Desert Fire Read online

  The jewelry box contained a half dozen sets of inexpensive cuff links, a few tie tacks, a gold cigarette lighter, a thin silver chain.

  The cuff links were not here, only the shoe. The damning, arrogant shoe.

  By the time he left, at nearly three-thirty, it had begun to snow. The roads were slippery, and the Königswinter Bridge over the Rhine was beginning to ice up. Below, the dark river was choppy in the wind, the snow disappearing at an angle into the broad, black maw. The sins of the fathers shall be visited upon the sons; the line kept drumming in his head. Bonn suddenly seemed a dark, frightening city.

  24

  CHIEF DISTRICT PROSECUTOR Ernst Schaller, dressed in a bathrobe and slippers, his hair mussed, his eyes still clouded by sleep, answered the door.

  “You,” he said.

  “You’d better let me in,” Roemer said ominously.

  “What’s this, for God’s sake, Roemer? Have you any idea of the time?”

  “Ludwig Whalpol killed that girl because she fell in love with an Iraqi spy.”

  “Good Lord.” Schaller staggered backward.

  Roemer followed him into the house and closed the door. Schaller seemed genuinely frightened of him. His eyes were wide and he seemed suddenly unable to talk.

  “Do you understand what I am saying to you, Chief Prosecutor?” Roemer had a harsh, flat edge on his voice. “I have your murderer for you, and now I wish to be withdrawn.”

  Schaller glanced toward the head of the stairs. “Keep your voice down.”

  “I shall present my evidence, and then I shall leave.” Schaller shook his head. “It’s quite impossible, you know. Ludwig Whalpol is not a killer …” He broke off, a sheepish expression crossing his face, as if he had said something stupid.

  “This is a BND matter,” Roemer said. “It was from the very beginning. It is not something for me.”

  Schaller noticed that Roemer was holding several files and a shoe. “I don’t want any of that.”

  “Neither do I.”

  “Have you got enough evidence for me to go to trial?”

  Roemer laughed. “This will never go to trial. You know that. You and the good major sat in your study and told me as much.”

  “Don’t be absurd, Roemer. A murder has been committed. If … if an officer of the government, or anyone for that matter, is implicated we will go to trial. It’s the very reason you were picked for this assignment. I knew you would find your man.”

  “But not Whalpol?”

  “I don’t think so. I can’t imagine it, under the circumstances.”

  “If it were true, what then, Chief Prosecutor?”

  “Then he would be arrested and placed on trial, as a matter of procedure, of course.”

  “Why me?”

  “The very question I was about to ask you,” Schaller said. “If Whalpol had killed this young girl, why in heaven’s name would he ask for the premier investigator in Germany?”

  “Because he’s an arrogant bastard who believes he can’t be found out.”

  Schaller was becoming more sure of himself. “What is your evidence against him? This shoe?”

  “I took it from his closet. It will match the footprints at the young woman’s apartment.”

  “And if it does, so what? He discovered the body. He recovered the file.” Schaller shook his head. “Even if he were the murderer and I knew it for a fact, I still could not go to trial on the basis of a heel print.”

  “I wasn’t asking for a trial, Chief Prosecutor,” Roemer said. “I merely asked that I be withdrawn from the case. It is clearly a BND matter … unless, of course, you want me to pass my information along to Lieutenant Manning.”

  “Don’t be a fool!”

  “There may be another problem.”

  “Yes.”

  “Leila Kahled, who is chief of security for the Iraqi team at KwU, came to my apartment to see me. She is the Mukhabarat chief here. Major Whalpol’s counterpart.”

  “Go on,” Schaller said, grim-lipped.

  “She knows who and what Whalpol is, and she knows he recruited Sarah Razmarah to spy on them.”

  Schaller seemed to consider it for a moment, but then he smiled. “I don’t think you will have too much of a problem with Fräulein Kahled. I’ll speak to her personally. I’m having dinner with her and her father on Sunday evening. It was scheduled for last night, but he was recalled to Baghdad unexpectedly.”

