League of Night and Fog

by David Morrell

  "Keep it that way. This isn't just another story to me. I'm supposed to be objective. What I am is furious. Nazi war criminals are all over this fucking country. I could give you dozens of names and addresses right now. There's no mystery about them. The Justice Department knows about them. Most are in their late sixties or early seventies. They keep their lawns mowed.

  They tip the paperboy. They have the neighbors over for barbecues. I could accuse them in front of their friends. It wouldn't matter. No one would care. Because they don't make trouble. How could that nice man down the street have done all those terrible things? And anyway all of that was a long time ago. Why dredge up unpleasant memories?"

  "You're exaggerating."

  "If anything, the reverse." Sloane pulled a sheet of paper from his jacket pocket. "Here's a list from my contacts in the Justice

  Department. Twenty mass murderers. Jack the Ripper, Son of Sam, and

  John Wayne Gacy are bush-league compared to this bunch."

  "And every one of them's a war criminal?"

  "There are plenty of others. This is just the top of the slime heap."

  "But if the Justice Department knows who these Nazis are... ?"

  "Why haven't they been prosecuted? Because after the war American intelligence made a bargain with them. Help us take over your Nazi spy networks and use them against the Russians, In exchange, we'll give you immunity. Or if you don't have a bargain of immunity, we still won't prosecute because your crimes were committed in Europe. To save a lot of diplomatic hassle, we'd just as soon deport you. On the other hand, if we revoke your citizenship, no other country will accept you, so we're stuck with you.

  Let's forget the whole mess. These Nazis will die soon anyhow. At least that was the theory until a few years ago. A group of idealistic lawyers in the Justice Department decided to do something about the government's lassitude. In 1979, the Office of Special Investigations was formed."

  "Then something is being done about the men on that list."

  "Yes, but not enough. There's no way to be certain about the numbers, but an educated guess is that as many as ten thousand Nazi war criminals came to this country. So far the Justice Department has prosecuted/ wry of them. Punishment takes the form of de naturalization and deportation."

  "Against mass murderers?"

  "The murders didn't take place in the United States, In effect, the only crime they're charged with is lying about their true identity on their immigration forms."

  "If the public knew, they'd be outraged."

  "Would they? In the cases that have gone to trial, the friends and neighbours of the men who were charged wanted to leave the past alone."

  "Is that the point of your story?"

  "I want to help the Justice Department. If I can rouse the public, maybe the Office of Special Investigations will get more government funding. These bastards--I don't care how old they are--should all be made to feel the same terror their victims felt"

  "Including my father?"

  "If he's guilty," Sloane said, "yes." Miller matched Sloane's angry gaze. "I've trusted and respected my father all my life. If impossibly the Justice Department is right about him... If he's what this so-called proof says he is..."

  "You agree he ought to be punished?"

  "Even my father..." Miller felt sick. "Provided he's guilty, even my father can't be absolved."

  Despite the five o'clock traffic. Miller managed to reduce a twenty-minute drive to slightly more than ten. The elevator to the fifth floor seemed to take forever. When he opened the door to muller and associates, architects, he saw mat his secretary had not yet gone home. "How was your meeting, Mr. Miller? Did you get the assignment?

  "It's too soon to tell. I want to make some notes. Marge. If anybody calls, I'm not here. No interruptions."

  "Will you be needing me for dictation?"

  "No, thanks. Go home when you finish what you're typing."

  "Whatever you say." He went into his office, shut the door, and leaned against it. How is it possible to know if someone you love is a monster?

  Sweat trickled past his eyes. An eternal five minutes later, the tapping on the keyboard mercifully stopped. He heard the click of switches on the computer, the indistinct rustle of a dust cloth being positioned over the monitor. "Good night, Mr. Miller."

  "Good night,"

  he said through the door. The tap of high-heeled footsteps. The click of a latch. The snap of the outside door. Silence. Miller exhaled, relieving the pressure in his lungs, and stared at the combination safe in the corner to his right, where he stored his plans-in-progress. Two days ago, when he'd received the hideous photographs of corpses and ashes, he'd wanted to destroy them. But an intuition had warned him to move cautiously. The photographs were obviously not just a prank. If he destroyed them, he might lose information he'd need later, clues about why he'd been sent the photographs at all. Now he wished he hadn't saved them--for fear of the truth he might find. He knelt, dialed the combination on the safe, and removed the packet of-photographs. One by one, he studied the black-and-white sheets.

  Death. Terrible death. He'd lied to Sloane, but only in response to one question--and only a part of that response had been a lie. But the lie, even partial, had been out of proportion to all the rest of the truth.

  Yes, he'd answered honestly, I knew that my father came from Germany. I knew he'd changed his name. I knew he'd been a German soldier. Yes, a soldier. But Miller was aware that his father hadn't been an innocent participant in the war, an inexperienced young draftee promoted absurdly to the rank of sergeant Not at all. His father had been a colonel in the SS. As Miller's father had aged, he'd been drawn increasingly back to the past- On a handful of days that had unexplained personal significance for him--January 30, April 20, November 8--he'd become more and more sentimental. On those occasions, his father had made and received mysterious phone calls. Then late one night, his father had confessed to his son what he did in the war.

