The Apocalypse Watch

  “So you decided to make up for what he never completed, is that it, Herr Kroeger?”

  “You have no right to interrogate me this way!” screamed the surgeon, sitting up straight, his eyes wet and red. “All men, even enemies, have the privacy of their lives!”

  “And I respect that,” said Witkowski, his posture straight in the chair. “But you’re an exception, Doctor, because you’re too intelligent, too educated to buy the bilge you’ve been sold, and are now selling. Tell me, do you respect the sanctity of life outside of the womb?”

  “Naturally. Breathing life is life.”

  “Including Jews, Gypsies, the disabled and mentally impaired, along with homosexuals of either gender?”

  “Those are political decisions, beyond the realm of the medical profession.”

  “Doctor, you are one son of a bitch. But I’ll tell you something. I may just bring you to the Latham you’re after, if only to watch him listen to you, then spit in your face.… ‘Political decisions?’ You make me sick.”

  Wesley Sorenson stared out his corner office window in Washington, absently noting the morning traffic congestion in the street below. The scene resembled a fish tank maze filled with insects, all trying to reach the next horizontal tube, only to find themselves in yet another tube, leading to still another, none with a finish line. It was a visual metaphor for his thoughts, concluded the director of Consular Operations, swinging his chair around, facing the separate piles of notes on his desk, notes that would be shredded and burned before he left the office at the end of the day. The strands of information were coming in too fast, clogging the alleyways of his mind, each revelation seemingly no less explosive than the one preceding it. The two Germans in custody in Fairfax had implicated the Vice President of the United States and the Speaker of the House in the spreading hunt for neo-Nazis, with the promise of additional names to follow; the CIA was compromised in its upper levels (how many more agencies were so infected?); a Defense Department communications laboratory had had an entire year’s research deleted from its computers by a neo who had disappeared on a Lufthansa flight to Munich; senators, congressmen, powerful businessmen, even newscasters, had been tainted with the Nazi brush with no substantive evidence whatsoever, the allegations dismissed until an influential member of Britain’s Foreign Office had been caught, apparently giving the names of other influential figures in the U.K.’s government hierarchy. Finally, Claude Moreau was clean, but the U.S. Embassy in Paris was not—good God, it was far from it if the latest information was accurate! Ambassador Courtland’s wife?

  It was a maelstrom of charges and countercharges, of insidious implications furiously denied, a battleground where blood would be spilled, the innocent mortally wounded, the guilty vanishing from the scene. It was as if the insanity of the crazed McCarthy period had been fused with the Nazi madness of the late thirties, the marching Bunds everywhere, all in lockstep with demonic leaders whose screaming exhortations brought the intellectually unwashed to their feet, their fears and their hatreds—frequently one and the same—finding volcanic outlets for their own inadequacies. The sickness of fanaticism was again spreading across the world; where would it end, if ever?

  What concerned Sorenson at the moment, however—concerned, hell, shocked him—was the information, followed by a faxed background check, on Courtland’s second wife, Janine Clunes. On the surface it would appear inconceivable; he had said as much to Drew Latham over their secure phones only minutes before.

  “I can’t believe it!”

  “That’s what Witkowski said until he read the check from Chicago. Then he said something else, only he kind of whispered it. You could barely hear him but the words were clear. ‘She’s a Sonnenkind.’ ”

  “Do you know what that means, Drew?”

  “Karin filled me in. It’s wild, Wes, and it could never fly. Infants, kids, sent all over the place—”

  “You left out a couple of items,” interrupted Sorenson. “Selected kids, pure Aryan blood, parents with combined IQ’s over two hundred seventy, none less.”

  “You know about it?”

  “They were called the products of the Lebensborn. SS officers impregnating blond-haired, blue-eyed northern European women, those closest to or across the Scandinavian borders whenever possible.”

  “That’s nuts!”

  “That was Heinrich Himmler. It was his concept.”

  “It happened?”

  “Not according to every intelligence investigation after the war. The conclusion was that the Lebensborn scheme was abandoned, due to the difficulty of transport and the time it took for medical evaluations.”

