A Song Of Shadows Part 10

A long sigh from the living room greeted that expression of hope.

'You know that you're bored,' Ruth told her. 'It'll do you good to be in school.'

'I'm not that bored.' Another sigh.

Ruth raised her eyes to heaven, and walked Parker to the door.

'Thanks again for the wine and the books. It wasn't necessary, but it was still very kind of you.'

He acknowledged her thanks with a nod, his right hand against the frame of the door. He tapped the place where the mezuzah had once been. A pair of nail holes marked the spot.

'Didn't you have an ornament or something here?' he asked.

He watched her search for an answer.

'Oh, yes. That. I just didn't care much for it. I'll find something else to replace it.'

'Something else Jewish?'

Their eyes met. She folded her arms across her chest.

'I haven't decided.'

He nodded.

'Goodbye, Ruth.'

'Goodbye,' she said, then added: 'We'll see you and your daughter over the weekend.'

'I look forward to it,' he replied, and she waited until he was on the sand before she closed the door.

Somehow, she even managed a farewell wave.

17.

From the dunes, Steiger watched in the fading light as the visitor departed from the Winter house. He'd been in there for a long time. Steiger wondered if he was f.u.c.king the Winter woman. It didn't matter to Steiger that her child appeared to be with them in the house. Steiger had spent so long among those to whom morality was an alien concept that he simply a.s.sumed all of humanity resembled him in the baseness of its appet.i.tes.

Whether or not this man was s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g Ruth Winter didn't concern Steiger per se. Steiger would probably have screwed her himself, given the opportunity, but it wasn't that kind of job, not yet. What worried Steiger was pillow talk. The Winter woman had a lot of hurt and confusion bottled up inside her right now, and a stranger's touch might be just the catalyst required to pop the cap. If she started talking, then who knew where it might lead? Well, Bruno Perlman knew, as did Lenny Tedesco and his wife, but none of them was now in a position to explain the possible consequences of loose talk to anyone.

The first step, thought Steiger, was to establish this man's ident.i.ty.

The second, if necessary, was to wipe him off the map.

On November 19th, 1900, a woman named Mildred Elizabeth Sisk was born in Portland, Maine. Her name changed to Gillars after her mother remarried in 1911, and when Mildred was sixteen the family migrated to Ohio, where she studied dramatic arts at Ohio Wesleyan University. Eventually she drifted east to New York in search of work, then on to Paris for a time, and Algiers, before finally moving to Germany, where she found employment with the Reichs-Rundfunk-Gesellschaft, the Reich Broadcasting Company.

When her German-born fiance was killed on the Eastern Front, she fell under the spell of Max Koischwitz, the program director in the USA Zone for RRG, who broadcast anti-Semitic and anti-British propaganda under the name Doctor Anders. Gillars and the married Koischwitz became lovers, and worked together on a show called Home Sweet Home, designed primarily to arouse homesickness in American troops fighting the Germans in North Africa. Thus Gillars became the original Axis Sally. Broadcasting as 'Midge', and through judicious use of music, she played on the soldiers' concerns about their mission, their officers, the women they had left behind, and what awaited them after the war. The propaganda was heavy-handed, and largely ineffective, but the GIs liked the music choices. If nothing else, Gillars had good taste in tunes, with a particular fondness for swing.

Gillars continued to broadcast from Berlin until the German surrender, after which she vanished into the postwar chaos, but the United States attorney general was determined to track her down. The alias Barbara Mome was linked to her, and the net began to close when an antique dealer sold a table for a woman of the same name, leading soldiers to an address in the British sector of Berlin in March 1946. Gillars was arrested, taking with her only a photo of her now deceased lover, and returned to the United States for trial. She served twelve years for treason in the Federal Reformatory for Women in Alderson, West Virginia before being paroled in 1961, after which she became a teacher at the Sisters of the Poor Child Catholic convent school near Columbus, Ohio. She died, largely unknown, in 1988.

