The Story of Henri Tod (18 page)

Blackford sighed. “That's not an easy one, Bruni. Officially, we work at arm's length.”

“I know it's not easy. That's why I'm asking you to do it. I wouldn't expect Mr.—what do you call them, ‘Mr. Joe Blow'?—to set up what I may need to set up. I do expect
you
to do it.”

Blackford whistled. “All I am expected to do is to lay on the United States Army. Right?”

“Right. But only if necessary.”

“There are a lot of interesting problems here, Bruni, and one mechanical problem. Which is that I've got to be out of town for two, maybe three days.”

Bruni knew better than to suggest that Blackford postpone his trip, let alone ask why he needed to take it. But his disappointment was evident. “When are you going?”

“Tomorrow.”

“Is there some way between now and then you can get the thing planned?”

“Sure. I could call Allen Dulles, I suppose. Where's the phone in here?”

Bruni did not smile. “Where Tod is concerned, I take no chances. He may be well on the way to mending. He may need special medical care. He may be mobile, he may not. There are more than thirteen thousand people per day that pass over and back to the Western sector, we both know that, all subject to detention and questioning. But if he is in a U.S. military vehicle, it is not lawful to stop it.”

“Bruni, look. I'll try. If I could put off the trip tomorrow I would do so. That is impossible.” He took a notepad from his pocket and tore off a blank page. “If the emergency does come, and if it comes before I return, call this telephone number and ask for Sergeant McCall. And say, ‘Jerome told me to call.' Now I've got to get cracking to see what can be done. You can pay the bill. And by the way, Bruni, where
do
you people get your bankroll?”

Bruni smiled. “How do you Americans put it? ‘Pennies from heaven'?”

“The way you all spend money, I could believe it. I'll report to Washington that Bing Crosby is bankrolling you. Good night, Bruni.”

“Good night, Blackford.”

Blackford walked out of the coffeehouse, then took a bus, and walked again close to where he knew that Rufus almost certainly could be found at this hour. At the corner he telephoned, let the phone ring four times, hung up. Then he redialed. At the first ring the telephone was answered. “It's me. And I'm around the corner. Can I come up?”

“Yes,” Rufus said, and a half hour later, Bruni's problem was his.

19

Noon to midnight. Nice. Old Central Europe sort of feel to it. Frankfurt to Vienna, twelve hours. With roughly equidistant stops. Nuremberg. Imagine how long
that
show would have lasted if the goal had been to try
all
war criminals. Interesting question: Was Josef Stalin a “war criminal”? Blackford reflected on Henri Tod's point about the philosophers whose inverse taxonomic hierarchy ends up with worrying about such uninteresting questions as whether when you killed innocent people, you did so because you were a “Nazi” or a “Communist.” It's what makes justice so slow in catching the point. To begin with, the Nuremberg trials were
ex post facto
legislation. Oh. So, if you're going to have
ex post facto
hangings, why not hang people who do those things that justify hanging them for doing? God knows, Hitler and his gang were such. But the effrontery! They were tried by, among others, judges deputized by Stalin, who on any objective accounting would have made the Guinness Book of Records as all-time mass killer of innocent people, though Mao Tse-tung was coming on fast. Idle thought department. The point, of course, was that Stalin had been among those who won the war. If Hitler had won it, no doubt he'd have tried Stalin. Though maybe he'd have tried him primarily for having collaborated, in his early years, with the Jew—Trotsky. Play with that.
“The defendant pleads, Honorable Judges, that he attempted to expiate his crime by subsequently sending an agent to kill the Jew Trotsky. That is an evasion. The fact of it is that Josef Stalin was a collaborator with the Jew Trotsky for a period of ten years, and nothing will do but that this honorable court pronounce a sentence of death, preferably by slow motion, like Soviet trains.”

