The Rhinemann Exchange (57 page)

“You’re hospitable,” said Spaulding, carrying his brandy to a chair next to Altmüller.

“And generous. Don’t forget that.”

“It would be hard to.… I was wondering, however, if I might impose further?” David placed his brandy glass on the side table and gestured at his rumpled, ill-fitting clothes. “These were borrowed from a ranch hand. God knows when they were last washed. Or me.… I’d appreciate a shower, a shave; perhaps a pair of trousers and a shirt, or a sweater.…”

“I’m sure your army personnel can accommodate you,” said Altmüller, watching David suspiciously.

“For Christ’s sake, Altmüller, I’m not
going
anywhere! Except to a shower. The designs are over there!” Spaulding pointed angrily through the archway to the metal case chained to the banister of the stairway. “If you think I’m leaving without
that
, you’re retarded.”

The insult infuriated the Nazi; he gripped the arms of his chair, controlling himself. Rhinemann laughed and spoke to Altmüller.

“The colonel has had a tiresome few days. His request is minor; and I can assure you he is going nowhere but to the Mendarro airfield.… I wish he were. He’d save me a half million dollars.”

David responded to Rhinemann’s laugh with one of his own. “A man with that kind of money in Zürich should at least
feel
clean.” He rose from the chair. “And you’re right about the last few days. I’m bushed. And sore all over. If the bed is soft I’ll grab a nap.” He looked over at Altmüller. “With a battalion of armed guards at the door if it’ll ease the little boy’s concerns.”

Altmüller shot up, his voice harsh and loud. “
Enough!
”

“Oh sit down,” said David. “You look foolish.”

Rhinemann’s guard brought him a pair of trousers, a lightweight turtleneck sweater and a tan suede jacket. David saw that each was expensive and he knew each would fit. Shaving equipment was in the bathroom; if there was anything else he needed, all he had to do was open the door and ask. The man would be outside in the hall. Actually, there would be two men.

David understood.

He told the guard—a
porteño
—that he would sleep for an hour, then shower and shave for his journey. Would the guard be so considerate as to make sure he was awake by eleven o’clock?

The guard would do so.

It was five minutes past ten on David’s watch. Jean had phoned at precisely nine fifteen. Asher Feld had exactly two hours from nine fifteen.

David had one hour and six minutes.

Eleven fifteen.

If Asher Feld really believed in his priorities.

The room was large, had a high ceiling and two double-casement windows three stories above the ground, and was in the east wing of the house. That was all Spaulding could tell—or wanted to study—while the lights were on.

He turned them off and went back to the windows. He opened the left casement quietly, peering out from behind the drapes.

The roof was slate; that wasn’t good. It had a wide gutter; that was better. The gutter led to a drainpipe about twenty feet away. That was satisfactory.

Directly beneath, on the second floor, were four small balconies that probably led to four bedrooms. The farthest balcony was no more than five feet from the drainpipe. Possibly relevant; probably not.

Below, the lawn like all the grounds at Habichtsnest: manicured, greenish black in the moonlight, full; with white wrought-iron outdoor furniture dotted about, and flagstone walks bordered by rows of flowers. Curving away from the area beneath his windows was a wide, raked path that disappeared into the darkness and the trees. He remembered seeing that path from the far right end of the terrace overlooking the pool; he remembered the intermittent, unraked hoofprints. The path was for horses; it had to lead to stables somewhere beyond the trees.

That
was
relevant; relevancy, at this point, being relative.

And then Spaulding saw the cupped glow of a cigarette behind a latticed arbor thirty-odd feet from the perimeter of the wrought-iron furniture. Rhinemann may have expressed confidence that he, David, would be on his way to
Mendarro in a couple of hours, but that confidence was backed up by men on watch.

No surprise; the surprise would have been the absence of such patrols. It was one of the reasons he counted on Asher Feld’s priorities.