In the quiet of his home, the Jigsaw Man listened to a recreation of one of Axis Sally's broadcasts. He had put it together himself, interspersing recordings of her slightly German-accented voice with tunes from the era of which he was fond.

'As one American to another,' Sally purred, 'do you love the British? Well, of course the answer is no. Do the British love us? Well, I should say not ...'

Her voice faded away as Count Basie emerged from the mix with 'Lullaby of Birdland.' Only when Earl Steiger tapped on the window gla.s.s did the Jigsaw Man reluctantly pull himself from his reverie to admit him.

18.

Parker didn't wake gradually, but shot up straight in bed, his head exploding, his vision pinp.r.i.c.ked by white-hot explosions of light, like phosphorous flares in the night. He felt the shotgun pellets ripping through his scalp, embedding themselves in his skull. He tried to hide from them and tumbled to the floor, his head in his hands, as bullets tore through his torso, one of them breaking a rib, a second nicking the upper part of his pelvis and sending shards of bone tearing into his intestines. A third came, bursting a kidney, and now every pain receptor in his body was alight.

He curled in upon himself on the bare boards, his mouth wide in agony both real and remembered, no longer capable of separating one from the other. This headache was the worst yet: in its intensity it reactivated the hurt of half-healed wounds, and returned him to that night in Scarborough when he had crawled through his home, trailing blood, wishing for them to come, willing them to end it all.

The pain, incredibly, grew more ferocious. The scar left by his laparotomy the vertical abdominal incision used to open him up after the shooting started to burn, and he thought he could feel the holes left by the chest drains stretching and opening. He tried gritting his teeth against it all, and tears forced themselves from the corners of his eyes, but he was brought no release. He was certain that tonight, after all he had endured, he must surely die.

A cool hand was laid on his forehead, the skin so chill as to be spangled with frost. Through his tears he saw it gleaming in the moonlight, sparkling like the light of dead stars. A voice spoke daddy and he felt the coldness of her breath, and smelled the scent of a world beyond this one. He began to tremble, for her touch burned coldly, but the agony slowly subsided, and his wounds ceased their singing, and her lips touched his cheek and left a mark that he would see in the mirror for days to come.

hush daddy hush And he lay on the floor in a fever dream as his dead daughter comforted him.

19.

The next day, the Maine State Police got their first break in the search for Oran Wilde.

Oran owned a smartphone, but it had only been used once since the morning of the killings, when Oran had sent his closest friend, Clyde Marshal, a link to an article on Reddit relating to the weaponry used in the movie Lone Survivor, which Oran had seen on cable the night before. This link, relatively innocuous in itself Oran was simply identifying weaponry that he had used in various PS3 games was taken by police as further evidence of his disturbed nature, and its discovery resulted in Clyde Marshal being questioned for twenty-four hours about any possible foreknowledge he might have had of the events at the Wilde house. Marshal was eventually released without charge, but his phone, too, was being monitored, and when Oran Wilde's phone eventually pinged back into action, it was to Marshal that he sent the following message: I'm okay, Cly. Just need to figure s.h.i.t out. This is all a big mistake. I didn't mean for it to happen. I'll explain when I can. Oran.

While the phone was immediately switched off after the message was sent, the battery was not removed, allowing the MSP to begin the process of triangulation. The trace was almost complete when Oran apparently realized that he had forgotten about the battery, whereupon the signal was lost, but not before the MSP had narrowed the source down to a square mile of ground that took in the Veterans Cemetery outside Augusta.

And it was there that the body of the homeless man was found.

