by Alan Elsner
“Janet? You haven't told us what you think,” Eric asked, tapping his pencil against the edge of the table. “If we delay further, is there any chance of getting new information on this guy?”
“Maybe. There is one more avenue we haven't tried yet. We've been pressing the Lithuanian government to give us access to their archives ever since they became independent four years ago. As you might expect, this was hardly their top priority. The Red Army only finally left the country just over a year ago—”
“Enough with the history lesson, get to the point,” Eric growled.
Janet shot him a look. “The point, Mr. Rosen, is that a source I know at the State Department tipped me this morning that things might be about to change. He has it on good authority the Lithuanian government is going to agree to our request.”
“That's great,” I said. “When might this happen?”
“Maybe even this week or next, certainly before Christmas,” Janet said.
“How soon could you get there?” Eric asked.
“The minute they give their formal assent, I'll be on the next plane,” she said.
“How's your Lithuanian?” asked George Carter, the depart-ment's brightest young historian and best linguist. He was wearing a particularly inappropriate tie that afternoon—panda bears cuddling baby panda bears and eating shoots and leaves.
“Nonexistent, but my guess is all the material is in German,” Janet said.
“Okay, I guess we'll have to wait to see if the Lithuanians come through,” Eric sighed. “But I'm not prepared to let this file sit there much longer. One way or another, we're moving ahead with this case. Is there any other business?”
“I got another one of those hate letters,” I said, brandishing a message that had arrived in the afternoon mail.
“What's it say?”
“The usual. ‘We know who you are and we're coming after you. We will rescue our country from the grasp of degenerates like you.’ And other friendly sentiments appropriate to this joyous Christmas season.”
“ Has anyone else been getting this kind of dreck?” Eric asked. There were a couple of nods around the table.
“I generally just throw them in the trash,” John Howard said. “It's just part of the job.”
“You're probably right, but I'd like you all to send all hate mail to me from now on,” Eric said. “I want the FBI to know about it.”
Leaving the meeting, I took the elevator to the top floor and hurried to a small conference room where a small group of men from different divisions of the Department of Justice met at around five thirty each afternoon to recite the afternoon and evening prayers. I couldn't always make it, but I tried to whenever possible. The group needed a minyan, or quorum of ten, to include certain prayers, including the Kaddish—the prayer for the dead, which those in mourning recite each day for thirty days after the death of a spouse or sibling and eleven months after the death of a parent, to fulfill the fifth commandment to honor one's mother and father.
Nine men stood in the room as I arrived, facing a window to the east in the direction of Jerusalem, already davening, swaying and bowing to the prayers. My arrival completed the minyan. I closed my eyes and softly recited the opening words of the Amidah, the eighteen benedictions: “Praised are You, Lord our God and God of our ancestors, God of Abraham, of Isaac, of Jacob, great, awesome, mighty, exalted God who bestows loving kindness, Creator of all.” The Amidah, which means “standing,” is said quietly so that each individual can approach God in his own way. Like Jacob, I often found myself wrestling with Him and with my better self.
In our minyan, everyone prayed more or less together, but each of us was lost in his own world. I recited these blessings several times a day; the Hebrew words slipped off my tongue in a rush, without thought. I sometimes had to force myself to concentrate on their meaning, but even on distracted days the prayer had significance. The fact that Jews have said these same words, unaltered, for millennia makes saying them a powerful act of affirmation. When I reached the line about giving life to the dead, I added a small, silent prayer for the soul of Sophie Reiner.
The service took about twenty minutes. When it was over, we all quickly shook hands and hurried back to work. As I opened the door of my office, the phone was ringing. I lunged across the desk and grabbed it just before voice mail picked up. It was Reynolds. “Professor, how ya doin’?” he asked.
“I'm pretty good. But you know, I'm not really a professor,” I said. “How's the case coming?”
“There's something I want you to see that you might be able to help me with. Could you come down to the station?”
