‘By the end of nineteen forty-three I was quite sure that I had found what I was looking for,’ Otto told them, as they sat in the living-room with Asbach brandy and cigars. The air was thick with blue flat-smelling smoke. The room was growing cold. With theatrical inappropriateness, Otto was trying to play the genial host, sitting in his huge 1930s’ armchair with his leg swinging, smoking and drinking relentlessly and telling them all about the heyday of the National Socialist party. ‘What times we had in Berlin! Unter den Linden, at night, in nineteen thirty-six! We shall never see times like that again!’
Kathleen was exhausted, and sat with her head bowed, saying nothing. Lloyd was tired, too, but he wanted to hear Otto out. He sipped his brandy to keep himself awake, and he glanced from time to time at Helmwige, who was so bored with what Otto was saying that she was finishing the crossword in the San Diego Tribune, sniffing and talking to herself.
Otto said, ‘I had heard of an ancient ritual chant which could change a burning human into a Salamander, but although I searched through thousands of books, I could not find it! At Ohrdruf concentration camp, with Helmwige’s assistance, I tried seven hundred different Norse and Hebrew prayers, burning a Jew each time in order to test the prayer’s effectiveness, sometimes sixty or seventy Jews a day! Years went by, thousands were burned, but still to no avail. Not one of them survived, not one of them became a Salamander!
‘However in March, nineteen forty-three, an old rabbi came to my office and asked me why I was burning these people. I explained that I was looking for the secret chant which could give a man immortality by fire. He begged me to stop burning people. He said that he would try to find out for me what the chant was, if only I would stop burning people. Well, what kind of an offer was that? I was a German officer and the experiment had been personally ordered by the Führer, and I said no.
‘Eventually, however, this same rabbi returned to me. He said that the word had been sent throughout the camps, and that there was a young Jewish music professor at Flossenburg who could tell me everything that I wanted to know.’
He offered Lloyd more brandy, but Lloyd held his hand over his glass. He found it disturbing enough having to share a room with Otto, without having to accept his hospitality, too.
Otto said, ‘The young professor had made a special study of Wagner and the origins of Wagner’s music. He had heard that Wagner was supposed to have been interested in basing an opera on the Norse fire-burial chants, but he wasn’t convinced that Wagner had ever written it. Apparently, the chants had been lost in the eighth century, during the Viking Migration period. The Book of Salamander, the runic book in which all the chants were contained, was sent by sea from Tollund to England, but it was sunk in a winter storm. However, the wreck must have been washed up on the northern coast of Germany, and the book salvaged. It reappeared in Bavaria, in the seventeenth century.
‘By a very circuitous route, and after many dubious transactions, it had come into the possession of the Bürgermeister of Bamberg, Johann Junius. Junius had long been fascinated by alchemy and by the secrets of eternal life. He translated the Norse runes, and began experimenting by setting fire to live cats and dogs. The story goes that eventually he succeeded in creating an unkillable cat.
‘However, Junius was spied on by his neighbours. He was arrested and taken before the courts, and accused of witchery. He was tortured with thumb screws and leg vices and the strappado, and in the end, of course, he confessed. Anything to escape further pain! He was burned at the stake, and apparently he shrieked and sang while the flames devoured him. Perhaps the good witch-finders of Bamberg managed to kill, perhaps they didn’t. But the story has it that Junius was seen many weeks afterward in various towns in Bavaria, looking pale and strange.’
Lloyd said nothing. He found it almost impossible to speak to a man who had calmly confessed that he had burned thousands of innocent people for the sake of a mystical theory, no matter how earth-shattering that mystical theory might be. It hadn’t been worth a single one of those lives. Not one. But who remembered those lives today?
Otto said, ‘The Book of Salamander and all of Junius’ notes were locked up in the Rathaus in Bamberg for two hundred years. But somebody found them, we don’t know who. It could have been a plague doctor called Gunther Hammer, or an astrologer known only as Stange. Whoever it was, he must have been a fanatical devotee of Richard Wagner, because in November, 1882, he sent it immediately to Wagner with a long unsigned letter pleading that Wagner use it to achieve immortality.
‘Richard Wagner had begun to fall ill in the last year of his life. Bad heart, you understand. In the letter, Hammer or Stange wrote to him, “Play these melodies, O Master, and you will live for ever.” Wagner was deeply impressed by the Norse chants. They were so barbarisch, so powerful! But he completely misunderstood his well-wisher’s intentions. He thought that he was being exhorted to turn the chants into an opera, so that he would achieve everlasting fame. It simply didn’t occur to him that he could actually live for ever.
