I waited. Does it speak for a journalist if he asks questions and then answers them himself? Does it speak against him? Breuer massaged his earlobe again. A high forehead, sharp eyes, a weak chin-he looked intelligent. And I liked listening to him; there was a pleasant twang in his voice, and what he said about Bonn sounded appealing. Yet at the same time I felt that I was privy to a routine performance. He had probably expounded on the smokestacks and Bonn a thousand times.
“Salger…yes, I remember him. I'd have thought you'd have remembered him, too. What newspapers do you read?”
“Nowadays the Süddeutsche, but I used to read all kinds, the Frankfurter-”
“Maybe the Süddeutsche didn't write much about Salger. Less than the other ones. He made headlines in some of them.”
I looked at him, puzzled. He enjoyed toying with my curiosity. But I was glad to humor him. If people give me what I want, I don't care what detours and diversions there are.
“Some coffee?”
“Please.”
He poured me a cup. “Salger was, as you yourself said, an under-secretary. He was in acquisitions at the Ministry of Defense, the way anyone who was anybody was back then. Remember the fifties and sixties? Life, politics-everything was about acquisitions.” He took a slurping sip from his cup. “Remember the König scandal?”
I had no idea what he was talking about. “In the late sixties?”
“That's right. König was an under-secretary and the president of a fund that could be used to bypass the federal budget to finance large public construction projects of the armed forces. It was a peculiar setup, what with the under-secretary also being president of the fund. But that's how it was, and Salger was an under-secretary and also a board member of the fund. Is it all coming back to you?”
Nothing was coming back to me, but I had got one guess right and tried my luck again. “Embezzlement?” How else could the president of a fund and a board member cause a scandal?
“Biafra.” Breuer reached for his earlobe again, as if he wanted to milk from it the continuation of the story, and looked at me meaningfully. “König had speculated with loans to Biafra. If Biafra had managed to secede from Nigeria, he would have made millions. But as we know, Ojukwu lost, and so did König. I don't know if he embezzled the money from the fund in the legal sense of the term, or misappropriated the money, or what. He hanged himself before the verdict was announced.”
“And Salger?”
Breuer shook his head. “That was one crazy guy. I guess you don't remember. Suspicion first fell on him. He was interrogated and arrested, but kept his mouth shut. The way he saw it, there was nothing that he could be reproached for. He got in a huff and saw the whole thing as a personal insult. When it finally came out that König…”
“How?”
“König was drowning in debt, and when the Biafra money he was counting on didn't materialize, he tried to stop up the holes in other ways, with more and more building grants and credits from the fund, and the whole thing blew up on him.”
“How long was Salger in prison?”
“About six months.” He stretched out his arms. “That's a long time. And all his colleagues, superiors, and political buddies turned their backs on him. They were sure he was the culprit. When it became clear that he wasn't, they tried to pin dereliction of duty as a board member on him. But that didn't stick either. A report surfaced showing that he had drawn attention to all the irregularities. So he was rehabilitated. There was even a promotion in the works. But he couldn't deal with the fact that the same people who had suspected and already convicted him were now patting him on the back and acting as if nothing had happened. He dropped everything and broke off contact with everyone: with his colleagues, superiors, and political buddies. He was barely fifty and had ended up retired and totally isolated. It's a crazy world.” He shook his head.
“Does the story go on?”
Breuer poured us another cup of coffee and reached for a pack of Marlboros on his desk. “My first one today. Would you like one, too?” I fished my yellow pack of cigarettes out of my pocket and offered him one, and he took it with great aplomb. A smoker of filter cigarettes who at the sight of a Sweet Afton doesn't say “Oh, but those don't have a filter!” and takes one with interest. I like that.
“There's more. Salger joined the Free Democratic Party, put himself up as a candidate for parliament, and mounted a futile campaign with a fervor that he would have done well to invest in a better cause. He wrote a book into which he poured all his experiences, a book that nobody wanted to publish and nobody wanted to read. He got sick, cancer, was in and out of hospitals, you know. He died a few years ago.”
“What did he live on?”
Breuer milked his earlobe. “He had a private fortune, quite a large one. That just goes to show-money doesn't guarantee happiness.”
21 Very clear indeed
On my trip back home the train was diverted through Darmstadt and along the Bergstrasse route. It was the first time I noticed the many quarries at the edge of the Odenwald Range. They made the mountains look like red Jell-O covered in green mint sauce, of which God had taken a few bites with a spoon.
In Bonn I had again dialed 41-17-88 and let it ring a long time in vain. The answering machine remained silent. But I'd barely set foot in my office when the phone rang.
“Hello.”
“Hello, Herr Self, Salger here. Have you tried reaching me over the past few days?”
So he, too, had noticed that his answering machine wasn't reacting. Had one of his friends turned the machine off by mistake?
“I'm glad you called, Herr Salger. I have a lot of information for you and would like to give it to you in person. I'd be happy to come see you in Bonn, but perhaps you will be passing through Mannheim one of these days? I take it you're back in Bonn, you see, your answering machine…”
“It must be broken, or the maid turned it off by mistake. But no, we're not back in Bonn, and as I can't arrange a meeting in the foreseeable future, I must ask you to give me the information over the phone. Have you found Leonore?”
“I'd rather not discuss the whereabouts of Leonore on the phone, since-”
“Herr Self, you took on this case and are obliged to report your findings. You accepted the case from me over the phone, and you must also make your report over the phone. Have I made myself clear?”
“Very clear, Herr Salger, very clear indeed. But I will not make my report over the phone, only in person. Furthermore, you did not commission me over the phone, but by letter. I am quite happy to make a report, but it will have to be in person.”
We continued haggling back and forth. He had no reason to refuse to meet me, and I had no reason to insist on it. He argued that his wife was close to a nervous breakdown, that she needed him constantly at her side, him and him alone. “She cannot bear the presence of strangers.”
I wedged the receiver between my chin and shoulder, got out my bottle of sambuca and poured myself a glass, lit a Sweet Afton, and explained to Salger in no uncertain terms that first, I always made my reports in writing or in person, and second, I always made a point of meeting my clients. “That is how I have always worked.”