  “I don’t understand. Do you know who this woman is?”

  “Yes.”

  “And that there is a very good possibility that Whalpol murdered Sarah Razmarah because she was giving away our secrets?”

  “I know that you’ve made that wild accusation.”

  Roemer didn’t think he could dislike anyone more than he disliked the Chief Prosecutor at that moment.

  25

  IT WAS NOON by the time Roemer managed to get away from the city. A couple of hours of sleep and a light breakfast had refreshed him enough so that the six-hour drive to Bern was not impossible.

  Colonel Legler had postponed their meeting until Monday (Roemer suspected Schaller had spoken with him); Gehrman was in conference and Manning was busy, so Roemer had left.

  The snow had stopped, the sun had come out and the Koblenz Autobahn was clear, though traffic was heavy. Roemer gassed up at the B9 entrance ramp just outside Bonn and, keeping to the left lane, sped up to 150 kilometers per hour. Radio Luxembourg was playing a Tchaikovsky symphony; it made him think of his father, who had loved Tchaikovsky even when loving things Russian was unpopular, in fact dangerous.

  By rights he should have hated the old man for all the things his mother had told him. But he did not. It was genetics; like father, like son.

  His first memory of his father was after the war. They were living in a large basement apartment in what was left of Munich. He could clearly see in his mind’s eye a photograph of his father in a black uniform, twin silver lightning bolts on the lapel. He had been one of the administrators at nearby Dachau. It was work he was proud of.

  Then his father disappeared, escaping with a lot of gold, jewels and artwork to Switzerland, leaving his wife and young son behind. Those next years were incredibly difficult. Roemer still vividly remembered being cold and hungry, though he wasn’t yet four years old. He remembered that even the rats had deserted the city—the ones the people had not trapped and eaten. He remembered sickness, and he remembered the American school that he and the children of other SS officers were made to attend. They were taught in detail, every day, about the horrors of the Final Solution. They were shown photographs and were made to listen to speeches about God and America and guilt. Mostly guilt.

  For several years, investigators would come every week to talk with his mother about the whereabouts of her husband. They were living in Augsburg. After each visit his mother would rant about what a bastard his father had been. About how he had deserted them. How the Russians had captured him, and had tortured and killed him, and how he had finally gotten what he deserved.

  Money began to arrive from Switzerland and their lives became easier. Roemer was placed in a boarding school and then the police university. Before his mother died, she told him that his father was alive and well in Interlaken, a small city in Switzerland. From then on, once or twice a year he drove down to see the old man. Each time he came away unfulfilled. He was searching for a father, but all he ever found was a distant, bitter stranger. Yet despite the old man’s terrible past, Roemer felt something for him.

  His father’s health began to fail, and in 1976 the old man went into a private sanatorium outside Bern. His sergeant remained at the Interlaken house.

  “Here is where I die,” he wheezed. “Not at the end of some Jewboy rope.”

  And now he was truly dying. Cancer. Kidney failure. A dozen maladies of old age in which the body simply gives up.

  Roemer was glad for it. The pain and guilt could finally be laid to rest.

  The sanatorium was a few kilomete
rs northwest of Bern on a large wooded tract in the hills along the River Aare. A lot of snow had fallen; the trees were heavily laden, and the air had a crisp, ethereal feel. As usual, the place seemed deserted. There were never many visitors here. This was a dying place, mostly for the well-to-do old men who preferred anonymity, as only the Swiss could provide it.

  It was past six when Roemer came up the long, looping driveway and parked just beyond the main entrance overhang. He got out and stretched his legs. His shoulder hurt like hell and he had a headache.

  The large and ornate building had once been a resort hotel, but had been converted into a hospital after the war.

  He walked slowly across the driveway and entered the expansive, tasteful lobby. An older woman in a starched white uniform rose behind a long counter.

  “Good evening, Herr Walkmann,” the woman said coolly. Here everyone had an alias.

  “How is he doing?” Roemer asked quietly.

  “He has his days, but before you leave, Dr. Klausen would like to have a word with you.”

