A Quiet Flame Read online

  “I’m beginning to think you might be someone important,” I said.

  We stopped outside a door where the air seemed more fetid. It made me think of visiting the aquarium at the Berlin Zoo when I was a child. Or perhaps the reptile house. Something wet and slimy and uncomfortable, anyway. The colonel took out a packet of Capstan Navy Cut, offered me one, and then lit us both. “Deodorants,” he said. “In here is the judicial mortuary.”

  “Do you bring all your first dates here?”

  “Just you, my friend.”

  “I feel I should warn you that I’m the squeamish sort. I don’t like mortuaries. Especially when there are dead bodies in them.”

  “Come, now. You worked in Homicide, didn’t you?”

  “That was years ago. It’s the living I want to be with as I get older, Colonel. I’ll have plenty of opportunity to spend time with the dead when I’m dead myself.”

  The colonel pushed open the door and waited. It seemed I didn’t have much choice but to go inside. The smell got worse. Like a dead alligator. Something wet and slimy and definitely dead. A man wearing white scrubs and bright green rubber gloves came to meet us. He was vaguely Indian-looking, dark-skinned with even darker rings under his eyes, one of which was milky, like an oyster. I had the idea he’d just crawled out of one of his body drawers. He and the colonel exchanged a silent mime of nods and head jerks, and then the green gloves went to work. Less than a minute later, I was looking at the naked body of an adolescent girl. At least I think it was a girl. What usually passed for clues in this department appeared to be missing. And not just the exterior parts, but quite a few of the internal ones, too. I’d seen more obviously fatal injuries, but only on the western front, in 1917. Everything south of her navel appeared to have been mislaid.

  The colonel let me take a good look at her and then said, “I was wondering if she reminded you of anyone.”

  “I don’t know. Someone dead?”

  “Her name is Grete Wohlauf. A German-Argentine girl. She was found in the Barrio Norte about two weeks ago. We think she was strangled. More obviously, her womb and other reproductive organs had been removed. Probably by someone who knew what he was doing. This was not a frenzied attack. As you can see, there is a certain clinical efficiency about what has been done here.”

  I kept the cigarette in my mouth so that the smoke acted as a screen between my sense of smell and the gutted cadaver that was laid out in front of us like something on an abattoir floor. Actually, the smell was mostly formaldehyde, but whenever I caught it in my nostrils, it dislodged memories of the many unpleasant things I’d seen in my time as a Berlin homicide detective. There were two things I remembered in particular, but I saw no reason to mention these to Colonel Montalbán.

  Whatever it was he wanted from me, I wanted no part of it. After a while, I turned away.

  “And?” I said.

  “I just wondered. If this might jog any memories.”

  “Nothing that ought to be in my photograph album.”

  “She was fifteen years old.”

  “It’s too bad.”

  “Yes,” he said. “I have a daughter myself. A little older than her. I don’t know what I’d do if something like this happened.” He shrugged. “Everything. Anything.”

  I said nothing. I imagined he was coming to the point.

  He walked me back to the mortuary door. “I told you before that I studied jurisprudence in Berlin,” he said. “Fichte, von Savigny, Ehrlich. My father wanted me to be a lawyer. And my mother, who is German, she wanted me to become a philosopher. I myself wanted to travel. To Europe. And after my law degree I was offered the opportunity to study in Germany. Everyone was happy. Me, most of all. I loved Berlin.”

  He pushed open the door and we went back into the corridor outside.

  “I had an apartment on the Ku-damm, near the Memorial Church and that club with the doorman who dressed up as the devil, and where the waiters dressed as angels.”

  “The Heaven and Hell,” I said. “I remember it very well.”

  “That’s right.” The colonel grinned. “Me a good Roman Catholic boy. I’d never seen so many naked women before. There was one show: ‘Twenty-five Scenes from the Life of the Marquis de Sade,’ it was called. And another called ‘The Naked Frenchwoman: Her Life Mirrored in Art.’ What a place. What a city. Is it really all gone?”

