Once Departed

“I’ll find it,” he said. “You’ve probably got hostess duties.”

He made his way to the improvised bar, on a large Castilian type table, and began to pour himself a stiff brandy. He remembered in time and cut it short, and then added ice and water. Let the others get swacked tonight, he and Mike had to be careful.

Jose Garcia’s voice said next to him, “Well, chum, any developments?”

He turned to the Spaniard. “I just got here, Senor Garcia.”

The other looked at him, his mouth twisted ruefully. He said, finally, “Joe, to you.”

Quint hadn’t expected that. He scowled at the smaller man. Garcia said, “Look here, Quint. The world is changing, and changing fast, and largely for the better. What new changes take place in the next ten years, who can say? If we don’t blow ourselves up, in the meantime, it should be a rather good world in another decade or two. Fewer people starving, more people feeling secure about the future. All that. Some parts of the world are moving faster than others, but things are developing on both sides of the Iron Curtain and…” he twisted his mouth again “… even in such countries as Spain. Maybe in my country things aren’t moving as fast as a lot of us would like— including me. But moving they are, and the speed is accelerating.”

It was Quint Jones’ turn to be rueful. “Okay, Joe, take that I’m sorry we’ve been ruffling each other’s fur. And good luck to you… and your country. In a way, I’m sorry to be leaving it.”

“I’m sorry to see you go,” Garcia said. He hesitated. “Actually, its not in my hands. That persona non grata thing. Perhaps in another couple of years or so…”

“I’ll be back,” Quint said.

Without further word, the Spaniard turned and left.

Quint didn’t have the time to speculate about the other’s words. Joe Garcia wasn’t as bad as all that, he supposed. But then, few people are, when you get inside them.

He drifted from one group to another. Most of them were talking about the killings. Rumors were sifting through Madrid, in spite of all police efforts to hold the lid on. An apprehension was obviously growing. The story was leaking through that the bodies of the murdered had been brutally mutilated.

He listened to a group Dave Shepherd was talking to. The expatriate homosexual was breathless. “You’ll never believe this,” he said. “But my dears, I’ve heard that…” he held his breath dramatically for a moment “… Martin Bormann is suspected of being here in Madrid.”

One of the others, already tight, and in a voice that Quint thought he recognized from the party at Dempsey’s, slurred, “Who the hell’s Mart Bordeom?”

Shepherd squelched him with a look of disdain. “Bormann!” he said. “Hitler’s right hand man.”

“Oh Hitler, for christssake. Damn shame we killed that guy. We could use him now. Fighting the damn reds.”

“Oh, shut up,” a feminine voice said.

Quint wandered on. He wasn’t going to learn anything from Dave Shepherd’s group. They were hardly at the beginning of things.

Mike Woolman had evidently tried to get a controversy going by bringing up Nicolas Ferencsik and the fact that he had disappeared and the further fact that he had been an authority on organ transplanting. He tried to get them talking about the possibility that the mutilated corpses and the controversial Hungarian might be connected, but it didn’t seem to get through with only hints. He would have had to club them over the head with a flat out statement.

However, Quint stood there for a time and listened. One of the other guests was a Rumanian refugee and the talk evolved into a discussion of Anna Asian and her Vitamin H3. The Rumanian was quite excited about the experiments in the old age clinics.

Doctor Asian brought this senile vagabond in off the streets. The man must have been at least ninety. They had no records of him at all. His mind was gone beyond the point where he knew about relatives or friends, or even what town he had come from. Doctor Asian began her injections and other treatment Within a month, his gray hair had begun to turn black. He was able to feed himself and take care of his bodily needs. In two months he was walking without a cane, through the hospital grounds. Eventually, they threw away his glasses. He didn’t need them. And, most unbelievable of all, they had found a job for him, in industry, and he was leading a normal life.”

Somebody said in great disbelief, “A normal life of a man how old?”

The Rumanian threw up his hands in a gesture more Gallic than Balkan. “Of a man perhaps sixty. He even had a sex life.”

Still someone else growled, “But it doesn’t seem to work on everyone.”

Quint drifted on, his face in scowl. It brought back something to him. Early in this affair he had scoffed at the idea of Hitler—had he still been alive—being a menace any longer. He would have been too old. But if this Doctor Asian in Rumania had succeeded in retarding age, and even turning it back, why couldn’t that have been done to Hitler, or, more likely, Martin Bormann? Why indeed? Professor Ferencsik had hinted that he knew how to keep his projected superman in all but everlasting youth.

He spotted Albrecht Stroehlein standing alone. Somehow, the ex-Gestapo man found it difficult to draw companionship—not to speak of friendship.

Quint came up to him, and the other turned as though happy to have someone to talk to. He held a large glass of punch in his hand.

Quint said, in the way of greeting, “How was Berlin?”

The other’s eyes popped. “What! Vot did you say, eh?”

Quint sipped his drink and said easly, “Berlin. Don’t get so excited. Your accent gets worse. Mike Woolman was telling me the other day. You weren’t so prosperous before you went up there. Obviously, you were given some sort of job.”

The German blinked at him, moistly apprehensive.

Quint yawned as though it wasn’t important. “We figured that either Digby or Brett-Home had hired you to finger Bormann or Doktor Stahlecker for them. You knew them both, back in the old days, didn’t you, Herr Stroehlein?”

“Ja. I knew them. From way back I knew them.” The German’s eyes shifted about the room, evidently not knowing whether to attempt to elude this prying American or not.

The columnist nodded, as though they were in mutual agreement. “We figured that was why the Dempsey party was set up. Brett-Home and Digby thought that with Nicolas Ferencsik attending, Doktor Stahlecker would show up. You’d be present and recognize him.”

The German had begun to frown. Quint quickly reviewed his words. Had something come out wrong? He was making a pretense to the other to be knowledgeable about the whole thing. He didn’t want to scare the weepy ex- Nazi off.

Stroehlein said cautiously, “Suppose you are right, eh? What are you coming to, eh?”

Quint shifted his shoulders. “I just wondered if you could have been fooled. Perhaps Doktor Stahlecker was there the other night. And possibly here tonight.”

The plump German at least had the gumption to be irritated at the suggestion that he was incompetent to play his role. He said, “Neinl If Doktor Stahlecker had been there at the other party, I would have recognized her. If she were here tonight, I would recognize her!”

The creature that had once been a man, squatted, huddled, in its hiding place. It was cramped, but not overly conscious of being uncomfortable. He—or it—had already lost the capacity for discomfort in such situation as this.

It waited. Knowing faintly, distantly, that before long it would be called up. The master would unleash its strength. At the dim thought it mewled pleasure deep in its throat. Tonight it would feel the good feeling again. It had been several days since it had felt the good feeling. It liked the good feeling. To feel its clawed hands sink deep…

It squatted in its hiding place and waited, and through its mind, so far away as to be all but gone, traced memories of yesteryear which it could not quite understand.

The packed hordes of brownshirted men in the Konigsplatz, shouting, shouting. And over and over again, that same word, that same cheer. Vaguely he tried to place it, and could not.