25
That's strange
I didn't call Nägelsbach. I drove over to Brigitte's place, where I found her, Peschkalek, and Manu having chocolate, espresso, and sambuca over a game of Risk. I had a hard time responding to their cheerfulness. But I'd had a long drive and could plead tiredness. I ate the leftovers and watched them play.
It was a heated game. After years of living in Rio, Manu conquered and defended South America tooth and nail. His strategy was to occupy North America and Africa in order to secure South America—he didn't care about the rest of the world. Brigitte had only joined in the game because she didn't want to be a wet blanket. She had captured Australia, was fantasizing about harmonious coexistence with aborigines, and was not interested in further conquests. So Peschkalek managed to capture Europe and Asia without effort. But his mission was to free Australia and South America, and unlike Brigitte or Manu he took his mission seriously, got entangled in a hopeless war on two fronts, and didn't rest until he was utterly defeated. Manu and Brigitte were overjoyed, and he laughed along with them. But he was rankled. He wasn't a good loser.
“Time to go to bed!” Brigitte clapped her hands.
“No, no, no!” Manu was in high spirits and ran from the living room to the kitchen and back to the living room, and turned on the TV. Yugoslavia was falling apart. Rostock was bankrupt. A baby had been abducted from a hospital in Lüdenscheid and found in a phone booth in Leverkusen. The Frenchman Marcel Croust won over Viktor Krempel in the Manila chess tournament, establishing himself as the challenger to the world champion. The Federal Public Prosecutor's Office announced the arrest of the suspected terrorists Helmut Lemke and Leonore Salger in a village in Spain, from where they were to be extradited to Germany. The TV showed them being led in handcuffs to a helicopter by policemen in black-lacquered hats.
“Isn't that…”
“Yes.”
Brigitte knew Leo from the picture leaning against the small stone lion on my desk. Brigitte shook her head. Leo, with her unwashed, stringy hair, bleary-eyed face, and grubby checked shirt, did not meet her approval.
“Are you going to see her again?” she asked me casually. Even when I had told her about my trip with Leo to Locarno, she had not made much of a fuss. Even then I hadn't fallen for it.
“I don't know.”
Peschkalek stared at the television screen without a word. I couldn't see his face. When the news was over he cleared his throat and said, “It's amazing what the teamwork of the European police can pull off nowadays.” He turned to me and launched into a minilecture about Interpol and the Schen-gen Treaty, the investigative role of the computer, Europol, and the new European forensic database.
“You'll try to get to see those two …” I began.
“I guess I ought to, don't you think?”
“… and you'll try to talk them into playing the role I didn't want to play?”
He weighed which answer would trigger what question, wasn't sure, and dodged. “I'll think about it.”
“What can you offer them?”
“What do you mean?” He seemed uncomfortable.
“Well, the Federal Public Prosecutor's Office can drop charges, apply for a lower penalty, or even grant pardons in order to salvage its story of the Käfertal attack. What can you offer? Money?”
“Me, money?”
“For a good feature article there's always good money, wouldn't you say?”
“Things aren't that good.” He got up. “I've got to get going.”
“Things aren't that good? There should be hundreds of thousands of marks in something like this, and with the real photos and documents even more. What would you say to a million?”
He looked at me, vexed. He was trying to figure out whether I'd just hit on that number or if I was hinting at something. His flight-instinct won. “Well, so long, then.”
Brigitte had listened to us annoyed. When Peschkalek had gone, after kisses on both cheeks, she asked what was going on. “Are you fighting?” I dodged her question. As we lay in bed, she rested her head on my arm and looked at me.
“Gerhard.”
“Yes?”
“Is that why they let you out of prison? I mean, did you tell them where to find the two of them?”
“What would be wrong with that? I don't know the girl, but she's on the run with him, and he did assault you, after all. That was him, wasn't it? The one I met at the door when I found you in terrible shape and covered in blood.”
“Yes, but I had no idea they were in Spain. Leo called me once or twice, and it sounded far away—that was all.”
“That's strange.” She turned around, nestled her back against me, and fell asleep.
I knew what she found strange. How would a policeman in a godforsaken village in the Spanish provinces come upon German terrorists? Not without a tip-off. I conjured up the image of a German tourist abroad going to the police to make a statement that he recognized the inhabitants of a neighboring bungalow as the terrorists for whom there was an alarm out. Then I remembered the tip-off that had led Rawitz and Bleckmeier to me, not to mention the tip-off that had landed me in prison. These had not come from a tourist. Nor had the tip-off that had brought Tietzke to Wendt's corpse. I might have been pointed out by someone who happened to see me, someone from Mannheim who had been drawn to the Oden-wald and Amorbach by the warm summery day. But the tip-off about Wendt's corpse had come from Wendt's murderer.