by By Jon Land
Lot 461 should have been the crowning achievement of his life. His final atonement for the secret he had kept these many years. Because of Hessler Industries, millions upon millions would be spared endless suffering. Children would not lose parents to insidious diseases that struck cruelly and randomly, nor would parents lose children. Cancer, AIDS, ALS ... The list went on and on. The potential of Lot 461 was unlimited.
For this, though, Paul did not feel worthy of accepting credit. How could he when he had ordered the entire project cancelled? No, the credit lay with his son Ari who had not lived to claim or enjoy it.
Paul thought he finally understood the grand scheme of it all. He was just beginning to wonder if he had done enough, atoned enough, to waive the final punishment for his sins when the gunman appeared outside of Ben-Gurion Airport.
Paul rested his shoulders against the rough stone wall and thought of the expense and labor that had gone into reconstructing this castle. It was too bad lives couldn’t be remade as easily. Taken apart and put back together, their original magnificence restored.
The wind whistled through the castle walls, sounding like a mournful spirit. Before him the ancient chimney seemed to rattle. Paul Hessler coughed dust from his mouth and lifted himself up.
He knew the time was coming when he must tell the world his tale, tell it before the assassins Franklin Russett feared were coming found him at last. But right now he just wanted to be gone from this place that held the deepest of his secrets.
The bricks lining the narrow staircase that spiralled downward felt cold and brittle to the touch, the mortar binding them gray with age. The winding steps were cracked and blackened in the worn places where most feet had fallen. Hessler descended them carefully, leaving his memories behind, one hand propped against the wall to keep from falling.
But the real fall, he knew, was yet to come and there was nothing he could do to stop it.
* * * *
* * * *
CHAPTER 68
W
ell after midnight, Ben was still behind his desk at police headquarters in Jericho’s Municipal Center, mulling over his next move. He needed access to the three companies in Israel who made up the remainder of his suspects. And for that he needed help.
He needed Danielle.
But she wasn’t answering her cell phone. Could be the Israelis were punitively jamming the Palestinian transmission towers, as they had been apt to do lately. He hoped that was the case because he didn’t want to consider the alternative: that something had happened to Danielle in Germany where she’d gone on the trail of murdered Holocaust survivors. Ben knew she was terribly frightened by the possibility her father was involved in whatever Asher Bain had uncovered. He had advised her not to go, but Danielle wasn’t going to be denied, even though she was in no condition right now to pursue anything.
Deeply worried about her, he kept dialing her number even after it became clear there would be no response and began to blame himself for letting her leave in the first place.
Ben finally opened a folder lying on the edge of his desk. Inside were the field reports from the officers he had assigned to canvass Shahir Falaya’s neighborhood on the chance someone might have seen the person who removed the hard drive from his computer. Ben expected nothing as he began to read the reports, surprised then to see that three witness reported seeing the same man lurking about the day the boy had died. The man must have made little effort to disguise his presence, since their descriptions matched almost perfectly.
Wait, he knew this man!
Ben read the descriptions again, letting them paint a picture in his head. His officers had asked the witnesses all the right prodding questions. He had trained them better than he thought and as a result the person spotted near the Falaya home was clear in his mind.
It didn’t seem possible! Of all the people...
Ben thought quickly of how to proceed from here. Al-Asi, he needed to speak to Colonel al-Asi!
“Inspector Kama!,” a voice called from the doorway, startling him.
Ben looked up to see a pair of well-dressed men staring in at him. He had seen them before somewhere, but couldn’t place it.
“We are sorry to disturb you, Inspector,” the speaker continued, “but Colonel al-Asi wishes to see you.”
Al-Asi’s men ... Is that where Ben recalled them from? “I tried to reach him before. There was no answer. Where is he?”
“We are not permitted to say. There have been some ... problems this evening.”
“Problems?”
“Please, Inspector, if you’ll just accompany us we have a car outside. The colonel is waiting:”
Ben’s gaze fell briefly on his phone. “Why didn’t he call?”
“As I said, it has been a difficult night. I’m sure the colonel will explain everything once you are with him.”
“And the phones,” the second man added, “they cannot be trusted.”
That’s when Ben realized where he had seen them before. Five days ago, in the soccer stadium.
The terrorist Mahmoud Fasil’s bodyguards, who had escaped in the panic!
He doubted that they recognized him; his glance had been fleeting and their eyes had never been directed his way.
“I can’t leave now. I’m sorry,” Ben said.
“We have our orders, Inspector. The colonel was very clear.”
“This is for your own safety,” the second one added.
“Why don’t we contact the colonel, and I can explain everything to him?”
