IN THE UPSIDE-DOWN WORLD of the southern hemisphere, November was early summer, the jacarandas still blooming and the worst of the humidity a month or two off. After the coats and mufflers of Hamburg it was startling to see people in short sleeves. The flight had taken forever and would have taken even longer in the forties, Aaron thought, the time and distance disorienting, reminders that you were somewhere else. Downtown, on Corrientes, the lumbering buses and movie marquees were familiar, any city, but the faces on the magazine covers were unknown to him, famous in some other world. What must it have been like for Schramm, any of them, knowing they were here for good, through the looking glass.
Jamie Campbell, the station chief, had booked him a room in a residential hotel on Calle Posadas.
“It’s on my hook, so nothing fancy,” Aaron had said on the phone.
“So I hear. You’re on leave. What is that anyway?”
“It means I pay. And nobody meets me at the airport.”
“OK. I’ll buy you a drink when you get in. Alvear Palace. Right around the corner from you. Put on a clean shirt. And maybe you’ll tell me what you’re doing down here. Or maybe not.”
Given the irregular layout of the room, the hotel must have been an apartment building, chopped up now, with an elevator added in the middle, but the street was pleasant, lined with trees, and what did it matter where he stayed? He had the rest of the afternoon to walk, to see the city, and he strolled through Recoleta, then over to the Plaza San Martín with its European palaces and leather shops. Calle Florida was busy with shoppers, but the rest of the neighborhood had the sleepy emptiness of a rich district in summer, people away at country houses or traveling.
At the turn of the century, during the great boom, Buenos Aires had wanted to be Paris, and here and there it was, belle epoque mansions and iron grillwork and a subway station that could have been on one of the grand boulevards. But it was Paris and not Paris, the same dislocating feeling he’d had looking at the magazine covers—everything familiar and unknown at the same time. He felt oddly invisible walking the streets. No one would run into him, no one knew who he was. Even the trees were alien—forming classic allées, lining the broad avenues, but flowering with bursts of tropical red or twisting with exotic roots. It was an ideal city for walking, mostly flat and sprawling out toward the even flatter pampas, a kind of Latin Chicago, stretched between prairies and the gray metallic water at its edge. Except here no one faced the water, the riverfront a working port of docks and railway sidings. Paris but not Paris.
“You should have started without me,” Jamie said, only a few minutes late. “This one’s on expenses. I’m supposed to find out what you’re doing here.”
“Wonderful how they look after you, isn’t it?”
“And you’re not going to tell me. So let’s enjoy the drink anyway. How do you like this?” he said, his hand taking in the red plush lobby.
“Quite a pile,” Aaron said, following the hand.
The Alvear Palace was another dream of Paris, an art deco front with a Ritz-like bar to match, and an enfilade corridor in grand hotel style, chandeliers and deep-pile carpets and large swags of curtain.
“Just don’t eat here. Unless you’ve got money we don’t know about. Martini?” He signaled the waiter, who nodded, evidently familiar with the order.
“Did you get the address?” Aaron said.
“For Mrs. Crane?” He pulled out an envelope and handed it to Aaron. “Why do you want it? Can I ask?”
“I promised a friend I’d contact her. Fritz Gruber, a reporter. For a series he’s doing. Sons of the Reich.”
“Sons?”
“And daughters. She’s Otto Schramm’s daughter.”
“Mm. You’re a little late to the party, aren’t you? That’s old news now—at least here. The papers had a field day with it for about five minutes. Not much since. Rough on her. Socially. Invitations start drying up when they know you’re a war criminal.”
“She wasn’t.”
“But he was. It turns out. So it rubs off. Anyway, the ropes started going up for her right after it came out. Who Helmut Braun really was. Too bad. Nice woman. Ah,” he said as the martinis arrived.
“You know her?”
“I’ve met her. It’s a small town in a big city, the ex-pats. You keep bumping into the same people in the same places. Here, for instance. Fucking Rick’s Café. Course, it’s easy for her, she’s just down the street, so this is her local. Maybe she’ll show up tonight. Then you won’t need that.” He nodded to the envelope. “We’re not supposed to do this, you know. Use the Agency for private business. Why the interest?”
“Me? None. The friend doing the book can’t travel—he’s in the hospital—so I said I’d help him out, that’s all.”
“While you just happened to be in Buenos Aires. Where everybody comes. On leave.”
“What’s wrong with Buenos Aires? It looked OK to me. I had a walk around.”
