Robert Fish - The Fugitive

Strauss nodded his head emphatically. “I also know him and I agree. I tried to tell everybody...” His voice trailed into silence under the withering contempt of Monica’s sideways look.

“All right!” Von Roesler was beginning to lose his temper. The madness that ebbed and flowed in him seemed to be at a standstill at the moment. His voice was firm. “So he isn’t a fool! All right!” His voice became gently sarcastic. “You gentlemen seem to know what shouldn’t be done; possibly you might care to express your suggestions as to what should be done!”

Strauss stared stubbornly at the little feathered hat he continued to twist between his fingers. It was clear that he had his ideas but was hesitant to present them. Mathais was not so bashful.

“Certainly,” he said coolly. “It is very simple. We go back to Strauss’s original idea. Which, of course, was the reason I arranged for Herr Busch to come to São Paulo in the first place.” He spread out his hands. “You merely meet with him.”

The explosion they had all been tentatively expecting did not materialize. Von Roesler sat silent, looking from one to the other. Even as they watched he seemed to age a bit, to become a bit smaller, even to shrink a bit into the folds of his bathrobe. When he finally spoke his voice seemed to have even become a bit querulous. They watched this change with amazement.

“It is very easy for you all to talk,” he said, his face beginning to twitch as the madness crept warily back to the edges of his mind. “Meet him! Meet him! But where?” He looked at them craftily. “They are waiting for me to come out of this apartment; don’t you know? They have been waiting for years; I know they have! They almost got Busch, and who is Busch? Nobody! What was Busch ever? Nothing! And yet they almost got Busch.”

“Meet him here,” Mathais said soothingly. “Meet him in this apartment. Then you won’t have to go out.”

“Meet him here?” The crazed voice was scandalized. “Here? Bring him here, when they must be following him every minute, watching every move he makes? Bring him here? Let him lead them to this apartment?”

“If you agree to meet him,” Strauss said in a quiet, reasonable tone, “a meeting place that is safe can easily be arranged.”

The mad eyes swung blindly away from them, wandering tragically along the walls, past the heavily draped windows, over the locked door. “I thought my destiny was always Brazil,” he said, speaking in a soft crooning tone to some hidden corner of his brain, the past beginning to swirl like his pipe smoke through the gossamer web of his thoughts. He giggled. “Safe? What is safe?” The insane laughter faded and he looked at them blankly, through them, beyond them. “You know,” he said conversationally, “I had a map on my desk at Buchenwald, a map of Brazil. I looked at it every day, studied it, pored over it. I thought my destiny was here in Brazil. Here. I was sure that my destiny was here.” He sighed, suddenly weary of it all. “And now I find myself locked in a small room, worse than a prisoner...”

“Your destiny is in Brazil,” Monica said swiftly, quietly, attempting to bring the wandering mind back into focus. “Here in Brazil. Maybe meeting with Herr Busch is that destiny, Erick.”

“And the meeting place is no problem,” Mathais interposed smoothly without a break, not wishing to allow time for the attention of the other to escape back into the nebulous past. “If you don’t want to meet him here in the apartment, I can easily arrange a suite at one of the hotels here in São Paulo.” A gleam of sanity briefly returned. The voice hardened. “Not in São Paulo. I will not meet him in São Paulo.” He leaned forward, appealing to the intelligence of them all. “Don’t you see? They are here in São Paulo. Now. Can’t you understand?”

“A suite at the Mirabelle in Rio, then,” Mathais said equably, calmly. “You will be safe there.”

The gleam once again faded, he seemed to shrink again. “Locked rooms,” he murmured faintly. “Always locked rooms...” He looked up pathetically. “Must I meet with. him?”

“We need the money,” Mathais said quietly.

“We promise you we will arrange a place that is safe from... from... from them,” Strauss added with embarrassment. Monica sat silent, her fingers twisting, her eyes filling with tears.

“Then I will meet with him!” The figure behind the desk seemed to draw strength from the decision. He looked at them all fiercely. “But not in São Paulo. In Rio!” He stood up abruptly; the weak figure that had sat in his place but a moment before had disappeared to be replaced in an instant by the old Erick von Roesler, Colonel in the justly famed and justly feared SD. They watched this metamorphosis in astonished silence.

He turned to Mathais, the old tone of command strong in his voice. “You will arrange it. Consider yourself in command. You will arrange a place that is safe; not indoors, not in any locked room. I leave it to you to arrange.” He turned sharply toward the others, continuing to speak to Mathais. “When all arrangements are completed, you will communicate with Herr Strauss; he will manage to let me know.” He looked at them coldly; it was dismissal. The meeting was over.

Monica saw them out of the apartment, her eyes bright with tears, her thoughts far away. In the automatic elevator, descending slowly, Strauss finally found words. “You know, of course,” he said absently, “the man is mad. Completely mad.” He turned to Mathais as if seeking support.

Mathais smiled at him icily. “Of course.”

“But...”

“But we need the money.” The door opened mechanically, depositing them in a deserted lobby. They stepped out.

“But do you think—” Strauss hesitated for words — “do you think that if he meets with Busch he will... he won’t... that he’ll act all right?” he finished in a rush.

Mathais looked at him. “Von Roesler is the only one who can convince Busch to part with that money. He’ll act all right. He’ll have to!” He turned toward the door, but Strauss caught his arm.

“How will you get Busch to go back to Rio?”

Mathais smiled grimly. “That will be no problem. Leave it to me. We have all wasted too much time trying to be subtle in this entire affair; I’ll simply tell him the man he wants to contact will meet him in Rio on such-and-such a day.”

Strauss still did not seem to be satisfied. “But a meeting place... If it isn’t just right, von Roesler may refuse to go.”

Mathais patted him on the arm reassuringly. “Don’t worry about the meeting place,” he said. “I know just the spot. It will be perfect.”

They pushed through the heavy doors and stepped out into the deserted street. In the distance the faint sounds of continuing Carnival revelers came beating softly on the early morning air.

“At least,” Strauss said vaguely, “Da Silva won’t be around to complicate things.”

“You handled that very well.” Mathais dismissed the subject abruptly, looking at his wrist watch. Strauss caught the hint.

They shook hands briefly. “Auf wiedersehen.”

“Auf wiedersehen ,” Mathais replied. And added, “And don’t worry about the meeting. I know just the place for it. It will be perfect.”

The intoxicating view from the high window of the suite in the Mirabelle Hotel overlooking the ruffled expanse of the ocean front did not seem to have changed at all in his absence. In the far distance the tiny rock islands still broke the even, calm surface of the sea with their pleasantly rounded protuberances; the same bobbing fishing boats seemed to weave on the same hypnotic, undulating waves that washed the beach in front of the hotel veranda. The somnambulant peddlers of ice cream with their gayly striped wagons could have been taken intact from the scene of the week before, pushing the same rickety wagons before them at the same retarded pace along the patterned mosaic sidewalk.