A Quiet Flame

16 BUENOS AIRES, 1950

I GOT UP AT SIX, just like always, had a bath, and then ate some breakfast. The Lloyds served something called a “full English breakfast”: two fried eggs, two strips of bacon, a sausage, a tomato, some mushrooms, and toast. I certainly felt full by the time I’d finished. Every time I ate one, I came away with the same thought. It was hard to believe anyone could have fought a war on a breakfast like that.

I went outside to buy some cigarettes. I paid no attention to the car that overtook me until it stopped and two doors opened. It was a black Ford sedan with nothing to indicate that it was a police car, unless you counted the two men with dark glasses and matching mustaches, who sprang out and walked swiftly toward me. I’d seen them before. In Berlin. In Munich. And in Vienna. All over the world, they were always the same thickset men with thickset brains and thickset knuckles. And they had the same practical and dynamic manner, regarding me as if I were an embarrassing piece of furniture, to be moved as quickly as possible to the backseat of the black car. I’d been removed before. Many times. When I was a private detective in Berlin, it had been a kind of occupational hazard. The Gestapo never much liked private bulls, even though Himmler had once used a Munich firm to find out if his brother-in-law was cheating on his sister.

Instinctively, I turned to avoid them and came up against thickset number three. I was searched and inside the car before I drew my next nervous breath. Nobody said anything. Except me. It kept my mind off the road ahead and the speed at which we were now moving.

“You boys are good,” I said. “Look here, I don’t suppose it would do any good to mention that my SIDE credentials are in my breast pocket. No? I guess not.”

We headed south, toward San Telmo. I made a few more cracks in castellano, which got ignored, and after a while, I gave in to their thickset silence. The car turned west near the Ministry of War. At sixteen stories, with two separate wings, it was the thickest-set building in Buenos Aires and it dominated the surrounding area like the Great Pyramid of Cheops. From the look of it, things hardly augured well for neighboring countries like Chile and Uruguay. After a while, we came to a pleasant little park and, behind this, a castellated fortress that looked as if it had been there since Francisco Pizarro had come to South America. As we drove through the main wooden gate, I almost expected the car to be hit with boulders and boiling oil poured on us from the battlements. We parked, and I was hustled outside of the car and down some steps in the courtyard. At the end of a long, damp corridor, I was placed in a short damp cell, searched by a man who was almost as big as the thickset Ministry of War, and then left alone with a chair, a wooden bunk, and a chamber pot for company. The pot was half full or half empty, depending on the way you look at these things.

I sat on the floor, which looked more comfortable than the chair or the bunk, and waited. In some faraway, rat-infested tower, a man was laughing hysterically. Nearer to where I was being held, water was trickling noisily onto a floor, and not being particularly thirsty, I hardly minded the sound. But after several hours had elapsed, I started to feel differently about it.

It was dusk when the door finally opened again. Two men came into my cell. They had their sleeves rolled up as if they meant business. One was small and muscular, and the other was large and muscular. The smaller one held what looked like a walking stick made of metal, with a two-pin electric plug on the end. The larger one held me. I struggled against him, but he didn’t seem to notice. I didn’t see his face. It was somewhere above the cloud line. The smaller one had tiny blue eyes like semiprecious stones.

“Welcome to Caseros,” he said with mock politeness. “Outside there is a little monument to the victims of the 1871 yellow-fever outbreak. In the deepest dungeon of this fortress is a pit where the bodies were thrown. Every year there are more and more victims of the 1871 yellow-fever outbreak. Understand?”

“I think so.”

“You’ve been asking questions about Directive Eleven.”

“Have I?”

“I should like to know why that is. And what you think you know.”

“So far I know very little. Possibly it precedes Directive Twelve. And I wouldn’t be at all surprised if someone one day discovered that it followed Directive Ten. How am I doing so far?”

“Not very well. You’re German, yes?”

I nodded.

“The country of Beethoven and Goethe. Printing and X-rays. Aspirin and the rocket engine.”

“Don’t forget the Hindenburg,” I said.

