by Joseph Kanon
The best photograph, surprisingly, was in the Auschwitz folder, where Aaron had imagined there’d be no pictures at all. A snapshot, not formally posed, of Schramm with Mengele and two coworkers, outside a brick building on a cigarette break, Schramm smiling, as if someone had just made a joke. Who’d taken the picture? Presumably another member of the staff, just then behind the camera. Aaron looked at them carefully, trying to take in details, the gap between Mengele’s front teeth, the nurse’s mouth, open in laughter, white coats, Schramm’s cigarette, but the picture itself, the fact of it, still seemed unreal. Enjoying a laugh just steps away from the crematoriums, the sun on their untroubled faces. What kind of people could they have been? What had made it all right for them?
Some of the personal testimonies, Max’s evidence-in-waiting, were cross-referenced to Mengele’s file and those of the other doctors, overlapping stories remembered in DP camps after the war and now fading on the page. Sara Sadowski, a Polish Jew forced to serve as a nurse in Mengele’s hospital, the mad experiments to change eye coloring, dyes that made children go blind. Included here in Schramm’s file because she had witnessed him giving Mengele assistance with his twins. For an exact comparative dissection, two girls had to die at the same time, so Schramm had killed one while Mengele killed the other, injections straight to the heart, instantaneous. Aaron glanced at the filing information at the top of the sheet. Recorded and signed January 1946. Sadowski deceased 1947. No cause of death given. Typhus. Tuberculosis, maybe. Camp diseases. No, a blank space, discreet, the other camp disease. Why then, having survived everything? But as he read through more of the file, one grisly brittle page after another, he saw that no one survived Auschwitz. One year, twenty—the distance was immaterial. It was always there. When Max finally died, the cause of death would be Auschwitz too.
More folders, a rat’s nest of paper—leads that went nowhere, requests for documents that went unanswered, details on the other missing Nazis that might, someday, overlap and be relevant, the vanished footprints of people no one wanted to find. In the chaos after the war there had at least been an effort to track down the Mengeles, the Schramms, the worst offenders. But then they stayed missing and the world moved on. Aaron hadn’t realized how easy it was to vanish. Take a new name, a new identity, and Max was helpless. Who was he looking for? After a while he had taken to drawing up hypotheticals, routes that had worked for some of the others and might have been used by Schramm. Bishop Hudal at the Vatican would use his contacts to get an Argentine landing permit. With that as identification, the applicant could obtain a Red Cross passport. Then, with both documents, go to the Argentine Consulate and apply for an entry visa, which in turn was used to get an identity card when he arrived in Buenos Aires, after which he disappeared into his new life.
Max had drawn the process out in a chart, diagramming the steps. But had Schramm actually taken them? There were other ratlines mentioned—a Croatian priest, a CIC line for Soviet defectors—and then, after Eichmann’s capture two years ago, a flurry of notes into the file, details that might have been similar to Schramm’s escape, more leads to check. With no one to check them. Aaron thought of the paperwork all the documents must have generated: visa applications, landing records, file after file, sitting in some office in Buenos Aires, undisturbed by Max’s requests. What had happened to them all? Schramm’s paper trail. Helmut Braun’s. And then he had died and it didn’t matter anymore. Even Max had given up, just a few things added to the file after the newspaper clippings, tying up loose ends now that he had Schramm’s alias. The Red Cross passport, checked against Max’s list, verified. The boat from Genoa, now also verified. His address in Buenos Aires, just for the record. Filling in the pieces of the puzzle just as Otto slipped between his fingers.
Aaron looked again at the Stern photo. Black tie at the Jockey Club. What had his life been like there? Aaron had somehow always imagined the fugitive Nazis literally hiding, cowering in a shack in the jungle. But Eichmann had been working a factory job, a man with children. Mengele was said to have invested in a pharmaceutical company, at least according to one rumor in Max’s file. They went to restaurants. They read Der Weg every month. Otto went to parties at the Jockey Club. They had got away with it. Aaron looked at the Auschwitz picture again. Smiling Otto, the laughing nurse, Mengele with a cigarette. Maybe relaxing after a selection, or one of the experiments. No anesthesia. People who were going to die anyway. Children. You’ll see him later. Had he smiled when he said it? Strolling down the selection line, waving Aaron’s mother to the left. He had got away with it. Aaron closed his eyes a little, imagining the man on the Alsterpavillon terrace again, walking toward the sun. Strolling.
