year or so that American doctors have been up to that sort of work.”
Quint Jones looked at him blankly. “Organ transplants? That’s Nicolas Ferencsik’s line.”
Digby grunted exasperation. “You begin to get the message, eh? Well, chew on this for awhile. Doktor Stahlecker was also one of the famed German doctors who butchered thousands of Jews, gypsies, Poles and Russian prisoners in the name of scientific research. The good doctor seemed interested in such supposed scientific items as how long could a woman live when her time for delivery was upon her and you tied her legs together, and how long could a Jew live with his skin completely flayed from his body? Or, how long could a man live in below zero water?”
Quint shot a look at Marylyn who seemed to have frozen in horror. He said, “Take it easy, Bart.”
Bart Digby said, “Well, at any rate, of all the Nazis still at large, Doktor Stahlecker is one of those most wanted. There’s a rope waiting for the good doctor in just about any country that participated in World War Two.”
“What’s the connection with Professor Ferencsik?” Quint said.
The former C.I.A. man came to his feet. “That’s what I’d like to know,” he said. “I’ll talk to you about it in the morning.” He looked at Marylyn. “Where’ve I seen you before?” he asked in puzzlement.
“At a police line-up in Chicago, probably,” Quint growled at him. “Good grief, get lost, Bart. Miss Worth was at the party last night. That’s where you saw her.”
Chapter Five
Quint Jones was awakened from no deep dream of peace by the brutal ringing of the phone next to his bed. He tried manfully to ignore it. It wasn’t to be ignored.
He grabbed it and snarled, “Yes?”
Mike Woolman said cheerfully, “Come on, come on. I can tell from your voice, you’re not out of bed. It’s eleven o’clock.”
Quint grumbled, “It got very drunk out last night.”
“Where’s all that
“Shut up,” Quint said. “What’d you want?”
“Look Quint, this case is pyramiding. Rumors are beginning to get around amongst the boys. I got a call from Paris headquarters of World Wide Press. They’re thinking of sending a special man down here to handle the story.”
That wasn’t so good from Mike’s viewpoint. He ought to be able to wrap a story up on his own, not depend on outsiders to come in and do his work for him when it got inportant.
Quint said, “So?”
“So, what’s the dope that you have that you wouldn’t tell me yesterday? Maybe you can reword it a little so you won’t be betraying any confidence.”
Quint was silent, scowling to himself. He shook his head in an attempt to achieve complete clarity.
Mike said urgently, “Especially, what’s the jazz about Martin Bormann and Doktor Stahlecker?”
The columnist shifted in his bed, uncomfortably. “Well, I was told a bit more about this Doc Stahlecker last night. It seems as if this is the doctor who patched Hitler up when he was blown to smithereens by the German generals in 1944. Sewed an arm on him and that sort of thing.”
Mike said nothing. Obviously digesting.
Quint said impatiently. “Evidently Doktor Stahlecker is almost as big an authority on organ transplants and such as Professor Ferencsik. What do I have to do, draw you a blueprint?”
Mike said, “Jesus.”
Quint said sarcastically, “May I suggest you get your fanny over to wherever it is Nicolas Ferencsik is staying and interview him on the question of just why he’s come to Spain, of all places?”
Mike grunted, “Uh huh. Swell.”
“Well, what’s more obvious?”
“Nothing, except Ferencsik absolutely refuses to see all reporters.”
“Pull some wires. Get hold of Joe Garcia or somebody and make some hints. Put some pressure to bear on the guy. Lean on him. He obviously knows plenty.”
The reporter said, “I’ll let you in on a secret, chum. Nobody, but nobody, twists the arm of a guy with as big a name as Nobel Prize winning Professor Ferencsik. This is a nasty world we live in, but not even here in Spain would the public allow the authorities to give Nicolas Ferencsik a hard time. It’d be like lowering the boom on Einstein, or Albert Schweitzer. Any more bright ideas?”
Quint Jones scratched himself unhappily through his pajamas. His mouth tasted like last week’s crop of maggots. He said, “Listen, where is Ferencsik staying?”
“What do you mean, where is he staying? He’s staying at the Dempsey’s, of course.”
“The
“Friend, you must have come in late. How’d you think Marty and Ferd ever got him to come to a party at their place? He’s living with them. He’s old family friends of Marty’s people. Her old man, way back before the war, before Hungary went commie, financed some deal of Nicolas Ferencsik before he got famous. Staked him to a lot of dough for research materials and all. He’s got a soft spot for Marty, or something. Knew her when she was a girl.”
Quint pursed his lips, as though to whistle. He said, “Okay, Mike, I’ll see what I can do. Call you back later.”
Mike Woolman sneered. “Oh, you think you can get in to see him, where I can’t, hey? Let me tell you friend, when Ferencsik says he won’t see reporters, believe me, he won’t see reporters.”
“That’s because you reporters don’t bathe, don’t gargle your throats in the morning and are illiterate clods.” Quint told him earnestly. “Now a columnist is something else again.”
“Go marry your mother,” Mike told him and hung up.
Quint grinned at the phone for a minute before returning it to its place. He grunted and swung his legs over the side of bed and fumbled his feet around for his slippers. They weren’t in their usual place. He grunted again and made his way to the kitchen barefooted. At least he didn’t have a blockbuster hangover this time. Marylyn Worth must have spotted him right at the crucial time and got him there to Botin’s and some food into him.
Nice girl, if she wasn’t so square, he told himself as he fished a bitterly cold bottle of coke from his refrigerator. Coffee for others, but the morning after he’d been drinking, it was coke for him. As a matter of fact, he had read somewhere, in a consumer’s union report, or something, that there was three and half times as much caffeine in a bottle of coke as there was in a cup of coffee. Be that as it may, it settled his stomach and gave him a lift.
He finished the coke and started breakfast proper a-going. That was another bit of wisdom he’d accumulated over the years. To get over a binge, get hot food into your stomach as soon as possible. Once you’ve been able to hold two hot meals down, the hangover is through.
When he’d forced down two eggs and some Spanish bacon—which he despised—along with some toast, he felt moderately better. Bacon, he remembered all over again, was the one thing he wished he could get into the American PX for. Except for the Danes and British, the Europeans didn’t have the word on bacon.
Breakfast safely down, he went into the bathroom to shower, shave and brush his teeth. He wished the hell he knew more about Nicolas Ferencsik’s subject, organ transplants. He wondered if it would be possible—if he was able to get an interview with him at all—to bring Marylyn in on it. As a science teacher, she evidently kept up on all fields, including recent medical developments. He had her phone number out at the base, but, as he recalled, this was first day at school, and he doubted there was any way to get her away before evening.
Thinking of Marylyn brought back her conversation of the evening before. As he dressed, he thought about her. Who was he to call the girl a square?
Now that he thought of it, the very term irritated him. When he was a boy, the word square meant honest, a person of integrity. Now it had come to mean somebody who was stupid, not with it, old fashioned. What had