“You must feel very proud. In Argentina we have given the modern world only one invention.” He lifted his metal stick. “The electric cattle prod. It speaks for itself, does it not? The device emits a strong bolt of electricity, sufficient to move a cow wherever one wants it to go. On average, a cow weighs about two thousand pounds. Ten times as much as you, perhaps. But this is still a highly effective means of shocking the animal into submission. So you can imagine the effect it will have on a human being. At least I hope you can imagine it while I’m asking my next question.”

“I’ll certainly try my best,” I said.

He rolled up one sleeve to reveal an arm covered in a shocking amount of hair. Somewhere in Argentina there was a freak show missing its missing link. The frayed cuff of the sleeve went all the way up the arm to the crescent of sweat underneath his armpit before he stopped rolling. Probably he didn’t want to get anything on his shirt. At the very least, he looked like a man who took his work seriously.

“I should like to know the name of the person who told you about Directive Eleven.”

“It was someone at the Casa Rosada. One of my colleagues, I suppose. I don’t remember who, exactly. Look, one hears all kinds of talk in a place like that.”

The small hairy man tore open the body of my shirt to reveal the scar on my collarbone. He tapped it with his filthiest fingernail. “Aiee. You’ve had an operation. Forgive me, I didn’t know. What was the matter with you?”

“I had half of my thyroid removed.”

“Why?”

“It was cancerous.”

He nodded, almost sympathetic. “It’s healing nicely.” Then he touched the scar with the end of the cattle prod. Fortunately for me, it was not yet switched on. “Normally, we concentrate on the genitals. But in your case, I think we might make an exception.” He jerked his head at the big man holding me. A moment or two later, I was tied securely to the chair in my cell.

“The name of the person who told you about Directive Eleven, please,” he said.

I tried to put Anna Yagubsky’s name to the farthest corner of my mind. I wasn’t worried that I’d reveal that she was the person who’d told me about Directive Eleven, but I’d seen the way pain can jolt words out of a man. I hated to think what a pair like this would do to a woman like her. So I started telling myself that the person who’d told me about Directive Eleven was Marcello, the duty officer in the records department at the Casa Rosada. Just in case I had to say something. I shook my head. “Look. Honestly. I don’t remember. It was weeks ago. There were several of us talking in the records department. It could have been anyone.”

But he wasn’t listening. “Here,” he said. “Let me help jog your memory.” He touched my knee with the cattle prod, and this time it was switched on. Even through the material of my trousers, the pain shifted me and the chair several feet along the floor and left my leg jerking uncontrollably for several minutes.

“Feels nice, doesn’t it?” he said. “And you’re going to think that was just a tickle when I put it on your bare flesh.”

“I’m laughing already.”

“Then the joke is on you, I’m afraid.” He came at me again with the cattle prod, aiming it squarely at the scar on my collarbone. For a split second, I had a vision of the remains of my thyroid sizzling inside my throat like a piece of fried liver. Then a voice I recognized said,

“That’s enough, I think.” It was Colonel Montalbán. “Untie him.”

There were no words of protest. Certainly none from me. My two would-be tormentors obeyed instantly, almost as if they had expected to be stopped. Montalbán himself lit a cigarette and put it in my grateful, trembling mouth.

“Am I glad to see you,” I said.

“Come on,” he said quietly. “Let’s get out of this place.”

Resisting the temptation to say something to the man with the cattle prod, I followed the colonel outside into the fortress courtyard, where a nice white Jaguar was parked. I drew a deep breath that was a mixture of relief and exhilaration. He opened the trunk and took out a neatly folded shirt and a tie that I half recognized.

“Here,” he said. “I brought you these from your hotel room.”

“That was very thoughtful of you, Colonel,” I said, unbuttoning the ragged remains of the shirt I was almost wearing.

“Don’t mention it,” he said, climbing into the driver’s seat.

“Always a nice car, Colonel,” I said, getting in beside him.

“This car belonged to an admiral who was plotting a coup d’état,” he said. “Can you imagine an admiral owning such a car?” He lit a cigarette for himself and drove out of the gate.

“Where is he now? The admiral?”

