Boys from Brazil by Ira Levin Read Free Book Online Page A

white picked it up, looked at it, and slipped it into his jacket pocket. He glanced at the card under the foot of the phone, took it, and looked at the black handset lying on the bed. “Barry!” it called. “Are you there?”
    The man in white reached out slowly and picked the handset up; raised it, brought it to his ear. Listened with brown eyes narrowed, vein-threaded nostrils quivering. His lips opened to the mouthpiece, stayed open. And closed and clenched firmly, mustache bristling.
    He put the handset into its cradle, drew his fingers away, stared at the phone. He turned and said, “I almost spoke to him. I was longing to.”
    The blond man, toweling red from his knife, looked curiously at him.
    The man in white said, “Hating each other so long. And he was here , in my hand! To finally speak to him!” He turned to the phone again, shook his head regretfully. Softly he said, “Liebermann, you bastard Jew. Your stooge is dead. How much did he tell you? It makes no difference; no one here will listen to you, not without proof. And the proof is in my pocket. The men will fly tomorrow. The Fourth Reich is coming. Good-by, Liebermann. See you at the door of the gas chamber.” He shook his head, smiling, and turned, putting the card in his pocket. “It would have been foolish, though,” he said. “I might have been making another tape.”
    The black-haired man, by an open closet, pointed at a suitcase in it and asked in Portuguese, “Should I pack his things, Doctor?”
    â€œRudi will. You go downstairs to Traunsteiner. Find a back door you can open and get the car to it. Then one of you come up and help us down. And don’t tell him the boy was on the phone . Say he was listening to the tape.”
    The black-haired man nodded and went out.
    The blond man said in German, “Won’t they get caught? The men, I mean.”
    â€œThe job has to be done,” the man in white said, taking out his eyeglass case. “As much of it as possible, at any cost. With luck they’ll do it all. Will anyone listen to Liebermann? He didn’t believe; you heard how the boy was arguing with him. God will help us; enough of the ninety-four will die.” He put on his glasses, and taking a matchbox from his pocket, turned to the phone. He lifted the handset and read the operator a number.
    â€œHello, my friend,” he said cheerfully. “Senhor Hessen, please.” He glanced away, white-gloved fingers covering the phone’s mouthpiece. “Empty his pockets, Rudi. And there’s a sneaker under the bureau there. Hessen? Dr. Mengele. Everything’s fine, there’s nothing to worry about. Exactly the amateur I expected. I don’t think he even understood German. Send the boys home to practice their signatures; it was just an excitement to round off the evening. No, not till 1977, I’m afraid; I fly back to the compound as soon as we clean up. So go with God, Horst. And say it for me to the others: ‘Go with God.’” He hung up and said, “Heil Hitler.”

 
    THE BURGGARTEN,
    with its pond and its Mozart monument, its lawns and walks and equestrian Emperor Franz, is near enough to the Vienna offices of Reuters, the international news agency, for correspondents and secretaries to bring their lunches there in the milder months of the year. Monday, October 14th, was a cool and overcast day, but four Reuters people came to the Garten anyway; they settled themselves on a bench, unwrapped sandwiches, and poured white wine into paper cups.
    One of the four, the wine-pourer, was Sydney Beynon, Reuters’ senior Vienna correspondent. A forty-four-year-old ex-Liverpudlian with two Viennese ex-wives, Beynon looks very much like an abdicating King Edward in horn-rimmed glasses. At he stood the bottle on the bench beside him and sipped judgmentally from his cup, he saw with a sudden down-press of guilt Yakov Liebermann