  "Yes, I was SS. I followed the Puhrer's orders. I believed in the master race. And yes, I believed in lebensraum, the space we needed to expand and flourish. But I didn't believe in racial extermination.

  Since we were superior, why couldn't we exist in tolerant harmony with inferior races? Why couldn't we allow them to serve us? I wasn't

  Death's Head. I wasn't one of the exterminators. Instead I was

  Waffenss, the legitimate military branch of the Schutzstaffiel I was a decent soldier. I served my country with dignity. That country lost.

  So be it. History decides morality. Now I live in America. Its citizens call it the greatest nation in the world. So be it. My conscience is clear, and if I had to, I would fight to defend America with the same determination I gave to Germany." Miller had been convinced. War by its nature blurred judgements and clouded values. Yet surely some values remained constant, he hoped. His father and other

  Waffen-SS commanders had managed to escape the aftermath of Germany's defeat. They'd exchanged identity papers with dead civilians and fled to Goliva, Mexico, America, Canada, England, Sweden. But they'd remained in touch, phoning each other to remember their heritage, to assure themselves that no matter how severely history had proved them wrong, they were still a part of their country's elite.

  Just as the sons of the elite had kept in contact. Miller had eventually been drawn into his father's circle of former friends. He and the sons of those other fathers had pledged to help one another in case their fathers came under attack. On the first of each year, there'd been dues to be paid, twenty thousand dollars per family, a bribe to the one outsider who knew their secret, an insurance premium of sorts, blackmail that guaranteed his silence. Now those bribes had proved useless. The pledge among the sons--to stand as one and defend the group--had turned out to be ineffectual. Despite precautions, their fathers had been attacked. They themselves, the sons of the fathers, were also under attack. Insanity. Let the past rest. Miller thought.

  The present and the future are
what matter. Our fathers aren't what you think they were. Bring them back. Leave us alone. You've made a mistake. The Night and Fog has to end. Yet the handsome young SS officer who gazed proudly from a photograph that Miller couldn't set down reminded him uncannily of his father. No! My father wouldn't have lied to me! But would he have dared reveal this sanity-threatening truth? I have to be wrong. Miller thought I looked at this same SS officer two days ago. It never occurred to me he might be my father. Or maybe I didn't want the thought to occur to me. But the thought insisted now.

  Miller's vision focused more narrowly onto the photograph, more intensely toward the SS officer's forehead, just below the peak of the ornate military cap. He tried to believe that what he saw on that forehead was an imperfection in the photograph itself, a scratch on the negative, but he couldn't convince himself. The scar was identical to the one on his father's forehead, the consequence of a near fatal car accident when he'd been ten. How is it possible to love a monster? But how is it possible to know if someone you love is a monster? Before he realized what he was doing. Miller had picked up the phone.

  "The U. S. Justice Department? Who told you this?" Halloway pressed the phone harder against his ear. "An Associated Press reporter."

  "Jesus Christ"

  "He said my father was a Nazi war criminal," Miller said. "The commander of a god damned SS extermination team."

  "But that's absurd!"

  "Is it? I'm beginning to wonder. Some of the things he told me--"

  "You mean you actually believe him? He's a reporter! He'll tell you anything!"

  "But I took another look at those photographs and--"

  "You were supposed to destroy the damned things!"

  "One shows my father in a Death's Head SS uniform! In front of civilian corpses!"

  "A photograph from World War Two? How do you know what your father even looked like back then? That photograph proves nothing!"

  "My father had a scar on the top right corner of his forehead! So does this SS officer!"

  "Coincidence!"

  "That's not a good enough explanation!" Miller's voice rose. "I have to know! Was my father in charge of a Nazi extermination squad? What about all the other fathers! Were they mass murderers too?"

  "If you're suggesting my father... ? That's ridiculous! It's insulting! I don't have to listen to--!"

  "Stop evading the question, Halloway! Answer it!"

  "I won't dignify--!"

  "Were they Nazi war criminals?"

  "Of course not! They were SS, yes! Waffen-SS! Legitimate soldiers! Not the Death's Head-SS who killed the Jews! But outsiders don't understand that distinction! Civilians think all SS were war criminals. So our fathers had to lie. The Night and Fog made the same mistake we feared the immigration authorities would make, the same mistake the U. S.

  Justice Department and the Associated Press reporter are making."

  "You're trying to tell me the Justice Department can't tell the difference between Waffen-SS and Death's Head-SS? Bullshit!"

  "Then how did they make this mistake!"

  "My father, your father, and the other members of the group used to phone each other on days that were special to them. April twentieth.

  November eighth. January thirtieth. Do those dates mean anything to you?"

  "Of course," Halloway said. "They were birthdays for some of the members of the group."

