“That’s kind of open ended, isn’t it?”
“It’s the best you’ll get. Those memories are, indeed, indelibly printed.”
“But for now you’ll do nothing?”
“You have my word. It’s not lightly given, nor will it be lightly taken back.”
“What would change it?”
“If you disappeared, for one thing.”
“I’ll stay in touch.”
Althene Holcroft watched her son walk out of the room. Her face—so tense, so rigid, only moments ago—was relaxed. Her thin lips formed a smile; her wide eyes were reflective, in them a look of quiet satisfaction and strength.
She reached for the telephone on her desk, pressed the single button O, and seconds later spoke.
“Overseas operator, please. I’d like to place a call to Geneva, Switzerland.”
He needed a professionally acceptable reason to close up Holcroft, Incorporated. Questions of substance could not be asked. The survivors of Wolfsschanze were killers for whom questions were too easily construed as interference. He had to disappear legitimately.… But one did not disappear legitimately: One found plausible explanations that gave the appearance of legitimacy.
The appearance of legitimacy.
Sam Buonoventura.
Not that Sam wasn’t legitimate: He was. He was one of the best construction engineers in the business. But Sam had followed the sun so long he had blind spots. He was a fifty-year-old professional drifter, a City College graduate from Tremont Avenue, in the Bronx, who had found a life of instant gratification in the warmer climes.
A brief tour of duty in the Army Corps of Engineers had convinced Buonoventura that there was a sweeter, more generous world beyond the borders of the United States, preferably south of the Keys. All one had to be was good—good in a job that was part of a larger job in which a great deal of money was invested. And during the fifties and sixties, the construction explosion in Latin America and the Caribbean was such that it might have been created for someone like Sam. He built a reputation among corporations and governments as the building tyrant who got things done in the field.
Once having studied blueprints, labor pools, and budgets, if Sam told his employers that a hotel or an airport or a dam would be operational within a given period of time, he was rarely in error beyond four percent. He was also an architect’s dream, which meant that he did not consider himself an architect.
Noel had worked with Buonoventura on two jobs outside the country, the first in Costa Rica, where if it had not been for Sam, Holcroft would have lost his life. The engineer had insisted that the well-groomed, courteous architect from the classy side of Manhattan learn to use a handgun, not just a hunting rifle from Abercrombie & Fitch. They were building a postal complex in the back country, and it was a far cry from the cocktail lounges of the Plaza and the Waldorf, and from San José. The architect had thought the weekend exercise ridiculous, but courtesy demanded compliance. Courtesy, and Buonoventura’s booming voice.
By the end of the following week, however, the architect was profoundly grateful. Thieves had come down from the hills to steal construction explosives. Two men had raced through the camp at night, they’d crashed into Noel’s shack as he slept. When they realized the explosives were not there one man had run outside, shouting instructions to his accomplices.
“¡Matemos el gringo!”
But the gringo understood the language. He reached his gun—the handgun provided by Sam Buonoventura—and shot his would-be killer.
Sam had only one comment: “Goddamn. In some cultures I’d have to take care of you for the rest of your life.”
Noel reached Buonoventura through a shipping company in Miami. He was in the Dutch Antilles, in the town of Willemstad, on the island of Curaçao.
“How the hell are you, Noley?” Sam shouted, over the phone. “Christ, it must be four, five years! How’s your pistol arm?”
“Haven’t used it since the colinas, and never expect to use it again. How are things with you?”
“These mothers got money to burn down here, so I’m lighting a few matches. You looking for work?”
“No. A favor.”
“Name it.”
“I’m going to be out of the country for a number of months on private business. I want a reason for not being in New York, for not being available. A reason that people won’t question. I’ve got an idea, Sam, and wondered if you could help me make it work.”
“If we’re both thinking the same thing, sure I can.”
They were thinking the same thing. It was not out of the ordinary for long-range projects in faraway places to employ consulting architects, men whose names would not appear on schematics or blueprints but whose skills would be used. The practice was generally confined to those areas where the hiring of native talent was a question of local pride. The inherent problem, of course, was that all too frequently the native talent lacked sufficient training and experience. Investors covered their risks by employing highly skilled outside professionals who corrected and amended the work of the locals, seeing the projects through to completion.
“Have you got any suggestions?” Noel asked.
“Hell, yes. Take your pick of half a dozen underdeveloped countries. Africa, South America, even some of the islands here in the Antilles and the Grenadines. The internationals are moving in like spiders, but the locals are still sensitive. The consulting jobs are kept separate and quiet; graft is soaring.”
“I don’t want a job, Sam. I want a cover. Someplace I can name, someone I can mention who’ll back me up.”
“Why not me? I’ll be buried in this motherlode for most of the year. Maybe more. I’ve got two marinas and a full-scale yacht club to go to when the hotel’s finished. I’m your man, Noley.”
“That’s what I was hoping,”
“That’s what I figured. I’ll give you the particulars and you let me know where I can reach you in case any of your high-society friends want to throw a tea dance for you.”
