Six Graves To Munich

CHAPTER 13

At Rome Rogan caught a flight to Budapest. Arthur Bailey had kept his promise and the visas were waiting for him. Rogan took along some whiskey and stayed drunk on the plane. He couldn’t forget what Genco Bari had told him: that Christine had died in childbirth; that he, Rogan, had been responsible for her death. But could a death so common to women since time began cause the terrible screams of pain he had heard on the phonograph in the Munich Palace of Justice? And that cruel bastard von Osteen making the record. Only a genius of evil could think of something so inhuman on the spur of the moment. Rogan forgot his own feelings of guilt for a moment as he thought of killing von Osteen and the pleasure it would give him. He thought of letting Pajerski’s execution wait, but he was already on the plane bound for Hungary; Arthur Bailey had already arranged things for him in Budapest. Rogan smiled grimly. He knew something Bailey didn’t know.

In Budapest, more than a little drunk, Rogan went directly to the United States consulate and asked to see the interpreter. This was all according to Arthur Bailey’s instructions.

A small nervous man with a toothbrush mustache led him to the inner chambers. “I am the interpreter,” he said. “Who sent you to me?”

“A mutual friend named Arthur Bailey,” Rogan told him.

The little man ducked away into another room. After a few moments he came back and said in a frightened, timid voice, “Please follow me, sir. I will take you to someone who will help you.”

They entered a room in which a burly man with thinning hair waited for them. He shook Rogan’s hand with vigor and introduced himself as Stefan Vrostk. “I am the one who will aid you in your mission,” he said. “Our friend Bailey has requested I give it my personal attention.” With a wave of his hand he dismissed the little interpreter.

When they were alone in the room, Vrostk began to speak in an arrogant manner. “I have read about your case. I have been briefed on what you have done. I have been informed on your future plans.” He spoke as if he were a man of great importance; he was, obviously, a man of overwhelming conceit.

Rogan sat back and just listened. Vrostk went on. “You must understand that here behind the Iron Curtain things are very different. You cannot hope to operate so flagrantly as you have done. Your record as an agent in World War II does show you are prone to carelessness. Your network was destroyed because you did not take proper precautions when you used your clandestine radio. Isn’t that true?” He gave Rogan a patronizing smile. But Rogan continued to look at him impassively.

Vrostk was a little nervous now, but this did not lessen his arrogance one bit. “I will point out Pajerski to you-where he works, his living habits, how he is guarded. The actual execution you must do yourself. I will then arrange to have the underground spirit you out of the country. But let me impress upon you that you are to do nothing without consulting me. You will do nothing without my approval. And you must accept without questioning my plans for your escape from this country once you have completed your mission. Do you understand this?”

Rogan could feel the anger mounting to his head. “Sure,” he said. “I understand. I understand everything perfectly. You work for Bailey, don’t you?”

“Yes,” Vrostk said.

Rogan smiled. “OK, then I’ll follow your orders. I’ll tell you everything before I do it.” He laughed. “Now show me where I can get my hands on Pajerski.”

Vrostk smiled paternally. “First we must have you checked into a hotel where you will be safe. Take a little nap, and this evening you and I shall dine at the Café Black Violin. And there you shall see Pajerski. He dines there every evening, plays chess there, meets his friends there. It is his hangout, as you say in America.”

In the small side-street hotel Vrostk had found for him, Rogan sat in a stuffed chair and made his own plans. In doing so he thought about Wenta Pajerski and everything the raw-boned Hungarian had done to him in the Munich Palace of Justice.

The face was huge, red, and warty as a hog’s, yet Pajerski had been only casual in his cruelty, and sometimes he had been kind. He had halted the interrogation to give Rogan a drink of water or a cigarette, slipped mint wafers into his hand. And though Rogan knew that Pajerski was deliberately playing the role of the “good guy,” the classic “nice cop” who makes some prisoners talk where nothing else will, he could not even now help feeling the glow of gratitude the act of kindness in itself inspired.

Whatever the motive, the sugary mints had been real, the sweet bits of chocolate broke his suffering. The water and cigarettes were miraculous gifts of life. They lived. They entered his body. So why not let Pajerski live? He remembered the hulking man’s vitality, his obvious joy in the good things of life that were material. The physical pleasure he took in eating, drinking, and even in the tortures demanded by the interrogation. But he had laughed when Eric Freisling was creeping up behind Rogan to fire the bullet into his skull. Pajerski had enjoyed that.

Rogan remembered something else. On the afternoon of the first interrogation in the Munich Palace of Justice, they had played the recording of Christine’s screams from the next room. Rogan had twisted and cried out in agony. Pajerski had sauntered out of the high-domed room saying jokingly to Rogan, “Be at ease; I go to make your wife scream with pleasure instead of pain.”

Rogan sighed. They had all played their parts so well. They had succeeded in tricking him every time. They had failed in only one thing: They had not killed him. And now it was his turn. It was his turn to materialize suddenly out of the darkness, bearing torture and death in his hands. It was his turn to know and see everything, and their turn to guess and fear what would happen next.