“He disappeared. Perhaps he is in Paraguay. Perhaps he is in Chile. Then again, perhaps he is nowhere in particular. But then again, sometimes it is best not to ask such a question. You understand?”

“I think so. But who’s minding the navy?”

“Truly, the only safe questions to ask in Argentina are the questions one asks of oneself. That is why there are so many psychoanalysts in this country.”

We drove east, toward the River Plate.

“Are there? Many psychoanalysts in this country?”

“Oh, yes. A great many. There is more psychoanalysis done here in Buenos Aires than almost anywhere else in the world. No one in Argentina thinks himself so perfect that he can’t be improved. Take you, for instance. A little psychoanalysis might help you to stay out of trouble. That’s what I thought, anyway. That’s why I arranged for you to see two of the best men in the city. So that you might understand yourself and your relationship to society. And to appreciate what I told you before: that in Argentina, it is better to know everything than to know too much. Of course, my men are better than most at helping a man to understand himself. Fewer sessions are required. Sometimes only one. And of course, they work much more cheaply than the kind of Freudian analysts most people go to see. But the results, I’m sure you’ll agree, are much more spectacular. It’s rare that anyone comes out of a session at Caseros without a profound sense of what is needed to survive in a city like this. Yes. Yes, I do believe that. This city will kill you unless, psychologically, you are equipped to deal with it. I hope I’m not being too cryptic here.”

“Not at all, Colonel. I understand you perfectly.”

“You’ll find a hip flask in the glove box,” he said. “Sometimes therapy gives a man a keen thirst for more than just self-knowledge.”

There was cognac in the flask. It tasted just fine. It gave me more breathing space, as if someone had opened a window. I offered him the flask. He shook his head and grinned.

“You’re a nice guy, Gunther. I wouldn’t want anything to happen to you. I’ve told you before. You used to be a real hero of mine. In life, a man should have a hero, don’t you think so?”

“That’s sweet of you, Colonel.”

“Rodolfo—that’s Rodolfo Freude, the head of SIDE. He thinks my belief in your abilities is irrational. And perhaps it is. But he’s not a real policeman, like us, Gunther. He doesn’t understand what it takes to be a great detective.”

“I’m not so sure I understand that myself, Colonel.”

“Then I shall tell you. To be a great detective one must also be a protagonist. A dynamic sort of character who makes things happen just by being himself. I think you are this kind of a person, Gunther.”

“In chess, we’d call that a gambit. Usually it involves the sacrifice of a pawn or a knight.”

“Yes. That is quite possible, also.”

I laughed. “You’re an interesting man, Colonel. A trifle eccentric, but interesting. And don’t think I don’t appreciate your confidence in me. Because I do appreciate it. Almost as much as your booze and your cigarettes.” I took his packet and lit another.

“Good. Because I should hate to think you needed a second session of therapy in Caseros.”

It was evening. The shops were closing and the clubs were opening. All over the city people were getting depressed that they were so far away from the rest of the civilized world. I knew how they felt. On one side was the ocean and on the other, the vast emptiness of the pampas. We were all of us surrounded by nothing, with nowhere else to go. Perhaps most people just resigned themselves to that. Just as they had in Nazi Germany. I was different. Saying one thing and thinking another was second nature to me.

“I get the picture, Colonel,” I told him. “I’d click my heels and salute if I wasn’t sitting down.” I sipped some more cognac. “From now on, this horse is wearing blinkers and a tongue strap.” I pointed through the windscreen. “There’s the road ahead and nothing else.” I uttered a wry little laugh, as if I’d learned a hard lesson.

The Colonel seemed pleased by this admission. “Now you’re getting it,” he said. “I’m only sorry that it cost you a shirt to find that out.”

“I can buy a new shirt, Colonel,” I said, still affecting craven acquiescence. “A new skin is harder to come by. You won’t need to warn me again. I’ve no desire to wind up in that morgue of yours. Speaking of which. The girl? Grete Wohlauf. I’m not sure I’ve found her killer. But I certainly found the man who killed those two girls in Germany. And you were right. He’s living here, in Buenos Aires. As I said, I can’t be sure he had anything to do with Grete Wohlauf’s death. Or that he knows anything about Fabienne von Bader. But I wouldn’t be at all surprised, since he’s pursuing the same trade in illegal abortions he was back then. His name is Josef Mengele, but he’s living here as Helmut Gregor. But I expect you already knew that. Anyway, you can read all about it in a statement I persuaded him to write. I have it hidden in my hotel room.”