His name was Richie Benoit, and he was a veteran of the first Iraq war, a drug addict, and the father of three children by two different women, neither of whom he had ever gotten round to marrying. He had been roughing it, on and off, for about five years, and died from three stab wounds to the chest from a short-bladed knife, which was discovered near his body. Although he carried no identification, Benoit was well known locally, mainly because there was hardly a convenience store in Augusta from which he hadn't at some point been ejected for attempted theft. Fingerprints on the knife were matched to prints taken from Oran Wilde's bedroom, and further forensic examination found traces of Oran's blood on the fingers of Benoit's right hand, indicating that a struggle might have taken place during which Benoit had scratched or otherwise injured the boy. In the narrative under construction, it appeared that Oran might have killed Benoit in order to rob him of what little money he had, although it was also suggested that some altercation might have occurred between them, possibly when Oran came upon Benoit sleeping on the street, or vice versa.

Roadblocks were put in place on all major and minor roads in and out of Augusta, and police began canva.s.sing the area around the cemetery, searching garages, bas.e.m.e.nts, empty lots, Dumpsters anywhere a teenage boy might try to hide from his pursuers.

But no trace of Oran Wilde was found.

II.

She had confronted Barbie during the pretrial proceedings what the French call l'instruction and when he was asked if he recognized her, he said, 'When you have been in prison for seven months it's always agreeable to see a desirable woman.' When Simone Lagrange said that his remark insulted her, he said, 'The trouble with you is you can't take a joke.'

Former Gestapo chief Klaus Barbie, known as the 'Butcher of Lyons', in exchanges with Simone Lagrange, who, at the age of thirteen, was beaten and interrogated by him at Gestapo headquarters in Lyons before being sent to Auschwitz (from 'Voices from the Barbie Trial' by Ted Morgan, New York Times, August 2nd, 1987).

20.

While police swarmed Augusta, a TV news crew traced one of the mothers of Richie Benoit's children, a woman named Muriel Landler, who lived in the smallest apartment the reporter had ever seen, made even more cramped by the presence of two children and three cats. Landler appeared genuinely upset to hear of Benoit's death, but still managed to negotiate a cash payment of $1000 before speaking to the camera, in order to pay off her auto loan lender, which had disabled her car using the starter interrupt device in the dashboard, even though she was only four days late with her payment.

'Who said,' as she told the reporter while pocketing the cash, 'that f.u.c.king technology makes our lives easier? Ten years ago they'd have had to send some fat f.u.c.k to find me.'

The reporter blanched slightly and asked her not to swear on camera.

'Who's swearing?' asked Muriel.

'You just did.'

'Did I? f.u.c.k.'

In the end, they only had to bleep her once, which was considered a minor miracle under the circ.u.mstances.

The call from Epstein came as Parker was throwing back his second painkiller. It helped the thumping in his head, but didn't do much for the nausea.

'Where are you?' asked Epstein.

'In Boreas. It's-'

'I know where it is. I thought that I might come visit you.'

'When?'

'In a couple of hours, I should think.'

'Are you serious?'

'When am I not? Liat is driving me. You remember Liat, don't you?'

Oh yes, thought Parker. Yes, I do.

'I have a favor to ask of you, too,' said Epstein. 'It relates to the late Bruno Perlman ...'

Epstein and Liat arrived in Boreas shortly after one p.m. Parker was waiting for them at Kramer & Sons Funeral Home, along with Cory Bloom. The rabbi hugged Parker, and introduced himself and the woman with him to Bloom. The woman, Liat, said nothing, which caused Bloom to bristle slightly until Epstein explained that Liat could neither speak nor hear. It was the interaction between Liat and Parker that particularly interested Bloom, though. There was a tenderness to the way the woman looked at him, and when she held him her lips brushed his cheek, and she closed her eyes for a moment. When she parted from him, he placed his right hand to his mouth, the fingers close to the lips, then moved it forward and down in her direction, so that he appeared almost to be blowing her a kiss. Liat's face lit up at the gesture, and Bloom found herself gasping at the woman's true beauty, which had been concealed until then by her sternness.

It emerged that Epstein had been in Boston for a meeting, and had already been considering a detour north to visit Parker and see how he was. He informed Bloom that he considered the subsequent call about Bruno Perlman as 'a nudge from the Most High.'

