The Bible of Clay

by Julia Navarro

  Clara felt Ante Plaskic's eyes on the back of her neck. It wasn't the first time she'd caught him surreptitiously looking at her when she entered the computer house or sat down with Gian Maria and other members of the team to clean the tablets. Perhaps he was just another backup hired by her grandfather to look after her.

  And then there was Ayed Sahadi. But in his case, she felt no sense of unease. Her grandfather had flatly told her that Ayed would kill anyone who tried to harm her. And the fact was, she felt protected. She knew how terrified Iraqis were to lift a hand against anyone within the inner circle of Saddam Hussein, and she and her family were as close to the president as anyone could be. She had no reason to worry.

  It was Sunday, and Yves, well aware of the team's exhaustion, had suggested that everyone take the afternoon off. But Clara and Gian Maria had decided to keep working, and they were sitting together cleaning tablets in the computer house as the sun approached the horizon. Ante was there too, studying them, fully aware of the discomfort his presence caused the woman.

  It would be easy to kill her. He could strangle her—he needed no weapon but his hands. And that was why he was gazing so fixedly at Clara's throat, thinking of the moment he would squeeze it and wring the last breath from her.

  He felt no emotion for this woman—for her or anyone else. He was shunned by everyone; the priest was the only person who made any attempt to befriend him. Even Picot seemed to find it hard to praise his work, although he knew he was doing an excellent job.

  But in addition to Clara, he would have to kill that overprotective nursemaid of hers, Fatima, the Shiite woman who followed her around like a faithful dog all over the camp. It drove him crazy to watch her kneel and pray toward Mecca three times a day. He'd also kill Ayed Sahadi, because he knew if he didn't, Ayed would kill him. He no longer had any doubts that the foreman was more than he appeared to be. The soldiers in the nearby garrison sometimes stood at attention when they saw him, although Ayed always made a quick gesture for them to stand at ease, and he inspired obvious fear in the workers, a fear that had nothing to do with their labors. At least half a dozen men reported to Ayed on a fairly regular basis, much in the mode of a military hierarchy.

  And Ante knew that he, in turn, was being watched by Sahadi, who openly showed his mistrust for the Croatian in any number of ways, as though warning him not to make any false moves. They were both killers, and they recognized each other.

  Alfred Tannenberg strode out of the hospital with a firm, brisk step. He'd been admitted seven days ago and his health was undeniably shaky, but he couldn't allow anyone to see that. Humans, like other animals, sensed weakness in others, and when they did, they knew they could attack.

  The conversation he'd just had with his doctor had left no doubt: He had until spring at the latest.

  The doctor was hesitant about giving him an exact time frame, but Tannenberg had pressured him and determined that if he lived until March, he'd have beaten the odds. He had to use every minute of the time he had left to secure Clara's future.

  He would stay on in Cairo for a few days to put his affairs in order and then go back to Iraq. He was going to surprise his granddaughter and join her in Safran for the time being, to stay near her, until they were told they had to leave the area. Leave the country, actually, and they would do so together—if he lived that long. That was why he needed Ahmed. Because Tannenberg knew full well that once he died, Clara would have no one—she'd need someone who loved her to keep her safe. He paid his men to protect her, but as soon as he was gone they would abandon her to her fate unless someone else took charge. He didn't care whether Ahmed and Clara divorced, but they'd have to do it after they both left Iraq.

  Alfred had never doubted that Ahmed would agree to the deal: first, because he wouldn't want to hurt Clara in any way and he knew that leaving her in Iraq was sentencing her to death; second, because opposing Alfred's wishes would be signing his own death warrant; third, and perhaps most important, because he was going to receive a very great deal of money for this last job. Yes, Ahmed would do what he was expected to do. And that was why Alfred Tannenberg had ordered him to make arrangements to stay in Safran from February on. Robert Brown, via Mike Fernandez, had sent him reliable information: The attack was to come in March.

  A few days later, Alfred was back in Baghdad, on his way to the

  Yellow House in a black Mercedes that didn't bother to stop at traffic lights.

  Fernandez was waiting for him in the quiet shadows of the vestibule of Tannenberg's home, under heavy guard as always. Security cameras had been installed even in the trees along the street leading to the Yellow House. The old man wasn't going down without a fight.

  "How are you, sir?" Mike Fernandez asked as Alfred came in, with a greater measure of respect than during their first meeting. He no longer wasted time with hostility or evasion. In the time they had worked together, he had seen clearly that Alfred Tannenberg was always several steps ahead of himself and Paul Dukais; he seemed to know not just what they were doing, but also what they were thinking.

  "So, Colonel, what news do we have?" Tannenberg asked, skipping over any niceties.

  "The men are here, sir. I've gone over the maps with them, and I'd like to know if we could spread out and get the lay of the land where we'll be rendezvousing with your men."

  "No, not now. You'll have to make do with studying the maps."

  "But your people move throughout the area without any problems."

  "That's right. But your group will draw attention, which we can't risk now. Once the operation starts, that's another story. Our success depends on our discipline—if you follow my orders to the letter, you'll get out of this alive, and rich as well."