“Oh, BA’s fine. If you like steak. But it’s a long way to come for a steak.” He sipped his drink. “Sons of the Reich. You’ll be heading out to Bariloche then. The mountains. They’re still wearing lederhosen there. You squint and you’re in Bavaria. Your buddy Schramm had a place there.” Another nod toward the envelope. “But you knew that.” Fishing.
“Who’s Mr. Crane?”
“Tommy? His family was in business down here. His grandmother came from one of the cattle families. You know, Jockey Club people.” Aaron looked up, seeing the grainy photograph. “But the real money was back in the States. Scrap, believe it or not. They made a killing during the war. Not that Tommy ever touched a rusty pipe. Just a swizzle stick at the Stork. Anyway, he was here—a family visit—and I guess it all looked good to Hanna, so she married him. She was just a kid, maybe she thought they’d be living at El Morocco. She stuck it out for a few years. Then after she figured out she’d heard everything he was ever going to say—back here. With a hell of a settlement, they say. On the town a lot. And then Braun turns out to be somebody else and it gets awkward. Easier to do your drinking alone.”
“Does she?”
“It’s an expression. I doubt it. She likes a drink, but not like that. She was upset, that’s all.”
“She didn’t know? He was Schramm?”
“They say not. Not the kind of thing you confide in a child. So some surprise. Course, she can still see the Germans. They think he’s a fucking hero. And Perón’s buddies. Old Dr. Freude at the Intelligence Bureau. He protected him. They’re all still here, more or less. If that’s who you want to see.” He took another drink. “What makes you think she’ll talk to you about this? Five bucks says she throws a drink in your face.”
“There she is,” Aaron said, glancing over Jamie’s shoulder.
She had stopped at the entrance, waiting for the maître d’, giving the room a quick once-over, then turning back to her group. Another woman and two men, talking quietly and laughing, out for the evening. She had loosened the tight bun of hair, which now fell to her shoulders, and the funeral suit had become a cocktail dress, smart, drawing looks from some of the other women. But the posture was the same—shoulders straight, eyes fixed in front of her as she glided past the tables.
“Want to meet her?” Campbell said.
Aaron shook his head. “Too many people. I’ll wait.”
“Better with an intro.”
“From you? Does she know who you are?”
Campbell shrugged. “They assume everybody at the embassy is Agency.” He paused. “But that’s not the same as knowing.”
“I don’t want to scare her.”
He watched her for a minute. Easy with the others, everybody ordering drinks, the room dimly lit and elegant. Her life here, the same one she must have led in New York, only the seasons different. For a second he thought she had looked over at him, but then she turned to the man next to her, smiling, back in the small circle of their table. The same cheekbones. “How could she not know,” he said, half to himself.
“What, about Braun? We didn’t. Of course, we weren’t looking for that.”
“What were you looking for?”
Campbell shifted in his seat. “The Germans weren’t happy when Perón had to leave in ’55. As long as he was around, they had nothing to worry about. They were all on the same side. Now, you never know. So some of them would like him back.”
“After all these years? Is that likely?”
“Here? A lot of people have fond memories. And every time something goes wrong, there he is, sitting in Madrid, looking better and better.”
“But not to Uncle Sam.”
“Right. Illia may not be much, but he’s still better than a fascist dictator with a bug up his ass about American influence. And a bad habit of nationalizing things. So every time his old friends in the army get together, we like to know about it. Same with the Germans. But the Germans are hard to turn. The reason they came here in the first place is we were trying to put them on trial back home. So not a lot of love lost there. And you know, over the years, you don’t see yourself going crazy. How about a Nazi encore with the Church begging you to save the world from Communism? Sound good to you? It does to them. Some of them anyway. So we like to keep tabs on what they’re up to.”
“Including Braun?”
“For a while. But there wasn’t much. The Germans all know each other. You see them at the ABC restaurant, having a beer, but that’s as far as it went with him. Maybe he was too smart. Maybe he thought his money would protect him. But we never got anything on him. No Fourth Reich stuff.”
“So she thought he was just a businessman?” Aaron said, looking over Campbell’s shoulder again, her blonde hair like candlelight in the dim room. “She had to know.”
Campbell shrugged. “Ask her. Let me guess the answer.”
