A Quiet Flame (37 page)

There were no words of protest. Certainly none from me. My two would-be tormentors obeyed instantly, almost as if they had expected to be stopped. Montalbán himself lit a cigarette and put it in my grateful, trembling mouth.

“Am I glad to see you,” I said.

“Come on,” he said quietly. “Let’s get out of this place.”

Resisting the temptation to say something to the man with the cattle prod, I followed the colonel outside into the fortress courtyard, where a nice white Jaguar was parked. I drew a deep breath that was a mixture of relief and exhilaration. He opened the trunk and took out a neatly folded shirt and a tie that I half recognized.

“Here,” he said. “I brought you these from your hotel room.”

“That was very thoughtful of you, Colonel,” I said, unbuttoning the ragged remains of the shirt I was almost wearing.

“Don’t mention it,” he said, climbing into the driver’s seat.

“Always a nice car, Colonel,” I said, getting in beside him.

“This car belonged to an admiral who was plotting a coup d’état,” he said. “Can you imagine an admiral owning such a car?” He lit a cigarette for himself and drove out of the gate.

“Where is he now? The admiral?”

“He disappeared. Perhaps he is in Paraguay. Perhaps he is in Chile. Then again, perhaps he is nowhere in particular. But then again, sometimes it is best not to ask such a question. You understand?”

“I think so. But who’s minding the navy?”

“Truly, the only safe questions to ask in Argentina are the questions one asks of oneself. That is why there are so many psychoanalysts in this country.”

We drove east, toward the River Plate.

“Are there? Many psychoanalysts in this country?”

“Oh, yes. A great many. There is more psychoanalysis done here in Buenos Aires than almost anywhere else in the world. No one in Argentina thinks himself so perfect that he can’t be improved. Take you, for instance. A little psychoanalysis might help you to stay out of trouble. That’s what I thought, anyway. That’s why I arranged for you to see two of the best men in the city. So that you might understand yourself and your relationship to society. And to appreciate what I told you before: that in Argentina, it is better to know everything than to know too much. Of course, my men are better than most at helping a man to understand himself. Fewer sessions are required. Sometimes only one. And of course, they work much more cheaply than the kind of Freudian analysts most people go to see. But the results, I’m sure you’ll agree, are much more spectacular. It’s rare that anyone comes out of a session at Caseros without a profound sense of what is needed to survive in a city like this. Yes. Yes, I do believe that. This city will kill you unless, psychologically, you are equipped to deal with it. I hope I’m not being too cryptic here.”

“Not at all, Colonel. I understand you perfectly.”

“You’ll find a hip flask in the glove box,” he said. “Sometimes therapy gives a man a keen thirst for more than just self-knowledge.”

There was cognac in the flask. It tasted just fine. It gave me more breathing space, as if someone had opened a window. I offered him the flask. He shook his head and grinned.

“You’re a nice guy, Gunther. I wouldn’t want anything to happen to you. I’ve told you before. You used to be a real hero of mine. In life, a man should have a hero, don’t you think so?”

“That’s sweet of you, Colonel.”

“Rodolfo—that’s Rodolfo Freude, the head of SIDE. He thinks my belief in your abilities is irrational. And perhaps it is. But he’s not a real policeman, like us, Gunther. He doesn’t understand what it takes to be a great detective.”

“I’m not so sure I understand that myself, Colonel.”

“Then I shall tell you. To be a great detective one must also be a protagonist. A dynamic sort of character who makes things happen just by being himself. I think you are this kind of a person, Gunther.”

“In chess, we’d call that a gambit. Usually it involves the sacrifice of a pawn or a knight.”

“Yes. That is quite possible, also.”

I laughed. “You’re an interesting man, Colonel. A trifle eccentric, but interesting. And don’t think I don’t appreciate your confidence in me. Because I do appreciate it. Almost as much as your booze and your cigarettes.” I took his packet and lit another.

“Good. Because I should hate to think you needed a second session of therapy in Caseros.”

It was evening. The shops were closing and the clubs were opening. All over the city people were getting depressed that they were so far away from the rest of the civilized world. I knew how they felt. On one side was the ocean and on the other, the vast emptiness of the pampas. We were all of us surrounded by nothing, with nowhere else to go. Perhaps most people just resigned themselves to that. Just as they had in Nazi Germany. I was different. Saying one thing and thinking another was second nature to me.

