and the special action groups. It had been the regular guys--the lawyers, the judges, the policemen, the chicken farmers, and the stonemasons--who had done all the killing. In the second picture, things were clearer cut: a slightly tubbier Warzok, his chins bulging over his tunic collar, was standing stiffly to attention, his right hand held in the clasp of a beaming Heinrich Himmler. Warzok was about an inch shorter than Himmler, who was accompanied by an SS Gruppenfuhrer I didn't recognize. The third picture was a wider shot, taken the same day, of about six SS officers, including Warzok and Himmler. There were shadows on the ground and it looked like the sun had been shining.
'Those two were taken in August 1942,' explained Frau Warzok. 'As you can see, Himmler was being shown around Janowska. Wilhaus was drunk, and things were slightly less cordial than it seems. Himmler didn't really approve of wanton cruelty. Or so Friedrich told me.'
She reached into her briefcase and took out a typewritten sheet of paper. 'This is a copy of some details that were on his SS record,' she said. 'His SS number. His NSDAP number. His parents--they're both dead, so you can forget any leads from that direction. He had a girlfriend, a Jewess called Rebecca, whom he murdered just before the camp was liberated. It's possible you might get something out of Fritz Gebauer. I haven't tried.'
I glanced over the paper she had prepared. She'd been very thorough, I had to give her that much. Or perhaps her lawyer fiance had. I looked at the photographs again. Somehow it was a little hard to imagine her in bed with the man shaking hands with Himmler, but I'd seen more unlikely-looking couples. I could see what Warzok got out of it. He was short, she was tall. In that he was conforming to type, at least. It was harder to see what had been in it for her. Tall women usually married short men because it wasn't money the men were short of, just inches. Stonemasons didn't make a lot of money. Not even in Austria, where the tombs are fancier than almost anywhere else in Europe.
'I don't get it,' I said. 'Why did a woman like you marry a squirt like him in the first place?'
'Because I got pregnant,' she said. 'I wouldn't have married him otherwise. After we married, I lost the child. And I told you. I'm a Catholic. We mate for life.'
'All right. I'll buy that. But suppose I do find him. What happens then? Have you thought about that?'
Her nostrils narrowed and her face took on a hard aspect that hadn't been there before. She closed her eyes for a moment, removed the velvet glove she'd been wearing, and let me see the steel hand that had been there all along.
'You mentioned Erich Koch,' she said. 'It's my fiance's understanding that since he came out of hiding, in May, the British--in whose zone of occupation he is now imprisoned--are considering the extradition requests of Poland and the Soviet Union, in whose countries Koch's crimes were committed. Despite the Basic Law, and any amnesties the Federal Republic might push through, it is my fiance's opinion--his well-informed opinion--that the British will approve his extradition to the Russian Zone. To Poland. Should he be found guilty in a Warsaw court, he will undoubtedly face the maximum punishment under Polish law. A sentence that Germany is judicially inclined to disapprove of. We anticipate the same fate for Friedrich Warzok.'
I grinned at her. 'Well, that's more like it,' I said. 'Now I can see what you two had in common. You're really quite a ruthless woman, aren't you? Kind of like one of those Borgias I was talking about. Lucrezia Borgia. Ruthless, and beautiful with it.'
She blushed.
'Do you really care what happens to a man like that?' she said, brandishing her husband's photograph.
'Not particularly. I'll help you to look for your husband, Frau Warzok. But I won't help you put a noose around his neck--even if he does deserve it several thousand times over.'
'What's the matter, Herr Gunther? Are you squeamish about such things?'
'It could be,' I said. 'If I am it's because I've seen men hanged and I've seen them shot. I've seen them blown to pieces and starved to death, and toasted with a flamethrower, and crushed underneath the tracks of a Panzer tank. It's a funny thing, but after a while you realize you've seen too much. Things you can't pretend you didn't see because they're always on the insides of your eyelids when you go to sleep at night. And you tell yourself that you'd rather not see any more. Not if you can help it. Which of course you can because none of the old excuses are worth a damn anymore. And it's simply not good enough to say we can't help it and orders are orders and expect people to swallow that the way they used to. So yes, I suppose I am a little squeamish. After all, just look where ruthless has gotten us.'
'You're quite the philosopher, aren't you?' she said. 'For a detective.'
'All detectives are philosophers, Frau Warzok. They have to be. That way they can recognize how much of what a client tells them they can swallow safely and how much they can flush. Which of them is as mad as Nietzsche and which of them is only as mad as Marx. The clients, I mean. You mentioned two hundred in advance.'
She reached down for her briefcase, took out her wallet, and counted out four seated ladies into my hand. 'I also brought some hemlock,' she said. 'If you didn't take the case, I was going to threaten to drink it. But if you do find my husband, maybe you could give it to him instead. Sort of a good-bye present.'
I grinned at her. I liked grinning at her. She was the type of client who needed to see my teeth, just to remind her that I might bite. 'I'll write you a receipt,' I said.
Our business concluded she stood up, shifting some of her perfume off her delectable body and up my airways. Without the heels and the hat, I figured she was probably only as tall as I was. But while she was wearing them I felt like her favorite eunuch. I imagined it was the effect she was looking for.
'Look after yourself, Herr Gunther,' she said, reaching for the door handle. Mr. Manners got there first.
'I always do. I've had an awful lot of practice.'
'When will you start to look for him?'
'Your two hundred says right now.'
'And how and where will you go about it?'
'I'll probably lift some rocks and see what crawls out from underneath. With six million Jews murdered, there are plenty of rocks in Germany to choose from.'
ELEVEN
Detective work is a little like walking into a movie that's already started. You don't know what's happened already and, as you try to find your way in the dark, it's inevitable that you're going to stand on someone's toes, or get in their way. Sometimes people curse you, but mostly they just sigh or tut loudly and move their legs and their coats, and then do their best to pretend you're not there. Asking questions of the person seated next to you can result in anything from a full plot and cast list to a slap in the mouth with a rolled-up program. You pay your money and you take your chances.
Chance was one thing. Pushing my luck was quite another. I wasn't about to go asking questions about old comrades without a friend to keep me company. Men who are facing the gallows are apt to be a little jealous about their privacy. I hadn't owned a gun since leaving Vienna. I decided that it was time I started to dress for all occasions.
Under National Socialism's law of 1938, handguns could be purchased only on submission of a Weapons Acquisitions Permit, and most men of my acquaintance had owned some kind of firearm. But at the end of the war General Eisenhower had ordered all privately owned firearms in the American Zone to be confiscated. In the Soviet Zone things were even stricter: A German in possession of so much as a single cartridge was likely to be summarily shot. A gun was as difficult to get hold of in Germany as a banana.
I knew a fellow named Stuber--Faxon Stuber--who drove an export taxi, who could get hold of all kinds of things, mostly from American GIs. Marked with the initials E.T., export taxis were reserved for the exclusive use of people in possession of foreign exchange coupons, or FECs. I wasn't sure how he had got hold of them, but I had found some FECs in the glove box of Kirsten's father's Hansa. I supposed he had been saving them to buy gasoline on the black market. I used some of them to pay Stuber for a gun.
He was a small man in his early twenties, with a mustache like a line of ants, and, on his head, an SS officer's black service cap from which all the insignia and cap cords had been removed. None of the Americans getting into Stuber's E.T. would ever have recognized his cap for what it was. But I did. I'd damn near had to wear a black cap myself. As it was, I'd been obliged to wear the field gray version only as part of the M37 SS uniform, which came along after 1938. I figured Stuber had found the cap or someone had given it to him. He was too young to have
