He ran to prepare himself—for what Olympic task he wasn’t certain of, either.
Six miles a day at first.
Then eight miles.
Ten miles. And then heartbreaking quarter-mile sprints.
Probably because he was a doctor, David pretended to himself that the running would help to lower his blood pressure. It would decrease his cholesterol. It would build up his cardiopulmonary fitness.
Pure folly.
David really ran for the pain.
During what, David called his “ruthless runs” he had no memory. No practical necessities. No tragic past or frightening, very unsure future.
There was just the physical act of running, the cleansing pain.
There was pushing himself to his absolute limits. There was teaching his body to accept extra pain like heel spurs, runner’s knee, and groin pulls. There was learning to control without oxygen before a second wind came. There was learning to run hard in spite of crippling excesses of lactic acid.
One overcast afternoon the FBI chief, Harry Callaghan, approached David about his running. Callaghan was shorthaired, physically fit, in his mid-forties. He was tall and gauntly thin. He reminded David of a New England college professor—or Gregory Peck trying to play a college-professor role. He was getting a little soft puttering around Cherry-woods, the agent said. Could he possibly work out a little with David? Might he tag along on one of the ruthless runs?
David didn’t like the idea, but he didn’t know how to say no politely. He recoiled from the thought of having a running partner: someone who might take his mind off the pure physical act.
A little before 5:00 P.M., Callaghan appeared in a burnt-orange-and-red USMC T-shirt, and loose Georgetown basketball shorts showing pale white and freckled legs.
David wore gray-and-red-striped Snowbirds, ancient Pumas, a faded apple-green shirt and shorts, and an old ratty sweatband that had evolved from snowy white to gray.
David was completing a hybrid combination of the Royal Canadian Air Force and the West Point fitness drills when Callaghan came up to him on the Lake Porch.
“No, no, Dr. Strauss. You don’t do the West Point drills before you run.” The FBI agent couldn’t really believe what he was seeing.
“I do a few sit-ups, squats, leg and knee raises before I go out,” David said. “When I come back in I try to do another set with rocking sit-ups and isometrics.”
Callaghan shook his head from side to side. This was the first time he’d realized that Dr. Strauss was a bit more than just another fitness nut.
The two men completed the final exercises side by side on the groaning wooden porch.
Grunting and cursing, they did squats, leg thrusts and raises, push-ups.
Acidic sweat began to waterfall into Harry Callaghan’s eyes. His Tiger Corsairs sloshed as they began to fill with water. Gnats and horseflies landed on his glistening back as if it were the national insects’ aircraft carrier.
David strapped a yellowish cowhide pack onto his back and shoulders. The backpack was a professional training device made by Dunlap. It could hold from twenty to fifty pounds of lead weight and David had it full.
“Do you mind if I run with this?” he said.
“You know what I’m going to say.”
“I’m the doctor, right?”
“Or maybe, you should see a doctor.”
“Okay, I’m ready. Run from the hips, Mr. Callaghan. Breathe from the belly.” David smiled for the first time. “Let’s go, partner.”
They ran straight back into the tall evergreen forest. Very cool in the shade. Actually, quite nice, Harry Callaghan thought, as his feet padded softly on the pine needles. Maybe the worst of it had been the exercises.
Seeming to sense the FBI agent’s contentment, David turned onto one of the winding trails leading up onto Lookout Mountain.
Here, the lie of land was steep and rocky. The running of the two men became closer to mountain-climbing.
After two and a half miles of mountain, Harry Callaghan began to feel an uneasy tightness and burning in his chest. Shortness of breath. Tightening in his upper legs. At first, he guessed that Dr. Strauss was trying strongly to discourage him from tagging along again.
The FBI man struggled to keep up beside David Strauss.
“What are you trying to do to yourself?” Callaghan asked in a puffing, grunting voice. “What are you trying to do to me?”
Very suddenly, though, in an intuitive flash, Callaghan knew exactly what David Strauss was doing on his “ruthless runs.”
“You’re getting yourself ready,” Callaghan huffed, his heavy steps landing like small bombs now.
