The Eighth Dwarf (31 page)

Again, Ploscaru nodded.

“There is this man I worked for.” She dropped her head and stared into her lap.

“What did you do for him?”

“I was a maid.”

“He has a house?”

“Yes. It's a large house almost on the Rhine.”

“Tell us about him—this man.”

“He never goes out. Sometimes, though, people will come to see him, but only very late at night. They talk until morning.”

“What about?”

She shook her head. “I don't know. He had a cook for a while, but she quit and he made me do the cooking. After the cook left there was only me and the gardener, except the gardener came only three times a week.”

“You lived there with him—with the man?”

She nodded. “I had to take care of the whole house. Later, he made me cook and do the other things. ”

“What things?”

“The bad things.”

“What bad things?”

“He gave me money and made me go out and buy him dresses. Then he would make me watch him put them on. He would take off all his clothes and put on the dresses and make me watch. Then he would make me do other awful things. If I didn't, he beat me. He liked to beat me.”

“What is his profession?”

She shook her head. “He said he was a teacher before the war—in Düsseldorf. But he said they came and got him and put him away in one of the camps—the one at Dauchau. At first I believed him, but later I didn't.”

“Why?”

“When the others came to see him, I could never hear what they talked about. But always when they thought I was not listening they called him Herr Doktor.”

“How long did you stay with him?”

“Almost a year.”

“Why did you stay with him so long?”

She raised her eyes from her lap then. They stared directly into Ploscaru's. “Because he paid me,” she said. “He paid me very well.”

“And what made you decide to leave?”

“My mother became ill. I had to go and stay with her.”

“How long ago was this?”

“Last week.”

“Is your mother still sick?”

“No.”

“But you have not gone back to the man who says he was a teacher?”

“No. Not yet.”

“What does he call himself?”

“Gloth. Martin Gloth.”

“And his address?”

“Are you going to give me money?”

Ploscaru nodded. “We'll give you money. Perhaps a lot of it.”

“The address is Fourteen Mirbachstrasse.”

The dwarf wrote it down and, after it, Martin Gloth.

“He is crazy,” the girl said.

“Yes. What else can you tell us about him?”

“One night when these men came to see him they stayed up all night and talked until dawn. Then the men left and he came to my room and made me do bad things. He had a new bandage on his arm right about here.” She indicated where the bandage had been. “He kept it on for almost a week. And then one night when he made me watch him take off his clothes and put on a dress the bandage was gone. There was no scar where the bandage had been. There was something else.”

“A tattoo,” Jackson said.

The girl looked disappointed. “How did you know?” she said. “He had numbers tattooed on his arm—right about here.”

“Pay her the money, Nick,” Jackson said.

29

After the girl had gone, her shabby briefcase almost stuffed with marks, Jackson paid off the last would-be informer in the corridor and came back into the room. The dwarf was standing near the table brushing his hands together. The smile on his face made him look almost ecstatic.

“Tell me how brilliant I am, Minor. I must hear it.”

“You're brilliant.”

“More.”

“Shrewd, clever, cunning, smart, crafty, and a credit to your race. How's that?”

“Better. Sometimes I need praise as others need drugs. It's my one failing. Otherwise I'm quite perfect.”

“I know.”

“Now, then, you understand what we must do.”

“I've got a pretty good idea.”

“When?”

“They used to lecture us that the wee hours of the morning were best.”

“The OSS, you mean.”

“Right.”

Ploscaru nodded thoughtfully. “Around four, I'd say.”

“Let's make it three-thirty. Oppenheimer might have heard the same lecture.” Jackson looked at his watch. “It's twelve-thirty now. That'll give me time to wake up his sister and tell her what we're up to.”

“I'm not sure that that's terribly wise.”

Jackson stared down at the dwarf for several moments. All friendliness had deserted the gray-haired man's face. In its stead was a cold, hard wariness.

