The Tenth Witness (Henri Poincare Mystery) (21 page)

T
HE
BRICK
and stucco Tudor sat well back from a street lined with eucalyptus trees, still green in the mild Argentine winter and smelling of menthol. Absent these fragrant trees, which didn’t grow in Germany, I could have been walking in suburban Munich admiring the trimmed lawns of a well-tended neighborhood. I pressed a buzzer. A maid in uniform answered.

“Greta Schmidt,
por favor
.” I presented her husband’s card.

She appeared within minutes wearing an apron and a broad smile. “Herr Poincaré? I’ve heard all about you. Please, come in.” She waved me into a tiled foyer. “Viktor says you’re quite the bright star. Welcome!”

It must be true that spouses, over decades, come to resemble each other; or perhaps all older people tend to look alike, with their slack faces and ears and noses that used to fit, but now seem oversized and attached with putty. Yet for all her wrinkles and mismatched parts and hair so thin I could see her scalp, Greta Schmidt was an elegant, self-possessed woman. Her hair was tinted and coiffed, likely that morning at a salon, her makeup applied with a light and confident hand. She was sturdy like her husband, more fireplug than willow, but graceful just the same, with an expression on the softer side of stern. She clasped my hand in hers.

“Viktor said you might stop in for one of our gatherings, and here you are! I’m so pleased, Henri. Your timing is excellent. Our little gathering is just now enjoying a late lunch. Please join us.”

At last,
I thought. Even in Viktor Schmidt’s home, I couldn’t deny my relief at being off the streets. I followed her into a roomful of gray-haired men and women, where Greta introduced me as a special friend of Anselm and Liesel Kraus, and also Viktor, here on business. “Henri,” she said, “I present the Edelweiss Society. We gather each week to speak the mother tongue and eat bratwurst, which my husband brings with him from Munich.”

Someone raised a beer stein: “To Viktor and bratwurst!”

“Friends, be kind,” said Greta. “Herr Poincaré’s German is passable. He makes a good effort. And there’s something else. I have it on good authority there may be a match in the making with Viktor’s goddaughter, Liesel Kraus.”

The little group perked up.

“Do you know something I don’t?” I asked.

“Don’t play sly with us. We all know the Kraus family here. Give us news.”

Eckehart Nagel stood in the corner of the room with his arms folded. I saw him at once and we’d acknowledged each other as Greta showed me about the room. “Look,” I said. “Liesel’s magnificent. I don’t know anyone half as smart or beautiful. But it’s only been a few weeks. I don’t know what Viktor’s been telling you.”

Greta winked. “Remember, I have a daughter in Munich.”
Yes
, I thought. That would be Theresa. “Our Liesel’s the right age, Henri, and so are you. Theresa and Viktor say you’re both smitten. Dear, you get to be a grandmother and you stop being coy about these things. If you see the potential for a match, if there’s an attraction and . . . how do I say it, an agreement about—”

“Values,” said Nagel, interrupting.

He looked just the same as when I’d seen him last, or so I thought, on the train platform in Vienna, in a neat suit with a pocket watch showing a loop of gold braid. Here was the same lean, erect bearing and perfectly bald, shiny head. “Shared values,” he continued. “If there’s an agreement about how to see the world, and if there’s real affection, then why not marry?”

“Exactly, Eckehart. You put it so clearly. Henri?” She placed a hand on my arm. “Do you and Liesel see the world the same way?”

“I don’t know,” I stammered. “Yes, I suppose.”

Nagel inspected me. “So, we meet again. Give us news, Herr Poincaré.”

Twice I had yelled his name across the train platform. If I’d had any doubts it was Dr. Nagel, I had none now. Why hadn’t he acknowledged me? Others standing near him had, which all but proved he was deaf or had willfully avoided me. One could not mistake a man whose skin was pulled tight over his skull. I told him the story and tried making a joke of it.

“Two weeks ago? I certainly wasn’t in Vienna. But if I were, I’d have gone straight to the Sacher Hotel for a slice of torte with an espresso. And invited you to join me! Maybe you and I shall do that sometime—meet in Vienna.”

“There couldn’t be two of you, I suppose?”

“Herr Poincaré, the world can hardly stomach one of me.”