  “Witkowski doesn’t believe it was abandoned.”

  Silence. Then Sorenson spoke. “I was convinced it was,” he said. “Now I’m not so sure.”

  “What do you want us to do—me to do?”

  “Keep cold and keep silent. If the neos know Kroeger’s alive, they’ll break everyone’s balls to find him. If you’ve lucked out, nobody on our side will be killed.”

  “That’s pretty iciclelike, Wes.”

  “ ‘Remembrance of things past,’ if you’ll forgive the literary bastardization,” said Sorenson. “Send a signal out to the Antinayous. Tell them you’ve got the prize.”

  “For Christ’s sake, why?”

  “Because at this point I don’t trust anybody, and I’m covering all our flanks. Do as I say. Call me back in an hour, or less, as things develop.”

  Things, however, had developed for the veteran intelligence officer, now the director of Consular Operations. No one had ever found a Sonnenkind. Even those once suspected were totally, angrily, deemed innocent children because of official papers and the perfectly Americanized, loving couples who took in the bereft orphans. But now, courts notwithstanding, a possible Sonnenkind had surfaced! A grown-up woman, once a child of Nazi Germany, now a highly desirable, accomplished academician who had snared a high-level officer of the State Department. It was a Sonnenkinder agenda if one ever existed.

  Sorenson picked up his phone and touched the numbers for the private phone of the director of the FBI, a decent man of whom Knox Talbot had said, “He’s okay.”

  “Yes?”

  “It’s Sorenson over at Cons-Op, am I disturbing you?”

  “On this line, hell no. What can I do for you?”

  “I’ll be up front. I’m transgressing into your area, but I don’t have a choice.”

  “Do any of us at certain times?” asked the FBI director. “We’ve never met, but Knox Talbot says you’re a friend of his, which gives you a pretty clean slate with me. Where’s the transgression?”

  “Actually, I haven’t gone over the line yet, but I want to, I think I have to.”

  “You said you had no choice.”

  “I don’t believe I do. However, it’s got to remain within Cons-Op.”

  “Then why call me? Isn’t solo better?”

  “Not in this case. I need a shortcut.”

  “Go ahead, Wes—that’s what Knox calls you. I’m Steve.”

  “Yes, I know. Steven Rosbician, the paradigm of law enforcement.”

  “My troops carry the P.R. way beyond the goal line. I was a white L.A. judge who got lucky, ’cause the blacks figured I was fair. Your petition, please.”

  “Have you got a unit in Marion County, Illinois?”

  “I’m sure we do. Illinois goes way back in our history. What city?”

  “Centralia.”

  “Close enough. What do you need?”

  “Anything you’ve got on a Mr. and Mrs. Charles Schneider. They may be dead and I don’t have an address, but I have an idea they may have immigrated from Germany in the early to middle thirties.”

  “That’s not much to go on.”

  “I realize that, but in the context of our inquiry and considering the times, the Bureau may have a file on them.”

  “If we have one, you’ll get it. So where’s the transgression? I’m not that long in this job, but
I don’t see it.”

  “Then let me clarify, Steve. I’m going domestic, which is your province, and I can’t give you the background for my inquiry. In the old days, J. Edgar, the hound, would have demanded it or slammed down the phone.”

  “I’m no goddamned Hoover, and the Bureau has changed considerably. If we can’t cooperate with each other, full disclosure or no, where are we?”

  “Well, it’s kind of spelled out in our charters—”

  “More honored in the breach, I’d suggest,” interrupted Rosbician. “Give me your secure fax number. Whatever we’ve got, you’ll have within the hour.”

  “Thanks very much,” said Sorenson, “and also, as you suggested, whatever I do from now on, I’ll go solo.”

  “Why the bullshit?”

  “Wait till you face a congressional hearing with six dour faces who don’t like you. Then you’ll understand.”

  “Then I’ll go back to a law firm and live a hell of a lot better.”

  “I like your perspective, Steve.” Sorenson gave the FBI director the number of his secure fax machine.

