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
I found a copy of Lange’s medical dictionary and, looking up the symptoms of malaria and those of viral meningitis, discovered that the two illnesses produced several symptoms that were more or less identical. In the Bavarian Alps, where mosquitoes are not exactly common, it would have been all too easy to have passed off several dozen men dying of malaria as an outbreak of viral meningitis. Who would have suspected it? All those German POWs had been used for medical experiments. Just like eight hundred American convicts. Not to mention all those people at Dachau and Majdanek. It seemed hard to believe, but experiments on human beings, for which seven Nazi doctors had been hanged at Landsberg, were obviously still going on, and under the protection of the CIA. The hypocrisy of it was staggering.
THIRTY-SIX
THIRTY-SIX
There was an Overseas Telephone and Telegraph Office on the ground floor of the Alliance Building in Alserstrasse, in the Ninth District. I approached an operator. He had a nose like a windsock and hair that was a sort of badger-color—gray on the outside and darker underneath. I gave him the Garmisch number, bought a kilogram of coins, and went to the telephone booth he had indicated. I didn’t expect to get through, but I figured it was worth a try. While I waited for my connection I thought about what I was going to say and hoped I could restrain myself from just using a lot of the words we used to use on the Russian front. I sat in the booth for about ten minutes before the telephone rang and the operator told me that the other phone was ringing. After a moment or two it was picked up and I heard a distant voice. Garmisch was only three hundred miles, but I imagined the call had to go through the telephone exchange in Linz, which was in the Russian zone of occupation, before being rerouted via Salzburg (in the American zone) and Innsbrück (in the French). The French were considered the least efficient of the four powers and the poor quality of the line was very likely their fault. But recognizing Eric Gruen’s voice, I started to pump a fistful of ten-groschen coins into the telephone, and after fifteen or twenty seconds we were speaking. Gruen seemed genuinely pleased to hear from me.
“Bernie,” he said. “I was hoping you would call. So that I might have a chance to tell you how sorry I am for landing you in a tight spot. Really, I am.”
“A tight spot,” I said. “Is that what you call it when you try to put another man’s head in a noose that’s meant for you?”