Astronomy, page 8
Pete DeLeone scraped off another stinking mound and brushed his hands over the omelet. “Now you won’t have to stop for lunch,” he said, smiling agreeably.
Betty stood back, aghast, and Susan walked off. “Come back,” Betty called. “Help me stop this Philistine from ruining the meal!” Susan lowered her head and kept going.
She passed Bogen standing at the kitchen door, going, “What’s wrong with garlic for breakfast . . . ?” She slugged the back of his head. That, she figured, was doing her bit for sisterhood.
Charley Shrieve was on the phone when she walked into his office. The room looked like him—neat, quiet, a little more reserved than was maybe healthy.
He caught the weight of her gaze, cut the conversation short, and hung up the phone.
“You didn’t have to do that,” she said.
“Ike will call back if it’s important.”
“Ike—that’s a joke, right?”
She noticed a smile on his face, but it disappeared even as she watched. He cleared a spot for her on the edge of his desk. Susan had sorted Conrad Hartmann’s disorderly mess into a neat chronological story of the rise and fall of the Faulkenberg Reservoir weapons lab.
She set it aside. She’d get to that in a while. Out of all this stuff, she’d found just one photograph that mattered enough to show her case officer.
Three men stood in the foreground—a pair of German officers and a disheveled scholar she recognized as Carl Leder. They had a giant volume opened up in front of them, something that looked as if it had been bound in some exotic leather (which, you might say, it was).
The book was the source of the exposure. Indeed, the book itself was all but obliterated by lens flare—though no uplighting appeared under the chins of the three principals. Whatever light had burned the photograph must have been invisible to the men in the picture.
They were consulting like contractors working off of a blueprint; only there was no blueprint. They were checking the layout of their weapons laboratory against a diagram in the Necronomicon.
She directed Shrieve’s attention to the German officer on the right.
“See the tall, aristocratic one, nice smile, looks like he’d have the latest story about the Farmer’s Daughter? I, uhm, I know him.”
Shrieve had this expression of professional interest. He resettled his glasses on his nose; suddenly his eyes were as blank as a Nebraska sky reflected in chrome. It had been funny when Shrieve had looked this way at Carl Leder.
Wasn’t so funny now.
“This is ‘Galileo’? This is the guy who did the magic trick and disappeared?”
She dug in her shirt pocket for another Marlboro. The pack was empty. Shit.
“This is the guy I went in to find,” she said. “A Krzysztof Malmagden. He turned out to be a major in the SS. He was assigned to head security for Zentralbund der Geheimlehre’s Totenstürm program.”
Shrieve watched her pat her pockets a moment. “You looking for a cigarette?” Charley Shrieve had a cigarette. He even lit it for her. “You didn’t tell me your boy Galileo was Major Krzysztof Malmagden.”
Susan frowned at the familiar way Shrieve spoke of him. “You know Krzysztof Malmagden?”
“Let’s say I’ve heard the name. He’s a scary guy, even for a Nazi. How come you never mentioned him?”
“He must have slipped my mind.”
“You want to talk about him now?”
She laughed. She couldn’t believe she was letting herself in for this. She was a civilian. She was supposed to be in Stony Brook, New York. She was supposed to be introducing freshman lit majors to John O’Hara.
“I was sent into Berlin to check out the head of the German’s Totenstürm program, for a possible extraction. Only it turned out to be some sort of, I don’t know, practical joke? This Major Malmagden had never communicated anything to the Allies. The Gestapo was there and they wanted to know who I was. They wanted very much to know what I was doing there.”
“Did this Major Malmagden . . .” Shrieve resettled his glasses on his nose. “Did he abuse you?”
Susan loved the way guys asked her that—sort of compassionate and avid at the same time. Even the smart ones, like this Charley Shrieve. She’d let herself get angry the first couple weeks back from Berlin. Eventually she realized anger just fed their lurid imaginations. “Oh. She doesn’t want to talk about it . . .” Jesus.
“Not exactly,” she said. “Things got way out of hand. Things took an odd turn.”
