Because he, too, was beginning to be recognized, David wore sunglasses, a floppy hat, a heavy windbreaker.
As a result, the two Americans felt relatively anonymous as they hiked down Dachau’s infamous Turnpike to Hell.
Inside the infernal walls, they went through various chapels and sterile memorial museums. They walked into gas chambers, and alongside the shooting ranges. They were looking for the resting place of Alix’s mother—the Grave of Ashes.
Contrary to Eisenhower’s orders to leave the camp exactly as it was when liberated, the West Germans had made the former Konzentrationslager much too pretty.
At least David and Alix thought so.
That day in particular, Dachau brought to mind well-intentioned but phony Memorial Day parades in America. There were all sorts of brassy commemorative plaques. Crisp scrolls. Hundreds of bright-colored flags. Willow trees grew all around the outer walls.
David and Alix stopped at a museum where the History of the Rise of Anti-Semitism was supposedly captured in artsy black-and-white photographs. They visited the Christ in Agony chapel. Then a nondenominational chapel marked for meditation.
A large plaque in German, English, and Russian read:
THOUSANDS OF OUR BROTHERS, SISTERS, AND PARENTS WERE KILLED WHERE YOU ARE NOW STANDING. THIS HAPPENED BETWEEN 1933 AND 1945. BY THE MURDEROUS NAZIS.
David Strauss shivered involuntarily. “Right now. As I stand right here, I’m finally out of touch with the idea that I was ever a medical doctor. A simple-minded, somewhat old-fashioned American doctor in New York. Will you please explain to me what I’m doing here? What the hell is happening to us?”
Alix shook her head. A glassy-eyed daze had come over her. She seemed in mild shock.
“I don’t know, David. I don’t know.”
Feeling an overwhelming sense of unreality, the American couple finally walked to the brick-walled, ivy-covered gas chambers and ovens.
“This building doesn’t feel right,” Alix said as they approached it along a low-fenced gravel walk. “It’s too pretty. All this ivy. I feel like I’m visiting some college English department.”
Right inside the front doorway, they were immediately confronted with six ovens directly across a deep, wide room. The ovens were all neatly shined. Lined up against redbrick walls that smelled of household disinfectant
“It’s like a little Arnold’s Bakery,” Alix said.
Then something terrifying about the spick-and-span, efficient little room began to affect them.
Over a brown side door they read: THINK ABOUT WHO DIED HERE.
Alix and David thought about it. They thought about the Jews, and about the Nazis.
On a ceiling beam: PRISONERS WERE ACTUALLY HANGED FROM HERE.
On one of the brick walls: PRISONERS WERE FLOGGED HERE.
Under the shiny ovens that looked a little like resuscitation chambers: THE ACTUAL OVENS USED AT DACHAU.
David was finding it difficult to breathe. Vicious waves of nausea came over him.
A family from America was posing for a photograph in front of one of the ovens. All the neatly groomed family members were smiling for the instant camera. They have no idea what happened here, David thought. They couldn’t have any idea.
“I don’t know why, but I can feel the whole thing now, Alix. What happened in Germany forty years ago.”
Tears were rolling down Alix’s face. The American father was carefully directing his photograph session. David and Alix both felt a terrible need to be in some private place for a few moments.
Arm in arm, holding each other tightly, they walked outside next to some gray administration buildings. George Santayana was quoted in German and English: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”
Remember was an odd, maybe even a poor choice of a word, David was thinking. … Was the quotation true, though, he couldn’t help wondering—partially feeling like some fool who takes secret messages from songs on the radio. Could the whole thing happen again? Could it repeat itself all over again? What did the Storm Troop want?
Alix, meanwhile, was beginning to question whether she could ever tell David all the things whirling around in her mind. God, it was so complicated. All of her past experience told her that only other concentration-camp survivors truly understood the nightmare, the hatred.
David’s private thoughts, Alix’s thoughts, were suddenly interrupted by a strangely familiar whirring, buzzing, clicking sound.
“Oh, God, David. Oh no.”
CHAPTER 42
An ugly, longhaired man with a sloth’s body and ferret’s face was responsible for the noise.