“I get the picture, Colonel,” I told him. “I’d click my heels and salute if I wasn’t sitting down.” I sipped some more cognac. “From now on, this horse is wearing blinkers and a tongue strap.” I pointed through the windscreen. “There’s the road ahead and nothing else.” I uttered a wry little laugh, as if I’d learned a hard lesson.

The Colonel seemed pleased by this admission. “Now you’re getting it,” he said. “I’m only sorry that it cost you a shirt to find that out.”

“I can buy a new shirt, Colonel,” I said, still affecting craven acquiescence. “A new skin is harder to come by. You won’t need to warn me again. I’ve no desire to wind up in that morgue of yours. Speaking of which. The girl? Grete Wohlauf. I’m not sure I’ve found her killer. But I certainly found the man who killed those two girls in Germany. And you were right. He’s living here, in Buenos Aires. As I said, I can’t be sure he had anything to do with Grete Wohlauf’s death. Or that he knows anything about Fabienne von Bader. But I wouldn’t be at all surprised, since he’s pursuing the same trade in illegal abortions he was back then. His name is Josef Mengele, but he’s living here as Helmut Gregor. But I expect you already knew that. Anyway, you can read all about it in a statement I persuaded him to write. I have it hidden in my hotel room.”

Colonel Montalbán put his hand inside his breast pocket and took out the envelope containing Mengele’s handwritten confession. “Do you mean this statement?”

“It certainly looks like it.”

“Naturally, when you were arrested, we searched your room at the San Martín.”

“Naturally. And I suppose you’re going to destroy that now.”

“On the contrary. I’m going to keep it in a very safe place. There may come a time when it could be very useful.”

“You mean in getting rid of Mengele.”

“He’s small fry. No, I mean in getting rid of Perón. This is a very Catholic country, Herr Gunther. Even an electorate that’s bought and paid for might find it hard to vote for a president who’s used a Nazi war criminal to carry out illegal abortions on juvenile girls with whom he’s been having sex. Of course I hope I shan’t need this statement. But placed somewhere safe, it becomes a very useful insurance policy. For a man such as myself, in a very uncertain profession, it’s the best thing for having job security that there is. For some time now I’ve suspected something like this was going on. Only I couldn’t connect any of it with Perón. That is, until you came along.”

“But how could you possibly know he was the man I was after in 1932?” I asked. “I’ve only just worked it out myself.”

“A month or two after Mengele arrived in Argentina, a box of papers arrived from Germany addressed to Helmut Gregor, here in Buenos Aires. These were Mengele’s own research files from his time at the Race and Resettlement Office in Berlin, and at Auschwitz. It seems that the doctor was unwilling to part with his life’s work and, reasoning that he was safe here, he had all of his papers shipped on to him from someone in his hometown of Günzburg. Not just his research files. There was also an SS file and a Gestapo file. For some reason, his Gestapo file contained your KRIPO files. The ones I gave to you when you first started working for me. It would seem that someone tried to reopen the Schwarz case during the war. Tried and failed, because someone higher up in the SS was protecting him. An SS colonel called Kassner, who had also worked for I. G. Farben. Anyway, Mengele never received any of his papers. He believes they were destroyed when a cargo hold in the ship bringing them from Germany was accidentally flooded. In fact, the files were intercepted by my men.

“Before they came into my hands, I had had my suspicions about who Helmut Gregor really was. And that he was carrying out illegal abortions here in Buenos Aires. I suspected Perón was sending him young girls he’d impregnated. But I couldn’t prove anything. I didn’t dare. Not even when one of Perón’s
fruta inmadura
—that’s what he calls his younger girlfriends—turned up dead. Her name was Grete Wohlauf. And she had died from an infection sustained during an abortion procedure. When Mengele’s papers turned up, I realized that he had been the man you were looking for. And I decided to awaken your interest in the case in a way that might be to my advantage. So I had the pathologist mutilate her in order to prick your curiosity.”

“But why didn’t you just level with me?”

