Philip Kerr - The Shot

Helmut Gregor feared the sound of his real name as another man might fear the name of his worst enemy. But thanks to the generous support of his family and the agricultural business that continued to thrive in Günzberg, Bavaria, he managed to live very comfortably in Buenos Aires. An old but attractive capital — it is a well-named city of good airs — Buenos Aires has many fine boulevards and an excellent opera house, and on a cool July afternoon in 1960, the middle-aged German doctor could still think himself in his beloved Vienna, before the war — before the defeat of Germany had necessitated such a protracted period of exile. For almost ten years he had resided in a quiet country house in the predominantly English suburb of Temperley. At least he had until now. After what had happened to Adolf Eichmann, Helmut Gregor considered it safer to move into the city centre. And until he could find a suitable apartment in the microcentro , he was currently staying at the elegant and modern City Hotel.

Other old comrades, alarmed by the audacity of the kidnapping — Eichmann had been snatched from his own house in San Fernando by Israeli intelligence agents and spirited away to Jerusalem — had fled across the Rio de la Plata to Uruguay and the city of Montevideo. The cooler Helmut Gregor, noting the world’s condemnation of Israel’s violation of international law and the possibility that the Israeli embassy in Argentina might be forced to close down — not to mention the rather satisfying wave of anti-Semitic violence that had recently occurred in Buenos Aires as a result of the illegal Israeli action — had reasoned that in all probability Buenos Aires was now the safest city in all of South America. For him and others like him, at any rate. There seemed little chance of the same thing happening to Helmut Gregor as had happened to Eichmann. Especially now that sympathetic friends in the right-wing Argentinian government had arranged for him to have twenty-four-hour police protection. It was Gregor’s opinion that by living in the middle of nowhere and lacking the kind of money that would have bought some protection, Adolf Eichmann had made it easy for his Israeli enemies. Even so, he had to admit that the Jews had carried off the operation with considerable flair. But he did not think they would, or could, snatch him from the biggest hotel in Buenos Aires.

Not that he stayed skulking indoors all day. Far from it. Like Vienna, Buenos Aires is a city made for walking, and like the ancient capital of Austria it boasts some excellent coffee houses. So every afternoon, at around three o’clock, and accompanied by the melancholic, swarthy-featured policeman who was his afternoon bodyguard — but for the man’s piercing blue eyes, Gregor would have said he looked more gypsy than Spanish — the German doctor would take a brisk walk to the Confiteria Ideal.

With its elaborate brass fittings, marble columns, and, in the late afternoons, an organist who played a medley of waltzes and tangos, the Ideal café, just off Corrientes, seemed a perfect evocation of old Austrian Gemütlichkeit . After drinking his usual cortado doble and eating a slice of delicious chocolate cake, and having closed the cold dark eyes that had seen his own hands inflict a whole Malabolgia of horrors, it was quite possible for the doctor to imagine himself back in Vienna’s Central Café on Herrengasse, anticipating a night at the Staatsoper or the Burgtheater. For a while anyway, until it was time to go. As he and his bodyguard collected their coats and left the Ideal at the usual time of a quarter to five, it would have been quite impossible for Helmut Gregor to have imagined himself in any way worse off than Adolf Eichmann. And yet he was. It would be another twenty-three months before Eichmann would meet the hangman in Ramleh Prison. But judgement was rather closer to hand for the doctor. Even as he was leaving the Ideal, one of the waiters, himself a Jew — of whom there are a great many in Buenos Aires — had ignored the doctor’s generous tip and was calling the Continental Hotel.

‘Sylvia? It’s me. Moloch is on his way.’

Sylvia replaced the hotel room’s telephone receiver and nodded at the tall American who was lying on the big bed. He threw aside the new Ian Fleming he had been reading, stubbed out his cigarette, and, having climbed up on top of the large mahogany wardrobe, adopted a prone position. Sylvia did not think this behaviour eccentric. Rather, she admired him for the efficient professional way he approached his task. Admired him, but feared him too.

The Continental Hotel, on Roque Saenz Pena, was a classic Italian-style building, but it reminded the American most of the Flatiron building in New York. The room was on the fifth-floor corner and through the open, double-height window he could see right up the street to the corner of Suipacha, a distance of over one hundred and fifty yards. The wardrobe creaked a little as he leaned toward the Winchester rifle that was already carefully positioned there between a couple of pillows. He always disliked poking a rifle out of an open window, preferring the comparative anonymity of a makeshift marksman’s platform constructed inside the shooting position. Moving the wardrobe away from the wall by six or seven feet had created the perfect urban hide, rendering him virtually undetectable from the street or the office building opposite. Now all he had to worry about was the unsuppressed noise of the .30-calibre rifle when he squeezed the trigger. But even that, he hoped, had been taken care of: Sylvia was already signalling to a car parked on the other side of the street. The black De Soto, a popular car in Buenos Aires, was old and battered, with a tendency to backfire and, seconds later, there came a report, as loud as any rifle shot, that scattered the seagulls and pigeons on the ledge outside the window like a handful of giant-sized confetti.

Not much of a ruse, thought the American, but it was better than nothing. And anyway, BA wasn’t like his hometown of Miami where the locals weren’t much used to the sound of firecrackers, or gunfire. Here there were plenty of public holidays, always celebrated at maximum volume, with cherry bombs and starting pistols, not to mention the odd revolution. It was only five years since the Argentinian air force had strafed the main square of the city during the military coup that had overthrown Peron. Loud bangs and explosions were a way of life in Buenos Aires. And sometimes death.

Sylvia collected a pair of field binoculars and stood with her back against the wardrobe, immediately underneath the barrel of the rifle. More powerful than the 8X Unertl scope mounted on the American’s rifle, the binoculars were to help her ensure that among the many pedestrians who passed along the length of Roque Saenz Pena, the target was properly spotted and a kill detected. Sylvia glanced at her watch as, in the street outside, the De Soto backfired once again.

Even with some cotton wool in her ears to stop her being deafened when the American finally pulled the trigger, the echo-chamber effect of the backfire between the tall buildings of Cangallo and Roque sounded more like a bomb going off.

Having achieved a solid body position, the American took hold of the rifle butt with his non-shooting hand and pressed it firmly against his shoulder. Next, he clasped the grip, slid his forefinger through the trigger guard, and positioned his cheek against the smooth wooden stock. Only then did he check the eye relief through the scope. The sight was already zeroed, following an uncomfortable three-hundred-and-fifty-mile round trip the previous weekend, to the valley of the Azul River, where the American had shot several wild goats. But even with a correctly boresighted rifle, this promised to be a much more difficult target to hit than a goat. There was a considerable amount of traffic along Roque Saenz Pena and across Cangallo, to say nothing of the confusing effect of the ancient seaport’s many crosswinds. As if to confirm the difficulty of sniping in an urban environment, a colectivo — one of the red Mercedes buses that served the city — obscured his practice view through the scope just as he had been positioning the cross-hairs of the reticle on an old porteño’s wide-brimmed hat.