He called on the others to introduce themselves. Gustavo and Anna Brandt announced that they lived near the airport and would be pleased to drive me when the time came.

Another couple asked about Munich. “We haven’t seen it in so long. The heart aches, Herr Poincaré. But in Buenos Aires, we’ve done our best. We’ve found a place to put the nastiness of the war behind us. All of us feel the same way.”

“You could visit,” I said. “It’s as easy as booking a flight.”

“Oh,” she said, smoothing a crease in her dress. “It never seems convenient.”

The members of the Edelweiss Society could not have been more welcoming. Still I felt, as I had at Terschelling, the odd sensation of standing in a room with Germans of a certain age, wondering what they did or saw and tolerated thirty years earlier. It was an ungenerous, though not preposterous, thought. Juan Perón had made Argentina a sanctuary for Nazis, Eichmann included. Doubtless, there were others, though I couldn’t think ill of this sweet lady who longed for the old country.

When the women retreated to another room, one of the men turned on the television to catch a World Cup soccer match. “Ach,” said Nagel. “It’s the Netherlands, those effeminate bastards. Switch it off, Gregor, before I throw something at the set.” Nagel turned to me.

I knew something about soccer. “Why effeminate, Dr. Nagel? The Dutch have a good team.”

Nagel had a talent for turning strong opinions into direct assaults. “Let me tell you,” he said. “The Cup comes to Argentina, and the Dutch soccer authority declares it objects to our politics. Their team debated. They wrung their hands. They took votes. You should have read the editorials in their papers! All this limp, wishy-washy soul searching and then they came anyway. It sickens me when someone won’t step forward to take charge. This world has no use for hand-wringers. Not in dangerous times. None. It’s soccer, for God’s sake. What has soccer to do with politics? Do you agree, Herr Poincaré? Tell me your view of the matter.”

And I had thought sports was the universally safe subject. I was saved when the man at the television changed the channel to a news broadcast.

Nagel erupted again, this time over footage of the protest at Plaza de Mayo the day before. “I can’t abide it! I
will
destroy that television! Switch it off, Gregor. Truly, if this weren’t Viktor’s house, I would throw the damned thing out the window.”

“You’d also pay for it, you piece of old shoe leather. I could use a new television. Come, let’s walk down the street to my house and wind you up.”

“Gregor, you miss my point.”

“You’re boring Herr Poincaré with politics. Enough.”

“No,” said Nagel. “He’s here to do business, and he should know what he’s walking into. Let him get a good dose of it and decide for himself.”

“Eckehart, stop,” said another. “You’re raising the temperature in here.”

“Well, let it get hot. Those screeching grandmothers are exactly what’s wrong with this country. Here’s how it is,” said Nagel, grabbing my arm. “I’m a physician. The way I see it, a country is like . . . no, it
is
a body. If a cancer attacks the body, you cut it out to save the patient. You dose that patient with strong medicines and radiation. You set a course to
annihilate
the cancer. It is permissible, in fact, to all but kill the patient to save him, using extreme measures when you must. If you succeed, the patient lives. As it goes with the human body, so it goes with the body politic. Argentina is in danger, Herr Poincaré. Our leaders are strong and our nation is capable of great things. But these women and the leftist guerillas who inspire their marches in the plaza are cancers that must be cut away.”

“Eckehart . . . they carry banners, not guns. Open your eyes.”

“
You,
Bern, are an apologist. Have you forgotten your history? If they’re bold enough to protest, if we
allow
them to think it’s their right to protest, in time there will be guns. Mark my words.”

“The
madres?
Old biddies with guns?”

“Their sons and husbands will carry the guns, you fool.”

Nagel was red in the face by this point. “All right, then. If my wife were alive, she’d have sent me to the kitchen for drinks and then apologized for my behavior. Forgive me, Herr Poincaré, but it’s an abundance of love for my adopted country that leads me to say these things. I won’t retract a word, but I
will
change the subject. I’ve mellowed in my old age.”

Brandt drew off the foam from his beer. “You should have heard him ten years ago when he was still in the army. He’s just a harmless old dog now. Isn’t that right, Herr General? People had to listen to you then.”

“It was the medical corps, not the army. And, yes, they listened.”

“Oh, how you loved a uniform!”

