The priest turned to his stepmother, who looked as if she were about to
speak. “Say nothing!” he ordered. “Do not answer him!”
“I cannot talk about him!” the old woman said. To her stepson, she
added, “Why does he ask me about Lenz? Why do you invite him here?”
“He is a liar, an impostor!” the priest said. “Vienna would send word
ahead first before sending a messenger!” He reached behind him and
produced his revolver, aiming it directly at Ben’s forehead.
“What kind of a priest are you?” Ben asked in a hush. Not a priest. A
priest would not put a gun to my head.
“I’m a man of God who protects my family. Now leave here at once.”
A sudden thought occurred to Ben, the obvious explanation, and he said
to the old woman, “Your husband had another family. A son with another
wife.”
“You’re not welcome in this house,” the priest said with a wave of his
weapon. “Out.”
“Gerhard Lenz had no children!” the old woman cried.
“Silence!” the priest thundered. “Enough! Say nothing more!”
“He pretends to be the son of Gerhard Lenz,” Ben said, half to himself.
“Why in the world would he pretend to be the son of… a monster?”
“Stand up!” the priest commanded.
“Gerhard Lenz didn’t die here, did he?” Ben said.
“What are you saying?” the stepmother gasped.
“If you don’t get out of here, I’ll kill you,” the priest said.
Ben rose obediently, but looked at the old woman, sunk deep within her
easy chair. “The rumors were true, then,” he said. “Gerhard Lenz
wasn’t buried in Chacarita cemetery in 1961, was he? He escaped from
Buenos Aires, evaded his pursuers ”
“He died here!” the old woman said frantically. “There was a funeral!
I myself flung dirt on his coffin!”
“But you never saw his body, did you?” Ben said.
“Out!” the priest barked.
“Why is he saying these things to me?” she cried.
She was interrupted by the ring of the telephone on a sideboard behind
the priest. Without moving his revolver he reached to his right and
snatched up the receiver. “Si?”
He seemed to be listening intently. Ben took advantage of the priest’s
momentary inattention to sidle ever so subtly in the priest’s direction.
“I need to reach Josef Strasser,” he said to the old woman.
She spat out her reply, “If you’re really sent from Austria, you know
how to reach him. You’re a liar!”
Then Strasser was alive!
Ben inched closer to the priest and continued talking to the stepmother.
“I myself was lied to set up!” There was in fact no logic in what he
said, not without a fuller explanation, but he wanted only to confuse
the old woman, rattle her further.
“That confirms it,” the priest said, hanging up the phone. “That was
Vienna. This man’s a fraud.” He looked at Ben. “You lied to us, Mr.
Hartman!” he said, glancing behind him for an instant, and Ben
immediately lunged. He grabbed the priest’s right wrist, the one
holding the gun, twisting it with all his strength, and at the same time
slammed his other hand into the priest’s throat, forefinger and thumb in
a rigid V. The old woman screamed with terror. Caught by surprise, the
priest cried out in pain. The revolver fell from his hand and clattered
to the floor.
With one immense movement Ben forced the priest to the floor, closing
his grip around the priest’s neck. He could feel the bony cartilage of
the larynx shift to one side. The man’s cry grew strangled as he
sprawled against the tiled floor, his head at an unnatural angle, trying
to rear up, trying to reach his free, left hand around, but it was vised
beneath his rib cage. He struggled with great strength, gasping for
breath. The old woman flung the backs of her hands against her face in
a strange protective gesture.
The gun! Must get the gun!
Ben jammed his left hand more forcefully into the man’s throat, and
thrust a knee into his stomach, aiming for the solar plexus. The
priest’s sudden, involuntary exhalation of breath told Ben that he’d hit
the mark. The priest’s dark eyes rolled upward so that only the whites
were showing. He was momentarily paralyzed by the blow. Ben snatched
the revolver from the floor, swung it around, and shoved it against the
man’s forehead.
He cocked the trigger. “Make a move, and you’re dead!”
Immediately the priest’s body fell slack. “No!” he choked out.