* * *
Shrieve was silent for a long time after she finished her story. He seemed uncertain what she wanted him to do. “It was a goof,” he said. “He saw a handy American and realized you might be useful at his war crimes tribunal.”
“I feel terrible,” she said.
“Too bad. These Germans were dead whether you were there or not.” Shrieve looked down at his notepad. He spelled out, “ ‘K R Z Y S Z T O F’? That doesn’t look German.”
“I don’t think he is German. I think he’s one of those aspiring Nazis from the Balkans. I don’t feel right about this,” she said. “All those people dead and here I am, drinking tea in a nice little house in Kiel. This terrible thing happened and the world just goes on, you know?”
“Malmagden’s being charged with mass murder. Does that make you feel any better?”
“Mass murder,” she said. “Somehow that seems barely enough.”
“How about mass murder and loitering with intent to commit lewd acts?”
She looked at him, What? He explained. Malmagden had been picked up in Cologne. Turned out the other side of his Angle Web had been the cellar of a church the last time he’d seen it. But the church housed a U.S. Army logistical support group now, and the cellar had been turned to other purposes as well.
Malmagden had cooked up an elaborate story to explain what he was doing in Cologne. He had no explanation for what he was doing in a women’s restroom.
It hardly mattered anyway. Shrieve had unhappy news.
“This Krzysztof Malmagden was at Faulkenberg Reservoir right up to the time it got vaporized. He’s the only lead we have left who can tell us what this Das Unternehmen was supposed to be. You and I, we’re the only ones who know enough to question him.”
“ ‘Till we meet again,’ ” she said.
“What?”
“The last time I saw him, that’s what he told me: Auf Wiedersehen. ‘Till we meet again.’ ”
* * *
In her dreams, Krzysztof Malmagden was a sepulchral presence, a portrait by El Greco in spectral light and black SS uniform. As she watched him stroll across the soccer field outside Plötzensee Prison on this shimmering-bright July morning, smiling and looping his arms across his teammates’ shoulders, he looked like a favorite Lutheran Sunday School teacher.
She had to remind herself, here was the man who had thrown three of his own soldiers to a horrible death. Simply to make a point.
Susan touched the heel of her Walther, just to make sure it was still handy. “Greetings from Boston College, Herr Malmagden. Class of 1941.”
He was confidential and cordial, happy in the good sweat of a morning spent with friends. He joked with an American private, and the kid was obviously enthralled.
Rank confers nobility, she realized, no matter whose army bestows it.
He excused himself all around and started across the field. Two of the other players stepped away with him—U.S. Army soldiers, she realized. Either they were guarding against his escape, or against his assassination. It was hard to tell. They smiled at Malmagden’s little asides as he came over. They gave Shrieve and Bogen hard looks.
Malmagden introduced them as sergeant Enders and Private Hobbs. He didn’t say which was which. He shook hands with Shrieve and Bogen.
Malmagden took her hand, just as she remembered. His smile held genuine warmth.
“Fräulein Berne, wasn’t it? Katje Berne?”
She found herself nodding dumbly.
“But of course, that wasn’t your real name, was it?”
“No.”
Malmagden laughed. “Please. We are no longer enemies. I confess, I found you enchanting.”
“Susan Gilbert,” she said. She managed to smile. She even managed to block the more egregious revenge fantasies out of her mind—the ones that involved setting him on fire just to see him run around. All in all, she thought she handled their introduction fairly well.
Shrieve extended a hand toward the interview room. They had reserved a room there for the afternoon. It was hardly a bistro on the Champs Élysées, but it had windows. It had a coffeepot. Malmagden accepted these small amenities with the grace of a dispossessed prince.
“Tell me, Liebchen. Do you still keep an L-pill inside of that silly fake wedding ring on your finger?”
She started to make some lame joke about keeping it around for the occasional blind date. It was a stupid joke. She dropped it.
Malmagden turned to the others. “The Gestapo harassed her briefly while I was attending to other matters. She thought I might let her be tortured for information.”
