The Eighth Dwarf (22 page)

But everything else about the deserter's description tallied almost exactly with the extensive dossiers that both Bureau IV and Bureau V of the SS
Reichssicherheitshauptampf,
or National Central Security Office, had once maintained on Kurt Oppenheimer. The pattern of operating was the same, as were the height, weight, and coloring. The only item missing from the SS files was a photograph. There was none.

The Americans shared their discovery with the Russians and the British. They also offered the information to the French, but the French that week were miffed about something and rejected the offer. The Russians and the British, however, were very much interested, and as the killings went on they became even more so.

Sitting now on the edge of his cot in the cellar of the ruined castle near Höchst and waiting for the water to boil for his tea, Kurt Oppenheimer tried to remember the faces of all the men he had killed. For some reason, the faces of those he had killed before the war ended were clearer than those he had killed afterward. These latter faces tended to blur and sometimes even took on the features of Sergeants Packer and Sherrod. He often thought of the two Americans, who had been shipped home months before, and wondered what they were doing. Packer he always pictured on a horse, dressed like a cowboy, and Sherrod, red beard bristling, was always lying near the surf on some warm beach.

He had no trouble remembering Karl-Heinz Damm's face, however, because Damm he had known quite well. Damm, in fact, had been the only one he had really despised. The rest had been merely symbols that he had destroyed. He had decided that you didn't need to hate a symbol in order to destroy it All you had to do was squeeze the trigger. It was really quite simple.

He rose and poured the boiling water into the teapot. Then he took the list that he had torn from Damm's ledgerlike book and studied it. The first name on the list was in the American Zone, in Russelsheim, only 19 miles from Frankfurt. The second name on the list was in the British Zone, in Bonn—or was it Bad Godesberg? No matter. He would do the one at Russelsheim first. Today he would demote himself to lieutenant It would be the last time that the American officer uniforms would be of any use. Yesterday in the Casino he knew he had pushed his luck by approaching the British Major. But it had been amusing. He realized that the British were probably looking for him. And there was even the possibility that the Major had been one of those who were doing the looking. He had that hunter's look about him, and besides, British majors weren't all that common in the American Zone. It would be even more amusing if the British Major somehow discovered that the American who had bought him a drink was actually the very man that he was looking for.

You want them to catch you, fool, his mocking self told him. “Well, yes, naturally,” Oppenheimer said aloud. “I've always known that.”

The Opel Motor Works at Russelsheim, about halfway between Frankfurt and Mainz, covered five hundred acres and at one time had been the largest automobile-manufacturing plant in Europe. At its peak it had turned out nearly 5,000 cars and trucks a month and had employed some 24,000 workers.

Both the RAF and the U.S. Army Air Corps had bombed it by day and by night, but despite their combined efforts the Opel plant was still operating at 40 percent of capacity at the war's end. Now it was back in operation, after a fashion, and supervising the entire plant and its 4,137 German workers was Lt. Jack Fallon, who before the war had been a shop steward for a United Auto Workers (CIO) local at the Ford plant in Dearborn, Michigan. To help him run his new empire, the Military Government had allotted him two enlisted men, a three-quarter-ton truck with a trailer, and an interpreter.

It was the interpreter whom the CID Lieutenant wanted to see.

“Jesus, you don't think he's a Nazi or something, do you?” Fallon said. “I'Ve already lost two interpreters because somebody claimed they were Nazis. Hell, this guy couldn't be a Nazi. He was in a concentration camp.”

“It's just routine,” Kurt Oppenheimer said.

“Okay, I'll see if I can find him for you.”

Fallon turned in his swivel chair and yelled through the open door, “Hey, Little, where the hell's Wiese got off to?”

“Beats the shit out of me, Lieutenant,” Cpl. Virgil Little yelled back.

“Well, go find the fucker and get his ass in here.”

“Yes, sir.”

Fallon leaned back in his chair. “It might take a while,” he said. “This is one hell of a big plant”

“That's all right,” Oppenheimer said.

“They keeping you guys busy?”

“Fairly so. How about you?”

