CHAPTER 18
Rogan smiled reassuringly at Rosalie. “Go and sit down. Nothing is going to happen. I’ve been expecting them.” He turned to Bailey. “Tell your fink to stash his weapon and you do the same. You’re not going to use them. And you’re not going to stop me from doing what I have to do.”
Bailey put away his gun and motioned to Vrostk. He said to Rogan very slowly, very sincerely, “We came to help you out. I was just worried that maybe you’d gone kill-crazy. I thought you might just start blasting away if you found us here, so I figured I’d get the drop and then explain.”
“Explain away,” Rogan said.
“Interpol is on to you,” Bailey said. “They’ve hooked you up with all the murders, and they’re processing copies of all your passport photos. They traced you to Munich; I got the Teletype in my Munich branch office just an hour ago. They think you’re here to kill somebody, and they’re trying to find out who. That’s the only thing you’ve got going for you. That nobody knows who you’re after.”
Rogan sat on the bed opposite the dusty green sofa. “Come off it, Bailey,” he said. “You know who I’m after.”
Bailey shook his head. His lean, handsome face took on a worried look. “You’ve become paranoiac,” he said. “I’ve helped you all along. I haven’t told them anything.”
Rogan leaned back on the pillow. His voice was very calm. “I’ll give you this much credit. At the beginning you didn’t know who the seven men in the Munich Palace of Justice were. But by the time I came back you had a dossier on every one of them. When I saw you a few months ago, the time you came to tell me to lay off the Freisling brothers, you knew all seven. But you were not going to let me know. After all, an intelligence network operating against the Communists is more important than an atrocity victim getting his revenge. Isn’t that how you Intelligence guys figure?”
Bailey didn’t answer. He was watching Rogan intently. Rogan went on. “After I killed the Freisling brothers you knew nothing would stop me. And you wanted Genco Bari and Wenta Pajerski knocked off. But I was never supposed to get away from Budapest alive.” He turned to Vrostk. “Isn’t that right?”
Vrostk flushed. “All arrangements were made for your escape. I cannot help it if you are a headstrong person who insists on going his own way.”
Rogan said contemptuously, “You lousy bastard. I went by the consulate just to check you out. There was no car waiting, and the whole neighborhood was crawling with cops. You tipped them off. I was never supposed to get to Munich; I was supposed to die behind the Iron Curtain. And that would have solved all your Intelligence problems.”
“You’re insulting me,” Bailey said. “You’re accusing me of having you betrayed to the Communist secret police.” His voice held a tone of such sincere outrage that Rosalie glanced doubtfully at Rogan.
“You know, if I were still a kid in the war you would have fooled me just now. But after the time I spent in the Munich Palace of Justice I see through guys like you. I had you all the way, Bailey; you never fooled me for a second. In fact, when I came to Munich I knew you’d be waiting, and I thought of tracking you down and killing you first. Then I figured it wouldn’t be necessary. And I didn’t want to kill someone just because he got in my way. But you’re no better than those seven men. If you’d been there you’d have done what they did. Maybe you have. How about it, Bailey? How many guys have you tortured? How many guys have you murdered?”
Rogan paused to light a cigarette. He looked directly into Bailey’s eyes when he started to speak again. “The seventh man, the chief interrogator, the man who tortured my wife and recorded her screams, is Judge Klaus von Osteen. The highest- ranking federal judge in Bavaria. The politician with the brightest future, maybe the next chancellor of West Germany. Backed by our State Department. And in the pocket of the American Intelligence apparatus. So you can’t afford to have him killed by me, and you certainly can’t have him arrested for war crimes.”
Rogan stubbed out his cigarette. “To keep me from killing von Osteen, to keep the story of his being a Gestapo man a secret, I had to be destroyed. You ordered Vrostk to betray me to the Hungarian secret police. Isn’t that right, Bailey? Simple, airtight, cleanhanded, just the way you sincere Intelligence types like it.”