  “Yes. Berlin itself is a ruin. Little more than a building site. You wouldn’t recognize it.”

  “Too bad.”

  He unlocked the door to a little room opposite the judicial mortuary. There was a cheap table, a few cheap chairs, and some cheap ash-trays. The colonel drew up a blind and opened a dirty window to let in some fresh air. Across the street I could see a church, and there were people going in the door who knew nothing about forensics and murder and whose nostrils were filled with something better than the smell of cigarettes and formaldehyde. I sighed and looked at my watch, hardly caring to conceal my impatience now. I hadn’t asked to see the body of a dead girl. I was irritated with him for that and for what I knew was surely coming.

  “Forgive me,” he said. “I’m just getting to it now. What I wanted to talk to you about, Herr Gunther. You see, I’ve always been interested in the darker side of human behavior. That is why I became interested in you, Herr Gunther. You are one of the reasons I became a policeman rather than a lawyer. In a sense you helped to save me from a very dull life.”

  The colonel drew up a chair for me and we sat down.

  “Back in 1932 there were two sensational murders in the German newspapers.”

  “There were a lot more than two,” I said sourly.

  “Not like these two. I remember reading about them in some lurid detail. These were lust murders, were they not? Two girls similarly mutilated. Just like poor Grete Wohlauf. One in Berlin and one in Munich. And you, Herr Gunther. You were the investigating detective. Your picture was in the paper.”

  “Yes. I was. Only I don’t see what that has to do with anything.”

  “The murderer was never caught, Herr Gunther. He was never caught. That’s why we’re talking.”

  I shook my head. “That’s true. But look, it was almost twenty years ago. And several thousand miles away. You’re surely not suggesting that these three murders might be connected.”

  “Why not?” The colonel shrugged. “I have to consider every possibility. With the benefit of hindsight, it seems to me that these were peculiarly German crimes. Who was that other fellow who murdered and sexually mutilated all those boys and girls? Haarmann, wasn’t it? He bit out their throats and cut off their genitals. And Kürten. Peter Kürten. The Vampire of Düsseldorf. Let’s not forget him, shall we?”

  “Haarmann and Kürten were executed, Colonel. As I’m sure you must remember. So it can hardly be them, now can it?”

  “Of course not. But there were other lust murders, too. As I’m sure you remember. Some of them involving mutilation and cannibalism.” The colonel leaned forward on his chair. “All right. Here’s where I’m going with this. Many Germans have come to live here in Buenos Aires. Before the war, and after the war. And not all of them are civilized people like you and me. Naturally I’ve been paying close attention to the trials of your so-called war criminals. And it’s quite clear to me that some of your countrymen have done some terrible things. Unimaginable things. So here’s my theory, if you can call it that. Not everyone who has come to Argentina in the last five years is an angel. Some might be devils. Just like in that old Berlin club. The Heaven and Hell. You will admit that much, surely?”

  “Freely. You heard what I said to the president.”

  “Yes, I did. It made me think that you might be a man I could use, Herr Gunther. An angel, if you like.”

  “I’ve never been called that before.”

  “Oh, I think you have, but I’ll get to that. Let me finish this particular train of thought. You will also admit, I hope, that many of your colleagues in the SS enjoyed killing, yes?
I mean, it stands to reason, doesn’t it? That some of these men in the SS were psychopaths. Yes?”

  I nodded. “I can see where you’re going with this, I think.”

  “Exactly. Take the case of Rudolf Höss, the commander of the Auschwitz concentration camp. He’d murdered before. In 1923. As had Martin Bormann. A man does not become a psychopath because he puts on a uniform. Therefore it must be the case that there were many psychopaths who found a congenial home in the SS and the Gestapo as licensed murderers and torturers.”

  “I always thought so,” I said. “You can imagine my pleasure when I was inducted into the SS, in 1940. It comes as quite a shock to spend your whole life investigating murder, then to be sent to Russia and expected to start committing it yourself.”

