Chapters (50)
- Praise
- Title Page
- Copyright Page
- Dedication
- Epigraph
- ONE
- TWO
- THREE
- FOUR
- FIVE
- SIX
- SEVEN
- EIGHT
- NINE
- TEN
- ELEVEN
- TWELVE
- THIRTEEN
- FOURTEEN
- FIFTEEN
- SIXTEEN
- SEVENTEEN
- EIGHTEEN
- NINETEEN
- TWENTY
- TWENTY-ONE
- TWENTY-TWO
- TWENTY-THREE
- TWENTY-FOUR
- TWENTY-FIVE
- TWENTY-SIX
- TWENTY-SEVEN
- TWENTY-EIGHT
- TWENTY-NINE
- THIRTY
- THIRTY-ONE
- THIRTY-TWO
- THIRTY-THREE
- THIRTY-FOUR
- THIRTY-FIVE
- THIRTY-SIX
- THIRTY-SEVEN
- THIRTY-EIGHT
- THIRTY-NINE
- FORTY
- FORTY-ONE
- FORTY-TWO
- EPILOGUE
- AUTHOR’S NOTE
- Teaser chapter
“Of course,” he said. “And now I’m ready to play the Good Samaritan. To help you. Money. A new passport. A weapon if you need one. A visa to wherever you want to go, just as long as it’s Argentina. That’s where most of our friends are, these days.”
“As I told you already, Father,” I said. “I don’t want a new life.”
“Then exactly what is it you do want, Herr Gunther?” I could hear him stiffening as he spoke.
“I’ll tell you. These days I’m a private detective. I have a client who’s looking for her husband. An SS man. She ought to have had a postcard from Buenos Aires by now, but she’s heard nothing in more than three and a half years. So she’s hired me to help find out what happened to him. The last time she saw him was in Ebensee, near Salzburg, in March 1946. He was already on the Web. In a safe house. Waiting for his new papers and tickets. She doesn’t want to spoil anything for him. All she wants to know is if he’s alive or dead. She’d like to remarry if it’s the second. But not if it’s the first. You see, the trouble is she’s like you, Father. A good Roman Catholic.”
“That’s a nice story,” he said.
“I liked it.”
“Don’t tell me.” The laugh took on an altogether different persona. This one sounded a little unbalanced. “You’re the schmuck she wants to marry.”
I waited for him to finish laughing. Probably it was just shock. It’s not every day you meet a priest who peels his lips back and lets it go like Peter Lorre.
“No, Father, it’s exactly the way I told you. In that respect at least, I’m like a priest. People bring me their problems and I try to sort them out. The only difference is that I don’t get much help from the guy on the high altar.”
“Does this housewife have a name?”
“Her name is Britta Warzok. Her husband’s name is Friedrich Warzok.” I told him what I knew about Friedrich Warzok.
“I like him already,” said Father Gotovina. “Three years without a word? He could very well be dead.”
“To be honest, I don’t think she’s looking for good news.”
“So why not tell her what she wants to hear?”
“That would be unethical, Father.”
“It took a lot of guts speaking to me like this,” he said quietly. “I admire that in a man. The Comradeship is, shall we say, easily alarmed. This business at Landsberg with the Red Jackets. It doesn’t help. Not to mention the prospect of yet more executions. The war’s been over for four years and the Amis are still trying to hang people, like some stupid sheriff in a cheap Western.”