Vrostk said in his arrogant-sounding voice, “What is to stop us from silencing you now?” Bailey gave his subordinate a weary look of impatience. Rogan laughed.
“Bailey, tell your fink why he can’t,” Rogan said, amused. When Bailey remained silent Rogan went on, speaking directly to Vrostk. “You’re too stupid to figure out what I’ve done, but your boss knows. I’ve sent letters to people in the States I can trust. If I die, von Osteen will be exposed, American diplomacy will be discredited. American Intelligence here in Europe will get it in the neck from Washington. So you can’t kill me. If I’m captured- same thing. Von Osteen will be exposed, so you can’t inform on me. You have to settle for breaking even. You have to hope that I kill von Osteen and nobody ever finds out why. I won’t insist on your helping me. That would be asking too much.”
Vrostk’s mouth hung open in shock. Bailey stood up to go. “You’ve got it figured out pretty good,” he said to Rogan. “Everything you said is true, I won’t deny it. Vrostk took his orders from me. But everything I did was part of my job, to get my job done. What the hell do I care about your getting your revenge, getting your justice, when I can help our country control Germany through von Osteen? But you’ve made all the right moves, so I have to stand aside and let you do what you have to do.
And I have no doubt that you’ll get to von Osteen, even though there’ll be a thousand cops looking for you tomorrow morning. But you’ve forgotten one thing, Rogan: You’d better escape after you kill him.”
Rogan shrugged. “I don’t give a damn about that.”
“No, and you don’t give much of a damn what happens to your women either.” He saw that Rogan had not understood. “First, your pretty little French wife that you let them kill, and now this
Rogan said quietly, “What the hell are you talking about?”
Bailey smiled for the first time. He said softly, “I mean that if you kill von Osteen and then you get killed, I put your girl through the wringer. She gets accused as an accessory to your murders, or she gets put away in that insane asylum. The same thing happens if von Osteen lives and gets exposed by your letters after you’re dead. Now, I’ll give you an alternative. Forget about killing von Osteen and I’ll get you and the girl immunity for everything you’ve done. I’ll get it fixed so the girl can enter the States with you when you go back. Think it over.” He started to leave.
Rogan called after him. His voice was shaky. For the first time that evening he seemed to have lost some of his confidence. “Tell me the truth, Bailey,” Rogan said. “If you had been one of the seven men in the Munich Palace of Justice, would you have done the things to me that they did?”
Bailey considered the question seriously for a moment; then he said quietly, “If I really believed it would help my country win the war, yes, I would have.” He followed Vrostk out of the door.
Rogan got up and went to the bureau. Rosalie saw him fit the rifled metal of the silencer on the spine of the Walther pistol and said in an anguished voice, “No, please don’t. I’m not afraid of what they’ll do to me.” She moved toward the door, as if to stop him from going out. Then she changed her mind and sat on the green sofa.
Rogan watched her for a moment. “I know what you’re thinking,” he said, “but didn’t I let Vrostk and Bailey get away with trying to kill me in Budapest? Everybody in that profession is some kind of special animal, not a human being. They’re all volunteers; nobody forces them into those jobs. They know what their duties will be. To torture, betray, and murder their fellow human beings. I don’t feel any pity for them.”
She did not answer; she bowed her head into her hands. Rogan said gently, “In Budapest I risked my life to be sure no one else was hurt except Pajerski. I was ready to give up everything, even my chance of punishing von Osteen, so that none of the innocent bystanders would be injured by me. Because those bystanders were innocent. These two men are not. And I won’t have you suffer because of me.”
Before she could answer, before she could raise her head, he went out of the room. She could hear his foot- steps going swiftly down the stairs.
Rogan drove off in the rented Mercedes and turned onto a main avenue, his foot pressed down on the gas. At this hour there was little traffic. He was hoping that Bailey and Vrostk didn’t have their own car, that they had come to the pension in a taxi and would now be on foot and trying to catch another taxi.