“Want to fight them, don’t you? … Nazis? Storm Troop?”
David Strauss began to pick up the pace. He tried to ignore the agent. “Little stitch in my side. Diaphragm spasm. Getting my second wind, though.”
“You can’t fight them.” Callaghan was struggling to keep up with the younger man. His chest was twisting tighter and tighter. His legs felt leaden. His neck and shoulders ached.
“The fuck I can’t. If I ever get the chance … I goddamn will. Fight the bastards. Murdering coward bastards.”
“They’re not going … challenge you to a footrace, Doctor.”
David said nothing.
That made Harry Callaghan angry.
Damnit, he knew about the Reich. Callaghan knew more about the Nazis than just about any field man in the Bureau. He could help. That was his job. David Strauss was choosing to ignore him, though. Acting as if the agent were some kind of useless second asshole.
Furious, Harry Callaghan stuck his foot out.
He knew he shouldn’t have the second he did it. Not professional, Harry. Not rational.
David fell hard and fast. As if he’d been hit by a bullet from a sniper’s rifle. Something Harry Callaghan had seen happen to a man.
The green shirt and shorts, the wheeling arms and legs, flipped, somersaulted, and rolled to an exaggerated stop against a wall of scrub pines.
“You might as well learn a lesson right now,” the FBI agent called down from the main trail.
“The Nazis run dirty, Dr. Strauss. Remember that.”
Harry Callaghan headed back to the Cherrywoods Hotel.
Walking slowly.
CHAPTER 17
The realization that she was maybe royally screwing up her life, her acting career at least, came to Alix Rothschild slowly, over a couple of weeks in mid-spring.
First there had been the million-dollar perfume stink in front of Henri Bendel’s.
Then another tempest in a teapot, in The Café of the Sherry Netherland, with a slick “packager” representing CBS, MFA, and apparently two million dollars.
Now there was the most uncomfortable tableau of all. At her movie company’s New York offices, high over Central Park South.
Alix’s agent, Mark Halperin, was there, the California golden boy. He was biting his manicured nails, sliding his sunglasses in and out of a breast pocket of his Western shirt, rubbing the soles of his fashionably soiled tennis sneakers together.
Also present in the posh business office was Arnold Manning, former president of one of the few remaining large studios in Hollywood. The gonzo independent producer was unattractive. He was bald and stout.
Manning sat in the midst of a coterie of studio lawyers, accountants, and other vice presidents. These overindulged men seemed to confuse themselves with their company’s movie stars and directors.
Arnold Manning spoke to Alix in the softest voice—as if she were a wayward but much-loved daughter—which in a way, Alix was.
“Must I remind you, Alix, dear, sweet, confusing, confused lady, that we have a three-picture arrangement, you and I. That’s for movies. Three movies.”
“That’s fine, Arnold,” Alix nodded. “I just haven’t liked the scripts you’ve been sending me.”
One of the studio heads reared ugly. “Point of information, Alix. As I understand it, Jackie Bi
sset didn’t like the script for The Deep. Dick Dreyfuss didn’t want to do Jaws. Facts.”
Alix looked away and stared out the floor-to-ceiling windows that were rattling softly in their giant aluminum frames.
Outside was Columbus Circle. Lovely Central Park in late spring. No visions of concentration camps today. No Dachau. No Buchenwald. Not yet, anyway.
“Please, listen.” Alix turned back to Arnold Manning. On her face was a small child’s hurt look. Crestfallen green eyes. The slightest thin-lipped moue.
“I promise to do the three pictures for you. I promise. I owe you, Arnold. I also kind of love you, dear, sweet, dark, confusing, I forget the rest, man.”
Arnold Manning looked hurt now. The slightest fat-lipped moue. “You forget sexy as hell.”
For the first time in the morning, Alix smiled.
“Arnold, I need a little time to be by myself … This terrible Nazi scare, I … basically, I have to get away from being such a big deal to everyone I’m around. I need to think. I need to be a plain nobody for a while. No admirers. No catty detractors.”