‘At Flossenburg concentration camp, the young Jewish music professor told me that in his view the existence of the opera Junius was only a myth, and that it was quite probable that Wagner had never written it. But now I had a scent to follow! With five historians to assist me, I discovered from the private diaries of Wagner’s friends that he had been working on a new opera in the last year of his life which he jokingly referred to as his Wikingsgesangbuch. He took it with him to Venice and he was still working on it when he died.
‘Unfortunately, when Wagner died, neither the opera nor the Book of Salamander was found amongst his possessions. For a long time, I thought that I had reached a dead-end, and that the young music professor was right about the opera being nothing but a story. But in a moment of inspiration, I discovered the name of the doctor and of the priest who had attended Wagner on his deathbed. The priest was Father Xavier Montini, a Jesuit, and a famous scholar on the subject of pagan ritual.
‘Now I used my logic, Mr Denman! My powers of deduction; and also my lifelong suspicion of Jesuits! I deduced that when Father Xavier Montini saw what Wagner had been working on, he became alarmed, and smuggled the Book of Salamander and the unfinished opera out of Wagner’s house, and hid them. After all, isn’t immortality supposed to be the exclusive territory of God Almighty? His unique selling point? The priest didn’t want that challenged by some pre-Christian mumbo-jumbo from Jutland!
‘Mussolini’s military staff gave us all the co-operation we needed to comb Venice looking for the opera and the book. In the end, after three months, we found them, bricked into the cellar wall of a house that had belonged to one of Father Xavier Montini’s friends. We were sad to discover that the cellar had flooded four or five times since the book had been concealed there, and that most of the original runes in the Book of Salamander had been obscured by damp. But the opera had been carefully wrapped in oilskin, and was almost as fresh and as bright as the day that Wagner had laid down his pen.
‘We had in our hands the means to create the master race of which Hitler had always dreamed, a race of pureblooded immortals who would rule the world with force and wisdom.’
‘So what stopped you?’ asked Lloyd.
Otto’s eyes followed a blowfly as it droned across the room, and the tip of his tongue ran across his lips. ‘Wagner had taken many liberties with the original chants. He hadn’t understood their importance, you see, and he had made many changes, for the sake of his opera. It was necessary for musical experts to work through the opera, note by note, in comparison, with Wagner’s diaries, and with what we had managed to salvage from the Book of Salamander, in order to recreate the original ritual music.
‘Otherwise, our dream would have been totgeboren, you understand? Born dead.’
He stood up. He swayed a little, as if the Asbach brandy had made him drunk. He seemed taller than before, a giant ash-grey stick-insect. Thin and tall and long-legged. Lloyd watched him with apprehension. He walked over to the window where the blowfly was furiously bizzling against the glass.
‘Our work was still not complete when the Russians entered Berlin. I was in the Führerbunker with Hitler and those who remained. Goebbels, Bormann, and the rest. On Hitler’s instructions, I was still working with Helmwige on the opera. We burned alive two young volunteers from the Hitler Youth, without success. They simply died in terrible pain. Then on the night of April 29, with the Russians only hours away from us, Helmwige volunteered to be burned. Hitler’s chauffeur Erich Hempka went to fetch two hundred litres of petrol, and two SS men dug a sandy pit in the Chancellery garden.’
He paused for a second, then scooped the blowfly into his hand. He held it up, and Lloyd could hear it furiously buzzing.
‘We chanted the ritual chant, and then we drenched Helmwige with petrol and she set fire to herself with a lighted rag. She said nothing. Didn’t scream, didn’t protest. At last the fire-chants had worked. Her smoke and her soul arose, and although her body remained, her spiritual essence became a Salamander, a creature of fire and spirit. It was amazing to watch. Hitler witnessed it for himself, and he was in tears.
‘Helmwige and I escaped from the Führerbunker along with Martin Bormann, and we were helped by SS officers to obtain International Red Cross passports, and to make our way to America. We arrived in New Orleans in time for the summer solstice, and we were able to complete the ritual in a room at the Pontchartrain Hotel. Helmwige then became what she is today. A living example of the master race.’
Otto held his fist close to his ear, so that he could hear the blowfly’s desperate struggles. He smiled in anticipation of the tiny treat that he was going to give himself.
‘What about Hitler?’ asked Lloyd. ‘If he saw what happened to Helmwige . . . didn’t he want to try it for himself?’
Otto gave a non-committal shrug. ‘The Führer was, of course, deeply impressed with what I had achieved. I was immediately put in charge of all genetic and racial experiments, including those of Mengele and von Harn. Not that it counted for much, of course. By that time, the Russians had already reached Potsdamer Platz, and the Reich was obviously at an end.
