Hour of the Assassins (12 page)

“Time is usually of the essence in our business.”

“Not in this case. Like I said, this isn't official business. And there's one more thing,” Caine added.

“And that is?”

“If you lie to me, then it becomes personal.”

Ibn Sallah studied Caine for a long moment. He saw the cheeks whipped red by the wind, the green eyes that were colder than the wind, and felt a slight uneasiness ripple through him. They were the eyes of a hunter.

“The money,” Ibn Sallah replied, patting his overcoat pocket. “Here,” and turned to look out at the water until he felt the bills being slipped into his pocket.

“I'm looking for a Nazi war criminal named Josef Mengele. He was the camp doctor at Auschwitz. Do you know where he is?”

“So you're working for the Jews,” Ibn Sallah sighed. “What a people. They are so much like us,” he added, shaking his head sadly. “The sons of Isaac and the sons of Ishmael are both the sons of Abraham,
vous comprenez
. Ours is a family quarrel. Like us, they are very old and they never forget,” he said, shivering inside his overcoat. “It's cold standing out here,” he muttered, frowning at Caine.

“Do you know where he is?” Caine repeated.

“No,” Ibn Sallah replied shortly and started to turn away. Caine put a hand on his arm and then removed it as Ibn Sallah looked back at him. The boat began to shudder as it slowed down to approach the Rapperswil dock. Along the shore, Caine could see a small crowd waiting to board.

“It's not so simple. You see, I know about the enclave of Nazi scientists you have at Helwân, outside Cairo,” Caine prompted.

“Mengele was a madman, not a rocket scientist,” Ibn Sallah retorted angrily.

“So he did try to stay in Egypt?” Caine said.

“You said only one question.”

“When was he in Egypt?”

For a moment Ibn Sallah considered walking away, then he reconsidered. As Caine had said, it really wasn't anything to do with the Moukhabarat. If the Jews wanted to spend their money chasing after ghosts from the past, so much the better.

“I never met him, but I remember a memo from Nasser when it happened. That was back in 1961. I assume he got nervous after the Eichmann business in Argentina. He was in Alexandria for a few days. We told him he couldn't stay and the Germans slipped him out on a freighter. No.” He held up his hand. “I don't know where the ship was going and I don't care. We didn't want him either. You're right. It isn't our affair. And now, monsieur, I believe our business is concluded,” he said with finality.

“Good enough,” Caine replied and, flipping his cigarette over the rail, turned and walked away. At the door to the salon he bumped against the dark-skinned Arab, who stood there unconcerned, watching Ibn Sallah. Caine put a quick back wristlock on the Arab as he reached into the Arab's pocket and retrieved the Bauer. As the Arab started to react, Caine stepped back and wagged a finger at the Arab. “Naughty, naughty,” he said, smiling, and then the smile was gone. The two men looked at each other. It would be an interesting match, they seemed to say with a glance. Then the Arab went to join Ibn Sallah at the rail, while Caine went down and debarked. At the foot of the dock he caught a taxi that took him around the lake back to Zurich.

Back at the Baur au Lac, Caine called the local Orbis office, which stayed open on Christmas day to prove that they were good little Communists, and made a reservation on the morning LOT flight to Warsaw.

Caine felt a sense of excitement as he sat down to a late lunch of
raclette
, a potato dish made with Bagnes cheese, and a bottle of Dézalay Neuchâtel wine at the Mövenpick on Dreikonigstrasse. He was beginning to get a scent of his quarry, he thought as he watched the people around him munching as contentedly as cattle in a feedlot. He scanned the room, looking for tags that might have been sent by Ibn Sallah, but the restaurant was crowded with civilians. After all, he reasoned, his business with Ibn Sallah really was finished. Still, he couldn't take anything for granted. Ibn Sallah was a formidable man, he thought, and continued to look around the restaurant.

At a nearby table two blond Swiss girls were snickering at the antics of a pair of Italian men in flashy mod suits, who were trying to pick them up. One of the Italians kissed the girls' hands, while the other bantered and smiled hopefully. As the Italians sat down at the girls' table, a Swiss businessman, sitting with his family, glared balefully at them and muttered something into his fondue.