She laughed good-naturedly. “Silly me.”
Malmagden made an indignant sound. “As if I would harm an Allied agent when the Russians are fighting their way into downtown Berlin. Think what you will of me, Frau Malmagden did not raise no fool.” He gave her a wicked grin. “Did I get that right? With the double negatives, yes?” Malmagden shook his head in amazed good humor: You Americans and your double negatives.
“You did lock me in a cell in the sewers beneath Berlin.” She felt like a spoilsport pointing this out.
“The Russians were preparing to flatten every building on the surface. The entire Volksstürm was down there with you.”
“I might have been eaten alive by the undead.”
“I made sure you were not.”
Susan had to force her hand away from the butt of her pistol. “Have I neglected to thank you?”
They held each other’s gaze a moment. Somewhere in the dark, she could hear her partners shuffling their feet in an embarrassed way. Shrieve coughed into his fist. Malmagden chuckled and looked away.
“Rotekopfen,” he chortled. “Redheads!”
* * *
Shrieve led off with a pack of cigarettes. This was the Allies’ standard interrogation tool.
Krzysztof Malmagden was not one of your steely-nerved Nazis, smelling of disinfectant and sanctimony. He eyed the American cigarettes enviously. It was all he could do to keep his hands on the table while Shrieve tapped one out for him.
Shrieve took his time. He blunted the end on the table, he smiled, he lit it for him, blew a puff of smoke his way.
“We want to know about a weapons laboratory in the Franconian Forest. You play straight with us, maybe we can help you out of the jam you’re in.”
Malmagden laughed. “Why would we put anything in the Franconian Wald? Do you know what’s there? Nothing! Someone has sold you a fish story, yes?”
“You were there, weren’t you? Just before it was destroyed? I hear you might even have played some part in that.”
Malmagden studied Susan briefly. He couldn’t lie in front of her as he could to Charley Shrieve. She was the witness to all of his crimes.
Malmagden waved his hand in a dismissive gesture. “Sure, I worked for Zentralbund der Geheimlehre. But I was polizei. I was a policeman. I cannot help you with anything of a technical nature.”
“What were you doing at Faulkenberg Reservoir,” she asked him. “Directing traffic?”
Malmagden winced at her tone. “Your brief encounter with the unknown has made you paranoid, Fräulein Berne.”
“Gilbert,” she corrected him. “Susan Gilbert.”
“Are you the one responsible for confiscating every writing implement in my cell?”
“You have access to a typewriter.”
“The keyboard is unfamiliar to me. I cannot use it.”
“Come on, Krzysztof. Even I can type.”
Malmagden gave her a disingenuous expression. “You will not allow me a writing implement so that I can compose my thoughts like a gentleman?”
“No pens, no pencils, nothing you can draw with.”
“I betrayed my brothers to spare you and your associates,” he said. “Yet you would make me work for my freedom like some indentured servant.”
Susan leaned forward to speak with him in a confidential tone. “Arbeit Macht Frei.”
Malmagden looked away. That was dirty pool, wasn’t it?
He puffed on his cigarette till blue smoke fanned through the ceiling lights. “You should thank me for what I have done, both in Berlin, and . . .” he gestured at the ceiling, “elsewhere. You have no idea how close you all came to the Apocalypse.”
Shrieve sighed. He looked to Susan. “Is this the guy you were going to testify for at the war crimes tribunal?”
Susan wasn’t sure what her role was supposed to be here. Instinct told her to keep her mouth shut and stare at Malmagden like he was a piece of meat. That was easy to do. She thought of Hope and Crosby begging their commanding officer to save them.
Shrieve held up the pictures taken at Faulkenberg Reservoir. Susan nodded—show him. He set it on the table. Malmagden tried to claim it was faked. Susan turned it over to reveal the date and the signature of Conrad Hartmann.
Malmagden chuckled to himself. “That swine.”
“You worked together,” Shrieve said. “Hartmann once worked in your perimeter guard up at Faulkenberg Reservoir.”
Malmagden laughed. “Did he tell you that? He flatters himself.”
