A Quiet Flame

“Mr. President, sir,” I said. “I think there’s something I should tell you. Since this is a Catholic country, maybe you can call it confession.” Seeing all their faces blanch, I smiled. “It’s all right. I’m not about to tell you about all the terrible things I did during the war. There were some things I’m not happy about, sure. But I don’t have the lives of innocent men and women on my conscience. No, my confession is something much more ordinary. You see, I’m not a doctor at all, sir. There was a doctor back in Germany. A fellow named Gruen. He wanted to go and live in America, only he worried what might happen to him if they ever found out what he’d done during the war. So, to take the heat off himself, he decided to make it look like I was him. Then he told the Israelis and the Allied war-crimes people where to come and look for me. Anyway, he did such a good job of convincing everyone I was him that I was obliged to go on the run. Eventually I turned for help to the old comrades and the Delegation for Argentine Emigration in Europe. Carlos, here. Don’t get me wrong, sir, I’m very grateful to be here. I had a hard job convincing an Israeli death squad that I wasn’t Gruen and was obliged to leave a couple of them dead in the snow near Garmisch-Partenkirchen. So you see, I really am a fugitive. I’m just not the fugitive you might think I am. And in particular, I am not and never have been a doctor.”

“So who the hell are you? Really?” It was Carlos Fuldner, and he sounded annoyed.

“My real name is Bernhard Gunther. I was in the SD. Working for intelligence. I was captured by the Russians and was interned in a camp before escaping. But before the war I was a policeman. A detective with the Berlin police force.”

“Did you say a detective?” This was the man with the small beard and the tinted glasses. The one I’d marked down as a cop. “What kind of a detective?”

“I worked in Homicide, mostly.”

“What was your rank?” asked the cop.

“When war was declared in 1939, I was a KOK. A Kriminal Oberkommissar. A chief inspector.”

“Then you’ll remember Ernst Gennat.”

“Of course. He was my mentor. Taught me everything I know.”

“What was it that the newspapers used to call him?”

“The Full Ernst. On account of his bulk and fondness for cakes.”

“What happened to him? Do you know?”

“He was deputy chief of the criminal police until his death in 1939. He had a heart attack.”

“Too bad.”

“Too many cakes.”

“Gunther, Gunther,” he said, as though trying to shake a thought like an apple from a tree growing in the back of his head. “Yes, of course. I know you.”

“You do?”

“I was in Berlin. Before the collapse of the Weimar Republic. Studying jurisprudence at the university.”

The cop came closer, close enough for me to smell the coffee and the cigarettes on his breath, and took off his glasses. I guessed he smoked a lot. For one thing, there was a cigarette in his mouth, and for another, his voice sounded like a smoked herring. There were laugh lines around the gray iron filings that constituted his mustache and his beard, but the walnut of a frown knotted between his bloodshot blue eyes told me that maybe he’d got out of the habit of smiling. His eyes narrowed as he searched my face for more answers.

“You know, you were a hero of mine. Believe it or not, you’re one of the reasons I gave up the idea of being a lawyer and became a policeman instead.” He looked at Perón. “Sir, this man was a famous Berlin detective. When I first went there, in 1928, there was a notorious strangler. His name was Gormann. This is the man who caught him. At the time it was quite a cause célèbre.” He looked back at me. “I’m right, aren’t I? You are that Gunther.”

“Yes, sir.”

“His name was in all the newspapers. I used to follow all your cases, as closely as I was able. Yes indeed, you were a hero of mine, Herr Gunther.”

By now he was shaking my hand. “And now you’re here. Amazing.”

Perón glanced at his gold wristwatch. I was beginning to bore him. The cop saw it, too. Not much escaped him. We might have lost the president’s attention altogether if Evita hadn’t walked up to me and given me a once-over like I was a spavined horse.