‘Hitler told me to leave Berlin with Helmwige and with a young Aryan boy whom Mengele had bred . . . the father of the young man who acts as our servant now.’
‘But Hitler didn’t take to the idea of setting fire to himself?’ Lloyd persisted.
Otto turned and stared at him narrowly, although the curved shadow from the mock-parchment lampshade made it difficult for Lloyd to see his face.
Otto said nothing for a while. Then he looked away. ‘What happened to the Führer will always remain a secret,’ he said.
‘Did you turn him into a Salamander?’
Otto shook his head. ‘Ich weiß nicht. If the Führer went through the ritual, he did after I left the Führerbunker. Helmwige and I and the boy escaped from Berlin in the early hours of April 30th. Later that same day, Hitler’s body was burned, yes, that is a matter of historical record. But the historical record does not say whether he was alive when he was burned, or whether he was already dead. He was supposed to have shot himself in the mouth, but when they carried his body out of his room, his head was covered with a blanket, so that none of the eye-witnesses could tell for certain.’
‘But if he did go through the ritual . . .?’
Otto shrugged. ‘If he did go through the ritual, then the probability is that he is still alive. But where . . . who knows?’
He opened his hand, and lifted out the blowfly by one leg. He picked off its wings with the concentration of a man picking the stalk off a raisin. Then he popped it quickly on to his tongue, and held it in his mouth for a moment, so that he could feel it vibrating against his cheeks. He sucked, and swallowed. ‘Helmwige,’ he said, ‘switch on the television.’ The conversation appeared to have ended.
They watched 21 Jump Street for a while. Then Otto switched over to the eight o’clock news. Lloyd looked at Kathleen but there was nothing that either of them could do. Otto watched a long item about crack dealing in San Diego schools, frowning and muttering to himself. Then the news turned to the accidental death of San Diego Detective Sergeant Houk, and the disappearance of Detective Gable and Deputy Bredero.
‘Sergeant Houk and Detective Gable were assisting State police in their investigation of the death by burning of thirteen men and women in the Anza Borrego State Park . . . While Sergeant Houk’s death appears to have been an automobile accident, state and metropolitan police are still unable to account for the complete disappearance of Detective Gable and Deputy Bredero . . . Deputy Bredero’s patrol car was found abandoned at the Five Flags shopping centre close to Highway I–5, with no fingerprints on it apart from his own . . .’
‘You’re very thorough,’ Lloyd remarked.
‘I had a scientific training,’ said Otto. ‘Besides, what we are doing here is too important to allow any margin for mistakes.’
‘You don’t think the police are going to track you down?’
Otto used his thumbnail to pick something black from between his teeth. ‘You are talking to someone who escaped from Berlin on the very last day of Hitler’s Reich,’ he said. ‘You are talking to a man who discovered an opera which had been hidden for sixty years, and who was able to revive a mystic ritual which had been lost for eleven centuries. Now . . . I have work to do, letters to write. I would appreciate it if you and Mrs Kerwin would retire to your rooms. And, please, make no attempts to leave the house. Our young man had been instructed to use physical force if necessary, to keep you here, and you have seen for yourself what I can do.’
‘But you’re not one of these Salamander people, are you?’ asked Kathleen. ‘How come you can set things on fire?’
Otto closed his eyes. He remained silent for such a long time that they thought that he wasn’t going to answer. But then he opened his eyes again, and said, ‘I have told you quite enough. Some secrets must remain secrets. On your dying day you will remember that you once knew me, and you will shudder in awe.’
Lloyd retorted, ‘I’ll shudder with something, but it damned well won’t be awe.’
Otto flicked him a look as sharp as a whipcrack. ‘Don’t tempt me, Mr Denman. It’s growing cold, and I’m sure we’d all appreciate a fire.’
The young man escorted them wordlessly up to their rooms, opened their doors for them, and then locked them in. Lloyd sat down on his mattress, eased off his shoes, and then lay back, feeling exhausted and grimy and shocked, as if he had just survived a minor but unpleasant automobile accident. His hands were sore, and his thought that it was probably time his bandages were changed, but at the moment there was nothing he could do about it. He watched the nodding fang-like shadows of yucca fronds on the sloping ceiling. There was still so much that he couldn’t accept, even though he had heard Otto’s cruel and lascivious confessions with his own ears, and seen with his own eyes how remorseless Otto could be.
All those grey-skinned people on the garage floor—how could they really be composed of nothing more than smoke and spirit? How could a ritual change transform an agonizing death into a fiery rebirth? How could anyone live for ever?
