A Quiet Flame

7 BUENOS AIRES, 1950

THE VON BADERS LIVED in the residential part of the Barrio Norte, which is castellano for “people with money.” The Calle Florida, the commercial heart of the Barrio Norte, seemed to have come into being in order to make sure that people with money would not have to go too far out of their way to spend it. The house on Arenales was built in the best eighteenth-century French style. It looked more like a grand hotel than somewhere anyone could have called home. The façade was all relief Ionic columns and tall windows: even the air-conditioning units seemed elegant and in keeping with the urban Bourbon look. Inside, things were no less formally French, with high ceilings and pilasters, marble fireplaces, gilt mirrors, lots of eighteenth-century furniture, and expensive-looking art.

The von Baders and their small dog received the colonel and me sitting on an overstuffed red sofa. She was sitting in one corner of the sofa and he was sitting in the other. They were wearing their best clothes but in a way that left me thinking that they might wear the same clothes to do some gardening, always supposing they knew where the secateurs and the trowels were kept. The way they sat there, I wanted to take hold of the baroness’s chin and move her head slightly toward her husband before picking up my brushes and getting started on their portrait. She was statuesque and beautiful, with good skin and perfect teeth and hair like spun gold and a neck like Queen Nefertiti’s taller sister. He was just thin with glasses, and unlike me, the dog seemed to prefer him to her. She was holding a handkerchief and looked as though she had been crying. The way anxious mothers are supposed to look. He was holding a cigarillo and looked like he’d been making money. Rather a lot of it.

Colonel Montalbán introduced me to them. We all spoke in German, as if our meeting were taking place in some handsome villa in Dahlem. I uttered a few sympathetic noises. Fabienne had disappeared somewhere between Arenales and the cemetery at Recoleta, less than half a mile away. She often went there by herself to lay flowers on the steps of the von Bader family vault. It was where they kept their bodies, not their money. It seemed that Fabienne had been very close to her grandfather, who was buried there. They gave me some photographs to borrow. Fabienne looked like any other fourteen-year-old girl who was blond, beautiful, and rich. In one of the photographs, she was sitting on a white pony. The pony’s bridle was held by a gaucho, and behind this bucolic little trio was a ranch house against a backdrop of eucalyptus trees.

“That’s our weekend house,” explained the baron. “In Pilar. To the north of Buenos Aires.”

“Nice,” I said, and wondered where they went when they wanted a proper holiday from the demands of being very rich.

“Yes. Fabienne loved it there,” said her mother.

“I take it you’ve already looked for her at this and any other homes you might own.”

“Yes,” he said. “Of course we have.” He let out a sigh that was part patience and part anxiety. “There’s only the weekend house, Herr Gunther. I don’t own any other houses in Argentina.” He shook his head and took a puff on the cigarillo. “You make me sound like some stinking, plutocratic Jew. Isn’t that right, Colonel?”

“There are no yids in this part of Buenos Aires,” said Montalbán.

Von Bader’s wife winced. She didn’t seem to like that remark. Which was another reason why I liked her more than I liked her husband. She crossed her long legs and looked away for a moment. I liked her legs, too.

“It’s really not like her at all,” she said. She blew her nose delicately on the small handkerchief, tucked it into the sleeve of her dress, and smiled bravely. I admired her for that. “She’s never done this kind of thing before.”

“What about her friends?” I asked.

“Fabienne wasn’t like most girls of her age, Herr Gunther,” said von Bader. “She was more mature than her peers. Very much more sophisticated. I doubt that she would have shared a confidence with any of them.”

“But naturally we’ve questioned them,” added the colonel. “I don’t think it would help to question them again. They said nothing that might help.”

“Did she know the other girl?” I asked. “Grete Wohlauf?”

“No,” said von Bader.

“I’d like to see her room, if I may.” I was looking at the baroness. She was easier on the eye than her husband. Easier on the ear, too.

“Of course,” she said. Then she looked at her husband. “Would you mind showing him Fabienne’s room, dear? It upsets me to go in there at the moment.”

Von Bader walked me to a little wooden elevator that was set in an open, wrought-iron shaft and surrounded by a steep, curving marble staircase. It’s not every home that has its own elevator and, catching sight of my eloquently raised eyebrows, the baron felt obliged to offer an explanation.

“During the last years of her life, my mother was in a wheelchair,” he said, as if building an elevator was a solution available to everyone with an elderly parent.

It was just the two of us and the dog in the elevator car. I was close enough to smell the cologne on von Bader’s face and the oil in his gray hair, and yet he avoided my eye. Each time he spoke to me, he was looking somewhere else. I told myself he was preoccupied with his daughter’s possible fate. But all the same, I’d handled enough cases involving missing persons to know when I wasn’t getting the whole story.

“Montalbán says that back in Berlin, before the war, you were a top detective. With KRIPO and in private practice.”

