The Elegant Lie

…

Following his discharge from the army, Carter spent several days waiting for his transit papers to come through. His lawyer, Captain Ottway, was trying to secure him a seat on a plane heading back to the States. If that fell through, a berth would be found for him on board a ship. In the meantime, he had nothing to do but sit in his Quonset hut waiting for mealtimes so that he could shamble over to the mess hall.

At first, Carter had been nervous about the reception he might receive from the military policemen who were constantly coming and going from the base. He assumed that everybody must know why he was there and what judgement had been handed to him. As soon as he entered the mess hall, which still smelled mustily of horses, he had the urge to get up onto one of the long collapsible tables where soldiers took their meals, and explain his side of things.

To his surprise, nobody looked his way when he walked in and took his place in the food line, a sectioned tin plate in his hand. He spotted the same military policemen who had put him in handcuffs and escorted him to and from his cell during the trial. They seemed completely oblivious to his presence, as if he were a phantom they could not even see.

The relief he felt to find himself anonymous again was so profound that he lingered in the mess hall, alone but suddenly not lonely, until the cooks finally tossed him out.

Captain Ottway had been gone four days when he finally reappeared, rapping softly with his knuckles on the flimsy door of the Quonset hut.

When he heard the knocking, Carter swung off his bed and let the captain in.

Ottway smiled weakly. It was not the same smile as before. ‘Listen,’ he said. ‘We have run into an obstacle.’

When Carter heard those words, the worst thing he could imagine was that he would be travelling home by ship, which might last the best part of two weeks instead of the couple of days it would otherwise take to go by plane.

But it turned out to be worse than that. Much worse.

Ottway explained that the trial, such as it was, had made its way into the newspapers back in America. Celebration of the Ardennes victory had been tempered by the thousands of Allied casualties suffered during the German attack. Reports of the SS massacre of almost a hundred American prisoners in a field outside St Christophe had provoked outrage in an already outraged population. The story of Carter’s dishonourable discharge, although it mentioned that he had been cleared of the most serious accusations, implied that he might singlehandedly have been able to forestall or prevent the attack. It made no mention of the dozens of other deserters who had previously warned of the assault, or of the generals’ refusal to act upon reports from American troops of enemy activity along the Belgian–German border.

‘So you see how it looks,’ said Ottway. ‘And consider the alternative, which is to acknowledge that the US Army was caught with its pants down. Nobody wants to hear that. Some weeks before you got here, American forces were attacked in the Hürtgen Forest, not far from the Ardennes, and they suffered such massive casualties that the battle was scarcely reported at all because it was considered to be too demoralising.’

‘But it’s OK if they hang it all on me. Is that what you’re saying?’ asked Carter.

‘I’m not saying it’s OK, but I am telling you it’s what they did.’

As Carter listened to this, he had the sensation of being swept away down a river somewhere deep inside himself, with no way to fight against the current.

‘I’m afraid there’s more,’ said Ottway. ‘The police back home have relieved you of duty.’

‘Permanently?’

‘I’m afraid so. Apparently, the mayor of Elizabeth, who was taking all kinds of flak from his constituents, insisted on it personally.’

‘My father…’ Carter heard himself muttering the words, but he had already been carried so far downstream that it felt as if he were speaking about a person he had never met.

‘Your father is doing all right,’ said Ottway. Reaching into his pocket, the lawyer pulled out a telegram message typed on a thin, yellowy-brown piece of paper. ‘I cabled him two days ago, after the story broke. I explained that there were extenuating circumstances that would be made clear in time. His reply came in this morning.’

Carter took the telegram and stared at it, struggling to focus, as if the letters were rearranging themselves as he tried to read them.

YOU HAVE MY TRUST AND CONFIDENCE STOP REMEMBER THIRD RULE STOP

‘What is the third rule?’ asked Ottway.

Carter lowered the page. ‘To survive,’ he said quietly. ‘You got any suggestions for that?’

‘I do have a plan,’ said Ottway, ‘which I think, under the circumstances, might be your only course of action.’

Carter struggled to hear the man over the thundering Niagara in his brain, in which his body turned and twisted, almost lifeless now, down and down onto the anvil of the rocks below.

‘The war will be over in a few months,’ continued Ottway, ‘and most of these soldiers are going home. But the American Army is still going to maintain bases here in Germany◦– in fact all over Europe◦– and civilian contractors will be needed to help keep those bases running. The wages are decent and, since you’re getting paid in dollars, that money will go a lot further over here than it would back home. You’ll get housing, food if you can stand to eat off mess hall trays indefinitely, and some day, when this whole thing has settled down, you can go home and start over if you want to. People might be angry now, but they won’t stay that way. Other stories will come along to distract them. The day will come when they won’t even remember what happened here.’