He thought of Celia lying there; and wondered what she was thinking, if she was thinking anything at all. Out on the road at Escondido, she had said that she still loved him. But could he still love her? How could you love somebody who had died and come back to life—somebody who wasn’t really flesh any more? Most difficult of all, how could he accept her back into his life when she had so readily embraced a creature like Otto—a man who had burned alive thousands of innocent people for the sake of one insane ideal?
Beneath everything that Otto was doing, Lloyd could feel the terrifying legacy of the Third Reich moving like a black silently thunderous glacier. Hitler had reawakened something in the human mind that would take more than guns and bombs and forty-five years of economic reconstruction to destroy. When he had claimed that his Reich would last for a thousand years, he had been right. And if Otto was able to transform all of those Salamanders sleeping on his garage floor, it would be even more than a thousand-year Reich. It would be a Reich that dominated mankind for ever.
Lloyd had read plenty of books and articles about the war. But until now he had never felt the real fear of war, the fear of living under somebody else’s will. It was more disturbing than he had ever imagined possible, and he suddenly began to understand why people were prepared to risk their lives for political freedom. Without political freedom, life was simply not worth living.
He fell asleep, and almost immediately he dreamed of Celia again. He dreamed that he was wading across a glossy-green meadow, through varnished grass and huge wide-awake daisies, under a sky the colour of tarnished bronze. Celia was standing naked on a distant levee, beside a gnarled and whiskery plane tree. Her hair was alight, and a plume of orange fire was rising from her head. He tried to shout out, but his voice sounded as tiny and ineffective as the blowfly buzzing in Otto’s fist. He tried to run, but the grass was too deep.
The key turned in his door. He opened his eyes. For a moment he could hear nothing but the insects in the yard outside, and the soft chattering of his wristwatch. He thought for a moment that he must have dreamed the sound of the key, but then he heard a floorboard creak.
‘Who’s there?’ he demanded, his heart racing—knowing all the time that he couldn’t do anything to defend himself, no matter who it was. The nameless young man was obviously powerful enough to break his neck. Helmwige could fry him alive just by touching him. And Otto could turn him into a human incendiary bomb simply by looking at him.
The door slowly opened. He lay still, although every tendon in his body was pulled tight. A single second passed as slowly as the world turning on its axis. Then the young man appeared, and stood beside the open door, watching him.
‘What do you want?’ Lloyd asked him, at last.
‘I came to see if you were asleep.’ The young man’s voice was soft, and curiously distorted, like the voice of somebody deaf, somebody who has learned to speak only by watching the movement of other people’s lips.
‘I was asleep, until you came in.’
‘I’m sorry. I wanted to ask you something.’
Lloyd propped himself up on one elbow. The young man’s apologetic tone was in direct contrast to Otto’s dry-voiced hectoring. ‘Does Otto know that you’re here?’ he asked him.
The young man glanced quickly behind him, as if the mere mention of Otto’s name could somehow invoke Otto’s presence. ‘No. Otto is working. He . . .’ making a scribbling gesture with his hand ‘. . . writes, you know? Always writing.’
‘What did you want to ask?’
The young man closed the door behind him, and knelt down next to Lloyd’s mattress. Although he was so muscular, he had the gentlest of airs about him. A boy, rather than a man. Uncertain, anxious, unexpectedly shy.
‘They have always hated me, Otto and Helmwige. They have always told me that I am nothing but an animal. They hated Mengele, you see, because up until the very end, Mengele was always the Führer’s favourite. They talk about it over and over, as if it happened only yesterday.’
Lloyd said nothing, but waited for the young man to carry on.
‘I have no name. I have nothing,’ the young man told him. ‘I asked Otto what was my name, and he said, you’re not even a person, you deserve no name. Do I give names to cabbages, or eggs, or chairs? That’s what he said.’
Lloyd said, ‘Otto isn’t exactly the most sympathetic person I’ve ever met.’
‘I have to do everything for them, everything. I have to clean, I have to do everything. Helmwige expects me to have love with her, any time that she wants to. They told me that to work for them was my punishment, because so many people had died so that I could live. I was made by Josef Mengele, and this is my punishment for having been made.’
‘Nobody’s to blame for their own existence,’ said Lloyd.
‘I am to blame for myself.’
‘Bullshit, you were born because somebody else wanted you born, for whatever reason. It doesn’t matter what the reason was, you had no hand in it. It’s not your fault.’
The young man raised his head so that the light from the corridor fell across his face, and shone in his eyes. Eyes like crystal-clear marbles, young and hopeful and innocent. ‘I wanted to ask you if you would like to leave this place, and take me with you.’
Lloyd sat up. ‘You’re going to help us to escape?’
