The Grandfather Clock (24 page)

I woke to the unfamiliar ring of my
phone. Foggy-headed, I answered, trying to snap myself out of my
sleep and struggling to recognize the time of day.

“
Hello? Um, hola?” I
said.

“
This is Michael, the
American?” It was a woman’s voice with a hint of an accent that I
couldn’t put my finger on.

“
Yes. Who is
this?”

“
My name is Freda. Where
are you staying?”

“
The hostel,” I
said.

“
Let’s meet.”

I waited on the steps of the hostel.
About thirty minutes after Freda’s call, a woman in her fifties
pedaled up on a bike. She was short, a little heavy, with blond
hair cut like John Denver. Her cheeks were red from her ride. She
introduced herself and I lead her up to the empty terrace on the
top floor.

“
Oh, such a nice view of
the town,” she said. I waited. Finally she asked, “Well, so what
brings me here?”

“
Eva thinks you can help
me,” I said, half statement, half question.

“
Oh, well. I grew up with
Eva’s mother. She used to help me in my flower shop until she moved
to Buenos Aires to be near one of her sons. Eva was always a
wonderful girl, haven’t seen her much lately, lovely little
daughter she has.”

“
Do you know why she had
you call me?”

She smiled. “Well, I received a call
from her brother. Just two days ago. He wanted to know if I could
help him reach someone who was interested in what he called ‘German
memorabilia.’”

“
Did he say what it
was?”

“
Not right away. He was a
little vague, which was fine. I understand how these things
are.”

“
Why did he think you
could help? What do you mean ‘how things are’?”

“
Michael, what was your
last name?”

“
Chance.”

“
Michael, the Germans in
this area go back for generations. We’re proud. We were here before
there was ever a Nazi. My father was born here. 1913. He went to
school in Frankfurt and then the war. He came back after the war
and took care of his mother until she died. It was only the 1980s
that investigators and journalists started coming here. His name
was on a list of suspected Nazi war criminals. Well, he wasn’t
hiding. He had no secrets.”

She took a deep breath and looked out
at the lake.

“
His health problems
started then. He lived his final days under a cloud. Threats to
bring him to trial. It was all lies. The real war criminals ...
some did come here, but they were old men. Dead and gone. The
threat of arrest followed him until his death in 1989. And then
even after. For ten years people spread lies that he was still
alive. Monsters.”

“
So Eva put Marco in touch
with you because of rumored Nazi affiliation?”

“
Oh, no. At least I don’t
think so. No, she thought of me because my father never hid, and I
will never hide. Maybe she thinks I’m a sort of German ambassador
in the community. I was young then and very vocal in clearing my
father’s name. He fought for his homeland. He was injured and
finished the war in a desk job. But he was no criminal.”

“
So what did you tell
Marco?”

“
I told him what he wanted
to know.”

“
What was
that?”

She stepped away and looked down. “He
wanted to know how to contact my son.”

“
Your son.”

“
Yes. He’s your age. How
should I describe him? As a teenager he became interested in our
family history. My father. My father’s friends. The sons and
grandsons. They all live here. He and Marco played football from a
very young age.”

“
He thought your son could
help him sell the gun.”

“
I didn’t know about the
gun until Eva called. You see, Oskar and I don’t always see eye to
eye. I’m afraid he might use the gun to impress some of the people
who are more – how should I say this? – deeply
involved.”

“
Involved in
what?”

“
Stories.
Conspiracies.”

“
Oh, the stories about
Hitler, living here.”

“
Lies.”

“
But people believe
it.”

“
They are fanatics,” she
said with a sigh.

“
But what could they want
with the gun?”

“
Your guess is as good as
mine. Perhaps a trophy piece. It’s all a ploy to take tourists’
money.”

“
Is your son some sort of
neo-Nazi?”

“
I don’t really know what
you call him. He’s not any kind of supremacist. Maybe it’s a love
of his German heritage gone wrong. He’s still young. It’s a
phase.”

“
What should I
do?”

“
I’ve been thinking about
this since Eva called this morning. I’m hoping you can get the gun
out of Bariloche. It can only bring the boys trouble.”

“
That’s my goal. Would you
mind telling me your last name?”

“
Einhorn. My married name
is Deitz, but my maiden name was Einhorn.”

“
How can I contact your
son?”

She pulled out a pen.

“
Does he speak
English?”

“
Of course.”

When I returned to my room, Charlie
and Glen’s luggage was gone. A note from Charlie said, “Sorry I
bailed. Off to Tierra del Feugo! Best of luck.” He signed it with
his email address. I opened my laptop. It didn’t take much
searching to find more on Freda’s father, Oskar Einhorn. His father
had been killed in an automobile accident. After the war he
returned to care for his mother in Barlioche. He met his wife,
Greta, and they had two children. One was Freda. The 1980s brought
relative calm after decades of turmoil in Argentina. With it came
the effort to pursue not only those guilty of crimes against the
Argentine people, but renewed effort to bring Nazi war criminals to
justice. Oskar Einhorn was notable because he was the prominent
head of a clothing manufacturer and vocal in proclaiming his
innocence. He was dogged by international press. Late in the decade
he became ill and passed away before he could see a reunified
Germany. In the mid-1990s activity on a long-dormant bank account
stoked rumors that his death was faked. Freda adamantly defended
her family, pointing out similar unsubstantiated rumors followed
the surviving children of German officers. For as many stories I
found on English websites, there were double that number in
Spanish.

Freda’s son, Oskar Dietz, was a little
harder to pin down. His online footprint competed with other men
with the same name in Germany. I found traces on social media, but
nothing substantial. The phone number would have to be my starting
point.