Whirring, buzzing, clicking.
Whirring, buzzing, clicking.
The human mole was shooting professional 35mm photographs of them.
“Hey, Rothschild.” The man growled as Alix tried to shield her face. “Give me one for Komet. I’ve come all the way from Frankfurt.”
From out of the gray prison-camp walls and shrubs, other people with cameras now began to appear. An old, slop-bellied burgher. A young woman with a telescope-nosed Nikon.
“Please don’t,” David said into the long lens of an expensive Rolliflex. “Please, not here.”
“Kuchemal da! Alix Rothschild!” A middle-aged German man shouted and pointed at them.
“Das ist Rothschild?” David and Alix heard from the rear.
They began to walk at a fast clip. Then they ran.
Across the promenade and into Dachau’s formal gardens. Down a path surrounded by more ceremonial plaques. More waving Memorial Day flags. Dachau’s only sign actually written in Hebrew:
HERE IS THE GRAVE OF THE THOUSANDS UNKNOWN.
HERE IS THE GRAVE OF ASHES.
Alix’s mother was there somewhere.
Nick had filmed powerful interviews there with young, bitter survivors.
Alix herself was choking back sobs and tears as she ran past the memorial signpost. Her nineteen-year-old mother. Always and forever nineteen years old. She couldn’t even stop to visit now … to say some prayer.
She and David streaked past THE PISTOL RANGE FOR EXECUTION.
THE EXECUTION RANGE WITH BLOOD DITCH.
“Strauss und Rothschild sind dauber!” It was like trying to escape from the prison itself. It was as if there were guards and terrible dogs coming up from behind.
Finally, they arrived at the front gates.
The black door of a car was thrown open for them. A groan went up from the crowd.
Cameras flashed in unison. Alix suddenly thought she could remember the Dachau tower searchlights. So much horrible detail was flooding back. She was feeling the way she’d felt in New York City. Before Cherrywoods and David.
“Nehmen wir … bitte … nach Flughaven.” David struggled with his German.
“Take us to Munich Airport, please.”
Suddenly, one of the taxi’s doors flew open again.
“David!” Alix screamed. “Get him out of here, please.”
The troll.
The terrible inhuman photographer was there with his ratty vinyl jacket, with his Nikon aimed for one last, dramatic shot.
“Nooo.” Alix was sobbing. “Nooo, David.”
David Strauss leaped out across the taxi’s backseat.
Before he knew what he was doing, he had the photographer crushed underneath his body on the parking-lot gravel.
David punched the German man in the chest. A hard, crunching blow. Somehow he avoided the temptation to keep hitting the troll. He got up and smashed the camera against a metal signpost. All the while, David Strauss was repeating a single word over and over.
“Nazi, Nazi, Nazi. Nazi.”
Shaking all over, David fell back into the taxi. Alix pressed into him and held on tight. The cab then bolted away from the terrible, confused scene at the pickup depot.
In the rush and confusion, neither David nor Alix seemed to notice a second Munich taxi.
The black car left the gate
s of Dachau just behind them. It, too, went straight to Munich Airport.
The Führer had just paid a visit to Dachau One also.
CHAPTER 43
That same afternoon, a beautiful one during which the temperature reached a dramatic eighty-four degrees all over Germany, agent Harry Callaghan coolly waded through assorted Herren and Fräulein mobbing the botikish Sachenhausen district of Frankfurt am Main.
Harry was chomping on a greenish Dutch cigar.
The FBI agent was feeling pretty good as the rich tobacco and aromas of local German cooking mixed in his lungs. He was feeling a little like Gregory Peck, whom people occasionally said he looked like.
The Sachenhausen part of Frankfurt consisted of old restored buildings crowding narrow streets. Harry observed cafés, bakeries, dress shops, chic pieds-à-terre—all apparently built on a slant with the cobbled road.
No autos were permitted here. (No poor people seemed to be permitted anywhere in Frankfurt.) There were plenty of Coca-Cola culture Germans, soldiers, and well-to-do tourists, though. Eating lots of kuchen. Buying strudel and sausages. Selecting cuckoo clocks and women’s clothing.