‘How long is that going to take?’ asked Carter.

‘I’m not sure,’ answered Ottway, ‘but for now, I think this is the only chance you’ve got.’

That night, he went to visit Riveira in the hospital ward, which was located in what had once been the servants’ dining room. The ceiling was low and the room was poorly lit, but the red tile floors were clean and smelled of carbolic and, of the six beds in the room, only two were occupied now.

The break in Riveira’s leg had been worse than the doctors originally thought, and the delay in his treatment had caused infection to set in. In the end, his left foot had to be amputated at the ankle. He lay in a corner of the ward, his leg in a sling that kept it raised above the level of his head.

‘Lieutenant!’ he shouted, when Carter walked into the room. He slapped his hands on the clean white sheets, like a child who wanted to play. He had lost a lot of weight and his face looked drawn and shadowy. Nevertheless, he seemed happy, not only to see Carter but at the news he had just been told. ‘They’re sending me home!’

The other man in the room, his head bandaged so that only his face was showing, sighed and put down the book he was reading. ‘Are you ever going to shut up about that?’ he asked. ‘You already told me a hundred times.’

‘And now I’m telling him,’ said Riveira, pointing at Carter as if to single him out from a dozen other strangers in the room.

‘You can still drive a jeep with one foot,’ said Riveira. ‘Did you know that? They fix your leg into some kind of a stirrup and you can work the clutch like that. And you know what I’m going to do when I get home? I’m going to buy myself a taxi. I’m set. I’m all set. I wish they’d damned well send me home today!’

‘Sounds like you got it all worked out,’ said Carter.

‘I do,’ he replied. ‘That’s a fact.’

The other wounded man sighed again. With his face haloed in bandages, he looked like a nun. ‘I got all my hair burned off,’ he said, ‘and my ears just melted like wax so that there was nothing left. And I don’t think they’re sending me back. Can you believe it?’

‘You should have burned your foot,’ said Riveira.

‘I know it,’ muttered the nun.

‘I came to say that you were right,’ Carter told Riveira.

Riveira blinked at him. ‘About what, Lieutenant?’

‘About everything you said when we were driving out of the Ardennes. It all came true, more or less.’

Riveira shook his head. ‘I don’t recollect any of it, sir. That morphine does a number on your brain.’

Carter wondered if Riveira was telling the truth. It didn’t matter now. ‘Anyway,’ he said, ‘you’re smarter than you look.’

Riveira grinned. ‘Who’d have thought it?’ he said.

‘That’s for damned sure,’ laughed the nun.

Carter raised one hand to say goodbye.

As Riveira did the same, the smile disappeared from his face. It was only for a moment, but there was something in Riveira’s expression that told Carter the man remembered every word he’d said.

As Carter cycled through the Höningerplatz, he noticed that the makeshift store where the legless man sold razor blades was gone now, and the place seemed strangely desolate. The sun had just set and the murky lavender of twilight filled the air. Pedalling towards the fenced-in sprawl of Dasch’s compound, Carter could smell the white blossoms on a crooked old apple tree which had somehow escaped the war. In a patch of tall and reedy grass the tree clung stubbornly to life, its coarse bark scabbed with moss and its branches arthritically twisted.

He arrived at the front gate just as the guard was opening it for Ritter to drive through in his Tatra. Ritter made no move to greet Carter as he sped past, raising the dust.

The guard let Carter through. ‘You might not want to go in there,’ he said, gesturing towards the office.

In the half-light, Carter could see broken glass strewn in front of the building. Its window was shattered and the chair that had flown through it only a short time ago lay splintered on the ground outside. ‘What happened?’ he asked the guard. ‘Was there a police raid or something?’

The guard shook his head, eyes hidden under the brim of his cap. ‘Mr Dasch did that all by himself, and I think it’s even worse inside.’

‘But why?’ demanded Carter.

‘I’m damned if I know,’ said the guard, ‘but whatever it is, I have a feeling we’re all going to take the blame, one way or another.’

Carter made his way across the dusty expanse of the compound. The garage was closed up now, and a warm night breeze muttered through the overlapping slats of corrugated iron that made up the roof of the building. For an instant, it reminded him of the warehouses back on the docks of Elizabeth, and he half expected to smell the brackish, muddy water of the Hudson.

Cautiously, he stepped through the open doorway of the office. His boots crunched on broken glass. It was dark in there, and it took him a moment to realise there was someone else in the room.

A figure sat at a desk in the corner, head in his hands, hunched over like a bear. ‘I said get out!’ roared the man.

In that moment, Carter realised it was Dasch. Without a word, he turned to leave.

