A Criminal to Remember (A Monty Haaviko Thriller) (25 page)

A fly landed on the old man’s face, just under his left eye, and he brushed it away.

“The orders were suicidal considering the flak over the city and the Yakovlev fighters and the Sturmovick ground attack planes but I listened anyway. Before supper I checked the plane out for one last time with a mechanic. While he was distracting two
RSHA
guards I undid the housing of one of the dachshunds and found it full of little booklets of cheap paper. I took one, tidied up and went and ate my potato soup. While I ate I read the booklet under the table. It was just a bunch of slips of paper glued into place. I could read Russian a little, we all could by then, and it said, ‘A week’s worth of Rations Book for Leningrad.’ And I knew that my cargo was counterfeit ration books.”

The music inside changed to “Everybody Loves Me Baby” by Don Maclean.

“After soup there was vodka and I wrote on a corner of a scrap of newspaper while I drank. The major had told me I was carrying 2,600 kilos of extra weight—maybe 1,000 would be the containers, the rest the ration books themselves. By my calculations I had perhaps 80,000 of the damn things. I would drop them; the citizens would pick them up and think such a blessing. And they would go to the kitchens and there would not be enough food and they would riot and the army guns would come out and they’d massacre their own.”

The old man rubbed his chin. “We knew that the citizens still in the city were living on 500 calories a day. Enough to let you die slowly. Enough to make you hurt. We knew the army had set up special teams to fight cannibalism. And the major and the bureaucrat wanted me to drop hope on them—I was amazed. I would have dropped white phosphorous or high explosive or delayed charges loaded to go off at nearby movement or anything else without blinking. I could have fired explosive incendiaries into a school or strafed a line of old women lining up to trade for fuel oil, but I could not drop hope. My mind rebelled.”

I was afraid to move and shake Goodson from his reverie. His voice went on, “There were six or eight million Soviets in the city when we started and we killed more than a million and a half through guns and bombs but mostly through starvation and disease. When the rivers were free of ice you could walk from one side to the other on bloated corpses and there were a lot of rivers. So off I flew, the weight had been calculated precisely and so I went solo, no radio man, no radar operator, and no rear gunner. Just me.”

His voice trailed off and then got stronger. “Alone. And I climbed slowly and turned northwest and headed out over the Baltic, that cold, amber-laden sea. And I turned north and then east and then I was over the city with my hand on the jury switch, just cables slung through a hole in my cockpit that ended in toggles. Drunk on vodka, scared, hating the Soviets below me and the shitters behind me with their fucking games and rules and cruelties. Hope, they were using me to drop hope. Who could defend against that? And my hand was on the toggles.”

There was no music in the house now and even the wind had died as the old man took a deep breath and said, wondering, “I couldn’t. Standing orders were to follow a different route back but I didn’t, I went back over the Baltic, that cold sea and I dumped my ration books into that hungry sea and went and reported that my mission had been accomplished. And they gave me a medal. And, a few weeks later, the siege was broken and we fled south. And I couldn’t find any fuel for my plane somewhere in Poland and I shot it in the nosecone while my engineer laughed—to put it out of its misery, I said. I made it to Austria, barely, and kept going. It was chaos but I was determined and lucky. And when I heard English being spoken I surrendered, then I was tried and sent to a prison camp here in Canada for two years. There I read about the Nuremberg trials. Some of the other prisoners were furious over what was happening but I wasn’t. I read a special report the Russians had delivered, a diary from an eleven-year- old girl, a baker’s daughter from Leningrad, named Tatyana Nikolayevna Savicheva. The diary talked about starvation and the death of her sister, then her grandmother, and then her brother, then one uncle and the other, then mother, all starved to death. It ended with ‘Everyone died. Only Tanya is left.’”

The old man’s voice trailed off.

I
t was getting towards evening and I needed to pee after drinking two pitchers of lemonade. I told Goodson and he pointed towards the trees, so I went out and pissed on a birch tree while thinking about what he had told me. When I came back he had assembled the drilling and was weighing it on his lap.

Without pausing I started, “None of that explains why Devanter wants you so bad.”

