This mention of Hitler prompted me to recall Anna Yagubsky and her missing relatives. And choosing my words carefully, I tried to bring up the subject of Argentine Jews with Montalbán.
“Is that why Argentina resisted Jewish emigration?”
He shrugged. “It was a very difficult time. There were so many who wanted to come here. It just wasn’t possible to accommodate them all. We’re not a big country like America or Canada.”
I avoided the temptation to remind the colonel that, according to my travel guide, Argentina was the eighth-largest country in the world.
“And was that how Directive Eleven came into existence?”
Montalbán’s eyes narrowed. “Directive Eleven is not a healthy thing to know about in Argentina. Who told you about it?”
“One hears things.”
“Yes, but from whom?”
“This is the Central State Intelligence Department,” I said. “Not Radio El Mundo. It would be surprising if one didn’t hear the odd secret in a place like this. Besides, my ability to speak
castellano
is improving all the time.”
“So I noticed.”
“I even heard that Martin Bormann is living in Argentina.”
“That’s certainly what the Americans believe. Which is the best reason of all to know that it’s not true. Only do try to remember what I told you. In Argentina it is better to know everything than to know too much.”
“Tell me, Colonel. Have there been any other murders?”
“Murders?”
“You know. When one person kills another on purpose. In this case, a schoolgirl. Like the one you showed me at the police headquarters. The one missing her wedding trousseau.”
He shook his head.
“And the missing girl? Fabienne von Bader?”
“She is still missing.” He smiled sadly. “I had hoped you would have found her by now.”
“No. Not yet. But I may be close to discovering the true identity of the man who killed Anita Schwarz.”
For a moment, he looked puzzled.
“She was the girl who was murdered in Berlin, back in 1932. You know? The one you remembered reading about in the German newspapers when I was still your idea of a hero.”
“Yes, of course. Do you think he might be here, after all?”
“It’s a little early to say if he is. Especially as I’m still waiting to see that doctor you told me about. The one from New York? The specialist.”
“Dr. Pack? That’s exactly why I came to see you. To tell you. He’s here. In Buenos Aires. He arrived today. He can see you tomorrow, or perhaps the day after, depending on—”
“His other, more important patient. I know. I know. But not too much. Just everything. I won’t forget.”
“See that you don’t. For your own sake.” He nodded. “You’re an interesting man,
señor.
No doubt about it.”
“Yes. I know that, too. I’ve had an interesting life.”
I OUGHT TO HAVE PAID more attention to the warning the colonel had given me. But I always was a sucker for a pretty face. Especially a pretty face as beautiful as Anna Yagubsky’s.
My desk was on the second floor. On the floor below was the
archivo
where SIDE’s files were stored. I decided to look in on my way out. I was already in the habit of going in there. For each old comrade I interviewed, I added to his file a detailed record of who he was and what crimes he had committed. I didn’t think I would be risking very much by looking in some other, unrelated files. The only question was how this was to be achieved.
In Berlin, all known and suspected enemies of the Third Reich had been registered in the A Index, located in Gestapo headquarters on Prinz Albrechtstrasse. The A Index, also known as “the Office Index,” was the most modern criminal records system in the world. Or so Heydrich had once told me. The index comprised half a million cards on people the Gestapo considered to be worthy of attention. It was set on a huge, horizontally mounted, circular card carousel with an electric motor and a dedicated operator who could locate any one of those half a million cards in less than a minute. Heydrich, a firm believer in the old axiom that knowledge is power, called it his “wheel of fortune.” More than anyone, it was Heydrich who helped to revolutionize the old Prussian political police and made the SD one of the largest employers in Germany. By 1935, more than six hundred officials worked in the Gestapo’s Berlin records division alone.
Nothing so sophisticated or large existed in Buenos Aires, although the system worked well enough at the Casa Rosada. A staff of twenty worked around the clock in five shifts of four. Files were kept on opposition politicians, trade-union officials, Communists, left-wing intellectuals, members of parliament, disaffected army officers, homosexuals, and religious leaders. These files were stored in mobile shelving that was operated by a system of locking handwheels and referenced according to name and subject by a series of leather-bound ledgers called
los libros marrones.
