Descendant Read Free Page B

holy oil, from St. Basil’s Romanian Orthodox church in New York. A pair of silver thumbscrews and a pair of silver toescrews. A silver compass, about five inches across, with a base that was filled with the dried petals of wild roses. A thirty-foot whip made of braided silver wire. A surgical saw. A small silver pot filled with black mustard seeds. Two small pots of paint, one white and one black.
    I lifted out a roll of greasy chamois leather and unwrapped it. Inside were three iron nails, about nine inches long. They were black and corroded and each had been fashioned by hand. I had no proof that they were genuine, but if the price that the detachment had paid for them was anything to go by, they should have been.These were supposed to be the nails that had been pulled out of Christ’s wrists and ankles when he was taken down from the cross.
    At the bottom of the tin box there was a circular mirror, made of highly polished silver, a large pair of dental forceps and a sculptor’s mallet. Hunting Screechers was always a combination of science, religion, common sense and magic, so you needed the apparatus that went with each. You also needed a willingness to believe that a human being can defy gravity.
    “Running kind of low on garlic,” said Corporal Little, lifting up a bunch of papery-covered cloves. Frank came sniffing around, his pendulous jowls swaying. “See?” said Corporal Little. “Frank knows that we’re going out tonight, don’t you, boy?”
    Frank gave one of those barks that can deafen you in one ear.

An Oblique Conversation
    Just after six o’clock the deputy manager rang up to my room to say that Leo Coopman had been “unavoidably detained” on the northeast side of the city. However somebody in the lobby called Paul Hankar would be privileged to talk to me. I went down in the elevator alone and met him in the small dark bar at the back of the hotel.
    Paul Hankar was a short, thickset man with a lumpy face like one of the peasants in a Brueghel painting, and rimless spectacles. He was wearing a black roll-neck sweater and a black suit with shiny elbows. I would have guessed that he was a schoolmaster in another life.
    He stood up and shook hands. “
Aangename kennismaking
, Colonel. Pleased to meet you.”
    “Actually it’s captain. Captain James Falcon Junior, 101 Counterintelligence Detachment.”
    We sat down and I offered him a cigarette. He took one and tapped it on his thumbnail. “I heard you were looking for some special information,” he said. His English was flat but barely accented.
    “You think you can help me?” I asked him.
    “It’s something we’ve been trying to keep quiet.Mainly because we didn’t want the Germans to know that we knew. And because we didn’t want to cause any panic. And because we didn’t want to look like fools, in case we were wrong.”
    “Do you know a young woman called Ann De Wouters? She rents an apartment on Markgravestraat.”
    Paul Hankar looked at me acutely. “I know the name, yes.”
    “You can’t do her any harm by telling me about her. She was murdered last night.”
    He flinched, as if I had reached across the table and tried to slap his cheek. But then he recovered himself and said, “I’m very shocked to hear that.”
    “Her landlady said it was
mensen van de nacht
. Do you have any idea what she was talking about?”
    A young boy in a long white apron came over to us and asked us what we wanted to drink. “What do you have?” asked Paul Hankar.
    “Apple schnapps.”
    “Anything else?”
    The boy shook his head.
    “In that case, we’ll have two apple schnapps.”
    “One schnapps, one lemonade,” I corrected him. “I need to keep a clear head tonight, and I know what that goddamned schnapps is like. My corporal calls it ‘nuts-water.’ ”
    Paul Hankar lit his cigarette and I noticed that his hand was trembling. “
Mensen van de nacht
?” he said, wryly. “That’s one explanation, if you believe in such