  "Mr. Dukais has made the arrangements for our exit—my men and the cargo will go out on military planes straight to air bases in Europe."

  "I hope he's taken my advice and arranged for portions of the cargo to be off-loaded in Spain and Portugal. They're allies of the United States, committed to the cause."

  "What cause, sir?" the former Green Beret wanted to know.

  "Bush's cause, of course, which has become our cause. This is big business, my friend."

  "Another part of the cargo will go directly to Washington?"

  "Yes, that's right."

  "And you, sir—where will you be when the war starts?"

  "That is no concern of yours. I'll be safe. Yasir will deliver my orders to you—we'll be in constant contact, even once our friends start bombing."

  Mike Fernandez wondered, not for the first time, whether Tannenberg actually felt any loyalty to anything or anyone, and he couldn't resist the temptation to press him a bit.

  "I imagine, sir, that you'll be worried knowing that this time it will be more than a few F-18s—we'll be invading Iraq wholesale."

  "Why should I be worried?"

  "Well, you have family here, and many important friends near Saddam."

  "I have no friends, Colonel, just interests," said Alfred. "I couldn't care less who wins or loses the war. I will go on doing business. Money is a chameleon that takes on the colors of the winner."

  "But you live here, you have this beautiful home. . . ."

  "My home is wherever I am at the moment. And now, if your curiosity is satisfied and you'll excuse me, I have work to do. Saddam is my friend and Bush is my friend; thanks to them I'm going to close a very nice deal and make a lot of money. As will you, and many others."

  "People will die, we'll lose friends. . . ."

  "I'm not going to lose any friends, and don't start getting sentimental. People die every day—the tempo just picks up in wartime."

  29

  alfred tannenberg and heinrich von meissen

  learned a great deal about themselves at Mauthausen. They discovered, for example, that it gave them pleasure to take other men's lives. Women and children were not exempt either. Alfred, like Zieris, the supreme commander of Mauthausen, preferred to shoot prisoners in the back of
the head, while Heinrich liked to toss their caps onto the barbed-wire fences, just as their commander had demonstrated the first day, and watch their terror as the guards did the killing for him. There were afternoons when he targeted dozens of desperate men, some of whom shuffled almost gladly to their deaths, as though they were on the path to liberation.

  The two new officers also formed fast friendships with some of the camp's doctors, who liked to experiment on the prisoners.

  "We are making great strides in science at the camp. Our subjects are revealing previously unknown secrets of the human body," Alfred proudly told Greta one winter evening after dinner. He explained in detail the way healthy men, women, and children were inoculated with various bacteria and viruses, so that the course of their diseases could be observed. They even put healthy inmates under the knife so that the doctors might begin to explore more deeply the minutiae of human anatomy.

  Greta nodded submissively at everything her husband told her, questioning nothing. In Mauthausen, as in the other camps that Alfred often visited, there were no human beings—just Jews, gypsies, Communists, homosexuals, and criminals. Germany had no place for rabble such as they. And if their bodies served to advance science, then at least their miserable lives had some meaning.

  "Heinrich, I spoke with Georg today," Alfred said one afternoon. "He says Himmler is pleased with the agreements we are reaching with the large factories. We shall provide them labor and they will produce war materiel for the Fatherland. The factories need laborers; all the qualified German men are on the front lines. But there is more—Himmler says that after the war, the SS must be prepared to finance itself. Here, we have more than enough people to enable us to become self-sufficient."

  "Come on, Alfred, these wretches are good for nothing but carrying rocks up from the quarry. We should do away with them all, or we will never solve Germany's problems."

  "We can put the women to greater use," Alfred suggested.

  "The women? We should exterminate them first. It's the only way to prevent them from breeding; their children are sucking Germany's blood dry," Heinrich argued.

  "We have our orders, Heinrich, and whether we like it or not, we must follow them. You are to select the prisoners in the best physical condition. Himmler wants able bodies for the factories."

  "I've talked to Georg as well."

  "I know, Heinrich, I know."

  "Then you know that he will be arriving in two or three days with his father."

  "Yes, I've been in my office for hours, organizing everything; Zieris wants the commission to see the camps running as efficiently as possible. Georg's father is one of the high command's favorite doctors, and Georg's uncle, who is also a commissioner, is a distinguished professor of physics. The rest are also prominent civilians toward whom the Fiihrer wishes us to offer our finest hospitality—they are especially interested in learning about the experiments of the Mauthausen doctors. Georg said he's got a surprise in store for us. I have a feeling he may be bringing Franz. He didn't say as much, but what better surprise than bringing us all together again?"

  "Well, it would be good to get Franz away from the Russian front.

  His last letter was devastating; things there are going from bad to worse."

  "Things are not going well anywhere; we both know that. But let's not talk about the war."

  "Yes, it's just too depressing. Going back to the commission—have you heard exactly what they want us to show them?"

  "You'll be pleased to know that it has to do with the women—the creatures who arrive with their bellies full of children, burdening the camp. We can't keep wasting the Fatherland's money feeding this riffraff. So the doctors want to discover how well these pregnant sows can fare in extreme circumstances. One of them believes they may be able to withstand more than we think.