As I drove through wet streets, the car radio carried more bad news from the Balkans, where Sarajevo remained besieged, its residents targeted by snipers whenever they ventured out of their homes for food or fuel. Then the subject turned to domestic issues and the Texas twang of Mitch Conroy took over, sounding his usual alarm about the horrors of big government, until I switched him off.
Reynolds and Novak were waiting in an interview room. They offered me a cup of coffee. I took a sip and put it aside. It tasted like boot polish dissolved in hot water.
“Professor, I want you to take a look at this,” Reynolds said, handing me a piece of paper. “I recall you saying how you're fluent in German, and all.”
I took a look at the half dozen lines, scrawled on a piece of hotel stationery in a large, undisciplined hand, automatically noting a couple of spelling mistakes in the first paragraph. “Sure, I can read it. It seems pretty clear.”
“So what does it say?” Reynolds asked.
I scanned it quickly. “Rather melodramatic,” I told them. “It appears to be a letter to her mother… and it's unfinished, like she was writing it before she left the room and put it aside to finish later. Was there an envelope or an address?”
Novak shook her head. “Nothing. Just that piece of paper.” I thought maybe her lipstick was a different shade this time, less scarlet. It didn't quite match her fingernails.
“Let me write it down for you in English,” I said. Reynolds shoved a writing pad across the table. For the next five minutes, we all sat in silence while I worked. “Okay, this is it, more or less,” I said, setting down the pen.
Mama, Mama, how on earth did I come to be here, alone in this grubby room, in a strange city in a strange country?
You ought to know—it's because of you I'm here, thousands of miles from home. You're the one who sent me here—sent me through your silence. So many things you left unsaid. Why were you not honest? All we had was each other. I did everything for you. And you, you shut me out. You could have trusted me. I would have kept your secrets.
Now, I wrestle with them night and day, trying to find my way through the forest.
Reynolds looked disappointed. “That doesn't help,” he muttered.
“Were you expecting something in particular?” I asked.
“I didn't know what to expect. I was hoping maybe for some idea about what she was doing here in D.C.”
“I assume you confirmed her identity.”
“We did, and she was who you said she was,” Novak said. “She was staying in a motel out on New York Avenue. Not very classy. Didn't find much there. No solid leads, no idea why anyone would want her dead.”
“Well, maybe like you told me, she was just in the wrong place at the wrong time,” I said hopefully.
Reynolds sighed. “Could be. We haven't ruled anything out. And just so we're clear, we're talkin’ here off the record. I don't want any of this in the media.”
“Don't worry,” I assured him piously. “I'm not allowed to talk to the media without the permission of my boss. And he almost never gives it.”
“All right.”
“What else can you tell me?”
“She was seen leaving the hotel probably around five, six o'clock. The medical examiner puts the time of death at anywhere between seven and eleven. Her body was found early next day.”
�
�What about her hotel room? Did you find anything there, apart from the letter?”
“Some clothes, toiletries, a few books, magazines, some CDs, ashtray full of cigarette butts even though it was a nonsmoking room,” Novak said. Her nicotine-stained fingers flashed into my mind, and I imagined her puffing away in the seedy privacy of the last room she would ever see.
“No suspicious prints,” said Reynolds. “We're trying to track her movements. We know she arrived in the country October 26. Flew in on Lufthansa to JFK from Frankfurt. That means she was here about a month. We're trying to figure out where she was, who she saw, and what she did. We know she was in Florida and in Boston, but we don't know why. She used a credit card, which makes it easier to follow the trail.”
“Do you know anything about her mother?”
“The German police are trying to come up with a more detailed profile. We know she was single, apparently never married. She worked as a medical aide at a retirement home. Seems to have lived a totally ordinary life,” Novak said.
A lonely life, I thought. A bit like mine.
“Any connection to the Nazis? Like a family member maybe?” I asked.
“Not that we know, but the Krauts are still looking into it.”
“Just so you know, they don't appreciate being called Krauts,” I said. “They prefer Huns.”
“Really?” Novak said. “I never knew that.”
