He had gone no more than one block on the avenue when he saw them walking along together. He drove on one more block, then parked the car and started walking back along the avenue to meet them. They were still a hundred feet away when they turned into the entrance of the Fredericka Beer Hall. Damn, he thought, he’d never be able to get at them in there.
He waited outside for an hour, hoping that they would have a few quick beers and then come out. But they did not reappear and he decided, finally, to go inside.
The beer hall was not full, and he saw Bailey and Vrostk right away. They had a long wooden table to themselves and they sat there gobbling down white sausages. Rogan took a seat near the door, where he would be shielded from them by a full table of beer drinkers who were still going strong.
As he watched Bailey and Vrostk drink, he was surprised at their appearance and behavior, and then amused at his surprise. Till now he had always seen them when they wore their masks of duty, careful not to reveal any weakness. Here he saw them relaxed, their disguises put aside.
The arrogant Vrostk evidently loved fat women. Rogan saw Vrostk pinch all the plump waitresses and let the skinny ones go by untouched. When a really hefty girl passed him, carrying a tray loaded with empty beer steins, Vrostk could not contain himself. He tried to embrace her, and the glasses went flying all over the wooden table; the waitress gave him a good-natured push that sent him staggering into Bailey’s lap.
The lean Arthur Bailey was a finicky glutton. He was devouring plate after plate of white sausages, leaving a little stringy tail of casing from each. He washed each mouthful of sausage down with a gulp of beer. He was totally absorbed in what he was doing. Suddenly he lunged toward one of the bathrooms.
Vrostk followed him, weaving drunkenly. Rogan waited a moment; then he, too, followed. He went through the doorway and was in luck; Bailey and Vrostk were the only occupants.
But he could not shoot; he could not take his Walther pistol from his jacket pocket. Bailey was bent helplessly over one of the huge white vomit bowls, puking up everything since breakfast. Vrostk was gently holding Bailey’s head so that it would not dip into the bowl’s contents.
Caught with their defenses down, they were curiously touching. Rogan backed out before they could see him, and left the beer hall. He drove the Mercedes to the pension, parked it, and went up to the room. The door was not locked. Inside Rosalie was sitting on the green sofa, waiting for him. Rogan took off the silencer and threw it back into the bureau drawer. He went and sat beside Rosalie on the sofa.
“I couldn’t do it,” he said. “I don’t know why, but I couldn’t kill them.”
CHAPTER 19
Next morning, while he drank his coffee he wrote down the name of his lawyer in the States and gave it to her. “If you do get into any kind of trouble, write to this man,” Rogan said. “He’ll come to help you out.”
That he had not killed Bailey and Vrostk had in some way resigned Rosalie to Rogan’s hunting down von Osteen. She did not try to make him change his mind; she accepted what he had to do. But she wanted him to rest for a few days. He looked ill and very tired. Rogan shook his head. He had waited too many years; he did not want to wait another day.
He had a slight headache. He could feel pressure on the part of his skull covered by the silver plate. Rosalie gave him water to wash down the pills he always carried with him. She watched him check the Walther pistol and put it in his jacket pocket. “Aren’t you using the silencer?” she asked.
“It makes the gun too inaccurate,” he said. “I’d have to get within fifteen feet to be sure of hitting him. And maybe I won’t be able to get that close.”
She understood what he really meant: that he had no hope of escaping; that it would be useless to silence the murder weapon. Before they went out the door she made him hold her in his arms, but there was no way he could comfort her.
He had her drive the car, not trusting his uncertain lateral vision at an important time like this. His damaged optical nerve was at its worst in moments of stress, and he wanted to be able partially to shield his face with his hand as he moved through the city. Munich would be full of police looking for him.
They drove past the courthouse steps, through the square Rogan remembered so well, with its florid columned buildings. Rosalie parked the Mercedes a short distance from the side entrance. Rogan got out of the car and entered the majestic archway into the courtyard of the Palace of Justice.
He walked over the cobblestones that had once been stained with his blood and whose crannies had swallowed the tiny blasted fragments of his skull. Stiff with tension, he followed Rosalie into the emergency medical clinic and watched her slip into her white nurse’s tunic. She turned to him and said quietly, “Are you ready?”
Rogan nodded. She took him up an interior staircase that led into a dark cool hall floored with marble. Great oak doors studded the sides of the corridor at intervals of fifty feet, the doors to the courtrooms. Deep niches next to each door contained suits of armor. Some of the niches were empty, the armor looted during the war and not yet replaced.
As he passed the courtroom doors Rogan could see the accused-petty thieves, burglars, rapists, pimps, murderers, and innocents-waiting for justice. He walked down the long corridor, his head pounding with the fearful emotion that filled the air like a malevolent electric current. They came to a wooden stand that held a placard: “
Rosalie was pulling at his arm. “In this courtroom,” she whispered. “Von Osteen will be the middle one of three judges.”
Rogan went in past a bailiff and took a seat in a back row. Rosalie sat beside him.
Slowly Rogan raised his head to look at the three judges on their platform at the lower end of the huge courtroom. A spectator seated in front of him obscured his view, and he tilted his head to get a better look. None of the judges looked familiar. “I don’t see him,” he whispered to Rosalie.
“The judge in the middle,” she whispered.
Rogan stared intently. The judge in the middle bore no resemblance to von Osteen. Von Osteen’s features were aristocratic, aquiline; this man’s features were lumpy. Even his forehead was narrower. No man could have changed so much. He whispered to Rosalie, “That’s not von Osteen; he doesn’t look anything like him.”
Slowly Rosalie turned to face him. “You mean he’s not the seventh man?”
Rogan shook his head. He saw gladness in her eyes and did not understand. Then she whispered, “But he
He felt dizzy suddenly. They had tricked him after all. He remembered the Freisling brothers’ sly smiles when they had given him the information about von Osteen. He remembered something confident in Bailey’s manner when they talked about von Osteen, something that had amused the Intelligence agent. And now he understood the look of gladness in Rosalie’s eyes: He would never find the seventh man and so would abandon his search and live out his life. This was what she had hoped for.
The silver plate in his skull began to ache, and the hatred for the whole world that soured his blood drained the strength from his body and he started to slump toward Rosalie. She caught him as he began to black out, and a stout bailiff, seeing what had happened, helped to carry Rogan out of the courtroom and down to the emergency clinic. Rosalie stayed on the side where Rogan had his gun, feeling the shape of it through the cloth of his jacket. In the clinic she made him lie on one of the four beds and put a screen around him. Then she held up his head and pushed the pills down his throat. In a few minutes the color returned to Rogan’s cheeks and he opened his eyes.
She spoke to him softly, but he didn’t answer, and finally she had to leave him there to attend to someone who had come in for minor medical aid.
Rogan stared at the ceiling. He tried to force his brain to think things out. There was no way the Freisling brothers could have been lying when they put down the same names of their wartime colleagues. And Bailey had admitted that it was von Osteen who was the man Rogan sought. Was it possible, then, that Rosalie had lied to him? No. For Rosalie, it was impossible. There was just one thing to do: Find Bailey and make him tell the truth. But
