He stood up and grabbed the luggage rack overhead to steady himself. “Time for a walk,” he said, and headed for the door.
I sat and looked at Michael and Shirin for a while, inviting conversation. Since that wasn’t forthcoming, I pulled out my notebook and brought it up to date.
* The text of this speech will be found in Chapter 28–Population:A Systems Approach.
Wednesday, May 22
Last stop
After an hour Shirin didn’t agree with my assessment that B had been gone a long time—she figured he’d just run into someone he knew—and Michael characteristically didn’t think it was his place to have an opinion, so I went looking on my own.
The compartments were divided from the corridors by partitions with glass inserts, so it was easy enough to see who was where, and B wasn’t anywhere in the front part of the train. A few compartments were empty and dark, and I saw no reason to check these till I ran out of other places to check. I realized he was almost as short on sleep as I was, and after his difficult evening in Stuttgart, he might well decide to stretch out on an empty seat for a nap. When I finally found him, I thought I was right, but I was wrong. He was stretched out on an empty seat all right, but he wasn’t asleep, he was dead, eyes open, with a bullet hole in his left temple.
Maybe someday I’ll write down what I went through in that minute, but not now. I think I came close to doing what used to be meant by “losing your mind,” before those words just became another cliched synonym for going crazy. I knew I had to throw the emergency switch and stop the train, as little as I wanted to. There didn’t seem to be any choice about that, though of course lots of passengers thought differently. It was a mess, of course, a nightmare. At first I thought I’d be executed on the spot. Eventually the conductor understood about the corpse. Eventually Michael arrived and took over as interpreter. Eventually some police arrived—it seemed like hours later—then waves of police arrived, each with the same questions. I was handcuffed twice and nearly a third time.
The train was eventually moved on into Hanover, just a few miles ahead. The night went on and on and on. Finally Michael and Shirin convinced the police that I was a very improbable murderer, and they let me go after confiscating my passport. By this time it was dawn. Michael found a cabbie willing to drive us to Radenau, and we got out of that place.
I slept till eight P.M., went downstairs for some dinner, and faxed Fr. Lulfre a note explaining what had happened. One police official with a good command of English had told me to call if I recollected anything that wasn’t in my statement. I called him and told him about seeing Herr Reichmann on the train platform at Frankfurt.
“How do you know he wasn’t just meeting someone on the train?”
“I don’t. But people who are meeting someone don’t come forward the way he did. They stand back so they can see people getting off down the whole length of the train.”
“That’s well observed,” the policeman agreed. “So let’s say he got on the train. You think he had a reason to want to harm your friend?”
“No, not at all.”
“Then what’s the point?”
“You said to call if I remembered anything. That’s what I’m doing.”
“Good. I appreciate that. By the way, the tests on your hands were negative for traces of gunpowder.”
“That’s news to you but not to me,” I told him. “I already knew there was no gunpowder on my hands. Can I get my passport back?”
“In a day or two. We just want to be able to talk to you if we need to.”
We said good-bye.
I felt half dead myself. I didn’t want to think, I didn’t want to remember, I didn’t want to do anything. I got out the bottle of Scotch and had a drink, but I didn’t even want to do that.
I stretched out on the bed in my clothes, closed my eyes, and slept for ten straight hours.
Thursday, May 23
Radenau: Day six
Fr. Lulfre phoned at eight in the morning and opened the conversation by telling me, in a tone of mild reproof, that it was midnight where he was.
“I didn’t ask you to call,” I snapped. There was a lengthy silence as he evidently decided that the wisest course was to say nothing to that.
“When are you coming home?” he finally asked.
“I don’t know. The police are holding my passport.”
“Why?”
“To keep me in Germany, obviously.”