“I’m afraid that’s impossible.”
Ben thought of the pistol bolstered on his hip. The two men in the doorway seemed on the verge of action. If they moved, for him or their guns, he would have no choice but to go for his pistol.
“Ah, there you are, Inspector,” a familiar voice said from the hallway, just behind the two men who claimed they had been sent by Colonel al-Asi. “Excuse me, please.”
The two men separated sheepishly to allow Fawzi Wallid, acting mayor of the district of Jericho, to enter the office flanked by two pairs of uniformed Palestinian policemen.
“I’m sorry to be so late, Inspector,” Ben’s former captain told him. “Come, we must be going now if we are to make the meeting with the president.” Wallid turned back to the two men clinging to the doorway. “Arafat works best in the late hours, schedules most of his meetings then when he can work without interruption.”
The two men in the doorway could do nothing but nod.
Ben rose and made sure his shirt was tucked in.
“You look fine, Inspector,” Wallid told him. “Our president does not stand on ceremony. Now,” he continued to the two men who had backed slightly off, “if you gentlemen don’t mind ...”
* * * *
T
he colonel asked me to personally watch over you, Inspector,” Wallid explained when they were outside, waiting for the two imposters to drive off before resuming the conversation. A few seconds after the imposters’ van left, a pair of cars slid out of their parking spots in subtle pursuit. “He had concerns.”
“I don’t recall you and al-Asi being on such good terms, sidi.”
“In my capacity as chief of police, he was someone to be feared. As acting mayor, he is someone to be cherished.”
“Where is the colonel?”
“Waiting for you. My men and I are to escort you there immediately.”
“He’s all right, then. His family, too.”
“For now, Inspector,” Wallid said, grasping Ben’s arm the way an old friend might. “You knew those men, didn’t you?”
“So did you, sidi.”
“Me? How?”
“From the soccer stadium: They were Fasil’s bodyguards.”
“Incredible!”
“Not incredible at all. You see, Mahmoud Fasil was the man who stole the hard drive from the murdered Falaya boy’s computer.”
* * * *
CHAPTER 69
W
; eiss wasright: PaulHessler didkill my father,” was the last thing Hans Mundt said to Danielle during the five hundred mile drive to Lodz, Poland. They averaged ninety miles per hour in the diesel Mercedes Mundt was driving and would have reached their destination much sooner had it not been for several stops mandated by Danielle’s queasy stomach. Fresh air and snacks provided short-lived relief but only the complete rest she craved would make her feel better. The brief naps she snatched on the trip provided meager respite at best, even made her feel worse.
It was late morning by the time they finally reached Lodz. The city, Poland’s second largest, remained industrial in character, not tremendously changed since the fall of communism. All of its buildings were coated in soot and grime, and the horizon was dominated by tall, smoking chimneys growing out of red-brick factories. Lodz, dark and gray, seemed forever trapped in a past from which it did not know how to escape.
Mundt bypassed the center of the city and continued north, clearly repeating a route he had taken many times before. Danielle knew the labor camp from which Paul Hessler had escaped in late 1944 was actually located well outside of Lodz proper, on the road to Lecyca to the north. This camp and two others in the area had culled their workers from the ranks of the Lodz ghetto.
Danielle assumed the labor camp would be long gone by now, especially after they passed the last of the boarded-up relics of textile mills on the side of the road. But Mundt continued on toward the marshes and forest of Lecyca along the Bzura River. Much to Danielle’s surprise, they stopped before a large decrepit building, situated all by itself in a clearing.
Mundt turned toward Danielle stiffly and spoke at last. “This is what’s left of the Lodz labor camp, the most well known of the three the Nazis operated in this region. It was a shoe factory in the years before the war. The Nazis appropriated it to make boots.”
Mechanically, Mundt opened the driver’s door and stepped out. Danielle followed but kept her distance.
“Nearly two thousand eight hundred Jews worked this factory between the years 1942 and 1944 when the camp was closed,” Mundt continued. “They came by transport, mostly from the Lodz ghetto and were easily replaceable. Of these, two thousand five hundred died of starvation, disease, or execution. One hundred managed to escape over the years and two hundred more survived the chaos of the final termination orders that were never fully carried out. Nor was the mandated destruction of the camp, since Haupsturmfuehrer Weiss fled before carrying out his last instructions.”
As they approached, the decaying condition of the old factory was even more obvious. Portions of the roof had collapsed. Not a window remained unbroken and huge sections of the walls had buckled, seemingly a stiff breeze away from crumbling altogether. It was damp and cold, and Danielle shivered in the dank mist that enveloped her. She followed Mundt through the mist, moving closer to the factory. The breeze carried scents of rotting wood and sour ground.