He made being a private detective sound like being a top dentist. Maybe it was kind of similar to being a dentist, at that. Sometimes getting a client to tell you everything relevant was like pulling teeth.

“I’ve had my Archimedes moments,” I said. “With KRIPO and on my own.”

“Archimedes?”

“Eureka. I’ve found it.” I shrugged. “These days I’m more the traveling-salesman type.”

“Selling what, in particular?”

“Nothing. Nothing at all. Not even now. I’ll do my best to find your daughter, sir, but I never was one for working miracles. Generally I do a lot better when people believe in me enough to give me all the facts.”

Von Bader colored a little. Maybe that was because he was trying to wrestle the elevator car door open. Or maybe it wasn’t. But he still wasn’t looking at me. “What makes you think you haven’t had them?”

“Call it a hunch.”

He nodded as if considering some kind of offer, which was odd, given that I hadn’t actually made him one.

We stepped out of the car and into the thickly carpeted corridor. At the end of it he pushed a door open and ushered me into the bedroom of a neat and tidy girl. The wallpaper was red roses. The bed had little flowers painted on the enameled iron frame. Above the bed were several Chinese fans in a picture frame. On a tall table was a large and empty Oriental birdcage. On a shorter table was a chessboard set out in a game that seemed to be still in progress. I gave the pieces the once-over. Black or white, she was a clever little girl. There were some books and some teddy bears and a chest of drawers. I tugged one open.

“Do you mind?” I asked.

“Go right ahead,” he said. “I suppose you’re just doing your job.”

“Well, I’m certainly not looking for her underwear.” I was hoping to goad something from him. After all, he hadn’t exactly denied that he was keeping something back. I turned over some socks and looked underneath.

“What exactly are you looking for?”

“A diary. A commonplace book. Some letters. Some money you didn’t know about. A photograph of someone you don’t recognize. I’m not sure, exactly. But I’ll know it when I see it.” I closed the drawer. “Or maybe there’s something you want to tell me now, while Colonel Montalbán isn’t here?”

He picked up one of the teddy bears and lifted it to his nose, like a hound trying to raise a scent. “It’s curious,” he said. “The way you can smell them on their toys. It’s so evocative of them. Kind of like Proust, really.”

I nodded. I’d heard a lot about Proust. One day I was going to have to find an excuse not to read him.

“I know what Montalbán thinks,” he said. “He thinks Fabienne is already dead.” Von Bader shook his head. “I just don’t believe that.”

“What makes you think not, Baron?”

“You would call it a hunch, I suppose. Easier to spell than intuition. But that’s how it is. If she was dead, I’m quite sure we would have heard something by now. Someone would have found her. I’m certain of it.” He shook his head. “Since you were once a famous detective with the homicide police in Berlin, I imagine Montalbán’s asking you to work on the assumption that she’s dead. Well, I’m asking you to assume the opposite. To assume that perhaps someone—someone German, yes, I think that must be true—is hiding her. Or keeping her against her will.”

I opened another drawer. “Why would someone want to do that? Do you have enemies, Herr Baron?”

“I’m a banker, Herr Hausner. And as it happens, a damned important one. It might surprise you but bankers do make enemies, yes. Money or the getting of money always brings enemies. There’s that. And then there’s what I did during the war to consider. During the war, I worked for the Abwehr. German military intelligence. Myself and a group of other German-Argentine bankers helped to bankroll the war effort on this side of the Atlantic. We funded a number of German agents in the United States. Without success, I’m sorry to say. Several of our most prominent agents were caught by the FBI and executed. They were betrayed, but I’m not sure by whom.”

“Could someone blame you for that?”

“I don’t see how. I had no operational involvement. I was just a money man.”

Von Bader was making eye contact with me now. Plenty of it.

“I’m not sure how relevant any of this is to my daughter’s disappearance, Herr Hausner. But there were five of us. Bankers funding the Nazis in Argentina. Ludwig Freude, Richard Staudt, Heinrich Dorge, Richard von Leute, and me. And I only mention this because late last year Dr. Dorge was found dead on a street here in Buenos Aires. He’d been murdered. Heinrich was formerly an aide to Dr. Hjalmar Schacht. I take it you’ve heard of him.”

“I’ve heard of him,” I said. Schacht had been the minister of economics and then president of the Reichsbank. In 1946, he had been tried for war crimes at Nuremberg and acquitted.

“I’m telling you all this so you’ll know two things in particular. One is that it’s perfectly possible my previous life has caught up with me in some—some unfathomable way. I’ve received no threats. Nothing. The other thing is that I’m a very rich man, Herr Hausner. And I want you to take me seriously when I say that if you find my daughter, alive, and bring about her safe return, I’ll give you a reward of two million pesos, payable in whatever currency and whatever country you choose. That’s about fifty thousand dollars, Herr Hausner.”

“That’s a lot of money, Herr Baron.”

