Ratlines Read Free

said.
    “May I take a drink, perhaps smoke a cigarette?”
    “You may.”
    Krauss turned to him. A man of middle age, between forty and forty five, old enough to have served in the war. He had looked younger across the cemetery, dressed in the overalls of a gravedigger, but proximity showed the lines on his forehead and around his eyes. Sand-coloured hair strayed beneath the woollen cap on his head. He held a pistol, a Browning fitted with a suppressor, aimed squarely at Krauss’s chest. It shook.
    “Would you care for a small vodka?” Krauss asked. “Perhaps it will steady your nerve.”
    The man considered for a few seconds. “All right,” he said.
    Krauss went to the nightstand where a bottle of imported vodka and a tea making set waited next to that morning’s Irish Times . The front page carried a headline about the forthcoming visit of President John F. Kennedy, a story concerning a request by the Northern Irish government that he should venture across the border during his days on the island. The Irish worshipped the American leader because he was one of theirs, however many generations removed, and anticipation of his arrival had reached a point of near hysteria. Krauss intended to avoid all radio and television broadcasts for the duration of Kennedy’s stay.
    Not that it mattered now.
    Krauss turned two white teacups over and poured a generous shot into each. He went to soften one with water from a jug, but the man spoke.
    “No water, thank you.”
    Krauss smiled as he handed a cup to the man. “No glasses, I’m afraid. I hope you don’t mind.”
    The man nodded his thanks as he took the cup with his left hand. Undiluted vodka spilled over the lip. He took a sip and coughed.
    Krauss reached into the breast pocket of his best black suit. The man’s knuckle whitened beneath the trigger guard. Krauss slowed the movement of his hand and produced a gold cigarette case. He opened it, and extended it to the man.
    “No, thank you.” The man did not flinch at the engraved swastika as Krauss had hoped. Perhaps he wasn’t a Jew, just some zealous Briton.
    Krauss took a Peter Stuyvesant, his only concession to Americanism, and gripped it between his lips as he snapped the case closed and returned it to his pocket. He preferred Marlboro, but they were too difficult to come by in this country. He took the matching lighter from his trouser pocket and sucked the petrol taste from its flame. The set had been a Christmas gift from Wilhelm Frick. Krauss treasured it. Blue smoke billowed between the men.
    “Please sit,” Krauss said, indicating the chair in the corner. He lowered himself onto the bed and drew deeply on the cigarette, letting the heat fill his throat and chest. “May I know your name?” he asked.
    “You may not,” the man said.
    “All right. So why?”
    The man took another sip, grimaced at the taste, and placed the cup on the windowsill to his left. “Why what?”
    “Why kill me?”
    “I haven’t decided if I’ll kill you or not, yet. I want to ask a few questions first.”
    Krauss sighed and leaned back against the headboard, crossing his legs on the lumpy mattress. “Very well.”
    “Who was the well-dressed Irishman you spoke with?”
    “An insultingly junior civil servant,” Krauss said.
    Eoin Tomalty had given Krauss’s hand a firm shake after the ceremony. “The minister sends his condolences,” Tomalty had said. “I’m sure you’ll understand why he was unable to attend in person.”
    Krauss had smiled and nodded, yes, of course he understood.
    “A civil servant?” the man asked. “The government actually sent a representative?”
    “A matter of courtesy.”
    “Who were the others there?”
    “You already know,” Krauss said. “You know me, so you must know them.”
    “Tell me anyway.”
    Krauss rhymed them off. “Célestin Lainé, Albert Luykx, and Caoimhín Murtagh representing the IRA.”
    “The IRA?”
    “They are fools,” Krauss said. “Yokels pretending