A Quiet Flame

“We were in the southern part of Russia, mainly,” he said. “Krasnodar and Stavropol. And in the northern Caucasus. The action group was headed by Otto Ohlendorf, and Beerkamp. My unit was commanded by an officer named Seetzen. Nice fellow. We had three gas vans at our disposal. Two big Saurers and a little Diamond. Mostly it was clearing out hospitals and asylums. The children’s homes were the worst. But don’t think these were normal healthy kids, mind. They weren’t. They were gimps, you know? Feebleminded, retarded kids. Bedridden, disabled. Better off out of it, if you asked me. Especially given the way the Popovs looked after them, which was to say hardly at all. The conditions in some of these places were appalling. In a way, gassing them like we did was a bloody kindness. Putting them out of their misery, we were. You’d have done the same for an injured horse. Anyway, that’s the way we looked at it.”

He paused, as if recalling some of the terrible scenes that he had witnessed. I almost pitied him. I wouldn’t have had his thoughts for anything.

“Mind you, it was still hard work. Not everyone could stick it. Some of the kids would catch on as to what was happening and we’d have to throw them in the vans. That could be pretty rough. We had to shoot a few who tried to escape. But once they were inside the van and the doors were shut, it was pretty quick, I think. They’d hammer on the sides of the truck for a few minutes and that would be it. Over. The more of them we managed to squeeze into the truck, the quicker it would be. I was in charge of that detail between August 1942 and July 1943, by which time we were in general retreat, of course.

“Then I went to Klagenfurt, where I was chief of the Gestapo. Then Koblenz, where I was also head of the Gestapo. After the war I was interned in Dachau, by the Amis, only I managed to escape. Hopeless, they were, the Amis. Couldn’t guard a fire. Then it was Rome, and the Vatican, before I ended up here. Right now, I’m working for Fuldner, but I’m planning to try the real estate business. There’s plenty of money to be made in this city. But I do miss Austria. Most of all I miss the skiing. I was the German police ski champion, you know.”

“Really?” Clearly, I had misjudged him completely. He might have been a murdering bastard but he was a sporting murdering bastard.

“You are right to look surprised, Herr Hausner.” He laughed. “I’ve been ill, you see. I was in Brazil before coming here to Argentina and managed to pick up a case of malaria. Really, I’ve still not recovered full health.” He went into the kitchen and opened the door of a new-looking Di Tella refrigerator. “Beer?”

“No, thanks.” I was particular about whom I drank with. “Not while I’m on duty.”

Kurt Christmann laughed. “I used to be like you,” he said, opening a beer bottle. “But now I try to be more like the Argentines. I even take a siesta in the afternoon. People like me and you, Hausner. We’re lucky to be alive.” He nodded. “A passport would be good. But I don’t think I’ll be going back to Germany. Germany’s finished, I think, now that the Popovs are there. There’s nothing there for me, except perhaps a hangman’s noose.”

“We did what we had to do,” I said. “What we were told to do.” I knew this speech well enough by now. I’d heard it often during the last five years. “We were just carrying out orders. If we’d refused to obey, we would have been shot ourselves.”

“That’s right,” agreed Christmann. “That’s right. We were only obeying orders.”

Now that I’d let him run a bit, I decided to try to reel the line in.

“Mind you,” I said. “There were some. A few. A few rotten apples who enjoyed the killing. Who went beyond the normal course of duty.”

Christmann pressed the beer bottle to his cheek and thought for a moment; then he shook his head. “You know something? I really don’t think that’s true. Not that I saw, anyway. Maybe it was different in your outfit. But the men I was with, in the Ukraine. All of them handled themselves with great courage and fortitude. That’s what I miss most. The comradeship. The brothers in arms. That’s what I miss most.”

I nodded, in seeming sympathy. “I miss Berlin, most of all,” I said. “Munich, too. But Berlin most of all.”

“You know something? I never went to Berlin.”

“What? Never?”

“No.” He chuckled and drank some more beer. “I don’t suppose I shall ever see it now, eh?”

I went away, full of satisfaction at having done an excellent day’s work. It’s the people you meet that make being a detective so rewarding. Once in a while you meet a real sweetie, like Kurt Christmann, who restores your faith in medieval justice and vigilantism and other, thoroughly sensible Latin American practices like strappado and the garrote. Sometimes it’s hard to walk away from people like that without shaking your head and wondering how it ever got to be that bad.

How did it ever get to be that bad?