Light was breaking as Hess walked out of the apartment building, breath smoking in the crisp fall air. He felt relaxed and at home, seeing the city he loved for perhaps the last time.
Marienplatz was quiet and empty at this early hour. He stopped for coffee with a shot of schnapps at a cafe, then lingering, having a second cup. When he came out Altstadt was starting to come alive. He smoked a cigarette, watching trucks pulling up, workers delivering food and beer to the restaurants.
It was a short walk back to the hotel. Hess was on Salvatorplatz coming up on the Bayerischer when he saw the police cars, three of them parked in front of the hotel, lights flashing. He went to a newsstand across the street. Saw Huber step out of one of the cars and enter the hotel.
Hess glanced at the newspapers on display and froze. There was his photograph on the front page of the Suddeutsche Zeitung. The headline said: FUGITIVE WAR CRIMINAL ERNST HESS SEEN IN MUNICH.
He scanned the article that said Ernst Hess had been positively identified in southern Florida and was a suspect in several murders. U.S. authorities believed Hess had murdered an American citizen, assumed his identity and returned to Munich. Now he had a better idea what had happened. Conlin, the Florida detective, had contacted the Munich police. Why didn’t Huber tell him?
Hess bought the newspaper, folded it under his arm and walked to Karlsplatz. There was a phone booth in the Stachus. He telephoned Stigler.
Twenty-eight
“Harry, it’s the German girl,” Phyllis said on the intercom. “Should I tell her you’re busy? Just kidding.”
Phyllis transferred the call. Harry picked up the phone. “Hello.”
“Harry, they’ve got me.” It was Colette, voice sounding strange, distant.
“Fraulein Rizik is understandably upset,” Hess said, coming on the line. “She’s not herself. You better come and help her, Harry. You’re the only hope she has.”
“Let me talk to her.”
“You can talk when you see her. You’ve got forty-two hours. Someone will meet you at Frauenplatz, behind the church — the day after tomorrow, four p.m.”
Harry started to say something but Hess had already hung up.
Cordell said, “Harry, you’re fuckin’ with me, right? You’re not goin’ back ’cause you can’t. Remember those two days you spent in the prison in Munich, goin’ out of your mind? Now add like twenty years.”
“More than that,” Harry said.
They were in Harry’s kitchen, sipping drinks at the island counter.
“Okay, so you’re not crazy.”
“I don’t know.”
“Harry, let me understand something, okay? You’re gonna give yourself up for Colette, is that right?”
“It’s a challenge. Hess is saying: you want her, let’s see how good you are. Come and get her.”
“He knows the police are gonna be after you?”
“They’re after him too. That makes it more interesting.”
“Like a game, huh?” Cordell sipped the Courvoisier and Coke. “Don’t see how you can win though.”
“I don’t have a choice.”
“Then you better have a plan and a good one. Where we gonna fly into? And don’t say Munich.”
“I was thinking Innsbruck. Go through customs in Austria, rent a car, drive north through the Bavarian Alps.”
“That’s what I’m talkin’ about, Harry,” Cordell said, smiling now.
“You can’t go back either, remember?” Cordell had been implicated on Harry’s gun possession charge by the Munich police. Now he could conceivably be prosecuted as an accessory to murder.
“I’m goin’ and that’s it. Now what exactly did the Nazi say?”
Harry called a travel agent and booked two flights to Innsbruck, Austria by way of London. It was 4:45 p.m. They were leaving in three hours.
“What kind of gun do you want?” Harry said to Cordell. “If we’re going to do this we better be armed.”
“A .45 in nickel-plate be my first choice. And a rifle, Harry, something accurate at distance.”
“Where’d you learn to shoot?”
“The army, where you think?”
“You any good?”
“I can hit the target ninety-five per cent of the time from three hundred meters.”
“That may come in handy.”
“What I was thinking.”
Next, Harry called Fedor Berman, a Holocaust survivor and private detective who had supplied the .38 Colt he’d used to defend himself against the Blackshirts, the gun Detective Huber had. Harry told Berman he needed the guns right away and Berman said, no problem. “What are you hunting, Herr Levin, big game?”
“The biggest. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
Harry carried his suitcase upstairs, unpacked and repacked with warm clothes for Bavaria in November. He thought about Colette, hoping Hess would keep her alive till he got there. Harry didn’t question what he was doing. In his mind there was no other way. This time he would face Hess and finish it.
Cordell came downstairs, duffel bag over his shoulder, wearing the winter green leisure suit, a comb sticking out of his Afro. “Okay, Harry, let’s go?”
“I think you should wear something a little more subdued. On this trip we want to blend in, not attract attention.”
“What do you suggest?”
“I’d leave the leisure suits here. Dress more conservative.”
“Harry, I don’t have anything conservative.”
“Or we can pick something up in Munich if you like.”
“Tried that, you may recall.”
“Yeah, and you fit right in.”
“Fit right in on the set of Heidi maybe — with Shirley Temple and grandfather.”
“I’ve got some clothes that might work.”
“This ought to be good.”
Harry took him up to his bedroom, opened the closet, took out a white dress shirt on a hanger and handed it to him. Cordell took off the leisure suit jacket, folded it over the back of a chair, unbuttoned the animals-rampant polyester, slid out of it. Harry handed him a pair of black pants, a light blue shirt with a button-down collar and a camel sweater. Try it on. I’ll see you in a few minutes.”
Cordell was checking himself out in the full-length mirror when Harry came back in the room.
“You look good.”
“I look like you with an Afro. Brothers see me like this they gonna kick me out the tribe.”
“The comb in your hair’s a nice touch.”
Cordell pulled it out and slid it in the right side pocket. “How’s that? I pass inspection?”
Twenty-nine
They landed at Gatwick airport outside London the next morning at 7:56. Had an hour wait and then a two-hour flight to Innsbruck, Austria, arriving at 11:03 a.m. Collected their luggage and went through customs. Harry rented a Mercedes-Benz sedan with tire chains.
The sun was up high and the road was snow-covered, the snow so bright it was blinding. They’d climb a steep mountain grade and fly down the other side, Harry trying to pass slow-moving trucks. Then the clouds rolled in and it started to snow, Harry watching the windshield fog up and the wipers thump back and forth, headlight beams coming the opposite way out of the grey gloom, holding the steering wheel with two hands.
They crossed the border into Germany, Harry nervous, thinking he was going to be arrested as a sleepy-eyed border guard glanced at their passports and took them into a little shack.
“What’s up with that?” Cordell looked worried now.
“I don’t know. Maybe he’s making a copy.”
“So they’re gonna know we’re here.”
“But they’ve got to find us.”