Colonel Montalbán put his hand inside his breast pocket and took out the envelope containing Mengele’s handwritten confession. “Do you mean this statement?”

“It certainly looks like it.”

“Naturally, when you were arrested, we searched your room at the San Martín.”

“Naturally. And I suppose you’re going to destroy that now.”

“On the contrary. I’m going to keep it in a very safe place. There may come a time when it could be very useful.”

“You mean in getting rid of Mengele.”

“He’s small fry. No, I mean in getting rid of Perón. This is a very Catholic country, Herr Gunther. Even an electorate that’s bought and paid for might find it hard to vote for a president who’s used a Nazi war criminal to carry out illegal abortions on juvenile girls with whom he’s been having sex. Of course I hope I shan’t need this statement. But placed somewhere safe, it becomes a very useful insurance policy. For a man such as myself, in a very uncertain profession, it’s the best thing for having job security that there is. For some time now I’ve suspected something like this was going on. Only I couldn’t connect any of it with Perón. That is, until you came along.”

“But how could you possibly know he was the man I was after in 1932?” I asked. “I’ve only just worked it out myself.”

“A month or two after Mengele arrived in Argentina, a box of papers arrived from Germany addressed to Helmut Gregor, here in Buenos Aires. These were Mengele’s own research files from his time at the Race and Resettlement Office in Berlin, and at Auschwitz. It seems that the doctor was unwilling to part with his life’s work and, reasoning that he was safe here, he had all of his papers shipped on to him from someone in his hometown of Günzburg. Not just his research files. There was also an SS file and a Gestapo file. For some reason, his Gestapo file contained your KRIPO files. The ones I gave to you when you first started working for me. It would seem that someone tried to reopen the Schwarz case during the war. Tried and failed, because someone higher up in the SS was protecting him. An SS colonel called Kassner, who had also worked for I. G. Farben. Anyway, Mengele never received any of his papers. He believes they were destroyed when a cargo hold in the ship bringing them from Germany was accidentally flooded. In fact, the files were intercepted by my men.

“Before they came into my hands, I had had my suspicions about who Helmut Gregor really was. And that he was carrying out illegal abortions here in Buenos Aires. I suspected Perón was sending him young girls he’d impregnated. But I couldn’t prove anything. I didn’t dare. Not even when one of Perón’s fruta inmadura—that’s what he calls his younger girlfriends—turned up dead. Her name was Grete Wohlauf. And she had died from an infection sustained during an abortion procedure. When Mengele’s papers turned up, I realized that he had been the man you were looking for. And I decided to awaken your interest in the case in a way that might be to my advantage. So I had the pathologist mutilate her in order to prick your curiosity.”

“But why didn’t you just level with me?”

“Because it didn’t suit my purpose. Mengele is protected by Perón. You managed to sidestep that protection. I couldn’t do what you have done. Not and keep Perón’s confidence. As you said yourself, you were my gambit, Herr Gunther. When I heard that Perón’s men had arrested you and taken you to Caseros, I was able to exercise some influence in another quarter and have you released. But not before teaching you a lesson. As I’ve told you before, asking questions about Directive Eleven is not a good idea.”

“That much I know. And Fabienne von Bader? Is she really missing?”

“Oh, yes. Have you found any trace of her?”

“No. But I’m beginning to understand why she’s disappeared. Her father has part control of the Reichsbank’s Swiss bank accounts, and the Peróns are keen to get their hands on that money. It’s my guess that the von Baders have hidden her for her own protection. So that the Peróns can’t use the girl to make her father do what they want him to do. Something like that, anyway.”

The colonel smiled. “As always, it’s a little bit more complicated than that.”

“Oh? How much more complicated?”

“I think you’re about to find out.”