A Quiet Flame

3 BUENOS AIRES, 1950

I PUT OUT my cigarette in an ashtray as big as a wheel hub, which lay on the president’s uncluttered desk. Next to the ashtray was a Van Cleef & Arpels jewelry box—the leather kind that looks like it would make a swell gift on its own. I figured the contents of that box were pinned to the little blonde’s lapel. She was fussing with the dogs as I started my noble-sounding monologue. It took only a minute to get her attention. I flatter myself that when the spirit moves me, I can make myself more interesting than any small dog. Besides, I guessed it wasn’t every day that someone in the president’s office tells him he’d made a mistake.

“Mr. President, sir,” I said. “I think there’s something I should tell you. Since this is a Catholic country, maybe you can call it confession.” Seeing all their faces blanch, I smiled. “It’s all right. I’m not about to tell you about all the terrible things I did during the war. There were some things I’m not happy about, sure. But I don’t have the lives of innocent men and women on my conscience. No, my confession is something much more ordinary. You see, I’m not a doctor at all, sir. There was a doctor back in Germany. A fellow named Gruen. He wanted to go and live in America, only he worried what might happen to him if they ever found out what he’d done during the war. So, to take the heat off himself, he decided to make it look like I was him. Then he told the Israelis and the Allied war-crimes people where to come and look for me. Anyway, he did such a good job of convincing everyone I was him that I was obliged to go on the run. Eventually I turned for help to the old comrades and the Delegation for Argentine Emigration in Europe. Carlos, here. Don’t get me wrong, sir, I’m very grateful to be here. I had a hard job convincing an Israeli death squad that I wasn’t Gruen and was obliged to leave a couple of them dead in the snow near Garmisch-Partenkirchen. So you see, I really am a fugitive. I’m just not the fugitive you might think I am. And in particular, I am not and never have been a doctor.”

“So who the hell are you? Really?” It was Carlos Fuldner, and he sounded annoyed.

“My real name is Bernhard Gunther. I was in the SD. Working for intelligence. I was captured by the Russians and was interned in a camp before escaping. But before the war I was a policeman. A detective with the Berlin police force.”

“Did you say a detective?” This was the man with the small beard and the tinted glasses. The one I’d marked down as a cop. “What kind of a detective?”

“I worked in Homicide, mostly.”

“What was your rank?” asked the cop.

“When war was declared in 1939, I was a KOK. A Kriminal Oberkommissar. A chief inspector.”

“Then you’ll remember Ernst Gennat.”

“Of course. He was my mentor. Taught me everything I know.”

“What was it that the newspapers used to call him?”

“The Full Ernst. On account of his bulk and fondness for cakes.”

“What happened to him? Do you know?”

“He was deputy chief of the criminal police until his death in 1939. He had a heart attack.”

“Too bad.”

“Too many cakes.”

“Gunther, Gunther,” he said, as though trying to shake a thought like an apple from a tree growing in the back of his head. “Yes, of course. I know you.”

“You do?”

“I was in Berlin. Before the collapse of the Weimar Republic. Studying jurisprudence at the university.”

The cop came closer, close enough for me to smell the coffee and the cigarettes on his breath, and took off his glasses. I guessed he smoked a lot. For one thing, there was a cigarette in his mouth, and for another, his voice sounded like a smoked herring. There were laugh lines around the gray iron filings that constituted his mustache and his beard, but the walnut of a frown knotted between his bloodshot blue eyes told me that maybe he’d got out of the habit of smiling. His eyes narrowed as he searched my face for more answers.

“You know, you were a hero of mine. Believe it or not, you’re one of the reasons I gave up the idea of being a lawyer and became a policeman instead.” He looked at Perón. “Sir, this man was a famous Berlin detective. When I first went there, in 1928, there was a notorious strangler. His name was Gormann. This is the man who caught him. At the time it was quite a cause célèbre.” He looked back at me. “I’m right, aren’t I? You are that Gunther.”

“Yes, sir.”

“His name was in all the newspapers. I used to follow all your cases, as closely as I was able. Yes indeed, you were a hero of mine, Herr Gunther.”

By now he was shaking my hand. “And now you’re here. Amazing.”