Holcroft placed his two draftsmen and his secretary in new jobs by Wednesday. As he had suspected, it was not difficult; they were good people. He made fourteen telephone calls to project-development executives at companies where his designs were under consideration, astonished to learn that of the fourteen, he was the leading contender in eight. Eight! If all came through, the fees would have totaled more than he had earned during the past five years.
But not two million dollars; he kept that in the back of his mind. And if it was not in the back of his mind, the survivors of Wolfsschanze were.
The telephone-answering service was given specific instructions. Holcroft, Incorporated, was unavailable at the time for architectural projects. The company was involved in an overseas commission of considerable magnitude. If the caller would leave his name and number …
For those who pressed for further information, a post-office box in Curaçao, Netherlands Antilles, under the name of Samuel Buonoventura, Limited, was listed. And, for the few who insisted on a telephone number, Sam’s was to be given.
Noel had agreed to phone Buonoventura once a week; he would do the same with the answering service.
By Friday morning, he had an uneasy feeling about his decision. He was taking himself out of a garden he had cultivated to walk into an unfamiliar forest.
Nothing is as it was for you. Nothing can ever be the same.
Suppose he could not find the Von Tiebolt children. Suppose they were dead, their remains no more than graves in a Brazilian cemetery? They had disappeared five years ago in Rio de Janeiro; what made him think he could make them reappear? And if he could not, would the survivors of Wolfsschanze strike? He was afraid. But fear itself did not cover everything, thought Holcroft as he walked to the corner of Seventy-third Street and Third Avenue. There were ways to handle fear. He could take the Geneva document to the authorities, to the State Department, and tell them what he knew of Peter Baldwin and Ernst Manfredi and a doorman named Jack. He could e
xpose the massive theft of thirty years ago, and grateful thousands over the world would see to it that he was protected.
That was the sanest thing to do, but somehow sanity and self-protection were not so important. Not now. There was a man in agony thirty years ago. And that man was his rationale.
He hailed a cab, struck by an odd thought, one he knew was in the deep recesses of his imagination. It was the “something else” that drove him into the unfamiliar forest.
He was assuming a guilt that was not his. He was taking on the sins of Heinrich Clausen.
Amends must be made.
“Six-thirty Fifth Avenue, please,” he said to the driver as he climbed into the cab. It was the address of the Brazilian Consulate.
The hunt had begun.
6
“Let me understand you, Mr. Holcroft,” said the aging attaché, leaning back in his chair. “You say you wish to locate a family that you won’t identify. You tell me this family immigrated to Brazil sometime in the forties and, according to the most recent information, dropped from sight several years ago. Is this correct?”
Noel saw the bemused expression on the attaché’s face and understood. It was a foolish game perhaps, but Holcroft did not know any other one to play. He was not going to name the Von Tiebolts before he reached Brazil; he was not going to give anyone the chance to complicate further a search that had enough disadvantages at the start. He smiled pleasantly.
“I didn’t quite say that. I asked how such a family might be found, given those circumstances. I didn’t say I was the one looking.”
“Then it’s a hypothetical question? Are you a journalist?”
Holcroft considered the medium-level diplomat’s question. How simple it would be to say yes; what a convenient explanation for the questions he would ask later. On the other hand, he’d be flying to Rio de Janeiro in a few days. There were immigration cards to be filled out, and a visa, perhaps; he did not know. A false answer now might become a problem later.
“No, an architect.”
The attaché’s eyes betrayed his surprise. “Then you’ll visit Brasília, of course. It is a masterpiece.”
“I’d like to very much.”
“You speak Portuguese?”
“A bit of Spanish. I’ve worked in Mexico. And in Costa Rica.”
“But we’re straying,” said the attaché, leaning forward in his chair. “I asked you if you were a journalist, and you hesitated. You were tempted to say you were because it was expedient. Frankly, that tells me you are, indeed, the one looking for this family that has dropped from sight. Now, why not tell me the rest?”
If he was going to consider lying in his search through this unfamiliar forest, thought Noel, he’d better learn to analyze his minor answers first. Lesson one: preparation.
“There isn’t that much to tell,” he said awkwardly. “I’m taking a trip to your country and I promised a friend I’d look up these people he knew a long time ago.” It was a variation on the truth and not a bad one, thought Holcroft. Perhaps that was why he was able to offer it convincingly. Lesson two: Base the lie in an aspect of truth.
“Yet your … friend has tried to locate them and was unable to do so.”
“He tried from thousands of miles away. It’s not the same.”
“I daresay it isn’t. So, because of this distance, and your friend’s concern that there could be complications, shall we say, you’d prefer not to identify the family by name.”
“That’s it.”
“No, it isn’t. It would be far too simple a matter for an attorney to cable a confidential inquiry-of-record to a reciprocating law firm in Rio de Janeiro. It’s done all the time. The family your friend wants to find is nowhere in evidence, so your friend wants you to trace them.” The attaché smiled and shrugged, as if he had delivered a basic lecture in arithmetic.
Noel watched the Brazilian with growing irritation. Lesson three: Don’t be led into a trap by pat conclusions casually stated. “You know something?” he said. “You’re a very disagreeable fellow.”
