Down Among the Dead Men

XXVIII

“What was it, Steve?”

“Thermite. Stuff they use for incendiaries. Had it fixed to go off when the brief case was opened.” Koski glanced at the soggy heap beside the Vigilant’s engine housing. “There was no bandage around Rolf Berger’s face now, but there would be one as soon as the police-boat could reach the Coast Guard control boat. The white hair was burned off one side of the man’s head, his coat had been ripped by the boathook when Mulcahey dragged him up over the gunwale.

“I am cruising along beside the yacht wondering if all goes according to plan,” Mulcahey peered off toward the violet haze where the water still blazed, “and I see this flash about twice as bright as the loom of Greens Ledge light. Then boom and you all come shooting out on deck like in one of them old shifting pictures in which everything is speeded up double.”

“It happened like that, Irish.” Koski pressed his lips together and caught his breath at the jagged agony in his side. “One second there we are, building brother Berger up to a terrific letdown. Next second, where are we!” He squdged water out of his shoes.

“Four hundred gallons of super-test, so the Cap’n says. Went up in one minute. And down in five. She sank while I was draggin’ you both aboard.”

“Lucky you were there to hold my hand...”

“Not bad for a foggy night, coach.” Mulcahey cut the motor switch, stuck his head out into the fog, listening for the howl of the Penfield siren. When he heard it he held his hand over the compass card, pointing toward the reef. He started the motor, swung the Vigilant on a course directly opposite. “Personally, I will feel better when this reptile is out from underfoot.”

“I thought you were going to say underground.”

“Okay. I say it. At that he reminds me of the only other guy I ever knew who would rather work for Hitler than his own country.”

“I heard that one. Gravedigger up at the cemetery, hah?”

“So you know all the answers. Be so kindly as to tell me some.”

“Hell of a lot of them I don’t know.”

“What I have been attempting to elucidate on my own with no success is, how did the short-wave crystal happen to get in that suitcase with the mangled remains?”

“That comes under what the defense attorney will call the realm of pure conjecture, Joe. You want my conjecture?”

“So who has a better one?”

“Oke. Mine is, when Merrill got to Room Five, he expected to meet Joslin. Guy he did meet was Ratzi here. Probably was a set-to. At a guess, on or near the bed. Say the crystal was in Berger’s pocket. It fell out during the fracas. He didn’t notice it. Later, when he needed the sheet for a little shroud-work, he probably crumpled it up without noticing the crystal, jammed it over the body in the suitcase.”

“There seems to be a slight loophole, Steven.”

“Such as—”

“If the crystal was Berger’s, how could Ansel have been using the short-wave set on the yacht, tell me that?”

“Sure. They’d both have crystals. So they could plug ’em in or pull ’em out of the set in Berger’s office or on the Seavett as opportunity might knock. Be too dangerous for them to always send from the same place.”

“I vote guilty on the first ballot. Only one other query. Why did Berger dump part of the remains into the Gowanus and lug the torso clear over to the East River?”

“Wanted to keep us from dredging up the whole of it — if any part should come to the surface. Less we’d find, harder it would be to identify. He got away with that. The part that would have helped us we haven’t found. Might not.” He sneaked a brief glance sternward at Joslin, apart from the others, holding Ellen in his arms. “I hope we never do.”

“What interests me more is, will we be finding any more of Berger’s partners in treachery?”

“Consult the star-student back there. I can’t read the lines in Berger’s palm. Be up to the feds, from here in, anyway. And Navy Intelligence. They’ll likely find out Gjersten was only one of the hands on the Nazi payroll. A pipe-line like this,” he touched Berger with his shoe, “generally has other outlets.”

“How did you persuade the bird to sing? I told him we had Ansel. But I guess I forgot to mention Gjersten was cold meat.”

“You forgot! Yeah! You remembered to save him from burning to death, though.”

Koski saw the violet glow pale down to a thin gauzelike haze, die out. The fog shut down; the police-boat moved slowly on through a film of mist.

“I won’t do that a second time, Irish. You can call your odds on that. Next time there’s any burning he’s on his own.”