“His dad found out about my past. He threatened to tell the public. I couldn’t risk that.”

“So the son still has the proof?”

“Yes. Cornelius has copies of my military records, photos of me receiving medals, newspaper reports from my village, confirmation records, birth records, even copies of letters from Goering—he sent them out to anyone who got any kind of decoration. Transcripts of my trial and sentence in Canada and so on.”

“Are you wanted anywhere?”

Goodson looked at me uncomprehendingly and then said, “No. I’ve done my time. I’m a free man.”

“So why doesn’t he use what he’s got? If he hates you so much?”

“I’m not entirely sure.”

It didn’t make sense and I said so. “So Devanter senior had the information way back when. I take it he blackmailed you? To do what?”

Goodson pinched the bridge of his nose. “He had me bow out of a huge contract in ’68 to build a freeway system right through Winnipeg. The joke was on him though, the whole deal fell through and they went for a Perimeter Highway with Peter Leitch’s company in ’69.”

“Did you help with that?”

“Me? Well, maybe I knew it was a possibility. It was a long time ago that it happened but maybe I knew it was something that might happen and maybe I mentioned it as a good idea to some movers and shakers. I never could figure out why the old man didn’t use the information afterwards, he sure had lots of opportunities.”

“So he never used it, or even threatened to use it?”

“Nope. He just held onto it after that. We still fought but never over so much money. That much never came up again. After ’69 I spent some time and money and tracked down the agencies Devanter had used—private agents in London and Germany, historians in Berlin and Moscow and the Pinkerton’s here in Canada and the U.S. I tracked them all down and bought them off where I could.”

The old man didn’t make sense. “Why would you do that?”

“To find out if senior was bluffing with me. Me and him we fought for how many years, sometimes it was the only thing that seemed worth doing and sometimes he bluffed. But he wasn’t bluffing. He had all the data in his hands.”

I stood and turned away from Goodson and started to pace. It was a conscious effort to leave him with a loaded shotgun and rifle behind me but I put my hands behind my back and started to walk back and forth.

“You’ve still got the records you collected?”

“I do. In a safe place. Under an assumed name in a town I’ve never visited because accidents happen.”

“Let me ask you something, why the fuck do you care what Devanter senior might have said or what Cornelius might say now?”

“It would ruin me.” He said it simply.

“No it wouldn’t. You’re what, eighty-five? eighty-seven? You have no children, no family, no nothing. You’ve got money and power and that’s about it. So why the fuck do you care what happens now?”

“I hate to lose.”

I stood in front of him. “Old man, everyone loses. Get the fuck over it. Life is hard and then you die.”

His eyes flashed and his knuckles whitened on the wood of the gun. “You don’t have to tell me that
dummes Scheiss!
”

“I guess not. I shouldn’t have to but here I am telling you anyway. Are you worried about public opinion?”

He thought about it. “Yes … I think so.”

“You live in a house three hours from the only decent-sized city within two days’ drive. You deal with everything through lawyers and corporate structures. What do you care about the public? You don’t have any contact with anyone that you don’t control.” Goodson stared at me and I went on, “And you didn’t do anything that you haven’t paid for. The law can’t touch you and you don’t care about society. So what else is there for you to worry about?”

“Ah.”

“However, you’re not good at giving up. I think that’s your problem. You just can’t stand losing.”

Goodson stared at me with open mouth and the young woman came out with a wooden tray with folding legs. She put it down between me and Goodson and then brought out a covered bowl full of thick-limbed pretzels, a bowl of dark brown mustard with a spoon and a third big bowl of Spanish peanuts. She checked my lemonade and Goodson’s whiskey and left.

As she went back into the house she gave me an indecipherable look.

I spread mustard on the warm, soft pretzel and ate it slowly, and when I was done I started to talk again. “You’re at the end of the game and it’s the hardest part to play. It’s only a loss if you consider it a loss.”

“It’s not that easy.”

“How so?”

“Think of the power of words. Think of the press who change the word ‘rock’ for ‘stone’ when describing the actions of Muslim youths throwing pebbles at Israeli tanks. Shooting a teenager who throws a rock at you is a lot more acceptable than shooting a boy who throws stones.”