‘Only if you wish to.’
‘Only if we wish to? Are you kidding? You think we’re here because we felt like an early vacation? We’re here because Otto threatened to burn us alive.’
The young man nodded. ‘He has done that many times, to many people. He does not say so, but burning people is Otto’s pleasure.’
‘But you’re going to help us get away?’
The young man nodded. ‘Very early in the morning, when Otto sleeps his deepest. I will come to your room and guide you away. We can take Otto’s own car, that will prevent him from following, for a while. None of the other cars is working.’
‘What about Celia?’ asked Lloyd. ‘He won’t do anything to her, will he? He won’t harm her in any way?’
The young man shook his head. ‘Your Celia is most important to him. Celia is the only one who can understand the music. He will never harm Celia.’
‘You’re sure about that?’
The young man nodded. ‘I heard him talking to Helmwige. He said that Celia was his Godsend . . . his saviour. When they escaped from Germany, you see, they lost many of their notes, and Celia was the first person they had found who was able to play the music for them.’
‘Okay, then . . . it’s a go,’ Lloyd told him. ‘Wake me up whenever you’re ready, and I’ll be right behind you.’
The young man checked his wristwatch. ‘Three o’clock . . . that will be the best time.’
Lloyd said, ‘You’re sure I can trust you?’
The young man lowered his head again.
‘Supposing I give you a name?’ Lloyd asked him. ‘Can I trust you then?’
‘A name?’ the young man asked him, incredulously.
‘Sure, a name. Your very own name.’
‘How can you give me a name?’ the young man asked. ‘You’re not my father.’
‘For Christ’s sake, I don’t have to be your father to give you a name. What do you want me to call you?’
The young man shrugged. ‘I don’t know any names.’
‘All right, then . . . we’ll call you Franklin, after Franklin Roosevelt. How about that? Franklin Free, because you’re going to be free.’
The young man pressed his hand to his chest. ‘And that can be me? That name? Franklin Free?’
Lloyd nodded. ‘That can be you.’
Never in his life had Lloyd seen anybody lifted so quickly from his own lack of self-importance as Franklin Free. He quivered with new strength, like a butterfly emerging from a chrysalis; he breathed more deeply, and knelt up straight. ‘That can be me? Franklin Free?’
‘That is you. You’re a human being, every human being has a name, and your name is Franklin Free.’
Franklin stood up. He didn’t seem to know which way to turn. Softly, he repeated the incantation, ‘My name is Franklin Free, and that can be me. My name is Franklin Franklin Free and that can be me.’
Lloyd checked his watch. ‘Listen, Franklin . . . it’s way after eleven. Let me try to grab some more zees. If you’re planning on breaking out of here at three o’clock in the morning, we all need to be fresh and alert and ready for anything.’
‘Franklin,’ Franklin repeated, in awe.
He reached out and grasped Lloyd’s hand, and squeezed it with the trembling restraint of someone who would dearly love to have hugged him, but knew that he couldn’t.
‘Franklin,’ he said. ‘That’s good.’
‘Glad you like it,’ Lloyd told him. He felt genuinely touched, more touched than Franklin could have understood.
Just then, they heard Helmwige calling from downstairs. ‘Bath! Come on! I want my bath!’
The newly-named Franklin gave Lloyd’s hand one last squeeze, and then said, ‘I have to go. Helmwige wants me.’
‘I’ll see you at three,’ Lloyd replied.
Franklin said, ‘If it doesn’t work out . . . if we don’t get away . . .’
‘We will get away,’ Lloyd assured him. ‘Don’t even think about it.’
‘But if we don’t, if he burns us . . .’
‘He’s not going to burn us, all right?’
‘But if he does . . . I just want you to know that what you’ve given me . . . well, it’s worth more than anything that Otto and Helmwige have ever given me. It’s worth the world.’
‘Draw my bath!’ Helmwige screamed.
Franklin went to the door. ‘Three o’clock,’ he promised. He held up the doorkey. ‘And just to show you that I mean what I say . . . I won’t lock the door.’
He hesitated, bit his lip. ‘If I do that . . . you won’t escape without me?’
‘I trust you,’ said Lloyd. ‘Don’t you think that you can trust me?’
‘I don’t know,’ Franklin replied, suddenly hesitant. He obviously wasn’t used to making up his own mind about anything.
‘Do you have any choice, but to trust me?’ Lloyd suggested.
Franklin thought about it, and then he said, ‘No, I guess I don’t.’ He tried to give Lloyd a brave smile, and then he left the room and closed the door behind him. Lloyd waited to hear the key turning in the lock, but it didn’t. Franklin had kept his word. One way or another, they were going to be free.