3
FRITZ FOUND NOTHING UNDER Schramm or Brenner—no deaths, no services. His staff had checked papers as far north as Bremerhaven, a wide arc, and added two more weeks, just in case, and had still come up dry. Now what? The brick wall of a dead end.
Aaron expected to find Max quiet and disappointed, licking his wounds. Instead he was sitting up in bed, talking on the phone, hands gesticulating as he spoke. When he saw Aaron, he leaned more closely into the receiver, not wanting to be overheard, up to something.
“How did you get the phone?” Aaron said when Max was finished.
“I asked them to put one in. I had a few calls to make.”
“It’s the last thing you should be doing. What happened to getting better?”
“I am better.” And in fact his color was good, eyes brighter, engaged. Schramm was keeping him alive, real or not.
“What calls?”
“I made an appointment for you to meet with a friend of mine. He can’t come here, so you be my legs for a few days.”
“Why can’t he come here?”
Max ignored this. “Did you look at the file?”
Aaron nodded. “Max, Fritz didn’t find—”
“I know. It would have been easier, a funeral. But when is it easy? So you look at it another way. A man stages his own death. I didn’t know before, but now that I do, the question is, why?”
“He’s in hiding. That’s what he does, disappear. Who knows how many—”
“Yes, but why then? I’ve been thinking. First, always look at the obvious. Why then? What’s happened?” He paused, a theatrical second. “Eichmann.”
“Months before.”
“And he’s worried ever since. If they can get Eichmann, why not him? So maybe Mossad is waiting to strike again.”
“Were they?”
Max shook his head.
“How do you know?”
“I know. Anyway, you can ask them yourself.”
Aaron looked up. “That’s who the meeting is?”
“We need to bring them in.”
“Bring them in.”
“In case I need—” He stopped. “They were never looking for him in Buenos Aires. Of course, how can he be sure? But what does he know for sure? Who’s requesting documents? Still after him?”
“You are,” Aaron said. Now about Max. How many years since the Time cover?
“All these years he’s protected. We can assume somebody would let him know there’s such a request, no? Maybe this is how they got Eichmann.”
“Max, you had nothing to do with Eichmann. You were never mentioned.”
Max looked up, a shadow across his face. “No, Wiesenthal. But how does Otto know? Better to die and get everyone off your back. Once and for all.”
“You didn’t even know his new name until after he died.”
Max waved this away. “So the old name. But there were still requests and somebody would notice.” His voice grasping at straws now.
“I meant to ask you about that,” Aaron said, taking them somewhere else. “The requests in the file. Did they just refuse? Some were from you, but some were official. The state prosecutor in Hesse, I saw. How could they just refuse?”
“Well, you delay. Things get lost, especially at the Information Bureau. You keep records and the
n they become compromising, they show how Perón was helping. Imagine, the president of the country being part of that. A Fascist sympathizer, but still— These are wanted men. Of course, he’s working with the Church. That makes it all right.”
“Bishop Hudal.”
Max raised his eyebrows. “So you read the file.” He nodded. “Alois Hudal. The Nazis’ best friend. He writes to Perón personally. Asking for visas. For ‘anti-Communist fighters.’ In other words, Nazis. A friend in the CIC told me.”
“What did the CIC do?”