“Interesting.”

“Sticks and stones may break my bones …”

“I get it already.”

“And in Afghanistan and Iraq our soldiers get blown up with Improvised Explosive Devices. Because our enemies could never build or use a bomb—they’re too stupid. I don’t want to lose and that’s what all this is about, I’m willing to pay for it. And I don’t want to be called a Nazi.”

He had a point. “Okay. It’s your money and you get to call the tune.” I ate some peanuts. “So why doesn’t Cornelius use what he’s got to fuck you up?”

“No idea.”

I had two ideas, sort of, anyway. “Number one, he doesn’t use the information because he knows it’s useless. Number two, he doesn’t use the information because …”

“Because what?”

“Let me think here. He’s got a weapon but he doesn’t use it. Why? Because it doesn’t work, that’s one possibility. Or because it’s dangerous to him.”

“Dangerous to him?”

“Yes. Dangerous.” I ate peanuts and paced back and forth while the old man finished his rye. “Can you prove that Devanter senior blackmailed you?”

“No. I can prove he collected the information though. I bought out the inquiry agents in London lock, stock and barrel. Including their correspondence with Devanter senior. Like I said, I wanted to find out exactly what he knew.”

I finally understood. It was like a big burst of light behind my eyes and everything fell into place. I sat down. “Mr. Goodson. You can do anything you want and Cornelius won’t do jack shit.”

“How can you be sure?”

“Because you have proof that his father discovered you were a Nazi and didn’t tell anyone. If you come forward and tell the press that, they’ll freak out. Then they’ll realize you’re not wanted and then they’ll start wondering why Devanter senior gathered up all the information in the first place.”

The woman came out and put her hand on Goodson’s shoulder and I kept talking.

“And, Mr. Goodson, that’s why Cornelius doesn’t want to use what he’s got. It embarrasses his father and his father is dead and can’t defend himself.”

Goodson stared at me and the woman said, “Aubrey? It’s time for you to go to bed.”

He got up slowly, staring at me. “Maybe. Maybe you’re right. So all I have to do is release the information myself.”

“Yes.”

“And I win.”

“Yes.”

He smiled and the woman led him inside. I waited until she came back.

“Is he going to be okay?”

“He’s an old man. But this has helped.”

“Really?”

“Yes. You see, he hates to lose and that’s what he thought was happening. He thought he was losing.”

“And now he doesn’t?”

“I think so. He never understood that to the living we owe respect, but to the dead we owe only the truth.”

“That’s very deep.”

She smiled and showed dimples. “It’s not mine. It’s a quote from a smart man called Voltaire. For Aubrey no one ever dies and so he saves the truth very carefully indeed just in case he needs it. And really, after all, how can you lose to the dead? They’re dead and gone, right? They don’t keep count.”

I left, feeling disquieted. I treasured the truth myself and held it close to my chest. It was my weapon and my armour. And I certainly wasn’t going to waste it on the dead, or the living either, for that matter.

I
got back to town late and left the Mustang parked in front of the house. When I walked through the door I found myself facing Claire with the Browning partially disassembled on piles of newspaper. Beside her elbow was the Beretta.

“Hi honey! Miss me?”

“You have no idea. Fred’s been a doll though.”

She sneered and gestured with her chin at the life-like toy doll in the corner of the dining room.

When the gun was cleaned and oiled and reloaded we went upstairs and slept on opposite sides of the bed.

There was an interview scheduled in a local television station and that’s where I went first after dropping off the Mustang.

I had left Claire staring grimly into her cup of coffee with dry toast and a congealing fried egg on a plate at her elbow.

We’d spoken perhaps three words to each other.

I walked. On the way to the station I made good time and I dawdled along Portage Avenue, trying to spot the cops and wondering if they were still tailing me. At a doughnut shop downtown I grabbed an extra large double cream and single sugar and a sour cream old-fashioned and watched for cops while I stood at a high bar up against the window.

“Excuse me.” A young woman came up beside me with her own coffee. I moved to the side and she pulled out a thick paperback and started to read. Her place was marked by a large, homemade bookmark and she put it beside her coffee.