“No, not really. It was a joke.” I coughed in embarrassment and tried to think of a more serious question to ask them. They both looked at me as if I were crazy.
“Did you find any documents? She said she wanted to show me some documents.”
“No documents, Prof. There were some books. I have them in my office, but they're all in German. They don't look like much, just trashy romance novels. You can take a look if you like,” Reynolds said. He stood up and led the way through the squad room into a tiny cubicle in the back. A small pile of books lay on the table. I examined them briefly. They appeared to be translations of American romance novels, the type you can buy in any supermarket. The covers showed swarthy men with long swept-back hair and bulging biceps clasping half-undressed women with heaving breasts. The sorry collection of paperbacks fit with the picture Reynolds had painted of a middle-aged spinster leading a dull, lonely life. Not at all the kind of person who would have access to important historical documents.
I flicked idly through one of the books and came across a piece of paper acting as a bookmark. “Did you see this?” I asked Reynolds.
“What?”
“It's a ticket,” I said, examining it. “To the Holocaust Museum. Dated November 27—that's the day before she came to see me.”
“Yeah, we saw it. Hell of a way to spend one of your last days on this earth,” Novak said.
“She didn't know she was going to die,” I said. Glancing at the CDs on the desk, I saw Abba's greatest hits, Nat King Cole, Burt Bacharach favorites, Be My Love: The Definitive Mario Lanza Collection — sickly stuff — and one more entitled Der Winterreise, a collection of songs written by Franz Schubert. It jogged something in my mind.
“This one may be interesting,” I told Reynolds.
“How so?”
“She said something to me that day we met about being a music lover. It struck me at the time as kind of a strange remark, one of several strange remarks she made. To tell you the truth, I was half convinced she was a nutcase.”
“What's interesting about it?” he asked. “She said she liked music, and she has a bunch of CDs. Seems perfectly logical to me.”
“This last one here doesn't fit the pattern. Everything else she has is easy listening, and all her books are romances. This one is different.” I picked up the case to examine it. Der Winterreise—The Winter Journey— Roberto Delatrucha, baritone. The face of a man in late middle age stared out from the cover. He was partially obscured by shadows, his steel gray hair swept back, eyes half closed, large, prominent mouth framed by a thick gray beard and mustache.
“Can I take out the liner notes?” I asked. Reynolds nodded. I glanced through the material quickly. “We read it,” Reynolds said. “Nothing there.” Actually, there was a hint of something there. I kept my mouth shut. It really was a minor point, hardly worth mentioning.
“Can I keep this one?” I asked.
“Nope, it's evidence,” Novak said. “You can get one at a record store if you're that interested. Why?”
“I don't know. Probably nothing.”
When I got back to my car, I made a quick note in my legal pad before I forgot the details. Jennifer used to make fun of my need to take notes on everything that ever happened to me. She called it excessively anal. She was probably right, but I had been doing it for years, and I wasn't about to stop now. Anyway, she was gone, so what difference did it make?
I was tired and hungry, but the thought of going home to an empty apartment didn't thrill me. So I drove to the mall, found a record store, and headed for the section on Schubert. To my surprise, there were fifteen different versions of Winterreise, three of them by Roberto Delatrucha, including the one I had seen on Reynolds's desk. I hadn't listened to classical music for years, not since my mother's death, when the piano she had loved playing so much had fallen silent. Strains of Chopin's mazurkas still occasionally floated uninvited into my head on invisible wisps of air. But this music was unfamiliar to me.
I picked out four discs—Winterreise, a couple of other Schubert compositions, and one of Delatrucha singing Schumann, who, beside Chopin, was my mother's other favorite composer. I remembered practicing some of his easier piano pieces as a kid. Mama would sit down beside me on the piano bench, playing the bass while I played the treble. Then we'd switch. Sometimes we'd swap hands without switching places, leaning across each other so that our arms crossed over the keyboard. Sometimes she'd put her other arm around me as we played, and I snuggled against her, safe and warm and loved.
