“No, but he had nothing to leave. His only worldly possessions were the clothes on his back, a watch and some personal papers. The only thing he left was a small gift he’d given me earlier.”
“Do you have that in your possession?”
“I do. It’s inside the rim of the sundial.”
Well, maybe we were getting somewhere. I stumbled through a mound of old books, rubbish and dirty linen and looked inside the sundial; It was there all right, whatever it was, a silver coin or medallion of some sort, the same approximate size and weight as a hundred pfennig piece. I handed it over to Kohler and he cupped it in the palm of his hand, frowning.
“It’s a fifty-cent piece, they haven’t been in circulation since Liberation.”
He turned it over.
“The mint date says 1966. And who the hell is John Fitzgerald Kennedy?”
Connor laughed’ again.
“You wouldn’t know the man, Mr. Kohler. You might ask the Jew when and if you catch up with him.”
“Anybody can forge a coin,” Kohler said. “You’re not going to throw me that easily, Father. Now, where did the Jew tell you he was going?”
“He didn’t.”
“What other friends did he have, what other people could he rely on?”
“No one.”
Kohler sighed.
“All right, Connor. I’m sorry, I really am.”
He opened the pouch and extracted a long gleaming needle. I crouched on the mattress next to the old man and held him while Ed went to work on his fingernails, but he didn’t crack. He screamed a lot, of course, nobody can help that, it’s as involuntary as a muscle spasm. But he didn’t beg. Finally, Ed let him rest a minute, then repeated the questions.
“I really wish there was something I could not tell you, gentlemen,” he said in a labored voice, “it would make withholding it a greater source of satisfaction to me. But then, that would be the sin of pride, I suppose. The punishment is enough, it is cleansing.”
Kohler shrugged and we rolled him over, then pulled his slacks down and inserted the cylindrical tube with the butane torch attachment up his anus. The screams were constant now and if there was anybody in the lofts below they would have been hammering on tie ceiling or calling the cops. Ed stopped it after a minute and let him lie there, gasping for breath, then picked up the bourbon bottle from the floor and pressed it to his lips. Half of it poured over onto his shirt but he must have gotten some down because his eyes spasmed open and he managed to pull himself up against the wall.
“Thank you.” The strong voice was just a raw croak now, barely audible.
Kohler sat next to him and talked quietly.
“This can all stop right now, Connor, and we’ll get you immediate medical attention. All you have to do is tell me where the Jew is and who else is helping him escape.”
The old man made a little noise that could have been a laugh or a sob.
“You always ask all the wrong questions. You never ask me who the Jew is, and that’s all that’s important.”
Kohler leaned closer.
“All right, who is he?”
He started to answer, then collapsed into a fit of wracking coughs. Kohler held up the bottle again and he got the last of it between his lips.
“Tell me who he is, Connor, tell me if it’s so important.”
“This is what I feel, not what I know. I think the Jew is a messenger, an observer.” His voice was raspy, barely audible. “Sometimes history goes wrong, it takes a wrong turning point at some crucial crossroads’ and careens off the rails. The pendulum swings unnaturally far between the polar forces of the universe, between good and evil, yin and yang, negative and positive. The cosmic balance is disrupted, there is a breach in the fabric of time and space and for a second the curtain is parted and the Others peer in, the Others who write our destinies like words in a book.” His voice grew stronger as he spoke, fueled by some inner passion. “This is beyond my own faith, beyond all man’s knowledge perhaps, but I saw it through his eyes, fragments of it, something vast and beautiful and terrifying. Norse mythology glimpsed it vaguely, the Runes, the spinners of Man’s fate, the weavers of the cosmic tapestry. And when there’s a fault, a tear in the tapestry, it’s corrected, just as the last act of a play is rewritten or a painting changed. Somewhere, sometimes, somewhen, the Others will doubt a future of their making and test it and perhaps destroy it, snuffing out a sun, scratching a universe, and starting all over again. And they see us through the eyes of their craftsmanship, sometimes through the eyes of an old Jew from another time and another place’ and another world. And they find us wanting. Wanting.”
He broke into a fit of coughing again, bubbles of blood-flecked foam frothing over his lips, and Ed and I looked at each other in despair.
“He’s clear round the bend now,” I said. “Should we finish it?”
Kohler looked down at the old man.
“Something might come out, even in delirium. We have no choice.”
The coughing had stopped and Connor looked up at us, almost expectantly. Kohler held up a long thin flexible wire.
“If I remember my mythology, priests weren’t overly concerned with their sexual prowess. But you’re still a man. Don’t make me do this.”
“It doesn’t matter,” he whispered. “Get it over with.”
“All you have to do is tell us where the Jew is.”
He said nothing.
“All right, Bill, hold him down.”
Kohler crouched over Connor’s groin.
“Shit, it’s like threading a needle… ah.”
The old man’s body thrashed and heaved and the scream rang in my ears, almost deafening me. Kohler withdrew the wire and bent over, placing his ear close to the old man’s mouth, which was emitting little burbling noises.
“Tell me where the Jew is, Connor, and it’ll all be over. The Jew.”
The words were barely distinguishable, and I leaned close.
“Ed, he’s trying to say something…”
Kohler waved me to silence, listened closely for a moment, then grimaced in disgust.
“Shit, it’s Latin. The old fool’s giving himself the Last Rites. C’mon, hold him down again.”
The wire Reamed briefly in Ed’s hands and then Connor spasmed in my arms. But there was no scream and within seconds the body was limp and still. Kohler checked the pulse, then stood up abruptly and walked over to the card table.
“He’s gone.” He started packing away the instruments. “And we didn’t get a fucking thing except some mystical gibberish. He was telling the truth all right.”
“Let’s get out of here.” The old man had voided his bowels and the place stank like a privy. For some reason I thought of the Blackfight at the Garden, the big buck sizzling on the grid. At the end, all you leave behind is shit.
The fresh air outside tasted good, hot as it was, and we sat in the car for a minute debating what to do next. Unless the Jew walked into our stakeout at the Crib we still were no closer to him than ever.
“I think we’d better brief von Leeb,” Kohler said. “We haven’t got much, but we’ve got something.” He slapped his pants pocket. “Maybe the old boy will spot some significance in this medallion thing. Who knows, maybe it’s in some kind of Jew code.”
The manager at the Adlon spotted us before we were out of the swinging doors and scurried over, an anguished expression on his face.
“A terrible thing, we’ve been in touch with the Mission…”
Kohler and I looked at each other simultaneously.
“We have all his effects here, of course, we’ll hold them for…”
Kohler’s voice was hoarse.
“When did it happen?”