Six Graves to Munich - Mario Cleri [43]
It almost looked as if Pajerski would wave her away. But then he grinned, his warty piggy face becoming a mass of joviality. He pinched the blond waitress so hard that she gave a little scream of pain.
Rogan called to the waitress and asked her for a pencil and a piece of notepaper. He looked at his watch. It read 7:30. On the rough brown notepaper he wrote: “I will turn your screams of pleasure into pain. Rosenmontag, 1945, in the Munich Palace of Justice.”
He waited until his watch read 7:55; then he called a waitress over and handed her the note. “Give this to Mr. Pajerski,” he said. “Then come right back to me and I will give you this.” He showed her a banknote that was more than her weekly salary. He didn’t want her standing near Pajerski when the booby trap went off.
Pajerski was scratching his chin with the white king when the waitress handed him the note. He read it slowly, translating the English audibly, his lips moving. He raised his eyes to stare directly at Rogan. Rogan stared back at him, smiling slightly. His watch read 7:59. And then as he saw the recognition slowly dawn in Pajerski’s eyes the white king exploded.
The explosion was deafening. Pajerski had been holding the chess piece in his right hand under his chin. Rogan had been staring into his eyes. Then suddenly Pajerski’s eyes disappeared in the explosion, and Rogan found himself staring into two empty bloody sockets. Pieces of flesh and bone spattered all over the room, and then Pajerski’s head, its flesh shredded, slumped over on flaps of skin that were still holding the neck to the body. Rogan slipped out of his seat and left the café by the kitchen door. The screaming, stampeding crowd took no notice of him.
Out on the street he walked one block to a main avenue and hailed a taxi. “To the airport,” he told the driver; then, just to make sure, he said, “Take the street that goes past the American consulate.”
He could hear the whine of police car sirens speeding to the Café Black Violin. In a few minutes his taxi was on the broad avenue that led past the consulate. “Don’t go so fast,” he told the driver. He leaned back so that he could not be seen from the street.
There was no Mercedes limousine waiting there. The street was empty of all vehicles, which was in itself unusual. But it had a hell of a lot of pedestrians, waiting to cross at corners and window-shopping. And most of the pedestrians were big, burly men. To Rogan’s experienced eye they had secret police written all over them. “Speed it up to the airport,” he told the driver.
It was then that he noticed what seemed like a physical coldness in his chest. It was as if his whole body were being touched by death. He felt the chilliness spread. But he was not cold. He did not feel any real physical discomfort. It was simply as if he himself had become some sort of host to death.
He had no trouble getting on the plane. His visa was in order, and there was no sign of any special police activity at the airport. His heart beat swiftly when he boarded the aircraft, but again there were no complications. The plane took off, climbed, and then it leveled off and headed for the German border and Munich.
That night Rosalie left her job as nurse’s aide in the Munich Palace of Justice at 6:00 p.m. The young doctor who worked with her insisted she have dinner with him. Afraid of losing her job, she agreed. He made sure the meal took a long time by ordering several courses. It was after 9:00 p.m. when they finished. Rosalie looked at her watch. “You must excuse me; I have an important engagement at ten,” she said, and started to gather up her coat and gloves.
The young doctor had a disappointed look on his face. It did not occur to Rosalie that she could miss meeting the plane one night and keep her escort company for the rest of the evening. If she missed meeting the Budapest plane even one