Six Graves to Munich - Mario Cleri [55]
He remembered the first day of the interrogation, the look on Rogan’s face. It was an innocent, good face, and it had irritated him. It was also the face of a young man to whom nothing terrible had yet happened.
On the same day von Osteen had gone to visit the prisoner ’s wife and found that she had been taken to the medical room, in childbirth. Walking toward the room, he had heard the young girl’s screams of pain, and when the doctor had told him the girl was dying von Osteen had decided to have the screams recorded to frighten Rogan into talking.
What a clever man he had been, von Osteen thought. He was clever in everything. Clever in evilness; and after the war, living with his ruined face, clever in goodness. And being clever, he now knew why he had destroyed Rogan so completely.
He had done so, von Osteen realized, because evil and good must always try to destroy each other; and it must follow that in the world of war and murder, evil must triumph over good. And so he had destroyed Rogan, slyly led him on to trust and hope. And at that final moment when Rogan had begged for mercy with his eyes von Osteen had laughed, his laughter drowned by the roar of the bullet exploding into Rogan’s skull. He had laughed at that moment because the sight of Rogan, with his hat tilted forward over his brow, had been genuinely comical; and death itself, in those terrible days of 1945, was merely a burlesque.
“It’s time.” His wife was touching his closed eyes. Von Osteen rose from the sofa and his wife helped him into his jacket. Then she walked with him to the limousine. “Be merciful,” she said.
It caught him unawares. He looked at her, his eyes dazed with incomprehension. She saw this and said, “On that poor wretch you will have to sentence this afternoon.”
Suddenly von Osteen had the overwhelming urge to confess his crimes to his wife. But the car was wheeling slowly away from the house on its way back to the Munich Palace of Justice. Already under sentence of death, but hoping for a reprieve, von Osteen could not bring himself to confess.
CHAPTER 21
Arthur Bailey paced the office of the CIA communications center in the U.S. Army headquarters outside Munich. Early that morning he had sent a coded radiogram to the Pentagon explaining the entire situation regarding von Osteen and Rogan. He had recommended that no action be taken by his organization. Now he was waiting impatiently for the answer.
It was nearly midday before a reply was received. The clerk took it into the top secret decoding room, and half an hour later the message was placed in Bailey’s hands. It stunned him. It instructed him to have von Osteen guarded and to inform the German police of Rogan’s intentions. This course of action would be so disastrous, Bailey thought, that he decided to use the radiophone to the Pentagon. The code signature on the reply was that of a former German teammate of Bailey’s, Fred Nelson. They couldn’t speak too freely over the radiophone, but maybe Bailey could get his message across to Nelson. And he sure as hell had to hurry. Rogan might be right behind Judge von Osteen this minute.
It took him ten minutes to get a connection. After identifying himself he said cautiously, “Do you people know what the hell you’re doing with those instructions you sent me? You could blow the whole political setup sky-high.”
Nelson’s voice was cool and noncommittal. “That decision came from the top in Intelligence. It’s been cleared by the State people. So just go ahead and follow orders.”
Bailey said disgustedly, “They’re all crazy.” His voice sounded so worried that Nelson took pity on him.
“That one aspect you’re worried about,” Nelson said guardedly, “that’s being taken care of.”
Nelson was referring to the letters Rogan had sent to his friends in the States. “Yes, I understand,” Bailey said. “What was done about that?”
“We’ve kept a file on him since your first report. We know everybody he might