Access to the files was controlled via a simple signature system, unless the file was deemed sensitive, in which case the entry in the
libros marrones
was written up in red.
The senior officer on duty in the
archivo
was known as the OR—the
oficial registro
—and he was supposed to supervise and authorize the acquisition and use of all written material. I knew at least two of these ORs reasonably well. To them I had confessed my former trade as a Berlin policeman and, in an effort to ingratiate myself, I had even regaled them with descriptions of the apparent omniscience of the Gestapo filing system. Most of what I told them, however, was based on the few months I had spent in KRIPO’s records division following my exit from Homicide, but sometimes I just made it up. Not that the ORs knew the difference. One of them, whom I knew only as Marcello, was keen to use the Gestapo filing system as a model for updating its SIDE counterpart, and I had promised to help him write a detailed memo for submission to the head of SIDE, Rodolfo Freude.
I knew that Marcello would be on duty in the
archivo
and, as I came through the swing doors, I saw him in his usual position, behind the main desk. This was completely circular, and with its Argentine flag and sidearmed military officers, it looked more like a defensive redoubt than a records division. Except that Marcello hardly resembled anything military in a uniform that fitted him only where it gripped him. Whenever I saw him, he always reminded me of one of those baby-faced boy soldiers drafted to defend Hitler’s bunker against the Red Army during the fall of Berlin.
I returned the updated files on Carl Vaernet and Pedro Olmos and asked for the file on Helmut Gregor. Marcello took the returned files, checked the
libros marrones
for Helmut Gregor, and then dispatched one of the junior officers to go and retrieve it from the shelves. I watched as the officer started to wind the handwheel, like a man opening a lock gate, until the relevant shelf had moved far along an invisible track to permit his ingress.
“Tell me more about your A Index,” said Marcello, who was of Italian-Argentine origin.
“All right,” I said, hoping that I might waltz him in the direction I wanted. “There were three kinds of cards. In Group One, all cards had a red mark, indicating an enemy of the state. In Group Two, a blue mark, indicating someone to be arrested in time of national emergency. And in Group Three, a green mark, indicating people who were subject to surveillance at all times. All these marks were on the left side of the card. On the right side of the card, a second color mark indicated a Communist, someone suspected of being in the Resistance, a Jew, a Jehovah’s Witness, a homosexual, a Freemason, and so on. The whole index was updated twice a year. At the beginning and at the end of the summer. Our busiest time. Himmler insisted on it.”
“Fascinating,” said Marcello.
“Informers had special files. And so did agents. But all of these files were completely separate from those held by the Abwehr—German military intelligence.”
“You mean they didn’t share intelligence?”
“Absolutely not. They hated each other.”
Now that I’d danced with him, I figured it was time to make my move.
“Do you have a file on a Jewish couple called the Yagubskys?” I asked innocently.
Marcello removed the heavy brown-leather-bound ledger from the curving shelf behind him and consulted it with a frequently licked forefinger. He must have licked it a thousand times every day, and I was surprised it wasn’t worn away, like a stick of salt. A minute or so later, he was shaking his head. “Nothing, I’m afraid.”
I told him some more. Made up stuff about how Heydrich had planned to build a huge, switch-programmed electronic machine to deliver the same information as the wheel of fortune by teleprinter paper tape, and in a tenth of the time. I let Marcello ooh and aah about that for a while before I asked him if I could see the files relating to Directive 11.
Marcello didn’t consult his brown books before answering; and he flinched a little, as if it bothered him that he was about to fail me again.
“No, we’ve got nothing about that, either,” he explained. “Files like that aren’t kept here. Not anymore. All files relating to the Argentine Immigration Service were removed by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs about a year ago. And I believe they were put in storage.”
“Oh? Where?”