“Up until now we've done it your way, Nick,” he said. “I've been Tommy Tagalong, not too bright, but loyal, plucky, and loads of fun. Now we're going up against some guy who wears dresses at teatime, but who also just might know how to use a gun. And then there's Oppenheimer, although I don't have to tell you about him. And finally there's you, Nick, and that double-cross you still think you're going to pull off. That worries me too, so I'm going to tell you again just what I told you at the train station in Washington. Think twice.”

The dwarf nodded, almost sadly, and started brushing his hands together again. His gaze wandered around the room. “I'm sorry to learn that you still don't trust me, Minor,” he murmured. “It comes as quite a blow. It really does.”

For a moment, Jackson almost believed him. Then he grinned and shook his head. “You'll recover.”

“Yes, of course,” Ploscaru said. “But you're quite right about Oppenheimer and the Gloth person. Caution shall be our watchword. Now, just what do you plan to tell Miss Oppenheimer?”

“That she'd better have her bag packed, because her brother and I might be heading from hither to yon very quickly.”

“In the roadster?”

“Uh-huh. In the roadster. That's why we bought it, wasn't it?”

“To be sure. Now, we all know where hither is. But where might yon be?”

Jackson shrugged. “Holland, maybe. It's close. But she must have some safe spot in mind where she can stash him for a while until things calm down. I'll ask her.”

The dwarf looked up at the ceiling. “You said, I believe, that you and Oppenheimer will be speeding off. Just what will I be doing in the meantime?”

“You?” Jackson said with a grin. “Why, you'll be sitting on his lap, Nick.”

Eva Scheel sat up in bed in the room at the Gasthaus that had been established in 1634 and looked down at Bodden. It was chilly in the room, and she covered her bare breasts with her arms and hugged herself. Bodden watched the smoke rise from his cigarette.

“So, printer,” she said softly. “Killing does not excite you.”

He sighed and shook his head. “It was a bad business.”

“You have a conscience,” she said. “I'm glad.”

“And you?”

She shrugged. “He's dead. Perhaps he deserved it. Perhaps not. But I feel nothing.”

He looked at her. “Are you really quite so hard, little one?”

“No, but I pretend to be. There will be time for remorse later—when we can afford it. It's quite a luxury, you know.” She shivered again and wondered whether it was really the cold that made her do so.

Bodden sat up in bed and reached over to a small table for the bottle. “Here,” he said, pouring some clear
Schnapps
into a glass. “This will warm you up.”

She accepted the glass gratefully, drank, and shivered again as the harsh liquor went down. “We could, of course, just run with the money we have.”

He drank from the bottle. “They would find us. You know that. Your plan is better.”

“Yes, if it works.” She rose and turned. Only the cold made her conscious of her nakedness. He stared at her with interest, if not with desire.

“You still like what you see, printer?”

“Very much.”

“We must find something that will excite you.”

“Counting a great deal of money might do it.”

“Has it before?”

“I don't know,” he said, smiling for the first time. “I've never tried it”

She set the glass down and started putting on her clothes. “Leah gave me the name of the hotel where the American said they'd be staying. It will be best to avoid him, so when I get there, I'll send a note up.”

“To the dwarf?”

“Yes.”

Bodden reached down to rub his still-throbbing knee. “That one I owe a little something to.”

“Revenge, like remorse, is another luxury that we can't yet afford.”

“Someday.”

“Someday,” she agreed, and slipped into her fur coat. From its deep pocket she brought out a pistol. She looked down at it curiously for a moment and then handed it to him.

“Well,” he said. “A Walther.”

“Satisfactory?”

“Perfectly.”

Her head tilted to one side a little as she stared down at him. “You may have to use it.”

“Yes,” he said, “I know.”

The whore awoke when Kurt Oppenheimer rose from the chair, causing its legs to scrape slightly.

“You did not sleep,” she said.

“A little, here in the chair.”

“You could have used the bed.”