  “May I go up now?”

  “Of course. Will you be staying the weekend?”

  “I’m not sure yet. I’ll let you know.”

  Roemer took the elevator to the third floor. The nurse on duty at the floor station was just hanging up the telephone.

  “Good evening, Herr Walkmann. You may go right in, though he may be dozing.”

  “Thank you.” Roemer walked to the end of the long corridor and knocked at the door before going in.

  His father was propped by pillows in an easy chair in front of the window. The room smelled of urine and alcohol. A small wooden crucifix hung on the wall over the bed. The only other adornment in the room was a small vase of cut flowers on the bureau.

  For a moment Roemer stood at the doorway staring at his father’s frail form, his wispy white hair in disarray, his gnarled, blue-veined hands folded in his lap, his arms and legs beneath his pajamas hardly more than brittle twigs. The old man had faded since the last time Roemer saw him, three months ago. He’d lost weight. The skin hung in ugly blue-tinged folds at his neck and jaw, and he had developed a slight palsy.

  Roemer pulled up a chair next to his father. The old man was awake, staring out the window, his eyes moist and clouded by cataracts.

  “So you’ve come again,” the old man said.

  “Hello, Father.”

  “I suppose you want more money. Or perhaps your mother sent you to tell me what a tough time she’s having.”

  “No, I just came to say hello. See how you were doing.”

  The old man turned to look at his son, his thin purple lips mean. “I feel fur Scheissen. I can’t piss, I can’t shit, I can’t eat. Max has left me, and I’m stuck in this filthy prison.”

  Roemer lit a cigarette and gave it to his father, who held it backward, like a Russian, with his thumb and forefinger. He coughed each time he inhaled. Roemer lit one for himself.

  “You can do me a favor while you’re here,” the old man said between coughing fits.

  “Sure.”

  “Get them to give me my schnapps. They’ve cut it out.”

  “I’ll talk to the doctor.”

  “Fuck the Schweinhund Juden. I want you to talk to Frantz. The administrator. I’ve given that old bastard enough money.”

  “I’ll speak with him tonight.”

  “See that you do. It’s all I ask.” The old man sank back into himself and turned so that he could again look out the window. It was getting dark already.

  Whenever Roemer came to see his father he was taken back to the early fifties, when there was still a genuine mystical belief in the old ways; in the old gods, the Nibelungen, who lived underground with their riches; in the Valkyrie, the warrior maidens of the Norse god whom the Germans had borrowed to look over their fallen warriors; and in the tragedy of heroes cut down in their youth. It was an atmosphere that seemed to hang around his father. The danger about the man was damped now only because he was very old, and dying. He was the Butcher of Dachau. How many men and women and children had he killed? How many screams had he heard, how many pleas for mercy? Yet here he was, the tragic old hero for whom a place waited in Valhalla.

  “I hate this goddamned country. I want to go home.”

  “It’s not there anymore,” Roemer said.

  The old man shook his head. “The atomic war is going to start over the Jewish state. The Arabs are pissed off. The Russkies will supply them with the bombs and the rockets and they’ll wipe the kikes off the map.”

  “The Israelis have their own nuclear weapons now.”

  The old man laughed, the sound brittle. He coughed. “I’m goddamned glad the bastards didn’t have the bomb in forty-two.”

  Roemer wondered why he kept coming here. It was like this each time.

  “How is your mother doing?”

  Roemer closed his eyes. “She’s all right.”

  “Maybe I should send for her. Wouldn’t that be a good idea?”

  “Perhaps.”

  “Shit, don’t do me any favors,” the old man mumbled. After a while his head nodded forward and his body slumped sideways. He dropped his cigarette in his lap.

  Roemer took the cigarette and his own and put them out in the ashtray on the table. He gently lifted his father out of the chair and laid him on the tall hospital bed. The old man’s body stank of rot.

  “Don’t let them get me, Walther,” he said with intensity. “It won’t be long now.”

  Roemer covered him with the sheet and thin blanket and lifted the side rails. “You’re safe here, Father.”

