A Matter of Honor

Chapter Twenty-seven

Twin taillights on the Porsche 911-SC blinked as Pytor Vayetch, with Herr Rauch in the passenger seat beside him, braked at the crosswalk, then made a sharp left and turned on a narrow, bricked street.

Lasari and Strasser stood in front of the Atelier, the flashing neon sign above the doorway, a homed devil with trident, coating their faces scarlet.

Greta pushed open the door and joined them. “A big man at the bar stopped me. He asked my name,” she said primly. “He thought I was an American girl he knew from Princeton, but it was someone else.” She smiled. “I think he just thought I was pretty, but he’s too old for me.” Strasser ignored her.

“That’s a lot of shit, what you just said, Jackson,” he said to Lasari. “Get in my car. You’re comin’ with me and Greta right now.”

“No, I’ll take a cab later.”

“You’re not a fucking civilian, Jackson. I thought you understood the ground rules.”

“I want to be alone. I want to drink some beer and not listen to anybody,” Lasari said.

“If it’s me,” Greta said, “I won’t talk at all. There’s beer in the refrigerator and we can all watch television. There’s ‘Dallas’ tonight and that’s a good one.” She pronounced the name with the stress on the second syllable.

“Goddamn it, Greta, shut up!” Strasser said.

“You’re just mad because you had to dance and that makes you sweat,” she said. “Mr. Vayetch has no respect for us. I was glad to dance. I would rather watch pigs eat than Herr Rauch. I’m surprised he bothers with a knife and fork. I’m surprised he doesn’t sweat when he eats.”

“All right, Lasari, go have a beer,” Strasser said, his voice tight with rage. “Or take a walk, or do what the fuck you want. But I’ll be sitting up till you walk in that door and don’t you forget it.”

Lasari walked up the slanted street to the bridge and stood on the crest of the old stone arch, hearing the flow of water beneath. He studied as much of the sprawling city as he could see in the thin moonlight, the antique street lights and glowing windows of the old buildings in this part of town.

Heidelberg lies along the Neckar River, a dozen miles from its confluence with the Rhine. One street, the Hauptstrasse, dominates the town, running its length on a parallel course with the river. It is an ancient city of bridges and churches and a picturesque castle on the wooded outskirts of the town. On the other side of the river Lasari could see the outlines of the Bismarck monument, a landmark he had passed in the cab on the way to Strasser’s apartment, and that gave him his bearings.

Lasari walked along the Hauptstrasse, listening to the echo of his footsteps on the pavement. He passed several cafés with brightly lit windows, the bar and tables inside crowded with tanned faces and short haircuts. Country western or disco music sounded out into the street.

He stopped at a bierstube with stained glass windows facing the street and was surprised to find it crowded inside, damply cool with the smell of beer, and sawdust on the floor.

Lasari sat at the bar and ordered a glass of dark beer. He was near a university, he realized, because several tables were occupied by students, drinking beer and poring over books. Other areas were crowded with older working men, a few playing a game with oblong slates on special wooden tables. In one corner a family of six, four pudgy daughters and their middle-aged parents, were eating brat-wurst and watching a game show on the TV at the end of the bar.

Lasari sipped his beer slowly, relishing the coldness against the still-raw abrasions where his teeth had gashed the lining of his mouth and tongue.

A drift of the bartender’s cigarette smoke caught in Lasari’s throat and he put his hand to his face, trying not to cough. There was still a dull ache in his head from the beatings in Chicago and any quick motion or spasm could bring a burst of pain to his taped ribs. He had walked along the Hauptstrasse faster than he meant to, agitated by his talk with Vayetch, troubled by the dilemma in which he found himself. He realized his body was moist with exertion and tension, the heavy taping on his ribs giving off a sticky chemical odor. Lasari put a hand inside his jacket and touched the bandages through his shirt. They felt thick and layered but even the touch of his fingers sent shivers of pain through his bruised ribs.

The conversation with the two strangers in the restaurant had left him with a terrible sense of inadequacy. They had been briefed, they knew his background, his records and their knowledge robbed him of defenses. What did he know about them?

Somewhere, in the hospital or Jackson Hole, he remembered reading what a logician had written: Survival is knowledge. Examine a trap to learn its dimensions, its properties; decide for what it is designed to lure and snare. Study the bait.

Lasari sipped beer and tried to apply the logician’s test. He knew he was in a trap but he couldn’t define its true shape or dimensions or how to escape. He wasn’t even sure if he was the victim or the bait.

Lasari’s thoughts were jarred when someone in the bar laughed, a high, familiar laugh that rang out above the hum of voices. He turned to the German family looking at television, but they were eating and watching solemnly.

