The Eighth Dwarf (20 page)

“You think they'll let you do that?” he said.

“What do you mean?”

“There are three governments looking for your brother—the Americans, the British, and the Russians—or so I've been told: about the Russians, I mean. What I'm saying is do you think that they'll simply let you spirit your brother away to some nice quiet sanitarium and then forget about all those people he's killed?”

Eva Scheel rose, picked up a plate, and offered it to Jackson. “Have some Milky Ways, Mr. Jackson; they really go quite nicely with tea.”

The candy bars had been sliced into quarter-inch-thick pieces and arranged with a great deal of care on the plate. Although Jackson wasn't overly fond of candy, he took one, smiled his thanks, and popped it into his mouth. She's giving her friend time to think, he thought as he watched Eva Scheel put the plate back on the table, resume her seat, and start stroking the collar of her fur coat as though she found it comforting.

“The Russians,” Leah said in almost a whisper. “I did not know about the Russians.” She looked at Jackson and then at Eva Scheel. “Why would the Russians …?” She didn't finish her question.

Eva Scheel shrugged and looked at Jackson. “Perhaps Mr. Jackson would know.”

“I can only guess,” he said.

Leah nodded. “Please.”

“Oil.”

“Oil?”

“And politics. In the Middle East or Near East or whatever you want to call it, they're all mixed up. The United States doesn't have any Middle East policy—at least, none that's discernible. The Russian policy is quite obvious. They want to move the British out so they can move in. Right now they're tilting toward the Arabs, because they're smart enough to realize that you can't be at odds with the Arabs in Palestine without its reverberating throughout the rest of the Moslem world—and that means Saudi Arabia and Bengal and Malaya and North Africa and the Dardanelles; not to mention those sections of Russia which are also Islamic. Your brother, ill or not, is a very good killer. The Russians could drop him in almost any place where things are in a state of flux—Iran, for example, or Iraq—and if your brother took out just the right person or persons, then the resulting mess could be all the excuse that the Russians would need to move in.”

“What an interesting theory,” Eva Scheel said with a smile that was almost polite. “A bit farfetched, but interesting.”

“Then there's Palestine,” Jackson said.

“What about Palestine?” Eva Scheel said.

Jackson looked at Leah Oppenheimer. “Your brother's politics are a bit strange. Do you think he's still a Communist?”

She shook her head. “I have no way of knowing.”

“Let's say that he is. Let's even say, for the sake of argument, that he's the fervent kind. Now suppose the Russians were able to hand the Palestinians a top-notch killer who was also a renegade Jew who could pass as an American or an Englishman—or a German refugee. Don't you think the Palestinians might make good use of him—perhaps even infiltrate him into the Irgun or the Stern Group?”

Leah Oppenheimer shook her head vigorously. “That's ridiculous.”

“Is it?”

“My brother could never be anyone's paid assassin.”

“Nobody really knows what your brother is—or what he could be, given sufficient incentive. Right now he's killing bad Germans, or thinks he is. I don't really think that bothers the Americans or the British or the Russians too much, not as long as he just keeps on killing those who're really rotten. But there's no percentage in it—at least, not for the Russians or the Americans or the British. Right now his talents, such as they are, are being wasted. Any one of the three could use him somewhere else—and right now the Middle East seems the most likely spot.”

“I'm surprised that you included the Americans, Mr. Jackson,” Eva Scheel said.

“Why?”

“I thought they would be too—well, pure.”

“We lost our purity during the war. Like virginity, once you lose it, you never get it back.”

“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 pistol: 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.

But he didn't seek out the Russians. They were after him, the Russians. Because of the Himmler thing. They had learned about it. How? Well, the Russians had their ways. Now they were combing the city for him. When they found him, they would arrest him and try him for cowardice. He would be found guilty and then they would shoot him. He would suffer a long time before he died.

A part of him always knew that his fears were groundless. This part of him, the mocking part, would stand aside as he cowered in some bombed-out ruin and with biting logic explain all about the irrationality of his fears. Finally, the fears began to go away and depression set in. The mocking part of him was not nearly so adept at dealing with depression. About all that this mocking self could tell him was that he was slightly mad. But then, he already knew that.

Sometimes, however, the depression would immobilize him for days at a time. He would sit, virtually motionless in whatever ruins he happened to find himself in, with his knees drawn up and his arms wrapped tightly around them. During these times he would neither sleep nor drink nor eat.

It got better in early June after he killed the rat. He killed it with a stone, skinned it, cooked it, and ate it. For nearly a week after that he lived on rats. They gave him enough strength to go poking about in the destroyed building in which he found himself. In a heap of rubble that once had been a bathroom he discovered a piece of broken mirror and looked at his reflection for the first time in more than a month. He started laughing. It went on for a long time, the laughter, and although at the end it may have turned into a kind of hysteria, when it was all over he felt better. Much better.

In fact, he felt so much better that he dug around in the rubble of what had been the bathroom and found a straight razor, a brush, and a cracked, gilt-embossed shaving mug with just a bit of soap left in its bottom. He walked three blocks to the nearest water, brought back a large tin of it, and shaved off his beard, cutting himself only twice in the process.