“Answer my questions! Tell the truth if you want to live!”
“Don’t, please don’t! I’m a man of God.”
“Right,” Ben snapped disdainfully. “How do I reach Josef Strasser?”
“He is I don’t know please my throat!”
Ben eased the pressure a bit, enough to allow him to breathe and to
speak. “Where’s Strasser?” he thundered.
The priest gulped air. “Strasser I don’t know how to reach Strasser he
lives in Buenos Aires, that’s all I know!” A small rivulet of urine
appeared on the floor between the man’s legs.
“Bullshit!” Ben shouted. “You give me an address or a phone number, or
your stepmother will have no one to take care of her!”
“No, please!” the old widow said, still cowering in her chair.
“If if you kill me,” the priest gasped, “you won’t get out of Buenos
Aires alive! They’ll track you down they’ll do things you’ll wish wish
you were dead!”
“Strasser’s address!”
“I don’t have it!” the priest said. “Please! I have no way to reach
Strasser!”
“Don’t lie,” Ben said. “You all know each other. You are all tied
together in a network. If you had to reach Strasser you have ways.”
“I’m nothing! You kill me, I’m nothing to them! They’ll find you!”
Ben wondered, who were “they”? Instead, he asked: “Who’s Jorgen Lenz?”
He pressed the barrel of the gun against the priest’s forehead. There
were a few drops of blood; he had broken the skin.
“He–please, he’s powerful, he controls–he owns her house, her
property, the man who calls himself Jurgen Lenz–”
“Then who is he really?”
“Put the gun down and get away from him.”
The voice–low, calm, Spanish-accented–came from the doorway behind
Ben. A tall man stood there holding a sawed-off shotgun. He was
dressed in heavy green slacks and a denim work shirt, and he looked to
be in his late twenties or early thirties, broad-chested and powerful.
“Roberta, help!” the widow cried. “Save my Francisco! Get this man
out of here at once!”
“Senora, should I kill this intruder?” Roberto asked.
The man’s demeanor told Ben he would fire without remorse. Ben
hesitated, unsure what to do. The priest was a hostage, with the
revolver to his forehead, yet Ben knew he could not bring himself to
pull the trigger. And even if he did, the man with the sawed-off
shotgun would kill him in the blink of an eye.
But I can still bluff, he realized.
“Roberto!” the old woman croaked. “Now!”
“Put the gun down or I’ll fire,” said the young man. “I don’t care what
happens to this scumbag.” He indicated the priest.
“Yes, but the senora does,” Ben said. “We will lower our weapons at the
same time.”
“All right,” the young man agreed. “Take the weapon away from his head,
stand up, and get out of here. If you want to live.” He lowered the
shotgun’s barrel, pointing it toward the floor, as Ben pulled the
revolver away from the priest’s forehead. He got up slowly, the gun
still lowered.
“Now move toward the door,” the man said.
Ben backed away, his right hand gripping the revolver, his left patting
the air behind him, feeling for obstacles as he moved. The young man
moved with him into the hall, his rifle still lowered.
“I just want you out of this house,” the man said calmly. “If you ever
come near this house again, you’ll be killed on sight.” The priest had
sullenly raised himself to a sitting position, looking drained and
humiliated. Ben backed out of the open door–either the priest had left
it open or Roberto had entered this way–and then pulled it shut.
In a few seconds he was running.
Anna paid the cabdriver and entered the small hotel, located on a quiet
street in the district of Buenos Aires called La Recoleta. It was not,
she thought uneasily, the sort of place where a single young woman
traveling alone would easily go unnoticed.
The concierge greeted her by name, which disturbed her. Earlier in the
day she and Ben had checked in, separately and several hours apart.
They’d also called in their reservations separately and at different
times. Staying in the same hotel made logistical sense, but it also
increased certain risks.
The chambermaid’s cart was parked outside her room. Inconvenient. She
wanted to be alone, go over the files, make phone calls; now she’d have
to wait. As she entered she saw the maid, hunched over her open