Six Graves to Munich - Mario Cleri [50]
And I have no doubt that you’ll get to von Osteen, even though there’ll be a thousand cops looking for you tomorrow morning. But you’ve forgotten one thing, Rogan: You’d better escape after you kill him.”
Rogan shrugged. “I don’t give a damn about that.”
“No, and you don’t give much of a damn what happens to your women either.” He saw that Rogan had not understood. “First, your pretty little French wife that you let them kill, and now this fraulein here.” He jerked his head toward Rosalie, who was sitting on the green sofa.
Rogan said quietly, “What the hell are you talking about?”
Bailey smiled for the first time. He said softly, “I mean that if you kill von Osteen and then you get killed, I put your girl through the wringer. She gets accused as an accessory to your murders, or she gets put away in that insane asylum. The same thing happens if von Osteen lives and gets exposed by your letters after you’re dead. Now, I’ll give you an alternative. Forget about killing von Osteen and I’ll get you and the girl immunity for everything you’ve done. I’ll get it fixed so the girl can enter the States with you when you go back. Think it over.” He started to leave.
Rogan called after him. His voice was shaky. For the first time that evening he seemed to have lost some of his confidence. “Tell me the truth, Bailey,” Rogan said. “If you had been one of the seven men in the Munich Palace of Justice, would you have done the things to me that they did?”
Bailey considered the question seriously for a moment; then he said quietly, “If I really believed it would help my country win the war, yes, I would have.” He followed Vrostk out of the door.
Rogan got up and went to the bureau. Rosalie saw him fit the rifled metal of the silencer on the spine of the Walther pistol and said in an anguished voice, “No, please don’t. I’m not afraid of what they’ll do to me.” She moved toward the door, as if to stop him from going out. Then she changed her mind and sat on the green sofa.
Rogan watched her for a moment. “I know what you’re thinking,” he said, “but didn’t I let Vrostk and Bailey get away with trying to kill me in Budapest? Everybody in that profession is some kind of special animal, not a human being. They’re all volunteers; nobody forces them into those jobs. They know what their duties will be. To torture, betray, and murder their fellow human beings. I don’t feel any pity for them.”
She did not answer; she bowed her head into her hands. Rogan said gently, “In Budapest I risked my life to be sure no one else was hurt except Pajerski. I was ready to give up everything, even my chance of punishing von Osteen, so that none of the innocent bystanders would be injured by me. Because those bystanders were innocent. These two men are not. And I won’t have you suffer because of me.”
Before she could answer, before she could raise her head, he went out of the room. She could hear his foot-steps going swiftly down the stairs.
Rogan drove off in the rented Mercedes and turned onto a main avenue, his foot pressed down on the gas. At this hour there was little traffic. He was hoping that Bailey and Vrostk didn’t have their own car, that they had come to the pension in a taxi and would now be on foot and trying to catch another taxi.
He had gone no more than one block on the avenue when he saw them walking along together. He drove on one more block, then parked the car and started walking back along the avenue to meet them. They were still a hundred feet away when they turned into the entrance of the Fredericka Beer Hall. Damn, he thought, he’d never be able to get at them in there.
He waited outside for an hour, hoping that they would have a few quick beers and then come out. But they did not reappear and he decided, finally, to go inside.
The beer hall was not full, and he saw Bailey and Vrostk right away. They had a long wooden table to themselves and they sat there gobbling down white sausages. Rogan took a seat near the door, where he would be shielded from them by a full table of beer drinkers