It was three thirty already. I would rather have sent myself and the alcoholized lamb in my stomach for a nice long siesta.
As we drove through Heddesheim to Viernheim, I remembered an old case of mine, the Viernheim denominational wars. An altar painting of Saint Catherine had disappeared from the Catholic church, and the chaplain, suspecting the Protestants, fulminated from his pulpit against thieving heretics. The Evangelical church was sprayed with graffiti, then the Catholic church, then church windows were broken. That was all a long, long time ago. A presbyter with an ecumenical bent had hired me to get the painting back. I found it in the room of the chaplain's pubescent altar server, who happened to be a fan of the actress Michelle Pfeiffer. And Michelle Pfeiffer happened to be the spitting image of Saint Catherine.
Walters studied engineering in Darmstadt but had been born and raised in Viernheim and had deep roots there. He was a member of the male choir, the carnival association, the chess club, the shooting club, and the marching band. “That makes me the ideal local reporter, wouldn't you say? I'm not partial to any political group. I was happy to give Altmann the information about the munitions depot, but I'd just as readily tip off the CDU about the planned collectivization of the Rhein-Neckar Center, or the SPD about child labor at the Willi Jung company. That's how I work. So you read the little piece I wrote about the question Altmann put to the District Council-and I take it you want to know more, right? Well, I'd like to know more myself.” His office was tiny. There was barely enough space for a desk, a swivel chair, and an extra chair for visitors. Walters had offered me the chair and Peschkalek a corner of his desk. The narrow window looked out on the Rathausstrasse. “Unfortunately I can't get it to open, so I'd be grateful if you didn't smoke.”
Peschkalek put away his pipe and sighed as if he were forfeiting a true pleasure and not just another of his futile battles with tobacco, matches, and pipe paraphernalia. “Journalists never know enough,” Peschkalek said. “We're all in the same boat, regardless of whether we're working for Spiegel, Paris Match, The New York Times, or the Viernheimer Tageblatt. I liked your article. It pinpoints the problem, it's written in a clean style, and you appeal to the reader by the fresh and direct way you introduce yourself into the article. One can see right away that the writer has solid background information and knowledge of the area. I'm impressed, Herr Walters.”
At first I thought Peschkalek was laying it on too thick, but I was quick to see that Walters was lapping it all up. He leaned back in his swivel chair. “I like the way you put it. I see what I do as grassroots journalism, and myself as a grassroots journalist. I'd be happy to write an article for your paper about the situation here in Viernheim. You're with Spiegel, did you say? Or was it Paris Match or The New York Times? If I'm to do something in English or French for you, somebody will have to go over it and clean it up.”
“I'll definitely keep you in mind. If Viernheim becomes a story, I could see to it that you get a column or a box in the coverage. But is Viernheim a story? A glow in the night is not necessarily a catastrophe. When did that actually happen?”
Peschkalek had roped him in. We found out that Walters had been driving from Hüttenfeld, where his girlfriend lived, to Viernheim at around midnight on January 6, when he saw three police cars in front of the gate to the munitions depot. He asked the officers what was going on but was brushed off. He drove on and saw the glow of a fire above the depot. “I didn't actually see the fire. But hey, my interest had been roused. So right away I headed onto the autobahn and took the turnoff to Lorsch. The depot is between Route 6 and the L 3111. But the glow was gone.”
“That's all?” Peschkalek was disappointed and didn't hide it.
“I stopped, got out of the car, and sniffed the air. Later I sniffed it again, as I drove through the Lampertheim Forest. You see, I had to stay on the autobahn all the way to Lorsch, where I took a back road and returned to Viernheim by way of Hüttenfeld. I couldn't smell anything. But what I've found out is that poison gas doesn't necessarily stink.”
“Poison gas?” Peschkalek and I burst out simultaneously.
“The rumor's been going around for years. Fischbach, Hanau, and Viernheim-after the war, the Americans are supposed to have set up depots there. Some people even say that the Germans stored and buried their poison gas there. Word has it that everything's been removed from Fischbach, and perhaps from Viernheim, too. Or that there was never anything there. Or that it's still there, and that all the commotion about its being removed from Fischbach was only a diversion from the poison gas stored in Viernheim. Be that as it may, I developed an interest in all of this after January sixth.” He shook his head. “A real devil's brew. Phosgene, tabun, sarin, VE, VX-have you read up on what that stuff can do? Even when you read about that stuff, it's enough to turn your stomach.”
“Were the police cars still at the gate?”
“No. But an American fire truck came out and drove away.”
Peschkalek sat up. “Where did it go? And how come you didn't put that in your article?”
“I was going to disclose things bit by bit. But then my editor didn't think the fire truck was exciting enough to warrant a sequel. The truck had headed down the Nibelungenstrasse and the Entlastungsstrasse, I think over to the American barracks.”
We thanked him. When we came out of Walters's cell, Peschkalek was ebullient. “What did I tell you? It's even better than I thought! The attack wasn't on any old American military installation, but specifically on an American poison-gas depot. You can bet your life that the Americans wouldn't turn a blind eye on such an attack. I wonder if Wendt orchestrated it all, and then had to pay for it with his life? Or did the Americans buy him off? Did he switch sides, and Leonore Sal-ger assassinated him? Mark my word, Wendt wasn't murdered just like that.”
6 A summer idyll
Nobody gets murdered just like that. The map in Wendt's briefcase showed the Viernheim triangle. When I stopped in front of the big map on the wall of the editorial office I recognized the Frankfurt-Mannheim autobahn and, leading straight down from it, the autobahn to Kaiserslautern.
Peschkalek stopped, too. “What's our next step, Herr Self? Shall we go take a look for ourselves?”
We drove along the Lorsch Road through the woods. A high fence ran alongside the road to our left, and just beyond it ran an asphalt path. Signs in German and English warned of explosives, of military and security patrols, of watchdogs, and that firearms were in use. The gate, which we passed half a kilometer down the road, was secured with iron bars and orange and blue warning lights and was plastered with signs that along with all the other warnings also cautioned against smoking. Then the fence veered to the left, and the road continued straight on. At the next left we made a big detour back to Viernheim, over and under the autobahn, but we no longer saw the fence.
“You ought to have a word with some of the local people, Herr Self.” Peschkalek had not said much during our reconnaissance, but he became talkative once we reached Viern-heim. “Poison gas. You heard it yourself. You'd think it would worry the people around here. But it doesn't. What surprises me is that our wild young reporter”-he pointed in the direction where he imagined the offices of the Viern-heimer Tageblatt to be-”even managed to get his little article printed. Nobody here wants to read that kind of stuff.” He headed along the road to Heddesheim, but soon took a right. “Just one more small detour, Herr Self.”