As he wandered the pretty streets, Harry began to be reminded of Georgetown in Washington … His divorce six years ago from Betsy. His son Martin, now a senior at Pitt. God, how it all was flying by. A life. How very much he’d given up to be a good investigator. “One of our very best. I mean that,” the director had once said to Harry’s face, knowing the praise would drive the proud man more than any amount of criticism.
Callaghan forced himself to think only about the job. Only about David Strauss and Alix Rothschild.
Something about the way the two of them seemed to belong together made Harry suddenly smile on the crowded streets of Frankfurt.
There was something special about David Strauss and Alix Rothschild. Something. That was one reason they’d made front-page news right from the start. There was just something about David and Alix together, Harry was thinking as he walked.
A big, blond man—James Bacon Burns—was sitting at a small wrought-iron table in one of the buzzing outdoor cafés. The Schlag.
The agent was doing his best to look like an American tourist, Harry noticed, as he turned into the café. A very handsome sort of American tourist. One who might easily pick up an unattached Fräulein, or perhaps even a Herren.
Harry vaguely remembered Burns from an earlier encounter in New York. Burns still wore the same patent-leather shoes with cute little gold buckles. A light gray diplomat’s suit. One of those dumb blue dress shirts with the stark-white collars. J.B. Burns: also known as Casper the Friendly Ghost.
“J.B., you brought me here to show me how good you have it. Nice, cushy assignment in Europe.” Harry offered Burns a broad smile and friendly handshake.
“So. They finally have something on the Strauss thing.” Harry sat down, finger-combing back his own slightly thinning brown hair. “It’s about time. Wouldn’t you say it’s about time?”
J.B. Burns laughed a little too loudly. He then took a big dripping bite of blue-plum kuchen.
“Yeah, mmmm, they have something, Harry.” The agent licked the tips of his long fingers.
“Wait until you hear what it is they have. On a scale of ten—an eleven. Possibly a twelve.”
A café waiter appeared at their table, a red cloth draped over his arm. Harry ordered Calvados and a big piece of apple-and-raisin kuchen.
“Big, big piece,” he made a moon-and-stars motion with his hands. “If the pieces are small, bring two of them.”
As soon as the waiter walked away, J.B. Burns produced a packet of black-and-white photographs. Burns’s family home photos, they looked like. With a yellow Kodak mailer-envelope.
“Take a look at this beauty. A definite photo-contest winner.”
The first dog-eared picture was of a society-type woman. Brunette. Thirty-eight or so. It appeared to have been taken at some sort of ball or ritzy dinner dance.
“All right, I give up. Who is she?”
“Believe it or not, she’s one of the Storm Troop operators. Rachel Davidson. Code name Housewife. She’s a New York City lawyer.”
Burns’s tanned, manicured hand dealt out another photograph.
Harry was beginning to feel a little bit like Ross Macdonald’s Lew Archer. What was he supposed to do now? Find the missing oil painting of the sister of the brunette Rachel Davidson?
The second photograph showed the same woman.
This time she was standing beside an older man whom Callaghan recognized immediately. In fact, seeing this particular man in the photograph sent Harry Callaghan’s mind reeling. His presence was almost as disconcerting as that of the third person in the photograph: Mrs. Elena Strauss.
“This one was taken at Cherrywoods Mountain House. That’s Mrs. Elena Strauss. And you’ll probably recognize General Yagaal Ben-Zurev.”
“Oh shit!” Callaghan set the photo down.
“You bet, ‘oh shit.’ Mrs. Davidson, the Housewife, is Ben-Zurev’s niece.”
Stroking his Dutch cigar, Harry stared down at the photo. Cherrywoods. Grandmother Strauss. Rachel Davidson. The Israeli general, Ben-Zurev.
Callaghan’s mind was already working on a few dicey little scenarios involving the mysterious Storm Troop.
Blue smoke signals rose from the table as the German waiter, Calvados, and kuchen arrived.
“Anything else, J.B.?”
