sure?â
Lieutenant Meyer nodded.
Baker-Bates tapped the lists. âYouâve given this to the right people here at HQ?â
âYes, sir, but we also thought that you should have a copy.â
âBecause of my interest in him.â
âYes, sir.â
Baker-Bates read the list again. âFive living in our zone, I see. How many in yours?â
âSeven in ours and four in the French.â
âHave you already collected yours?â
âLast night. We got six of them. The seventhâthe one in Stuttgartâkilled himself and his wife just as we were going in.â
âHow?â
âWell, we made the mistake of knocking firstââ
âI mean how did he kill himself?â
âOh. With a knife. He cut his throat. His wifeâs too. They say it was a mess.â
Baker-Bates brought out a package of Lucky Strikes and offered them to Meyer, who took one. Each lighted his own cigarette. When they were going, Baker-Bates said, âHow was he killed? Damm.â
âShot. Twice.â
âWho heard it?â
âNobody.â
Baker-Batesâs eyebrows went up. The Lieutenant noticed that there were traces of gray in them. âNobody?â
âWell, sir, thatâs something else thatâs not quite kosher. This guy Damm lived all by himself in an eight-room house almost within spitting distance of us at the Farben building. Now, you know as well as I do that nobody in Germanyâs got an eight-room house all to themselves, not unless theyâve got the fix in somewhere, which is something else that weâve got our people looking into. We donât think his name was Damm, either. He came out of Dachau clean as a whistle, but we figure thatâs where he probably fixed himself up with a new ID. Weâre checking on it.â
âWhere did Damm workâor did he?â
âHe didnât,â Meyer said. âHe was in the black market, apparently in a pretty big way. He had a cellar full of stuffâcigarettes, coffee; he even had three cases of Johnnie Walker Scotch, and you know how hard that is to get. So at first we figured thatâs why he got killed, because of some kind of black-market deal that went sour. We figured that until we found that list of names, and then we started figuring something else.â
âYou say nobody heard anything?â
âNo, sir.â
âDid they see anything?â
âMaybe.â
âMaybe?â
âWell, thereâs this one old woman, but her eyes arenât too good. She said she saw an American soldier go into Dammâs house about seventeen hundred hours and come out about seventeen-thirty. He was driving a jeep.â
âWhat kind of soldierâcould she tell?â
âNo, sir. Like I said, her eyes werenât too good, but she thought he was about six feet tall and kind of blond. That would fit, wouldnât it?â
âThat would fit.â
âDoes he speak English?â
âOppenheimer?â
âYes, sir.â
âYes, he speaks English, Lieutenant. Perfect English.â
âThen that would be a pretty good disguise, wouldnât it?â
Baker-Bates sighed. âLike his English, it would be perfect. How many names do you think he got?â
âWell, sir, there were sixteen left, like I said, and he seemed toâve torn out half the pages that had names on âem, so we figure thatâs about what heâs got. Sixteen.â
âAnd heâll start going for them one by one,â Baker-Bates said, and ground his cigarette out in a cheap tin tray.
âYou think heâs crazy, sirâOppenheimer?â
âPossibly. Why do you ask?â
âWell, heâs doing pretty much what he did during the war. He acted out some pretty rotten ones then, from what I hear. Now he seems to be going back and picking off the ones that we missed or canât find. Well, hell, sir, I know
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