The One from the Other

extradited to a country where they hanged most of their Nazi war criminals--I was quite sure she could take it.

'And you think that's what happened to Friedrich?'

'Yes. The man I spoke to is more or less certain of it.'

'Poor Friedrich,' she said. 'Not a very pleasant way to die, is it?'

'I've seen worse,' I said. I lit a cigarette. 'I would say I'm sorry but it hardly seems appropriate. And for a number of reasons.'

'Poor, poor Friedrich,' she said again. She finished her drink and ordered another for us both. Her eyes were looking moist.

'You say that like you almost mean it,' I said. 'Almost.'

'Let's just say that he had his moments, shall we? Yes, in the beginning, he very definitely had his moments. And now he is dead.' She took out her handkerchief and, very deliberately, pressed it into the corner of each eye.

'Knowing it is one thing, Frau Warzok. Proving it to the satisfaction of a church court is quite another. The Comradeship--the people who tried to help your husband--are not the kind to swear on anything except perhaps an SS dagger. The man I met made that quite clear to me in no uncertain terms.'

'Nasty, eh?'

'Like a common wart.'

'And dangerous.'

'I wouldn't be at all surprised.'

'Did he threaten you?'

'Yes, I suppose he did,' I said. 'But I wouldn't let it concern you at all. Being threatened is an occupational hazard for someone like me. I almost didn't notice it.'

'Please be careful, Herr Gunther,' she said. 'I would not like to have you on my conscience.'

The second round of drinks arrived. I finished my first one and placed the empty on the waiter's tray. The fat lady and her son who worked for American Overseas Airline came in and sat at the next table. I ate my cocktail onion quickly before she could ask for it. The son was German. But the wine-colored gabardine suit he wore looked like something out of Esquire magazine. Or maybe a Chicago nightclub. The jacket was oversize, with wide lapels and even wider shoulders, and the trousers were baggy and low on the crotch and narrowed dramatically at the ankle, as if to accentuate his brown and white shoes. His shirt was plain white, his tie an electric shade of pink. The whole ensemble was made complete by a double key chain of exaggerated length that hung from a narrow leather belt. Assuming she wouldn't have eaten it I imagined that he was probably the apple of his mother's eye. Not that he would have noticed given that his own eye was already crawling over Britta Warzok like an invisible tongue. The next second he was pushing his chair back, putting down his pillowcase-size napkin, standing up, and coming over to our table like maybe he knew her. Smiling as if his life depended on it and bowing stiffly, which looked all wrong in the easygoing suit he was wearing, he said:

'How are you, dear lady? How are you enjoying Munich?'

Frau Warzok regarded him blankly. He bowed again almost as if he hoped that the movement might jog her memory.

'Felix Klingerhoefer? Don't you remember? We met on the plane.'

She started to shake her head. 'I think you must be mistaking me for someone else, Herr--?'

I almost laughed out loud. The idea that Britta Warzok could have been mistaken for anyone, except perhaps one of the three Graces, was too absurd. Especially with those three scars on her face. Eva Braun would have been more forgettable.

'No, no,' insisted Klingerhoefer. 'There's no mistake.'

Silently I agreed with him, thinking it rather clumsy of her to pretend to have forgotten his name like that, especially since he had just finished mentioning it. I remained silent, waiting to see how this would play out.

Ignoring him altogether now, Britta Warzok looked at me and said, 'What were we talking about, Bernie?'

I thought it odd that it should have been that particular moment she chose to use my Christian name for the first time. I didn't look at her. Instead, I kept my eyes on Klingerhoefer in the hope it might encourage him to say something else. I even smiled at him, I think. Just so he wouldn't get the idea I was going to get rough with him. But he was stranded like a dog on an ice floe. And bowing a third time, he muttered an apology and went back to his own table with his face turning the color of his strange suit.

'I think I was telling you about some of the odd people this job brings me into contact with,' I said.

'Doesn't it just?' she whispered, glancing nervously in Klingerhoefer's direction. 'Honestly. I don't know where on earth he got the idea that we were acquainted. I've never seen him before.'

Honestly. I just love it when clients talk like that. Especially the females. All my doubts about her veracity were instantly removed, of course.

'In that suit, I think I'd have remembered him,' she added, quite redundantly.

'No doubt about it,' I said, watching the man. 'You certainly would.'

She opened her bag and took out an envelope that she handed to me. 'I promised you a bonus,' she said. 'And here it is.'

I glanced inside the envelope at some banknotes. There were ten of them and they were all red. It wasn't five thousand marks. But it was still more than generous. I told her it was too generous. 'After all,' I said. 'The evidence doesn't help your cause very much.'

'On the contrary,' she said. 'It helps me a great deal.' She tapped her forehead with an immaculate fingernail. 'In here. Even if it doesn't help my cause, as you say, you've no idea what a load off my mind this is. To know that he won't be coming back.' And taking hold of my hand, she picked it up and kissed it with what looked like real gratitude. 'Thank you, Herr Gunther. Thank you, very much.'

'It's been a pleasure,' I said.

I put the envelope in my inside pocket and buttoned it down for safekeeping. I liked the way she had kissed my hand. I liked the bonus, too. I liked the fact that she'd paid it in hundred-mark notes. Nice new ones with the lady reading a book beside a mounted terrestrial globe. I even liked her hat, and the three scars on her face. I liked pretty much everything about her except the little gun in her bag.

I dislike women who carry guns almost as much as I dislike men who carry them. The gun and the little incident with Herr Klingerhoefer--not to mention the way she had avoided having me back to her home--made me think there was much more to Britta Warzok than met the eye. And given that she met the eye like Cleopatra, that gave me a cramp in a muscle that suddenly I felt I just had to stretch.

'You're a pretty strict Roman Catholic, Frau Warzok,' I said. 'Am I right?'

'Unfortunately, yes. Why do you ask?'

'Only because I was speaking to a priest about your dilemma and he recommended that you employ the good old Jesuit device of equivocation,' I said. 'It means saying one thing while thinking quite another, in pursuit of a good cause. Apparently it's something that was recommended by the founder of the Jesuits, Ulrich Zwingli. According to this priest I was speaking to, Zwingli writes about it in a book called Spiritual Exercises. Maybe you should read it. Zwingli says that the greater sin than the lie itself would be the evil action that would result from not telling a lie. In this case, that you're a good-looking young woman who wants to get married and start a family. The priest I spoke to reckons that if you were to forget about the fact that you saw your husband alive in the spring of 1946, you would only have to get the Dienststelle to declare that he was dead, and then there would be no need to involve the church at all. And now that you know that he really is dead, where would the harm be in that?'

Frau Warzok shrugged. 'What you say is interesting, Herr Gunther,' she said. 'Perhaps we will speak to a Jesuit and see what he recommends. But I couldn't lie about such a thing. Not to a priest. I'm afraid that, for a Catholic, there are no easy shortcuts.' She finished her drink and then dabbed at her mouth with her napkin.

'It's just a suggestion,' I said.

She dipped into her bag again, put five dollars on the table, and then made as if to go. 'No, please don't get up,' she said. 'I feel awful having stopped you from having dinner. Do please stay and order something. There's enough there to cover more or less whatever you want. At least finish your drink.'

I stood up, kissed her hand, and watched her go. She didn't even glance at Herr Klingerhoefer, who blushed again, fiddled with his key chain, and then forced a smile at his mother. Half of me wanted to follow her. Half of me