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Quinn was convinced Marchais had been on the second plane, that he had disappeared into twenty-three years of dead-end jobs on fairgrounds until being recruited for his last foreign assignment. What Quinn wanted was the name of one other who had been with him on that last assignment. There was nothing in the papers to give a clue. Lutz returned.
“One last thing,” said Quinn.
“I can’t,” protested Lutz. “There’s already talk that I’m writing a background piece on mercenaries. I’m not—I’m on the Common Market meeting of agriculture Ministers.”
“Broaden your horizons,” suggested Quinn. “How many German mercenaries were in the Stanleyville mutiny, the march to Bukavu, the siege of Bukavu, and the internment camp in Ruanda.”
Lutz took notes.
“I have a wife and kids to go home to, you know.”
“Then you’re a lucky man,” said Quinn.
The area of information he had asked for was narrower, and Lutz was back from the morgue in twenty minutes. This time he stayed while Quinn read.
What Lutz had brought him was the entire file on German mercenaries from 1960 onward. A dozen at least. Wilhelm had been in the Congo, at Watsa. Dead of wounds on the Paulis road ambush. Rolf Steiner had been in Biafra; still living in Munich, but was never in the Congo. Quinn turned the page. Siegfried “Congo” Muller had been through the Congo from start to finish; died in South Africa in 1983.
There were two other Germans, both living in Nuremberg, addresses given, but both had left Africa in the spring of 1967. That left one.
Werner Bernhardt had been with the Fifth Commando but skipped to join Schramme when it was disbanded. He had been in the mutiny, on the march to Bukavu, and in the siege of the lakeside resort. There was no address for him.
“Where would he be now?” asked Quinn.
“If it’s not listed, he disappeared,” said Lutz. “That was 1968, you know. This is 1991. He could be dead. Or anywhere. People like that ... you know ... Central or South America, South Africa ...”
“Or here in Germany,” suggested Quinn.
For answer, Lutz borrowed the bar’s telephone directory. There were four columns of Bernhardts. And that was just for Hamburg. There are ten states in the Federal Republic, and they all have several such directories. “If he’s listed at all,” said Lutz.
“Criminal records?” asked Quinn.
“Unless it’s federal, there are ten separate police authorities to go through,” said Lutz. “You know that, since the war, when the Allies were kind enough to write our constitution for us, everything is decentralized. So we can never have another Hitler. Makes tracking someone down enormous fun. I know—it’s part of my job. But a man like this ... very little chance. If he wants to disappear, he disappears. This one does, or he’d have given some interview in twenty-three years, appeared in the papers. But, nothing. If he had, he’d be in our files.”
Quinn had one last question. Where had he originally come from, this Bernhardt? Lutz scanned the sheets.
“Dortmund,” he said. “He was born and raised in Dortmund. Maybe the police there know something. But they won’t tell you. Civil rights, you see—we’re very keen on civil rights in Germany.”
Quinn thanked him and let him go. He and Sam wandered down the street looking for a promising restaurant.
“Where do we go next?” she asked.
“Dortmund,” he said. “I know a man in Dortmund.”
“Darling,” she said, “you know a man everywhere.”
In the middle of November, Michael Odell faced President Cormack alone in the Oval Office. The Vice President was shocked by the change in his old friend. Far from having recovered since the funeral, John Cormack seemed to have shrunk.
It was not simply the physical appearance that worried Odell; the former power of concentration was gone, the old incisiveness dissipated. He tried to draw the President’s attention to the appointments diary.
“Ah, yes,” said Cormack, with an attempt at revival. “Let’s have a look.”
He studied the page for Monday.
“John, it’s Tuesday,” said Odell gently.
As the pages turned Odell saw broad red lines through canceled appointments. There was a NATO Head of State in town. The President should greet him on the White House lawn; not negotiate with him—the European would understand that—but just greet him.
Besides, the issue was not whether the European leader would understand; the problem was whether the American media would understand if the President failed to show. Odell feared they might understand only too well.