Fallon sighed. “It's a mess. You know who I get orders from? I get orders from G-Five in Frankfurt. Except that sometimes their orders are just the opposite of the ones I get from G-Four—that's production control. And before I can turn around, here comes a new set of orders in—this time from OMGUS up in Berlin. And if that wasn't enough, those G-Five fuckers down at Seventh Army in Heidelberg think they've got to put their two cents' worth in. I don't know what the hell I'm doing half the time.”

“Sounds rough,” Oppenheimer said, producing a pack of Camels, and offered them to Fallon.

Fallon shook his head. “Let me give you an example of what I mean.” He looked hopefully at Oppenheimer and was encouraged by the sympathetic nod that he got.

“What we're trying to do here is turn out trucks—small ones, you know, three-quarter-ton jobs. But in the meantime we're also supposed to be turning out radiators and carburetors, and these we ship off to the D-B plant at Mannheim.”

“D-B?” Oppenheimer said.

“Daimler-Benz.”

“Oh.”

“Okay, swell, we turn out four hundred and sixteen radiators and six hundred and two carburetors, right?”

“Right.”

“Then they shut down the fucking gas on us. Well, we get our gas from Darmstadt, and Darmstadt has to have coal before it can turn out gas. But Darmstadt depends on getting its coal from somewhere up in the Ruhr, in the British Zone. Well, they're not mining any coal up in the Ruhr, or if they are, those British fuckers are keeping it for themselves. So D-B is screaming for its radiators and its carbs and I'm screaming back that I can't turn 'em out without gas and I can't get the gas unless Darmstadt gets the coal. So you know what they tell me to do?”

“What?”

“Improvise.”

“Jesus.”

“So here's what I do. I take one of those trucks that we turned out and I write it off. I mean the records on it just disappear. It was never produced, if you know what I mean? Then I start nosing around the black market and I find some guy who's got coal. You can find it if you know where to look. So I say to this guy, ‘How'd you like a brand-new truck?' Of course, he wants to know what the catch is. Well, the catch is that he's gotta use the truck to haul enough coal over to Darmstadt to provide me with gas for three weeks.”

“That's goddamned ingenious,” Oppenheimer said.

Fallon ran his hand through his short brown hair. He was a wiry man, not too tall, a little past thirty, who wore a look of perpetual exasperation on a face that was too young to have so many lines in it.

“Well, hell, I don't know if it's ingenious or not. All I know is that I'm going home next month—if they don't court-martial me first I tell you one thing, though. I've learned some tricks here that're gonna set those Ford fuckers back on their ass if they don't watch out.” He smiled happily at the pleasing prospect, and most of the exasperated look went away.

Cpl. Virgil Little came into the office a few minutes later without knocking, followed by a German civilian dressed in a brown suit and black shoes. Corporal Little was about twenty, with a thinker's face and a scholar's stoop. The German civilian was more than twice his age, with a round face, small blue eyes, and a thin-lipped, unforgiving mouth that separated a tiny chin from a rather large nose. What remained of his hair was a dull taupe shade.

“Here he is, Lieutenant” Corporal Little said. “Anything else?”

Before Fallon could reply, Oppenheimer said, “I'd like the Corporal to remain, Lieutenant. All right?”

Fallon shrugged. “Okay.”

“And the other enlisted man. Would you have him come in too?”

“Tell Baxter to come in,” Fallon said.

“Hey, Baxter,” Corporal Little called through the door. “The Lieutenant wants you.”

A big, sleepy-looking youth of about nineteen shambled in and looked around. He was Private Louis Baxter, whose one passion in life was automobiles. Working in a plant where they were actually manufactured was for him an experience of unending joy.

“Would you close the door, please?” Oppenheimer said.

Baxter turned and closed the door, then turned back.

“Private, I think you should sit over there,” Oppenheimer said, indicating a chair, “and you, Corporal, over there.”

Baxter sat where he was told, but Corporal Little looked first at Lieutenant Fallon, who frowned slightly, then nodded. Corporal Little sat down.

That left only the German standing in the center of the large office. He looked calmly at Oppenheimer, smiled slightly, then looked back at Fallon.

“May I ask the purpose of this meeting, Lieutenant?”