Alix Rothschild smiled again. “And I’m aware, Mr. Manning, that at the rate I’m going, I could be a nobody for a long, long time to come.”
Arnold Manning began to laugh as if he were being tickled by chimps with pink feathers. The peculiar laugh grew until the stout, bald man let out a howl.
“So go away, Alix. I agree you have to relax. I agree you need some time by yourself. Everybody does. … I understand what this horrible neo-Nazi business must mean to you.”
Manning had waited just long enough. Now he was giving Alix back her own ideas, almost her own words. They both knew what he was doing, but that was fine. That was the secret of the relationship between Alix Rothschild and Arnold Manning.
“Where are you thinking of going, Al?” Mark Halperin was still nibbling his sunglasses. “Just in case your agent needs to get in touch.”
“That’s my Mark-up!” Alix put on a smile.
She was trying to be like her old self again. Leave them laughing, Alix had long ago learned on agency casting calls.
“I was thinking of going upstate for a while. In a week or so. I have an old friend up there … who knows how to treat me like I’m nobody. He still calls me Alix Rothman.”
Alix stood up, and the whole room of suits and sunglasses rose with her.
“I’ll be going to a place called Cherrywoods Mountain House. But I won’t be accepting any phone calls.”
CHAPTER 18
On Sunday afternoon, David Strauss sat on a bench out along one of Cherrywoods’ prettiest nature trails. Beside him was the FBI agent, Harry Callaghan.
“I’m sorry about the other day. Our running debut,” Callaghan said. “I was trying to help—at least to let you know that I was available. I got mad when you shut me off.”
“I’m sorry about what happened, too,” David nodded. “You were right. What you were trying to tell me. I was being a shithead. … It’s just that I have this unbelievable hate building up inside me. No outlet for it. It’s hard to communicate exactly.”
“Not so hard. I can imagine at least some of what you must feel. I would like to help, though. That’s what I’m here for. My job. My vocation, you might say.”
From their spot on the woodlands trail, David and Callaghan had a perfect view west across the Roundout Valley to the Rip Van Winkle mountains.
“Hundreds of millions of years ago,” David said, “all the land around here was covered by a great inland lake. My grandfather used to tell me that every time the two of us came up here.” David Strauss smiled. “I guess I’m still off in my own world a little. Lots of family stuff floating around in my head.”
“Yeah. Well, when you come back down to earth, don’t forget what I’ve been trying to tell you. Please don’t get me confused with any of the Washington bureaucrat images that you probably have. Which I have, for God’s sake.”
“I appreciate what you’re trying to do. Really, I’m going to be fine,” David promised.
CHAPTER 19
David couldn’t get the idea that Heather was de$$$[MS PAGE NO 71]$$$ out of his mind. That she was gone from his life.
Forever and always.
Never to be heard or seen by him again.
Distractions helped, David had to admit. The m$$$[MS PAGE NO 71]$$$e peculiar the distraction, the better.
When he’d been an undergraduate at Princeton, David had begun a curious diary/journal that he called his Crapbook.
The Crapbook now contained such treasures as a visitor’s pass into Olympic Village in Munich; a college letter for sculling; one of his favorite first lines from a book—“Like most men, I tell a hundred lies a day.” All sorts of junk that antique people call “collectibles.”
To the more whimsical first half of the book, David now added an obsessive collection of clippings on the North Avenue Nazi attack. He pasted in news stories on other suspected Storm Troop activity: a synagogue bombing on Long Island; the grisly murder of an influential rabbi doctor in Chicago. He put in condolences on Elena’s and Nick’s murder from important Jewish leaders all over the world. And selected Naziana from his ever-expanding library.
While the scrapbook helped David maintain some balance of sanity, what seemed to help more were the medical clinics he offered every weekday afternoon.
A general practitioner for the first time in his career, David suddenly found himself treating asthma, roseola, croup, enlarged prostate, insomnia, and peptic ulcers.
Most important, while he was treating one of the hotel staff, David felt useful again. Inside his office at the hotel, Dr. David Strauss could just about feel alive.