If he disobeyed the orders of Malleck and Strasser, and now Vayetch and Herr Rauch, and made a run for it, they could report him and he would be on his way to federal prison. If he cooperated, if he smuggled the contraband into the United States and was caught, the same thing could happen. He had struggled to persuade himself to appeal to the army, to admit to his desertion. Now he had compounded desertion with criminal collusion. Would any Army brass believe otherwise?

A lanky young man in civilian clothes walked behind Lasari and toward the front door. In the reflection of the bar mirror, Lasari saw that he had blond, curly hair and a flickering smile. He did not look at Lasari but gave the bartender a soft salute, calling over his shoulder, “See you all again. You take care, you hear?”

Lasari felt a sudden new pain in his gut, a jolt of fear. As the door swung shut behind the blond man, a draft of cold air from the Neckar swept through the barroom.

Lasari now knew why Sergeant Strasser had allowed him this time alone on the town, because he was not alone. He was being watched. The blond man was Eddie Neal, the soldier from the Chicago armory who had wanted to put the boots to him as he lay on the floor at Karl Malleck’s feet. And the laugh, the mocking humorless laugh, was the one he had heard just before he was bludgeoned into blackness in Bonnie Caidin’s apartment.

Bonnie Caidin.... “The little newspaper cunt has been on my payroll from the beginning.... Who do you think gave us the fucking key, you ginny bastard...”

Lasari paid for his beer and left the bar. He looked up and down the Hauptstrasse. It seemed to him suddenly more than a strange street in a strange town. It was now a menacing place of dangers, a stretch of lampposts, darkened doorways and shadows... a world of watching Sergeant Mallecks, Herr Rauchs and Eddie Neals.

Lasari spotted a cruising cab, flagged it and gave the driver the address of Strasser’s apartment.

The apartment door was off the latch and Lasari pushed it open. Greta was sitting on the floor in a blue chenille robe, watching TV with the sound off, a stem man with a goatee reading the late news. Her expression was petulant and her legs were stretched out straight in front of her, slim and pale, in a pose that was childish and defiant. Her high-heeled, ankle-strapped sandals were sprawled carelessly on the floor nearby.

“He won’t let me play the television,” she said, pushing her thick, fair hair away from her temples. She had pulled out the combs and the soft waves fell to her shoulders. “He’s angry with you, so that makes him angry with me.” Her smile was sullen and shrewd. “He’s drunk, you know, but not that drunk. I got into bed with him and he tried to do something, but he said he was too angry.”

Lasari looked around the apartment and then went over to one of the cuckoo clocks on the wall. With a finger he touched the long pine cone pendulums, sending them swinging back and forth. “Don’t any of these damned clocks work, Greta? You’d go to bed if you knew what time it was.”

“Of course they work,” she said, “but they’re not wound up. Who wants to hear cuckoos all day long? And you shouldn’t touch those clocks. He won’t even let me go near them. They’re his hobby, he is very proud of them.”

“Why does he want so many?” Lasari said.

She shrugged. “Maybe you’re just jealous of Ernie because he has something special. He hires my cousin to carve those pine cones, each one separate.” She pulled her chenille robe above her bare knees.

“You Americans don’t like us because you beat us in the war and you think we’re rich again. Let me tell you something, Mr. Jackson. All Germans don’t have it so good. Many people have no jobs. My cousin is sixteen. He would like to be a carpenter but his father cannot pay ten thousand deutsche marks to buy him an apprenticeship.”

Greta’s voice had become soft and petulant, on the verge of tears, as she stared at the walls of clocks.

“That’s almost four thousand dollars, those deutsche marks, not much to you rich Americans, but a lot of money for poor Germans. My cousin has no work. That’s why the big Ernest Strasser can hire a boy to sit in the cellar and carve things for his silly cuckoos.”

The sway and the click of the pendulums seemed to agitate her, so Lasari stopped them carefully with the tip of his finger.

“I think your cousin does nice work, Greta,” he said.

“You don’t care about my cousin,” she said, “and you don’t care about me. Do you know what it means for a girl to go to bed with a man and nothing happens? It’s not because he’s angry, it’s not because he’s drunk. That’s not true. He is very afraid, you know. But if I try to talk to him about that, he goes crazy...”

Lasari slid the catch on the front door to lock it and turned toward the hallway leading to his bedroom.

“Can I make some cocoa and bring it to your room?” Greta asked.

“I don’t drink cocoa,” Lasari said. “It keeps me awake.”

“All right! You’ll be lonely some night, you cowboy shit!” she called after him. “You’ll beg to stay awake and have cocoa. Don’t ask me for it then, Jackson. You can make it yourself then, goddamn you... And what did you think, that I would tell him something on you?”