'A priest I know, who works for the Comradeship, told me that Warzok disappeared from a safe house near Ebensee. He was supposed to go to Lisbon and get on a boat bound for South America. The same place that Eichmann is headed. They figure you killed Warzok the same way you killed Willy Hintze.'
'Well, that's true, at any rate,' agreed Zvi. 'I was working for the CIA then. Or the OSS as we called it. And Aaron, he was British Army Intelligence. We did kill Willy Hintze. In the wood near Thalgau. A few months after Eichmann. The man we thought was Eichmann, anyway. Eichmann's brother used to go to a small village in the Ebensee hills. His wife used to go to the same place. We went there in the dark. Kept the place under surveillance. There were four men staying in a chalet in the woods near the village. The man we killed matched the description we had of Eichmann.'
'You know what I think?' I said. 'I think Eichmann's family were drawing you off, so that he could be somewhere else.'
'Yes,' said Zvi. 'That's been done.'
I'd said my piece. I was exhausted. I asked for a cigarette. Zvi gave me one. I asked for more coffee. Aaron poured me a cup. I was getting somewhere.
'What are we going to do, boss?' Aaron asked Zvi.
Zvi sighed irritably. 'Lock him up somewhere while I think,' he said.
'Where?' Aaron looked at Shlomo.
'The bathroom,' said Shlomo. 'There's no window and there's a key in the door.'
I felt my heart leap in my chest. The bathroom was where I had hidden the gun that Engelbertina had given me. The one she claimed she wanted me to have in case Eric Gruen had used it on himself. But would it still be there?
The two Jews escorted me to the bathroom. I waited until I heard the key removed from the lock on the other side of the door before opening the airing cupboard and reaching behind the hot-water tank. For a moment, the gun eluded me. The next second it was in my hand.
The magazine in a Mauser is not much bigger than a cigarette lighter. I turned the gun upside down and, with frozen, nervous fingers, slid it up and out of the grip. Eight-millimeter ammunition is about the same size as the nib on a decent fountain pen. And it doesn't look much more deadly. But there was an old saying in KRIPO: It's not what you hit them with, it's where you hit them. There were seven rounds in the magazine and one in the breech. I hoped I wouldn't have to use any of them. But if I did I knew I would have the element of surprise. No one expects a naked man with just a blanket wrapped around him to be armed with a pistol. I pushed the magazine back into the grip and thumbed back the hammer. With the safety off, the gun was now ready to fire. There seemed little point in worrying about an accidental shot. These men were professional killers. If it came down to a gunfight I knew I would be lucky to get just one of them. I drank some water, used the lavatory, and then held the gun under the spot where my other hand held the blanket around my neck. At least I wouldn't die like a dog. I had seen enough men shot on the edge of a ditch to know that I would shoot myself before I'd even allow that to happen. About half an hour passed, during which time I thought a lot about Kirsten and the men who had murdered her. If I managed ever to escape from these Israelis, I told myself, I was going to go after them. Even if it meant pursuing them all the way to America. At the very least I was going to follow them to the airbase. But which one? There were American airbases all over Germany. Then I remembered the letter I had found in Jacobs's glove box. The letter from the Rochester Strong Memorial Hospital itemizing some medical equipment delivered to Garmisch- Partenkirchen, via the Rhein-Main Air Base. It seemed a safe bet that Rhein-Main would be where they were headed. I glanced at my wristwatch. It was almost six o'clock. The plane to Virginia was leaving at midnight. Finally I heard the sound of the key in the lock of the bathroom door. Even if he hadn't been pointing a gun at me, Zvi's face would have told me the worst.
'No go, huh?'
'I'm sorry,' he said. 'But what you say is just too fantastic. Even if you're not who we think you are, you're still SS. That much you have admitted. And then there are those photographs of you with Himmler and Heydrich. They were the sworn enemies of my people.'
'In the wrong place at the wrong time,' I said. 'Story of my life, I guess.'
He stood back from the door and waved his gun at the corridor leading toward the door. 'Come on,' he said grimly. 'Let's get this over with.'