Our home had been full of music then. Mom always hummed to herself as she went about her daily tasks. When she left us, the music went with her. My father and I lived together in virtual silence for another five years, until I went off to college. When I became religious, it only increased the gulf between us. He rarely mentioned her name. I wanted to, but didn't. I quit piano lessons shortly after the funeral and never sat down at the instrument again. A year later, my father sold it. Sometimes, when I was alone in the house, I'd gaze down at where the piano legs had squashed little round indentations in the carpet. I'd lie down with my eyes closed and gently stroke the patch of rug worn bare by Mom's heel from working the sustaining pedal—almost the only sign that was left of her in the entire house.
I snapped out of my reverie. “Is this stuff popular?” I asked the man behind the counter as he rang up my purchases.
“Not mega popular, like The Four Seasons or Beethoven's Fifth,” he said. “We sell a few from time to time.”
“And this Delatrucha guy, is he well known?”
“I'd say. Next to Fischer-Dieskau, he's the king of lieder.”
Fischer who? I had no idea who or what he was talking about. I paid for the discs and left. They seemed innocent enough on the outside. Inside, they were emotional dynamite primed to blow up in my face.
As I wander around Washington, peering into the lobbies of government buildings, I keep asking myself how this nation fell so low. For there is no doubt, we are steeped in evil. The souls of 50 million unborn babies cry out for justice. Sometimes, I can hear them weeping.
Yesterday, I was at the Vietnam Memorial. I stood in the cold, reading the names—name after name after name—and while I was reading, I thought about Dusty Briggs and Stan Knight getting their heads blown off in that hellhole they call Iraq. One day, they'll be names on a monument too, if anyone cares enough to build one. They'll write on it, “They died for cheap gasoline.” What a joke! At least they didn't have to come home and watch what's happening here with the queers, kooks, and kikes running the country. I felt a m
igraine coming on and rushed back to my room before the torture hit.
The truth is, nothing was ever the same after the war. Everything led up to that one moment in the desert. We're pinned down, taking mortar fire from an Iraqi position about a half mile away, waiting for air support that's not coming. We've already lost Briggs and Knight, and if this goes on for much longer we're all fucked. There's only one person in the entire platoon who can take out a position at that range. One! The lieutenant calls me forward. “This one's for you, Shorty,” he says. I put my eye against the scope, watching and waiting, ignoring the shit flying around us, the explosions, the cussing and yelling, the radio crackling. It's just me and the scope. Everything's frozen. Then I see a flash of light in the distance. An Iraqi pops up his head for a micro-second. I press the trigger; his upper body explodes. Everything above his shoulders disappears, like on a video game. Our guys are cheering and whooping. “Way to go, Shorty, did you see that shot, did you fucking see that shot?” they're yelling. Nobody can believe it. I keep on shooting, even after they try to surrender. Until the lieutenant grabs me by the shoulder and tells me, “That's enough, son.” As if it's ever enough, once you get started.
As we roll through the desert, we see more Iraqis, crawling along on their hands and knees. And dogs chewing on the corpses. Once you see that, believe me, nothing's ever the same. Nothing.
4
During the time that I myself was at Belzec, the gas installation was still housed in a hut which was lined with sheet metal and which held about 100 people.
—TESTIMONY OF JOSEF OBERHAUSER
I THREW MY JACKET ON THE BED, grabbed a Diet Coke from the fridge, shoved some leftover ravioli into the microwave, and flicked the CD player on. I had moved into this apartment after Jennifer and I broke up. It seemed like a good idea at the time—move to a new neighborhood, put some space between me and the office, get involved with a different social set. The apartment was within walking distance of an Orthodox shul, or synagogue, vital for Shabbat, the Sabbath day, when I couldn't drive. I had two bedrooms, one of which nobody had ever used. The building itself was immaculate. It boasted a resplendent lobby with marble floors and wall-length mirrors so you couldn't tell whether you were coming or going. But the place never quite felt like home. My one major purchase had been a king-size bed, which seemed as big as a swimming pool when I lay in it alone. I drowned in it every night.