  Thirty-eight minutes passed before the loud beep of the Cons-Op machine in his office preceded the emergence of a single page of paper from the FBI. Wesley Sorenson retrieved it and read the information.

  Karl and Johanna Schneider came to the U.S. on January 12, 1940, expatriates from Germany with relatives in Cicero, Illinois, who vouched for them, stating that the young male Schneider had skills that would easily find him work in the technical field of optometry. Their ages were, respectively, twenty-one and nineteen. The stated reason for their leaving Germany was that Johanna Schneider’s grandfather was Jewish, and she was discriminated against by the Aryan Ministerium in Stuttgart.

  In March of 1946, Mr. Schneider, by then Charles rather than Karl, owned a small Optometric factory in Centralia, and petitioned the Immigration Service to allow his niece, one Janine Clunitz, an infant female child, to immigrate, as her parents had died in an automobile crash. The petition was granted and the Schneiders legally adopted the child.

  In August of 1991, Mrs. Schneider died of heart failure. Mr. Schneider, age 76, still resides at 121 Cyprus Street, Centralia, Illinois. He has retired, but goes down to his business twice a week.

  The MO for this file is based on long-ago surveillance of German immigrants at the beginning of World War II. In the opinion of this field officer, it should be terminated.

  Thank heavens, it wasn’t, thought Sorenson. If Charles-Karl Schneider was really a Sonnenkind recipient, a wealth of information might be extracted from him on the assumption that the Sonnenkinder had a network. It would be asinine to assume that it did not have one. The legal and technical paperwork involved in the U.S. immigration procedures were complex to the point of total confusion; a support system was mandatory. It could well be past the time when it should have happened, but a crack in the ice now might release the fouled waters below, exposing dirt that was relevant to the present. Sorenson picked up his phone and pressed the button for his secretary.

  “Yes, sir?”

  “Book me on an airline that flies into Centralia, Illinois, or whatever’s closest. Under an assumed name, of course, which, I trust, you’ll tell me.”

  “For when, Mr. Director?”

  “Early this afternoon, if you can. Then get my wife on the phone. I won’t be home for dinner.”

  Claude Moreau studied the transcript from Nuremberg, Germany, the decoded dossier on one Dr. Hans Traupman, chief surgeon in residence at the Nuremberg Hospital.

  Hans Traupman, born April 21, 1922, in Berlin, the son of two physicians, Drs. Erich and Marlene Traupman, showed early signs of a high intelligence quotient, according to his initial school years …

  The dossier went on to describe Traupman’s academic achievements, including a brief period in the Hitler Youth movement, ordered by decree, and his duty after medical school in Nuremberg as a young doctor in the Sanitätstruppe, the Wehrmacht’s medical corps.

  After the conflict, Traupman returned to Nuremberg, where he was trained in residence and specialized in surgeries of the brain. Within ten years, with scores of operations behind him, he was considered one of the leading cranial surgeons in the country, if not the Free World. As to his personal life, little is known. He was married to an Elke Mueller, said marriage dissolved by divorce after five years and no children. Since that time he has resided in an elegant apartment in Nuremberg’s most fashionable section. He is a wealthy man, frequently dining at the most expensive restaurants and known to be an excessive tipper. His guests range from medical colleagues to political figures from Bonn and various celebrities from the motion pictures and television. To summarize, if such a summary is possible, he is a bon vivant with the medical skills to permit his extravagant living.

  Moreau picked up his phone and touched the button that put him in direct contact with their man in Nuremberg.

  “Yes?” said the voice in Germany.

  “It is I.”

  “I sent you everything there was.”

  “No, you didn’t. Dig up everything you can on Elke Mueller.”

  “Traupman’s former wife? Why? She’s history.”

  “Because she’s the key, you idiot. A divorce after a year or two is understandable, after twenty perfectly acceptable, but not after five. There’s a story there. Do as I ask, and send me the material as fast as you can.”

  “It’s a whole different agenda,” protested the agent in Nuremberg. “She’s living in Munich now, under her maiden name.”

  “Mueller, of course. Do you have an address?”

  “Naturally.” The Deuxième agent gave it to him.

