When the Phalange seizes power in a bloody coup a year later, he has made headway: he gets a responsible position with the state police. He is among those who set off in pursuit of Eva-Maria Bach. “I have an account to settle,” is all he explains.
His colleagues understand. “Don’t worry, Gus. When we catch up with her, you can be in charge of the operation. Do whatever you like with her.” They spend months tracking her down. She really gives them the runaround.
But one evening they catch her at last, in a little provincial concert hall in the north of the country. On that day he’s been drinking too much again. He’s not well. He doesn’t enter the hall with the others; he leans against the wall outside. He hears it alclass="underline" the yells, the sound of the piano breaking up.
As she comes out of the hall, astonished to be going free, Eva-Maria Bach sees him lurking in the shadows. Their eyes meet. She thinks he has just saved her. She thinks he gave the order to let her go. How remorseful she feels for her cruelty to him! How generous he is to forgive her! She takes a step toward him, but he stops her from coming any closer with a gesture. She understands: he doesn’t want to compromise himself in front of his colleagues. So she simply says, from a distance, “Thank you.” She finds the strength to smile at him in spite of her terror, in spite of Dora, who is still in the hall, a prisoner, her hand nothing but a mass of crushed flesh. She repeats it, “Thank you.” She is thanking him for herself, but above all for her little daughter. She can be reunited with the child tomorrow and hold her in her arms. “Thank you,” she says.
They push her out into the road, telling her to get out for good. Van Vlyck can’t control the spasms of his stomach anymore. Resting his hands on the dingy wall of the little town hall, he throws up copiously. His vomit soils his boots and pants.
A few hours later, in the car driving through the night toward the capital, he is informed that they have picked up the little girl at her nursemaid’s, and they ask, “What do we do with the child?” He feels his stomach heaving again. By now, no doubt, the dogs will have done their work. He wishes everyone would leave him alone. Would let him sleep. “What do we do with the child?” his colleague persists.
“An orphanage. At the other end of the country. As far away from here as possible,” he replies.
And he knows he has just made a mistake.
The sports hall at the Phalange headquarters was empty at this hour. Van Vlyck unlocked the door and strode along the echoing corridors. The entire locker room was full of the sharp odor of sweating bodies: the air, the leather, and wood all smelled of it. A jacket and pants hung from a hook. With satisfaction, he recognized them as the property of Two-and-a-Half. You always knew where to find him, and it wasn’t in the library.
He changed quickly and crossed the bodybuilding room in an old T-shirt and a well-worn pair of shorts. A regular creaking sound guided him to the opposite window, where a man with an undershot jaw and eyes deeply embedded in their sockets was doing weight-training exercises on a mat. The floorboards beneath the mat were groaning under him. Van Vlyck glanced at the number of disks on each side of the bar and couldn’t hide his astonishment. “You can lift that amount ten times running?”
“Fifteen times,” said the man impassively when he had put the barbell down.
Two-and-a-Half wasn’t as thickset as Van Vlyck and was probably forty-five pounds lighter, but no one could equal him for sheer strength. He said no more than ten words a day, and he didn’t understand jokes. His body was tough and his mind even tougher. His nickname derived from the way he never reached “three” when he threatened someone. “I’ll count up to three,” he would warn, but he had hardly uttered the word “two” before the subject of his threat was dead, killed by a bullet, a knife, or his bare hands. If asked why he did it, why he didn’t at least give the person he was interrogating a chance, he would say, “Dunno. Guess I got no patience.”
Van Vlyck got on the machine next to him and began his own exercises. They carried on together for an hour or more without talking. The two men were different in every way. Van Vlyck grunted and groaned with effort. He seemed to hate the bars or dumbbells he was lifting. He swore at them. Sweat ran down his white skin, seeping into the red hair on his broad chest and massive forearms. He often stopped to drink water and rub himself down with a towel. Two-and-a-Half, on the other hand, worked coldly on. His body stayed dry. He didn’t drink anything. You could hardly hear him breathing, but the enormous weights were raised as regularly as if an indefatigable piston were lifting them.
Afterward they met in the deserted bar of the sports hall.
“A beer?” suggested Van Vlyck.
Two-and-a-Half blinked by way of assent. Van Vlyck went around behind the counter and took the tops off the two bottles himself. They began drinking in silence. Two-and-a-Half examined the contents of his glass with the same vague expression that he directed at other people. Van Vlyck wondered what he was thinking about. He felt uneasy. Was Two-and-a-Half even thinking about anything at all?
“I might have a job for you.”
Two-and-a-Half didn’t move a muscle.
“Information to be pried out of someone who doesn’t like talking. The pay will be good.”
Two-and-a-Half nodded slightly to show that he would take the job.
The wind was sweeping over the dark riverbanks. A few pedestrians, out late, were hurrying home, avoiding the puddles of water. Down on the river itself, gusts of wind turned the rain to hail as it fell, as if throwing handfuls of gravel at it. Night was falling. Two-and-a-Half followed the paved path beside the river like someone out for a stroll. He knew he might be about to kill a man, but that didn’t bother him. Raindrops beat down hard on his umbrella. He crumpled the banknotes in his right-hand jacket pocket. Van Vlyck had given them to him as an advance: half the sum, the rest to be paid when he had extracted the information. It was as good as his already. He passed four bridges without crossing any of them, and stopped at the fifth.
A quick glance was enough to show him that the man he was after wasn’t there. No motorbike chained to the guardrail meant no Mitten. That bike was really the common property of everyone who lived under the Wooden Bridge, but only Mitten was able to ride it. Never mind; he’d wait.
As he waited, he started over the bridge and walked along the wet sidewalk, keeping a tight hold on the umbrella, which threatened to blow away. He hadn’t gone fifty yards before the noisy motorbike, still without lights, appeared at the far end. From a distance its rider, wearing a woolen balaclava, with his shoulders hunched, looked like a large, lumbering insect. He was revving the engine, but the result was pitifuclass="underline" it didn’t respond. Two-and-a-Half watched him coming closer, delighted. He couldn’t have hoped for better working conditions: darkness, no witnesses, the bridge . . .
He waited for Mitten to draw level with him and then gave him a vicious shove. Sent flying, the tramp cried out. The motorbike fell to the ground, went into a skid on the wet pavement, crossed the road, and crashed into the opposite curb. The hot exhaust pipe broke off, skidded on the pavement, and spat out vapor.
“What’s the big idea?” yelled Mitten. “I’ve smashed my kneecap!”
Two-and-a-Half didn’t even close his umbrella. He took the tramp by the front of his jacket with one hand, stood him on his feet, and held him close in a violent grip.
“I’ve smashed my kneecap!” wailed Mitten. “I’m in agony!”
Under the soaked balaclava, his emaciated, bearded face was twisting in pain.
“Let me go! What do you want?”