“Besides being a respected and successful lawyer, Rachel Davidson is an Orthodox Jew. She was very close to General Ben-Zurev. He was found dead in Washington late this spring.”
“Yes? I’m liking this story less and less as it gathers steam.”
“We’re getting reports that Ben-Zurev was helping to control the Storm Troop from Israel. His code name was Warrior. There was some kind of rift among their top leadership. The group had a vow of secrecy that they took very seriously. Ben-Zurev was killed. The Arabs have known about it for about a month. The pricks sat on it.
“We think Mossad leaked the information to Washington. Whatever the hell Dachau Two is, they don’t want it to come off. Very, very bad stuff. Everybody is very, very edgy, Harry.”
“Is this the Agency’s up-to-the-moment evaluation?”
Burns smiled. He pursed his lips.
“Those cagey bastards haven’t made an evaluation yet. Like to hear mine? It’s all in this little folder.”
Harry Callaghan crushed out his cigar into his kuchen. “The Storm Troop is a very elaborately conceived, very dangerous Jewish terrorist group,” Harry said.
“Or Israeli,” Burns added. “An Israeli Black September that has its roots way, way back. Maybe as far back as the forties. There was a commando group back then known as DIN. DIN attempted to poison a million Germans as partial retribution for the Holocaust.”
“And this group carries on, they masquerade as neo-Nazis.”
“Because everybody goes haywire when they hear about Nazis. Because nobody can evaluate Nazi data properly. There has to be loads more to it. That’s a start I can live with, though.”
“The terrorists are going to avenge the six million?”
“I don’t know. I’m guessing something on that order.”
Harry stared from a third-floor window at an office building across the cobblestone street. The late-afternoon sun was making stars and lilac-blue rings around a flagpole.
“Harry,” J.B. Burns said, “doesn’t one thing strike you as a little odd? That Dr. David Strauss has somehow escaped two shooting attempts now?”
Callaghan looked back from across the street.
“I guess it does. A lot of things strike me as odd right now. Listen, I have a few things I’d like you to check for me. In a big, big hurry. Can you do me a few favors, J.B.?”
“For sure,” the blond man smiled. “Hey, why do you think I wore my roller skates today?”
“I was wondering about that.” Harry Callaghan shook his head and laughed. “Guccis, to
o, I noticed.”
CHAPTER 44
James Burns’s office was a modishly furnished two-room walk-up in the West End business district of Frankfurt. The entire office consisted of Burns and a nineteen-year-old German girl named Sigi. It was he and Sigi against the world, James Burns liked to say whenever he was feeling put upon by Washington—which was often.
Like now.
Like the way they’d suddenly dumped all this terrorist crap in his lap and then fled for the hills.
As he climbed to the third floor of the prewar building, Burns heard loud music coming from above.
Goddamn Sigi was a Beethoven nut.
Once he got inside the office, though, he saw that the longhaired blond girl (James Burns liked to call Sigi his “very own California surfer in the Fozzerland”) wasn’t anywhere around.
A “While You Were Out” note was pinned to the telephone. A single word—“wife.”
Mildly annoyed, the American man carefully folded his suit jacket. He dialed his home phone number and then lit up a cigar.
While he waited for someone to answer, he stared at Cary Grant, Ingrid Bergman, and Humphrey Bogart on the office walls. Goddamn Sigi was also an American movie nut.
“Who dis?” Burns heard.
“Vee-gates, it’s the midget!” James Burns laughed into the telephone. “Is your mother home, midget?”
“Who dis?”
As he spoke on the phone, Burns also began to write out the things he had to do for Harry Callaghan before his workday was over.
“Dis ist Herr Burns, midget. The good-looking fellow mitt the blond hair. Daddy.”
Patricia Burns giggled. “Daddy? You’re silly.”
James Burns didn’t speak back to his little daughter. The door to the second room of the office had suddenly swung open.
Burns was looking at Sigi, neatly tied to a leather wing chair.
A man with a small Luger stepped into the doorway. James Burns understood why Beethoven’s Ninth was playing so loudly.
“Wait a minute,” James Burns said to the intruder, pulling out his own Smith & Wesson.