The Eighth Dwarf by Ross Thomas Read Free Book Online

as a possibility. Therefore, we must have a contingent plan should Ploscaru and Jackson fail. And that is what I’ve been thinking about. If you will bring me my wallet, I will give you the address of those you must reach.”
    Leah Oppenheimer rose. “The ones in Cologne?”
    â€œYes,” her father said. “The ones in Cologne.”
    It was shortly before midnight when Jackson arrived back in San Diego at the El Cortez Hotel, where the dwarf had booked them adjoining rooms. He got his key from the desk, learned that the bar was still open, and went in for a nightcap.
    The bar was called the Shore Leave Room, and it was deserted save for the bartender and two Navy lieutenants who were with a pair of coy blondes who didn’t seem to be their wives. Jackson ordered a bourbon and water and carried it to a far table. After sampling his drink, he took from his inside breast pocket the envelope that Leah Oppenheimer had given him. The envelope was sealed, and Jackson slit it open raggedly with a pencil.
    He took the money out first and counted it on his knee beneath the table. It was all there. He counted out ten $100 bills, folded them once, and stuffed them into his pants pocket. He put the remaining $500 back into the envelope, after removing four photographs and two folded sheets of paper.
    The photographs seemed to have been taken with a box camera. One of them showed a young man, possibly twenty-two, seated astride a bicycle. From the height of the bicycle, Jackson judged him to be about six feet tall. His sleeves were rolled up above the elbows, his shirt was open at the throat, and he wore shorts that might have been leather. On his feet were heavy shoes with thick white socks. The young man looked fit and lean and possibly tanned. His mouth was open as though he were saying something jocular, and there was a half-humorous expression on his face. Jackson turned the photograph over. On the back was written, “Kurt, Darmstadt, 1936.”
    The other photographs seemed to have been taken later, although there were no dates. In all of them Kurt Oppenheimer wore a white shirt, a tie, and a coat. In only one of them was he smiling, and Jackson thought that the smile seemed forced. Jackson also thought that Kurt Oppenheimer looked very much like his sister, although he had his father’s thin, wide mouth. Jackson studied the photographs carefully, but made no attempt to memorize them. He tried to detect signs of brutality, or animal cunning, or even dedication, but all that the photographs revealed was a pleasant-faced young man, almost handsome, with light-colored, not quite blond hair, who looked quick and clever, but not especially happy.
    Jackson put the photographs back into the envelope and unfolded the two sheets of paper. Both were covered with jagged, Germanic script written in dark blue ink. The heading was “My Brother, Kurt Oppenheimer.” The body of the two pages, like the heading, was written in German and began, “On the first of August, 1914, the day the terrible war began, my brother, Kurt Oppenheimer, was born in Frankfurt.”
    The essay, for that was how Jackson came to think of it, went on to describe an uneventful, not particularly religious childhood composed mostly of school, sports, stamp collecting, and vacations in Italy, France, and Scotland. A paragraph was devoted to the death of the mother “in that sad spring of 1926 when Kurt was 11 and I was 7.” Their mother’s death, Leah Oppenheimer wrote, “was a deeply felt loss that somehow drew our small family even closer together.”
    Leah Oppenheimer went on to recount how her brother had been graduated from a Gymnasium in Frankfurt, “where he was a brilliant student, though given to many high-spirited pranks.” From the Gymnasium he had gone on to attend the university at Bonn, “where he developed his deep interest in politics.” Jackson interpreted that to mean he had