“Well, by the time they know this, they’re fighting the Communists too. So, nothing. But the point is, he writes to Perón. So how much is already going on if he thinks he can do this? A direct approach. People think it was just Eichmann or a few big fish who got out, but it was hundreds, maybe thousands. Aliases, new papers, hiding places while they wait. Perón can’t do all that. Only the Church had those resources. Plus they’ve been anti-Semitic forever. But Perón can let them into Argentina. And he does. And as long as he’s running the show, nobody looks in the files. But later—it could be a political embarrassment. Not just to him. His people. So in ’55, just before he gets kicked out, a lot of the records get destroyed. Sometimes you make a request now, the clerks are telling the truth, they don’t have the files. Not anymore. Gone. The rats are safe.” He held up a finger, telling a story. “Unless there are other files.” He waited for Aaron’s reaction. “It’s a wonderful place, Argentina. So much paper. And everybody wants to be a big shot. Look at those uniforms. Not even Napoleon— Anyway, they’re always fighting about something. Even this. The Foreign Ministry fights with Immigration. That’s why you needed two documents, the landing permit from Immigration, the visa from the Ministry. And Immigration keeps its own files—character witnesses, recommendations. And these they don’t put with the others, so Perón’s people don’t destroy them. Maybe they didn’t even know they’re there. But they are. You just have to go and find them. And now I have the name.”
Aaron looked over at him. Years of work, making a trail map through the bureaucracy, maybe the only one who cared enough to know.
“Nobody’s going to let you do that.”
“I have people with access. People there. We need documents to make the case.”
“At his trial.”
Max nodded.
“Max, we’re not going to Buenos Aires.”
“So don’t come.”
Aaron said nothing, not biting. Take a breath.
“Anyway, he’s here. You think. So why go—”
“But guess what’s not here? There either.” Enjoying himself. He nodded to the phone. “They just called back from Munich. A nice young lady.”
“Who?”
But Max wanted to stretch it out. “I should have checked before. Sometimes you don’t think, you just assume. Buenos Aires, all right, but even the police there— But they don’t have them. They never had them.”
“What?”
“His dental records.” Finally there, a modest flourish. “They couldn’t. They were destroyed during the war. In the bombing. All the records. Schmidt, that’s the dentist. He did the whole family. I didn’t think to check. You make mistakes.”
“But Max,” Aaron said, hesitant, being reasonable with a child, “he lived in Argentina fourteen, fifteen years. He’d have a dentist there. With records. Why would they need Schmidt’s?”
“It’s not conclusive, recent ones. You want the whole history.”
Did you? Or was Max just selling again?
“Dental records—it’s hard to argue with that. I didn’t. I thought, well, that’s it. But they weren’t complete. It’s not proof.”
“Somebody identified the body.”
“Anybody can identify a body.”
“That would be illegal.”
“Down there, who knows what’s legal?”
“Now you’re just making a case.”
“So make a different one. Tell me I’m wrong.”
“I’m not saying that.” He slowed. “I’m just saying nobody in the file pictures looked like the man at the Alsterpavillon.”
“It’s twenty years, those pictures.”
Aaron nodded. “The body was identified. The dental records matched—I don’t care where they came from, they matched. If he wants to play dead, why come here? No funeral, either side of the family. Fritz checked everywhere. Maybe he had a cousin who walks just like him, I don’t know. Maybe the light was playing tricks.”
“No cousin,” Max said quietly. “All right, it’s a case.” He looked up. “But what if I’m right?”
“And now you want me to meet with Mossad and say what? Set up an operation in Argentina? When we don’t even know ourselves.”
“We know,” Max said, but almost to himself, not fighting back. He glanced at Aaron. “Mossad can’t operate on German soil. So, an interested party only. He knows me. He’d be interested in this. That’s all. Be my legs.”
“All right,” Aaron said, making peace. “Where’s the meeting?”
“Chilehaus. The office building in Burchardplatz. Like a ship. You’re by the prow. Five-thirty, everybody’s leaving work, meeting for a drink. Busy. Nathan likes that, accidentally in public. God forbid you should just meet in a bar, stay warm.” He looked up. “But he’s good.”
“OK,” Aaron said, getting up to leave. “I’ll be back. Now, why don’t you give the phone a rest for a while? I can’t believe they let you have one.”
“I asked nicely,” Max said, a glint back in his eye.
Aaron picked up his coat. “Max,” he said quietly. “What if—?” He stopped, as Max looked up at him. Let it go.
