“This is marvelous,” Rudolph said.
“This is a very personal project, Herr Rudolph. I have no plans to sell or barter for it.” He actually had big plans for the car, and they included Herr Rudolph. What he needed from the man would cost a fortune in black market currency, and what better way to reel him in and increase the price than by feigning a deep reluctance to sell.
“Who can afford personal projects?” Rudolph countered. “And what can you do with it, anyway? Germans are not allowed to drive.”
Lang shrugged. “It’s not nearly ready to be driven yet, Herr Rudolph.”
Rudolph shook his index finger at him. “For your own good, I will take this off your hands. You’ll be paid very well, I assure you.”
Rudolph began walking away. Lang chased after him.
“Herr Rudolph, I don’t want to sell it.”
“I won’t cheat you. And the most important thing is, neither will I steal it. Think of a price, and we can negotiate when it’s ready. Good day to you, Herr Lang.”
Lang stood outside the double doors, watching Rudolph and his men disappear down the driveway and out of sight. Without the distraction of the outside world, the voices within rose to a shrill hiss. Behind him, in the dark interior, he could feel a shadowy presence. The dread of what he must do made his body let out a great shudder. He’d hoped that by salvaging in the ruins that morning and finding a project to tinker with, the distraction would calm him, but now that he stood near the large doors that stood open like a black maw, he realized that he must come to grips with the inevitable.
Still facing outward, he pulled the double doors closed and locked them with the sliding bolts. He lit a kerosene lantern, closed the single door, and turned to face the center of the room. The lantern threw exaggerated shadows on the walls. The odor of motor oil and the vapors of old fires and mildew overwhelmed the fresh air. And just below those fumes, the scent of blood and death. Or was that his imagination?
In the center of the room, he pulled a chain. The clank of the chain on the geared pulley seemed deafening in the enclosed space. A two-by-four-foot rectangle slab of concrete flooring rose up on one side, revealing steps that led downward to a bomb shelter the shoe factory mechanics had constructed during the war for themselves and the factory executives.
He hesitated at the top of the steps. The lantern light pierced only a few yards of the darkness below. After the other sacrifices his elation had been so great that the task before him served as another phase of the celebration for a well-performed beatification. But this time he had defied the urgings to select a child for sacrifice. He had hastily chosen an adult for beatification to appease the voices, but the ceremony had become an ordeal. Instead of elation, anguish came. The screams, the blood, the horror had given him no pleasure.
Lang reassumed his true identity—Dr. Ernst Ramek—as he descended the stairs. His legs seemed drained of blood, and his knees threatened to buckle. With each step down, the memories, the visions, the sounds flooded back, immersing him in the very hell he desired to escape. Each descending footfall brought with it a sense memory of those he had taken into the medical research blockhouse at Mauthausen concentration camp, its dark hallway lined with doors, and behind the doors, victims of experimentation, mutilated, sliced open, infected, gangrenous. . . . And none allowed medication to relieve the pain. Every day to walk that hallway and listen to the moans, the pleadings for mercy, the screams of those driven insane by relentless terror and agony. At the end of that hallway—the vision very clear now—lay the operating room, where he’d been compelled to go each day to assist with mutilation done in the name of science.
He had made a pact with evil to save his own skin. What man would say no? A question he had often used to justify those abominations over certain and cruel death. As madness replaced abject horror, the victims’ suffering, their blood, their writhing bodies, their pleading for mercy elicited a kind of carnal passion. Each “procedure” brought lust then despair, excitation then depression in equal quantities.
His feet touched the former bomb shelter’s floor, thirty feet underground. A short hallway led to a steel door. He unlocked it and entered a large, square room with an operating table in its center. Pools of black coagulated blood covered the table. Bloodied rags lay scattered around. An open aluminum vat held blood collected from the hole at the foot of the slightly tilted table.
The sights induced another flashback: a prisoner patient writhing on the operating table as one of the doctors sliced through the torso and dug out the stomach. A victim he’d helped select, strapped down to the table, and told lies that no harm would come, that the doctor simply wanted to examine her. For research, you understand? But the victims suspected the fate awaiting them in the medical blockhouse. They’d heard the rumors, and sometimes the screams. They knew that very few “rabbits,” as the Nazi doctors liked to call their subjects, who entered that blockhouse were ever seen again.
Dr. Ramek fell against the wall and covered his eyes. Please stop.
He was being punished. All his efforts, all his success could be repudiated. He must obey the urges. He must suffer along with the Chosen One. Only then would the beatification ceremony expunge his sins. He must embrace the anguish, for only then would he be lifted up among the venerated in heaven.
Resolve gave him strength. Excitement and anticipation returned. Past images no longer assaulted him, and his mind cleared. He began to hum an obscure tune from his childhood, as he went about making the room pristine again, preparing for the true and perhaps final sacrifice.