He heard water running like muffled thunder out of the hot-water tank. Then footsteps on the stairs, and creaking boards on the landing, and Helmwige talking as if she were slightly drunk. He lay on his mattress without moving. He had tried to sound confident about escaping, but he wasn’t at all sure that Franklin was bright enough to be able to get them out of the house, or that Otto and Helmwige would be sleeping deeply enough to allow them to go. If they could just get out of range of Otto’s fire-raising, they would be safe. But he wasn’t at all sure how far away that actually was. For all he knew, Otto only had to think hard enough, and he could ignite a fire in the next county, or the next state, or anywhere he liked in the world. His talent for fire-raising was the one secret that Otto had refused to discuss.
Still, Lloyd recalled that when Otto had set fire to his steering-wheel, he had taken two or three steps forward, as if to bring himself closer. And when he had chased them out of the 24-hour drugstore in Del Mar, his arrow of fire had been able to pursue them only for thirty or forty feet.
If they could just get clear of the house, he guessed that they would probably be safe. Then all they had to do was to find somewhere safe to hide and to wait for the solstice—wait for Otto and Helmwige to perform the ceremony of Transformation—and then rescue Celia and Mike Kerwin, too.
Nothing to worry about. Nothing that the Lone Ranger couldn’t have handled, or maybe Dirty Harry. Lloyd would have loved Otto to make his day.
After a few minutes, he eased himself up off the mattress and went to the door. He turned the handle, and found that Franklin had been telling the truth. He had left it unlocked. Lloyd opened it two or three inches, and listened. At the far end of the landing, the bathroom door was ajar, and he could hear splashing and murmuring, and then Helmwige saying, ‘Gently, gently, du bist so plump.’
He hesitated for a short while, and then he opened the door wider, and crept out into the corridor. It sounded as if Otto was still downstairs, writing. The whirling sounds of The Ride of the Valkyries came from the record-player in the living-room, played at top volume, and Lloyd heard the clinking of Otto’s brandy-bottle as he poured himself another drink.
Holding his breath, he tiptoed along the corridor until he reached the half-open bathroom door. Cautiously, he put his eye to the crack in the door. The whole room was foggy with rose-smelling steam, and from where he was standing he could see only the edge of a large white enameled bathtub, a bottle of Vidal Sassoon shampoo, and a glistening pink curve which he took to be Helmwige’s shoulder. Helmwige was sitting with her back to him, so he took the risk of leaning across the doorway and peering right into the room.
Franklin was kneeling beside the bathtub wearing nothing but white Fruit-of-the-Loom shorts. He was facing the door and he saw Lloyd at once. He frowned, and mouthed the word. ‘Wha . . .?’ but Lloyd gave him a quick wave to reassure him that everything was fine, and that he wasn’t trying to escape just yet.
There was nothing that Franklin could do, in any case. Helmwige was watching him too intently. He was massaging her shoulders with soap, while she ran her hands up and down his muscular forearms, and kept saying,’Mmmmmmm, that’s better . . . gently, gently.’
Lloyd watched as Franklin rubbed more soap on his hands, and then began to lather Helmwige’s enormous breasts. Her wet skin squeaked as he grasped her breasts tightly, and rolled her nipples between finger and thumb. She continued to murmur, and to splash, and to run her hands up and down his arms.
‘Harder, you can do that harder. Pinch me! I like to be pinched! Ohhh . . .’
Franklin rinsed her breasts with a huge natural sponge. Then he scooped his arm into the bath, so that his hand was right underneath her bottom, and he raised her hips right out of the water. She had heavy thighs, and a rounded stomach, but she was still in voluptuous shape for a woman who must have been immortalized when she was well into her forties.
‘You must make sure that I am completely clean,’ she told Franklin.
‘Yes,’ said Franklin. His voice was flat. He glanced at Lloyd but Lloyd remained where he was, not moving. Downstairs the Valkyries continued to thrash and to tumble, although it sounded as if this part of the record had suffered from years of being played almost every evening.
Helmwige reached down with both hands into her dark blonde pubic hair, and opened her vulva as wide as she could, so that Franklin could soap his finger and slip it inside. ‘Ohhh, höchst erfreulich,’ she murmured.
Franklin slid his finger in and out of her, and she threw back her head and moaned and warbled like a dove. Then he slid in a second finger, and a third. Helmwige gasped and splashed, and pulled herself even wider open. At last, panting, his muscular chest glistening with perspiration, Franklin worked his entire soapy hand up into her, right up to the wrist.
