He sat on the dais with Stroop at his left; was toasted by him most eloquently—the man wasn’t as much of an idiot as he’d expected—and turned his attention to the ravishing blonde on his right. Last year’s Miss Nazi she turned out to be, and small wonder. Though wedding-ringed now and—no fooling his eye—pregnant, four months. Husband in Rio on business; thrilled to be sitting next to such a distinguished…Maybe? He could always stay over; fly back bright and early.
While he was dancing with pregnant Miss Nazi, working his hand down gradually onto her really marvelous ass, Farnbach danced close and said, “Good evening! How are you? We heard you were here and came gate-crashing. May I present my wife Ilse? Sweetheart, Herr Doktor Mengele.”
He kept dancing in place and smiling, thinking he had had too much to drink, but Farnbach didn’t disappear or turn into someone else; he stayed Farnbach—became more Farnbach, in fact; shaven-headed, thick-lipped, introducing himself hungry-eyed to Miss Nazi while the ugly little woman in his arms yammered about “honor” and “pleasure” and “though you took Bruno away from me!”
He stopped dancing, freed his arms.
Farnbach explained cheerfully to him: “We’re at the Excelsior. A little second honeymoon.”
He stared at him, and said, “You’re supposed to be in Kristianstad. Getting ready to kill Oscarsson.”
Gasp from the ugly woman. Farnbach went white, stared back at him.
“Traitor!” he screamed. “Pig of a—” Words couldn’t do it; he flung himself at Farnbach and grabbed his thick neck; pushed him backward through dancers, strangling him, while Farnbach’s hands pulled at his arms. Red-faced the no-word-for-him now, blue eyes bulging. Scream of a woman; people turning: “Oh my God!” A table stopped Farnbach, lifted its far side; people retreated. He pushed Farnbach down, strangling him; the table shot up, pouring dishes-glasses-cutlery as they fell before it, spilling soup and wine on Farnbach’s shaven head, washing his purpling face.
Hands pulled at Mengele; women screamed; the music splintered and died. Rudi tore at Mengele’s wrists, looking pleadingly at him.
He let go, allowed himself to be pulled up and away, set on his feet. “This man is a traitor!” he shouted at them all. “He betrayed me, he betrayed you! He betrayed the race! He betrayed the Aryan race!”
A scream from the ugly woman kneeling at Farnbach’s side as, red-faced and wet, he rubbed his throat, gasping. “There’s glass in his head!” she cried. “Oh my God! Get a doctor! Oh Bruno, Bruno!”
“This man should be killed,” Mengele explained breathily to the men around him. “He betrayed the Aryan race. He was given a job to do, a soldier’s duty. He chose not to do it.”
The men looked confused and concerned. Rudi rubbed Mengele’s blotched wrists.
Farnbach coughed, trying to say something. He pushed his wife’s napkin-hand from his face and raised himself on one arm, looking up toward Mengele. He coughed and rubbed at his throat. His wife clutched his wet-darkened shoulders. “Don’t move!” she told him. “Oh God! Where’s a doctor?”
“They!” Farnbach barked. “Called! Me back!” A drop of blood slid down in front of his right ear and became a small ruby earring, hanging, growing.
Mengele pushed men away, looked down.
“Monday!” Farnbach told him. “I was in Kristianstad! Setting things up for”—he looked at the others, looked at Mengele—“for what I had to do!” His blood-earring dropped; another began growing in its place. “They called me in Stockholm and told”—he glanced toward his wife, looked at Mengele—“someone I knew there that I should come back. To my company’s office. At once.”
“You’re lying,” Mengele said.
“No!” Farnbach cried; his blood-earring dropped. “Everyone’s back! One was at—the office when I got there! Two had already been! The other two were coming!”
Mengele stared at him, swallowed. “Why?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” Farnbach told him scornfully. “I don’t ask questions any more. I do as I’m told.”
“Where’s a doctor?” his wife screamed; “He’s on his way!” someone called from the door.
Mengele said, “I…am a doctor.”
“Don’t you come near him!”
He looked at Farnbach’s wife. “Shut up,” he said. He looked around. “Does anyone have a pair of tweezers?”
In the banquet manager’s office he picked slivers of glass out of the back of Farnbach’s head with tweezers and a magnifying glass, while Rudi held a lamp close beside. “Just a few more,” he said, dropping the largest sliver into an ashtray.
Farnbach, sitting bent over, said nothing.
Mengele dabbed the cuts with disinfectant and taped a gauze square over them. “I’m very sorry,” he said.
Farnbach stood up, straightened his damp jacket. “And when,” he asked, “do we find out why we were sent?”
Mengele looked at him for a moment and said, “I thought you stopped asking questions.”
Farnbach turned on his heel and went out.
Mengele gave the tweezers to Rudi and sent him out too. “Find Tin-tin,” he said. “We’ll be leaving soon. Send him ahead to warn Erico. And close the door.”
He put things back in the first-aid kit, sat down at the slovenly desk, took his glasses off, palmed his forehead dry. He got out his cigarette case; lit a cigarette and drew on it, dropped the match on the slivers of glass. He put his glasses back on and got out his address book.
He called Seibert’s private number. A Brazilian maid with the giggles told him that the senhor and senhora were out, she didn’t know where.
He tried headquarters, expecting no answer; got none.
Ostreicher’s son Siegfried gave him another number, where Ostreicher himself answered the phone.
“This is Mengele. I’m in Florianópolis. I just saw Farnbach.”
Silence, and then: “Damn it. The colonel was going to tell you in the morning; he’s been putting it off. He’s very unhappy about it. He fought like hell.”
“I can imagine,” Mengele said. “What happened?”
“It’s that son of a bitch Liebermann. He saw Frieda Maloney sometime last week.”
“He’s in America!” Mengele cried.
“Not unless they moved it to Düsseldorf. She must have told him the whole story of her end of things. Her lawyer asked some of our friends there how come we were black-marketing babies in the 1960’s. He convinced them it was true, and they asked us. Rudel flew in last Sunday, there was a three-hour meeting—Seibert very much wanted you to be there; Rudel and some of the others didn’t—and that was it. The men came in on Tuesday and Wednesday.”
Mengele pushed his glasses up and groaned, holding his eyes. “Why couldn’t they simply have killed Liebermann?” he asked. “Are they lunatics, or Jews themselves, or what? Mundt would have leaped at the chance. He wanted to do it on his own, at the very beginning. He, alone, is smarter than all your colonels put together.”
“Would you like to hear their reasoning?”
“Go ahead. If I vomit while you’re speaking, please excuse me.”
“Seventeen of the men are dead. This means, according to your figures, that we can be sure of one or even two successes. And maybe one or two more among the others, since some of the men will die naturally at sixty-five. Liebermann still doesn’t know everything, because Maloney doesn’t. But she may have remembered names, and if she did, his next logical step is to try to trap Hessen.”