“At the old Hotel de Inmigrantes. It’s on the north dock, on the other side of the Avenida Eduardo Madero. It was constructed at the beginning of the century to deal with the huge number of immigrants coming here to Argentina. Rather like Ellis Island, in New York. The place is more or less derelict now. Even the rats stay clear of it. I believe there’s just a skeleton staff that works there. I haven’t been there myself, but one of the other ORs helped to move some cabinets there and said it was all a bit primitive. If you were looking for something there, it would probably be best to go through the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.”
I shook my head. “It’s really not that important,” I said.
I DROVE to President Perón Station, parked my car, and found a telephone. I called the number Anna Yagubsky had given me. An old man answered, his voice full of suspicion. I guessed it was her father. When I gave him my name, he started to ask a lot of questions, none of which I could have answered even if I’d wanted to.
“Listen, Señor Yagubsky, I’d love to talk awhile with you, only I’m a little pressed for time right now. So would you mind just putting your questions on hold and fetching your daughter to the phone?”
“There’s no need to be rude about it,” he said.
“As a matter of fact, I was trying very hard not to be rude about it.”
“I’m amazed that you have any clients at all, Señor Hausner, if this is how you treat them.”
“Clients? Uh-huh. Exactly what did your daughter tell you about me, Señor Yagubsky?”
“That you’re a private detective. And that she hired you to find my brother.”
I smiled. “What about your sister-in-law?”
“To be really honest with you, my sister-in-law I can live without. I never understood why Roman married her. And we never got along that well. Are you married,
señor
?”
“Have been. Not anymore.”
“Well, at least you know what you’re doing without.”
I pushed another coin into the telephone. “Right now, I’m in danger of going without speaking to your daughter. That was my last five centavos.”
“All right, all right. That’s the trouble with you Germans. You’ve always got a reason to be in a hurry.” He laid the receiver down with a clunk, and a long minute later, Anna came on the line.
“What did you say to my father?”
“There’s really no time to explain. I want you to meet me at President Perón Station in half an hour.”
“Couldn’t it be tomorrow night?”
“Tomorrow’s no good. I might have a hospital appointment tomorrow. Maybe the day after as well.” I quickly lit a cigarette. “Look, just be here as soon as you can. I’ll wait by the Belgrano platform.”
“Can’t you tell me anything?”
“Wear some old clothes. And bring a flashlight. Two, if you have them. And a flask of coffee. We’re liable to be a while.”
“But where are we going?”
“To do a little digging.”
“You’re scaring me. Maybe I should bring a pick and shovel, too.”
“No, angel, not with those lovely hands of yours. Take it easy. We’re not looking to dig anyone up. We’re just going to dig around in some old immigration files and it’s liable to get a little dusty, that’s all.”
“I’m very relieved to hear it. For a minute I thought—I mean, I’m a little bit squeamish about digging up dead bodies. Especially at night.”
“I hear that normally that’s the best time to do that kind of thing. Even the dead aren’t paying much attention.”
“This is Buenos Aires, Señor Hausner. The dead are always paying attention in Buenos Aires. That’s why we built La Recoleta. So we wouldn’t forget it. Death is a way of life for us.”
“You’re talking to a German, angel. When we invented the SS, we had the last word in death cults, believe me.” The phone began to demand more money. “And that was my last five centavos. So get your beautiful behind over here, like I told you.”
“Yes, sir.”
I put down the receiver. I regretted involving Anna. There was some risk in what I was planning. But I couldn’t think of anyone else who might have helped me to understand whatever documents were being stored in the Hotel de Inmigrantes. Then again, she was involved. It was her aunt and uncle we were looking for. She wasn’t paying me enough to take all of the risks on my own. And since she wasn’t paying me anything at all, she could damn well come along for the ride and like it. I was of two minds about her calling me “sir” like that. It made me feel like someone worthy of respect by virtue of my age. Which was something, I told myself, I was going to have to get used to. As long as I was getting older. That was okay. You had to remain alive to get older.