A Quiet Flame

I unbuttoned my coat so that I could treat his eyes to a little taste of the gun I was wearing. Just in case he thought to try something surgical on me. Like trepanning a little hole in my head with a pistol. Because by now I had no doubt he was armed. There was something heavier than a packet of cigarettes in one of his coat pockets. I didn’t know exactly what Mengele had done during the war. The only thing I knew was what Eichmann had told me. That Mengele had done something bestial at Auschwitz. And for this reason he was one of the most wanted men in Europe.

“Come now. Surely you remember. What was it he used to call you? Biffo, wasn’t it? No, wait a minute. It was Bippo. Whatever happened to Kassner?”

“I really think you’re mistaking me for someone else. If you don’t mind me saying so, this was eighteen years ago.”

“No, it’s all coming back to me now. You see, Herr Doktor Mengele—Beppo—I was a policeman in 1932. Working for the Homicide Division in Berlin KRIPO. A detective investigating the murder of Anita Schwarz. Do you remember her, perhaps?”

He crossed his legs, coolly. “No. Look, this is all very confusing. I think I need a cigarette.”

His hand went into the pocket. But I was quicker.

“Uh-uh,” I said, and holding the Smith & Wesson just a few inches above his belly, I smacked his hand out of his coat pocket and then took out a walnut-handled PPK. I glanced at it briefly. It was a thirty-eight with a Nazi eagle on the grip.

“Not very clever of you,” I said. “Keeping something like this.”

“You’re the one who’s not being very clever,” he said.

I pocketed the pistol and sat down again. “Oh? How’s that?”

“Because I’m a friend of the president.”

“Is that so?”

“I advise you to put that gun away and leave now.”

“Not before we’ve had a little talk, Mengele. About old times.” I thumbed back the hammer on the Smith. “And if I don’t like the answers, then I’m going to have to offer you a prompt. In the foot. And then in the leg. I’m sure you know how it works, Doctor. A Socratic dialogue?”

“Socratic?”

“Yes. I encourage you to reflect and to think and, together”—I waved the gun at him—“together we search for the truth to some important questions. No philosophical training is needed, but if I think you’re not trying to help us reach a consensus—well, you remember what happened to Socrates, don’t you? His fellow Athenians forced him to put a gun to his head and blow his own brains out. Something like that, anyway.”

“Why on earth do you care what happened to Anita Schwarz?” Mengele asked angrily. “It was almost twenty years ago.”

“Not just Anita Schwarz. Elizabeth Bremer, too. The girl in Munich?”

“It wasn’t what you think,” he insisted.

“No? What was it, then? Dadaism? I seem to remember that was quite popular before the Nazis. Let’s see now. You eviscerated those two girls because you were an artist who believed in meaning through chaos. You used their insides for a collage. Or perhaps a nice photograph. There were you and Max Ernst and Kurt Schwitters. No? How about this, then? You were a medical student who decided to make a bit of extra money by offering backstreet abortions to underage girls. It’s the details I’m not clear about. The when and the how.”

“If I tell you, will you leave me alone?”

“If you don’t tell me, I’m going to shoot you.” I took aim at his foot. “Then I’ll leave you alone. To bleed to death.”

“All right, all right.”

“Let’s start in Munich. With Elizabeth Bremer.”

Mengele shook his head until, seeing me take aim at his foot again, he waved his hands. “No, no, I’m just trying to cast my mind back. But it’s difficult. So much has happened since then. You’ve no idea how irrelevant all this seems to a man like me. You’re talking about two accidental deaths that happened almost twenty years ago.” He laughed bitterly. “I was at Auschwitz, you know. And what happened there was, of course, quite extraordinary. Perhaps the most extraordinary thing that has ever happened. Three million died at Auschwitz. Three million. And you just want to talk about two children.”

“I’m not here to judge you. I’m here to finish an investigation.”

“Listen to yourself. You sound like one of those stupid Canadian cowboys. What is it that they call them? The Mounties? They always get their man. Is that really all this is? Professional pride? Or is there something else I’m missing?”

“I’m asking the questions, Doctor. But as it happens, there is some professional pride here, yes. I’m sure you know what that’s like, you being a professional man yourself. I got taken off this case, for political reasons. Because I wasn’t a Nazi. I didn’t like that then and I don’t like it now. So. Let’s start with Walter Pieck. You knew him quite well, didn’t you? From Günzburg.”