Mario Puzo - Six Graves To Munich

Eric snarled, “We made the trunk of that car an air-sealed chamber. We’ll suffocate. You plan to kill us anyway.”

“I’ve had special air holes drilled into the trunk since then,” Rogan said blandly.

Eric spat on the floor. He made a sudden grab for Rosalie and held her in front of him. But the drug had so weakened him that Rosalie easily twisted out of his grasp. And as she wrenched free one of her long painted fingernails went into Eric’s eye. He screamed and held his hand to his left eye. Rosalie stepped out of the line of fire.

Up to this moment Rogan had controlled his anger. Now his head began to throb with familiar pain. “You dirty bastard,” he said to Eric. “You put down as little information as possible. You didn’t tell me it was Klaus von Osteen who killed my wife. And I’m willing to bet you helped him. Now you don’t want to get into the trunk of the car because you think I’m going to kill you. All right, you son of a bitch. I’m going to kill you right now. Right here in the hotel room. I’m going to beat you to a bloody pulp. Or maybe I’ll just blow your head off.”

It was Hans who brought peace. Almost tearfully, through his puffed and bloody lips, he said to his brother, “Be calm, do what the American wishes us to do. Don’t you see he has gone mad?”

Eric Freisling looked searchingly at Rogan’s face. “Yes,” he said then. “I will do what you wish.”

Rogan stood very still. Rosalie came up beside him and touched him as if to bring him back to sanity. And his terrible anger began to subside. He said to her, “You know what you have to do after we leave?”

“Yes.”

Rogan herded the two brothers out of the room and down the back stairs of the hotel. He kept the gun in his pocket. When they went out of the rear entrance that led to the parking lot, Rogan whispered directions until they came to where the Mercedes was parked. Rogan made them kneel in the gravel at his feet while he unlocked the trunk. Eric got into it first, awkwardly, the drug still affecting his movements. He gave Rogan a last distrustful look. Rogan pushed him to the floor. As Hans crawled into the spacious trunk his mouth tried to form a smile; it was an obscene leer because of his smashed lips and fragmented teeth. He said meekly, humbly, “You know, I’m glad this happened. All these years what we did to you has been on my conscience. I think it will be very good for me, psychologically, to be punished.”

“Do you really think so?” Rogan said politely, and slammed the trunk lid down over them.

Rogan drove the Mercedes around Berlin for the next coup drove the Mercedes around Berlin for the next couple of hours. He made sure a supply of air was going through the rubber hosing and into the trunk. This was to give Rosalie time to do her part. She had to go down to the hotel ballroom, where she would drink, flirt, and dance with the unattached men so that later everyone would remember her having been there. This would give her an alibi.

Near midnight Rogan pulled the wire attached to the steering wheel. This would cut off the air and feed carbon monoxide into the trunk. In thirty minutes or less the Freisling brothers would be dead. Rogan now drove toward the Berlin railway station.

But after fifteen minutes Rogan stopped the car. He had intended to kill them as they had tried to kill him in the Munich Palace of Justice, without warning and still hoping for freedom. He had meant to slaughter them like animals, but he could not.

He got out of the car, went around to the back, and banged on the trunk lid. “Hans… Eric,” he called. He didn’t know why he used their first names, as if they had become friends. He called out again, in a low urgent voice, to warn them they were going into the eternal darkness of death, so that they could compose whatever souls they had, say whatever prayers possible to make themselves ready for the black void. Again he banged on the trunk, louder this time, but there was no answer. He realized suddenly what must have happened. In their drugged condition they had probably died shortly after Rogan had switched to the carbon monoxide. To make sure that they were dead and not shamming, Rogan unlocked the trunk and raised the lid.

Evil they had been, no loss to the world, but in their last moments they had found some spark of humanity. In their final agony the two brothers had turned to each other and died in each other’s arms. Their faces had lost all slyness and cunning. Rogan stared at them for a long time. It was a mistake, he thought, to have killed them together. Accidentally, he had been merciful.

He locked the trunk and drove on to the railway station. He swung the car into the vast car park, filled with thousands of vehicles, and parked it in the section he thought most likely to remain filled, near the east entrance. Then he got out of the Mercedes and started toward his hotel. As he walked he let the keys to the Mercedes slip out of his hand and into the gutter.

He walked all the way back to the hotel, and so it was nearly three in the morning before he let himself into his hotel suite. Rosalie was waiting up for him. She brought him a glass of water to take with his pills, but Rogan could feel the blood pounding in his head, louder and louder. The familiar sickish, sweet taste was in his mouth, and then he felt the fearsome spinning vertigo, and he was falling… falling… falling…

It was three days before Rogan became conscious of his surroundings. He was still in the hotel suite, lying in his bed, but the bedroom had the antiseptic smell of a hospital. Rosalie was hovering over him, instantly at his side when she saw he was awake. Peering over her shoulder was a peevish-faced man with a beard who resembled the comical German doctor in films.

“Ah”-the doctor’s voice was a harsh voice-“you have finally found your way back to us. Fortunate, very fortunate. Now I must insist you go to the hospital.”

Rogan shook his head. “I’m OK here. Just give me a prescription for some more of my pills. No hospital is going to help me.”

The doctor adjusted his spectacles and stroked his beard. Despite the facial camouflage he looked young, and he was obviously disturbed by Rosalie’s beauty. Now he turned to scold her. “You must give this fellow some peace. He is suffering from nervous exhaustion. He must have complete rest for at least two weeks. Do you understand me?” The young doctor angrily tore a sheet from his prescription pad and handed it to her.

There was a knock on the door of the hotel suite, and Rosalie went to answer it. The American Intelligence agent Bailey came in, followed by two German detectives. Bailey’s long Gary Cooper face was sour. “Where’s your boyfriend?” he asked Rosalie. She nodded toward the bedroom door. The three men moved toward it.

“He’s sick,” Rosalie said. But the three men went into the bedroom.

Bailey did not seem surprised to find Rogan in bed. Neither did he seem to have any sympathy for the sick man. He looked down at Rogan and said flatly, “So you went ahead and did it.”

“Did what?” Rogan asked. He was feeling fine now. He grinned up at Bailey.

“Don’t bullshit me,” Bailey snapped angrily. “The Freisling brothers have disappeared. Just like that. They left their gas station closed; their stuff is still in their apartment; their money is still in the bank. That means only one thing: They’re dead.”

“Not necessarily,” Rogan said.