The Human Pool by Chris Petit

Author:Chris Petit
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Atria Books
Published: 2002-08-29T04:00:00+00:00

We met twice more. On the third occasion he didn’t turn up, and I failed to spot my followers who bundled me into a car and stuck a gun in my side. They didn’t seem like German agents or Americans. Given the banker’s abrupt no-show, I sensed they were probably working for him.

David and his gang were the last players to slot into place.

Our immediate destination was a deserted mechanic’s garage under a railway arch, where we went through the shameful process of extracting information and confession. They couldn’t decide if I was an agent for the Nazis, in which case they wanted to kill me, or for the Americans, in which case they wanted to turn and run, or both.

The torture was of symbolic rather than actual importance, in part a result of their own frustration at fighting a war without enemy contact. They were not experts in the way I am sure Jaretski would have been. What I had always dreaded was made endurable by the belief that I was instrumental to their plans and they would therefore not kill me.

I told them what I knew, which I did not regard as much, more out of a sense of accumulated isolation than anything else. It was a salutary lesson to discover that any illusions of loyalty I might have had were meaningless. If there was anything shameful about the process, it had to do with our complicit awareness of how little our small drama counted for in the face of so much death and suffering. We were playing self-conscious games, way off in the margins where forbidden alliances were forged. We were already shamed by the compromises of survival.

David wore glasses and had a high forehead. His dark hair was already receding. He was wiry and intense. David, echoing Dulles, to me: ‘Information is either priceless or very dangerous, so use it well.’ He reminded me that I worked for the Red Cross as well as for Mr Dulles, and it was time both of us did something to help the Jews.

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