Caine sipped the wine as he rehashed his conversation with Ibn Sallah. Mengele was alive in 1961, that was the key thing, he thought excitedly. He had left South America and found that even Egypt was still too hot for him. So where could he go? After the Eichmann thing calmed down, he almost certainly would have gone back to South America. But probably not Argentina again, since that was where Eichmann had been picked up. He couldn't have gone east, but only after Caine went to Poland could he be sure of that. But he was still running scared in '61, that was the main thing.

Caine spent the afternoon in the Jelmoli department store, where he bought a heavy wool suit and a turtle-neck sweater to wear in the Polish winter. After dinner he took a bottle of pear brandy back to his room and sipped at it while he packed. Then he took a long shower and went to bed.

Outside, the harsh night wind moaned around the corners of the hotel. He dreamed he was climbing up the frozen face of the Dolder. The wind was a cold implacable enemy that tore with icy fingers at his desperate hold on the mountain. He was clinging to a ledge, unable to pull himself up. To hang on was agony and to let go was death. He tried to shut out the terrible ache in his fingers, but mind disciplines wouldn't work and there was only the pain. A dark shadow above him kicked at his fingers and he fell screaming into a bottomless crevice in the glacier. He was still falling when he woke up, the morning light streaming brightly through the high hotel window.

CHAPTER 6

The snow-covered Silesian plain lay flat and white as a freshly laundered sheet under the wing of the Soviet-built Ilyushin. From his window seat Caine could see puffs of clouds floating like anti-aircraft bursts in the gray sky. Looking down at the white plains, he finally understood what Koenig had been talking about that time, during his Junior Officer Training at the Farm. The land was perfect tank country. It must have been a walk-through for the Wehrmacht, with the foolish, gallant Polish cavalry thrown against the panzers. The Poles might as well have used spitballs. Koenig had used the Polish cavalry to illustrate his point.

“This isn't a business for heroes,” Koenig had said. “Guts stand about as much chance against brains and logistics as a rabbit in a tiger cage.”

Caine ran over the story again in his mind. It wasn't great, but hopefully he wouldn't need it for long. Just until he made a quick snatch and got out. He was a lawyer coming to Warsaw to settle the estate of the late lamented Widow Wydobrowska. It was really a standard Company ploy: identify a scource, compromise him, scan the material, and get out, leaving him to take the fall. Caine didn't have to like it, and if he wanted to worry about someone, he should be worrying about himself: because if the secret police didn't buy his story, the only Polish hospitality they would offer him would be a final cigarette as they stood him against a blood-spattered wall.

But he didn't like it. Unbidden, a long-forgotten line from Plutarch surfaced in his mind. Something about frogs. That was it. “Though the boys throw stones at frogs in sport, yet the frogs do not die in sport but in earnest.”

How many innocent bystanders had he already hurt? Hillary; DePalma; Hanratty, whom he had scared shitless; now some poor Pole he hadn't met yet. And his hunt had barely begun. He'd do it all right, because he was a hunter, but he didn't have to like it.

His ears began to pop as the Ilyushin began its descent to Okecie Airport. Through the window he could see the glinting surface of the frozen Vistula, twisting its tortured course across Warsaw like a vein of ice. He had a bad moment as the wheels skidded down the runway. He was a spy behind the Curtain, and after all the mumbo jumbo about detente he knew that if he made a mistake, they wouldn't just pat him on the back and hand him the Order of Lenin. With a final whine the jet turbines sighed into silence.

There was a hint of Magyar blood in the cheekbones of the young blond customs official. He had the pug nose of the Polish peasantry and a touch of the Teutonic in his blue eyes. No wonder they're paranoid, Caine thought. They've been raped often enough. Then the knot in his stomach began to tighten. He could control the rest as the fear shot through him, but he couldn't stop the tightness as the official began examining the Hasselblad with a more than cursory interest. If he opened it and found the Bauer, Caine would be writing Wasserman a Dear John from a labor camp in the Urals, where they don't bother to put up a fence, since no one can make it across the snow without freezing to death anyway.

“Camera very good.” The official smiled enthusiastically, for a moment reminding Caine how young he was. Caine handed the official his customs declaration form and passport. Let him chew on that instead of the camera, he thought.

