Read Online The Human Pool by Chris Petit - Free Book Online Page B

work, although he couldn’t say yet what it was, and pointed to the maps strewn about—Hungary, Turkey, Syria, the Middle East, Germany, all were arrowed and circled—testament to some vast, final campaign. In his head; I doubted if it existed anywhere else. He showed me these maps proudly, saying that soon he would be able to explain. The old Karl-Heinz cliff-hanger.
    Around one o’clock he stopped pretending. He asked if I had held a Swiss bank account during the war. I shook my head. He looked surprised. ‘I thought everyone did. It was like having a mistress!’ He had got his on Willi Schmidt’s recommendation, but had not used it to stash away loot like some others he could name. Once Karl-Heinz had lied better than anyone. Not anymore. I doubted if he had used the account as little as he claimed. Even in uniform he had been a consummate businessman and deal maker.
    After the war he had ‘forgotten about the account,’ and it had lain dormant, along with thousands of others. Most had belonged to Jews killed by the Nazis, and the subsequent refusal of the Swiss banks to turn them over to surviving relatives, citing the absence of death certificates as a reason, had taken more than fifty years and an international scandal to sort out. The banks—stubborn, proprietorial, and ultra-conservative—finally owned up, only to find themselves involved in a further controversy. The published list, meant as a late apology to the Jews, included the names of several Nazis, some of them war criminals. Relatives of those Nazis were entitled to claim the contents of the accounts regardless of their provenance. So stolen goods went to the relations of the stealers. Karl-Heinz had learned that much to his cost, he said: his name was on the list. A nephew he had no idea existed had made a claim, and the story got followed up by a television company, who had come knocking on his door.
    I asked about the Englishman who had been at dinner. Karl-Heinz shrugged him aside. ‘He was recommended as someone who might be able to put my side of the story. I think it’s more likely he is some sort of spy.’
    He insisted ‘they’ were catching up with him. ‘They’ were building a case against him, despite his immunity deal. This, he believed, could still result in prosecution for war crimes. ‘It’s all bullshit, of course,’ he added. ‘Zionist cocksuckers.’
    I suspect, as for me, terror of medical diagnosis lies at the root of his fear, and the rest is embellishment. We both know without having to remind each other that there is no such thing as remission, only undiagnosed illness.
    Karl-Heinz refused to accept that I wasn’t in a position to help. He thought I had contacts and influence long gone. His paranoia did another flip. ‘Of course!’ he said. ‘It’s because everyone’s dead that they are coming after me!’
    I told him a good lawyer could probably delay the case until after he was dead, but Karl-Heinz’s earlier good humour had deserted him.
    I asked the next question with an old trepidation. ‘Was Willi’s name on the bank’s list, too?’
    Strasse nodded. It had been printed just above his. He held up his fingers to indicate the tiny space that had separated them. ‘Small world, like the Englishman said. Now it turns out Willi has a wife. I bet you didn’t know that .’
    â€˜Bullshit. Willi wasn’t the marrying kind.’
    According to Karl-Heinz, the widow had written saying she had married Willi in 1944, and was looking for witnesses to vouch for her because all the relevant certificates and memorabilia had been destroyed. Her letter, he remembered, was what he had been trying to locate in his bedroom wardrobe.
    â€˜Tomorrow when you are in Zurich—’ Karl-Heinz gave me a crafty look that said: I am not so forgetful as you may think. ‘You will go and see Willi’s