“I’m sorry you think so,” replied the attaché sincerely. “I want to be of help. That’s my function here. I’ve spoken to you this way for a reason. You are not the first man, God knows, nor will you be the last, to look for people who came to my country ‘sometime in the forties.’ I’m sure I don’t have to amplify that statement. The vast majority of those people were Germans, many bringing to Brazil great sums of money transferred by compromised neutrals. What I’m trying to say is simply put: Be careful. Such people as you speak of do not disappear without cause.”
“What do you mean?”
“They have to, Mr. Holcroft. Had to. The Nuremberg Tribunals and the Israeli hunters aside, many possessed funds—in some cases, fortunes—that were stolen from conquered peoples, from their institutions, often from their governments. Those funds could be reclaimed.”
Noel tensed the muscles of his stomach. There was a connection—abstract, even misleading, under the circumstances, but it was there. The Von Tiebolts were part of a theft so massive and complex it was beyond accounting procedures. But it could not be the reason they had vanished. Lesson four: Be prepared for unexpected coincidences, no matter how strained; be ready to conceal reactions.
“I don’t think the family could be involved in anything like that,” he said.
“But, of course, you’re not sure, since you know so little.”
“Let’s say I’m sure. Now, all I want to know is how I go about finding them—or finding out what happened to them.”
“I mentioned attorneys.”
“No attorneys. I’m an architect, remember? Lawyers are natural enemies; they take up most of our time.” Holcroft smiled. “Whatever a lawyer can do, I can do faster by myself. I do speak Spanish. I’ll get by in Portuguese.”
“I see.” The attaché paused while he reached for a box of thin cigars on his desk. He opened it and held it out for Holcroft, who shook his head. “Are you sure? It’s Havana.”
“I’m sure. I’m also pressed for time.”
“Yes, I know.” The attaché reached for a silver table lighter on the desk, snapped it, and inhaled deeply; the tip of the cigar glowed. He raised his eyes abruptly to Noel. “I can’t convince you to tell me the name of this family?”
“Oh, for Christ’s sake …” Holcroft got up. He’d had enough; he’d find other sources.
“Please,” said the Brazilian, “sit down, please. Just a minute or two longer. The time’s not wasted, I assure you.”
Noel saw the urgency in the attaché’s eyes. He sat down. “What is it?”
“La comunidad alemana. I use the Spanish you speak so well.”
“The German community? There’s a German community in Rio—is that what you mean?”
“Yes, but it’s not solely geographical. There’s an outlying district—the German barrio, if you will—but that is not what I refer to. I’m speaking of what we call la otra cara de los alemanes. Can you understand that?”
“The ‘other face’ … what’s underneath, below the German surface.”
“Precisely. ‘The underside,’ you might say. What makes them what they are; what makes them do what they do. It’s important that you understand.”
“I think I do. I think you explained it. Most were Nazis getting out of the Nuremberg net, bringing in money that wasn’t theirs; hiding, concealing identities. Naturally, such people would tend to stick together.”
“Naturally,” the Brazilian said. “But you’d think after so many years there’d be greater assimilation.”
“Why? You work here in New York. Go down to the Lower East Side, or Mulberry Street or up to the Bronx. Enclaves of Italians, Poles, Jews. They’ve been here for decades. You’re talking about twenty-five, thirty years. That’s not much.”
“There are similarities, of course, but it’s not the same, believe me. The people you speak of in New York associate openly; they wear their heritages on their sleeves. It is not
like that in Brazil. The German community pretends to be assimilated, but it is not. In commerce, yes, but in very little else. There is a pervading sense of fear and anger. Too many have been hunted for too long; a thousand identities are concealed daily from everyone but themselves. They have their own hierarchy. Three or four families control the community; their huge Germanic estates dot our countryside. Of course, they call them Swiss or Bavarian.” Once more the attaché paused. “Do you begin to grasp what I’m saying? The consul general will not say it; my government will not permit it. But I am far down the ladder. It is left to me. Do you understand?”
Noel was bewildered. “Frankly, no. Nothing you’ve said surprises me. At Nuremberg they called it ‘crimes against humanity.’ That kind of thing leads to a lot of guilt, and guilt breeds fear. Of course such people in a country that isn’t their own would stay close to each other.”
“Guilt does breed fear. And fear in turn leads to suspicion. Finally, suspicion gives birth to violence. That’s what you must understand. A stranger coming to Rio looking for Germans who have disappeared is undertaking a potentially dangerous search. La otra cam de los alemanes. They protect each other.” The attaché picked up his cigar. “Give us the name, Mr. Holcroft. Let us look for these people.”
Noel watched the Brazilian inhale the smoke from his precious Havana. He was not sure why, but he felt suddenly uneasy. Don’t be led into a trap by pat conclusions casually stated.… “I can’t. I think you’re exaggerating, and obviously you won’t help me.” He stood up.
“Very well,” said the Brazilian. “I’ll tell you what you would find out for yourself. When you get to Rio de Janeiro, go to the Ministry of Immigration. If you have names and approximate dates, perhaps they can help you.”
“Thanks very much,” said Noel, turning toward the door.