The Nazi Hunter

by Alan Elsner

  “What about the tag number I gave you from their truck?” I asked, ignoring the backhanded compliment.

  “We've identified the owner. His name is Burl Collins, thirty-two, lives near Elkins. We're gathering more information about him, but so far we haven't found either him or his truck.”

  “We shot out the tires to keep them from chasing us. They probably had to call a local garage to tow it.”

  “That's a good lead. We'll check it out. Did you notice anything else?”

  Lynn gave her a copy of the sketch of the bumper sticker.

  “This is excellent. It gives us something to go on. Very smart of you, copying it like that,” she said.

  “Thank my boyfriend,” Lynn said. “He writes down everything. Seems the habit is catching.”

  “One more thing,” I interjected. “The flatbed was piled high with sacks of something.”

  “Something?”

  “They were labeled ammonia and nitrous, I think.”

  Fabrizio grabbed my arm. “Ammonium nitrate. Are you sure?”

  “I think so. There were fifty or sixty sacks of it. Why?”

  “Jesus Christ,” she mumbled.

  “Why? What is it?”

  “Ammonium nitrate is a common fertilizer—“

  “So what? Maybe he's a farmer,” I interrupted.

  “—that can also easily be turned into an incredibly dangerous explosive. Add diesel fuel and a blasting cap, and you've got yourself an enormous bomb.”

  “Oh, my God,” Lynn whispered. “If not for the snow in the driveway, they could have driven that truck up the hill, parked it outside the house—and we'd all be dead.”

  “Or they may be planning to blow up something else, something much bigger,” Fabrizio said grimly. “We've been monitoring a lot of wild talk recently among these extremists about attacking the federal government. We know some of them have been experimenting with explosives out in the woods. Maybe it's moving beyond talk. We need to find these guys quickly before they can do real damage.”

  “Our plane is boarding in an hour,” I said. “We're off to do some fishing. Maybe we'll hook a big one.”

  “Catch one for me, and let me know when you get back,” Fabrizio said, without a trace of irony.

  Now is not the time to get angry. What happened, happened. It was a fucking fiasco, there's no other way to put it—but it wasn't a disaster. The mission continues. I am more determined than ever to go forward.

  Seeing the tires of Burl's truck shot out was a test of my leadership. We had to get the fertilizer and the truck out of there to a safe hiding place before the police arrived.

  We had a hell of a night of it. Burl brought out his tractor, and we loaded all the fertilizer on the flatbed. We managed to stow the sacks in a barn a few miles away. Then we hitched the tractor to Clint's truck, towed it out of there, and dumped it in the woods. Thank God for Burl. There's a man you can trust in a crisis. Clint spent the whole night moaning because someone fired a gun at him. He said he wanted out. I grabbed him by the collar and reminded him he took an oath of blood and he'd better stand by it. I also reminded him what happens to snitches. He stopped his moaning and bitching real quick.

  Next morning, early, I drove to Charleston to rent a U-Haul. The police or the FBI might search the area and find the fertilizer. We all need to disappear for a while, especially Burl. In a couple of weeks, the heat will die down, and we can resume again.

  I called a prison buddy and asked where we could hole up for a while. It took us the best part of six hours due south to get there. It's a good place. As long as I'm in the mountains, I feel safe. After the mission, I aim to head back to Knott County, where I know every cave, every abandoned mine shaft, every holler, every riverbed and stream. I can hide out for months, years if necessary. But it's not going to be that long. Once we've carried out the mission, the decent, patriotic, God-fearing majority of America will rise up. The days of this evil government are numbered. Someone must reclaim this nation before all our sacred freedoms are lost. I am about to strike a mighty blow for the Lord. The Scripture tells us, “And their dead bodies shall lie in the street of the great city, which spiritually is called Sodom.”

  I haven't forgotten about Cain, but I'm declaring operational silence until we embark on the mission. Nobody will hear another word until we strike. The time has come to speak with deeds, not words.

  18

  Because of the stench, the people in the surrounding areas left their homes.