“I know.”

He opened his briefcase and took out a carton of Chesterfields. “Your cigarettes.”

“Do you want to—”

He shook his head and smiled. “No, not tonight. Perhaps another time.”

She yawned. “What time is it?”

“A little past one.”

“You are leaving now?”

“I have a long walk to make.”

“At this time of night?”

“Yes.”

“Can't it wait till morning?”

“No,” he said. “It can't.”

Jackson watched as Leah Oppenheimer pulled on her stockings. She wet her finger and ran it along the seams, twisting her head around, looking back and down to make sure that they were straight.

“Why do women always do that?”

“What?”

“Wet their finger and then run it along the seams.”

“It keeps them straight.”

“The seams?”

“Yes, of course.”

“How?”

“I don't know. It just does.”

She slipped the dark blue dress over her head, glanced at herself in the mirror, gave the dress a few tugs, and then turned to Jackson.

“All right. Now I am dressed. Where do we go?”

“Nowhere.”

“Then why—”

Jackson interrupted. “Sometime within the next few hours we may find your brother.”

She didn't seem surprised at the announcement. Instead she nodded solemnly, waiting for Jackson to continue.

“If we do find him, we may have to leave Bonn in a hurry. The question is—where do we go? We need a place that's safe and relatively close.”

“Cologne,” she said almost automatically.

“That's not much better than Bonn.”

“I have certain friends there who are well organized. If you can get my brother to them, then your job will be done.” She moved over to her purse and took out pencil and paper. “Here—I will write their name and address.”

While she was writing, he said, “There may be complications.”

She looked up. “What kind of complications?”

“I don't know. If I did know, they wouldn't be complications—only problems.”

She went back to writing the name and address. “And if they do turn into problems, what will solve them?”

“Money, probably,” Jackson said, and looked at the slip of paper she handed him, reading the name awkwardly. “Shmuel Ben-Zvi?” His look was questioning. “What kind of name is that—Hebrew?”

The look on Leah Oppenheimer's face was defiant. “Israeli,” she said.

“Well, now,” Jackson said.

“You have any objections?”

Jackson shrugged. “He's your brother, not mine. You can hand him over to anyone you wish.”

“You said that money will solve whatever problems might arise. How much money?”

“As much as you have or can raise from your Israeli friends in the next few hours.”

“I will have to go to Cologne. That will take at least two or three hours. Will I have enough time?”

“I should think so,” Jackson said.

She nodded thoughtfully as she gazed at Jackson. “What does Mr. Ploscaru advise?”

“Well, you see,” Jackson said, “I haven't really asked, because Mr. Ploscaru may be both the complication and the problem.”

When the sleepy fourteen-year-old boy brought the note up to Ploscaru's room, the dwarf read it, gave the boy a tip, and said, “Tell her to meet me at the corner in five minutes.”

“Which corner?”

“By the bank.”

After the boy had gone, Ploscaru took the big Army .45 from its case and shoved it into the waistband of his trousers. He buttoned his jacket over it and then climbed up on a chair to inspect himself in the mirror. Satisfied that the bulge wasn't too noticeable, he climbed down from the chair and stood for a moment looking thoughtfully about the room. As he thought, he automatically brushed some imaginary crumbs from his palms.

Eva Scheel watched the dwarf approach. When he drew near enough, she said, “I am Eva Scheel, Herr Ploscaru.”

The dwarf bowed. “You are, I understand, a friend of Fräulein Oppenheimer's.”

“And of her brother's.”

“Ah.”

“I think we should talk.”

“Perhaps a bar would be more comfortable. Someone at my hotel told me that there is one close by that remains open quite late. Shall we go there?”

There was no one in the bar except the proprietor and three solitary drinkers who sat hunched over their glasses.

After seating Eva Scheel, Ploscaru moved to the bar, paid extra, and brought back two glasses of what the proprietor had said was his best brandy.