  Roemer stood at the bedside for a time watching his father sleeping, hearing his labored breathing. For a terrible moment he had the urge to take the pillow from beneath his father’s head and press it over the old man’s face. It would be a peaceful end.

  Dr. Emile Klausen, the resident physician, was at the nurses’ station. “Ah, Herr Walkmann.” The doctor was a shambling bear of a man with thick brown hair. “Is your father still awake?”

  “He’s sleeping now. I put him to bed.”

  “Good.”

  “You wanted to speak with me before I left?”

  The doctor sighed. “You understand it will not be long. Perhaps two months at the most.”

  “Is he in any pain?”

  “Not in any ordinary sense. He is pretty much in his own world now, most of the time.”

  “Call me at the end, please,” Roemer said.

  “By the way, Herr Walkmann, your friend has arrived. She is waiting for you downstairs.”

  A cold hand clutched Roemer’s throat. “Friend?”

  “Fräulein Kahled?”

  Roemer ran to the elevator. He couldn’t believe the bitch had followed him here. She wanted something on him, some lever to use against him. Well, she had it now.

  26

  LEILA WAS IN the lobby looking at a large painting of a Swiss alpine scene hanging above the fireplace when Roemer emerged from the elevator. He fought to control himself. After all these years he was finally going to be confronted.

  He crossed the lobby. “What are you doing here?” he demanded when he reached her.

  Leila turned. “I could ask you the same thing, Investigator,” she said coldly. “But I’ve already figured it out.”

  So goddamned close. Just another couple of months and it wouldn’t have mattered.

  “Your father is here. The Butcher of Dachau.”

  “He is dying. There are only a few weeks left for him.”

  “The Justice Department in Berlin would find interesting the fact that he’s still alive. The Wiesenthal organization in Vienna might be grateful to learn that he’s here.”

  “I wonder what the Americans would say if they knew what your people were doing in Bonn?”

  Leila smiled. “You would become a traitor? I think your own government would have you shot.”

  “I’ll do whatever it takes to protect my father.”

  Lei
la appraised him. “Yes, I can see that you are the son.”

  Roemer tensed. He wanted to lash out, smash her face, knock her down. He was at the raw edge. “I’m not a Nazi,” he said softly.

  “You had a good teacher …”

  “I never knew him until long after the war.”

  “And your mother, Investigator, was she a Nazi bitch?”

  God in heaven, he couldn’t take much more of this.

  “I want to know,” Leila said relentlessly. “Was she there on the torture squads in Dachau? Did she make lampshades from human skin?”

  Roemer’s right fist came up slowly.

  “Touch me, you bastard, and I’ll kill you.”

  The nurse behind the counter stood up. She was looking at them. She picked up the telephone.

  “Leave,” Roemer said. “He’ll be dead very soon.”

  “In Berlin, at the end of the hangman’s rope.”

  He lunged and shoved Leila back against the wall, his right forearm across her neck. Her eyes were wide with fear, she grappled for her purse.

  “I’ll break your fucking neck the instant you touch your gun.”

  “Herr Walkmann!” the nurse was shouting.

  “Not a day goes by that I don’t feel guilt,” he spat. “Not a night passes without nightmares. But he is my father!” Tears streamed down his cheeks.

  Rough hands were on his shoulders, tearing him away. Suddenly spent, he allowed himself to be shoved aside by the hospital’s security men.

  Leila gaped at him, wide-eyed. But there was something else there too. Sadness? Pity?

  “This woman is armed,” Roemer said calmly. “She is here to kill my father.”

  27

  THE POWERFUL OVERHEAD klieg lights went out moments after the red transmission light on camera one winked off, and Joan Waldmann bundled up the news feature script she had just read, sat back with a sigh and lit a cigarette. It was late Sunday night and she was tired. It had been a hectic week. Time to go home to bed.

  She was a pretty woman of twenty-eight with a big-city polish on camera and a wholesome look off. She was short and sensuous, with dark hair, wide eyes and a firm body.