Ira Levin - Boys from Brazil

“What the hell is this about? No Nazi is after me. You’ve got the wrong Henry Wheelock.”

“Is there another in New Providence who raises Dobermans? Sixty-five years old, a wife much younger, a son almost fourteen?”

Silence.

“You need protection,” Liebermann said. “And the Nazi has to be captured, not killed by dogs.”

“I’ll believe it when the F.B.I. tells me. I’m not going to have any Jew kids with baseball bats around.”

Liebermann was silent for a moment. “Mr. Wheelock,” he said, “could I come see you on my way to Washington? I’ll explain a little more.” Gorin looked questioningly at him; he looked away.

“Come ahead if you want to; I’m always here.”

“When is your wife not there?”

“She’s away most of the day. She teaches.”

“And the boy is in school too?”

“When he’s not playing hooky to make movies. He’s going to be the next Alfred Hitchcock, he thinks.”

“I’ll be there around noon tomorrow.”

“Suit yourself. But just you . I see any ‘Jewish Defenders’ around, I let the dogs loose. You got a pencil? I’ll give you directions.”

“I have them,” Liebermann said. “I’ll see you tomorrow. And I hope tonight you stay home.”

“I was planning to.”

Liebermann hung up.

“I have to tell him it involves the adoption,” he told Gorin, “and it’s better if he can’t hang up on me.” He smiled. “I also have to convince him the Y.J.D. isn’t ‘Jew kids with baseball bats.’” To Greenspan he said, “You’ll have to wait someplace there and then I’ll call you.”

“I have to go to Philadelphia first,” Greenspan said. “To pick my men and get my equipment.” To Gorin he said, “I want to take Paul along.”

They worked things out. Greenspan and Paul Stern would go to Philadelphia in Stern’s car as soon as they could get packed, and Liebermann would drive Greenspan’s car to New Providence in the morning. When he had persuaded Wheelock to accept Y.J.D. protection, he would call Philadelphia and the team would drive out and meet him at Wheelock’s home. Once things were settled there, he would drive on to Washington, keeping Greenspan’s car till the F.B.I. relieved the team. “I should call my office,” he said, stirring tea. “They think I’m there already.”

Gorin gestured at the phone.

Liebermann shook his head. “No, not now, it’s too late there. Early in the morning I’ll call.” He smiled. “I won’t stick the Y.J.D.”

Gorin shrugged. “I’m on the phone to Europe all the time,” he said. “Our chapters there.”

Liebermann nodded thoughtfully. “The contributors went from me to you.”

“I suppose some did,” Gorin said. “But the fact that we’re sitting here together, working together, proves that they’re still helping the same cause, doesn’t it?”

“I guess so,” Liebermann said. “Yes. Sure.”

Later he said, “Wheelock’s boy doesn’t paint pictures. It’s 1975; he makes movies.” He smiled. “But he picked himself the right initials. He wants to be another Alfred Hitchcock. And the father, the civil servant, doesn’t think it’s such a good idea. Hitler and his father had big arguments about his wanting to be an artist.”

Mengele had gone across the street early Wednesday morning and taken a room at another hotel, the Kenilworth, registering as Mr. Kurt Koehler of 18 Sheridan Road, Evanston, Illinois. He had been asked, fairly enough, to pay in advance, since all he carried was a slim leather portfolio (papers, knife, clips for the Browning, diamonds) and a small paper bag (grapes).

He couldn’t call Liebermann’s office from the room of Sr. Ramón Aschheim y Negrín, for after Liebermann’s death the calls from Koehler might well be checked into, nor did he especially care to gather seven dollars’ worth of coins and spend an hour blackening his thumb as he fed them into a booth phone. And as Kurt Koehler he could receive a return call, should one be necessary.

In his second room ( no tenths of a star) he had reached Fräulein Zimmer and explained to her that he had flown from New York to Washington, sending Barry’s body on its way unescorted, because of the overriding importance of getting the poor boy’s notes—even more significant than he had originally realized—into Herr Liebermann’s hands as quickly as possible. But where, pray tell, was Herr Liebermann?

Not at the Benjamin Franklin? Fräulein Zimmer had been surprised but not alarmed. She would call Mannheim and see what she could find out. Perhaps Herr Koehler might try some other hotels, though why Herr Liebermann should have gone elsewhere she couldn’t imagine. No doubt he would call in soon; he usually did when he changed his plans. ( Usually! ) Yes, she would call Herr Koehler as soon as she had information. At the Kenilworth, kind Fräulein; the Benjamin Franklin had been full when he arrived. But holding a room for Herr Liebermann, of course.

By the time she had called back he had called more than thirty hotels, and the Benjamin Franklin six times.

Liebermann had left Frankfurt on his intended flight Tuesday morning; so he was either in Washington or had stopped off in New York.

“Where does he stay there?”

“Sometimes the Hotel Edison but usually with friends, contributors. He has a lot of them there. It’s a big Jewish city, you know.”

“I know.”

“Don’t worry, Herr Koehler; I’m sure I’ll hear soon and I’ll tell him you’re waiting. I’m staying here late, just in case.”

He called the Edison in New York, more hotels in Washington, the Benjamin Franklin every half-hour; dashed back there through freezing rain to make sure his clothes and suitcase were still in his Do Not Disturb -signed room.

He slept Wednesday night at the Kenilworth. Tried to sleep. Grew depressed. Thought of the gun on the bedside table…Did he really expect to get Liebermann and the other men still to be killed (seventy-seven of them!) before being killed himself? Or even worse, captured and made to endure the kind of hideous mock-trial that had befallen poor Stangl and Eichmann? Why not end all the struggling, planning, worrying?

He found, at one in the morning on American television—and surely this was God’s doing, a sign sent to raise him from despair—glorious film of the Führer and General von Blomberg watching a Luftwaffe flyover; silenced the loathsome English narration and watched the grainy old soundless images, so heart-wrenchingly bittersweet, so reinspiring…

Slept.

At a few minutes after eight on Thursday morning, just as he was about to place another call to Vienna, the phone rang. “Hello?”

“Kurt Koehler?” A woman, American, not Fräulein Zimmer.

“Yes…”

“Hello, this is Rita Farb! I’m a friend of Yakov Liebermann’s. He’s been staying with us. I’m in New York. He asked me to call you. He called his office in Vienna a little while ago and found out you were there in Washington waiting for him. He’ll be there tonight, around six. He’d like you to have dinner with him. He’ll call you as soon as he gets in.”

Relieved, joyful, Mengele said, “That’s fine!”

“And could you do him a favor, please? Would you call the Hotel Benjamin Franklin and tell them he’ll definitely be coming?”

“Yes, I’ll be glad to! Do you know what flight he’s arriving on?”

“He’s driving, not flying. He just left. That’s why I’m calling. He was a little rushed.”

Mengele frowned. “Won’t he be here earlier than six?” he asked. “If he left already?”

“No, he has to make a detour into Pennsylvania. He might even be a little later than six, but he’ll definitely be there and he’ll call you first thing.”