The Hour of the Cat

Table of Contents

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

First published in paperback in the United States in 2006 by
The Overlook Press, Peter Mayer Publishers, Inc,
141 Wooster Street
New York, NY 10012
www.overlookpress.com

Copyright © 2005 by Peter Quinn

 

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or
transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical,
including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and
retrieval system now known or to be invented, without permission in
writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who wishes to quote
brief passages in connection with a review written for
inclusion in a magazine, newspaper, or broadcast.

 

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Quinn, Peter.
Hour of the cat / Peter Quinn.
p. cm.

1. Private investigators—New York (State)—New York—Fiction. 2. Germans—New York (State)—Fiction. 3. Nurses—Crimes against—Fiction. 4. Intelligence officers—Fiction. 5. Death row inmates—Fiction. 6. New York (N.Y.)—Fiction. 7. Conspiracies—Fiction. I. Titles. PS3617.U584H'.54—dc22 2005040602

 

eISBN : 978-1-590-20574-7

To Genevieve and Daniel
A chuisle mo chroí
L'chaim

Eugenics was a science that ruled that some forms of life were undeserving of life. The regime at hand merely had to draw the practical conclusions and carry out the death sentences. National Socialism, which harped incessantly on notions of purity of race, would have been the laughingstock of Germany had its scientists shown the imbecility of this idea. Instead, it was the scientists who gave an academic garb to racism or, rather, invented scientific racism as a modern version of pure and simple prejudice and fear of the other.

Finally, the Holocaust, the systematic “extermination” of human beings, would have been unthinkable without the medical profession's “detached” evaluation of these human beings as not only inferior and therefore unworthy of life, but as positively dangerous to the national Aryan body and therefore doomed to quick and efficient, yet of course wholly unemotional elimination. This is what makes the Holocaust central to our era, for it was founded on a scientifically sanctioned, indeed ordered, brutality.

—OMER BARTOV,
Murder in Our Midst

I
AN ANDERSON TOOK a copy of the
Völkischer Beobachter
from the racks of newspapers lining the hotel café's walls. As soon as he returned to his corner booth, a waiter served the coffee and pastry he had ordered. At the sight of the German newspaper, the waiter checked the single letter that the maître d' had written in the corner of the seating card, a reminder of the Excelsior Hotel's commitment, for the duration of the Olympic Games, to address guests in their own language. Yes,
E for Englisch
, as he had thought. “Will there be anything else?” the waiter asked.

“Not for the moment,” Anderson said.
“Danke.”

The waiter tapped his heels together, lightly, making an almost imperceptible sound, then moved into the room's cavernous center, beneath the immense electric chandeliers, through the closely placed tables, in search of more orders. Advertised as the largest hotel in Europe, the Excelsior had recently added “the most cosmopolitan,” a claim given credence by the crowd eagerly availing itself of the international selection of over 200 newspapers and magazines provided gratis. Most of the patrons were engrossed in their newspapers, the front page headlines in seemingly every language on the continent—German, French, Spanish, Hungarian—announcing the success of the previous day's opening ceremonies at the Berlin Olympiad.

Anderson looked up from the
Völkischer Beobachter
, its gushing account of yesterday's event nothing less than what he expected from the Nazi Party's official newspaper. A paper flag bearing the rising sun held over his head, a Japanese guide led a straggly line of his countrymen to a table on the far side of the room. The maître d' approached. “Herr Anderson, your guest has arrived,” he said in barely accented English. “Should I show him to your table?”

“Please, if you don't mind.” Anderson folded the paper and laid it beside him. He stood and brushed the pastry crumbs from his pants. The maître d' was almost at the table when the person behind popped in front. “Ian Anderson, right?” He held out his hand without waiting for an answer. “I'm Chuck Weber, and I appreciate your taking time to meet with me.”

“It's quite all right, Mr. Weber,” Anderson said. “Won't you have a seat?”

“Call me Chuck, please.” Weber sat in the booth, across from Anderson, who artfully slipped several marks into the hand of the slighted and scowling maître d'. The maître d' bowed in gratitude, whispering, this time in German, “Herr Anderson, I can only hope the manners of an English gentleman will rub off on your American guest.”

Weber watched the maître d' as he returned to his station at the café's entrance. “What'd he say?”

“That it seems as though the whole world has come to see the Berlin Games.”

“He's got that right.” A waiter came to take his order. “Cognac, make it a double,” Weber said. He had a pudgy, round face, topped by thick, slicked-back hair the color of dirty straw. He was significantly younger than he'd sounded on the phone, in his early thirties, not late forties, as Anderson had guessed.

