Boys from Brazil (2 page)

The tuxedoed Japanese came in and asked how everything was. “First rate!” the man in white assured him. “Excellent!” The other men agreed, in Portuguese-Spanish-German.

Melon was served. More tea.

The men talked about fishing, and different ways of cooking fish.

The man in white asked Mori to marry him; she smiled and pleaded a husband and two children.

The men climbed up from creaking backrests, stretched their arms and stood on tiptoe, patted their stomachs. A few, the man in white among them, went out into the hallway to find the men's room. The others talked about the man in white: how charming he was, and how lively and youthful for—was it sixty-three? Sixty-four?

The first group came back; the others went.

The table was clean black, set with brandy snifters, ashtrays, and a box of glass-tubed cigars. Mori went around crouching with a bottle, feeding each snifter a bottomful of dark amber. Tsuruko and Yoshiko whispered at the serving table, disagreeing about the clearing up. “Out, girls,” the man in white said, going to his place. “We wish to speak in private.”

Tsuruko shooed Yoshiko before her; apologized passing the man: “We'll clear up later.” Mori gave the last snifter its brandy, set the bottle on the table's unoccupied end, and scurried toward the door, standing aside with her head bowed as the rest of the men came in.

The man in white lowered himself into his backrest. Farnbach-Paz helped him position it.

The black-haired man looked in at the door, counted the men, and drew the door closed.

The men lowered themselves into their places, gravely this time, not joking. The cigar box was passed.

The wall-opening was blocked on the other side by dark-gray suiting.

The man in white took a cigarette from his gold case, closed it, looked at it, and offered it to Farnbach on his right, who shook his bald-shaven head; but realizing he was being invited to read, not smoke, he took the case and held it out to focus on it. His blue eyes widened in recognition. “Ohhh!” He sucked air in through thick puckered lips as he read. Smiling excitedly at the man in white, he said, “How marvelous! Even better than a medal. May I?” He gestured with the case toward Kleist beside him.

The man in white nodded, smiling and pink-cheeked, and turned to put his cigarette to the flame of a lighter held waiting at his left. Squinting against smoke, he drew his briefcase nearer his side and opened it wide again. “Wonderful!” Kleist said. “Look, Schwimmer.” The man in white found and pulled from his briefcase a sheaf of papers, which he set before him, moving his brandy aside. He put his cigarette into the notch of a white ashtray. Watching handsome young-looking Schwimmer pass the case across the table toward Mundt, he took his eyeglass case from his breast pocket, the glasses from the case. He smiled at admiring smiles from Schwimmer and Kleist, pocketed the eyeglass case, shook the glasses open and slid them on. A whistle from Mundt, long and low. The man in white took up his cigarette, drew on it savoringly, and set it in the ashtray again. He squared the papers before him and studied the topmost one, reaching for his brandy. “Mm, mm, mm!”—from Traunsteiner. The man in white sipped brandy, thumbed the bottom of the sheaf of papers.

The cigarette case came back to him, from silver-haired Hessen, blue eyes bright in his gaunt face. “What a wonderful thing to possess!”

“Yes,” the man in white agreed, nodding, “I'm enormously proud of it.” He put the case down beside the papers.

“Who wouldn't be?” Farnbach asked.

The man in white put his snifter aside and said, “Let's get down to business now, boys.” Tipping his cropped gray head, he pushed his glasses lower on his nose and looked at the men over them. They faced him attentively, cigars poised. Silence took the room; only a low whine of air conditioning persisted against it.

“You know what you're going out to do,” the man in white said, “and you know it's a long job. I'll fill you in on the details now.” He leaned his head forward, looking down through his glasses. “Ninety-four men have to die on or near certain dates in the next two and a half years,” he said, reading. “Sixteen of them are in West Germany, fourteen in Sweden, thirteen in England, twelve in the United States, ten in Norway, nine in Austria, eight in Holland, and six each in Denmark and Canada. Total, ninety-four. The first is to die on or near October sixteenth; the last, on or near the twenty-third of April, 1977.”