“My daughter’s life is worth at least that much to me. More. Much more. But that’s my business. Your business is to try to collect that two million pesos.”

I nodded thoughtfully. I guess it must have looked like I was weighing things up. That’s the trouble with me. I’m coin-operated. I start thinking when people offer me money. I start thinking a lot more when it’s a lot of money.

“Do you have any children, Herr Hausner?”

“No, sir.”

“If you did you would know that money’s not that important next to the life of someone you love.”

“I’m obliged to take your word for that, sir.”

“You’re not obliged to take my word for it at all. I’ll have my lawyers draw up a letter of agreement regarding the reward.”

It wasn’t what I’d meant, but I didn’t contradict him. Instead I took a last look around the room.

“What happened to the bird in the cage?”

“The bird?”

“In the cage.” I pointed at the pagoda-sized cage on the tall table.

Von Bader looked at the cage almost as if he had never looked at it before. “Oh, that. It died.”

“Was she upset about it?”

“Yes, of course she was. But I don’t see how her disappearance could have anything to do with a bird.”

I shrugged.

“I have a fourteen-year-old daughter, Herr Hausner. You don’t. As a result, and with all due respect, I think I can honestly say I know more about fourteen-year-old girls than you do.”

“Did she bury it in the garden?”

“I really don’t know.”

“Perhaps your wife does.”

“I’d really rather you didn’t ask her about it. She’s upset enough about things as it is. My wife holds herself responsible for the death of the bird. And she’s already looking around for reasons to blame herself for our daughter’s disappearance. Any implied suggestion that these two events might be connected would only add to the sense of guilt she’s feeling about Fabienne. I’m sure you understand.”

That might just have been true. And maybe it wasn’t. But out of respect for his two million pesos I was prepared to let the bird go. Sometimes, to take hold of the money, you have to let go of the bird. That’s what they call politics.

We returned to the sitting room, where the baroness had started crying again. I’ve made a close study of women crying. In my line of work it comes with the truncheon and the handcuffs. On the eastern front, in 1941, I saw women who could have won Olympic gold medals for crying. Sherlock Holmes used to study cigar ash and wrote a monograph on the subject. I knew about crying. I knew that when a woman is crying it doesn’t pay to let her get too close to your shoulder. It can cost you a clean shirt. Tears are, however, sacred, and you violate their sanctity at your peril. We left her to get on with it.

AFTER WE LEFT the von Bader house, I insisted the colonel and I go to Recoleta Cemetery. We were, after all, very close. I wanted to see the place Fabienne had been visiting when she disappeared.

Like the Viennese, rich porteños take death very seriously. Enough to spend large sums of money on expensive tombs and mausolea. But Recoleta was the only cemetery I’d ever been where there weren’t any graves. We went through a Greek-style entrance into what was a little city of marble. Many of the mausolea were classically designed and looked almost habitable. Walking around the neat and parallel stone streets was like touring some ancient Roman town swept clean of its human inhabitants by a cataclysmic natural disaster. Looking up at the bright blue sky, I half expected to see the smoking crater of a volcano. It was hard to imagine a fourteen-year-old girl coming to such a place. The few living people we saw were old and gray. I expect they had the same thought about me and the colonel.

We got back in the car and headed for the Casa Rosada. It was a while since I’d driven a car. Not that anyone would have noticed. I had seen worse drivers than porteños, but only in Ben-Hur. Ramón Novarro and Francis X. Bushman would have felt quite at home on the streets of Buenos Aires.

“Nice and handy for the president to have his secret police headquartered in the Casa Rosada,” I said, catching sight of the distinctive pink building again.

“It has some advantages. Incidentally, you’ve already seen the boss. The youngish man in the pinstripe suit who was with us when you met Perón? That’s him. Rodolfo Freude. He’s never very far away from the president.”

“Freude. Von Bader mentioned a banker called Ludwig Freude. Any relation?”

“Rodolfo’s father.”

“Is that how he got the job?”

“It’s a long story, but yes, in effect.”

“Was he in the Abwehr, too?”

“Who? Rodolfo? No. But Rodolfo’s deputy was. Werner Koennecke. Werner is married to Rodolfo’s sister, Lily.”

“It all sounds very cozy.”

“That’s Buenos Aires for you. It’s just like the cemetery at Recoleta. You have to know someone to get in.”

“Who do you know, Colonel?”

“Rodolfo knows some important people, it’s true. But I know people who are really important. I know an Italian woman who is the best whore in the city. I know a chef who makes the best pasta in South America. And I know a man who can kill someone and make it look like a suicide, with no questions asked. These are the important things to know in our strange profession, Herr Hausner. Don’t you agree?”

“I don’t often awake and feel the need to have someone murdered, Colonel. If I did I’d probably do it myself. But I guess I’m just a little bit strange that way. Besides, I’m too old to be impressed by anything very much. Except perhaps an Italian woman. I always did like Italian women.”