And the deep blue sea

‘Egerton,’ Goddard said.

Lind nodded. He took two folded radiograms from his shirt pocket, and handed one to Goddard. ‘Read ‘em aloud. This one first. They were filed about two hours apart, in Buenos Aires, and Sparks is having trouble keeping up now.’

Goddard unfolded it and started to read.MASTER S/S LEANDER SAN FRANCISCO RADIOURGENTLY REQUEST IMMEDIATE VERIFICATION FOLLOWING PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION OF PASSENGER ABOARD YOUR VESSEL USING NAME WALTER EGERTON CARRYING BRITISH PASSPORT AND CLAIMING BE EX-COLONEL ENGLISH ARMY STOP WEARS EYE PATCH LEFT EYE FIVE FEET ELEVEN ONE HUNDRED SIXTY POUNDS GRAY HAIR GRAY MOUSTACHE UPPER-CLASS ENGLISH ACCENT STOP IF DESCRIPTION TALLIES IMPERATIVE DO NOT AROUSE SUSPICIONS THIS MAN OR REVEAL CONTENTS THIS MESSAGE AND IF RADIO NEWS DISSEMINATED ABOARD VESSEL PLEASE CENSOR ACCORDINGLY STOP DELIVER NO MESSAGES TO HIM STOP POLICE WILL BOARD VESSEL WITH PILOT BOAT YOUR ARRIVAL MANILA STOP PASSPORT IS FORGERY AND THERE IS STRONG EVIDENCE MAN IS HUGO MAYR—

Goddard broke off and looked at Lind, suddenly remembering Krasicki’s scream: Mire! You go Mire! There were simultaneous exclamations from the two women. ‘That’s what he was saying!’

Lind nodded. Goddard continued reading.—HUGO MAYR STOP REPLY LT. HANS RICHTER CARE BUENOS AIRES POLICE.

It was Karen who broke the silence. ‘But he couldn’t have been!’ She cried out incredulously. ‘That sweet, charming man!’

Lind spread his hands. ‘Krasicki seemed to have no doubts.’

‘But everybody’s believed Mayr was dead,’ Madeleine Lennox said. ‘For over twenty years.’

‘Not everybody,’ Lind replied. ‘They were still looking for him.’

‘He must have discovered they were on his trail,’ Goddard said, ‘and tried to run for it.’

‘My guess,’ Lind said, ‘is that Egerton was a new identity. Simply running wouldn’t have done any good, if they were closing in on him.’

‘Sure,’ Goddard said. ‘And wait—that wireless from Senora Santos. Warning, probably, that they were about to crack the Egerton identity, or were asking questions.’

‘Good thinking, Sherlock,’ Lind said. He handed over the second radiogram. ‘You’re right on the button.’

Goddard read it aloud.MASTER S/S LEANDER SAN FRANCISCO RADIOJUST LEARNED THIS HOUR OF YOUR WIRELESS TO CONSUELA SANTOS REVEALING DEATH OF ALLEGED WALTER EGERTON STOP HER TESTIMONY APPEARS ESTABLISH CONCLUSIVELY MAN WAS HUGO MAYR BUT IMPERATIVE REPEAT IMPERATIVE YOU PRESERVE BODY BY ANY MEANS POSSIBLE TO PERMIT FINAL IDENTIFICATION THROUGH FINGERPRINTS YOUR ARRIVAL MANILA STOP ACKNOWLEDGE SOONEST HANS RICHTER.

There was a moment of stunned silence. Then Goddard whistled softly. ‘Buenos Aires time is—what? Sixtieth meridian?’

Lind nodded. ‘Roughly four hours ahead of ship’s time now.’

‘There will be hell to pay. The first message was filed at least two hours before he was buried.’

“No, Sparks is in the clear,’ Lind said. ‘His hours of watch are set by international agreement, according to time zone. And it’s no fault of the skipper’s. He notified the responsible party named by the deceased, and was told there was nobody wishing to claim the body. And, anyway, the ship’s not operated as a branch of the West German police; it’s just an unfortunate foul-up, and not irrevocable, by any means. We’ve already anticipated the next message.’

‘What? Oh.’ Goddard saw what he meant. ‘Sealing off the room.’

