it had not been pneumonia at all. Perhaps it had been a mild dose of malaria. Henkell wouldn't have been able to tell the one from the other. There was no reason at all for him to have suspected that my own fever had an 'entomological vector,' as they called it, any more than there was reason for him to have known that Kirsten Handloser was my wife. Not under those circumstances. Which was probably just as well. They might have given me Sporovax.
This put a very different complexion on things. Involving the police looked much too unpredictable now. I needed to know that these men would be properly punished for their crimes. And to know that for sure I would have to punish them myself. Suddenly it had become much easier to understand those Jewish avenger squads. The Nakam. What kind of punishment was a few years in prison for men who had committed such disgusting crimes? Men like Dr. Franz Six from the Jewish Department at the SD. The man who, back in September 1937, had sent me to Palestine. Or Israel, as we now had to call it. I had no idea what had happened to Paul Begelmann, the Jew whose money Six coveted. But I remembered seeing Six again, in Smolensk, where he had commanded a Special Action Group that had massacred seventeen thousand people. And for this he had received a sentence of just twenty years. If the new federal government of Germany had its way, he would be out on parole before he'd served even a quarter of that sentence. Five years for murdering seventeen thousand Jews. No wonder the Israelis felt obliged to murder these men.
Hearing a sound above me I opened my eyes and recognized much too late that the sound had been the hammer on a snub-nosed thirty-eight-caliber Smith & Wesson being thumbed back. The nice thirty-eight with the J-frame and rubberized grip I had seen in the glove box of Jacobs's Buick. Only now it was in his hand. I never forget a gun. Especially when it's pointed at my face.
'Lean back from the desk,' he said quietly. 'And put your hands on your head. Do it slowly. This thirty-eight has a very light action and might easily go off if your hand goes within three feet of that Mauser. I saw your footprints in the snow. Just like Good King Wenceslas. You should have been more careful.'
I sat back in the chair and placed my hands on my head, watching the black hole of the two-inch barrel as it got closer. We both knew I was a dead man if he pulled the trigger. A thirty-eight provides a human skull with a lot of surplus ventilation.
'If I had more time,' he said, 'I might be real curious as to how you got yourself out of Vienna as quickly as you did. Impressive. Then again, I told Eric not to let you have the money. You used it to get out of the city, right?' He leaned forward, carefully, and picked up my gun.
'As a matter of fact, I still have the money,' I said.
'Oh? Where is it?' He eased the hammer off my automatic and tucked it under his trouser belt.
'About forty miles from here,' I said. 'We could go and get it, if you like.'
'And I could pistol-whip it out of you, Gunther. Luckily for you, I'm rather pressed for time.'
'Catching a plane?'
'That's right. Now hand over those passports.'
'What passports?'
'If I have to ask a second time, you'll lose the ear. And don't delude yourself that anyone will hear the shot and give a shit. Not with that skeet range around the corner.'
'Good point,' I said. 'Can I use my hand to get them? They're in my coat pocket. Or would you prefer I tried for them with my teeth?'
'Forefinger and thumb only.' He took a step back, grabbing hold of his wrist, and extended the hand holding the gun at my head. Like he was getting ready to fire. At the same time his keen eyes glanced down at the open file I had been reading. I said nothing about the file. There was no point in putting him on guard any more than he already was. I lifted the passports out of my pocket and tossed them on top of the file.
'What's that you're reading?' He took the passports and then the tickets and pocketed them in his own short leather coat.
'Just the case notes on one of your protege's patients,' I said, closing the file.
'Hands on top of your head again,' he said.
'As doctors, I think they're lousy,' I said. 'All of their patients have a nasty habit of dying.' I was trying hard to control my anger, but my ears were burning. I hoped he would put the color in them down to the cold. I wanted to beat his face to a pulp but I could only do that if I avoided getting shot.
'That's a price worth paying,' he said.
'Easy to say when you're not the one paying it.'
'Nazi POWs?' He sneered. 'I don't think anyone is going to miss a few sick krauts.'
'And the guy who you brought to Dachau?' I asked. 'Was he one of those Nazi POWs, too?'
'Wolfram? He was expendable. We picked you for the same reason, Gunther. You're expendable, too.'
'But when the local supply of sick Nazi POWs dried up? They started using incurable patients in Munich's mental hospitals. Just like the old days. They were also expendable, huh?'
'That was stupid,' said Jacobs. 'A risk they didn't need to take.'
'You know, I can understand them doing it,' I said. 'They're criminals. Fanatics. But not you, Jacobs. I know you know what they did, during the war. I saw the file in the Russian Kommandatura, in Vienna. Experiments on concentration camp prisoners? A lot of them were Jews, just like you. Doesn't that bother you just a little?'
'That was then,' he said. 'This is now. And more importantly, there's tomorrow.'
'You sound like someone I know,' I said. 'A die-hard Nazi.'
'It might take another year or two,' he continued, leaning back against the wall, relaxing just enough to make me think I stood half a chance. Maybe he hoped I would go for him, so he had the excuse to shoot me. Assuming he needed an excuse. 'But a malaria vaccine is something much more important than some misplaced sense of justice and retribution. Have you any idea what a malaria vaccine might be worth?'
'There's nothing more important than retribution,' I said. 'Not in my book.'
'It's lucky you feel that way, Gunther,' he said. 'Because you're going to play the starring role in a little court of retributive justice, right here in Garmisch. I don't think you Germans have a word for it. We call it a kangaroo court. Don't ask me why. But it means an unauthorized court that disregards all normal legal procedures. The Israelis call them Nakam courts. Nakam meaning 'vengeance.' You know? Where the verdict and the sentence come within a minute or two of each other.' He jerked his gun up in the air. 'On your feet, Gunther.'
I stood up.
'Now come around the desk, into the corridor, and go ahead of me.'
He backed out of the doorway as I came toward him. I was praying for some kind of external distraction that might make him take his eyes off me for half a second. But he knew that, of course. And would be ready for it, if or when it came.
'I'm going to lock you up somewhere nice and warm,' he said, herding me along the corridor. 'Open that door and go downstairs.'
I continued to do exactly what I was told. I could feel the aim of that thirty-eight squarely between my shoulder blades. From three or four feet, the bullet of a thirty-eight would have gone straight through me, leaving a hole the size of an Austrian two-shilling piece.
'And when you're locked up,' he said, coming downstairs behind me and switching on the light as we went, 'I'm going to telephone some people I know in Linz. Some friends of mine. One of them used to be CIA. But now he's Israeli intelligence. That's how they like to think of themselves anyway. Assassins. That's what I call them. And that's how I use them.'
'I suppose they're the ones who killed the real Frau Warzok,' I said.
'I wouldn't shed any tears for her, Gunther,' he said. 'After what she did? She had it coming.'
'And Gruen's old girlfriend, Vera Messmann?' I asked. 'Did they kill her, too?'
'Sure.'
'But she wasn't a criminal,' I said. 'What did you tell them about her?'
'I told them she'd been a guard at Ravensbruck,' he said. 'That was a training base for female SS supervisors. Did you know that? The British hanged quite a few of the women from Ravensbruck--Irma Grese was just twenty- one years old--but some of them got away. I told the Nakam that Vera Messmann used to set her wolfhounds on Jews to tear them to pieces. Stuff like that. Mostly the information I give them is good. But now and then I slip someone onto the list who's not a real Nazi. Someone like Vera Messmann. And now you, Gunther. They'll be really pleased to get you. They've been after Eric Gruen for a long time. Which is why they'll have all the relevant