Helmwige made an extraordinary growling deep-breathing noise that reminded Lloyd of a sea-lioness. She gripped Franklin’s wrist fiercely in both hands. Then she suddenly shuddered, and shook, and screamed out loud. The bathwater churned as wildly as if it were full of piranha fish. Fascinated and horrified by what he had seen, but strangely aroused, too, Lloyd turned quickly away. He tiptoed back along the corridor until he reached the door of Kathleen’s room. Franklin had left the key in the lock, so all he had to do was quickly to turn it, open the door, and slip inside.
Kathleen was awake and sitting up in bed. When he came in, she switched on the bedside lamp, a cheap clip-on with a broken plastic shade. ‘Lloyd? What’s happening? How did you get out? Somebody’s screaming!’
‘Don’t worry about that—that’s Helmwige, having a little bathtime fun. Listen—that boy came into my room a few minutes ago. It seems like he’s had it up to here with Otto and Helmwige, and he wants us all to make a break for it.’
‘You mean escape? Do you think you can trust him?’
‘I don’t see any reason not to. He’s not exactly Albert Einstein, but he seems willing enough. And he doesn’t have any reason to double-cross us, does he?’
‘But what if Otto catches us? He’ll burn us alive!’
‘I wouldn’t be too sure that he’s not planning on doing that anyway. He’s determined to start where Hitler left off, and, believe me, he’s not going to let anybody stand in his way.’
Kathleen brushed back her hair with her hand. ‘He’ll never manage it, though, will he? The police are bound to track him down sooner or later.’
Lloyd shrugged. ‘I’m not so sure. He’s got people who can burn you as soon as look at you—people who can live for ever. How are you going to stand up against people like that? And how many other people are going to be tempted to join him, once they realize that they really could be immortal? Besides, you’ve got Otto himself to contend with. You heard what he did to Sergeant Houk. He could do that to anybody who tries to stop him. One glance and you’re humanburger.’
He heard water emptying out of the bathtub, and the sound of voices. ‘Listen—I’d better get back to my room. The plan is that we sneak out of the house at three o’clock in the morning, when Otto and Helmwige are really out of it. Franklin is going to wake us up, if we’re asleep.’
‘Franklin? I thought he didn’t have a name.’
‘I christened him. He was as pleased as a dog with two tails.’
‘Lloyd . . . do you really believe that we’re going to be able to get away? I mean, safely? If anything should happen to me . . . well, I don’t know what Thomas would do.’
‘Do you want to stay?’ Lloyd asked her.
Kathleen shook her head. ‘I guess it’s just that I never felt frightened before. Not like this.’
‘Franklin told me that Otto wouldn’t harm Celia at all, if I escaped. I guess he wouldn’t harm your husband, either.’
Kathleen said, ‘That man lying out in the garage, Lloyd—that isn’t Mike Kerwin. Leastways, it’s not the Mike Kerwin I married. The Mike Kerwin I married was burned to death on that bus in the desert.’
Lloyd saw the tears glisten in her eyes. He couldn’t help admiring her bravery and her realism. He hadn’t yet accepted that he had lost Celia for ever. Somehow, with a Disneylike optimism, he had kept on believing that the Celia he had hoped to marry was still there; that she would reappear just as she was before and say, ‘Fooled you!’
But he knew now that he was going to have face the truth. Celia had been burned, Celia was gone. The creature that had taken her place was a creature of fire and sorcery, a creature that he would never be able to accept back into his life. He could understand why Celia had chosen youthful immortality over a gradually worsening disability and an early death. But the more he learned about Otto and his Salamanders, the more difficult he found it to come to terms with the fact that Celia had embraced his idea of a master race. The Celia that Lloyd had loved would never have accepted a single minute of life that had been bought at the price of thousands of innocent people being deliberately incinerated.
He had lost Celia now, lost her for good. The world had had enough of camps, enough of gas-chambers, enough of ovens.
Kathleen must have sensed what he was feeling, because she put her arms around him and laid her head against his chest. Tears slid down his cheeks and dropped into her hair like warm pearls.
‘Ssh, it’s over,’ she said.
Lloyd wiped his eyes with the heels of his hands. ‘Thanks,’ he said. ‘I guess I’ve been the victim of my own bravado.’
She kissed his cheek. ‘I’ll see you at three.’
Lloyd went to the door, listened, then opened it. He returned to his room, quietly closed the door behind him, and lay back down on his mattress.
He hadn’t expected to be able to sleep, so he had recited the lyrics of all the rock songs that he could think of, then all the poems that he could remember (By the shore of Gitche Gume . . . by the shining Big Sea Water . . .); then the address section of his Filofax, with the full telephone numbers and zip codes of all of his friends; then the Padres’ batting averages for the past three seasons.