Perón glanced at his gold wristwatch. I was beginning to bore him. The cop saw it, too. Not much escaped him. We might have lost the president’s attention altogether if Evita hadn’t walked up to me and given me a once-over like I was a spavined horse.

Eva Perón’s was a good figure, if you liked women who were interesting to draw. I never yet have seen a painting that convinces me those old masters preferred women who were skinny. Evita’s figure was interesting in all the right places between the knees and the shoulders. Which is not to say that I found her attractive. She was too cool, too businesslike, too efficient, too composed for my taste. I like a little vulnerability in my women. Especially at breakfast time. In her navy-blue suit Evita already looked dressed to launch a ship. Somewhere more important than here, talking to me, anyway. On the back of her bottle-blond hair was a little navy-blue velvet beret, while over her arm was a Russian winter’s worth of sables. Not that any of that caught my eye very much. Mostly my eyes were on the mint candies she was wearing—the little chandeliers of diamonds in her ears, the floral bouquet of diamonds on her lapel, and the dazzling golfball on her finger. It looked like it had been an excellent year for Van Cleef & Arpels.

“So, we have a famous detective, here in Buenos Aires,” she said. “How very fascinating.”

“I don’t know about famous,” I said. “ ‘Famous’ is a word for a boxer or a movie star, not a detective. Sure, the police leaders of Weimar encouraged the newspapers to believe that some of us were more successful than others. But that was just public relations. To give the public confidence in our ability to solve crimes. I’m afraid you couldn’t write more than a couple of very dull paragraphs in today’s newspapers about the kind of detective I was, ma’am.”

Eva Perón tried a smile, but it didn’t stay long. Her lipstick was flawless and her teeth were perfect, but her eyes weren’t in it. It was like being smiled at by a temperate glacier.

“Your modesty is, shall we say, typical of all your fellow countrymen,” she said. “It seems none of you was ever very important. Always it is someone else who deserves the credit or, more usually, the blame. Isn’t that right, Herr Gunther?”

There were a lot of things I might have said to that. But when the president’s wife takes a swing at you, it’s best to take it on the chin as though you’ve got a boiler-plated jaw, even if it does hurt.

“Only ten years ago, Germans thought they should rule the world. Now all they want to do is live quietly and be left alone. Is that what you want, Herr Gunther? To live quietly? To be left alone?”

It was the cop who came to my aid. “Please, ma’am,” he said. “He is just being modest. Take my word for it. Herr Gunther was a great detective.”

“We’ll see,” she said.

“Take the compliment, Herr Gunther. If I can remember your name, after all these years, then surely you would have to agree that, in this case at least, modesty is misplaced.”

I shrugged. “Perhaps,” I allowed.

“Well,” said Evita. “I must be going. I’ll leave Herr Gunther and Colonel Montalbán to their mutual admiration.”

I watched her go. I was glad to see the back of her. More important, I was glad to see her behind. Even under the president’s eye it demanded attention. I didn’t know any Argentine tango tunes, but watching her closely sheathed tail as she stalked gracefully out of her husband’s office, I felt like humming one. In a different room and wearing a clean shirt, I might have tried slapping it. Some men liked slapping a guitar or a set of dominoes. With me it was a woman’s ass. It wasn’t exactly a hobby. But I was good at it. A man ought to be good at something.

When she was gone, the president climbed back into the front seat and took over the steering wheel. I wondered how much he would let her get away with before he slapped her himself. Quite a bit, probably. It’s a common failing with older dictators when they have younger wives.

In German, Perón said, “Don’t mind my wife, Herr Gunther. She doesn’t understand that you spoke from”—he slapped his stomach with the flat of his hand—“down here. You spoke as you felt you had to speak. And I’m flattered that you did so. We see something in each other, perhaps. Something important. Obeying other people is one thing. Any fool can do that. But obeying oneself, submitting oneself to the most rigid and implacable of disciplines, that is what is important. Is it not?”

“Yes, sir.”

Perón nodded. “So you are not a doctor. Therefore we cannot help you practice medicine. Is there anything else we can do for you?”

“There is one thing, sir,” I said. “Maybe I’m not much of a sailor. Or maybe I’m just getting old. But lately I’ve not been feeling myself, sir. I’d like to see a doctor, if I could. A real one. Find out if there’s anything actually wrong with me, or if I’m just homesick. Although right now that does seem a little unlikely.”