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He discovered his bonds He called out for , why he was tied, where he had been taken I did not make a sound or move a muscle I stayed very still on the dark side of the rooht flashed and the crazy music played on and on
After a while, h it seemed like an hour to me and must have constituted a week of subjective tian to vary the frequency of the flashes I still kept thee, but varied the flash speed enough to turn his world a little further inside out He was getting hysterical now I didn’t want to overdo it He was supposed to have a bad heart, and I was putting hian to talk with him The two of us had always spoken in Slovak, so I avoided that language at first I cupped my hands aroundas possible, and I talked to him in German
"We must have the records You must tell us where they are The Fuehrer wants your records You must find the records Where are the records? The Fuehrer needs the records…"
I broke that off after a while, moved to another part of the rooe of that and of Portuguese as well, and I kept pitching at hi in GerI kept it up long past the point where I hly bored with it, and then I cut it all out at once, the talking, the flashing, the music I turned off the record and cut the strobe and sat down in the darkness He didn’ta sort of clicking noise I couldn’t figure it at first, and then I got it His teeth were chattering
A few ain I pitched the strobe at a different part of the rooe black swastika on the wall I set the speed do, so that a beaht would illuminate the swastika on the white wall for about four seconds, then there would be four seconds of darkness, and then the light again, a nice boring pattern I slipped noiselessly over to the side of the bed and whispered in his ear
I told hied him to confess so that his life would be spared I kept on in this vein, over and over He asked what he had done, what he was supposed to confess to, where he as going to kill him He was just filled with questions I pretended that I did not hear anything he said I talked on over his words, switching languages constantly, often in ain, and then I began to intersperse the questions with others The location of the records The number of his account in the Swiss bank The name of the bank At one point I very nearly had him He told me the name of the bank, the Zurich-Geneva Bank of Commerce, and then he stopped cold "Tanner!" he shouted "What in God’s na to ain, and I orried But I was fairly sure it was going to work He had let one part of his guard slip He had mentioned the name of the bank The rest would come in due time He kneho I was and knehere ere, but he would lose the thread before long The et hiotten anyone, sick or healthy, young or old I’otten me
He never recognized me after that I kept it up, theit the saot was the bank account nuuessed, just over half a million Swiss francs, or about 130,000 US I jotted down the account number and some other scraps of inforet the money out of that account and into my own numbered account at the Bank Leu
It would take a trip to Zurich, and perhaps require sonature, but it could be done On the way ho out the ary, so much to Israel, so much to Macedonia, to Ireland, to Kurdistan, to Croatia And soirl in Macedonia who expected my child And perhaps a bit to Kurt Neumann, and surely some to Sarkan’s friends in Athens, and…
But I still had to find the records I turnedin his little hoht that flashed on and off, on and off, illu a black swastika on a white wall
It didn’t take very asps and he cursed around the words, cursed the Jews and the Czechs and the Negroes and the Orientals, cursed all the persons and peoples he blamed for the miseries of the world, all of which miseries had suddenly come down around his head The words poured out in a bitter stream of Slovak, a river of black slime I couldn’t listen to hi room There was a false drawer in his desk The drawer’s bottom was composed of two pieces of very thin wood artfully fitted one atop the other I took the fittings of the drawer apart and slipped out one of the pieces of wood to expose the meat in the sandwich, a dozen sheets of onionskin covered with careful, tiny writing Part was in Slovak, part in code The part I could read was enough to convince me that I had found the bacon This hat they wanted in Washington They elco now I turned off the ht, and pointed it not at the wall, not at the swastika, but at him His face was drawn, his eyes wild I set the frequency of the strobe up to the right level and let hiht as if hungry for the blackness it would bring, and his face relaxed in mock death as he went out and under
I put out the strobe light, turned on the light overhead I went to theand reuese sun was shining Before I had not knohat tiht or day