Fumbling for a moment in the inside breast pocket of his tan hounds-tooth-check jacket, Weber finally found what he was looking for. He took out an alligator case not much larger than a cigarette lighter, extracted a business card and handed it to Anderson. “As I said on the phone, I'm with Holcomb & Belknap. We're headquartered in New York but, as you see from the card, we have offices in Chicago, London, and now Berlin.”

“Yes, I see, ‘Charles R. Weber, vice president.' An impressive title.”

“Doesn't say so on the card, but I'm the youngest v.p. in the history of the firm.”

“And your firm's specialty, it says here, is public relations. It's not a profession I know a lot about.”

“P.R. is a bigger deal in the States than over here, but it's catching on. It's not complicated, really. In a nutshell, when an individual or business needs to deal with the press, we make sure it's done to their advantage. If you've got a good story to tell, we get it covered. If it's not so good, we help frame it in a favorable way or keep it out of the spotlight altogether.”

The waiter delivered Weber's cognac. He lifted his glass. “Cheers,” he said. “I'm interested in the book you're writing.”

“Yes, you said so on the phone. What do you know about my book?”

“Well, Ian—you don't mind me calling you Ian, do you?”

“Go right ahead.”

“It's this way, Ian. Mr. Holcomb, founder and managing director of our firm, was at a dinner party in New York also attended by your American publisher. His ears pricked up when he heard the title,
My Journey in Nazi Germany.
”

“
Travels in the New Germany
is the correct title.”

“Sure, that's it. As Mr. Holcomb told your publisher, we've got clients with a standing interest in what gets written about Germany, especially given all the propaganda and emotions that get mixed in and passed off for facts.”

“Do you have the German government for a client?”

Weber chuckled. “Not that I'd feel obliged to tell you if we did, but no, we're not on Hitler's payroll.” He finished his drink. “Quite the opposite, we work with a number of American firms whose interests in Germany are purely commercial or philanthropic. They are very concerned about steering clear of politics.”

“American interests in Germany aren't a subject of my book.”

“A lot of times it hardly matters what's written. What counts is the interpretation put on it. Today, in the U.S., there are those whose only interest is in painting everything that happens in Germany as intended either to harm certain ethnic groups or to start another war. Here, in Berlin, you can see for yourself how wrong they are. Does it look to you as though a new version of the Spanish Inquisition is under way? Or that another war is on tap?” Weber gestured with his empty glass at the room filled with happy tourists and relaxed patrons.

“Germany encompasses more than this room,” Anderson said.

“Exactly right. It's impossible to sum up all that's happening in Germany by looking exclusively at a small piece, good or bad. Think about it! A country flattened by defeat and depression is on its feet. Business is booming. Millions are back to work. Yet some only want to see the negative. I've been working with firms such as International Business Machines, Ford, and Texaco. You'd think they'd win praise for building bridges of peace through international commerce. Instead, they're attacked and pilloried for not joining a boycott of trade with Germany.”

“It's absurd when you think about it,” Weber continued. I mean, look at Avery Brundage and the American Olympic Committee, and the heat they took over the decision not to boycott these Games. In the face of every kind or pressure and threat, he stood his ground, so that today the United States is here, alongside the rest of the world, ready to compete, and with a team that includes Jews and colored as well as regular Americans.”

“The issue was the treatment of Jews here in Germany and their exclusion from amateur sports.”

“Sure, and then what do we in the States say when people turn around and point fingers at us for not letting the colored play in our professional baseball leagues? And you English aren't exactly pure as driven snow when it comes to the treatment of other races. I mean, ‘Let the one without sin cast the first stone,' right?”

“What happens in America or Britain doesn't excuse what happens in Germany, and vice versa.”

“Of course, I'm sorry for getting us sidetracked. I'll get right to the point. I've been told that you've been looking into the eugenic program underway in Germany, and without intending in any way to tell you what to write, I'd like to see to it that my client is left out of the discussion. Not praised, not criticized, left out.”

“I told you, my interest isn't in any specific American involvement in Germany. My focus is on the people of this country and the direction in which they're being led.”

“There are those in the p.r. business who think you have to be subtle and coy, insinuating your message rather than stating it. Not me. ‘Give it to 'em straight,' that's the Chuck Weber philosophy. Just so you know that I've got nothing to hide, I'll tell you up front who my client is. It's the Rockefeller Foundation. Are you familiar with it?”