Philip Kerr - A Quiet Flame

“Then I shall tell you. To be a great detective one must also be a protagonist. A dynamic sort of character who makes things happen just by being himself. I think you are this kind of a person, Gunther.”

“In chess, we’d call that a gambit. Usually it involves the sacrifice of a pawn or a knight.”

“Yes. That is quite possible, also.”

I laughed. “You’re an interesting man, Colonel. A trifle eccentric, but interesting. And don’t think I don’t appreciate your confidence in me. Because I do appreciate it. Almost as much as your booze and your cigarettes.” I took his packet and lit another.

“Good. Because I should hate to think you needed a second session of therapy in Caseros.”

It was evening. The shops were closing and the clubs were opening. All over the city people were getting depressed that they were so far away from the rest of the civilized world. I knew how they felt. On one side was the ocean and on the other, the vast emptiness of the pampas. We were all of us surrounded by nothing, with nowhere else to go. Perhaps most people just resigned themselves to that. Just as they had in Nazi Germany. I was different. Saying one thing and thinking another was second nature to me.

“I get the picture, Colonel,” I told him. “I’d click my heels and salute if I wasn’t sitting down.” I sipped some more cognac. “From now on, this horse is wearing blinkers and a tongue strap.” I pointed through the windscreen. “There’s the road ahead and nothing else.” I uttered a wry little laugh, as if I’d learned a hard lesson.

The Colonel seemed pleased by this admission. “Now you’re getting it,” he said. “I’m only sorry that it cost you a shirt to find that out.”

“I can buy a new shirt, Colonel,” I said, still affecting craven acquiescence. “A new skin is harder to come by. You won’t need to warn me again. I’ve no desire to wind up in that morgue of yours. Speaking of which. The girl? Grete Wohlauf. I’m not sure I’ve found her killer. But I certainly found the man who killed those two girls in Germany. And you were right. He’s living here, in Buenos Aires. As I said, I can’t be sure he had anything to do with Grete Wohlauf’s death. Or that he knows anything about Fabienne von Bader. But I wouldn’t be at all surprised, since he’s pursuing the same trade in illegal abortions he was back then. His name is Josef Mengele, but he’s living here as Helmut Gregor. But I expect you already knew that. Anyway, you can read all about it in a statement I persuaded him to write. I have it hidden in my hotel room.”

Colonel Montalban put his hand inside his breast pocket and took out the envelope containing Mengele’s handwritten confession. “Do you mean this statement?”

“It certainly looks like it.”

“Naturally, when you were arrested, we searched your room at the San Martin.”

“Naturally. And I suppose you’re going to destroy that now.”

“On the contrary. I’m going to keep it in a very safe place. There may come a time when it could be very useful.”

“You mean in getting rid of Mengele.”

“He’s small fry. No, I mean in getting rid of Peron. This is a very Catholic country, Herr Gunther. Even an electorate that’s bought and paid for might find it hard to vote for a president who’s used a Nazi war criminal to carry out illegal abortions on juvenile girls with whom he’s been having sex. Of course I hope I shan’t need this statement. But placed somewhere safe, it becomes a very useful insurance policy. For a man such as myself, in a very uncertain profession, it’s the best thing for having job security that there is. For some time now I’ve suspected something like this was going on. Only I couldn’t connect any of it with Peron. That is, until you came along.”

“But how could you possibly know he was the man I was after in 1932?” I asked. “I’ve only just worked it out myself.”

“A month or two after Mengele arrived in Argentina, a box of papers arrived from Germany addressed to Helmut Gregor, here in Buenos Aires. These were Mengele’s own research files from his time at the Race and Resettlement Office in Berlin, and at Auschwitz. It seems that the doctor was unwilling to part with his life’s work and, reasoning that he was safe here, he had all of his papers shipped on to him from someone in his hometown of Gunzburg. Not just his research files. There was also an SS file and a Gestapo file. For some reason, his Gestapo file contained your KRIPO files. The ones I gave to you when you first started working for me. It would seem that someone tried to reopen the Schwarz case during the war. Tried and failed, because someone higher up in the SS was protecting him. An SS colonel called Kassner, who had also worked for I. G. Farben. Anyway, Mengele never received any of his papers. He believes they were destroyed when a cargo hold in the ship bringing them from Germany was accidentally flooded. In fact, the files were intercepted by my men.

“Before they came into my hands, I had had my suspicions about who Helmut Gregor really was. And that he was carrying out illegal abortions here in Buenos Aires. I suspected Peron was sending him young girls he’d impregnated. But I couldn’t prove anything. I didn’t dare. Not even when one of Peron’s fruta inmadura -that’s what he calls his younger girlfriends-turned up dead. Her name was Grete Wohlauf. And she had died from an infection sustained during an abortion procedure. When Mengele’s papers turned up, I realized that he had been the man you were looking for. And I decided to awaken your interest in the case in a way that might be to my advantage. So I had the pathologist mutilate her in order to prick your curiosity.”

“But why didn’t you just level with me?”

“Because it didn’t suit my purpose. Mengele is protected by Peron. You managed to sidestep that protection. I couldn’t do what you have done. Not and keep Peron’s confidence. As you said yourself, you were my gambit, Herr Gunther. When I heard that Peron’s men had arrested you and taken you to Caseros, I was able to exercise some influence in another quarter and have you released. But not before teaching you a lesson. As I’ve told you before, asking questions about Directive Eleven is not a good idea.”

“That much I know. And Fabienne von Bader? Is she really missing?”

“Oh, yes. Have you found any trace of her?”

“No. But I’m beginning to understand why she’s disappeared. Her father has part control of the Reichsbank’s Swiss bank accounts, and the Perons are keen to get their hands on that money. It’s my guess that the von Baders have hidden her for her own protection. So that the Perons can’t use the girl to make her father do what they want him to do. Something like that, anyway.”

The colonel smiled. “As always, it’s a little bit more complicated than that.”

“Oh? How much more complicated?”

“I think you’re about to find out.”

THE COLONEL DROVE past the Ministry of Labor, where, as usual, a long line of people was already waiting to see Evita, and then around the corner, where he stopped the car in front of an anonymous-looking door.

I’d been turning over in my mind what he’d told me about Mengele. And as we got out of the car, I told him I thought I’d probably wasted a lot of time speaking to old comrades, which, with a little careful direction from him, could have been more usefully spent elsewhere.

“We have a saying, ‘It takes more than one dead mouse to make a good cat.’ ” In front of the door, he took a bunch of keys out of his pocket, unlocked it, and then ushered me inside. “When I intercepted Mengele’s private papers, it reminded me of how little we actually know about all the ex-Nazis who have come to Argentina. Peron may care nothing about what any of you did during the war, but that could hardly be good enough for me. After all, it’s my job to know about people. So I decided it was high time that we started gathering intelligence on all our ‘guest workers.’ I decided that you were our best means of obtaining it.”