Horst Bittler’s father, Otto, was a schoolteacher before the Second World War and the deputy head of an extermination camp by the end of it. A man much sought after by the Allied powers, he’d been wounded by the explo-sion of a mortar shell while fleeing from the Russian advance. The incident had left him with the use of only one eye, but that turned out to be a blessing in disguise. The wound had so distorted his features that his face no longer bore any resemblance to photos that had been taken of it.
It helped, too, that prior to the collapse, Otto had ordered one of his prisoners, an engraver from Krakow, to prepare a set of identity papers. The papers identified Sturmbann-fuehrer Bittler as August Schultz, a Wehrmacht corporal and former farm laborer. Otto had rewarded the engraver by put-ting a bullet in his head.
The papers were good, but not perfect, so once he’d got-ten away from the Russians, Otto had gone to ground in Munich, taking refuge at the home of an old classmate. The classmate was not pleased to have Otto show up on his doorstep, but he was hardly in a position to refuse shelter. He had a past of his own to hide-and Otto knew it.
Eight months later, Odessa, the organization of former SS members, was finally able to smuggle Otto, his wife, Erika, and their two-year-old son, Horst, out of the country.
In Brazil, Otto reverted to his original name and managed to get a job in a factory that built refrigerators. He died in 1956, when Horst was twelve. Whatever else he’d been, Otto was a devoted father and the only person Horst Bittler had ever truly loved. His son was devastated by his passing.
Horst’s surviving parent was another case altogether. She was a shrew of a woman, obsessed with cleanliness and instilled with the conviction that no culture was superior to German culture.
Horst hated her to the very fiber of his being.
Along with his potato dumplings and cabbage, she dosed him with Schiller and Goethe, tapping her foot impatiently while he absorbed each morsel, forcing him to recite it aloud before ladling out the next one. He acquired, in the process, such distaste for literature that he read only scientific works ever afterward.
For her, there were no accidents and no excuses. Showing emotion was contemptible. Warmth was weakness. Non-Aryans were inferior. The sex act was necessary for repro-duction, but to take pleasure in it was filthy. Most people were not to be trusted. The old Germany, the Great Germany, was gone. Only cowards and weaklings were left. No one who survived was deserving of loyalty or support. It was wasted effort ever to help anyone with anything.
In later years, it often gave her son pleasure to reflect upon how wrong she’d been. The fugitive he’d met in the winter of 1977 turned out to be neither a coward nor a weak-ling, and helping him was anything but wasted effort. Had it not been for his pains in shielding the man’s true identity, and the financial reward that followed, Bittler might well have spent the rest of his life in a modest practice, eking out a living by treating patients on the national health scheme and being badly paid for it.
But fate had smiled on him, and here he was, three decades later, with a successful clinic that bore his name.
* * *
Doctor Horst Bittler rose weekdays punctually at seven and on weekends punctually at eight. He retired punctually at ten thirty, read professional journals for half an hour, and switched off the bedside lamp punctually at eleven, whether he’d finished the article or not. If he hadn’t, he’d make a tiny dot in the margin with a pencil, always with a pencil, never with a pen. He abhorred physical exercise, practiced no sports, took no vacations, and had an aversion to the kultur that his mother had spent years drumming into him.
Except for opera.
Horst Bittler adored the opera, especially Wagner, espe-cially Tannhauser, which he always referred to by its full title: Tannhauser und der Sangerkrieg auf Wartburg.
He’d never married, not because he was a misogynist, or because he had no interest in the other sex, but simply be-cause he was uncomfortable when anyone, man or woman, sought intimacy with him. In his younger days, when his hormones were still raging, he’d made occasional use of the prostitutes on the Rua Aurora, or in the neighborhood of the Jockey Club, but with the appearance of AIDS and advancing age, he’d taken to satisfying himself with mastur-bation. That, too, had a time allotted to it: before breakfast on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. Like regular bowel movements, Bittler considered masturbation important to his health.
When he harvested an organ, he began the procedure promptly at midnight, always with his beloved Wagner play-ing over the loudspeaker system he’d installed in both of his operating rooms.
His lunch was served promptly at one and his dinner promptly at eight. He had seven luncheon menus and seven dinner menus, one for each day of the week, and they never varied.
All of his employees were well aware of his regular sched-ule, and if they suffered a lapse of memory about where he was or what he was doing at any given moment, they could find that schedule clearly posted in his outer office. His sec-retary, Gretchen, screened all of his calls. One of her princi-pal duties was to assure he was never interrupted.
After Clovis Oliveira left, Horst Bittler made a note in his agenda, registering the date and time of their next meet-ing. Then he called Gretchen and told her to summon Roberto Ribeiro. For the plan taking place in his mind, he was going to need a pilot, a very special kind of pilot, and Ribeiro was just the man to find him.