“Not anymore,” Susan said. “Conrad Hartmann is dead.”
This had a gratifying impact on Malmagden’s nerve. He looked as if he’d been hit by a penny thrown off the Empire State Building.
“ ‘Dead’? Please. That is too much dramatic. We are not children here. Hartmann is in this very prison somewhere. He is laughing at me right now, yes?”
“Somebody smothered him in mercury,” Shrieve said. “There’s some question whether he died before or after his intestines burst. Whatever, it must have been a horrible way to die.”
“And then one of your ghouls came by to check up on him.”
“ ‘Ghouls’?” Malmagden laughed.
“You know the one—Nietzsche, I think? He has the dark patch running between his eyebrows. Him.”
“You are an exceptionally imaginative young lady.”
“They were your personal guard in Berlin,” she said. “They still work for you? Or are they working for someone else now?”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Because I always thought they were the reason your Zentralbund buddies left you alone. If your guard has gone to work for one of your rivals, hey . . .” She lifted her hands, You figure it out.
Malmagden became quiet; that mercury business, that may have horrified him, but that was Hartmann’s problem. Malmagden’s ghouls were close to his heart.
“Please,” he said, “I cannot talk further. I have to go back now.”
Something had taken a wrong turn. She had miscalculated with her riff about his personal guard. Susan had worried she couldn’t scare a guy like Malmagden. She had succeeded entirely too well. In fact, he was checking his watch. He wanted to go back to his cell.
“You have no idea what you are dealing with here,” Malmagden said. He called to his two American protectors. But Dale Bogen had them wrapped up in a cutthroat game of Crazy Eights.
He pounded at the door.
“You know something about two hundred tons of lead and concrete shipped through a warehouse on Münterstrasse in the last few days?”
Malmagden laughed. “In the last few days? I’ve been in prison.”
“Is it a weapons program? You guys building yourself some sort of Gadget?”
“You risk my life in ways you do not understand. I will not talk to you further.” He banged at the door louder. Any second now, Enders and Hobbs would be down to collect him.
Susan saw the murderer of Hope and Crosby making his escape. And Shrieve was leaning back from the table in his casual manner.
“Let me suggest you get back here and sit down,” she said lightly. “I’m not done talking with you yet.”
“What would you do?” Malmagden addressed the door. He had no intention of turning around. “Beat me with the hose?”
Rubber hose was something she had a passing acquaintance with. “Takes a certain expertise to use a hose efficiently,” she said. “I’m in sort of a hurry tonight.”
Like magic, the Walther PP was in her hand.
The room got heartbeat quiet. Malmagden turned to face her. His eyes grew infinitesimally larger. Slowly, calmly, Charley Shrieve leaned forward in his chair.
“Come on, Red. Belay that shit.”
“You want to know what’s going on at Faulkenberg Reservoir? Just leave us alone a couple minutes. Let me take care of this.”
“What if you shoot off his kneecap and he doesn’t talk?”
“That’s the nice thing about knees,” she pointed out. “They come in pairs.”
“Malmagden was simultaneously trying to look amused and curl his knees away from her toward the wall.”
“You’re not scaring him. Krzyzstof here, he’s got things after him that aren’t even human.”
Malmagden was watching the gun. He was holding his droll expression even as he reached back to work the doorknob.
“Listen to the young gentleman,” Malmagden urged in a voice that did not sound droll or amused in the least. “If you truly understand the principalities I dealt with, then you know what would happen if they learned of my betrayal.”
“There you go, Red. He can’t name names. But that doesn’t mean he won’t help us out, does it Krzysztof?”
Malmagden became still. He studied Shrieve in a calculating way. They were speaking in fine print, she realized. She had fulfilled her role in this little charade: They were doing some kind of deal.
“We don’t want you to get in trouble.” Charley smiled reasonably at everyone. Things were going to be all right; he would see to it personally. “Red here, she doesn’t want you to get in trouble. She’s just a little pent-up. It’s been a long war. But we’re all friends. Aren’t we, Red?”