  —TESTIMONY OF TADEUSZ ZALECKI

  THIS WAS POSSIBLY THE FIRST TIME I had ever enjoyed a grueling transatlantic flight. The plane felt safe and wonderfully normal. I ate the kosher meal, put away half a bottle of mediocre wine, snuggled with Lynn, and even watched the movie—an epic thriller in which the hero overcomes all the odds and saves the world, leaving a trail of bodies in his wake. The only thing I couldn't do was sleep. Lynn took out her contact lenses, curled up in her seat like a little kitten, and slept through the whole journey. Jacob also kept his word, closing his eyes just after takeoff, not opening them again until just before landing.

  Eight hours after leaving Washington, we emerged from passport control in Frankfurt. I never thought I'd see the day when the sight of German signs all around me and the sound of the German language over the public address system would be so comforting.

  George was waiting in the concourse. “You need to call Eric. He's frantic. He phoned me three times yesterday. What have you done?”

  “It's a long story. I'll call him later. It's only four in the morning in Washington now. Let's get out of here.” George led the way to a rented Mercedes and was soon navigating through the airport traffic.

  “Nice wheels, George. Where are we going?” I said.

  “First Würzburg. Then Munich. We've traced three potential witnesses who may be able to help us.”

  “Great.”

  “Maybe. It's not so simple. Only one of the three actually served at Belzec. It's not even certain he'll agree to be interviewed. There's a guy from the German Ministry of Justice with him right now, trying to persuade him to talk to you. He's been told he personally has nothing to fear. He's the one in Würzburg.”

  “I've never been there.”

  “You're in for a treat. Beautiful historic city. Baroque palace. Medieval streets. Totally rebuilt, of course, because it was so heavily damaged in the war.”

  “Sounds nice. Not that we'll be doing much sightseeing. I feel as if I haven't slept for a week. You said there were two other witnesses?”

  “They both live in Munich. They may or may not be of use. Probably long shots.”

  “What about witnesses in Ukraine?”

  “I gave the authorities a list of people who testified at war crimes trials about Belzec. Most of them are dead by now, but they found a couple who are still alive. Our embassy in Kiev is talking to the Ukrainian government about it. It's a sensitive political issue.”

  “Why so?” Jacob asked from the back seat.

  “They're fiercely protective of their independence and very defensive about the past, especially their role in the Holocaust.”

  “They ought to be,” I said.

  “On the other hand, they want good relations with the United States. That might help persuade them to help us,” George said as we hit the autobahn. He accelerated to 160 kilometers an hour, which I realized was 100 mph. I found myself shaking.

  “What's the matter?” George asked. I considered how much to tell him.

  “A lot has happened, including two attempts to murder us.”

  “You're kidding!”

  “No, George, I'm not kidding, and please slow down. I'd just as soon get there in one piece.”

  “Relax, Mark. This is Germany. Lots of people spend their whole lives dreaming about doing what we're doing right now—driving the autobahn at one hundred mph. It's fun, isn't it, Lynn?”

  “It's pretty cool,” she said from the back seat.

  Fast
as we were moving, other cars kept passing us and disappearing into the distance. “My only dream is to find a hotel bed,” I pleaded. “Please slow down, my nerves are totally shot.”

  George eased down to a more comfortable speed. As we drove, I told him about our adventures. The more he heard, the slower he drove, and the grimmer his expression became. A couple of hours later, we pulled into Würzburg, ready to confront our first witness from Belzec.

  The first witness was Hans-Peter Spengler, one of the few Germans still alive who was known to have served as a guard at Belzec. Now eighty, he had spent a couple of years in jail back in the 1960s for his part in killing half a million people. Next on the list was Manfred Rudigger, a onetime aide of Himmler, who had accompanied his boss on many of his travels. George thought he might have been with Himmler on his trips to the camps. But Rudigger was nearly ninety. The last of the three was Wolfgang Schütz, a retired piano teacher, who was listed as Franz Beck's accompanist in his debut recital in Berlin—the one interrupted by the air raid.