He sat back and looked at the men again. “
Why
must these men die? And why on or near their particular dates?” He shook his head. “Not now; later you can be told that. But this I
can
tell you now: their deaths are the final step in an operation to which I and the leaders of the Organization have devoted many years, enormous effort, and a large part of the Organization's fortune. It's the most important operation the Organization has ever undertaken, and ‘important' is a thousand times too weak a word to describe it.
The hope and the destiny of the Aryan race lie in the balance
. No exaggeration here, my friends; literal truth: the destiny of the Aryan people—to hold sway over the Slavs and the Semites, the Black and the Yellow—will be fulfilled if the operation succeeds, will not be fulfilled if the operation fails. So ‘important' isn't a strong enough word, is it? ‘Holy,' maybe? Yes, that's closer. It's a
holy
operation you're taking part in.”

He picked up his cigarette, tapped ash away, and carried its shortness carefully to his lips.

The men looked at one another silently, awed. They reminded themselves to draw at cigars, to sip brandy. They looked at the man in white again; he ground his cigarette in the ashtray, looked up at them.

“You'll be leaving Brazil with new identities,” he said, and touched the briefcase at his side. “Everything's here. Genuine stuff, not forgeries. And you'll have ample funds for the two and a half years. In diamonds”—he smiled—“which I'm afraid you'll have to take through customs in the uncomfortable way.”

The men smiled and shrugged.

“You'll each be responsible for the men in one or a pair of countries. You have from thirteen to eighteen assignments each, but a few of the men will already have died of natural causes. They're sixty-five years old. Not too many of them will have died, though, as they were in excellent health as of their fifty-second year, with no signs of incipient disorder.”

“All the men are sixty-five?” Hessen asked, looking puzzled.

“Almost all,” the man in white said. “That is, they will be when their dates come around. A few will be a year or two younger or older.” He lifted aside the paper from which he had read the countries and numbers, and picked up the other nine or ten sheets. “The addresses,” he told the men, “are their addresses in 1961 and '62, but you shouldn't have any trouble locating them today. Most are probably still where they were. They're family men, stable; civil servants mostly—tax examiners, principals of schools, and so on; men of minor authority.”

“They have that in common too?” Schwimmer asked.

The man in white nodded.

Hessen said, “A remarkably homogeneous group. The members of another organization, opposed to ours?”

“They don't even know one another, or us,” the man in white said. “At least I hope they don't.”

“They'll be retired now, won't they?” Kleist asked. “If they're sixty-five?” His glass eye looked elsewhere.

“Yes, most of them will probably be retired,” the man in white agreed. “But if they've moved, you can be sure they'll have taken care to leave proper forwarding addresses. Schwimmer, you get England. Thirteen, the smallest number.” He handed a typewritten sheet to Kleist to pass on to Schwimmer. “No reflection on your abilities,” he smiled at Schwimmer. “On the contrary, a recognition of them. I hear you can turn yourself into an Englishman of whom the Queen herself wouldn't be suspicious.”

“You do know how to flatter one, old man,” Schwimmer drawled in Oxonian English, fingering his sandy mustache as he glanced at the sheet. “Actually, the old girl's not all that bright, y' know.”

The man in white smiled. “That talent might very well prove useful,” he said, “though your new identity, like all the others', is that of a German national. You're traveling salesmen, boys; maybe between assignments you'll have time to discover a few farmers' daughters.” He looked at his next sheet. “Farnbach, you'll be traveling in Sweden.” He handed the sheet to his right. “With fourteen customers for your fine imported merchandise.”

Farnbach, taking the sheet, leaned forward, his hairless brow-ridge creased by a frown. “All of them elderly civil servants,” he said, “and by killing them we fulfill the destiny of the Aryan race?”

The man in white looked at him for a moment. “Was that a question or a statement, Farnbach?” he asked. “It sounded a little like a question there at the end, and if so, I'm surprised. Because you, and all of you, were chosen for this operation on the basis of your unquestioning obedience as well as your other attributes and talents.”

Farnbach sat back, his thick lips closed and his nostrils flaring, his face flushed.