“Because it didn’t suit my purpose. Mengele is protected by Perón. You managed to sidestep that protection. I couldn’t do what you have done. Not and keep Perón’s confidence. As you said yourself, you were my gambit, Herr Gunther. When I heard that Perón’s men had arrested you and taken you to Caseros, I was able to exercise some influence in another quarter and have you released. But not before teaching you a lesson. As I’ve told you before, asking questions about Directive Eleven is not a good idea.”

“That much I know. And Fabienne von Bader? Is she really missing?”

“Oh, yes. Have you found any trace of her?”

“No. But I’m beginning to understand why she’s disappeared. Her father has part control of the Reichsbank’s Swiss bank accounts, and the Peróns are keen to get their hands on that money. It’s my guess that the von Baders have hidden her for her own protection. So that the Peróns can’t use the girl to make her father do what they want him to do. Something like that, anyway.”

The colonel smiled. “As always, it’s a little bit more complicated than that.”

“Oh? How much more complicated?”

“I think you’re about to find out.”

BUENOS AIRES, 1950

T
HE COLONEL DROVE past the Ministry of Labor, where, as usual, a long line of people was already waiting to see Evita, and then around the corner, where he stopped the car in front of an anonymous-looking door.

I’d been turning over in my mind what he’d told me about Mengele. And as we got out of the car, I told him I thought I’d probably wasted a lot of time speaking to old comrades, which, with a little careful direction from him, could have been more usefully spent elsewhere.

“We have a saying, ‘It takes more than one dead mouse to make a good cat.’ ” In front of the door, he took a bunch of keys out of his pocket, unlocked it, and then ushered me inside. “When I intercepted Mengele’s private papers, it reminded me of how little we actually know about all the ex-Nazis who have come to Argentina. Perón may care nothing about what any of you did during the war, but that could hardly be good enough for me. After all, it’s my job to know about people. So I decided it was high time that we started gathering intelligence on all our ‘guest workers.’ I decided that you were our best means of obtaining it.”

He closed the door behind us and we walked up a quiet marble stairway. The handrail was sticky with wood polish, and the marble floor as white and shiny as a string of freshwater pearls. On the first-floor landing was a picture of Evita. She was wearing a blue dress with white spots, a large pink tea rose on her shoulder, a ruby-and-diamond necklace and a matching ruby-and-diamond smile.

“At some stage, relations with the United States will have to improve if Argentina is to recover the economic wealth we enjoyed a decade ago,” said the colonel. “For that to happen, it may be politic, eventually, to ask some of our more notorious immigrants to go and live somewhere else. Paraguay, for example. Paraguay is a lawless, primitive country, where even the worst animals can live quite openly. So you see. All this time, you have been doing this country a great service for which, one day—one day soon, I suspect—we will have cause to thank you.”

“I feel patriotic already.”

“Hold on to that feeling. You’re going to need it when you meet Evita. The woman is the most patriotic person I know.”

“Is that where we’re going?”

“Yes. And by the way, you remember how I mentioned that when I heard that Perón’s men had arrested you and taken you to Caseros, I was able to exercise some influence in another quarter and have you released? Evita is that quarter. She is your new protector. It might be a good idea to remember that.”

Colonel Montalbán paused in front of a heavy wooden door. On the other side was what sounded like a beehive. He looked me up and down and handed me a comb. I ran it quickly through my hair and gave it back.

“If I’d known I was going to meet the president’s wife tonight, I’d have spent the day shopping for a new suit,” I said. “Maybe even had a bath.”

“Believe me, she will hardly notice how you smell. Not in this place.”

He opened the door and we entered a wood-paneled room about the size of a tennis court. At the far end was another, larger painting of Evita. She was wearing a blue dress and smiling at a group of children. Behind her head was a bright light, and if I hadn’t known better, I’d have said she had a husband called Joseph and a son who was a carpenter. The room was full of people and the smell of their unwashed bodies. Some of them were disabled, some were pregnant, most looked poor. All of them were quite certain that the woman they were hoping to see was nothing less than the Madonna of Buenos Aires, La Dama de la Esperanza. There was no pushing or jostling for position, however. Each of them had a ticket and, from time to time, an official would come into that room and announce a number. This was the cue for an unmarried mother, a homeless family, or a crippled orphan to come forward and be received into the holy presence.