A Quiet Flame

“You’re not obliged to take my word for it at all. I’ll have my lawyers draw up a letter of agreement regarding the reward.”

It wasn’t what I’d meant, but I didn’t contradict him. Instead I took a last look around the room.

“What happened to the bird in the cage?”

“The bird?”

“In the cage.” I pointed at the pagoda-sized cage on the tall table.

Von Bader looked at the cage almost as if he had never looked at it before. “Oh, that. It died.”

“Was she upset about it?”

“Yes, of course she was. But I don’t see how her disappearance could have anything to do with a bird.”

I shrugged.

“I have a fourteen-year-old daughter, Herr Hausner. You don’t. As a result, and with all due respect, I think I can honestly say I know more about fourteen-year-old girls than you do.”

“Did she bury it in the garden?”

“I really don’t know.”

“Perhaps your wife does.”

“I’d really rather you didn’t ask her about it. She’s upset enough about things as it is. My wife holds herself responsible for the death of the bird. And she’s already looking around for reasons to blame herself for our daughter’s disappearance. Any implied suggestion that these two events might be connected would only add to the sense of guilt she’s feeling about Fabienne. I’m sure you understand.”

That might just have been true. And maybe it wasn’t. But out of respect for his two million pesos I was prepared to let the bird go. Sometimes, to take hold of the money, you have to let go of the bird. That’s what they call politics.

We returned to the sitting room, where the baroness had started crying again. I’ve made a close study of women crying. In my line of work it comes with the truncheon and the handcuffs. On the eastern front, in 1941, I saw women who could have won Olympic gold medals for crying. Sherlock Holmes used to study cigar ash and wrote a monograph on the subject. I knew about crying. I knew that when a woman is crying it doesn’t pay to let her get too close to your shoulder. It can cost you a clean shirt. Tears are, however, sacred, and you violate their sanctity at your peril. We left her to get on with it.

AFTER WE LEFT the von Bader house, I insisted the colonel and I go to Recoleta Cemetery. We were, after all, very close. I wanted to see the place Fabienne had been visiting when she disappeared.

Like the Viennese, rich porteños take death very seriously. Enough to spend large sums of money on expensive tombs and mausolea. But Recoleta was the only cemetery I’d ever been where there weren’t any graves. We went through a Greek-style entrance into what was a little city of marble. Many of the mausolea were classically designed and looked almost habitable. Walking around the neat and parallel stone streets was like touring some ancient Roman town swept clean of its human inhabitants by a cataclysmic natural disaster. Looking up at the bright blue sky, I half expected to see the smoking crater of a volcano. It was hard to imagine a fourteen-year-old girl coming to such a place. The few living people we saw were old and gray. I expect they had the same thought about me and the colonel.

We got back in the car and headed for the Casa Rosada. It was a while since I’d driven a car. Not that anyone would have noticed. I had seen worse drivers than porteños, but only in Ben-Hur. Ramón Novarro and Francis X. Bushman would have felt quite at home on the streets of Buenos Aires.

“Nice and handy for the president to have his secret police headquartered in the Casa Rosada,” I said, catching sight of the distinctive pink building again.

“It has some advantages. Incidentally, you’ve already seen the boss. The youngish man in the pinstripe suit who was with us when you met Perón? That’s him. Rodolfo Freude. He’s never very far away from the president.”

“Freude. Von Bader mentioned a banker called Ludwig Freude. Any relation?”

“Rodolfo’s father.”

“Is that how he got the job?”

“It’s a long story, but yes, in effect.”

“Was he in the Abwehr, too?”

“Who? Rodolfo? No. But Rodolfo’s deputy was. Werner Koennecke. Werner is married to Rodolfo’s sister, Lily.”

“It all sounds very cozy.”

“That’s Buenos Aires for you. It’s just like the cemetery at Recoleta. You have to know someone to get in.”

“Who do you know, Colonel?”

“Rodolfo knows some important people, it’s true. But I know people who are really important. I know an Italian woman who is the best whore in the city. I know a chef who makes the best pasta in South America. And I know a man who can kill someone and make it look like a suicide, with no questions asked. These are the important things to know in our strange profession, Herr Hausner. Don’t you agree?”

“I don’t often awake and feel the need to have someone murdered, Colonel. If I did I’d probably do it myself. But I guess I’m just a little bit strange that way. Besides, I’m too old to be impressed by anything very much. Except perhaps an Italian woman. I always did like Italian women.”

8 BERLIN, 1932