Erik Kramer, one of the '& Sons', brought them to a room in the bas.e.m.e.nt of the funeral home, and Perlman's body was briefly removed from the refrigerated unit in which it was being kept. This was the favor that Epstein had asked of Parker, and Cory Bloom had seen no reason to object. As Epstein had explained to Parker, it was not just the bereaved who were troubled by death, but the dead themselves. According to the Talmud and Kabbalah, the soul did not completely leave the world until after burial. Until then it was in a state of transition, of disconnection, which was why the deceased should not be left alone between death and burial. Out of this had come the Jewish tradition of shemira, or watching over the body.

But, as Erik Kramer explained to Epstein, Kramer & Sons was a very old-style funeral business, and his father and mother continued to live on the top two floors of the home, for they were not troubled by the presence of the dead. In this way, although they were not Jewish, he suggested that they were performing a kind of shemira. Epstein thanked him for this kindness, but said that he knew of a Chevra Kadisha, a Jewish burial society, who would be able to find volunteers to act as shomrim until the time came for Perlman's burial. The rabbi then said a prayer over the body before it was returned to the cold and the dark. After that, Epstein remained silent until they arrived at the Brickhouse, where he ordered salad and spoke to them of numbers.

Tattooed numbers, as Bloom had already established, were used to identify prisoners at just one concentration camp the Auschwitz complex in Upper Silesia and then just from 1941 onward. Only prisoners selected for work received a serial number, Epstein explained. Those who were sent directly to the gas chambers including the elderly, the weak, and children were not tattooed, although in the early days of the camp those who were in the infirmary or marked for execution were also tattooed on the chest using a metal stamp made up of interchangeable centimeter-long needles which allowed the tattoo to be created using a single blow, after which ink was rubbed into the wound.

The digits were generally tattooed on the outer side of the left forearm, although some prisoners from transports in 1943 received tattoos on the inner forearm. The numbering sequences used varied over time, according to intake and the nature of the prisoners involved. An 'AU' series denoted a Soviet prisoner, a 'Z' series a gypsy. 'A' and 'B' sequences up to 20,000 were used to identify male and female prisoners arriving at the camp after 1944, although an administrative error resulted in the 'B' series exceeding 20,000. The n.a.z.is' original intention was to get as far as 'Z' if required.

'So,' said Epstein, 'your initial surmise was right: these are Auschwitz ident.i.ty numbers. Perlman lost four family members the Nemiroffs in the camps: a great-uncle, a great-aunt, and their son and daughter. But the curious thing is that they didn't die at Auschwitz. They were killed at another camp entirely. They perished at Lubsko.'

Epstein had never met Bruno Perlman while he lived his first sight of him had come that day at Kramer & Sons but he knew of him. Perlman had been a troubled youth. He was involved in minor criminality, and was a heroin addict for a number of years. Eventually he rediscovered his faith with a vengeance, which led him to begin researching his family. In the actions of those who had killed the Nemiroffs, he found an outlet for his rage at himself, and grew obsessed with the Holocaust. He also became involved with a number of organizations targeting neo-n.a.z.i groups, although Perlman was by nature and inclination more of a loner, and was regarded by most as a dabbler who could not be relied upon. He was also essentially self-absorbed, seeing everything through the prism of Lubsko.

Parker had heard the name used recently. It came to him.

'Engel,' he said. 'The war criminal they're trying to deport from New York. He was a guard at Lubsko.'

'Indeed,' said Epstein. 'He's the first of the Lubsko staff that the US government has been able to lay hands on. Lubsko was a nasty, sordid little footnote to the Holocaust, as if such a thing could even be required.

'To understand Lubkso, you have to recognize something: n.a.z.ism was, at heart, a criminal enterprise, a product of which was the Holocaust. The n.a.z.is were gangsters and hoodlums. As much as they were ideologically driven, they were also greedy. Pure ideologues don't pull gold teeth from the mouths of the dead.

