With her smile still in place, Leah Oppenheimer said, “So we meet again in yet another country, Mr. Jackson.”
“So it would seem,” he said, wondering whether she had planned the slightly stagey remark beforehand or whether it had just come naturally. He couldn’t quite decide which he preferred. Either way it reminded him of her wretched prose style.
“You have already met my friend, Fräulein Scheel.”
“Yes.”
“Do sit down, Mr. Jackson. Once more, you are just in time for tea,”
Jackson chose a spindly-looking chair upholstered in maroon velvet whose legs ended in serpent’s heads. Each serpent’s mouth was wide open and in it was clutched a glass ball. He noticed that the rest of the furniture in the room was just as awful. Eva Scheel chose a similar chair closer to the tea table.
The Oppenheimer woman made her usual ritual out of serving the tea. “Although we have no heat,” she said, “the electricity was on for two hours just before you came, so we managed to boil some water for tea.”
Because he couldn’t think of anything else to say, Jackson said that that was nice.
“Remember those delicious little cakes that we had in the hotel in Mexico, Mr. Jackson?”
Jackson said he remembered.
“Well, I’m afraid we’ll have none of those or anything like them this time because of my stupidity. It would have been so easy for me to bring some things from Mexico City. But fortunately, Fräulein Scheel has come up with a solution.”
Jackson couldn’t bring himself to ask what the solution was, so he merely smiled in what he hoped was a polite and interested way.
“The solution,” Eva Scheel said in a dry tone, “consists of some delicately sliced sweets called Milky Ways, courtesy of the American Army.”
“Eva has an American friend, a young officer,” Leah said, handing Jackson his cup of tea. “He seems like a very nice young man. I met him last night. His name is Meyer. Lieutenant Meyer.”
Over the rim of his cup, Jackson eyed Eva Scheel with new interest. Well, what have we here? he wondered. A nice little German girl dying to get to America, or something else? Something else, he decided after trying to visualize Eva Scheel in bed with Lieutenant Meyer, which was a game he often played. For some reason, the Scheel-Meyer combination just didn’t work. He also had to decide quickly whether to mention that he had already met Lieutenant Meyer. If you don’t, it’ll be a silent lie that could complicate things. One of Jackson’s few personal rules was never to lie if the truth would do.
“Would that be Lieutenant LaFollette Meyer from Milwaukee?” he said, and hoped that the smile on his face was a winning one.
“Do you know him?” Leah said.
“We met yesterday at the airport. Lieutenant Meyer is very much interested in your brother — in an official sort of way.”
Leah Oppenheimer nodded sadly. “Yes, I know. He had many questions for me last night, most of which I could not answer. Isn’t it terrible — all those people?”
“You mean the dead ones?”
“Yes.”
“That your brother’s killed?”
“I did not know. During the war I knew that he had to do awful things. But now...” She shook her head. “He must be terribly ill. That’s why we must find him, Mr. Jackson: so that we can get him proper medical treatment.”
She was lying, Jackson realized, about not having known that her brother was something more than a harmless scamp, but he decided to let it pass because, again, it was simpler that way.
“You think they’ll let you do that?” he said.
“What do you mean?”
“There are three governments looking for your brother — the Americans, the British, and the Russians — or so I’ve been told: about the Russians, I mean. What I’m saying is do you think that they’ll simply let you spirit your brother away to some nice quiet sanitarium and then forget about all those people he’s killed?”
Eva Scheel rose, picked up a plate, and offered it to Jackson. “Have some Milky Ways, Mr. Jackson; they really go quite nicely with tea.”
The candy bars had been sliced into quarter-inch-thick pieces and arranged with a great deal of care on the plate. Although Jackson wasn’t overly fond of candy, he took one, smiled his thanks, and popped it into his mouth. She’s giving her friend time to think, he thought as he watched Eva Scheel put the plate back on the table, resume her seat, and start stroking the collar of her fur coat as though she found it comforting.
“The Russians,” Leah said in almost a whisper. “I did not know about the Russians.” She looked at Jackson and then at Eva Scheel. “Why would the Russians...?” She didn’t finish her question.
Eva Scheel shrugged and looked at Jackson. “Perhaps Mr. Jackson would know.”
“I can only guess,” he said.
Leah nodded. “Please.”
“Oil.”
“Oil?”
“And politics. In the Middle East or Near East or whatever you want to call it, they’re all mixed up. The United States doesn’t have any Middle East policy — at least, none that’s discernible. The Russian policy is quite obvious. They want to move the British out so they can move in. Right now they’re tilting toward the Arabs, because they’re smart enough to realize that you can’t be at odds with the Arabs in Palestine without its reverberating throughout the rest of the Moslem world — and that means Saudi Arabia and Bengal and Malaya and North Africa and the Dardanelles; not to mention those sections of Russia which are also Islamic. Your brother, ill or not, is a very good killer. The Russians could drop him in almost any place where things are in a state of flux — Iran, for example, or Iraq — and if your brother took out just the right person or persons, then the resulting mess could be all the excuse that the Russians would need to move in.”
“What an interesting theory,” Eva Scheel said with a smile that was almost polite. “A bit farfetched, but interesting.”
“Then there’s Palestine,” Jackson said.
“What about Palestine?” Eva Scheel said.
Jackson looked at Leah Oppenheimer. “Your brother’s politics are a bit strange. Do you think he’s still a Communist?”
She shook her head. “I have no way of knowing.”
“Let’s say that he is. Let’s even say, for the sake of argument, that he’s the fervent kind. Now suppose the Russians were able to hand the Palestinians a top-notch killer who was also a renegade Jew who could pass as an American or an Englishman — or a German refugee. Don’t you think the Palestinians might make good use of him — perhaps even infiltrate him into the Irgun or the Stern Group?”
Leah Oppenheimer shook her head vigorously. “That’s ridiculous.”
“Is it?”
“My brother could never be anyone’s paid assassin.”
“Nobody really knows what your brother is — or what he could be, given sufficient incentive. Right now he’s killing bad Germans, or thinks he is. I don’t really think that bothers the Americans or the British or the Russians too much, not as long as he just keeps on killing those who’re really rotten. But there’s no percentage in it — at least, not for the Russians or the Americans or the British. Right now his talents, such as they are, are being wasted. Any one of the three could use him somewhere else — and right now the Middle East seems the most likely spot.”
“I’m surprised that you included the Americans, Mr. Jackson,” Eva Scheel said.
“Why?”
“I thought they would be too... well, pure.”
“We lost our purity during the war. Like virginity, once you lose it, you never get it back.”