  “Then forget my previous order. I’ve changed my mind. Alert Munich that I’m flying in. I wish to confront this lady myself.”

  “Whatever you say, but I think you’re crazy.”

  “Everyone’s crazy,” said Moreau. “It’s the times we’re living in.”

  Sorenson’s plane landed in Mount Vernon, Illinois, roughly thirty miles south of Centralia. Using the false driver’s license and credit card provided by Consular Operations, he rented a car and, following the routes highlighted for him by the rental agency’s clerk, drove north to the city. Cons-Op had also given him a street map of Centralia, the address, 121 Cyprus Street, clearly marked, and the directions from the city limits on Highway 51 specific. Twenty minutes later Sorenson drove down the quiet tree-lined street looking for number 121. The street itself was, indeed, central America, but of a different, bygone era. It was upper-middle-class Norman Rockwell, the houses large, with generous front porches, profuse with lattice-work, even rocking chairs. One could easily imagine the owners sitting in them and drinking afternoon tea with their neighbors.

  Then he saw the mailbox, 121. Only this house was different, not in style or size, but something else, something subtle. What was it? The windows, thought the director of Consular Operations. The windows on the second and third floors all had their shades drawn. Even on the ground floor, the large, multipaned bay window, flanked by two stained-glass vertical rectangles, was blocked by Venetian blinds. It was as though this particular residence was not terribly receptive to visitors. Wesley wondered if he’d fall into that category, or worse. He parked in front, got out and walked up the concrete path, climbed the steps, and rang the bell.

  The door opened, revealing a slender old man with thinning white hair and wearing thick-lensed glasses. “Yes, please?” he said in a soft, wavering voice with barely a trace of an accent.

  “My name is Wesley Sorenson and I’m from Washington, D.C., Mr. Schneider. We have to talk, either here or in far less comfortable quarters.”

  The old man’s eyes grew wide, what color there was in his face leaving it. He started to speak several times but choked on the words. Finally, he became clear. “Ach, it has taken you so long, it was so long ago.… Come in, I’ve been expecting you for nearly fifty years.… Come, come, it is too warm out, and the air-conditioning is
expensive.… Nothing matters now anyway.”

  “We’re not so far apart in years, Mr. Schneider,” said Sorenson, walking into a large Victorian foyer and following the Sonnenkind recipient into the shadowed living room, filled with overstuffed furniture. “Fifty years is not that long for either of us.”

  “May I offer you some schnapps? Frankly, I could use one or two, probably more.”

  “A short whisky would be sufficient, if you have it. Bourbon would be nice, but it doesn’t matter.”

  “Oh, but it does, and I do have it. My second daughter is married to a man from one of the Carolinas, and he prefers it.… Sit, sit, I shall disappear for a minute or two and bring us our libations.”

  “Thank you.” The Cons-Op director suddenly wondered whether he should have arranged for a weapon. He had been away from the field too long! The old son of a bitch could be finding one of his own. Instead, Schneider returned, carrying a silver tray, glasses and two bottles on it, without any bulges in his clothing.

  “This will make things easier, nicht wahr?” he said.

  “I’m surprised you expected me at all,” observed Sorenson once their drinks were in front of them, his on a coffee table, the German’s on the arm of an easy chair across from him. “As you say, it was so many years ago.”

  “My young wife and I were part of the fanatical youth of Germany at the time. All those torchlit parades, the slogans, the euphoria of being the true master race of the world. It was all quite seductive, and we were seduced. We were assigned our mission by the legendary Heinrich Himmler himself, who thought ‘long range,’ as we say today. I honestly believe he thought we would lose the war, but he was totally devoted to the thesis of Aryan superiority. After the war we did as we were ordered by the Odessa. And even then, we still believed.”

  “So you petitioned, accepted the immigration of one Janine Clunitz, later Clunes, and adopted her?”

  “Yes. She was an extraordinary child, far more intelligent than Johanna and me. Every Tuesday night from the time she was eight or nine, men would come for her and drive her to someplace else where she was—I suppose the word is indoctrinated.”