Mundt stopped before a memorial plaque made of chiselled granite that had been cemented into the ground a hundred feet from the factory’s boarded up and chained entrance.
“The names of those buried in mass graves on the camp grounds,” Mundt explained. “The Polish government will not destroy this place, but neither do they find it worthy of upkeep. They just left it here to rot. Fittingly, I suppose.”
Mundt ran his hands along the engraved impressions of names on the plaque.
“You won’t find my father’s name here, Pakad Barnea. Just those of the laborers who died here, both Jewish and otherwise. You’ll notice that Paul Hessler’s name is not to be found either.”
“Because he escaped after killing your father.”
Mundt responded without turning toward her. “This building holds many secrets, Barnea,” he said noncommittally, “one of which I am going to share with you now.”
But they moved no farther toward the building. Instead Mundt turned and started slowly off toward the dank woods with Danielle following close behind. A few hundred yards in, they stopped over a rectangular hole that was unmistakably a grave.
“This is where my father was buried. I finally found the body three weeks ago, the bones still covered by an SS greatcoat. Frayed and tattered, but the insignias still in place somehow. It made me nauseous.”
“You never knew your father.”
“I was born after he left for the war.”
“In the nursing home Gunthar Weiss told me your father befriended Hessler. Saved his life on at least two occasions and was responsible for keeping Hessler alive.”
“All true. Paul Hessler came here a frail, frightened boy of sixteen following the deaths of his parents in the Lodz ghetto. He was sent here to a different kind of death, a different kind of hell. And if it hadn’t been for my father, he would undoubtedly have found it.”
Danielle lowered her voice. Her lips were dry and cracked from the wind. “You can’t get those years back. You can’t come to know your father this way.”
“No?”
“You’ve turned a lifelong obsession into a midlife crisis. You don’t have any children of your own, do you?”
“Something we have in common, Pakad Barnea.”
“The difference being you never will. You’ve come to realize that but can’t accept it. That’s why we’re here. That’s what all this has been about.”
“Who are you to tell me what all this is about?”
“Hessler killed your father—Karl Mundt—in order to escape, and now that you’ve confirmed that, you’re going to kill Hessler.”
Mundt’s expression became almost benign. “Killing Paul Hessler is not my intention at all.”
Danielle felt something like a rope tugging her backwards. “Then why did you send Sergeant Phipps, the old man, to Ben-Gurion Airport last week?”
Mundt shook his head. “I didn’t. He wasn’t sent by me.”
“You deny having any contact with Phipps?”
“No. I spoke to him: to help me fill in some of the final missing details. About finding Paul Hessler near death in the woods weeks after his escape.”
“And what did you tell him?”
“Nothing. But he must have figured it out for himself.”
“What did he figure out for himself?” Danielle asked, exasperated.
Mundt’s stonelike expression wavered ever so slightly. “The man he rescued wasn’t Paul Hessler. It was Karl Mundt. My father.”
* * * *
CHAPTER 70
I
want this mess cleaned up. Is that clear?”
Israeli foreign minister David Turkanis made no effort to disguise his anger directed at the former head of Israel’s Mossad, Abraham Vorsky.
“This is not my mess, Minister,” Vorsky said, trying to sound respectful. “It belongs to history.”
Turkanis snorted in disgust. He started to shake his head, then simply stiffened and sneered. “You blame these murders on history?’
“Justice often takes its time.”
Turkanis shook his head, kicked the sand of the Negev Desert about, to vent his anger. They had met here at Turkanis’s request because he needed to be present at Israel’s Air Defense Command headquarters for further tests on the Arrow missile defense system being conducted at midnight. But the location also afforded a degree of privacy usually not possible in Israel.
“Justice,” Turkanis repeated, fighting to keep his voice down. “If what you say is true, and I’m not at all convinced it was, you should have passed the information along through the proper channels.”
“That is not the way such things are done.”
“In your day, perhaps,” Turkanis snapped, shaking his head in dismay. “Not anymore. My God, where have you been? Don’t you realize that Israel no longer operates in a vacuum? Our actions have consequences, and yours have placed this government in an extremely uncomfortable, not to say dangerous, position.”
“If all had gone according to plan, you would never have found out.”
“What do you
think this is, Vorsky, 1967? 1973 perhaps?”
“You would be wise to remember those times, Minister.”
“And you would be wise to remember the lessons learned from them. Did you think the late Captain Bain’s conclusions would not reach us? How could you believe we would not figure out who was behind the murders of these three old men?”