“I don’t mind you sticking it to me, Anna. But please try to cut the sarcasm in front of the general. He’s beginning to notice. And no confessions about who and what you are. That would really cook our goose.” I looked around the room. “Where’s the gun?”
“Hidden.”
“Hidden where?”
She shook her head.
“Still thinking of shooting him?”
“I know, he should suffer more. Shooting is too quick. Gas would be better. Perhaps I can leave the oven on in the kitchen before we go to bed tonight.”
“Anna, please. Listen to me. These are very dangerous people. Even now, Heinrich is carrying a gun. And he’s a professional. Before you can even cock that Smith, he’ll blow your head off.”
“What do you mean, ‘cock’?”
I shook my head. “See what I mean? You don’t even know how to shoot.”
“You could show me.”
“Look, those dead people in that camp. They could be anyone.”
“They could be. But they’re not. We both know who and what they are. You said so yourself. It was a camp created by order of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. What else would they want a camp for but to imprison foreign refugees? And your friend. The Scotsman. Melville. It was he who mentioned Directive Twelve. An order for barbed wire to be delivered to a German SS general called Kammler. Directive Twelve, Bernie. That implies something more serious than Directive Eleven, don’t you think?” She took a deep breath. “Besides, before we left Tucuman this morning, you told me it was Kammler who built the big death camps. Auschwitz. Birkenau. Treblinka. Surely you must agree that he deserves to be shot for that alone.”
“Perhaps. Yes, of course. But I can promise you, shooting Kammler here, today, isn’t the answer. There has to be another way.”
“I don’t see how we can arrest him. Not in Argentina. Do you?”
I shook my head.
“Then shooting him is best.”
I smiled. “See what I mean? There’s no such thing as a murderer. There’s just a plumber or a shopkeeper or a lawyer who kills someone else. Ordinary people. People like you, Anna.”
“This isn’t murder. This will be an execution.”
“Don’t you think that’s what those SS men used to tell themselves when they started shooting pits full of Jews?”
“All I know is that he can’t be allowed to get away with it.”
“Anna, I promise you. I will think of something. Just don’t do anything rash. All right?”
She remained silent. I took her hand but she snatched it away again, angrily.
“All right?”
She let out a long sigh. “All right.”
A LITTLE LATER, the maid brought us some evening clothes. A black beaded gown that made Anna look stunning. A dinner jacket, dress shirt, and bow tie that somehow managed to fit me.
“Well, what do you know, we look almost civilized,” Anna said, straightening my tie. There was some perfume on the dressing table. She put some on. “Smells like dead flowers,” she observed.
“Actually, I rather like it,” I said.
“It figures. Anything dead probably smells good to a Nazi.”
“I wish you’d lay off that Nazi gibe.”
“I rather thought that was the point, Gunther. To make them think you’re one of them. So we can save our skins.” She got up and paused in front of the full-length cheval mirror. “Well, I’m ready for anything. Maybe even a killing or two.”
We went down to dinner. Besides Kammler, Grund, Anna, and me, there were three other people.
“This is my wife, Pilar, and my daughter, Mercedes,” said Kammler.
“Welcome to Wiederhold,” said Frau Kammler.
She was tall and thin and elegant, with perfect semicircular eyebrows that looked like they’d been drawn by Giotto, and lots of wavy fair hair either side of her face, which lent her a spaniel look. She belonged in the Cologne Prize winners’ enclosure at Weidenpesch racecourse. But I wouldn’t have raced her; I’d have put her out to stud at a million dollars a time. Frau Kammler’s daughter was no less beautiful and no less charming. She looked about sixteen, but was perhaps younger. Her hair was more Titian than red, because as soon as you saw her, you thought she belonged on a velvet couch in the studio of a great painter with an eye for beauty. When I saw her, I was sorry I didn’t paint myself. Her eyes were a peculiar shade of green, like an emerald with a trace of lapis lazuli, but quietly knowing, too, like she was about to check your king and you were just too dumb to know it yet.
All of us did our best to be civilized and polite. Even Anna, who responded to the thrown-down gauntlet of so much unexpected beauty by finding a little bit of extra beauty inside herself and switching it on like an electric light. But it was difficult to maintain this genteel atmosphere when the last guest was Otto Skorzeny. Especially as he had been drinking.
“What are you doing here?” he asked when he saw me.
“Having dinner, I hope.”
Skorzeny draped a big arm around my shoulder. It felt as heavy as an iron bar. “This fellow is all right, Hans,” he told Kammler. “He’s my confidant. He’s going to help me to make sure those greaseballs never get their hands on the Reichsbank’s money.”
Anna shot me a look.
“How’s the hand, Otto?” I asked him, anxious to change the subject.
Skorzeny inspected his big mitt. It was covered in some livid-looking scars from when he had punched King George’s picture. It was clear he had forgotten how the scars had come to be there at all. “My hand? Yes. I remember now. How’s your ingrown toenail, or whatever it was?”
“He’s fine,” said Anna, putting her arm through mine.
“Who are you?” he asked her.
“His nurse. Only somehow he manages to look after himself very well without me. I wonder why I came at all.”
“Have you known each other for long?” asked Frau Kammler.
“They’re engaged to be married,” said Heinrich Grund.
“Really?” said Frau Kammler.
“It’s for his own good,” said Anna.
“Do you have any friends as good-looking as you?” Skorzeny asked her.
“No. But you seem to have plenty of friends of your own.”
Skorzeny looked at me, then at Kammler and Grund. “You’re right,” he said. “My old comrades.”
Anna shot me another look. I hoped she didn’t have the gun on her. The way things were going, I thought she might shoot everyone, including me.
“But I need a good woman,” he complained.
“What about Evita?” I asked. “How’s it coming along with her?” Skorzeny pulled a face. “Not a chance. Bitch.”
“Otto, please,” said Frau Kammler. “There are children present.”
Skorzeny looked at Mercedes and grinned with open admiration. She was grinning back at him. “Mercedes? She’s hardly that.”
“Thank you, Otto,” said Mercedes. “At least there’s someone here who’s prepared to treat me like a grown-up. Anyway, he’s right, Mommy. Eva Peron is a bitch.”
“That will do, Mercedes.” Her mother lit a cigarette in a holder the length of a blowpipe. Scolding Skorzeny gently, she took him over to the most comfortable-looking sofa and sat down with him. Evidently, she had experience of his behavior, because a minute later the hero of the Gran Sasso was asleep and snoring loudly.
We dined without him.
As promised, the dinner prepared by Goering’s chef was excellent. And very German. I ate things I hadn’t tasted since before the war. Even Anna was impressed.
“Tell your chef that I’m in love with him,” she said, full of charm now.
Kammler took his wife’s hand. “And I am in love with my wife,” he said, bringing the long, slender hand to his lips.
She smiled back at him and took his hand back to her mouth, then nuzzled it tenderly, like a favorite pet.
“Tell me, Anna,” said Kammler. “Have you ever seen two people who were so much in love as us?”