Hour of the Assassins (20 page)

“Would you know if he were back in Paraguay?”

For a moment Weizman's eyes searched Caine's face as if it were a map he was trying to read. Then he shook his head with finality.

“He is not in Paraguay. If he were, we would know about it,
comprende?
Besides”—he shrugged—“we have enough Nazis here without him.”

“Who leads the Nazis here in Asunción?”

Weizman's eyes turned up and Caine could, see the whites as Weizman shifted uneasily in his chair, like a child who has to go to the bathroom.

“Müller,” he muttered, actually trembling in terror like a field mouse in front of a snake. “Heinrich Müller. He owns a meat-packing business. Perfect for a butcher, wouldn't you say? But be careful, señor. He has important friends. Political friends.”

“Such a deal,” Caine said, and stood up. He left a five-hundred-guarani note on the table for the check and extended his hand to Weizman.

“
Gracias
,” he said and shook Weizman's limp, moist hand.

“
Buena suerte
.” Good luck, Weizman said, looking as though he didn't have any to spare. Caine left him sitting there, fervently attacking his
sopa Paraguayo
as though it were his last meal.

Caine was growing impatient. He had been tailing Müller for almost a week without getting a single chance to make the snatch. Of course, snatching Müller might alert Mengele, but since Caine had no intention of letting Müller go, all the Nazis would know for sure was that Müller had disappeared. Then, too, if he could move quickly enough against Mengele, Müller's disappearance wouldn't matter. “Surpries lies at the foundation of all undertakings, without exception,” Koenig used to say, quoting Clausewitz. Koenig was fond of quoting Clausewitz. Except that it didn't look like he was going to get the chance to put the theory into practice, Caine mused, because he hadn't found any way to get at Müller.

To make matters worse, inevitably he had been spotted. It was impossible to tail someone in such a small community and go unobserved, so he had taken the opposite tack, blatantly showing up wherever Müller did, making a noisy show as the ugly American tourist with a local hooker on his arm for camouflage. But the ploy only worked short term and time was running out. He had been spotted once too often for coincidence, and now they were undoubtedly wondering who the hell he was and whether or not to terminate him.

Even now Müller was flicking an uneasy glance in his direction across the crowded restaurant. Unless he did it tonight he would have to abort; he was already running too close to the wire. Maybe they were playing Ring-Around-the-Rosie. That very evening before dinner Caine had come back to his room in the Hotel del Lago to find that the hair he had stretched across the doorposts was broken and the keys he had placed in a carefully disarranged pattern in his bureau drawer had been moved. The problem was that the son of a bitch was never alone, Caine mused as he swallowed the last of his beer.

Müller was a big man—nearly six feet—his body still hard and trim under his lightweight sport shirt and slacks. His hair was closely cropped and iron gray, his blue eyes like aquamarines set in a face that looked like it had been hammered out of bronze. Even in his civies he still looked like an SS officer on furlough. He leaned over and whispered something to his bodyguard, Steiger, then with a bellow he rejoined his table companions in singing war songs from the good old days. They punctuated their bleary nostalgia by banging their beer bottles on the table in time to the singing, drowning out the plaintive Paraguayan music played by a trio of a harp and two guitars in the far corner.

Steiger was a bullet-headed Neanderthal with a white scar running down his forehead into his cheek. Caine didn't bother to fool himself into thinking Steiger was a pushover. He hadn't gotten that scar from Heidelberg. He had the piggish face of a Brown-shirt bully and Caine was willing to bet that the scar came from the kind of street brawl he probably relished. Steiger made no effort to hide the gun in his waistband, jammed against his beer belly like a truss. It was a naval Luger with a six-inch barrel, the kind that used to be carried by the Wehrmacht paratroopers. Also seated at the table were Müller's mistress, an aging blonde who wore a silk scarf around her neck to hide a sagging chin line, and a fat, bald German in a business suit, who crooned the lyrics in a beery off-key monotone.