  “Oh, I wasn’t suggesting you were a psychopath, Herr Gunther. Look, let’s say that in 1932 this murderer is not caught. In 1933 the Nazis come to power and he joins the SS, where he finds a new, socially acceptable means of achieving his lust for cruelty. During the war he works in a death camp, killing as many as he wants, with total impunity.”

  “And then you invite him to come and live in Argentina.” I grinned. “I take your point. But I don’t see how I can help.”

  “I should have thought it was obvious. A chance to reopen an old case.”

  “I’m not the neat type, Colonel. And believe me, there were plenty of other unsolved cases on our books. None of them costs me any sleep.”

  The colonel was nodding but I could see that he still had cards to play.

  “Another girl has gone missing,” he said. “Here in B.A.”

  “Girls go missing all the time. Darwin called it natural selection. A girl selects a young man and naturally her father doesn’t like him very much. So she runs off with him.”

  “So I can’t appeal to your social conscience?”

  “I hardly know my way around this city. I barely speak the language. I’m a fish out of water.”

  “Not exactly. The girl who is missing is of German-Argentine origin. Like Grete Wohlauf. I was thinking you might confine your inquiries to our German community. Didn’t I just explain that I have a hunch we’re looking for a German? You don’t need to speak good Spanish to do that. You don’t need to know the city. You do need to be a German. And to hunt among the people I want you to hunt among, you need to be one of them. When I said you could be my angel, I meant my black angel. Isn’t that what Germans called men who were in the SS? Black angels?”

  “Set a thief to catch a thief, is that it?”

  “Something like that, yes.”

  “They’re not going to like that, my old comrades. They have new names. New faces, some of them. New names, new faces, and amnesia. I could find myself becoming very unpopular with some of the most ruthless men in South America. Present company excepted.”

  “I already thought of a way of handling things so that you don’t wind up dead.”

  I smiled. He was persistent, I had to give him that much. And I was beginning to have a feeling he had already second-guessed all of my objections. “I bet you have, Colonel.”

  “I’ve even considered your financial situation,” he said. “After having converted your money at the Bank of London and South America—the branch on Calle Bartolomé Mitre, wasn’t it?”

  “So much for banking secrecy in this country,” I said.

  “You will have learned that twenty-five thousand Austrian schillings is not such a lot. By my calculations, you have about a thousand dollars, which is not going to last you very long in Buenos Aires. A year, maybe less, if there are unforeseen expenses. And it’s my experience that there are always unforeseen circumstances. Especially for a man in your position. On the other hand, I’m offering you a job. Unlike the kind of a job Carlos Fuldner will probably offer you, this is a job you would actually be good at.”

  “Working for you? In the secret police?”

  “Why not? There’s a salary, a desk in the Casa Rosada, a car. There’s even a passport. A proper one. Not that piece of shit the Red Cross gave you. With a proper passport you could go back to Germany, perhaps. Without having to answer all sorts of awkward questions when you got there. After all, you would be an Argentine citizen. Think about it.”

  “Perhaps if I had the original case files, it might have been possible.” I shook my head. “But it was almost twenty years ago. Probably the files were lost during the war.”

  “On the contrary. They’re here in B.A. I had them sent from Berlin Alexanderplatz.”

  “You did that? How?”

  The colonel shrugged modestly, but still managed to look quite pleased with himself. As well he might have done. I was impressed with him.

  “Actually, it really wasn’t very difficult. It’s the Americans who dislike Perón and the generals, not the Russians. Besides, the Delegation for Argentine Immigration in Europe has many friends in Germany. You should know that better than anyone. If the DAIE can get Eichmann out of Germany, a few old files are not going to present much of a problem.”

  “My compliments, Colonel. You seem to have thought of everything.”

  “In Buenos Aires it is better to know everything than it is to know too much,” said the colonel.

  He crossed his legs and picked some fluff off his knee and waited patiently for my answer. I felt certain I was about to trump him, but he looked so cool I couldn’t help but think he still had something up his sleeve.