  “How did you track him down?” I asked in admiration.

  “Elementary, my dear Mark. I called the incredibly efficient German telephone operator.”

  Würzburg was indeed a medieval gem, with a massive, square castle on a hill overlooking the city and a wonderful medieval bridge lined with statues of bishops, spanning a fast-flowing river. We were met at our hotel by Gunther Scharpf, a sober-faced man representing the German Ministry of Justice who was trying to persuade our first witness to cooperate. He looked at me, unshaven and unkempt, with an almost imperceptible shudder.

  “Good news, Mr. Cain,” he said in an impeccable British accent as we shook hands. “I think I have convinced Herr Spengler to meet with you tomorrow in the forenoon. That will give you some time to, ah, to freshen up, as it were,” he said.

  “The forenoon,” I said. “How civilized.”

  We took separate rooms and said good night. As I headed for the elevator, George pulled me aside. “There's one more thing I need to ask you,” he said.

  I waited.

  “Not here,” he muttered, ushering me in the direction of the bar.“Privately.”

  “Can't it wait?”

  “John Howard called again this morning, before you arrived. He's raving about how Eric's gone too far this time on the Bruteitis case. He claims to have heard that some of those documents Janet brought back from Lithuania with his signature on them were doctored.” Eric had decided to try my scheme, and Howard was biting.

  “Who told him that?” I asked.

  “He wouldn't say. He just said it was a reliable source.”

  “And you believed him?”

  “I don't know what to believe, frankly.”

  “George, you've worked with Janet for quite a while now. Do you seriously believe she'd forge a signature on a historical document or allow someone else to do so?”

  He hesitated.“No, I guess not. But what should I tell John? He was almost gleeful. Plus, he keeps nagging me to tell him what I'm doing here.”

  “Don't tell him anything. If he chooses to believe absurd accusations, he deserves whatever he gets.”

  I was so tired I thought I'd sleep for thirty hours, but at three in the morning, I was sitting up in bed wide-eyed, flicking through TV channels showing pop videos, news, sports, and soft porn.

  A knock on the door. Lynn was wearing a hotel bathrobe way too big for her. “Can I come in?” she asked shyly, looking down at the carpet.

  “Sure,” I said, leading her into the room while hastily zapping off the TV.“I'm wide awake, too. It's the jet lag.”

  “That's not what's keeping me awake. It felt weird knowing you were in the next room, sleeping alone…”

  “As you see, I'm not sleeping.”

  “What I'm saying is, it felt wrong that we were apart when we could be together. If we could be together, that is.”

  “Lynn—”

  “No, let me finish. I need to know. Am I just a ham sandwich to you?”

  “Come again?”

  “Premarital sex is a no-no for you guys. It's a sin, just like eating a ham sandwich, only worse, probably.” She was tripping over her words, looking everywhere but at me. “I would never offer you a ham sandwich. I wouldn't do it. I wouldn't want you to eat it, even if it looked good and you were really, really hungry. And I know how you look at me. I've known for a long time… and I'm pretty much the same way with you, which is kind of driving me crazy—only I don't want you to eat the ham sandwich because you'd never forgive me afterward, and I couldn't bear it. Oh, God, did that come out as weird as I think it did? I always babble way too much when I'm really, really nervous.”

  Was she saying what I thought she was saying? I cleared my throat. “Actually, it's not like eating a ham sandwich,” I said.

  “What isn't?”

  “Sex. The Torah doesn't ban premarital sex. Not specifically. It's not a sin.” A pause. “Not as such.”

  “It's not?” she whispered, finally making eye contact.

  “Absolutely not.” Another pause. Suddenly, I was the nervous one. “Actually, it's an interesting issue. The Mishna says that if an act of intercourse is intended as a mode of betrothal, it's considered to be lawful.” Was I babbling?

  “That's in the Mishna?”

  “It is.”

  “What exactly is the Mishna?”

  “Part of the Talmud.”

  “Oh…”

  “And Nachmanides was also willing to overlook such behavior.”