And like a Pavlov-conditioned dog, the official began to scan Caine's documents, because this was a part of the world where papers mattered. Without them you had no identity, no right to breathe. Throughout Eastern Europe people clung to dogeared pieces of paper, because without them they were dead.

“Why you to Poland coming?” the official asked.

“Business,” Caine replied. Christ, did the schmuck imagine that any tourist would come to Warsaw in the winter for pleasure, he thought.

“What business?”

“I'm a lawyer, here to settle an estate. If I can locate the heirs, some people and your government stand to inherit some money.” Caine smiled ingratiatingly.

“What is lawyer?” the official asked suspiciously.

“
Ich bin ein Anwalt
,” switching to German, the lingua franca in this part of the world.

“
Willkommen zu Polska
,” the official responded smartly, and stamped Caine's papers.

The cold wind hit him like a fist as he came out of the airport and stood on line to board the Orbis minibus to the Europejski. As the minibus rumbled over the frozen streets, Caine rubbed a circle on the frosted window and peered out at the gray afternoon. Pedestrians in dark overcoats walked with brisk, ginger steps through the drab frozen streets, like giant awkward penguins. Passing the Plac Zamkowy, he caught a glimpse of the Vistula, frozen in time as if sentenced to eternal winter.

Along the Krakowskie Przedmiescie, signs advertised Western brands of liquor and cigarettes in words full of consonants. Two smartly dressed shopgirls paused at a kiosk advertising the
Zycie Warszawy
. They were stamping their feet in the snow to keep warm, as though performing a Slavic folk dance. The minibus slid gently to a halt at the entrance to the Europejski Hotel like a boat coming in to a berth.

Caine went directly to the Orbis office in the lobby and exchanged traveler's checks into zlotys at six times the official exchange rate. The Poles needed hard currency the way California needs rain in August. He rented a Volga car and then spent a few minutes trying to convince the Orbis man that he didn't need a guide and that he didn't want his hand held. Then he checked in and asked the aging bellboy to bring him a bottle of Dyborowa vodka and a prostitute named Marysia.

The worlds of espionage, crime, and ordinary life intersect in the bedroom. While on a short spell of desk duty at Langley just before he left the Company, he had read a COMINT report on contacts in Eastern Europe. The Warsaw agent-in-place had sent a list of prostitutes who operated out of the major tourist hotels with the tacit approval of the secret police, called the U.B. Marysia was the only name on the list he still remembered.

The hotel suite was furnished in the kind of overstuffed baroque fashion that tried to resurrect the Victorian era. It looked a little like a stage set, Caine thought. He half-expected the maid to come in and dramatically announce that King Edward was dead. He went over to the shuttered French doors that led to the balcony and looked out at the ochreous clouds that promised more snow. Along the Krakowskie Przedmiescie late-afternoon streetlights gave off a pale sulphurous glow as the light failed, as though the sun were truly a dying star.

With a hideous leer, like an aging gargoyle come to life, the bellboy returned with the vodka and the woman. The leer almost turned to a smile when Caine gave him a lavish tip. The bellboy bowed and left, as Caine turned to look at the woman.

She was a stylish blonde, thirtyish and prettier than he had expected. She was puffing a cigarette through a gold-plated holder and wore a supercilious expression, or perhaps she just wanted to raise the price. Her tight dress was red and beginning to fray as it strained at the seams. She paused for a moment to study her makeup in a round mirror surrounded by a bronze frame made up of garish metal cupids, then glanced around as though she wanted to rearrange the furniture. Caine watched her as she moved across the room with an air of studied grace. She was pretty enough, he thought. The only question was, How hungry was she?

“What's your name?” he asked and when she looked at him blankly, he repeated the question in German.

“Marysia.”

“Come over here.”

She approached him, wetting her lips with the tip of her tongue, then looked at him with surprise as he removed her hand from his thigh.

“How much?” he asked.

“Two thousand, lover,” she replied breathlessly and he somehow knew that it was more than she was used to getting.

“I'll do better than that. I'll give you five thousand zlotys for the name of your boyfriend in the U.B.”