Ideological daydreams department, Blackford thought. He was walking, an overnight suitcase in one hand, a briefcase in the other, through a part of the old city, or, more accurately, through the new part of the old city (not much had been left of Frankfurt after the Allied bombings) on a balmy afternoon, closer to summer than spring. He knew this section of the city, knew it well. That was another mission, and he thought wistfully that if Count Wintergrin had succeeded in his program to unify Germany he, Blackford, would not now be trying to do what he could to keep the American commander-in-chief one pace ahead of the Eastern juggernaut. Back then it could be said, in a way, that Count Wintergrin was taking the initiative: he wanted to unify something that at that moment was sundered—Germany. But now the Soviet Union wanted to unify Berlin. Or what, exactly, if not, exactly, that? How odd that all the world was wondering more: “What would be the American response?” than it was wondering, “What, exactly, will the Soviet Union do?” That it would be aggressive was accepted; discounted. That is what the Soviet Union
does
, don't you understand?

He walked by the Cathedral of St. Bartholomew. The sun was very bright, the temperature getting even warmer, but without any hint of tropicality. Here, in this city (the statisticians had figured it out), had been the densest per-square-inch bombing of the war—yes, Dresden and Berlin included. And here he was, an American, a former pilot in the American Air Force, wandering freely through Frankfurt, utterly unmenaced. The worry was not over the Americans who had fought a war and destroyed Frankfurt. The worry was about one of America's World War II allies. Would they do to Frankfurt—so painfully rebuilt, with its judges, its parliament, its free and unrigged elections, its prodigal industry—what they had done to German cities so unfortunate as to be located in the eastern half of the country? Would they be given the chance, if the United States said No, with nuclear resolution?

“Not if
I
can help it,” Blackford said, and laughed.
I
,
Blackford Oakes, promise ye yeomen of Frankfurt that, having won my favor, you will be spared any danger from the barbarians
. Meanwhile, if you will excuse me, I have got to catch the train to Vienna, because I have to bribe an unknown man on a matter involving one young woman.
That is my last microcosmic concern, Oh ye Elders of Frankfurt. From that moment on, I will look after your corporate interests
. Suddenly he ducked, because a pigeon, flying only a few yards above, had dropped his erstwhile belongings inches from Blackford's brown oxford shoes, and, looking up, he knew with the certitude of a former pilot that he had been between the crosshairs of the Norden bombsight hovering over him. History records that Blackford Oakes survived.

He arrived at the new railroad station, presented his ticket at the gate, walked into the car whose number was designated on his ticket, on to his compartment, and to one of whose six seats he had contractual access to. In his briefcase he had Mommsen's
Römische Geschichte
, recommended by Whittaker Chambers, but he had never got around to picking it up until browsing in that bookstore in Berlin. It gave a view of the political vectors of Roman culture, and Chambers saw something of the same sort happening here in Western Europe.

He was reading it when the train started out for Nuremberg. Three other passengers had entered the compartment, one of whom caught his eye. A fussy commercial traveler, dressed in solid black with a gray tie as if he had just attended a funeral. For him, travel was obviously something of a science. It required five minutes for him carefully to stow his bags on the rack above; remove what he desired from his lesser bag, which lay under his seat; regroup his luncheon provisions, which had been packed in individual wrappers; take his ticket from his wallet and situate it in his shirt pocket, that he might more easily produce it when the moment came; remove his shoes, put on his moccasins, enter his shoes in the shoe stockings from bag two, place the shoes in bag one. Readjust the combination on the lock of his briefcase, before doing which he glanced, perfunctorily one must suppose, to his right and then to his left. He maneuvered his palm to cover over the combination lock, so that neither Blackford, seated on his left, nor the drunkard and his gabby female companion sitting opposite him might espy it. Then the briefcase was opened. From it a book was taken out, the jacket copy announcing a German edition of Professor John Kenneth Galbraith's
The Affluent Society
, though, Blacky saw quickly, the book inside was in fact the equally entertaining German translation of the
Memoirs of Fanny Hill
. The man sat down, finally, book in hand, and began to read. His posture was erect and if it had happened, at that moment, that someone had elected to take a comprehensive picture of Herr von Gruenigen, he'd have caught the portrait of a member of the upwardly mobile German commercial class that had prospered after the war.