Now she was leaning forward with her cigarette, a lighter appearing like magic, her movements slow and practiced, almost languorous. When she sat back, the smoke seemed to form a curtain between her and the others, a retreat none of them noticed. More talk, smiling, but not really following anymore, somewhere off by herself. Thinking what? Her face blank, veiled by the smoke. Maybe back in Hamburg, with memories of Doro. Maybe in New York with her boy husband. But not here. Smoking and smiling but not here. He looked for a second at the others. None of them knew her, had even seen her go. And suddenly, an impulse, like a jump of blood, he wanted to know, not just Otto and what she knew, but everything, what she thought behind the smoke.
“What else?” he said, still looking at her.
“It’s all in there,” Campbell said, indicating the envelope. “Field report.”
“You had her under surveillance?”
“Part of the report on her father, that’s all. We have a lot of time down here. What if he’s using his daughter? As a courier, something like that. So why not check, just to be sure. We have the time.”
“And?”
“Nothing. She shops. She goes out. She stays in. She likes the Alvear. She sees a shrink twice a week.”
Aaron raised an eyebrow.
“Wouldn’t you? Given the family. Anyway, that’s nothing special in BA. Everybody sees a shrink. There’s a whole neighborhood, all shrink offices. Villa Freud. Really. It’s what people do here. Maybe the air.”
“Who’s the boyfriend?” he said, eyes back at her table.
“No idea. Not the first, though. She’s not shy.”
“Any of them serious?”
“You want to interview her or fuck her?”
Aaron shot him a look.
“Just asking. Two different things. You don’t want to confuse them.” He took a sip of his drink. “Unless you’re doing one to get the other.”
Aaron looked at him again. “I’ll let you know how it goes. Since you’re interested. You like peepholes too?”
Campbell put up his hand. “Just saying.”
“Meanwhile, could you get a copy of the accident report?”
“Whose? Braun’s? Why?”
“I’d like to know how she reacted. When she identified the body. I don’t want to bring it up if—”
“She didn’t identify the body. Rudel did.”
“Who?”
“Hans-Ulrich Rudel. Luftwaffe ace. Everybody’s best friend. If you’re German. He put some money into Der Weg. Old pal of Braun’s. Great minds think alike, or something like that. And since he was there—”
“He was there? At the accident?”
Campbell nodded. “Yes. They were together, but he was lucky. Why?” Alert now, afraid of missing something.
“Isn’t it usual for the family—”
“Well, his daughter. There wasn’t any question about it. Nobody knew him better than Rudel. And it’s a hell of a thing, make her look at something like that. Then the family doctor backed him up. Markus Bildener. So they had two IDs. They didn’t need her, put her through that.”
Aaron sat back, glancing again over Jamie’s shoulder. Had she refused to do it, be part of the plan? Or had she only been told later, the fake death something she had to accept? Uneasy with it, still nervous at Ohlsdorf, now hiding behind smoke.
“What?” Jamie said.
“Nothing. The martini just hit me. Right off the plane.”
Jamie looked at him, his face cloudy with some interior debate.
“What are you doing here?” he said finally. “I’m really asking this time.” What he had come to say.
“You mean Langley’s asking,” Aaron said. “They’re worried about me? With all the problems of the world—”
“They don’t want you to be another one.”
“How?”
“Uncle chases Nazis. Dies. Next thing you know, the nephew shows up in Buenos Aires. Who comes to Buenos Aires? People looking for Nazis. So maybe some unfinished business. That could be a problem.”
“The only Nazi I’m looking for is dead.”
“Which is why I gave you that.” He motioned to the envelope. “But not everybody’s dead. You don’t want to step on any toes.”
Aaron stared at him for a minute. “Especially if they’re our Nazis. Working for us.”
Jamie took another sip of the martini. “However unlikely that would be.”
“But it’s a wicked world and you play the cards you’re dealt. And so on.”
“And so on.”
“This is what you came to tell me?”
“Your uncle wanted to lock them all up. Maybe he was right—not very nice people. But sometimes a bad guy’s useful.”
Aaron picked up the envelope. “This one isn’t. He’s dead. Look, before you get yourself in a twist about this, I’m really just interested in their kids.”
“Which ones?”
“You want a list?”
“The office insists.”
“So somebody is working for us.”
Jamie shrugged. “It’s hard getting leverage. Sometimes promises are made.”
“Like not putting him on trial? A big fish, then.” Testing.
“We’re not in the trial business.” The sound of a door closing, Aaron standing outside.
He drained his glass. “So I don’t talk to anybody without clearing it with you first, that right?”
Jamie nodded.
“But I’m cleared to talk to Mrs. Crane.”
“If she wants to talk to you.”
“How about the Eichmann kids? He wasn’t on the payroll, was he?”