He was only aware that it was three o’clock when he felt Franklin shaking his shoulder and whispering, ‘Mr Denman? Mr Denman? Wake up, Mr Denman, it’s time to go.’
He stared into the darkness. ‘Is it three o’clock already?’ he asked, his mouth thick and woolly. He sat up, and rubbed his eyes. ‘Jesus, I dreamed I was having dinner at Mr A’s.’
‘Come on,’ breathed Franklin. ‘as quietly as you can. Otto is so deeply asleep that he’s practically dead, but Helmwige is very jumpy.’
Lloyd cleared his throat. ‘I’m not surprised, the way she was playing in the tub tonight.’
‘She will do anything and everything,’ said Franklin. ‘What does she care, she’s going to live for ever? She’s a morphine addict, Hermann Goering got her on to morphine during the war. But she takes every kind of drug you can imagine. She has sex with anybody she feels like it. She doesn’t have to care about AIDS. She will perform any kind of sex act you can imagine, and some that you can’t. I’ve seen her have sex with two dogs, while Otto watched her and ate flies.’
‘Let’s go,’ said Lloyd. He didn’t particularly want to hear any more. He stood up, and caught his head on the sharply sloping ceiling. He swore more foully than he had sworn for years, not so much because it hurt but because he was tense and tired and frightened. In some ways, Helmwige frightened him more than Otto. At least Otto was mortal, at least Otto could be killed. But how could you fight against somebody who had no regard for their own life whatsoever?
Franklin opened the door, and crept out into the corridor, with Lloyd following closely behind. They crossed to Kathleen’s room, and Franklin quietly turned the key. Kathleen must have heard them whispering, because she was waiting for them right behind the door.
‘Are they asleep?’ she breathed. Lloyd nodded, and took hold of her hand.
Quickly and silently they tiptoed along the corridor, past the half-open bathroom, and then past Helmwige’s bedroom, which was wide open. By the light of a flickering black-and-white television movie, they could see Helmwige sprawled naked on her frilled four-poster bed, her legs wide apart, her mouth open. She was breathing coarsely and irregularly, as if she were having a nightmare. The movie was The Thin Man, with William Powell and Myrna Loy.
‘I read you were shot five times in the tabloid.’
‘It’s not true. He didn’t come near my tabloid.’
With infinite care, they went downstairs. Franklin was so heavy that the treads squeaked whenever he put his weight on them, and Lloyd winced. But at last they reached the darkened hallway, and the house remained silent.
Franklin beckoned Lloyd and Kathleen to come closer. ‘All we have to do now is get out of the front door, head for the car, get into it, and go.’ He held up the car keys. ‘I lifted these from Helmwige’s purse this afternoon.’
‘What about the other cars?’ asked Lloyd.
‘Only the coupé works, and I let down the tyres.’
‘Where does Otto sleep?’ Lloyd whispered. ‘Will he hear us leave?’
‘Oh, he’ll hear us leave all right. He works in the living-room every night till one or two o’clock, playing his records and drinking brandy. Then he goes to sleep on the couch, fully dressed. He doesn’t even bother to wash.’
‘Thanks a lot,’ Lloyd replied. ‘He’s already won the Lloyd Denman Award for the Man Most Likely to Make You Barf On Sight.’
‘Okay, let’s go,’ Franklin told them. ‘But let’s make it real quick.’
He released the security chain, and then silently slid back the bolts. He opened the latch, and the front door swung open with the faintest of creaks. Outside, the night was as black as only a Southern California night can be. They could barely distinguish the faint gleam on the roof of Otto’s Mercedes sedan.
‘Okay, go!’ whispered Franklin. Together, they ran across the porch, into the drive, and quarter-backed their way between the parked Mercedes. Kathleen caught her knee against the rear bumper of the 380SL, and hissed, ‘Shit!’ but they reached the sedan, wrenched open the doors, and threw themselves into the leather-upholstered seats. Franklin pushed the key into the ignition, roared the car into life, and switched on the headlights.
‘Oh, God, no!’ said Kathleen, in panic.
The headlights had instantly illuminated the thin uncompromising figure of Otto, standing in front of them in a short-sleeved shirt and grey slacks, his arms folded, his withered mouth puckered with anger.
‘Run the bastard down!’ Lloyd shouted at Franklin. But Franklin sat in the driver’s seat staring at Otto in complete paralysis. Franklin had been bred by Otto and raised by Otto. Franklin’s will had been subjugated by Otto from the moment he was born.
Otto walked up to the side of the car and held out his hand. ‘The keys, please,’ he demanded.