The One from the Other

FORTY

I heard Jacobs moving around upstairs for a while and then everything went quiet. I stood up and kicked at the door, which helped get some of the anger and frustration out of me but did nothing to aid my escape. The cellar door was made of oak. I could have kicked it all day and not even scratched it. I looked around for some sort of tool.

The cellar had no windows and no other doors. There was a central-heating radiator the size of a coiled anaconda and as hot as a lightbulb. The floor was concrete, with walls to match. Some old kitchen appliances were heaped in one corner, and I supposed that part of the laboratory upstairs had once been the villa’s kitchen. There were several pairs of skis, boots, and poles; an old toboggan; some ice skates; and a bicycle with no tires. I practiced using one of the skis as a sort of pikestaff and decided that it might serve as a useful weapon if the Israelis coming to see were armed only with the strength of the Lord. If they had guns, I was in trouble. I abandoned a similar plan to use the blade of an ice skate for the same reason.

As well as an assortment of junk there was a small wine rack containing some dusty-looking bottles of Riesling. I smashed the neck off one and drank the contents without much pleasure. There’s nothing worse than warm Riesling. By now I was feeling warm myself. I removed my coat and my jacket, smoked a cigarette and turned my attention to several largish packages that were ranged on either side of the radiator. All of them were addressed to Major Jacobs and labeled “U.S. Government. Urgent Laboratory Specimens.” Another label read: “Extreme caution advised. Handle with care. Store in a warm place only. Danger of infectious disease. Contains live insectary. Should only be opened by trained entomologist.”

I had my doubts that an Israeli avenger squad would be deterred from killing me by a couple of squadrons of mosquitoes, but I tore the packaging off the first box and removed the lid all the same. Inside the box was a lot of straw and, in the middle of the straw, a handy little travel habitat for the friends of Henkell and Gruen. A couple of sheets of paper described an inventory of what was inside the box. It had been prepared by someone from the Committee on Medical Sciences in the Department of Defense at the Pentagon, in Washington, D.C. It read as follows: “Insectary contains live and preserved anopheles and culex eggs, larvae, pupae, and adult specimens, both male and female. Adults and live eggs are in mosquito cages. Insectary also contains sucking tubes, to pick up mosquitoes from the cage and several blood meals to sustain insect life for up to thirty days.”

Two of the other packages contained similar live insectaries. A fourth package contained “dissecting and compound microscopes, forceps, slides, cover slips, droppers, petri dishes, pyrethrin solution, pipettes, bioassay units, insecticide-free nets, and chloroform.” This last item set me wondering if I might be able to chloroform one of the Israelis. But once again I came up against the realization that it’s not so easy to attack a man when he’s holding a gun on you.

A couple of hours passed. I drank some more warm wine and lay down on the floor. There seemed to be nothing else to do except sleep. And in that respect at least, the Riesling was almost as helpful as the chloroform.

Footsteps on the floor above woke me a short while later. I sat up feeling a little sick. It wasn’t the wine so much as a strong sense of anxiety as to what was about to happen to me. Unless I managed somehow to convince these men that I was not Eric Gruen, I had no doubt that I was going to be murdered, and in the way Jacobs had described.

Nothing happened for almost thirty minutes. I heard furniture being moved around and smelled cigarettes being smoked. I even heard laughter. Then there were heavy footsteps on the stairs, followed by the sound of the key in the lock. I stood up and moved back into the cellar and tried to put out of my mind the idea of what would very probably be in their minds: the huge satisfaction of having apprehended one of the most loathsome war criminals ever. Finally the door swung open and two men stood in front of me, their faces filled with quiet distaste and their hands filled with bright, shiny forty-five automatics. They were light on their toes. As if they had just stepped out of the boxing ring and were hoping I might resist a bit, so that they could spar with me for a while.

Both wore roll-neck sweaters and ski pants. One was younger than the other. His brown hair was stiff-looking, as if he had just stepped out of a barbershop, with something on it, like hair oil or cream, or maybe a handful of laundry starch. He had eyebrows that looked like a monkey’s fingers and big brown eyes that belonged properly to some kind of big dog, as indeed did the rest of his face. His partner was taller, uglier, with ears like a baby elephant and a nose like the lid of a grand piano. His sports jacket fit him like a lampshade.

They walked me upstairs, as if I was carrying an unexploded bomb, and back into the office. They had moved the desk so that it now faced the glass doors of the laboratory. There was a man behind it, and a single chair in front of it, like the chair in a witness box. Politely the man behind the desk invited me to sit down. He sounded American. As I did so, he leaned forward with the air of an examining magistrate, his fingers clasped as if he were planning to say a prayer before questioning me. He was in shirtsleeves, which were rolled up as if he meant business. But it could just as easily have been the heat in the room. It was still very warm. He had thick, gray hair that fell in his eyes, and he was as thin as the trail of shit from a neglected goldfish. His nose was smaller than the noses of the other two men, but only just. Not that you paid much attention to the size of his nose. It was the color that distracted you. There were so many burst capillaries on that nose it looked more like a species of orchid or poisonous mushroom. He picked up a pen and prepared to write in a nice new notebook.

“What is your name?”

