Six Graves To Munich

CHAPTER 2

Rogan liked the girl so well that he arranged for her to live with him in his hotel for the next week. This involved complicated financial arrangements with the proprietor, but he didn’t mind. Rosalie was delighted. Rogan got an almost paternal satisfaction out of her pleasure.

She was even more thrilled when she learned that his hotel was the world-famous Vier Jahrezeiten, the most luxurious hotel in postwar Hamburg, its service in the grand manner of the old Kaiser Germany.

Rogan treated Rosalie like a princess that week. He gave her money for new clothes, and he took her to the theater and to fine restaurants. She was an affectionate girl, but there was a strange blankness in her that puzzled Rogan. She responded to him as if he were something to love, just as a pet dog is something to love. She stroked his body as impersonally as she would stroke a fur coat, purring with the same kind of pleasure. One day she came back unexpectedly from a shopping trip and found Rogan cleaning his Walther P-38 pistol. That Rogan should own such a weapon was a matter of complete indifference to her. She really didn’t care, and she didn’t question him about it. Although Rogan was relieved that she reacted this way, he knew it wasn’t natural.

Experience had taught Rogan that he needed a week’s rest after one of his attacks. His next move was to Berlin, and toward the end of the week he debated whether or not to take Rosalie along to the divided city. He decided against it. Things might end badly, and she would be hurt through no fault of her own. On the last night he told her he would be leaving her in the morning and gave her all the cash in his wallet. With that strange blankness, she took the money and tossed it on the bed. She gave no sign of emotion other than a purely physical one of animal hunger. Because it was their last night together she wanted to make love for as long as possible. She began to take off her clothes. As she did so she asked casually, “Why must you go to Berlin?”

Rogan studied her creamy shoulders. “Business,” he said.

“I looked in your special envelopes, all seven of them. I wanted to know more about you.” She pulled off her stockings. “The night you met me you killed Karl Pfann, and his envelope and photograph are marked with the number two. The envelope and picture of Albert Moltke are marked ‘number one,’ so I went to the library and found the Vienna newspapers. Moltke was killed a month ago. Your passport shows you were in Austria at that time. Envelopes three and four are marked with the names of Eric and Hans Freisling, and they live in Berlin. So you are going to Berlin to kill them when you leave me tomorrow. And you plan to kill the other three men also, numbers five, six, and seven. Isn’t that true?”

Rosalie spoke matter-of-factly, as if his plans were not extraordinary in any way. Naked, she sat on the edge of the bed, waiting for him to make love to her. For a bizarre moment Rogan thought of killing her and rejected it; and then he realized that it would not be necessary. She would never betray him. There was that curious blankness in her eyes, as if she had no capacity to distinguish between good and evil.

He knelt before her on the bed and bent his head between her breasts. He took her hand in his, and it was warm and dry; she was not afraid. He guided her hand to the back of his skull, made her run her fingers over the silver plate. It was concealed by hair brushed over it, and part of it was overgrown with a thin membrane of dead, horny skin; but he knew she could feel the metal. “Those seven men did that to me,” he said. “It keeps me alive, but I’ll never see any grandchildren. I’ll never live to be an old man sitting in the sun.”

Her fingers touched the back of his skull, not recoiling from the metal or the horny, dead flesh. “I’ll help you if you want me to,” she said; and he could smell the scent of roses on her and he thought, knowing it was sentimental, that roses were for weddings, not for death.

“No,” he said. “I’ll leave tomorrow. Forget about me. Forget you ever saw those envelopes. OK?”

“OK,” Rosalie said, “I’ll forget about you.” She paused, and for a moment that curious emptiness left her and she asked, “Will you forget about me?”

“No,” Rogan said.