Late one afternoon while he was treating a gardener’s child for a raging case of poison ivy, the head of the FBI team dropped by at his office.
Callaghan sat on the edge of David’s examining table. He ran his finger across the bottom of young Neal Becton’s foot.
The boy started to giggle. Callaghan grinned, too, and it was the first time David had seen any sign of humor coming from the FBI agent.
“We’ve just gotten a strange report.” Callaghan tamped down on his pipe, then lit it. “The report says that Bormann may have recently entered the United States through Miami. Did your family ever have any contact with that bastard, David? In the concentration camps in Germany? Even the most remote contact?”
As he dabbed Albolene cream onto Neal Becton’s inflamed legs, David began to feel slightly whimsical, a bit light-headed. It was a feeling he hadn’t experienced since the Westchester attack.
“Reichsführer Martin Bormann? Short, squat man? Yeah. Sure we knew him. He used to come to breakfast at our house when I was just a boy. My Grandmother Elena would serve Nova and bagels, and he’d get all sorts of pissed off.”
Just the far corner of Harry Callaghan’s mouth broke. Half a smile showed.
“The other thing,” Callaghan went on without giving David the satisfaction of a real laugh. “One of the few American Nazi-hunters has been in contact with us. Benjamin Rabinowitz? A friend of your grandmother’s.”
David nodded. He’d heard quite a bit about Rabinowitz. For years, Elena had been a contributor to Rabinowitz’s efforts, in fact. She’d contributed to Rabinowitz in America and to Michael Ben-Iban’s Centre for Jewish Studies in Europe, David knew.
“Rabinowitz has some interesting theories I’d like you to react to. The only slight catch …” Callaghan began to relight his pipe, “is we’d have to leave the hotel for a few hours tomorrow. Rabinowitz doesn’t want to be seen with you. He actually seemed somewhat paranoid. Frightened.”
David felt a chill shoot up his spine. He had an ominous feeling that maybe something was going to happen now. Maybe the Nazi-hunter would have some new and important information. Something revealing about the Nazi Storm Troop.
“I’d like to meet Mr. Rabinowitz very much,” he said. “Tomorrow is fine with me. I’d be glad to meet him anywhere.”
/> David Strauss didn’t realize it as he stood in his doctor’s office that afternoon, but his personal hunt for the neo-Nazis had just begun.
CHAPTER 20
The Sans Souci Restaurant, Washington, D.C.
The Führer and the Warrior were eating rare steaks and sipping red wine, enjoying as amiable and lighthearted a supper as was evident anywhere in the clubby, chatty Washington, D.C., dining room.
“A pleasure, as it always is here.” The Warrior sipped his burgundy, letting the fine red roll on his tongue. He then wiped his crinkly, puffed mouth.
The Führer smiled in agreement. “A very decent steak. Even at approximately twenty-five dollars a pound.”
Their attentive waiter, Randolph, came with two snifters of Courvoisier.
“I believe it is time now,” the Warrior said. “You have wined me and dined me most graciously. Now we must talk.”
For the next fifteen minutes, the Führer was alternately a graceful diplomat, a moralist, a harsh military strategist.
The complete plan for the operation known as Dachau Two was revealed to the Warrior.
The plot was mercilessly torn to shreds and then rebuilt from the remnants. Truly terrifying and unassailable this time.
Black coffee was ordered by the Warrior. The face and broad neck of the white-maned man had grown bright scarlet red over the intense quarter of an hour.
“Finally,” the Führer said in a nerveless monotone that was chilling, “my group will strike. The effect will be like nothing ever seen. An extraordinary blitzkrieg, even in this age.”
The Warrior answered slowly, with grave consideration showing in every line of his face.
“If it was anyone other than you who asked this of me—I would say no, no, no. The risks of your plan are almost unconscionable. Because it is you who ask, however, I must give my tentative approval.”
The Führer started to speak, but the Warrior slowly raised his hand.
“Not approval to proceed, my friend, approval to seek further guidance from the other Council members. You now have one negative vote. My vote is no.”