Descendant

Antwerp during the occupation. When I say ‘close friends,’ you understand what I am saying to you.”

He paused, and took a deep breath, as if he were trying to stop himself from sounding too emotional.

“She is, she was, a very moral young woman. But her husband Jan was arrested and shot by the Germans in 1942, and I think she believed that this was the best way she could take her revenge.

“Anyway — one night this young German officer invited Ann to a party at Major General Stolberg-Stolberg’s house — he was the commanding officer of the 136th Special Employment Division. Some of the German officers got drunk and started boasting that they would soon exterminate all of the resistance in Antwerp.”

He turned around in his seat to make sure that nobody else was listening, and then he leaned forward and said, “They claimed they had brought in some kind of infection from Eastern Europe which would spread among the White Brigade and within six weeks it would kill us all.”

Still I didn’t reply. And still the branch kept tapping at the window. It sounded as if the wind was rising, and I prayed that it wouldn’t start to rain. The scent of Screechers was so much harder to follow in the wet.

Paul Hankar said, “They didn’t seem to know exactly what this infection was, but they were very excited about it. Apparently they had used it against the resistance in Poland and also in France. They said that it had come from Romania.”

“I see. Any mention of mensen van de nacht?”

“The night people? As far as I’m concerned, that was only a hysterical rumor. It started to spread when people were discovered around the city with all of the blood drained out of them. Sometimes a whole family would be found in their apartment, grandparents, mothers and fathers, even babies. cut open, and their hearts pulled out. But in many cases their doors were locked on the inside and nobody could work out how anybody could have gotten in or out.”

“How do you think they were killed?”

“I don’t know. I don’t believe in anything supernatural. Once or twice, some of our people who had gotten sick were seen by witnesses in the vicinity of these tragedies, but we never found any conclusive evidence that they were responsible.”

I said, quietly, “Ann was killed like that.”

“What?”

“They opened her up. Then they took out her heart and drained all the blood out of her.”

Paul Hankar’s mouth tightened, but he didn’t say anything. I watched him, and smoked, and eventually I said, “Is there anything else you can tell me? It doesn’t matter how trivial you think it is, it might help me to find out who killed her.”

“And then what, after you’ve found out who killed her? That won’t bring her back.”

“I know. But it might stop it from happening again.”

He blew out smoke, and shrugged. “I know very little, really. Ann kept her ears open whenever she was in the company of German officers, and once or twice she heard them discussing the killings, especially the one on Minderbroeder Straat, when twenty-three people died, including two nuns.

“The Germans never said anything to connect these massacres directly with their Romanian infection, but Ann told me more than once that she had a feeling that they might be associated. One of the SS officers said something like, ‘At last the Romanians are being of some use to us.’ And, ‘The sicker they are, the more blood they want.’ Also, one of our wireless operators managed to intercept some coded messages which were sent to Antwerp from the Sixth Army in Bucharest.”

“Really?”

“We could only pick up bits and pieces. But they kept referring to ‘carriers,’ in the sense of people who carry an infection.”

“These messages. did they contain any names?”

“What do you mean?”

“Romanian names. It could help us to find out what this infection actually is, and where it came from.”

“As I remember, only one Romanian name. Dorin Duca. It came up several times. It was not completely clear, because the messages were so fragmentary, but it appeared that somebody called Duca was supposed to be assisting the operation in Antwerp. However we never came across any Duca, so I doubt if he actually came here. We keep a very close check on who comes into Antwerp, believe me, and who leaves.”

The boy arrived with a bottle of apple schnapps and a bottle of lemonade, and two very small glasses. Paul Hankar immediately filled up his glass, knocked it back and filled it up again. “If the Allies hadn’t taken the city, there would have been no resistance left by Christmas.”

“What did you do when your people became infected?”

“I told you. We isolated them, broke off all contact. We couldn’t jeopardize any of our operations.”

“So I could talk to some of them, if I needed to?”

Paul Hankar shrugged. “I think many of them got very sick indeed, so maybe not.”

“How sick?”

Paul Hankar looked from left to right, avoiding my eyes. “Well, they are dead now,” he said at last. “You understand for our own protection that we had to dispose of them.”

“How many?”

“Altogether? Maybe thirty-five, thirty-six.”

“Do you want to tell me how you did it?”

“I don’t understand.”

“Do you want to tell me how you disposed of them?”

“Does it matter?”

“Actually, yes, it matters a great deal.”

He lifted his hand with his finger pointing like a pistol. “We shot them in the back of the head. Then we threw their bodies into the Scheldt.”

“OK. I was afraid of that.”

“We did something wrong?”

I shook my head. “You did what you thought was right. I can’t blame you for that.”

“You think this was possibly easy? All through the darkest times of the occupation, we had trusted these same people with our very lives, and they in their turn had implicitly trusted us. They were not only friends but relatives, some of them — fathers and mothers, brothers and sisters.”

“Sure.” I didn’t like to tell him that shooting a Screecher could only make things a thousand times worse. The only saving grace was that they had thrown their bodies into the river.

We sat in silence for a while. Eventually Paul Hankar picked up another paper napkin and blew his nose on it. “I am very sad about Ann,” he said. “She was always so careful not to compromise herself. I always thought that she and I would both survive.”

“I’m sorry,” I said. I didn’t think that I was old enough to tell him how obvious it was that he had loved her.

He finished his drink and stood up. “I have to go now. I hope I have assisted you. If you find the people who murdered her — ”

“We will. But you won’t find out about it. Besides, what’s the point of telling an art-nouveau jewelry designer who died in 1901?”

He nearly managed to smile. “You know the name Paul Hankar?”

I nodded.

“I’m impressed. I didn’t know Americans had such culture.”

Man-trailing

We left the hotel just as the pregnant-looking longcase clock in the lobby chimed eight. Frank was straining so hard on his leash that he sounded like a Cajun squeeze-box. It hadn’t rained hard, but a fine wet mist had descended over the city, and the cobbles were all slippery and shiny. I could hear heavy bombers somewhere in the