  “Please don’t think that I’m not flattered by your offer,” I said. “But right now I have other things on my mind. You’ve thought of everything, it’s true. Except the one reason why I’m not going to work for you. You see, Colonel, I’m not well. I had heart palpitations on the boat. I thought I was having a heart attack. Anyway, I went to see Dr. Espejo, the one Perón recommended. And he says I don’t have a heart condition at all. The heart palpitations are the result of thyrotoxicosis. I have cancer of the thyroid, Colonel Montalbán. That’s why I’m not going to work for you.”

  5

  BUENOS AIRES, 1950

  COLONEL MONTALBÁN TOOK OFF his glasses and began to clean their tinted lenses with the end of his woolen tie. He was trying not to smile so as not to hurt my feelings, but I could see that he really didn’t care if he did. As if he was trying only a little not to give the game away.

  I guessed what this was.

  “But you knew that already, didn’t you?”

  The colonel shrugged and went on polishing.

  “What kind of a country is this? No banking secrecy. And no medical ethics. I suppose Dr. Espejo is a friend of yours.”

  “Actually, no. Quite the reverse. Espejo is what we call a resentido. It means he has a chip on his shoulder. Espejo is a man who dislikes Perón intensely.”

  “I wondered why he seemed to be the only person I’ve met in this city who doesn’t have a picture of the president on his wall.” I shook my head. “I don’t get it. Perón recommended a doctor who hates him?”

  “Earlier on, you mentioned the oyentes.”

  I smiled. “You have a listening device planted in his surgery.”

  “Several.”

  “I guess that’s one way of making sure you get an honest diagnosis.”

  “Did you perhaps think you didn’t?”

  “It sure didn’t feel like Espejo was keeping anything back. The man’s got quite a left hook on him. It’s been a while since anyone caught me one on the chin like that.” I paused. “Don’t tell me he was pulling his punches.”

  “Not at all,” said the colonel. “Espejo’s a good doctor. But there are better ones. If I were you, Herr Gunther, I should want to have someone treating me who’s more of an expert in these matters than Espejo. A specialist.”

  “Sounds expensive. Too expensive for my thousand dollars.”

  “All the more reason to work for me. We have a saying here in Argentina. We say, ‘I can’t trust you until I tell you a secret.’ So that’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to trust you with o
ne of the biggest secrets in the country. Then you will have to help me and I will have to help you. It will be a sign of good faith between us.”

  “What if I prefer not to know what you know?”

  “I can’t tell you B if I don’t also tell you A. I will tell you B first, and then perhaps you will guess A. Dr. George Pack is one of the leading cancer specialists in the world. He is a consultant at Sloan-Kettering in New York. He treats patients like the Rockefellers and the Astors. But quite often he also comes here, to Buenos Aires.”

  “To treat someone equally important, no doubt,” I said. “The general?”

  The colonel shook his head.

  “The general’s wife?”

  He nodded. “But even she does not know.”

  “Is that possible?”

  “It is if the general wishes it. Evita thinks she has a woman’s problem. But it’s something else. I have already spoken to Dr. Pack. And as a favor to the general, he has agreed to treat you the next time he is in the country. At our expense, of course.” The colonel threw his hands up. “So you see, you have no choice, no excuse to refuse. There isn’t one objection you can make that hasn’t already been thought of.”

  “All right,” I said. “I can tell when I’m beaten. But you seem to have a lot of faith in my abilities, Colonel. Still, how can I resist?”

  “How, indeed? But is it so hard to accept my admiration for your forensic abilities? It would be the same for you and Ernst Gennat, would it not? Or that other great Berlin detective. Bernard Weiss. These were your mentors. Your own heroes.”

  “For a while, yes, they were,” I said. “All the same, it does seem like you’ve been to a hell of a lot of trouble to have me investigate one murder and one missing girl.”

  “It might seem that way to you, Herr Gunther. But to be brutal with you, it’s really no trouble at all. We have some old papers sent from Berlin. We give you a job. We pay you some money. We employ a doctor to treat your illness. These are easy things to fix when you’re a man in my position. What could be simpler?”

  “When you put it like that,” I said.