The Other Side of Love (66 page)

- oh, so virtuously - had persisted she must keep her covenant with her parents, then had rushed home to get raped by her friend, this Aryan prince.

“You’re a mystery to me, Kathe. Maybe Aubrey understands what makes you tick, but I sure as hell don’t,”

he said bitingly.

“First thing tomorrow I’ll get over to headquarters and uncover what I can about your buddy.”

He kicked the connecting door shut behind him.

Wyatt spent the next morning tangled il§red tape.

The squeaky-voiced top sergeant in cftrge of records insisted on a signature from the colonel before he would release the files for Kurt Schwagermann. The colonel was on a three-day inspection trip. Wyatt tried several of the colonel’s subordinate officers: none would take the responsibility of releasing the dossier. Finally he ran into a guy he’d known at Columbia, now an adjutant to General Clay, who cut through the gobbledegook. It was after one when Wyatt carried the accordion file to the window and scanned the typed interrogations. Kurt Schwagermann, born in Munich in 1908 - there was a copy of the birth certificate - had served a three-month prison term in 1938 for his anti-Nazi statements. Immediately after his release he had married Jolenta Mohr, aged seventeen. No children. In 1939 he had been drafted into the Wehrmacht. There was a mimeographed Gestapo form stamped POLITICALLY UNSUITABLE FOR OFFICER TRAINING. He had been wounded in the left shoulder at El Alamein, and in the chest by Italian guerrillas. This second wound had caused such extensive lung damage that he had been given a

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medical discharge, the record of which had been destroyed during an air raid. Eminently qualified to rise to the top of the Occupation barrel, he now headed a plant in Hochst that manufactured photo electric cells for the PX. He and his wife had taken four invalids into their home. None of these invalids was a child.

Wyatt weighed the papers in both hands. The guy was as far from an SS officer as a German could be. But it was not unknown for war criminals to shroud themselves in the identities of the dead.

He jotted down the address.

IV

And a very fine address it was, on the outskirts of the Stadtwald. As they drove there, Kathe recalled from history lessons that in 1395 Frankfurt had been the first city in Europe to sow a forest. Many of the ancient trees still stood. At the outskirts of the forest, they knit their branches with the branches of their descendants to shelter a few well set back mansions.

The Schwagermanns”

residence, although built of a particularly ugly brown brick, was commodious with the look of solid comfort. Tacked on to the left side was a conservatory. Tropically green ferns pressed against the outsize panes, none of which was cracked or boarded over a mass of unbroken glass that was near-mythological in postwar Frankfurt. Wyatt, idling briefly at the cross-hatched gate, continued past several houses and made a U-turn, parking. A huge pine fairly well hid the car.

Kathe’s attention remained riveted on the Schwagermanns”

property. Not a soul went in or came out. The haze of coal smoke evaporating above the main chimney was the sole sign of habitation.

For nearly an hour, she stared, fidgeting, while Wyatt calmly read his pocket book of all things, Anna Karemna.

The front door was opening.

Kathe leaned as far forward as the dashboard permitted. Trees impeded her view, so she caught only a fleeting glimpse of a young woman wearing a red felt hat with the brim pulled smartly down on one side.

Wyatt hadn’t been so intent on Tolstoy after all. He whistled softly.

“Must be Frau Groener-Schwagermann.”

After a minute the brunette swung open the big gate, halting to call in thin sharp sounds like ack-ack:

“Stop dawdling. Hurry up!”

A child in a heavy coat, short pants and grey knitted stockings burst into sight.

Arms outspread, he raced along the pavement, dipping and swaying to simulate an aeroplane in flight. His shining platinum hair swung and flapped. Colour suffused his cheeks. His glowing

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skin shone a robust sun-kissed brown rather than the milky white that normally accompanies such pale hair. His legs pistoned. He seemed to vibrate with dynamic energy.

“Erich …

“

Kathe breathed.

“Kid’s pretty big for five,”

Wyatt said doubtfully.

“It’s Erich!”

“You said Groener had two other boys”

“This is my baby!”

Shh!”

The child slowed, actively interested in the American car, then he stared into her face. His soft babyish mouth curled in a saucy half-smile that brought an ache to Kathe’s frantically pumping heart. Then he swerved, racing under the trees in his pretend aeroplane.

“Erich!”

the woman shrilled.

“Erich! Come back here this minute.”

With a put-upon long-suffering grimace in their direction, she trotted after the child, who was already a hundred feet ahead of her.

Kathe rested her head back on the car-seat and breathed deeply. Perspiration beaded her forehead. The joy that was sweeping through her in great waves was so powerful, the reverberations of her heart so precipitate, that she understood the expression

“die from happiness’.

V

For the next hour the external world passed like a shadow show. She barely heard Wyatt reiterate that she didn’t have a thread of evidence that the boy was hers. How could he not have seen himself in Erich? Had he never glanced at a reflection of his own smile?

The duo returned, the woman draggBg the child’s arm.

“Erich, you hurry up!”

*

Watching the woman hustle the child inside the gate, Kathe said:

“Did you hear that?”

“OK, OK, I grant that in a few seconds and without a word you established a mystic oedipal bond”

“She called him Erich!”

“It’s not the secret name of God. Aubrey might like more positive proof than a first name that the boy he’s about to rear is at least half a Kingsmith.”

As he said this, his cheeks splotched with red.

“Aubrey trusts me.”

“Listen to yourself, Kathe. Trust? There’s only one way to trust that this kid is yours, and that’s to have a talk with your wartime buddy.”

Suddenly she laughed.

“Why’re we snapping at each other? I’ve waited this long. 1 can wait until Groener gets home.”

Wyatt had brought his service pistol and was inspecting it.

“Aubrey took his to the warehouse,”

she said, eyeing the weapon nervously.

