The Negotiator

“All right,” he said. “What is his name?”

“Paul Marchais,” said Qui

Julian Hayman’s files in London might have had something on Marchais, but Qui

“These must not pass out of my possession,” he said. “And they must be back by nightfall.”

“Crap,” said Qui

Lutz left. Sam had not understood the talk in German, but now she leaned over to see what Qui

“What are you looking for?” she asked.

“I want to see if the bastard had any pals, any really close friends,” said Qui

The first piece was from an Antwerp newspaper of 1965, a general review of local men who had signed on to fight in the Congo. For Belgium it was a highly emotional issue in those days-the stories of the Simba rebels raping, torturing, and slaughtering priests, nuns, planters, missionaries, women, and children, many of them Belgian, had endowed the mercenaries who put down the Simba revolt with a kind of glamour. The article was in Flemish, with a German translation attached.

Marchais, Paul: born in Liège 1943, son of a Walloon father and Flemish mother-that would account for the French-sounding name of a boy who grew up in Antwerp. Father killed in the liberation of Belgium in 1944/45. Mother returned to her native Antwerp.

Slum boyhood, spent around the docks. In trouble with the police from early teens. A string of minor convictions to spring 1964. Turned up in the Congo with Jacques Schramme’s Leopard Group. There was no mention of the rape charge; perhaps the Antwerp police were keeping quiet in the hope he would show up again and be arrested.

The second piece was a passing mention. In 1966 he had apparently quit Schramme and joined the Fifth Commando, by then headed by John Peters, who had succeeded Mike Hoare. Principally ma

The other two pieces mentioned Marchais, or simply a giant Belgian called Big Paul, staying on after the disbanding of the Fifth Commando and the departure of Peters, and rejoining Schramme in time for the 1967 Stanleyville mutiny and the long march to Bukavu.

Finally Lutz had included five photocopies of sheets extracted from Anthony Modeler’s classic, Histoire des Mercenaires, from which Qui

In late July 1967, unable to hold Stanleyville, Schramme’s group set off for the border and cut a swath clean through all opposition until they reached Bukavu, once a delightful watering hole for Belgians, a cool resort on the edge of a lake. Here they holed up.

They held out for three months until they finally ran out of ammunition. Then they marched over the bridge across the lake into the neighboring republic of Ruanda.

Qui

On April 23, 1968, two Red Cross airplanes finally repatriated the mercenaries. One plane flew direct to Brussels with all the Belgians on board. All except one. The Belgian public was prepared to hail their mercenaries as heroes; not so the police. They checked everyone descending from the plane against their own wanted lists. Marchais must have taken the other DC-6, the one that dropped off human cargoes at Pisa, Zurich, and Paris. Between them the two planes carried 123 mixed European and South African mercenaries back to Europe.

Qui

“One last thing,” said Qui

“I can’t,” protested Lutz. “There’s already talk that I’m writing a background piece on mercenaries. I’m not-I’m on the Common Market meeting of agriculture Ministers.”

“Broaden your horizons,” suggested Qui

Lutz took notes.

“I have a wife and kids to go home to, you know.”

“Then you’re a lucky man,” said Qui

The area of information he had asked for was narrower, and Lutz was back from the morgue in twenty minutes. This time he stayed while Qui

What Lutz had brought him was the entire file on German mercenaries from 1960 onward. A dozen at least. Wilhelm had been in the Congo, at Watsa. Dead of wounds on the Paulis road ambush. Rolf Steiner had been in Biafra; still living in Munich, but was never in the Congo. Qui

There were two other Germans, both living in Nuremberg, addresses given, but both had left Africa in the spring of 1967. That left one.

Werner Bernhardt had been with the Fifth Commando but skipped to join Schramme when it was disbanded. He had been in the mutiny, on the march to Bukavu, and in the siege of the lakeside resort. There was no address for him.

“Where would he be now?” asked Qui

“If it’s not listed, he disappeared,” said Lutz. “That was 1968, you know. This is 1991. He could be dead. Or anywhere. People like that… you know… Central or South America, South Africa…”

“Or here in Germany,” suggested Qui

For answer, Lutz borrowed the bar’s telephone directory. There were four columns of Bernhardts. And that was just for Hamburg. There are ten states in the Federal Republic, and they all have several such directories. “If he’s listed at all,” said Lutz.

“Criminal records?” asked Qui

“Unless it’s federal, there are ten separate police authorities to go through,” said Lutz. “You know that, since the war, when the Allies were kind enough to write our constitution for us, everything is decentralized. So we can never have another Hitler. Makes tracking someone down enormous fun. I know-it’s part of my job. But a man like this… very little chance. If he wants to disappear, he disappears. This one does, or he’d have given some interview in twenty-three years, appeared in the papers. But, nothing. If he had, he’d be in our files.”

Qui

“Dortmund,” he said. “He was born and raised in Dortmund. Maybe the police there know something. But they won’t tell you. Civil rights, you see-we’re very keen on civil rights in Germany.”

Qui

“Where do we go next?” she asked.

“Dortmund,” he said. “I know a man in Dortmund.”

“Darling,” she said, “you know a man everywhere.”

In the middle of November, Michael Odell faced President Cormack alone in the Oval Office. The Vice President was shocked by the change in his old friend. Far from having recovered since the funeral, John Cormack seemed to have shrunk.