  “He was?”

  “Yes.”

  “That's good. I never heard of him before, but he sounds important.”

  “He was. He was a famous medieval scholar. Rabbi Moshe ben Nachman.”

  “So Rabbi Moshe said it would be okay for us to sleep together?”

  “Yes.” He'd been dead for over seven hundred years, so I figured he wouldn't mind that much.

  She giggled. “So it's kosher, more like brisket than ham.”

  “But only if we love each other,” I said, anxious to ditch the meat metaphors. “I'm not into cheap sex. It has to mean something.”

  “I should have told you when you told me,” she said. A smile crept onto my face. “I've been thinking about it and kicking myself. I feel so bad. But you'll forgive me because you love me and I'm telling you now, which is better late than never.”

  “Tell me what?” I said.

  “I love you.”

  I reached for her, and she slid into my arms. My hand slipped through the opening of her bathrobe. Her skin felt impossibly soft. She shivered with pleasure. Her arms crept under my T-shirt, doing wonderful things. My heart was pounding like a jack hammer. “So you really do love me?” I whispered.

  “Isn't it obvious?’

  “Not to me.”

  “I felt like I was broadcasting it to the whole world.”

  “I want to hear you say it again.”

  She gulped, then looked straight at me with those wide eyes. “I love you. Totally.” She shrugged her shoulders, and the bathrobe fell away. I gently pushed her back on the bed, and she pulled me on top of her.

  “You're sure this is in the Mishna?” she panted.

  “Promise,” I said.

  We didn't sleep much for the rest of the night, but I had never felt more alive, more complete, more ecstatic, like the narrator in the millergirl song. At five in the morning, Lynn showered, and reality hit. There was a big day ahead. I needed to focus. I said my prayers quickly, covering my head with a washcloth to replace my lost kippah. My tefillin and prayer shawl had been in the cabin and were now presumably ashes. But that morning I prayed with more feeling than ever before, and all my prayers were hymns of praise.

  It was already 11:00 P.M. in Washington, and time to call Eric before it got even later.

  “What the hell have you been doing?” he thundered.

  “What do you mean?” I asked. “You knew I was coming here.”

  “I've had police from
West Virginia on the line all day, and the FBI as well.”

  “We spoke to the FBI before we left.”

  “What the hell went on there? It sounds like the Gunfight at the OK Corral.”

  “Something like that. But we're all safe. Lynn's here, too.”

  “This has gotten way out of hand. God, you're usually such a careful, legalistic son of a bitch. Now look at you. Do you know what you're doing?”

  “I might ask the same. Do you know what you're doing?”

  “What?”

  “That bullshit you planted with John Howard about the Bruteitis signatures being doctored.”

  He chuckled. “You heard about that.”

  “Howard called George. I assume you roped Janet into your little plot.”

  “So he swallowed the bait, the little pisher?”

  “Seems so.”

  “Good. Now that I have him hooked, I'll reel him in. But listen to me—I want you to be really careful over there. I mean it. You're on foreign territory now. The last thing we need is a diplomatic incident. By the way, our embassy in Kiev confirms they have a couple of Ukrainians for you to interview next week.”

  “I'll fly there as soon as we're done here.”

  “Don't waste any time. It's running short.”

  When we appeared in the lobby, our friend from the ministry looked glum. “I'm afraid there's a slight hitch,” he said. “I just received a phone call from Herr Spengler. It appears he has changed his mind.”

  “Can't you get him to change it back?” I asked.

  “He is a man of fairly strong impulses. However, I shall try.”

  We toured the Baroque palace while waiting to hear Spengler's decision. I gazed without interest at rococo ceilings and frescoes of plump cherubs tickling the breasts of plump women. My mind wandered. When we returned to the hotel, the answer was still no.

  “I'm afraid he is adamant,” said Scharpf. “All my efforts to move him failed.”

  “What's his problem?” George asked.

  “He says, and this I believe is entirely understandable, that he doesn't want to reawaken painful memories.”