Selected Detective
SECRET ESCAPE

“Oh, poor Antonku. My poor dear Anton, why don't you let us die together? As it should be. Why are you torturing me like this?” Inga Gratz's hand crawled across the bed sheet and gripped Khalifa's wrist. His grasp was cold, wet with sweat, and tight. The detective frowned, uncomfortable with his touch, as if a large venomous spider had wrapped its feet in his hands. However, he did not move to pull his hand. He felt that his entire investigation had somehow narrowed itself into this meeting, and that his attitude that allowed the woman to hold his hand had helped the old woman to get closer and more informative, tell him what he needs to know, then he prepares to endure this state, even if it makes him feel a bit nauseous.

It was eleven o'clock at night. For five hours he had been going back and forth through the corridor outside Inga Gratz's room in the hospital, smoking constantly, recalling repeated events in the apartment block, while waiting for him to wake up. When he finally regained consciousness, the doctors forbade him from going into the room, saying that Inga was still too weak to speak, that Khalifa should wait until tomorrow morning. Frankly, he forced himself to come in and see it, threatening to take the matter to a higher level, and they finally gave up, allowing him to enter for fifteen minutes, on condition that a nurse must be accompanied.

“Hina,” she muttered, her fingers blocked and removed Khalifa's wrist, her voice blunt and faint, most likely a side effect of the drugs she was taking. “You should see that. despicable. Every one of them. Bloodsuckers. We do good for the world. You should thank us.” He looked at Khalifa, his face as pale as a corpse in the gentle glint of his bedside lamp. A pair of plastic tubes came down from his nostrils like skinny worms sprawling from a hole in his skull. Then she turned and started crying. There was also another intravenous tube inserted into his arm, and with the other hand he began to claw at it, calling the sister waiting by the side of the door to come closer and raise her hand, slowly pulling her down the blanket. Silent for a long time, the only sound came to a halt, the roar of uneventful breath of this old woman and, from outside the window, the, the sound of fut-fut rhythms from water droplets in the hospital yard.

“Dieter,” he finally said, his face still away from Khalifa, his voice almost inaudible, only a weak whisper.

“Sorry?”

“It was Piet's real name. Dieters. Dieter Hoth.” For a moment the detective tried to make the connection. When he did, he dropped his head and sighed, a faint smile on the tip of his mouth, even though there was no humor in his expression, just a kind of self-deprecation. For God's sake! That hoth is what Hannah Schlegel whispered to Jamal fifteen years ago, as she drooped dying on the temple floor at Karnak. Hoth, not THoth.

All this time he's been chasing the wrong name. How many more were wrong, he asked; how many more dark paths did he walk?

“A a ... Nazis?” ask Khalifa.

Inga nodded weakly. “We're all Nazis. We are proud to serve our country, our Fuhrer. No one understands him now, but he's a good man. Great guy. He should be able to make this world a better place.”

He turned his head towards Khalifa, so helpless, the pleading gaze still emanated from his eyes, even though Khalifa now saw something else there, deep inside, too, something he had not realized before: cruelty, violence, as if his frail body was nothing more than an outer wrapper inside which contained a separate thing entirely, all of them were more spiteful creatures. Khalifa tightened her teeth, stronger than the hand of the woman who was wet before.

“And Hannah Schlegel?” he asks. “He killed her? Piet Jansen Dieter Hoth.” He nodded weakly again, nothing more than an ascending motion fractured from his head. “Hannah knows who she is. Came to look for him. They never stop looking.” He clenched his mouth and rolled his eyes to the ceiling, a sense of horror creeping on his body as if he was receiving a mild electric shock.

Then silent for a moment, the ticking of the clockwork on the wall sounded rudely uncharacteristic in the enveloping silence; then slowly, with a little hesitation, he began to speak again, letting out little by little, he said, piece by piece, the story of Elsa Fauch's own life is her real name, Wolfgang Fauch's wife, both guards at the Ravensbruck concentration camp and about the life of her friend, Dieter Hoth: who she is, who she is, where he came from, his cooperation with the SS. Khalifa lets him tell stories at his own pace, in his own way, sometimes asking odd questions or comments when it appears he is missing part of his narrative.

But when he didn't listen in silence, all the different elements of the case, all the things that had baffled him over the past two weeks, were slowly solved in his mind until the whole thing was clear and reasonable.

“We all came out together,” he said slowly, staring at the ceiling of the room, his eyes half closed.

“At the end of the war. April 1945. I, Wolfgang, Dieter, another man named Julius Schechtmann. Julius went to South America, we went to Egypt. Dieter has contacted people who can help us.” In Khalifa's mind another piece of the puzzle could be inserted in its place.

“Faruk Al-Hakim,” says Khalifa. The old woman nodded. “Dieter knows his family. He's just a young man, a shopkeeper. Smart, tenacious, ambitious.

We bring money, billions, whatever we can hold. We pay Faruk, he helps us to disappear. Later, others came; farouk arranged everything for them as well. We pay him an annual salary; he makes sure no questions are asked. That's good business for him.” The meeting with Chief Mahfudz came to Khalifa's mind again. I told Al-Hakim about Jansen, but he said Jansen was off limits. It is said that withdrawing himself into this case will make matters worse, the more hatred towards Jews. No wonder, he thought.

Investigating Jansen would bring the whole Nazi thing out into the open; expose Egypt as a refuge for murderers and war criminals, and draw Al-Hakim from what is clearly profitable. It's much better to leave Jansen alone and have someone else indicted as Schlegel's killer. Even if it is someone else who is completely innocent.