  "He wants them, not the men, to go down into the quarry and carry up the rocks, on their backs," Alfred continued. "He'll keep track of how many can stand the work, how long they can last. . . and how many cannot—how many tempt the watchtowers' bullets.

  "I think he is going to study the fetuses too. I don't know what he is hoping to find, but he says it will continue to expand our knowledge of the human body."

  "And what about their children?" Heinrich asked. "Some of them had their bastards in tow when they arrived here."

  "Oh, they'll be at the quarry as well, to watch the medical treatment administered to their mothers. It should be very interesting. Come on, let's talk to the doctor now. He's the one who has developed the formula for the injection. We'll see the effect it has firsthand. We have to bathe them first, though. I refuse to subject our physicians to our prisoners' filth."

  "How many women will participate?"

  "He has chosen fifty—-Jewesses, gypsies, and political prisoners. Some of them are already more dead than alive—they'll probably thank us."

  The day had dawned silvery gray, with a fine mist and an icy wind that whistled around the corners of the buildings and penetrated every chink in the barracks. The prisoners shook violently with the cold, but the bad weather had no apparent effect on the two SS officers looking impatiently at their watches, waiting for the procession of cars arriving from Berlin.

  Standing in rows, utterly defeated, fifty women waited in silence for whatever fate the officers had planned for them. The prisonerguards—some laughing loudly, others exchanging conspiratorial looks—had informed them that they would never forget this day Some of them trembled and held tightly to the hands of their children, whom they had been forced to bring to the exercise field.

  Some of the women had survived the camp for two years, working for the factories that supplied the German war machine; others had been there for only a few months. But on the faces of all of them could be seen the ravages of hunger and despair.

  They had been subjected to all manner of torture and abuse by their guards, who forced them to work from sunup to sundown, day after day, regardless of their weariness or weakness.

  Those who collapsed in exhaustion were beaten with the whips and truncheons the guards favored.

  But at least they were surviving in the midst of the nightmare that had become their lives—they had seen many of their fellow prisoners die without a soul to come to their aid. Most simply dropped dead after reaching the limit of their strength. There were also those who disappeared—these were the most exhausted of the lot, the ones who could work no more, and one morning the guards would come and simply carry them away. They would never be seen again; nor was there ever even a hint of their fate.

  When they left children behind, the rest of the women made a superhuman effort to care for and protect them as though they were their own, until they were old enough to join the adults at another work gang or another camp altogether.

  The procession of sleek black cars drove slowly onto the long parade field. The civilians who emerged from them seemed eager, impatient even. Mauthausen was considered one of the most important of the Reich's work camps, a model to be followed.

  Georg and Alfred gave each other a great bear hug after the upraised arm and cry of "Heil, Hitler!" As they stepped back to have a better look at each other, they heard Heinrich's joyous exclamation:

  "Franz! My God, you've come!"

  "Franz!" Alfred immediately embraced his friend.

  As the four gave themselves over to their exuberant reunion, they ignored the disapproving looks from Zieris and the other SS officers. They were self-assured, untouchable, the chosen ones of Himmler himself.

  By now, Alfred's father manufactured a good portion of the uniforms for the German army. Franz's father, an attorney, had become a

  consummate diplomat reporting to the Fiihrer himself. It had been he who, years earlier, had managed to persuade a number of countries to take part in the Olympic games in Berlin—a feather in his cap that earned him a great deal of respect among his peers. Heinrich's father was one of the lawyers whose talents had been put to work constructing the legal syste
m of the new Germany. Georg's father was a doctor who treated many members of the SS high command.

  The women watched these four young officers who so clearly stood out from the others, and they gripped their children's hands more tightly.

  The children were so malnourished that they could hardly stand, but they obeyed their mothers' insistence on keeping up appearances, for they knew what horror could be unleashed against them if they failed to please the terrible men in black.

  The four officers came over to examine the prisoners. Their eyes reflected utter contempt and revulsion.

  "What a spectacle," Franz said disgustedly.

  "Come, my friend, you'll see, this will be fun! Today is going to be a great day!" Heinrich assured him.

  "I'm positively brimming with curiosity," said Georg.

  "It will be an unforgettable day, I promise you," Alfred seconded Heinrich.

  Then Alfred made a sign to the prisoner-guards. "You're going to enjoy this," he went on.

  The women trembled at the words of the SS officers, and a greater sense of dread overcame them.

  "An unforgettable day," the SS officer repeated softly, as he smiled at them.

  30

  when he heard his name, lion doyle stiffened and

  cautiously turned. A woman he recognized emerged from a large group sitting at the other end of the bar. They were all journalists—you could see that from a mile away—no doubt dispatched by their various agencies to report from the fires of hell itself so that the citizens of the world could know the truth. Lion was, of course, no stranger to the horrors of war, but could he fit in as a civilian on a job?

  "Hello, Miranda," Lion said coolly, belying the tension he felt in every muscle.

  "Don't tell me you're in Amman on vacation." "Oh, I wish."