“Bernhard Gunther.”

“What were you called before?”

“My name has always been Bernhard Gunther.”

“How tall are you?”

“One meter eighty-seven.”

“What size shoes do you wear?”

“Forty-four.”

“What size jacket?”

“Fifty-four.”

“What was your membership number in the NSDAP?”

“I was never a member of the Nazi Party.”

“What was your number in the SS?”

“85 437.”

“What is your date of birth?”

“July 7, 1896.”

“Place of birth?”

“Berlin.”

“Under what name were you born?”

“Bernhard Gunther.”

My interrogator sighed and put down his pen. Almost reluctantly he opened a drawer and took out a file, which he opened. He handed me a German passport in the name of Eric Gruen. I opened it. He said: “Is this your passport?”

I shrugged. “It’s my picture,” I said. “But I’ve never seen this passport before.”

He handed me another document. “A copy of an SS file in the name of Eric Gruen,” he said. “That is also your photograph, is it not?”

“That’s my photograph,” I said. “But this is not my SS file.”

“An application for the SS, completed and signed by Eric Gruen, with a medical report. Height one meter eighty-eight, hair blond, eyes blue, distinguishing characteristic, subject is missing the little finger of his left hand.” He handed the document over. I took it with my left hand, without thinking. “You are missing the little finger on your left hand. You can hardly deny that.”

“It’s a long story,” I said. “But I’m not Eric Gruen.”

“More photographs,” said my interrogator. “A picture of you shaking hands with Reich Marshal Hermann Göring, taken in August 1936. Another of you with SS Obergruppenführer Heydrich, taken at Wewelsburg Castle, Paderborn, November 1938.”

“You’ll notice I’m not wearing a uniform,” I said.

“And a picture of you standing next to Reichsführer Heinrich Himmler, believed taken October 1938. He’s not wearing a uniform either.” He smiled. “What did you discuss? Euthanasia, perhaps. Aktion T-four?”

“I met him, yes,” I said. “It doesn’t mean we sent each other Christmas cards.”

“A photograph of you with SS Gruppenführer Arthur Nebe. Taken Minsk, 1941. You are wearing a uniform in this picture. Are you not? Nebe commanded a Special Action Group that killed—how many Jews was it, Aaron?”

“Ninety thousand Jews, sir.” Aaron sounded more English than American.

“Ninety thousand. Yes.”

“I’m not who you think I am.”

“Three days ago you were in Vienna, were you not?”

“Yes.”

“Now we’re getting somewhere. Exhibit Eight. The sworn testimony of Tibor Medgyessy, formerly employed as the Gruen family butler, in Vienna. Shown your photograph, the one from your own SS file, he positively identified you as Eric Gruen. Also the statement of the desk clerk at the Hotel Erzherzog Rainer. You stayed there following the death of your mother, Elisabeth. He also identified you as Eric Gruen. It was foolish of you to go to the funeral, Gruen. Foolish, but understandable.”

“Look, I’ve been framed,” I said. “Very handsomely by Major Jacobs. The real Eric Gruen is leaving the country tonight. Aboard a plane from an American military airfield. He is going to work for the CIA and Jacobs and the American government, to produce a malaria vaccine.”

“Major Jacobs is a man of the very highest integrity,” said my interrogator. “A man who has put the interests of the State of Israel ahead of those of his own country, and at no small peril to himself.” He leaned back in his chair and lit a cigarette. “Look, why don’t you admit who you are? Admit the crimes you committed at Majdanek and Dachau. Admit what you’ve done and it will go easier for you, I promise.”

“Easier for you, you mean. My name is Bernhard Gunther.”

“How did you come by that name?”

“It’s my name,” I insisted.

“The real Bernhard Gunther is dead,” said the interrogator and handed me yet another piece of paper. “This is a copy of his death certificate. He was murdered by the ODESSA or some other old comrades organization in Munich, two months ago. Presumably so that you could assume his identity.” He paused. “With this expertly forged passport.” And he handed me my own passport. The one I left at Mönch before traveling to Vienna.

“That’s not forged,” I said. “That’s a real passport. It’s the other one that’s a fake.” I sighed and shook my head. “But if I’m dead, then does it matter what I say? You’ll be killing the wrong person. But then of course that wouldn’t be the first time you’ve killed the wrong person. Vera Messmann wasn’t the war criminal Jacobs told she was. As it happens, I can prove who I say I am. Twelve years ago, in Palestine . . .”

“You bastard,” yelled the big man with the elephant ears. “You murdering bastard.” He came toward me quickly and hit me hard with something in his fist. I think the younger man might have tried to restrain him, but it didn’t work. He wasn’t the type to be restrained by anything much except perhaps a heavy machine gun. The blow when it came knocked me off the chair. I felt as if I had been hit by fifty thousand volts. My whole body was left tingling, with the exception of my head, which felt as if someone had wrapped it in a thick, damp towel so I couldn’t hear anything, or see anything. My own voice sounded muffled. Then another towel got wrapped around my head and there was just silence and darkness and nothing at all except a magic carpet that picked me up and floated me away to a place that didn’t exist. And that was a place where Bernie Gunther—the real Bernie Gunther—felt very much at home.