Six Graves to Munich - Mario Cleri [20]
Strolling farther on through the Hansa quarter bristling with huge, gray, avant-garde apartment buildings, they were repelled by one of the new architectural gimmicks in the building complex. All its pipes for garbage, toilet waste, water, ended exposed in a huge glass terminal building, so that they looked like a nest of malignant steel snakes. Rosalie shuddered. “Let’s go home,” she said. She did not like the new world any better than the old.
Back in West Berlin they hurried to their hotel. Rogan unlocked the door to their suite and opened it for Rosalie, patting her round bottom as she went by. He followed her inside and heard her surprised gasp as he closed the door. He wheeled around.
They were waiting for him. The two Freisling brothers sat behind the coffee table, smoking cigarettes. It was Hans who spoke. “Herr Rogan, do not be alarmed. You understand that in our business one has to be careful. We did not wish anyone to know we had contacted you.”
Rogan went forward to shake their hands. He smiled reassuringly. “I understand,” he said. He understood more. That they had come early to search his room. To find out if he was a plant. To perhaps find and steal the blueprints so they would not have to pay cash for them—
Communist cash they could then put in their own pockets. But they had been out of luck and forced to wait. The blueprints were in his jacket pocket. More important, the seven envelopes, plus the gun and silencer, were in a small bag that he had checked into the hotel storage cellar.
Hans Freisling smiled. The last time he had smiled like that, his brother Eric had crept up behind Rogan to fire the bullet in his skull. “We wish to purchase some of your computer blueprints, in strict confidence of course. Are you agreeable?”
Rogan smiled back. “Have supper with me here tomorrow evening,” he said. “You understand I have to make some arrangements. I do not keep everything I need in this room.”
Eric Freisling smiled slyly and said, “We understand.” He wanted Rogan to know that they had searched the suite; he wanted him to know that they were not men to be trifled with.
Rogan looked at him steadily. “Come tomorrow evening at eight,” he said. He ushered them out of the room.
That night he could not respond to Rosalie, and when she finally fell asleep, Rogan lit a cigarette and waited for the familiar nightmare to come. He was on his third cigarette when it started.
And then in his mind a dark curtain was drawn aside and he was in the high-domed room of the Munich Palace of Justice. Far away in the limitless shadows of his brain seven men took their eternal shapes. Five of them were blurred; but two—Eric and Hans Freisling—were very clear, very distinct, as if they were standing in a spotlight. Eric’s face was as he had looked into it that fatal day, the slack heavy mouth, the sly, snapping black eyes, the thick nose, and stamped over all the features, a brutish cruelty.
The face of Hans Freisling was similar to Eric’s, but with cunning rather than cruelty in the expression. It was Hans who advanced on the young prisoner Rogan and encouraged him with false kindliness. It was Hans who looked directly into Rogan’s eyes and reassured him. “Dress in those nice clothes,” Hans had whispered. “We are going to set you free. The Americans are winning the war and some day you can help us. Remember how we spared your life. Change your clothes now. Quickly.”
And then, trustfully, Rogan changed his clothing; gratefully he smiled at the seven murderers of his wife. When Hans Freisling put out his hand in friendship, the young prisoner Rogan reached out to grasp it. Only then did the faces of the five other men become clear with their furtive, guilty grins. And he thought: Where is the seventh man? And at that moment the brim of his new hat tilted forward over his eyes. He felt the cold metal of the gun barrel against the back of his neck. He felt his hair bristle with terror. And just before the bullet exploded in his skull he heard his