  "You bastard," Miller screamed, "if only you hadn't lied!"

  "Lied? About what?"

  "April twentieth was someone's birthday, all right. In 1889. Hitler's birthday. November eighth is the anniversary of the so-called beer-hall rebellion. Hitler's first attempt to take over the German government.

  That was in 1923. The rebellion failed. But ten years later he did gain control. On January thirtieth. Those are the three most sacred dates in Nazi tradition. And the three dates on which our fathers, despite the risk, couldn't resist getting in touch with each other."

  "All right," Halloway said, "so I didn't realize the significance of those dates."

  "I don't believe you. You know what those dates mean. I can hear it in your voice."

  "Obviously you're determined to believe what you want. But I assure you--"

  "I've got another question," Miller interrupted. "Our fathers were all senior officers. That means they didn't serve together. They commanded separate units. When the war ended, they'd have been widely divided.

  What's the basis of their bond? What makes them a group?"

  "My father said they trained together," Halloway answered.

  "But the Nazi army was spread all over. The eastern front, the western front, the North African front. Russia, France, Italy, Egypt If our fathers trained together, they probably never saw each other again throughout the war. You bastard, you lied again. The bond had nothing to do with their having trained together. Why, out of all the German soldiers who tried to conceal their war records, did this group get in touch with each other? They hid all over the world. But they stayed in touch. Goddamn it, why?" Halloway didn't answer. "Who were they paying blackmail to?" Miller demanded. "Why?" Silence on the other end of the line. "I think the reporter was right," Miller said. "I think there's a hell of a lot my father didn't tell me and you didn't tell me either.

  But you will. I'm coming up there, Halloway.

  I'm coming to Canada to choke the answers out of you."

  "No! That's crazy! You can't come here! If the Justice Department is watching you, you'll draw their attention to me and--!" Halloway didn't finish his sentence. Miller had slammed down the phone.

  Halloway slowly set down his own phone. For several seconds, he wasn't able to move. With effort, he turned toward his father's acrylic landscapes, which he'd been nostalgically studying when the phone rang.

  The row of paintings was broken periodically by patio windows through which he saw his guards patrolling the grounds. As a rule, he would never have accepted Miller's call at this number; instead he would have gone to the secure phone in the nearby city. Kitchener. But he didn't feel it was wise to risk leaving the estate, not even to visit his family at the safe house in the city. Achingly, longingly, he missed his wife and children, but he didn't dare endanger them by bringing them back here. Earlier, Rosenberg--dangerously out of control--had called from Mexico City, babbling that the authorities there had discovered the truth about his father. Similar frightened calls had reached him from the sons of the other fathers in the group. The past was being peeled away. The Night and Fog had managed its reprisal well, twisting its vengeance ever tighter and deeper. But Halloway had a foreboding that the screw had not yet been fully turned, that another more forceful twist was yet to come. The ship, he kept thinking. By now, it would have passed through the Strait of Gibraltar and entered the

  Mediterranean Sea. Halloway wished he'd paid attention to Rosenberg's second thoughts about that ship. He wished he'd acquiesced to

  Rosenberg's fears and ordered the ship to return. Too late now. Even if

  Halloway tried, he wouldn't be able to get through the complex system of contacts to warn the ship in time. Whatever would happen now was out of his control. But if the Night and Fog knew about that ship just as they knew about everything else, if the truth about that ship were revealed, we'll face two enemies, the Night and Fog and our clients, Halloway thought, and I'm not sure which is worse.

  1 he cargo ship Medusa had a registry as tangled as the snarl of snakes associated with her legendary namesake. Her ostensible owner was

  Transoceanic Enterprises, a Bolivian corporation. But a close examination of Transoceanic Enterprises' incorporation papers would have revealed that the company, whose office address was a post office box, was owned by Atlantis Shipping, a Liberian corporation, and in Liberia the company's office was as difficult to find as the mythical continent after which Atlantis Shipping was named. This company was in turn owned by Mediterranean Transport, a Swiss concern owned by a Mexican concern owned by a Canadian concern. Many of the offi
cers did not exist. Those who did were paid to provide no other service than that of allowing their signatures to be used on legal documents. Of the handful of actual directors, one was Aaron Rosenberg of Mexico City Imports; another was

  Richard Halloway of Ontario Shipping. Medusa regularly crisscrossed the

  Atlantic, carrying textiles, machinery, and food to and from Greece,

  Italy, France, Spain, England, Canada, Mexico, and Brazil. But the profit from these shipments was minimal, and if not for another cargo that was often hidden among the textiles, machinery, and food, neither

  Aaron Rosenberg nor Richard Halloway would have been able to maintain his luxurious lifestyle. That cargo was aboard the Medusa as she proceeded toward her rendezvous with a freighter whose registration was equally tangled and whose owner had an opulent estate on the Libyan coast. Tomorrow night, off the coast of northern Africa, crates would be transferred. Medusa would continue toward Naples to deliver