Don DeLillo - Running Dog

"Air-conditioned storage vault," she said. "To preserve it properly."

"I myself first heard of the item some thirty years ago."

"When my husband was killed I knew that was the reason. He refused to sell at their price. At first they agreed on a price and when the screening was to be. Then Christoph demanded half payment in advance. This was turned down and he no longer wanted to talk with them. They put pressure in so many ways. He still refused. We see what happened."

"Whose price?" Lightborne said. "Who put pressure?"

"I don't think you want to know."

"Do you know?"

The train from New York went roaring by, knocking them back a little in their seats, rippling the pages of the magazine she held once more in her lap.

"I know the name of a company in Virginia. I insisted to tell the police there is something to find there. They treated me as though I were a child. Sex crime. Obviously it could be nothing else. They were almost too embarrassed to discuss it with me. Only sex, it could be. The things sex killers do. One knife wound in the body, I reminded them. Where is the mutilation, the mess? So exact, this sex killer? No, no, they tell me. He picked up the wrong fellow. It happens all the time."

Another train approached, heading south. They went down the steps near the taxi shack, fleeing the vibration and noise, and ended up strolling in little circles in the parking lot.

"After Christoph was buried, I went to Germany. It was done half in rage. I wanted the film, to possess it myself. I thought to own it would make my husband real again. As though it would give me power. As though the murderers would be taunted. Having it in my hands would make everything real. He died for something. Here it is. This round container with straps. Now I understand. Of course," she said, "I've calmed down since then. Now I only think to sell it. I want to be paid for my husband's death."

"Yes, and it's much, much better to conduct this kind of transaction in an atmosphere of mutual composure."

She laughed wryly.

"All I want now is to see the last of it. They've put their listening devices in my house, they've broken in when I was not at home, they've made phone calls at all hours. I'm sick of this business. Deeply ashamed and disgusted. I know I'll be cheated out of the movie's true value. Still, I want to be rid of it as soon as possible."

"There's no question of cheating," Lightborne said. "My client doesn't operate that way. Once you hand over the film, you'll be given a transferral fee. Then my client's technical people will check to see just what we have. Is it a camera original, the master, as I've been hearing? Can we make a workprint for editing? Can we correct whatever defects? There's a dozen questions like this, most beyond my own scope. If there's no soundtrack, can we add one? What about final printing?"

"I only know Berlin, the Reich Chancellery, when the Russians shelled the city."

"Then of course the ultimate question. The content itself. What is actually on film. Once this is looked into, you and I can discuss further monetary installments."

"I know I'll be cheated. It doesn't matter. As long as you take it away."

They crossed the street and walked slowly past a row of shops. Lightborne went into a paint store, just closing for the day, and asked if he might borrow a rubber band. He looped it twice over his right shoe to keep the sole from flapping. Then he and Klara Ludecke went back through the tunnel to the depot and sat on the bench near the newsstand.

"There is a single container," she said. "It's quite large, metallic. I think steel. I don't know how many reels are inside. Meet me on Fifty-seventh Street between Sixth and Seventh avenues. Two weeks from today, noon, south side of the street. I'll place the object in your hands."

"Where, exactly, on the south side of the street?"

"Walk up and down. I'll find you."

"I'd like to ask," Lightborne said. "If you know anything about the history behind all this, I'd be interested in hearing."

"You're interested in the Nazis?"

"In the period, the era. The great collapse. People in overcoats listening to Bruckner. Hitler handing out vials of poison."

"This is theatrical, the swastika banners, the floodlights."

"The wedding banquet," he said. "The execution of Fegelein in the garden. The burial of the wolf hound and her pups."

"You respond to the operatic quality, the great flames."

"Yes, the Russian guns in the distance, the strange celebration in the bunker when they mistakenly thought Hitler was about to kill himself."

"The last meal was spaghetti," she said.

The New York train pulled in, the 7:13. Lightborne decided he was sufficiently interested in the circumstances surrounding the movie to wait for the next train, assuming she could tell him something.

"Christoph's father was an officer with a tank unit that defended against the Russian advance on the Oder."

"Marshall Rokossovsky, maybe."

"I was fond of him. Heinz Ludecke. A shy, humorous man. In the war he had a cousin-I don't know his name. He was a stenographer attached to the Führerbunker in Berlin. The main task of this cousin was to record conversations between Hitler and Goebbels."

"Yes, they liked to reminisce," Lightborne said.

"In the confusion at the end, Heinz was taken prisoner by the Russians but managed to escape with false papers. Eventually he ended up in a British camp for refugees and foreign workers. Here he came across his cousin, who carried Belgian papers and a parcel which he obviously regarded with the greatest concern. It seems Hitler's valet had been ordered to burn all of the Führer's possessions and effects. This parcel alone had been smuggled out of the bunker by Heinz's cousin and he insisted that Heinz take possession of it on the theory that he was less vulnerable to interrogation and arrest."

"They didn't burn his portrait of Frederick the Great," Lightborne said. "He gave specific orders the portrait was to be spared."

"You hardly need me, Mr. Lightborne."

"I'm sorry, go on."

"It might be best if you produced your own movie."

"Please continue, Mrs. Ludecke."

"Heinz managed to resume a more or less normal life. His cousin vanished completely, never to be seen again, as in a fairy tale. Of course all this I learned from my husband. Whether or not Heinz ever viewed the film, even Christoph never found out. When Heinz died, not so long ago, Christoph went to Germany and took possession of the movie, something he could not do while his father was alive because Heinz would not relinquish it."

"Why didn't he destroy it, I wonder."

"He was devoted to Hitler, and remained so all his life. If he saw what was on the film and if it is the filth some people believe it to be, I'm quite sure he would have destroyed it. Most likely he never saw the movie. I don't know. Perhaps there's another answer. The film itself may provide the answer. Or it may do nothing of the kind. In any case it was after my husband acquired the film that he started the fresh rumors of its existence."

"To heat up the market."

"To create a fever, yes. Not the happiest of strategies, was it?"

"A sad business," Lightborne said with feeling.

"You know the circumstances?"

"Merely in outline."

"He was wearing my clothes when he was killed."

"To avoid detection. Those people were putting pressure."

"It was something he did from time to time."

"A preference."

"He would go into the city."

"I see."

"He said it was only the clothes. He didn't have relations with men, he said."

"Was he telling the truth?"

"I don't know," she said. "They knew him in that district. Truck drivers near the packing plants. They called him the Red Queen, for the dresses he wore, always red, my dresses. I knew. I permitted it."