THIRTY
Mason had decided to walk despite the freezing rain that had started with nightfall. The damp cold helped revive him after the tedious yet macabre task of wading through endless written testimonials of ex–concentration camp inmates. As the afternoon had worn on, his outrage at the grisly details dulled to numb detachment. Single acts of unimaginable cruelty, which had horrified him at the beginning, began to elicit as much reaction as a weather report. How many more testimonies of savagery would it take before he was so dulled by the suffering that he lost his compassion altogether, the empathy slipping away, grain by grain?
He stopped across the street from Laura’s hotel and lit a cigarette, took a puff, then decided he didn’t want it. He tossed it to the pavement, crossed the street, and entered the hotel. The lobby exuded old-world charm: walls of carved wood framing painted Bavarian pastoral scenes, oak-beamed ceilings, and silk-upholstered furniture. Candles provided most of the light, though a few lightbulbs glowed dimly at strategic places, probably powered by an army-supplied generator. Two German hotel employees were in the midst of decorating a Christmas tree in one corner.
Mason continued past the spiral staircase and a bay of elevators and traversed a short hallway that led to the restaurant entrance and the hotel’s bar. Plush but tattered sofas and low tables filled the lounge, with a long bar at the far end. Two large fissures spanned the marble floor, the only testament to the violence of the bombs exploding all around the hotel.
He saw Laura sitting at one of the tables. She laughed along with a group of companions: three women and two men in civvies and two men in uniform.
Mason removed his hat, but remained where he was. He hoped to attract Laura’s attention from a distance. Laura spotted him. She excused herself and joined him.
“I hate to break up your little shindig,” Mason said.
“It’s fine. My friends and I were just having a little farewell party.” She took him by the arm. “I’d introduce you, but four of them are reporters. You’d be like a minnow with the sharks.” She led him to a sofa tucked away in a corner. “Did you eat? I’m sure they’re still serving.”
“I’ll order a sandwich or something. Whose farewell party?”
Laura sat and patted the cushion next to her. “I’ll give you the whole scoop when you sit down.”
A
waiter arrived when Mason sat. Laura ordered a martini. Mason ordered a ham sandwich and a double whiskey.
“I bet you had a bad day,” Laura said.
“You don’t know the half of it.”
“I want to know all of it.”
“You first.”
Laura hesitated then shook her head. “Maybe we’ll wait for your whiskey.”
“Ah. Ply me with alcohol before giving me the news.”
“Something like that.”
The waiter brought the drinks and promised to bring the sandwich in a few minutes. Mason and Laura clinked glasses.
“Here’s to new horizons,” Mason said and held up his whiskey. “You’re going to have one juicy story by the time this case is finished. But you might have to convince someone else to tell the rest. Your boyfriend, Jenkins, has given me one week to solve it or I’m out.”
“He’s not my boyfriend. We called it quits a few days—” She stopped. “What do you mean, you’ve only got a week?”
Mason told her about the meeting with the brass that afternoon, then about how everyone was stunned and distressed over Albrecht’s suicide and the cathedral murder scene. “Now the entire army brass is breathing down my neck. They’ve given me one week. And for some goddamned reason, I fought to stay on this investigation. I don’t know why. So we can go through the motions of solving this case while we wait for the next victim.”
“If they boot you off, that’s one thing. There’s nothing you can do about that. But you need to give it everything you’ve got. Then, if you don’t solve it, you can walk away knowing that you did all that was humanly possible. Otherwise, you’re going to carry a big weight around on your shoulders.”
They both fell quiet when the waiter came back with the sandwich. Laura snagged one of his limp fries. “The German cook hasn’t mastered the art of french fries yet. Cooks them like they do all their potatoes.”
Mason took a bite of his sandwich. “Let’s talk about you. Why did you break up with the general?”
“Maybe it’s time I really got to know the lowly doughboy.”
“You’ll enjoy the novelty . . . for a while.”
Laura picked up a french fry and threw it at him. “That’s just a form of conceit. It doesn’t suit you.”
“A cop and a reporter . . .” Mason rubbed his chin and feigned a thoughtful pause. “Well, they said man would never fly.”
Mason saw her expression change in a split second from confident to vulnerable.
“Laura, what is it?”
Laura tried to smile at him, but it turned lopsided. “I’m leaving in a few days.”
Mason was aware of Laura probing him with those intense blue eyes, but he’d lost track of what his face was doing. He felt like he’d been punched in the stomach. “Leaving for where?”
“Berlin, first.”
“For good?”
Laura shrugged her shoulders. “I don’t know. The story I told you about when we first met—getting an angle on the black market?” When Mason nodded, she continued. “I’ve been doing a whole piece on it, and I’ve made a few contacts—German and American—who run sizable operations.”
“Laura, that’s dangerous work.”
“I’ve been in dangerous situations before. I can handle myself.”
“Haven’t you had enough of people shooting at you? Not enough thrills for one lifetime? No, sir, not you. You can’t stand to be away from it.”
“Look who’s talking.”
Mason had no argument against that, and they fell into silence for a moment.
Finally Laura said, “One of my contacts has connections with a major ring that operates out of Berlin. Those people have their hands on everything. Their principal line of supply is a route that comes up from Italy into Austria, through a small town called Garmisch-Partenkirchen, into Munich, and on to Berlin. My contact is going to help me get in touch with someone in Berlin.”