It had to be now or never, Caine decided, signaling the waiter for the check. He had completed his preparations in Asunción, renting a black Ford and buying everything he needed: flashlight, canteen, binoculars, car flares, fishing tackle with eighty-pound test line, the tin cans of vegetables that he had emptied, the five-gallon can of gasoline. But it was impossible to get at Müller in Asunción. The man's house and office were made of brick and built like fortresses, his pattern of movement constantly varied—and Steiger never left his side.

Then Müller broke the pattern once again. Caine followed Müller's Mercedes to the resort town of San Bernardino on the tropical shore of Lake Ypacaraí. Müller evidently planned to spend a few days with his mistress at his sumptuous lakeside villa. Caine reconnoitered the area till he found the spot he was looking for: a jungle clearing near an abandoned farmhouse, miles from any habitation. Near the clearing was a stagnant marsh pool, oozing with the stench of slime and death. The marsh was bordered with thick mud, black and sticky as pitch.

Using the fishing line and pebbles placed in the empty tin cans, the way they used to around the fortified hamlets, he set trip wires across the overgrown trail from the farmhouse to the clearing. As he worked the smell of his own body heat, the noisy shrieks of the jungle birds, the trip wires, brought it all back. Asia.

He thought he heard the belch of mortars and the rattle of small-arms fire, but when he looked up, there was only the electric whine of insects, like the constant hum of high-power lines and the squawking of a pair of wildly colored parrots. That fucking war just won't end, he thought miserably. He reached for a stick to throw at the birds, then flinched back with horror as it slithered silently into the undergrowth.

But it was no go. Caine had watched the villa through the binoculars from a rowboat well out in the lake. He counted on the glare from the water to cover the glint of sunlight off the lenses. But except for a bit of waterfront fishing with Steiger, Müller hadn't left the villa. All Caine had to show for two days of stakeout were the
surubi
and
armados
fish he had caught, a wealth of mosquito bites, and, in spite of a thick layer of sunscreen, a neon-bright sunburn that made him look like a warning ad for Solarcaine—until tonight, when Müller finally ventured out to La Cordobesa for dinner and the sentimental
Bierhaus
sing-along.

Their singing followed Caine out of the restaurant, the lyrics hanging in his mind like an unfinished sentence.

“
Wie heist Lilli Marlene, Wie heist Lillie Marlene?
”

The question lingered like a Zen koan. It seemed that if he could just find an answer to the riddle of Lilli Marlene's identity, it would somehow contain an answer to the riddle of the universe itself. He shrugged the thought away as he got into the car. Perhaps there was no answer, no real Lilli Marlene. And perhaps the universe didn't mean anything either.

He backed the car into the dark alley beside the restaurant, by the back exit door he had spotted earlier. He opened the locked door with his folding knife and slipped unnoticed into the filthy men's
lavabo
near the door. He latched the cubicle door, folded down the toilet seat, and settled down to wait, trying to breathe through his mouth to minimize the stench.

While he watched the door through the doorjamb crack of the cubicle, he made a slipknot loop from a length of fishing line and put it back into his pocket. Then he took out the Bauer and cocked it. He was counting on the beer and the regularity of Miiller's bladder capacity. The last time he had seen Müller out drinking in Asunción, Müller had hit the john approximately every forty-five minutes. It wasn't much, but it was something. More important, Steiger hadn't gone with him.

Caine glanced around the cubicle at the graffiti. The partitions were decorated with the usual badly drawn cocks and cunts and obscene Spanish suggestions that would have required a contortionist to fulfill. That's the part that the Company doesn't talk about when recruiting, he thought wryly. That an agent spends more time in toilets than a janitor does.

Müller's image filled the doorway for an instant and then it was gone. Caine waited until he heard the piddling water sound from the urinal before he quietly unlatched the cubicle door and stepped out. Müller was just zipping up his fly when he heard Caine. He started to turn, his eyes narrowing at the sight of the Bauer aimed at his heart.

“Put your hands up,” Caine ordered sharply.

Müller raised his hands slowly, an ironic smile playing across his face.

He didn't looked worried. Probably playing for time till Steiger came looking, Caine thought, his eyes burning bright green as with fever.

“No, against the wall, hotshot,” Caine said, gesturing at the wall with the Bauer. He held Müller spread-eagle against the wall and quickly frisked him, keeping the Bauer clear. He knew he had to be quick. Steiger could come in at any second. Now he had come to the danger point. If Müller were to make his move, it would have to be now.