He let the drapes fall back into place, stepped away from the window and went to the canopied bed. He pulled down the blankets and stripped to his shorts—coarse underdrawers he had found in the adobe hut to replace his own bloodstained ones. He lay down and closed his eyes with no intention of sleeping. Instead, he pictured the high, electrified fence down at the gate of Habichtsnest. As he had seen it while Rhinemann’s guards searched him against the battered FMF automobile.

To the right of the huge gate. To the east.

The floodlights had thrown sufficient illumination for him to see the slightly angling curvature of the fence line as it receded into the woods. Not much but definite.

North by northeast.

He visualized once again the balcony above the pool. Beyond the railing at the far right end of the terrace where he had talked quietly with Jean. He concentrated on the area below—in front, to the right.

North by northeast.

He saw it clearly. The grounds to the right of the croquet course and the tables sloped gently downhill until they were met by the tall trees of the surrounding woods. It was into these woods that the bridle path below him now entered. And as the ground descended—ultimately a mile down to the river banks—he remembered the breaks in the patterns of the far off treetops. Again to the right.

Fields.

If there were horses—and there
were
horses—and stables—and there
had
to be stables—then there were fields. For the animals to graze and race off the frustrations of the wooded, confining bridle paths.

The spaces between the descending trees were carved-out pasture lands, there was no other explanation.

North by northeast.

He shifted his thoughts to the highway two miles south of the marble steps of Habichtsnest, the highway that cut through the outskirts of Luján toward Buenos Aires. He remembered: the road, although high above the river at the
Habichtsnest intersection, curved to the
left
and went
downhill
into the Tigre district. He tried to recall precisely the first minutes of the nightmare ride in the Bentley that ended in smoke and fire and death in the Colinas Rojas. The car had swung out of the hidden entrance and for several miles sped east
and
down
and
slightly north. It finally paralleled the shoreline of the river.

North by northeast.

And then he pictured the river below the terraced balcony, dotted with white sails and cabin cruisers. It flowed diagonally away … to the right.

North by northeast.

That was his escape.

Down the bridle path into the protective cover of the dark woods and northeast toward the breaks in the trees—the fields. Across the fields, always heading to the right—east, and downhill, north. Back into the sloping forest, following the line of the river, until he found the electrified fence bordering the enormous compound that was Habichtsnest.

Beyond that fence was the highway to Buenos Aires. And the embassy.

And Jean.

David let his body go limp, let the ache of his wound run around in circles on his torn skin. He breathed steadily, deeply. He had to remain calm; that was the hardest part.

He looked at his watch—his gift from Jean. It was nearly eleven o’clock. He got out of the bed and put on the trousers and the sweater. He slipped into his shoes and pulled the laces as tight as he could, until the leather pinched his feet, then reached for the pillow and wrapped the soiled shirt from the outback ranch around it. He replaced the pillow at the top of the bed and pulled the blanket partially over it. He lifted the sheets, bunched them, inserted the ranch hand’s trousers and let the blankets fall back in place.

He stood up. In the darkness, and with what light would come from the hallway, the bed looked sufficiently full at least for his immediate purpose.

He crossed to the door and pressed his back into the wall beside it.

His watch read one minute to eleven.

The tapping was loud; the guard was not subtle.

The door opened.

“
Señor
?… 
Señor
?”

The door opened further.

“
Señor
, it’s time. It’s eleven o’clock.”

The guard stood in the frame, looking at the bed. “
El duerme
,” he said casually over his shoulder.

“
Señor Spaulding!
” The guard walked into the darkened room.

The instant the man cleared the door panel, David took a single step and with both hands clasped the guard’s neck from behind. He crushed his fingers into the throat and yanked the man diagonally into him.

No cry emerged; the guard’s windpipe was choked of all air supply. He went down, limp.

Spaulding closed the door slowly and snapped on the wall switch.

“
Thanks very much
,” he said loudly. “Give me a hand, will you please? My stomach hurts like
hell
.…”

It was no secret at Habichtsnest that the American had been wounded.