Fallon nodded at Oppenheimer. “The Lieutenant here will tell you.”

The German nodded, looked at Oppenheimer, nodded again almost enough for it to be a slight bow, and said, “Please?”

“Your name?” Oppenheimer said in a bored voice.

“Wiese. Joachim Wiese.”

“Your age?”

“Forty-three.”

“Place of birth?”

“Leipzig.”

“Occupation?”

“Interpreter.”

“Occupation before the war?”

“Teacher.”

“What subjects did you teach?”

“English, French, and Latin.”

Oppenheimer stared at Wiese for a long moment, smiled, took out the pack of Camels, rose, and offered the German one. Wiese relaxed visibly and accepted the cigarette. Using his Zippo lighter, Oppenheimer lit the German's cigarette, smiled again charmingly, and said, “You're lying.”

“I do not lie,” the German said stiffly as his face turned bright pink.

“What the hell's this all about?” Lieutenant Fallon said.

Oppenheimer went back to his chair and sat down. He reached into his back pocket as if for a handkerchief and brought out the Walther instead.

“For Christ's sake,” Fallon said.

The Walther was aimed at the German who said his name was Joachim Wiese. “We're going to have a court-martial, Lieutenant,” Oppenheimer said. “It won't take long. I will be the prosecution; you will be the judge; Corporal Little, I think, will be the defense counsel; and Private Baxter—let's see—Private Baxter, yes, will be sergeant at arms.”

“What the fuck are you talking about?” Fallon said, and started to rise. Oppenheimer waved the gun at him, and he sat back down.

“I'm talking about friend Wiese here. You see, Lieutenant, his name is really not Wiese at all.” He smiled up at the German. “Tell them your real name.”

The German's face was beginning to sweat. “I don't understand,” he said. “My name is Wiese. I was a teacher. Then they sent me to Dachau. I almost died there. My wife, she—she did die.” He spread his hands imploringly. “I have proof—documents.”

“And very good documents, too. You bought them from a man called Damm—Karl-Heinz Damm—in Munich on June 2, 1945. You paid the equivalent of ten thousand dollars for them in Swiss francs. It was an excellent bargain.”

The German was afraid to move his body, so he only turned his head to look at Fallon. “I—I don't understand any of this, Lieutenant. Can't you do something? It is all some terrible mistake. You have seen my documents. Tell him that you have seen them.”

“I've seen them,” Fallon said in a flat voice.

“Good,” Oppenheimer said. “The judge has seen the documents, so we will stipulate that they have been entered as evidence. Now to get on with the prosecution. You see, Your Honor, the accused was not always an interpreter and was never, never a teacher of English or French or Latin. No, he was in a quite different business during the war—the slave-labor business. Would you care to tell us about the labor business?”

The German shook his head vigorously. The pink had gone from his face. It was now a chalkish white. “I don't understand,” he said. “I don't understand any of this.”

“No? You have never heard the name Oskar Gerwinat?”

Again the German shook his head. “No. Never.”

“Strange. Well, Oskar Gerwinat was in the slave-labor business. He was a contractor. By that I mean he was given contracts to feed and house the slave laborers. Well, Herr Gerwinat was an excellent businessman. He soon discovered that the less he fed his charges, the more profitable his business. If they died, from exposure or overwork or hunger, well, no matter. There were always many more where they came from: Poland, France, Holland—places like that. Herr Gerwinat was not the largest contractor in his particular field, but he had a very nice little business going, mainly in the Ruhr area. The most reliable figures estimate that two thousand three hundred fifty-four of Herr Gerwinat's charges died from hunger or exposure or overwork—or sometimes, I would assume, all three. Now are you quite sure you have never heard of Oskar Gerwinat?”

The man charged with being Oskar Gerwinat was trembling now. “Never,” he said, and sounded as though he were choking on something. “It's all a mistake—a terrible mistake.”

“The prosecution will now introduce new evidence,” Oppenheimer said. He took from his pocket one of the sheets that he had torn from Damm's ledgerlike book and, without taking his eyes from the German, handed it to Fallon.

Fallon looked at it. “Hell, this is in German. I can't read this.”