“We have a good life,” the woman said again. “Starting business, making new friends. There was a small group of us one time. Now everyone's gone. Me, Wolfgang, our Dieter is the last. And now it's just me.” He sighed, and shifted his frail body slightly under the blanket, his hand still holding Khalifa's arm.

“We must always be guarded, of course. Especially after what happened to Julius, they hung it, you know, that filthy animal. In general, we can live our lives as usual, taking care of our own business. Mind that we enjoy the rest of our day in peace and quiet.”

“Until Hannah Schlegel arrives,” says Khalifa slowly.

He sneered when he mentioned the name, his thin, pale lips pulling back to reveal his teeth. The detective had a puzzling momentary impression that he was not looking at a human but more like a wild animal, a dog or a wolf.

“God knows how he found Dieter,” he said.

“Dieter has been so careful, doing whatever she can to cover her tracks.falsify her own death before we leave Berlin, he left some of his personal possessions on a corpse, so impressed that he had been killed in the Russian attack. But then, that's how the Jews are there for you, ‘ right? Vampirish. Always hunting, always looking for blood. Always, always, always.” He became agitated, always changing position on his bed, his breathing short and sighing sharply. Taking another step forward, the nurse placed her hand on the woman's gray forehead, trying to calm her down. Khalifa took the opportunity to free her arm, no longer holding it by the touch of her skin, as if coming into contact with the skin would create an infection on her, pouring poison into her bloodstream. He shifted his chair back, so that it would not be reached by the woman, crossed his legs and waited until he recovered.

“He never told us the full story,” he started again in the end, sister calmed him down. “Something about France, excavation. All he said was that he had sent Schlegel back to the camp in 1943, and forty-five years later, Schlegel suddenly just called from a hotel in Luxor and asked to meet him.” He shook his head. “Initially Dieter thought that Schlegel just wanted to blackmail him. Typical greedy Jews. But then, when they met, the foolish Lady of Fuck started shouting justice and revenge, saying that she was carrying a knife and was going to kill him. Dieter was seventy at the time, but he was still strong, fit. He struck Schlegel, and finished him off with his wand. Or at least he thought he had killed her.

“Everything that concerns this case, wherever this case takes it as if I were in an alien world. Trudgingly walking around in a dark and black space where all my instincts and sensibilities, all that I know and cherish, mean nothing at all. I don't get it. I don't understand any of this.”

“Hannah Schlegel?” he tried asking. “Will it ask you to burn it?”

The old woman nodded. “He called us, explained what happened, reminded that it was possible that Schlegel had left a note, details of how he followed it. He stole his wallet, and therefore had his address. Wolfgang contacted some of his business associations in Jerusalem.they took care of everything.” He closed his eyes, his bad and withered fingers tapped at the edge of his bed.

“Dieter the poor. It changed after that. None of us, but he was the worst. Believing that more would come, that they would bring him back to Israel and put him on trial. He did not want to see anyone again, all the windows of his house were always locked, sleeping with a gun on the side of his bed. And then, when Farouk died last year, he was even more terrified because with Farouk gone there was nothing to protect us. I'm sure it is. Worry is something that constantly scolds him. He may have killed Schlegel at Karnak, but the old Jew killed him too. In the end get us all. they always do. they are garbage. hina.” She was heading towards the end of her remaining strength, and the nurse, who was still standing by the side of the bed, coughed and glanced at her watch, signaling that it was time for the interview to end. Khalifa nodded, stood up and turned to step at the door, but then looked again.

“Before he died, it seems that Mr. Jansen tried to contact *******Palestinian Al - Mulatham. He said he had a number of weapons he could use against the Jews. Do you know about it?” To his surprise, the old woman laughed stifledly, with a cruel and thick voice, like bubbling mud.

“Puzzle Dieter,” said, a bit of strength seems to have returned his voice. “Like that we usually call it, me and Wolfgang. He always used the puzzle, especially after he drank a glass or two. How he found something that could help him corrupt the Jews. ’I can still hurt them, Inga’. That's how he used to say. ’I can still hurt Kparat it all’.” He laughed slowly and, lowering his hand, sank back into the pillow as if into the snow, his eyes flashing open and shut.

“What did he tell you about it?” Ask Khalifa.

“No,” answers, “He never said it.”

“Where?”

He shrugged his shoulders, weak. “I think he mentioned a safe storage box. But then another time he reported having left all the details to his old friend, so who knows? He could have been so full of secrets, that Dieter.” He sighed, looking up at the ceiling.

“New generation, that's what he expected. Someone to whom he can give that, which will help Germany to be strong again. But years passed and no one took the coat, and he found out that he had cancer, so he decided to give it to the Palestinians. ‘Give this to the people who need it’, that's what it says. We send a letter to him.”

“Surat?” khalifa's eyes narrowed.

“To a Palestinian woman. In Jerusalem. Dieter thinks the woman can help him. Al-Madani, that's his name. Layla Al - Madani. I don't know if she ever called him back. I hope he does. We must continue to fight, showing the Jews that they cannot do everything in their own way. Hina, that's how they are. Disease outbreak. We do good for the world. You should know that. Are you sure you should know that? We are your real friends. We have always been your friends.” His eyes slowly closed, his voice growing weaker and farther away. Khalifa looked at him, tried, but failed, scratched a little more, then walked to the door. As soon as he reached the door, somehow the woman tried to lift herself up on the bed and call out to him.

“I'll be fine, ’kan? You're not gonna tell the Israelites? You gonna come after me? they are your enemies too.” Khalifa remained silent for a few seconds, then, without answering, she stepped out into the corridor and closed the door behind her

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