‘Carter, is that you?’ Dasch’s voice sounded strained and unfamiliar.

‘Yes,’ he replied, ‘but I’ll leave you alone.’

‘Nonsense!’ With a sweep of one hand, Dasch beckoned to Carter. With the other, he clicked on the desk light, which had somehow remained unbroken. ‘Come in,’ he said, ‘and marvel at my handiwork.’

In amazement, Carter looked around. The large map of Europe had been torn down and kicked into a corner of the room. A filing cabinet had been tipped over and lay like a coffin on the floor. A smell of old cigarettes from an overloaded ashtray, whose contents had been hurled against the wall, mixed with the blossom-scented air sifting in through the broken window.

‘This must look like the result of a brawl in one of your Wild West saloons,’ said Dasch. ‘I just sent Ritter out to get some wood to make repairs. God knows where he’ll find what he needs at this time of day, but he always manages somehow.’

‘Was there a fight?’ asked Carter.

‘Only me against the world.’ As Dasch spoke, he began arranging things that had been scattered around the desk◦– pencils, a ledger, a stapler◦– as if somehow to atone for the damage he had done to the room. ‘One day, it will sink into my skull that this is a struggle that I cannot win.’

‘And how did it beat you this time?’

‘By crashing my plane.’

It took a moment for Dasch’s words to sink in. ‘I’m sorry to hear that,’ Carter said at last.

‘Garlinsky called with the news,’ explained Dasch. ‘He’s on his way over here now. God help me.’

‘Why are you so afraid of Garlinsky?’ asked Carter. ‘What power does this man have over you that a million others don’t?’

Dasch was silent for a while before he replied, and then he answered with a question of his own. ‘What are we, Mr Carter? What kind of men would you say that we are?’

‘That all depends on who you ask.’

‘I’m asking you.’

The wind whistled in through the fangs of broken glass still clinging to the window frame.

‘We are men who work outside of the law,’ said Carter. ‘That is the thing which defines us, to the world and to ourselves.’

‘Very good.’ Dasch raised a finger and wagged it at the ceiling. ‘No matter which side of the law we choose to stand on, one thing remains a constant◦– what we do is who we are. Although the world imagines that there are many of us on our side of the line, wallowing in our riches, the actual number of those who truly prosper is very small indeed. In this little universe, we come to know each other, by reputation if not by association. Do you follow me, Mr Carter?’

‘So far, I guess,’ he said.

‘So when a man appears out of nowhere, the way Garlinsky did about a month ago, not only with a plan to expand my business beyond what even I had thought was possible, but with enough money in his briefcase to actually make the plan work, it is natural enough that I would make enquiries as to who this man might be.’

‘Sure,’ said Carter, ‘that makes sense. And did you?’

‘Of course.’

‘What did you learn?’

Dasch leaned across his desk. ‘Nothing,’ he hissed. ‘He is a ghost, Mr Carter, and even here among the ruins of the Reich, where almost everybody must keep secrets from the past, no one has the skill to make them disappear completely the way this Garlinsky has done. No one but the devil, anyway.’

At that moment, the guard appeared in the doorway, his rifle slung across his back. The silhouette of the gun barrel jutted from his shoulder, as if an arrow had been plunged into his neck. ‘Somebody’s coming,’ he said. ‘I think it is Mr Garlinsky.’

Dasch rose to his feet. ‘I didn’t hear a car.’

‘There is no car,’ replied the guard.

‘What?’ asked Dasch. ‘Is he on a bicycle?’

‘No, sir. He is on foot.’

‘But it’s an hour’s walk back to the city, and nobody lives out here!’

‘Nevertheless, sir,’ said the guard, ‘somebody is coming.’

‘Well,’ Dasch said exasperatedly, ‘when he gets to the end of the road, open the gate and see what the hell he wants.’

‘Sir,’ said the guard, ‘he is not walking on the road.’

There was something about the way the guard spoke that sent a shudder down the length of Carter’s spine. Leaving the carnage of Dasch’s office, the two men followed the guard across the compound until they came to the fence. Beyond it, shuddering blue in the moonlight, lay a wide, open tract of land, stretching featurelessly out towards the Rhine. A shallow mist had settled on the ground, weaving in amongst the nodding stalks of milkweed.

Across this space came a figure in a long trench coat, carrying a briefcase whose polished leather sides caught a glint of moonlight now and then. His face was hidden in shadow. He did not move quickly, but his pace never slackened and the trench coat billowed about his legs, stirring the mist as he walked.

‘It’s him,’ whispered Dasch.

Only now, as Carter mutely watched the man’s approach across the wasteland, did he understand the fear that Dasch had spoken of, and he thought back to the last time a stranger had walked into his life.