“I’ve failed you, my boy,” Ploscaru said with mock despair. Then he brightened. “But there is a little parlormaid that we could scare up for you if...” He let the trail off and finished it with a small gesture.
“Never mind,” Jackson said, and turned from the blazing fire. “There’s no coal in Germany, Nick. I’ve been reading Time magazine. There’s no coal in the American Zone, anyway. When they divided Germany up, Russia got the wheat, Britain got the coal, and America got the scenery.”
“There’s a ton of coal in the cellar, I believe.”
The dwarf was wearing his green silk dressing gown and his red slippers. His green eyes seemed to dance with anticipation over the questions that he knew would come.
“Okay, Nick. Whose house?”
“A cousin’s. A distant cousin — thrice removed, as I belive you say in the States. He’s actually a Swede and he’s with the United Nations. Something called UNRRA, What ever does UNRRA stand for?”
“It’s the UN Relief and Rehabilitation Agency.”
“Yes, well, my cousin runs the DP camp at a place called Badenhausen. It used to be a concentration camp, I understand, but now they keep DP’s there. I wonder if any of those who are now its guests were once its inmates. Well, no matter. In any event, my cousin is on leave for a month, and so we have his house until then. It’s rather a nice place. Fourteen rooms, I think, with a staff of five. So much better than a hotel, don’t you agree?”
“Sure.”
“We’ll need a car, of course. The butler gave me a tip on one that we can look into tomorrow.”
“The butler.”
“Didn’t I mention the household staff? I thought I did. There’s the butler; the cook, of course; a gardener; and two maids. Rather decadently colonial, don’t you think? I mean, all the servants. Shall we have a drink? No bourbon, I’m afraid, but there is some rather decent Scotch.”
“I’ll fix them,” Jackson said, and stepped over to the glasses and the Scotch bottle. “Have a nice trip over?”
“Very pleasant.”
“Let me guess. The Air Corps again.”
“How very perceptive of you, Minor. There was this young captain that I’d known in Ploesti. Shot down, you know. He was only a second lieutenant then, but he still believes that I somehow saved his life. Well, I bumped into him in Washington and he mentioned that he was making what he called a ‘goodie run.’”
“A goodie run?”
“Yes, it seems that they sometimes do that — fly bombers full of luxury goods over to what the young Captain called the top brass. Rank has its privileges, Minor. So when I happened to mention that I was interested in getting to Germany, he wanted to know how I got along with animals. It turned out that part of his cargo was six Pekingese that belonged to some general’s wife. I get along famously with animals, as you know; even Pekingese, which are, quite frankly, terrible little beasts. So my young Captain and I struck a bargain. He agreed to give me a ride over if I would look after the dogs. It was a quite pleasant trip, as I said. Very quick. We didn’t even stop once, although we did land at Wiesbaden instead of Frankfurt, which was a bit inconvenient. A huge plane — one of these B-29 things. But there was miles of room so I had no trouble in bringing along a few cigarettes. How many did you bring?”
“A carton,” Jackson said.
“Well, I brought a few more than that. As a matter of fact, it was the young Captain who suggested that they would come in quite handy.”
“How many’s a few more, Nick?”
“Let me think. About forty-eight thousand, actually.”
“Jesus.”
“That’s four big cases. There was a fifth case, but when we landed at Wiesbaden, I was inside of that, of course.”
“So they smuggled you in along with your cigarettes.”
“Naturally.”
“I wonder.”
“You wonder what?”
“When they catch you, whether you’ll be shot or hanged.”
Ploscaru chuckled, reached into a pocket of his dressing gown, and took out the Swiss passport. He handed it to Jackson. “Page three, I think. A most official-looking entry visa properly stamped by the U.S. Constabulary, which is handling the borders, you know. It cost me two cartons of cigarettes at the DP camp that I spoke of. My cousin, before he left, put me onto a most expert forger there, a Czech. My cousin, I’m sorry to say, dabbles a bit in the black market himself.”
Jackson examined the stamp. “It looks all right.” He handed back the passport. “So you’ve been here awhile?”
“Almost twenty-four hours.”
“Then you must have left Washington just after you saw me off at the station.”
“Baltimore, actually. We flew out of Baltimore. Now tell me, how was your trip?”
“Rotten,” Jackson said. “I was met at the airport by a Lieutenant Meyer. Lieutenant LaFollette Meyer, who’s with the CIC here.”
“The counterintelligence people.”
“Right. Lieutenant Meyer seemed to think that I was going to help him find Kurt Oppenheimer.”
“You disabused him of that notion, I trust.”
“Not completely. Lieutenant Meyer will probably come in handy. I turned mysterious instead.”
Ploscaru nodded judiciously. “Yes, that’s often effective. He’s young, I take it?”
“Twenty-six or so. He gave me a rundown on Oppenheimer. It seems that he’s just killed somebody else.”
“Who?”
“Somebody called Damm. From what Meyer tells me, Damm may have needed killing, but the Army’s getting awfully upset with Oppenheimer. It’s not only the killing that bothers them. It’s also the fact that he’s going around posing as a U.S. Army major.”
“What a wonderful disguise!”
“It fooled Baker-Bates.”
“Dear me. Is he here?”
“Uh-huh. Your old pal. Apparently Oppenheimer braced him at the American officers’ club. They had quite a chat. Oppenheimer even bought him a drink.”
Ploscaru chuckled. “Poor Gilbert must be absolutely livid.”
“They also think that Oppenheimer has a list.”
“A list of what?”
“Of the people that he’s going to kill next.”
Jackson watched as the dwarf slowly lit one of his Old Gold cigarettes. When the cigarette was burning satisfactorily, Ploscaru reached for the drink that Jackson had poured him and took a long swallow. Then he sighed.
“You’ll have to interpret that for me,” Jackson said.
“What?”
“The sigh.”
“It means, I suppose, that instead of the brief respite that I’d hoped for, we must instead be up and doing.”
“Doing what?”
“Why, finding young Oppenheimer, of course.”
“When?”
“We start tomorrow morning.”
“Not tonight?”
Ploscaru frowned, but the wrinkles in his forehead quickly smoothed themselves out. “Oh, I see. You’re joking just a little, aren’t you? You must be terribly tired.”
“You’re right; I am.”
“We’ll get a good sleep tonight, have a nice breakfast tomorrow, and then be off to our appointments.”
“Appointments?”
“Yes, you have one for ten o’clock tomorrow with Leah Oppenheimer. She arrived late yesterday from Paris. A terribly complicated trip, I understand, by train.”
Jackson nodded slowly. “You’re not coming with me?”
“No, I think not. I have my own appointment to keep.”
“What appointment?”
“Why, my appointment at the zoo, naturally.”
It had stopped raining an hour before. From his seat on the bench near the zoo’s pond, Ploscaru watched as the neatly dressed old man took the small cloth bundle from his briefcase. The old man, limping slightly had arrived some five minutes before. He walked with the aid of a heavy cane. For a while, for nearly the full five minutes, he had stood at the edge of the pond, leaning on his cane and gazing out at the ducks.