Nagel shook his head. “Ignore these imbeciles. You’ve come for business, I understand. With whom did you meet today? Perhaps one of us can help. Business in Argentina works the way it does elsewhere, you know. If Viktor recommends you, then you’re one of us. If you’re one of us, you gain full advantage of our contacts. Which are extensive, I might add. The main thing is to know a place before doing business. You’ve not been here long, but surely you’ve formed an impression of Buenos Aires. What do you think?”

The nine men of the Edelweiss Society had been chatting among themselves. One read a newspaper, another was inspecting an aquarium. Each stopped what he was doing and turned as a unit when Nagel asked that question.

With their wives in the next room, the Edelweiss men had relaxed in a way I hadn’t noticed before, and I realized that as a group they looked familiar. It was their clubby, easy attitude as much as any distinct memory of having seen them before. I could imagine these men as school chums, legs thrown over chairs, a card game under way. I imagined them smoking cigarettes and drinking their fathers’ liquor as someone kept watch at the window. They had aged alone and they had aged together, a fraternity that took root long ago. Thirty years as expat Germans in a new country could make brothers of anyone, I supposed.

As for my impressions of Buenos Aires, I decided against sharing my thoughts about the
madres
or the policeman and his van. Nor would I mention the limousine driver ready to wet himself over my visiting the Plaza de Mayo on his watch or the ever-charming Colonel Batista. Instead, I spoke of the
Preciado.

“Your government is going to salvage a treasure ship,” I said. “They brought me here to consult.”

Which was true.

They were amazed at the prospect of riches just seventy meters off the shore of their muddy river, and most of them were happy to discuss the intricacies of marine salvage. But Nagel had attached himself to his interrogation of me like some burr I’d picked up in the forest.

“All this is fascinating,” he said. “But what is your impression of Argentina? First impressions matter, son. Surely you have an opinion.”

I told the truth. “Buenos Aires is a magnificent city.”

“We know that. What else? What do you see?”

“Ambition, Dr. Nagel. I see . . . tremendous ambition.”

Thank God he didn’t ask for what.

twenty-nine

O
n returning to Munich, I learned that four more of our proposals had been accepted and eight others had made their respective shortlists, with notification expected within the month. My life was about to become a crazed quilt of travel, consulting, and hiring. This was the good news. The bad: not a single new client was based in Germany, let alone Munich.

Liesel had returned from Bangladesh three days earlier, her spirits in shambles. “Before I arrived,” she said, “the plant manager and the government had worked out the death benefit for each worker.” It was the second time that summer she nursed a Scotch on her balcony, contemplating how Kraus Steel had violated its own. “The families agreed that each life is worth $244 in US dollars. Two-forty-four times fourteen workers. This was our total liability in Chittagong. Our manager didn’t understand why I bothered to come.”

I asked about an account in the
Times
reporting that three children had died.

Liesel wouldn’t look at me. “The teenagers lied about their age. To work they must be eighteen, but no one checks. One of the dead was sixteen. Two were fifteen. Apparently, we hire them to carry off asbestos. Each ship has 15,000 tons of it, and the children break it apart with hammer claws and carry it off with their bare hands, out to the beach. It floats on the tide, then sinks. We pay the cutters, the ones with torches, forty cents an hour US. The men who carry the steel plates to the trucks get twenty-five cents an hour. The children get eleven cents. This is what they die for?”

She turned, her eyes ragged and ripped. “It’s
our
yard!”

For two days she hadn’t talked of Chittagong. Wanting to be near but to say nothing, she watched me work in my moon suit as I closed out my research on the circuit boards. On the third day, her version of the calamity poured out.
It’s our yard.
She said it a good dozen times that evening.

“I see it now. Your work at capturing gold will become another Chittagong and Uganda. Maybe Anselm won’t set up his computer salvaging in Bangladesh. But he will somewhere, and the workers won’t be wearing a protective suit or gas mask. Will they?”

“He’s your brother,” I said. “You tell me.”

It was not inevitable. Anselm could choose to earn an obscene profit or settle for an enormous profit, depending on whether or not he bought safety gear for his workers and shipped the acids to industrial facilities for recycling.

“My couch,” she said, pointing. “Look at it.”

We were standing on the balcony.