But Max finished for him. “What if I’m an old man who doesn’t see so good.” He nodded. “What if. Then I’d have to go out of business. You make that kind of mistake—” He looked away. “You know what you worry about, you get old? What if you can’t tell anymore? Like a painter doesn’t know his painting’s lousy. Too old to see what’s there. Just what he wants to see. So maybe I want it to be Schramm and that’s who I see. I know. Sometimes it works like that. What if.” He looked back. “What if I saw him and he wasn’t there? Then I’m—”
Aaron said nothing, then put his hand on Max’s arm. “Not yet.” The hand tighter now, a conversation. “Stay off the phone.”
“Send Elena over.”
“You’re supposed to rest.”
Max nodded. “Send her.”
In the corridor, Aaron stopped for a minute, not sure where he wanted to go. Back to Max’s office and the Schramm file of blind alleys? Back home to his office and the piles of field reports with their own blind alleys? How long had he been away? Days, a week, long enough to have left it behind. Without wanting to be here either. He’d come for Max and now couldn’t wait to leave his room. It wasn’t hospital claustrophobia, the smell of disinfectant, the nurses in and out, the overheated air. Max’s room was filled with something else, triggered at the Alsterpavillon, crammed into files, the inescapable memory of Poland, the miles of chimneys, somewhere Aaron had never had to go before, where Max still lived.
“Herr Wiley!” The W pronounced as V, German.
Aaron looked down toward the nurses’ station, Fritz in a hurry, brushing past people, jacket rumpled, shirt coming untucked on one side. Aaron imagined flecks of ash on his tie.
“Good, you’re here. I was afraid—” He stopped, catching his breath. “He’s up?” Nodding to Max’s room. “He’ll want to hear.”
“What?”
“Come. Both,” he said, guiding Aaron back into Max’s room. “So you’re slipping,” he called over to Max, a tease. “Now, who thinks of everything?”
Max waited, eyebrows up.
“Not Schramm. Not Brenner. Lessing. His wife.”
“His wife,” Max said. “Yes, Lessing, I remember. But she disappeared, as Lessing. I thought she remarried.” He looked up. “She’s dead?”
Fritz nodded. “I saw the notic
e and at first I didn’t connect. No mention of Schramm, of course. No marriage. But something in the back of my head, so I checked. And there it was. Lessing. So he comes back for the wife. Quite a love story.”
“Quatsch,” Max said, waving his hand.
“Is there a funeral?” Aaron said.
“This morning. It’s good I found you.” He glanced at his watch. “Ohlsdorf, so we should hurry.”
Max looked straight at Aaron for a minute, not gloating, the wordless look its own triumph. Then he turned to Fritz. “Don’t be surprised if he’s not there. To show himself to people— But find out where the grave is. Watch that. That’s where.” He shook his head, an almost involuntary smile, and lay back against the pillow. “The wife. And he comes back. So did she know all along where he was? See him? Maybe the divorce was like the car crash. Another trick.” He turned, waving them off. “Go find out. Watch the grave, yes? That’s where he’ll go.”
* * *
Ohlsdorf Cemetery was near the airport, so they went north toward Barmbek, then out of the city.
“One of the largest in the world,” Fritz said, suddenly a tour guide. “Over two hundred thousand graves. But very beautiful, like a park. My father’s there.”
“What if he does show up? What do we do?” Aaron said, thinking out loud. “I mean, we can’t just grab him. Like that. Where is it anyway? The funeral. Some kind of chapel?”
“They have ten. You have to ask at the gate. Don’t worry, there’s time. See the camera, the bag on the backseat? Check if there’s film. If he does show, we’ll want that. Otto Schramm. It’s a front-page picture.”
“We should tell the police.”
“Get the picture. Prove it’s him. Then you’ve got something. They’d need a reason.”
“For Otto Schramm? He’s a war criminal. He’s been on the Most Wanted List since the war.”
Fritz nodded. “Genau. The publicity would shame them into it. So we get the picture. Otherwise, it’s the usual. The wanted list? Bonn sends it to the consulate in São Paulo. Maybe somebody looks. Maybe somebody’s an old Nazi and lets it sit in the tray. The Brazilian police? They need a request. No one is looking for these men, not really. Stangl, from Treblinka? He lived in Brazil as Stangl. All these years. But since Eichmann, people take an interest. Even Bonn moves a little. For years it was forget, forget, but now it’s news again. The Schramms, they’re not so safe anymore.”