Six Graves to Munich - Mario Cleri [13]
The stranger was coming toward him. A tall, powerfully built man, with an oddly shaped head. Handsome, in a dark German way. But then Albert Moltke noticed the well-tailored suit. No, this man was an American, obviously. Moltke had met many of them since the war, in the transaction of business. He smiled his welcome and turned to introduce his wife, but she had wandered off a few steps and was talking to someone else. And then the American was introducing himself. His name sounded something like Rogan and this, too, was vaguely familiar to Moltke. “Congratulations on your promotion to the Recordat. And congratulations on your acquittal some time ago.”
Moltke gave him a polite smile. He recited his standard speech. “A patriotic jury did its duty and decided, fortunately for me, for an innocent fellow German.”
They chatted awhile. The American suggested that he could use some legal help on setting up his computer business. Moltke became interested. He knew that the American really meant he wanted to bypass a few city taxes. Moltke, knowing from past experience that this could make him rich, took the American by the arm and said, “Why don’t we get a little bit of fresh air, take a little stroll?” The American smiled and nodded. Moltke’s wife did not see them leave.
As they walked through the city streets the American asked casually, “Don’t you remember my face?”
Moltke grimaced and said, “My dear sir, you do seem familiar, but I meet a lot of people, after all.” He was a little impatient; he wished the American would get down to business.
With a slight sense of uneasiness, Moltke realized that now they were walking in a deserted alley. Then the American leaned close to Moltke’s ear and whispered something that almost made his heart stop beating: “Do you remember Rosenmontag, 1945? In Munich? In the Palace of Justice?”
And then Moltke remembered the face; and he was not surprised when the American said, “My name is Rogan.” With the fear that flooded through him there was overwhelming shame, as if for the first time he truly believed in his own guilt.
Rogan saw the recognition in Moltke’s eyes. He steered the little man deeper into the alley, feeling Moltke’s body trembling, trembling under his arm. “I won’t hurt you,” he said. “I only want some information about the other men, your comrades. I know Karl Pfann and the Freisling brothers. What were the names of the other three men, and where can I find them?”
Moltke was terrified. He started running clumsily down the alley. Rogan ran beside him, sprinting easily, as if the two of them were trotting together for exercise. Coming up on the Austrian’s left side, Rogan drew the Walther pistol from his shoulder holster. Still running, he fitted the silencer onto the barrel. He felt no pity; he considered no mercy. Moltke’s sins were etched in his brain, committed a thousand times in his memory. It had been Moltke who had smiled when Christine screamed in the next room, and who had murmured, “Come, don’t be so much a hero at your poor wife’s expense. Don’t you want your child to be born?” So reasonable, so persuasive, when he knew that Christine was already dead. Moltke was the least of them but the memories of him had to die. Rogan fired two shots into Moltke’s side. Moltke swooped forward in a falling glide; and Rogan kept running, out of the alley and onto a main street. The next day he took a plane to Hamburg.
In Hamburg it had been easy to track down Karl Pfann. Pfann had been the most brutal of the interrogators, but in such an animallike way that Rogan had despised