‘Right,’ Lind said. ‘Skipper fired back a reply to the first message saying Egerton was dead and had been buried at sea, and then Sparks got the second one, from the same station. So they passed each other. It’s obvious what they’ll want. Apparently Mayr’s fingerprints are on file, so if the room’s untouched till we get to Manila it’s almost certain the experts can raise enough prints to establish positive identification.’

‘It was locked, anyway, wasn’t it?’ Goddard asked.

‘Yes. Last night, just as soon as the bed linen was removed. But I’ve closed the porthole, and we’ll put a padlock and hasp on the door to double-lock it.’

‘Should be fairly routine,’ Goddard agreed. ‘There’s the tooth glass, and the mirror on the medicine cabinet.’

Lind nodded. ‘And the cabin steward says he had a set of silver-backed military hairbrushes. Well, I’ve got to get back on watch.’

He went out. The others were silent for a moment, trying to absorb the fact that the urbane and charming Englishman they’d all liked so well was the infamous Hugo Mayr, the butcher of Poland and the most widely sought Nazi since Eichmann.

Madeleine Lennox shook her head. ‘No. I simply can’t believe it. I try, but it just won’t go down.’

‘Of course,’ Karen said, ‘they’ll find out it’s a mistake.’

No, Goddard thought; they wouldn’t find out it was a mistake. It all fitted together too beautifully; the fake eye patch alone destroyed the whole Egerton identity, so you started fresh from that point with a man who could be anybody. And when a West German police officer in Buenos Aires and a Polish concentration camp victim on a ship four thousand miles away simultaneously made the same identification, it was hard to argue with. He stopped then, and frowned, aware of something disturbing about it. Was it the fact that Krasicki had recognized him after a quarter century? No, he thought, the basic configuration of a man’s face might change a great deal between, say, twenty and forty-five, but after that it was identifiable until it began to go to pieces in extreme old age. And the Pole had known him under circumstances calculated to impress the face on his memory, to say the least. No, it was something else. He knew what it was then, and smiled to himself.

He had dealt too long in illusion, and was trying to make life conform to the rules of fiction. Believe me, fellas, I’m not trying to pick the script to pieces, but this I just can’t buy. Look, we’ve got this Nazi schmuck the whole world’s been looking for for twenty-five years, and then all of a sudden, on the same day and practically the same hour, two people make him, halfway around the world from each other, so he’s killed, buried, and identified like it was something programmed on a computer. You see whattamean? He’s running from this West German fuzz, and just happens to wind up on a ship with this poor joker he gelded in 1943. You’re right, Mannie, it would never work.

Madeleine Lennox asked, ‘What do you think, Mr. Goddard ?’

‘Oh,’ he said. ‘That the only tragedy of the whole thing is Krasicki.’

‘Then you do believe he was Hugo Mayr?’ Karen asked.

‘Yes. And if they’d discovered it only a few hours earlier, Krasicki wouldn’t have had to spend what’s left of his life in an institution for the criminally insane.’

By eight thirty the two women had to concede there no longer appeared to be any doubt. The messages had continued to come in. As Lind had predicted, Lieutenant Richter requested the cabin be sealed immediately. Fingerprint experts would board the Leander the moment she arrived in Manila. And by now they had begun to grasp that they were the focus of the world’s attention—briefly perhaps, but the world wanted news of just what had happened aboard this rusty old freighter lost in the immensity of the Pacific where the notorious Nazi war criminal had met his end. Captain Steen had already received requests from Associated Press, United Press International, and Reuters, bidding for the exclusive story. He sat drinking coffee with them in the lounge, dazed as they all were. Lind came in with the news there was no change in Krasicki’s condition. He poured a cup of coffee and sat down.

Karen sighed. ‘But it’s still incredible that he fooled us so completely.’

Lind smiled. ‘Well, he’s been fooling a lot of people for over twenty years.’

‘He was a consummate actor,’ Goddard said. ‘He had to be, or they’d have got him long ago.’

Madeleine Lennox lit a cigarette and smiled faintly. ‘Well, that’s praise from an authority. And incidentally, now that we can begin to think of the scene without screaming, how would you direct it in a picture?’

‘I wouldn’t change a thing,’ Goddard replied.

‘No, but I mean, the technical aspects of it, the breakdown of the individual parts, where the cameras would be.’

‘Camera,’ Goddard said. ‘In a scene like that you can use only one, because of the lighting. You break it down into several setups, from different points of view, and shoot them individually. Usually, there’s a master shot and