“Are you going to share whatever you find out with the police?”
“A reporter is only as good as her confidential sources.”
Mason was about to say something, but Laura went on. “Look, some of the stuff they’re into is despicable, but it’s mostly coal, fuel oil, food—”
“Drugs.”
“No doubt. But I promise that if I learn of anything that harms innocent people, and if I’ve got hard evidence, then I will contact the police.”
“When you do that, make sure you’re far away.”
Laura nodded and looked away for a moment. “That’s why I’m not sure when, or if, I’ll be back.”
“I wish you’d leave this kind of thing to the police.”
“You said it: Dangerous assignments are my way of thumbing my nose at my parents.”
“I’m being serious this time. You’ve got to be careful.”
A smile spread across Laura’s face. She leaned over and kissed him. To Mason, the room seemed to disappear. Nothing else existed, but only for a moment.
Laura broke the kiss and fished for something in her purse. “I won’t be leaving for four or five days.” She laid whatever it was on the table and slid it over while covering it with her hand. “Why don’t we make the most of it?” She stood and walked away.
Mason watched her go then looked down. Laura had left a note with her room number.
A few minutes later, Mason entered Laura’s room. The only light came from the fireplace. Laura stood up from the bed and met him halfway across the room. Mason lifted her chin and kissed her hard. Their lips never parted as they pulled off their clothes, gently at first, then frantically as if they couldn’t get them off fast enough. They stood next to the fire, their hands caressing and probing. With Mason’s passion came the bliss of forgetting. Only her body, her moans of pleasure mattered. He grabbed the quilt off the bed even as they embraced. He wrapped them both and lowered to the floor. While making love, he felt an intense relief, precious moments when nothing pressed on his mind and his body felt weightless. For a few moments, he could push aside thoughts about how it would all flood back again.
The ocean always falls away before the tidal wave roars ashore.
THIRTY-ONE
Mason sat at the phone struggling to hear the War Crimes Commission lawyer over the din of the operations room. He turned in his chair and waved for the others to tone it down, but no one noticed. The operations room had blossomed: They now had five phones and four rows of tables with his team of investigators and ten army clerks answering the constantly ringing phones or bustling around the tables sorting through piles of documents. The extra phones, tables, and clerks were there thanks to Wolski’s skills at “procurement.” Mason had no intention of asking Wolski how he had pulled it off, but he suspected that at least half of the procurement had been misappropriated from Colonel Walton’s provisions and staff.
“What was that, sir?” Mason said into the phone. He listened. “I know the Russians have agreed to participate in the Nuremberg trials. I simply want you to mention to Herta Oberheuser’s lawyer that a combined Polish-Russian tribunal is petitioning for the Ravensbrück prisoners to appear in a separate trial in Poland because of atrocities perpetrated on Polish women.”
Mason noticed Wolski hovering next to him and he held up his hand, telling him to wait. “That’s correct. It’s a ruse to get her to talk. I’m sure she’s holding back information we need for our murder case. . . . Yes, you’ve heard about our case, then. So you understand the urgency. The Dachau camp commander told me she’s getting panicky about the trial, and I’m counting on this disinformation to push her over the edge and cooperate with us.” He listened. “Good. I appreciate this, sir.” Mason hung up the phone and turned to Wolski. “They’ve agreed to do it.”
“Hopefully we can piggyback her with Dr. Blazek tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow? When did you hear this?”
“Colonel Walton just called to say that JAG is getting Blazek up here to visually identify Mauthausen guards and provide an oral statement. He arrives tomorrow at Dachau. They were going to bring him up here anyway, but they moved up the date for us.”
“That’s good news. We can go at both of them about that German prisoner doctor, the Healing Angel. That name has popped up a couple of times with a description of being tall and broad shouldered.”
Cole came up to the table and laid out a short stack of files. “This is what we’ve got so far on the night passes for German civilians. It’s all the potentials we’ve been able to match up from identity papers. Of these forty, fifteen have been reported by checkpoint MPs as using wagons. Freight mostly. Some for salvage operations.”
“Check them out right away.”
“It’s just me, sir. Mancini had to team up with Timmers and MacMillan to help check out the hundreds of sightings we’ve been getting from citizens.”
“Not one of those sightings has amounted to anything so far,” Wolski said.
“We can’t ignore them,” Mason said. He split the stack and handed a portion to Cole. “Team up with one of our MPs. You take half and we’ll take half.”
Mason stood and said to Wolski, “Let’s go.”
“You know this is a long shot.”
“O ye of little faith.”
• • •
Wolski parked the jeep on a short street lined with damaged warehouses and factories. In front of them stood an arched brick entrance with large wooden doors. Rising above the enclosure, they could see the ragged remnants of a factory.
“You sure you got the address right?” Mason asked.
Wolski checked his notepad. “That’s what it says right here. Schwanthaler shoe factory.”
They both climbed out of the jeep and approached the closed doors. Mason banged on the doors with his fist.
“Maybe it’s a bogus address,” Wolski said.
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