Put the mustache on, the wig. The gun. Jacket, coat, hat; grabbed the portfolio.
He ran across the street and into the Benjamin Franklin; paused at the cashier’s window to give instructions and hurried to the car-rental booth. A pretty young woman in a yellow-and-black uniform smiled radiantly at him.
And only a little less radiantly when she learned he was Paraguayan and had no credit card. The estimated cost of the rental would have to be paid in cash in advance; around sixty dollars, she thought; she would work it out more accurately. He threw bills down, left his license, told her to have the car ready within ten minutes, no later; hurried to the elevators.
By nine o’clock he was on the highway to Baltimore, in a white Ford Pinto under a bright blue sky. Gun under his arm, knife in his coat pocket, God at his side.
Driving at the fifty-five-mile-per-hour speed limit, he would reach New Providence almost an hour before Liebermann.
Other cars slowly passed him. Americans! The limit is fifty-five, they go sixty. He shook his head and allowed himself to drive faster. When in Rome…
He reached New Providence—a clutch of drab houses, a shop, a one-story brick post office—at ten of eleven, but then he had to find Old Buck Road without asking directions of someone who might later describe him and/or his car to the police. The road map he had picked up at a gas station in Maryland, more detailed than the atlas map, showed a town named Buck to the southwest of New Providence; he explored in that direction, following a bumpy two-lane road that curved through winter-bare farmland; slowed at each cross road and peered at all-but-illegible signs and markers. Occasional cars and trucks passed him.
He found Old Buck Road branching right and left; chose the right-hand branch and headed back toward New Providence, watching for mailboxes. Passed Gruber, and C. Johnson. Leafless trees locked branches over the narrow road. A horse-drawn black buggy came toward him. He had seen similar ones on billboards on the main road; Amish people were apparently a local tourist attraction. A bearded black-hatted man and a black-bonneted woman sat within the black-canopied buggy, looking straight ahead.
The mailboxes, near drives leading into trees, were few and far apart. Which was good; he could use the gun.
H. Wheelock. The red flag-signal was down at the side of the box. GUARD DOGS, a board below warned (or advertised?) in crude black-painted letters.
Which was bad. Though not wholly bad, since it gave him a more acceptable reason for being there than the summer-tour-for-the-boy business which he had intended to repeat.
He turned right, guiding the car’s wheels into the deep ruts of a humpbacked dirt drive that led gradually uphill through trees. The car’s bottom scraped against the hump: Herr Hertz’s problem. But his own, too, should the car be disabled. He drove slowly. Looked at his watch: 11:18.
Yes, he vaguely remembered one of the American couples listing dog-breeding among their interests. No doubt it had been the Wheelocks; and the prison guard, retired by now certainly, had perhaps made a full-time occupation of his former pastime. “Good morning!” Mengele said aloud. “The sign down below says ‘guard dogs,’ and a guard dog is exactly what I’m looking for.” He pressed the full mustache down tight, patted the wig at side and back, tilted the mirror and glanced at himself; put the mirror right and followed the rutted drive slowly; reached under coat and jacket, unsnapped the holster’s side so the gun could be whipped free.
Dogs’ barking, a tumult of it, challenged him from a sunlit clearing where a two-story house—white shutters, brown shingles—stood at an angle to him; and at its back a dozen dogs flinging themselves at high mesh fence, barking, yipping. A white-haired man stood behind them, looking toward him.
He drove on to the foot of the house’s stone-paved walk and stopped the car there; shifted to P and turned the key. One dog yipped now, a puppy by the sound of it. At the far side of the house a red pickup truck stood in a two-car garage, the other half empty.
He unlocked the car door, opened it, got out; stretched and rubbed his back while the car whined at him to take the key. The gun stirred under his arm. He slammed the door and stood looking at the white-trimmed porch at the head of the walk. This is where one of them lives! Perhaps a photo of the boy would be around somewhere. How wonderful to see that nearly-fourteen-year-old face! God in heaven, what if he’s not in school today? Upsetting but thrilling thought!
The white-haired man came loping around the side of the house, a dog at his side, a gleaming black hound. The man wore a bulky brown jacket, black gloves, brown trousers; he was tall and broad, his ruddy face sullen, unfriendly.
Mengele smiled. “Good morning!” he called. “The—”
“You Liebermann?” the man asked in a deep-throated voice, loping nearer.
Mengele smiled more widely. “Ja, yes!” he said. “Yes! Mr. Wheelock?”
The man stopped near Mengele and nodded his head of wavy white hair. The dog, a handsome blue-black Doberman, snarled at Mengele, showing sharp white teeth. Its chain collar was hooked by a black leather finger. Rips and tears shredded the sleeves of the coarse brown jacket, fibers of white quilting sticking out.
“I’m a little early,” Mengele apologized.
Wheelock looked beyond him, toward the car, and looked directly at him with squinting blue eyes under bushy white brows. Wrinkles seamed his white-stubbled cheeks. “Come on in,” he said, tilting his white-haired head toward the house. “I don’t mind admitting you’ve got me goddamn curious.” He turned and led the way up the walk, finger-holding the blue-black Doberman’s chain.
“That’s a beautiful dog,” Mengele said, following.
Wheelock went up onto the porch. The white door had a dog’s-head knocker.
“Is your son at home?” Mengele asked.
“Nobody is,” Wheelock said, opening the door. “Excepting them.” Dobermans—two, three of them—came licking his glove, growling at Mengele. “Easy, boys,” Wheelock said. “It’s a friend.” He gestured the dogs back—they retreated obediently—and he went in with the other dog, beckoning to Mengele. “Close the door.”
Mengele came in and closed the door; stood looking at Wheelock crouching among crowding black Dobermans, stroking their heads and clapping their firm flanks while they tongued and nuzzled him. Mengele said, “How beautiful.”
“These young fellows,” Wheelock said happily, “are Harpo and Zeppo—my son named them; only litter I ever let him—and this old boy is Samson—easy, Sam—and this one is Major. This is Mr. Liebermann, fellows. A friend.” He stood up and smiled at Mengele, pulling at glove fingertips. “You can see now why I don’t wet my pants when you say someone’s out to get me.”
Mengele nodded. “Yes,” he said. He looked down at two Dobermans sniffing his thighs. “Wonderful protection,” he said, “dogs like these.”
“Tear the throat out of anyone who looks cross-eyed at me.” Wheelock unzipped his jacket; red shirt was inside it. “Take your coat off,” he said. “Hang it there.”
A high coat-stand with large black hooks stood at Mengele’s right; its oval mirror showed a chair and the end of a dining table in the room opposite. Mengele put his hat on a hook, unbuttoned his coat; smiled down at the Dobermans, smiled at Wheelock taking his jacket off. Beyond Wheelock a narrow stairway rose steeply.
“So you’re the one that caught that Eichmann.” Wheelock hung up his shredded-sleeved jacket.
“The Israelis caught him,” Mengele said, taking his coat off. “But I helped them, of course. I found where he was hiding down there in Argentina.”