David bent over the collapsed guard. He massaged his throat, pinched his nostrils, put his lips to the man’s mouth and blew air into the damaged windpipe.

The guard responded; conscious but not conscious. In semishock.

Spaulding removed the man’s Lüger from his belt holster and a large hunting knife from a scabbard beside it. He put the blade underneath the man’s jaw and drew blood with the sharp point. He whispered. In Spanish.

“Understand me! I want you to laugh! You start laughing
now!
If you don’t, this goes home. Right up through your neck!… Now.
Laugh!
”

The guard’s crazed eyes carried his total lack of comprehension. He seemed to know only that he was dealing with a maniac. A madman who would kill him.

Feebly at first, then with growing volume and panic, the man laughed.

Spaulding laughed with him.

The laughter grew; David kept staring at the guard, gesturing for louder, more enthusiastic merriment. The
man—perplexed beyond reason and totally frightened—roared hysterically.

Spaulding heard the click of the doorknob two feet from his ear. He crashed the barrel of the Lüger into the guard’s head and stood up as the second man entered.

“
Qué pasa, Antonio? Tu re
—”

The Lüger’s handle smashed into the Argentine’s skull with such force that the guard’s expulsion of breath was as loud as his voice as he fell.

David looked at his watch. It was eight minutes past eleven. Seven minutes to go.

If the man named Asher Feld believed the words he spoke with such commitment.

Spaulding removed the second guard’s weapons, putting the additional Lüger into his belt. He searched both men’s pockets, removing whatever paper currency he could find. And a few coins.

He had no money whatsoever. He might well need money.

He ran into the bathroom and turned on the shower to the hottest position on the dial. He returned to the hallway door and locked it. Then he turned off all lights and went to the left casement window, closing his eyes to adjust to the darkness outside. He opened them and blinked several times, trying to blur out the white spots of anxiety.

It was nine minutes past eleven.

He rubbed his perspiring hands over the expensive turtleneck sweater; he took deep breaths and waited.

The waiting was nearly unendurable.

Because he could not know.

And then he heard it! And he knew.

Two thunderous explosions! So loud, so stunning, so totally without warning that he found himself trembling, his breathing stopped.

There followed bursts of machine-gun fire that ripped through the silent night.

Below him on the ground, men were screaming at one another, racing toward the sounds that were filling the perimeter of the compound with growing ferocity.

David watched the hysteria below. There were five guards beneath his windows, all running now out of their concealed stations. He could see the spill of additional
floodlights being turned on to his right, in the elegant front courtyard of Habichtsnest. He could hear the roar of powerful automobile engines and the increasing frequency of panicked commands.

He eased himself out of the casement window, holding onto the sill until his feet touched the gutter.

Both Lügers were in his belt, the knife between his teeth. He could not chance a blade next to his body; he could always spit it out if necessary. He sidestepped his way along the slate roof. The drainpipe was only feet away.

The explosions and the gunfire from the gate increased. David marveled—not only at Asher Feld’s commitment, but at his logistics. The Haganah leader must have brought a small, well-supplied army into Habichtsnest.

He lowered his body cautiously against the slate roof; he reached out, gripped the gutter on the far side of the drainpipe with his right hand and slowly, carefully crouched sideways, inching his feet into a support position. He pushed against the outside rim of the gutter, testing its strength, and in a quick-springing short jump, he leaped over the side, holding the rim with both hands, his feet against the wall, straddling the drainpipe.

He began his descent, hand-below-hand on the pipe.

Amid the sounds of the gunfire, he suddenly heard loud crashing above him. There were shouts in both German and Spanish and the unmistakable smashing of wood.

The room he had just left had been broken into.

The extreme north second-floor balcony was parallel with him now. He reached out with his left hand, gripped the edge, whipped his right hand across for support and swung underneath, his body dangling thirty feet above the ground but out of sight.

Men were at the casement windows above. They forced the lead frames open without regard to the handles; the glass smashed; metal screeched against metal.