There’s a term in telemarketing that
refers to an employee’s anxiety over making sales calls. “Call
reluctance.” At Globe Bank had a long questionnaire that applicants
would fill out to rate their level of call reluctance. That’s the
feeling some people have when they don the headset and the computer
connects them to Mrs. Jones who is making dinner with a baby
screaming in the corner. I always believed that I was born without
call reluctance until it was time to call Oskar Dietz.

Nazis are monsters. What was Oskar
Dietz like? What had Marco told him?

My heart pounded as the phone
rang.

“
Hola,” a man shouted. It
sounded like he was in a car.

“
Sí, ahh, Oskar
Dietz?”

“
Sí, quién es?”

“
Um. Habla
inglés?

“
Yes. Who is
speaking?”

“
My name is Michael. You
might know why I am calling. It has to do with Marco
Rios.”

“
Sí. Yes. Did he tell you
to call me?”

“
Not exactly.” Oskar
didn’t know the whole story.

“
You are interested in the
piece.”

I paused, contemplating my move. I
could play along, but if he mentioned my name to Marco, my game
wouldn’t last long.

“
What do you know about
it?” I asked.

He laughed. “Sorry, can’t talk about
that. If you are interested in something, come to Bariloche from
wherever you are. If you are serious, come see me.”

“
I’m here,” I
said.

“
Oh,” his tone changed.
“In that case, call me in the morning. I’ll set things up with
Marco.”

I wasn’t going to be able avoid Marco.
Perhaps with the element of surprise on my side, and the fact that
I had traveled so far, he would realize he had made a mistake. If I
was uneasy in the hunt, perhaps he was more uneasy as the
hunted.

Friday afternoon at the hostel was
busy. I camped out in the lobby to do something I had been
dreading. I logged in to my email account and I called the
voicemail on my phone.

“
You have six messages,”
came the woman’s cold tone.

A message from Klara sounded falsely
upbeat, she was just checking in, but a little worried. Come home
soon, she said. I felt bad leaving the way I did, and I hadn’t
called her since our brief conversation when I arrived in Buenos
Aires. For me it had been a whirlwind three days of travel. For
her, it was three days of going to school, going home, and not
hearing from me.

The next message was Celeste. She had
a detached concern in her voice. “Michael, I just talked to Marco.
He sounded crazy. I just want you to be ... I just don’t know what
he would do if he saw you. Be careful. Don’t try to do this alone.
And please, call Klara. She’s ... uh, losing it. Ciao.”

There was a strange email from
Marianne. It wasn’t strange that she urged me to contact the
authorities. It was strange that she didn’t mention the dumbbell
and made no acknowledgment of the deception. Perhaps she
understood, or maybe something else was at work.

I took a deep breath and dialed Klara.
She fumbled with her phone as she answered, “Hello?
Hello?”

“
Klara, it’s me,” I said,
staring at the ceiling and speaking of the din of the lobby
crowd.

“
Hello?”

“
Can you hear
me?”

“
Michael. I have to go.
I’m coming to Argentina. I’m trying to...”

“
What? What are
you…?”

“
It’s ... I have to go.”
The line went dead.

I immediately called Celeste, whose
phone went straight to voicemail. What were they doing? My heart
was racing. They didn’t know I was in Patagonia.

I admit that I was buoyed by the news
that they were coming. Certainly Klara was unaware of what had
provoked Marco. If I’d had a clearer head when I left Paris, I
might have tried to figure out a way to enlist their help. But I
left with anger toward Celeste and I was convinced that once Klara
knew what happened in New Orleans, she would be out of the picture
too.

A trio of back-packers lounged nearby,
maps spread on the floor, pulling books from a shelf. I scanned the
books, wishing I’d could be so plaintive as to read a book. There
were books on Eva Peron is several languages, a host of romance
novels and thrillers, and tourist guides dating back a decade. Next
to a worn copy of Fodor’s Argentina, a flimsy paperback caught my
eye. The cover was a photo of the town of Bariloche. Superimposed
into the square was the image of a statue of Hitler, arm extended
in Nazi salute. The book was in Spanish, but the words “Sitios
Historicos Relacionados Al Nacionalsocialismo” were clear. It was a
guide to the area’s Nazi past.

The afternoon sun was setting and the
temperature was beginning to drop. I made my way to a restaurant
and took a seat at the bar. I ordered a beer and opened the book.
The bartender recognized it with surprising familiarity. “Ahh,
looking for Nazis are you?”

I could feel my face flush. “It just
caught my eye. I don’t speak Spanish, so I can’t make much out of
it.” I thumbed the pages hopelessly.

“
When that book came out,
it was everywhere.”

“
What do you make of
it?”

“
Ha. Well, I was a kid in
the 1980s, but a prominent man, leader of the local German school,
was extradited to Italy for war crimes. Name was Priebke. It was an
international story. That brought us a lot of attention. It comes
and goes.”

“
And the Hitler stories.
Pretty far-fetched.”

“
I don’t know. I’ve talked
to old men who claim that they saw the man. In Argentina, secrets
are everywhere. But for all the Germans who were living in plain
sight, I find it hard to believe without proof. Other than the
house they say he lived in.”

“
Where is
that?”

He grabbed the book, like he already
knew the page. He turned toward the middle where there was a photo
of the house that I’d seen on the Internet, with a map on the
opposite page. “It’s an hour and a half maybe. But you have to know
where you are going. You can’t see it from the road and the
entrance is hidden.”