Jamie glanced up. “It’s not a joke. We need to know what you’re up to. You don’t want to wander off the ranch.”
“Wander off the ranch. Christ, Jamie, you’re beginning to sound like them.”
He looked over his glass. “I am them. So are you.”
“I’m on leave. I’m not working for anyone right now.”
“You’re never on leave. Not in this job. You know that.”
“So this is an order.”
“A word to the wise.”
“I’m just here to talk to their kids. You can quote that in your report.”
Jamie looked at him for a moment, then let it go and signaled the waiter. “In that case, ’nuff said, and I’m buying.” Then, a new thought. “You know, anything you write, you’d have to clear it with—”
“You’ll be the first to know.” He smiled, on the team again. “And thanks for this,” he said, putting the envelope in his pocket.
“What do you think she’ll say?”
“Probably what they all say. How nice he was. Devoted family man.”
“Then what’s the story?” Jamie said, taking the new glass from the waiter.
“You’re a kid, you believe what you’re told. Mostly. But then you grow up. Turns out Daddy was killing people. Lots of them. How do you feel about him now? You know some of the camp commandants had their families with them. Fritz talked to one son. He remembers playing in the backyard while the prisoners were marched past. Work detail. He never thought anything of it. The way they looked—starving, like skeletons—he thought that was the way they were supposed to look. How things were. Later he finds out what happened to them. Now how does he look at his father?”
“We don’t get to pick our parents.”
“Just our friends,” Aaron said, raising his eyes. “The ones we make promises to.”
Jamie shifted in his chair. “I didn’t make them.”
“That’s what everybody in Germany says. My friend Fritz thinks, you talk to the children, you’re talking to Germany too. How much did you know? Then, how do you live with it?”
“You see a shrink twice a week.”
“That’s one way. Or it never happened. Or it wasn’t him.” He took a breath. “Or it was. Then what? When do you become complicit,” he said, thinking of Max, following Otto in his white coat.
“Christ, they were kids.”
“But they didn’t stay kids. Take Otto. He wasn’t just killing, he was enjoying it. Medical experiments on kids. What do you do with someone like him? What if he’s your father?”
“Well, that took care of itself. Luckily. For her, I mean.”
“She still sees a shrink.”
Jamie said nothing for a second, uncomfortable. “You know, all this business, who’s a Nazi, it went away and now since Eichmann it’s starting up again. All of the sudden everybody’s a Wiesenthal, turning over rocks. You can’t live in the past.”
“It’s not the past if they’re still alive. If they haven’t paid.”
“But this one’s dead.”
Aaron nodded, checked.
“So now who pays?” Jamie said. “The daughter? Bringing it all up again.”
But she knows, Aaron wanted to shout. They must have gone to the funeral together. Like a getaway driver waiting outside the bank. Aiding and abetting. And the only lead he had to Otto. Worth anything.
“She’s already talking about it twice a week. Maybe she won’t mind talking a little more. Fritz says the others couldn’t stop, once they started. Some of them, it’s a relief.”
Jamie hesitated, then tipped his drink in a mock salute. “I still say she’ll throw a glass in your face.”
Aaron looked past him again. “Here’s your chance to find out. She’s coming.”
Without thinking, Jamie swiveled to see, the movement catching her attention, so that she was forced to acknowledge him, a small smile. She detached herself from her group and came over.
“Jamie, isn’t it? Hanna Crane. We met at the Carlsons’.”
“I remember.”
“I’ll bet not,” she said, pleasant. “Embassy people never do, but they have to pretend.”
Her voice was clear, the English distinct, the trace of accent no longer German, just another tone, a verbal garnish.
“In this case, it would be hard to forget.”
She laughed. “Aren’t you ashamed? A line like that. Worse than the Argentines. They still act like Talleyrand—or whoever it was that all the diplomats got it from. Was it?”
“Metternich, I think. But still true.”
She smiled again. “Well, all right. Then I’m flattered. Satisfied?”
She had turned toward Aaron, waiting to be introduced. At Ohlsdorf, her head at an angle, he had seen Otto in the sharp cheekbones, the high forehead, but now, facing him, the resemblance was fainter, the cheeks softened by full lips and bright, lively eyes that were taking him in, interested, someone new in town, maybe the way Doro’s had been in the happy years.
“Ah, Aaron Wiley,” Jamie said, still playing diplomat. “Hanna Crane.”
“A colleague? You’re at the embassy too?”
“No, just passing through.”
“An old school friend,” Jamie said.
“Passing through to where?” she said, skeptical, enjoying this.
