To my surprise, one of them stopped and stared at me. I stared back. I never forget a face and I wished I’d forgotten this one, but his name still eluded me. He spoke to me in German.
“Gunther, isn’t it?”
“Not me,” I said, in German. “My name is Wolf, Walter Wolf.”
The man turned to his friends. “I’ll catch you up,” he said, and sat down.
After they’d gone away, he offered me a cigarette, which I declined, and waved the bar owner over. “What are you drinking, Herr Wolf?”
“Schnapps,” I said.
“Two schnapps,” he said. “Better bring the bottle. Make it the good stuff, if you have any.” He lit a cigarette and smiled. “I seem to remember you have a taste for schnapps.”
“Your memory is better than mine, I’m afraid. You have the advantage of me, Herr—”
“Leuthard. Ueli Leuthard.”
I nodded.
The bar owner came back with a bottle of good Korn and two glasses and left them on the table.
“The last time we did this was in July 1942.” Leuthard poured two glasses. “In the Tiergarten. Don’t you remember, now? You’d stolen the bottle and the glasses from the Villa Minoux in Wannsee. I was impressed with your enterprise. But I was young then.”
“Now I come to think of it, I do kind of remember. That was the night you smashed a man’s head in with a bust of Hitler, wasn’t it? Heckholz. Dr. Heckholz. That was his name.”
“I knew you’d remember.”
“What was it made you kill him anyway?”
“Does it really matter now?”
“No. I suppose not.”
Leuthard looked somber for a moment. “Believe me, I’m not proud of killing him. Frankly, it’s bothered me ever since. But it had to be done. I had my orders. My general told me to shut Heckholz up for good and so that’s what I did. I’d have shot him if I’d been allowed to carry a gun in Germany, but I wasn’t, so I was forced to improvise. And look here, it was wartime, after all. Even for Switzerland. We may not have been at war but it wasn’t for want of Germany’s desire to take over our country. So, I had to kill him. It would have been embarrassing for the Swiss government if it had been generally known how much business we did with the German government and, in particular, the SS. Not to say compromising, diplomatically. Our neutrality was at stake.”
“I’m sure I don’t care. No, really. It’s none of my business. It was the war. Really, that’s all that needs to be said about it.”
“Did you change your name because you were SS? I mean, let’s be honest, Gunther. I bet you have a past, too, right?”
“No, that wasn’t the reason. But you’re right. I have a past. There’s quite a bit of it, actually. And each year it seems there’s just a little bit more of that than there is a future, perhaps.”
“I heard how you figured it was me who killed that lawyer. Paul Meyer told me. That was clever of you.”
“Not really. How is he? Your friend Meyer.”
“Still writing books. But we were never really friends. He was pretty pissed about what happened that night.”
“I liked him.”
“He liked you. And your friend — that dyed-in-the-wool Nazi, General Schellenberg.”
“That Nazi helped to save Switzerland, too.”
“Really?” Leuthard looked less than convinced by this argument but I didn’t feel much inclined to argue Schellenberg’s case. “I read somewhere that he was dead, didn’t I?”
“That’s right. Four years ago.”
“He couldn’t have been much more than forty.”
“Forty-two. He had a liver condition. The same one I’ve got, I imagine. It’s the one you get when you keep using your liver to process very large quantities of alcohol.”
“Talking of which.” Leuthard raised his glass. “What shall we drink to?”
“How about absent friends?”
“Absent friends.”
We drank and then Leuthard poured two more.
“What are you doing these days?” he asked.
“I work at a hotel round here.”
“Is it a good one? I speak as someone who would prefer to sleep on land tonight.”
“Not really. Fortunately for you it’s just closed for the winter, which saves us both the trouble of my recommendation, which would be untruthful.”
“That’s my yacht on the pontoon.”
“Yes, I saw it dock. Very impressive. I didn’t see the name.”
“The Zaca. It’s very nice but the beds are a little hard. I’m going to have to have them replaced. Either that or get myself a new yacht. You used to work at another hotel, didn’t you? The Hotel Adlon, wasn’t it? In Berlin?”
I nodded. “That’s right. I was the house detective. I tried running a hotel myself after the war but it didn’t work out.”
“Oh? What went wrong?”
“It was in the wrong place. For a hotel that’s always more important than you think it is.”
“It’s a tough business. Especially in winter. I should know, I run a hotel myself. It belongs to someone else. But I help to run the place. The Grand Hôtel du Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat. Perhaps you’ve heard of it.”
I smiled. “Everyone on the Riviera has heard of the Grand Hôtel du Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat. That’s like asking a German if they’ve heard of Konrad Adenauer.”
“As a matter of fact, he stayed with us, last summer.”
“I wouldn’t expect anything else of a good Christian Democrat.”
“What else have you heard? About the hotel, I mean?”
“That it’s the best on the Côte d’Azur.”
“You don’t rate the Pavillon Eden-Roc in Cap d’Antibes as highly? Or any of the others as much?”
“The Pavillon has a bigger swimming pool, but the service lets it down and the décor is a little tired. And maybe they’re a little inflexible with credit. The Grand in Cap Martin isn’t doing so well right now; rumor has it that the whole hotel is going to close and become apartments before very long. The rumor’s true, by the way. Being right on the main road, the Carlton in Cannes is too noisy, and so is the Majestic. Not only that but people can see into the rooms with a sea view when guests leave the French windows open, which isn’t very private for more famous guests. The Negresco in Nice has the best barman on the Riviera but the new chef isn’t working out. I hear he drinks. The Hôtel de Paris in Monaco is full of crooks and Americans — the crooks follow the Americans, so you’d better watch your purse — and much too expensive for what it is. It’s no accident that Alfred Hitchcock chose to base much of his very colorful film in that hotel. You’ll find more thieves working in the restaurant than in the casino. Fifty francs for an omelette is pushing it, even for the Riviera. No, if it was my money and I had enough of it, I’d stay at your hotel. But I’d still ask for a winter rate.”
Leuthard smiled. “And here? Where would you stay round here?”