“We never needed it.”

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‘And Groener didn’t exactly level with you, either.”

Wyatt slid a clip in the Colt.

“Rathe, there’s no second chances. Once we confront your old friend, he’ll take off. Maybe he won’t even take the boy with him but will send him to another sector. One thing’s for sure. We’ll never find the kid. So, if he is yours, he’s got to leave with us.”

VI

A cold waning moon lit the way as their footsteps crunched on the gravel path that curved around the trees. Since Groener had parked the Kiibelwagen on the street thirty minutes earlier, Kathe’s hands had been shaking and she’d had difficulty catching her breath. Wild with impatience as she was, she’d nevertheless agreed Wyatt was right: they should give Groener time to settle down.

Seen up close by moonlight, the house appeared yet more imposing than it had this afternoon. Electricity was not available for German housing after nine: an old-fashioned oil carriage-lamp diffused its glow around the arched entry.

They went up the three broad steps.

“Ready?”

Wyatt asked.

“All nerved up, like before a race, except multiplied by a thousand a million.”

Without forethought, she raised up on tiptoe, kissing his cold cheek.

“Thank you, Wyatt.”

The door opened. A manservant stood holding a candlestick. The draught wavered the candle-flame, but even in the uncertain shadows it was possible to see that he wore his green livery jacket with the same air of martial fitness as the watchman at the Hochst warehouse.

Apparently the household was accustomed to American officers arriving late at night.

“Herr Schwagermann expects you?”

“Yes,”

Wyatt said.

The servant marched through the hall to the rear of the house. A few seconds later, Groener’s stocky outline came striding towards them.

Nearing the door, he halted.

“Kathe?”

His shadowed face displayed a consternation similar to when she’d arrived at the Hochst warehouse.

“But what are you doing here?”

“We need to talk,”

she said, adding:

“This is Captain Kingsmith.”

“Ah, the American

“cousin”,”

Groener said, and she could tell the hint of derisive amusement was forced. The brunette had come into the hall. With a brusque jerk of his head, Groener dismissed her. The woman moved towards the staircase, puckering her lips to blow a coy kiss at him as she took the candle from the servant.

Groener said:

“Come this way.”

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The small study was dominated by its fireplace. A pair of lifesize wooden caryatids supported a mantelpiece adorned with a mass of carved dwarfs, the great heap of blazing logs threw off more heat than was necessary, and the reddish firelight competed with the glow cast by the spirit-lamp on the table. Kathe perched as far as possible from Groener, clasping the handle of her handbag to conceal the nerve spasms that swept herw”

“There are no children listed at this fddress,”

Wyatt said in his fluent, badly accented German.

“But a boy lives here. Tell us about him.”

Groener, apparently recuperated from his shock at seeing Kathe on his doorstep, picked up his snifter, warming the glass between his palms.

“First, Kathe, what about you? I heard you had a bit of a problem with your de-Nazification.”

“That letter you wrote didn’t cut the mustard with our tribunal, Groener,”

Wyatt said.

“Now, let’s forget the crap. Who’s the kid?”

“My son.”

“You told Aubrey and me’, Kathe said,

“that your sons were killed in a bombing raid.”

They were.”

Sorrow flickered across Groener’s brutally goodlooking features, and he took a sip of brandy.

“But I had this other boy out of wedlock. What a scamp! A real handful. And my Jolenta’s not used to children.”

“She’s not the mother, then?”

Wyatt asked.

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‘I met Jolenta last August. It was easier to list her as my wife but, to use an American term, she’s a shack-up.”

“He’s mine, isn’t he?”

Kathe asked in a strangled whisper.

“You could have asked that in the first place.”

Groener smiled.

“Of course he is.”

“And you sent me on that wild-goose chase! I’ve been in every kind of hell. Who was that creature?”

“Wasn’t her performance convincing? After thirty years”

acting with the Schauspielhaus in Berlin she ought to be able to play a bereaved Hausfrau. And, in case you’re worrying about the real Dettens, they didn’t want to give Erich up, but Reinhard was about to be arrested because of his war work - she told you the truth about despatching the trains to the east. They needed me to sneak them out of the country and arrange passage. They’ve been in Montevideo since September.”

“And you had the Darmstadt records altered?”

“Kathe, Kathe, by now you should know it’s a favour here, a favour there.”

Groener shifted in his chair, looking at Wyatt.

“Did you know Kathe as a flaxen-haired little girl, Captain? I did. When she grew into a Nordic princess, I fell in love. And in time I had her.”

“Against my will,”

Kathe muttered.

A log broke, sending up sparks as the halves fell with a small crash. Kathe jumped. Neither of the men stirred.

“We were quite good friends at Villa Haug and later,”

Groener said.

“And, as for not taking pleasure in bed, why would you? Decent women don’t.”

“We’re not here to talk over old times,”

Wyatt said coldly.

“This is between her and me, Captain. Kathe, call me a sentimentalist, but I still feel exactly the same. What about it? As my wife, you’ll have a fine home, servants, this son - and other eugenically sound children.”

“You’re a murderer,”

Kathe said.

“In a war all men have red hands.”

“We didn’t gas people - or work them to death,”

Wyatt said hoarsely.

“You’ll swing.”

“So that’s it, eh?”

Groener’s small eyes narrowed.

“My son in exchange for your silence? Well, there’s no deal, Captain.”

“He’s my baby!”

Kathe cried.

“

“Uncle Kurt”, he calls me, but soon I’ll ask him to call me

“Father”. And when he’s old enough to understand he’ll learn that I am his father.”

“Kathe wants her son,”

Wyatt said.

“And I explained the terms by which she’ll have him,”

Groener said, pausing.

“The only terms.”

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‘Like hell,”