Philip Kerr - A Quiet Flame

It was my turn to be nervous now. I was looking around for some sign that we might have been observed. A death camp was more than I had bargained for. Much more. “I dunno. Maybe a thousand. Look, we really should leave. Now.”

“Yes, you’re right.” She found a handkerchief and wiped her eye. “Just give me a minute, will you? My aunt and uncle are probably buried in one of these pits.”

“You don’t know that.”

“Can you honestly think of a better explanation?”

“Look,” I said. “The people who are buried here. You don’t know that they’re Jewish. They could be Argentines. Political opponents of the Perons. There’s no reason to suppose-”

“That’s a gas chamber in there,” she said, looking back at the barrack from which we had just emerged. “Isn’t it? Come on, Gunther. You were in the SS. You of all people should be able to recognize one.”

I said nothing.

“I never heard of Peron’s political opponents being gassed,” she said. “Shot, yes. Tossed out of a plane. Yes. But not gassed. Only Jews get gassed. This place. This camp. Is a place of death. That’s why they were brought here. To be gassed. I can feel it. Everywhere. I could feel it in that dummy shower-barrack. I can feel it here, most of all.”

“We have to leave,” I said.

“What?”

“Now. If they catch us here, they’ll kill us for sure,” I said. I took her arm and lifted her up. “I never expected this, angel. Really, I didn’t. I’d never have brought you here if I’d even suspected that it was this kind of place. I thought it might be a concentration camp. But never a death camp. Not that. This is much more than I ever bargained for.”

I took her back to the hole in the fence.

“Christ,” she said, “no wonder this is such a big secret. Can you imagine what might happen if people outside Argentina ever find out about this place?”

“Anna. Listen to me. You have to promise you’ll never mention this. At least not so long as you remain in this country. They’d kill us both, for sure. The quicker we’re away from here, the better.”

Entering the trees again, I started to run. And so did she. At least now, I thought, she had grasped the true gravity of our situation. I threw away the wire cutters. We found the hole we had made in the first, exterior fence. We started running back to where we had left the jeep.

I smelled them first. Or rather, I smelled their cigarettes. I stopped running and turned to face Anna.

“Listen,” I said, holding her by the shoulders. “Do exactly what I say. There are men looking for us on this road.”

“How do you know?”

“Because I can smell their tobacco.”

Anna sniffed the air and then bit her lip.

“Take off your clothes.”

“What are you talking about? Are you mad?”

“Maybe they won’t find the hole we made in the fence.” I was already undressing. “Our best chance is to make them think that we stopped here to make love. That’s the story we’ve got to stick to. If they think that’s all that we were doing, they might just let us go. Come on, angel. Strip.”

She hesitated.

“No one who’s just seen what we’ve just seen would strip and have sex in the woods, now would they?”

“I told you we should have come back and done this in darkness,” she said, and started to undress.

When we were both naked, I wrestled my way between her thighs and said, “Now, sound like you’re enjoying it. As loud as you can.”

Anna moaned loudly. And then again.

I started to thrust my pelvis at her as if not just her sexual satisfaction and mine depended on this charade, but our lives as well.

IWAS STILL thrusting away between Anna’s thighs when I heard a twig break on the forest floor behind me. I twisted around to see some men. None of them were wearing uniforms, but two of them had rifles slung over their shoulders. That was good, I thought. At the same time, I grabbed something with which to cover our nakedness.

There were three of them, and they were dressed for riding. They wore blue shirts, leather vests, denim trousers, riding boots, and spurs. The man without a rifle had a silver belt buckle as big as a breastplate, an ornate-looking gun belt, and over his wrist was looped a short, stiff leather whip. He was more obviously Spanish than his companions, who appeared to be mestizos -local Indians. His face was badly pockmarked, but he had a quiet confidence in his manner that seemed to indicate his scars didn’t matter to him.

“I would ask what you are doing here,” he said, grinning, “only it seems obvious.”

“Is it any business of yours?” I said, dressing quickly.

“This is private property,” he said. “That makes it my business.” He wasn’t looking at me. He was watching Anna put on her clothes, which was almost as pleasurable a sight as watching her take them off.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “We got lost. We stopped to look at the map and then one thing led to another. You know how it is, I expect.” I glanced around. “It seemed like a nice, quiet spot. No one around.”

“You were wrong.”

Then, out of the trees, came a fourth man, riding a fine white horse and very different from the other three. He wore an immaculate white short-sleeved shirt, a black military-style cap, a pair of gray riding breeches, and black boots that were as shiny as the gold watch on his slim wrist. He had a head like a giant bird of prey.

“The fence has been cut,” he told the pockmarked gaucho.

“Not by us,” said Anna.

“Claims they stopped here for a quiet fuck,” said the head gaucho.

Silently, the man on the white horse rode around us while we finished dressing. My holster and gun were still on the ground somewhere, only I hadn’t been able to find them.

He said, “Who are you, and what are you doing in this part of the country?”

His castellano was better than mine. There was something about his mouth that made it better for speaking Spanish. The size and shape of the chin governing the mouth caused me to suspect that maybe there were a couple of Habsburgs in his family. But he was German. That much I was certain of, and instinctively I knew this must be Hans Kammler.

“I work for the SIDE,” I said. “My identification is in my coat pocket.”

I handed the coat to the head gaucho, who quickly found my wallet and handed it to his boss.

“My name is Carlos Hausner. I’m German. I came here to interview old comrades so that they can be issued the good-conduct passes they’ll need to obtain an Argentine passport. Colonel Montalban at the Casa Rosada will vouch for me. So will Carlos Fuldner and Pedro Geller at Capri Construction. I’m afraid we got a bit lost. As I was saying to this gentleman, we stopped to take a look at the map and, I’m afraid, one thing led to another.”

The German on the white horse looked through my wallet and then tossed it back to me before turning his attention to Anna. “And who are you?” he asked.

“His fiancee.”

The German looked at me and smiled. “And you say you’re an old comrade.”

“I was an officer in the SS. Like you, Herr General.”

“It’s that obvious, is it?” The German looked disappointed.

“Only to me, sir,” I said, clicking my heels together and hoping that my show of Prussian obsequiousness might excuse Anna and me.

“A job with SIDE, a fiancee.” He smiled. “My, you have settled in here, haven’t you?” The horse shifted under him and he wheeled it around so that he could keep staring down at us. “Tell me, Hausner. Do you always bring your fiancee along when you’re on police business?”