“Bariloche,” Aaron said. “I want to see the Andes.”
She looked at him, surprised, then pleased. “Oh. It’s very beautiful this time of year. Empty. Not like ski season. My father—my family used to have a house there.”
“But not anymore?”
“No, we sold it. It was really my father who liked to go,” she said, moving away from it. “Some wonderful trails out past Llao Llao. Funny to think of you hiking,” she said to Jamie.
“I’m not. Just Aaron. But why funny?”
“I don’t know. I just never imagined you being outdoors.”
He had been facing Jamie, and now, turning back, he found her staring at him, and for a second he was back at Ohlsdorf, blending into the chairs, finally recognized. But it wasn’t that. A more familiar kind of recognition, how men and women talked, a conversation in a look. What surprised him was the frankness of it, a direct stare, not coy, as clear as her voice. Who are you? Is something going to happen? Do I want something to happen? Jamie’s friend. Which probably means the same work. Already lying. But you were looking before, across the room.
“But you must know the place so well,” Aaron said, breaking away from the look. “Anything you’d recommend? Restaurants? Anything I should avoid?”
“Mm. How long are you here? You’re not going right away, I hope. Jamie, you should give a party. People love meeting new people down here. I suppose because there never are any.” She smiled, easy with drink.
“A few days anyhow. If you think of any restaurants— Can I call you?”
She looked up at him, eyes laughing now, the line more forward than Aaron had intended.
“Or just let Jamie know,” he finished.
“No, call. I’d like that.” Looking straight at him, as if she wanted to see into him, who he was, and Aaron felt a prickling in his scalp, the flirting ritual now unexpectedly charged, not just erotic, duplicitous. I know something you don’t know I know. “Jamie has the number, don’t you, Jamie?”
“Somewhere.”
She laughed again. “Jamie has everybody’s number. So to speak.” She turned to Aaron. “Really an old school friend? Of course you wouldn’t say, would you? Never mind. Pablo’s flagging me down,” she said, glancing toward her party. “Nice meeting you. Cognac is good. Wonderful views of the lake.” She smiled at his blank expression. “A restaurant. In Bariloche. You’ll have to call for the others.”
He watched her pass out of the bar area and into the main lobby, down the carpeted stair to the revolving door, shoulders straight, not looking back.
“Interesting to see you in action,” Jamie said. “Two minutes and you’re getting her number.”
“She did most of the work.”
“Mr. Irresistible. You could have fooled me.”
“She thinks I’m with the Agency.”
“You are.”
“Then why not stay away?” Aaron said, thinking. “Most people get a little shy.”
“Maybe she likes the idea. Playing with matches.”
Aaron shook his head. “Not if you’ve got something to hide.”
“What does she have to hide?” Alert again.
Aaron shrugged, deflecting this. “What does she talk about twice a week?”
He had dinner alone in one of the restaurants across the street from Recoleta Cemetery. The lamps had been turned on along the cemetery’s high walls, wrought iron fixtures that once might have held candles, an eerie effect, but there was still enough natural light left to see the tops of the mausoleums inside, crosses and pyramids, angels and haloed madonnas, crammed together in a miniature city of the dead. Farther along he could make out the white façade of the colonial church—our lady of something. Pilar. The street was busy, a warm evening, the cafés full, his the only table for one. How many evenings had Max spent like this, sitting alone, only his document folders for company? You’re on your own, Nathan had said, and now he felt the doors closing all around him. Mossad, with better things to do. The Agency, too compromised to help. But Max must have felt the same, filling his folders, year after year, the only one who still cared. You could get used to eating alone, maybe even prefer it. He thought of those final tense dinners with Claire, making conversation with nothing to say.
He refilled his glass, hearing Nathan again. On your own. You’re ready for that? A desk man. Was he? He remembered the field reports he used to analyze, the solitude you could feel on the page. Men keeping secrets. Now him. No one in the noisy café next door knew what he was doing here, who he really was. His great advantage, a hunter whose scent hadn’t yet reached his prey. But it would, and then what? He’d need help. Max had given him names, “well placed in the Jewish community,” and Aaron imagined a line of old men, Maxes, adept at sifting through landing cards and visa files, more desk men. Who, then? Jamie, protecting his flank? Nathan? For the first time, it occurred to him that he might not be able to do it, that the hunt he owed Max might end in another escape. Otto still walking around.