Gripping the gun tightly under my blanket, I came out of the bathroom and walked ahead of him. Aaron was waiting by the front door. Shlomo was outside. But so far only Zvi had a gun in his hand. Which meant I would certainly have to shoot him first. We came out of the house in darkness. Thoughtfully Shlomo switched on the outside light so that they could see what they were doing. We trudged up the slope toward the tree line and the open grave that awaited me. I had figured out when I would make my move.
'I suppose this is your idea of poetic justice,' I said. 'This kind of degrading execution.' My voice sounded brave but my stomach was in knots. 'To my mind this makes you as bad as one of those Special Action Groups.' I was hoping that at least one of them, Aaron perhaps, would start to feel a little disgusted with himself, and look away. I would shoot Zvi first, and then Shlomo. Shlomo was the only one of the three I really wanted to kill. The side of my head still ached miserably. At the edge of my grave I stopped and glanced around. All three of them were less than six feet away from me, within easy range of even a bad shot. It had been a while since I had killed a man. But there would be no hesitation. If necessary I would kill all three.
FORTY-TWO
It was bitterly cold. A wind whipped my blanket around my head for a moment. My clothes lay in the grave below me, dusted with a light covering of snow. But I was glad of the snow. The snow would show the blood if I hit a man. I'm a good shot--better with a pistol than with a rifle, that's for sure--but with an eight-mill in the open air, it's easy to think you've missed. Unlike a forty-five. If Zvi or Shlomo got one off I'd stay hit and look that way until I bled to death.
'Any chance of a last cigarette?' I asked. Give a man something to think about before you take him on. That's what they had taught us in the police academy.
'A cigarette?' said Zvi.
'You must be joking,' said Shlomo. 'In this weather?'
But Zvi was already reaching for his own packet when I dropped my blanket, turned, and fired. The shot hit Zvi on the cheek, just next to his left ear. I fired again and took the end of his nose off. Blood spattered onto Shlomo's neck and shirt collar like a careless sneeze. At the same time the big man grappled, oxlike, for the gun under his armpit. And I shot him in the throat, dumping him on his backside in the snow like a heavy backpack. With one hand pressed to his Adam's apple, and gurgling like a coffee machine, he found the handle of his gun and fumbled it out of his holster, pulling the trigger involuntarily as it appeared in front of his astonished-looking face, this shot killing Zvi stone dead. I pulled the trigger again and shot Shlomo between the eyes even as I stepped quickly toward Aaron and kicked him hard between the legs with a frozen foot. Despite the pain, he held onto my foot at least until I jabbed the gun into his eye. He yelled with pain and let go of my foot. I slipped on the snow and fell and then watched as Aaron staggered back for another second, tripped over Shlomo's motionless body and fell down beside him. Scrambling up onto my knees I leveled my pistol at his head and yelled at him not to reach for his gun. Aaron didn't hear me, or perhaps he chose to ignore me, but either way he pulled the Colt out of his holster and tried to make it ready to fire. But his fingers were cold. As cold as mine, probably, except that my finger was already on the trigger. And I had more than enough time on my side and feeling in my hand to adjust my aim and shoot the young Jew in the calf muscle. He yelped like a beaten dog, dropped his gun, and clutched his leg in agony. I thought I had fired five or six, perhaps more, I couldn't remember for sure. So I picked up Zvi's gun, and threw my own into the trees. Then I collected Aaron's gun, and Shlomo's, and quickly threw those after it. With Aaron effectively incapacitated, I went to the shallow grave, retrieved my half-frozen clothes and started to dress. And while I got dressed again, I spoke to Aaron:
'I'm not going to kill you,' I panted. 'I'm not going to kill you, because I want you to listen. My name is not and never has been Eric Gruen. At some stage in the future, if it's humanly possible, I'm going to kill that man. My name is and always has been Bernhard Gunther. I want you to remember that name. I want you to tell that name to whichever fanatic is in charge of Haganah these days. So that you'll remember it was Bernhard Gunther who told you that Adolf Eichmann is still alive. And that you owe me a favor. Only the next time you look for Eichmann, it had