The man in white looked at his next clipped-together sheets. “No, Farnbach, I'm sure it was a statement,” he said, “and in that case I have to correct it slightly: by killing them you
prepare the way
for the fulfillment of the destiny, et cetera. It will come; not in April 1977, when the ninety-fourth man dies, but in time. Only obey your orders. Traunsteiner, you've got Norway and Denmark.” He handed the sheets away. “Ten in one, six in the other.”

Traunsteiner took the sheets, his square red face set in a grim demonstration: Unquestioning Obedience.

“Holland and the upper part of Germany,” the man in white said, “are for Sergeant Kleist. Sixteen again, eight and eight.”

“Thank you, Herr Doktor.”

“The eight in lower Germany and nine in Austria—make seventeen for Sergeant Mundt.”

Mundt—round-faced, crop-headed, eyeglassed—grinned as he waited for the sheets to reach him. “When I'm in Austria,” he said, “I'll take care of Yakov Liebermann while I'm at it!” Traunsteiner, passing the sheets to him, smiled with gold-filled teeth.

“Yakov Liebermann,” the man in white said, “has already been taken care of, by time, and ill health, and the failure of the bank where he kept his Jewish money. He's hunting for lecture-bookings now, not for us. Forget about him.”

“Of course,” Mundt said. “I was only joking.”

“And I'm not. To the police and the press he's a boring old nuisance with a file cabinet full of ghosts; kill him and you're liable to turn him into a neglected hero with living enemies still to be caught.”

“I never heard of the Jew-bastard.”

“I wish I could say the same.”

The men laughed.

The man in white handed his last pair of sheets to Hessen. “And for you, eighteen,” he said, smiling. “Twelve in the United States and six in Canada. I count on your being your brother's brother.”

“I am,” Hessen said, lifting his silver head, the sharp-planed face proud. “You'll see I am.”

The man in white looked around at the men. “I told you,” he said, “that the men are to be killed on or near the date given with each one's name. ‘On' is of course better than ‘near,' but only microscopically so. A week one way or the other will make no real difference, and even a month will be acceptable if you have reason to think it will make an assignment less risky. As for methods: whichever you choose, provided only that they vary and that there's never any suggestion of premeditation. The authorities in no country must suspect that an operation is under way. It shouldn't be difficult for you. Bear in mind that these are sixty-five-year-old men: their eyes are failing; they have slow reflexes, diminished strength. They're likely to drive poorly and cross streets carelessly, to suffer falls, to be knifed and robbed by hoodlums. There are dozens of ways in which such men can be killed without attracting high-level attention.” He smiled. “I trust you to find them.”

Kleist said, “Can we hire someone else to take an assignment or to help with it? If that seems the best way of bringing it off?”

The man in white turned his hands out in wondering surprise. “You're sensible men with good judgment,” he reminded Kleist; “that's why we chose you. However you think the job should be done, that's the way to do it. As long as the men die at the right time and the authorities don't suspect it's an operation, you have a completely free hand.” He raised a finger. “No, not completely; I'm sorry. One proviso, and it's a very important one. We don't want the men's families involved, either as co-victims in any sort of accident or—in the case, say, of younger wives who might be open to romantic overtures—as accomplices. I repeat: the families aren't to be involved in any way, and only outsiders used as accomplices.”

“Why should we need accomplices?” Traunsteiner asked, and Kleist said, “You never know what you're liable to run up against.”

“I've been all over Austria,” Mundt said, looking at one of his sheets, “and there are places here I've never heard of.”

“Yes,” Farnbach groused, looking at his single sheet, “I know Sweden but I certainly never heard of any ‘Rasbo.'”

“It's a small town about fifteen kilometers northeast of Uppsala,” the man in white said. “That's Bertil Hedin, isn't it? He's the postmaster there.”

Farnbach looked at him, his brow uplifted.

The man in white met his gaze, and smiled patiently. “And killing Postmaster Hedin,” he said, “is every bit as important—correction, as holy—as I said it was. Come on now, Farnbach, be the fine soldier you've always been.”