He took out Jamie’s envelope and opened it. The usual Agency top sheet with routing numbers and file destination, the usual Agency overkill, full bio, source redacted, when all he’d asked for was address and phone. Jamie had included a surveillance report. Aaron glanced at the dates. Just before the accident, her father still alive. He read through the first page, peeking into her life. A week as James had described. Shopping. Lunch at the yacht club. The opera. Dinner with Ricardo and Tina. A short weekend in Mar del Plata. Dr. Ortiz in Villa Freud (an asterisk here, his bona fides checked). Drinks at the Alvear. Dinner Sunday at the Kavanagh Building (cross-reference to Helmut Braun). He looked at the following week. Another Sunday dinner. Obligatory or had she looked forward to seeing him? Aaron imagined the Sunday roast and red cabbage, an evening in Munich. What had they talked about? What did they talk about now?
He flipped a page. More lunches and parties. Dr. Ortiz. The Brazilian Embassy, then the Chilean, stops on the endless rounds of embassy cocktail receptions, a chance to dress up. A day trip to Tigre. Hairdresser. Pablo. Aaron skimmed down, looking to the bottom. How far had the surveillance gone? Sleeping partners? But not here, a discreet blank at the end of the page. One day like the other, filling time, presumably the life she still lived.
Except she wasn’t just filling time anymore. The secret must have changed everything, even idle moments now lived in sharp, wary focus. He thought of her at the ceremony at Ohlsdorf, the white of her neck, tense, a deer listening for any snapping sound, ready to dart away. He wondered what a surveillance report would show now. No more Sunday dinners at the Kavanagh. How did they communicate? Why not just call? Unless they didn’t want to take any chances, kept an elaborate radio silence. But why would the police listen in? They wouldn’t. The Agency hadn’t; there was nothing to suggest it. Maybe suspicion became its own reason, a cautious new way of filling time.
He walked the few blocks home, night now, dark in patches away from the restaurant lights. He stopped at the corner of Avenida Alvear, looking across to the sloping pocket of park with giant ombu trees, the pale gray roots twisting under the black umbrella of leaves, as if they were moving toward him, alive, like the roots at Angkor Wat strangling the temple stones. On this side of the street, modern apartment buildings, some with terraces facing back to the cemetery, the preferred view. She lived in one of these, the address in his pocket, maybe even home now, looking down on him. But more likely drinking a Malbec with Pablo and her friends. Living her father’s lie, telling no one, another field agent working alone.
He was scarcely through the door when the phone rang, noisy, jarring.
“I’m putting you through,” the desk clerk said, a borrowed English phrase.
The radio crackle of a long-distance line.
“Aaron? Fritz.” Talking quickly, almost gasping.
“My god, what time is it there?”
“The rates are cheaper after midnight. But three minutes only, please.”
“You all right?”
“The ribs are still taped, but I’m living.”
“In the hospital?”
“No. Home. And now a little time in the mountains, to rest.”
“That’s good.”
“No, that’s what the office will say. A convalescent. But I am coming to you. That’s why I’m calling.”
“They’re sending you? I thought they wouldn’t—”
“I decided I didn’t like being kicked to death. I have some money. If we get him, I’ll have more. Then the paper pays.”
Aaron smiled to himself, hearing the rumpled swagger in his voice.
“I met her tonight, the daughter.”
“Did she recognize you?”
“No. I don’t think so.”
“And now?”
“I get to know her better. She must know where he is. She’s bound to make a slip.”
A sound of agreement, a gentle grunt. “First, build the trust. That’s how you get the picture. After an accident.”
Aaron said nothing, uncomfortable, suddenly seeing faces caught by a flashbulb, grieving, stunned.
“And your—people there?”
“They think I’m working for you. Lining up interviews for the series.”
“Well, now it will be true.”
“You don’t have to do this. You must still be—”
“He saw my face. So I’m careful. I don’t leave from Germany. Austria. No trace. Nobody knows I’m there.” Voice still rushed, caught up in some melodrama. “So. This telephone costs a fortune. I’ll leave a message.”
“You sure you can do this? Travel, I mean.”
“You’re like the doctor. Stay in bed. So now I’m Lazarus. Rising up. That’s right, rising up?”
“That was a miracle.”
“Ja, back from the dead. Just like Schramm.” A small laugh. “I want to be there, when we get him. Let him see my face again. So he knows it’s me.”
“OK,” Aaron said, not knowing what else to say.
“We help each other. And I get my story. This time, lots of pictures.” Ambulance chasing. But isn’t that what he wanted too? Flashbulbs. Press.
“OK,” Aaron said again.