“Put your hands behind you.”

Instantaneously with the tensing of the muscles in Müller's shoulders telegraphing the move, Caine slammed the butt of the Bauer with all his strength into Müller's kidneys. Müller's strangled gasp was lost in the hollow thump as Caine rammed his left palm against the base of the skull, cracking Müller's forehead against the wall.

“Put 'em behind you,” Caine hissed, and as Müller weakly brought his hands behind him, Caine slipped the fishing-line loop around the crossed wrists and pulled it so tight the line disappeared into the flesh. Müller started to fill his lungs to shout and Caine jammed the Bauer into the same kidney. All that came out of Müller was a hoarse gargle.

“Shut up,” Caine hissed, and tightly bound Müller's hands with the remaining length of line. A thin red bracelet of blood formed around Müller's wrists and began to drip on the floor.

“Go,” Caine said and shoved Müller ahead of him into the dark corridor and out the alley exit. He kicked Müller facedown onto the Ford's rear-seat floor, fishing in Müller's pockets for the keys to the Mercedes. When he found the keys, he started the Ford, pulled out of the alley, and drove for half a block, stopping alongside the parked Mercedes. Warning Müller not to move, he jumped out of the Ford and quickly opened the Mercedes. He released the hook lock, opened the hood, and yanked out the distributor cap and wiring. Then he slammed down the hood, locked the Mercedes, and was back in the Ford within seconds, heading out of town along the lake-front road. In spite of all that, he knew nothing he did would delay Steiger for long.

He could hear Müller trying to gain leverage against the rear seat, as he neared the outskirts of San Bernadino. Suddenly he doused his lights and swerved to a stop in a dark private road. Caine heaved the distributor cap and the Mercedes keys in opposite directions far into the trees, then went around to the rear door and tightly bound Müller's feet with another length of fish line. He forced Müller to hop into the front seat, where he could keep an eye on him, and soon they were again speeding out to the deserted farmhouse.

The headlights carved a tunnel of light through the dense jungle darkness as they sped down the unlit asphalt road. The warm, moist wind created by the car's speed flowed through the half-opened window, pressing against his skin in a clammy embrace. Insects splattered like brown raindrops against the windshield until he was forced to use the wipers, smearing the glass with a gummy film.

“Who are you?
Israelien?
” Müller gasped. Since the Eichmann snatch Nazi fugitives had been haunted by the nightmare of Israeli commandos. Now the nightmare was coming true at last.

Müller twisted to look at Caine, his face sweating and taut with pain. But his pale eyes were cold and still in control of it.

“
Bitte
, the line is too tight. My hands are getting numb.”

“So what,” Caine said.

The asphalt ended and they began bouncing down a dirt road, hedged like a corridor by the dark shadows of trees. Müller gritted his teeth in pain. Every few seconds Caine glanced across at him, then back up at the rearview mirror, which remained pitch-black. He held the speedometer needle poking around fifty, like a compass needle touching north.

“Are you
Israelien?
” Müller asked. When Caine didn't answer, he shrugged and looked away into the darkness.

“It doesn't matter. It had to come. We are both dead men, you and I. Unless you free me, you'll never get out of Paraguay alive. Do you know who I am?”

“I know who you are, Müller,” Caine said.

“You know nothing,” Müller retorted contemptuously. “I am
Hauptsturmbannführer
Heinrich Müller of the Waffen SS. Did you think I would deny it? I am not like those others, the weaklings, who claimed that they were only following orders. Otherwise they wouldn't have harmed the hair on a Jew's head,” he added mockingly. “I did not follow orders, I gave them,” he thundered proudly.

“And millions died,” Caine said.

“Why not? It was war and they were in the way. We were trying to do what no society had ever done before. To create a New Order for the world and defend our sacred
Vaterland
at the same time. Only a squeamish weakling would let a few Jews stand in the way of what we were trying to accomplish. Besides, what were those lice to me? Or anyone? Shall I tell you something? All anyone ever cares about is himself. It's human nature. If you're honest, you'll admit it.