The train was modern by American standards, the motion smooth, the service expeditious. In the dining car Blackford found himself placed by the steward opposite his fussy traveling companion, who nodded to him and continued reading his book while he ate. As did Blackford, while enjoying the Bavarian summer that slid by, with the occasional lake, the clean towns and hamlets, and the rich soil, carefully tended. Across the aisle and opposite him was a young woman who sat reading the latest issue of
Time
magazine, General Maxwell Taylor on the cover. She ordered a light lunch in English, and read listlessly, Blackford thought. She was dressed smartly in a light brown linen suit with a yellow silk blouse. On her ears were small pearls; her hair was soft and apparently untended, though it framed her face nicely and enhanced her profile. Impulsively Blackford took his notebook from his pocket and wrote: “If you are planning to go as far as Salzburg or Vienna, might we dine together? I am well behaved, I can translate for you, and later on if I can have
Time
, you can have Mommsen's
Römische Geschichte
, what do you say? I am sitting opposite you across the way. I am
not
the one with the mustache, who is eating pork chops. If the answer is yes, I'll reserve the table you're at for the second seating, at 7:30. My name is Jerome, first name Buck. My friends call me Bucky. You can call me Bucky after the first course, if we become friends. Advise.”

He handed the note to the waiter, who presented it to the girl by merely swiveling about. Blackford noticed that she read it carefully. She did not look up. But she opened her handbag, took out a pencil and pad and wrote. She managed to engage the attention of the waiter and to direct the note to Blackford without once looking across at him.

Blackford read: “I'll decide after I know more about you. I am occupying Seat 3A in Compartment C, Car 326. During the afternoon, send me a note and tell me more about yourself. My name is Linda Lewis.” Blackford was amused, finished his coffee, paid his bill, rose, and walked back without attempting in any way to arrest Miss (Mrs.?) Lewis's visual attention. When he reached the rear of the car he arranged with the captain to reserve the table, gave him two marks, took the reservation, and returned to his compartment.

They were in Nuremberg and would be here for eight minutes. In October of 1944 he had killed a German fighter pilot in a duel over Nuremberg. It had been his first of three aerial encounters. He closed his eyes and remembered the fear he had felt when he first saw the tracer bullets; in his bowels he felt the instinctive deep dive down for cloud cover. Before reaching the bank of clouds he spotted his assailant, bound for the bomber flotilla it was Blackford's job to protect, and so he pulled up, headed for what he recognized as an Me 109, and circled to come in between the sun and the plane. The German had begun to fire at the bomber, whose gunner was firing back. The angle was wrong, Blackford saw. As things stood at that exact moment, if he also began firing there was a fine possibility that an American bomber would engage in a suicide pact with an American fighter plane. So he pulled the stick sharply and rose, leveled, and then pushed down the nose of his Mustang and, the angle now changed, fired at the German. The German's response was a sharp left roll, a rotational loop, and now for the briefest seconds the adversaries were so to speak face to face: they might in another age in suits of steel have been riding armored steeds, holding lances and charging at each other. Blackford intuitively waited that definitive split second necessary to fine-tune his aim. The German fired and Blackford fired a half second later. The German's bullets missed Blackford's cockpit by half a foot. Blackford's bullets poured into the pilot's upper chest, and as he swerved to the right, Blackford passed his mortally wounded adversary a small room's distance away, and gazed for a tenth of a second at the lifeless features of a young man still, like Blackford, in his teens. Blackford's first kill. He wished it had been his last. But always it had been, in his case, a question of that man's life or Blackford's, if you didn't count the death of Count Wintergrin. Twelve months later, in October of 1945, five minutes away from the railroad station, the trial would begin against Hermann Göring, the head of the German air force, diminished on that other October day by one fighter, and one fighter pilot,
inter alia
. Twelve months after that, in the early hours of the morning, he was scheduled to hang, but two hours before the execution they found Hermann Göring in his cell, dead from self-administered poison.

Enough, Blackford thought, of gruesome reminiscence. The incident in Nuremberg gave rise to a historic lead sentence in the United Press radio news in New York. Blackford remembered hearing a spirited young UP radio editor tell later how the Nuremberg executions were, “upstairs” at UP, judged to be too important for the regular professional staff to handle. So the president of United Press, wearing a green eyeshade, had descended from the executive offices with his entourage into the radio press room in the New York Daily News Building, taking charge of the typewriter. And when the electrifying news came, he solemnly tapped out his lead sentence to UP's five thousand clients: “Hermann Göring cheated death today by committing suicide.”