t lie, Mr. Rogan. I know how you’ll leave them.” He put out his hand to shake Rogan’s. “I’ve done my official duty, but after reading your file I have to wish you luck. Watch out for those Freisling brothers; they’re a pair of sly bastards.”

  When Bailey and his silent partner had closed the door behind them Rogan turned to Rosalie. “Is it true what they said about you?”

  Rosalie sat up straight, her hands folded in her lap. Her eyes gazed steadily into Rogan’s. “Yes,” she said.

  They didn’t go out that evening. Rogan ordered food and champagne to be sent up to their room, and after they finished they went to bed. Rosalie cradled her golden head in his arm and took puffs from his cigarette. “Shall I tell you about it?” she asked.

  “If you want to,” Rogan said. “It doesn’t really make any difference, you know—your being sick.”

  “I’m all right now,” she said.

  Rogan kissed her gently. “I know.”

  “I want to tell you,” she said. “Maybe you won’t love me afterward, but I want to tell you.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Rogan insisted. “It really doesn’t.”

  Rosalie reached out and turned off the bedside table lamp. She could speak more freely in the dark.

  CHAPTER 6

  How she had wept that terrible day in the spring of 1945. The world had come to an end when she was a daydreaming fourteen-year-old maiden. The great dragon of war had carried her away.

  She left her home early that morning to work on the family’s rented garden plot on the outskirts of her home-town of Bublingshausen in Hesse. Later, she was digging the dark earth when a great shadow fell across the land. She looked up and saw a vast armada of planes blotting out the sun, and she heard the thunder of their bombs dropping on the optical works of Wetzlar. Then the bombs, overflowing as water overflows a glass, spilled into her own harmless medieval village. The badly frightened girl buried her face in the soft wormy earth as the ground trembled violently. When the sky no longer roared with thunder and the shadow had lifted from the sun, she made her way back to the heart of Bublingshausen.

  It was burning. The gingerbread houses, like toys torched by a wanton child, were melting down into ashes. Rosalie ran down the flowered streets she had known all her life, picking her way through smoldering rubble. It was a dream, she thought; how could all the houses she had known since childhood vanish so quickly?

  And then she turned into the street that approached her home in the Hintergasse, and she saw a row of naked rooms, tier on tier. And it was magic that she could see the houses of her neighbors and friends without any shielding walls—the bedrooms, the dining rooms, all set before her like a play on the stage. And there was her mother’s bedroom and her own kitchen that she had known all the fourteen years of her life.

  Rosalie moved toward the entrance, but it was blocked by a hill of rubble. Sticking out of the vast pile of p
ulverized brick she saw the brown-booted feet and checked trouser legs that were her father’s. She saw other bodies covered with red and white dust; and then she saw the one solitary arm pointing with mute agony toward the sky, on one gray finger the plaited gold band that was her mother’s wedding ring.

  Dazed, Rosalie sank down into the rubble. She felt no pain, no grief—only a peculiar numbness. The hours passed. Dusk was beginning to fall when she heard the continuous rumble of steel on crumbled stone. Looking up, she saw a long line of American tanks snaking through what had been Bublingshausen. They passed through the town and there was silence. Then a small Army truck with a canvas canopy came by. It stopped, and a young American soldier jumped down out of the driver’s seat. He was blond and fresh-faced. He stood over her and said in rough German, “Hey, Liebchen, you want to come with us?”

  Since there was nothing else to do, and since everyone she knew was dead, and since the garden she had planted that morning would not bear fruit for months, Rosalie went with the soldier in his canopied truck.

  They drove until dark. Then the blond soldier took her into the back of the truck and made her lie down on a pile of army blankets. He knelt beside her. He broke open a bright green box and gave her a piece of hard round cheese and some chocolate. Then he stretched out beside her.

  He was warm, and Rosalie knew that as long as she felt this warmth she could never die, never lie beneath the smoldering pile of rubbled brick where her mother and father now were. When the young soldier pressed against her and she felt the hard column of flesh against her thigh, she let him do whatever he wanted. Finally he left her huddled in the pile of blankets, and he went to the front and started to drive again.