'And lest you should be mistaken, we are speaking here of sums of money almost beyond comprehension, of quant.i.ties of looted a.s.sets that defy the imagination. Take one man, just one: Ernst Kaltenbrunner, who in 1943 became the head of the Reichssicherheitshauptamt, or RSHA, the Reich Main Office for Security, which was responsible for the implementation of the Final Solution. Kaltenbrunner had a house at Altaussee called the Villa Kerry, and when he was forced to flee from the American advance, he decided to bury his wealth in his garden. He had at his disposal fifty kilograms of gold, fifty cases of gold coin, plate, and jewelry, two million US dollars, two million Swiss francs, five boxes of gemstones, and a stamp collection valued at five million marks. It was too much to bury, so he hid what he could and had to be talked out of putting the rest in a cave and dynamiting it. This is one man just one. Do you understand?'

Epstein banged a thin finger on the table before him. Parker had never seen the old rabbi so animated, so enraged.

'This was not simply about ga.s.sing and shooting and burning millions of innocent men, women, and children, about turning Europe into one vast funeral pyre: it was about robbing these people along the way, of taking everything they had from them down to their spectacles, their hair, even the clothes that they wore, so they were forced to go to their deaths naked.'

Epstein regained his usual composure. His point had been made.

'But the n.a.z.is were worried about wealth slipping through their fingers, for they wanted nothing to get past them. So a unit was formed within the RSHA to identify Jews and other prisoners who might have managed to hide significant transportable a.s.sets gold, jewelry, art before being sent to the camps, and put pressure on them to reveal their location. It drew on staff from Amter II, the Administration, Law, and Finance Section, along with Adolf Eichmann's Referat IV B4, but it was secretive about its work, to the extent that those who were involved in Lubsko did not even have it listed on their service record. It took years for the Allies just to figure out that "Special Administration (Amter II-L)" was a reference to Lubsko.

'Now there were some who advocated torture and the threat of immediate execution as a stimulus, but given that most of the prisoners in the camps were already brutalized and facing death, further threats struck those involved in Amter II-L as redundant. Instead a more refined approach was decided upon, and Lubsko was created.

'The idea for the deception came from the death camp at Treblinka, of all places. I don't know if any of you have ever visited a slaughterhouse, but the trick is to hide from the cattle the imminence of their deaths. It makes them easier to handle. So you don't want them to smell blood and panic until the end, and you don't want them to hear the sounds the animals inside make when they sense what is about to happen. Most of those who ended up in Treblinka survived only minutes before being herded to the gas chambers, but in order for the operation to be conducted with the minimum of fuss and panic, the prisoner transports arrived at what looked like a village train station, with timetables and flowers, and the path to the chambers led through a grove of trees. You see, the best slaughterhouse is one that doesn't look like a slaughterhouse at all.

'So Lubsko was a death camp disguised to resemble a work farm, with small chalet-type huts and a minimal guard presence. It had a proper infirmary for prisoners, with no more than four to six prisoners to a hut, although the preference at Lubsko was to give each family its own dwelling. Prisoners would be expected to work, but compared to Auschwitz the labor was minimal, even pleasant. They would be required to farm, plant vegetables, feed chickens, and do some light maintenance painting, cleaning to keep the camp looking fresh. An Obersturmbannfuhrer named Lothar Probst was given command of the camp, along with his wife, Magda. She was twenty years younger than him, and very pretty, by all accounts. She was almost the perfect wife for an SS officer; her only flaw was that she could not give him the children he wanted, but whose fault that was, I do not know. She was a local leader in the League of German Girls before she joined the Party, and trained as a nurse at Grafeneck Castle near Stuttgart.

'You have heard of Grafeneck? No? It was the headquarters of the n.a.z.i euthanasia program. Before they began slaughtering us, they practiced on their own: the mentally ill, the physically disabled, the weak, the deformed, the ones who did not match the Aryan ideal. In 1940 alone, they killed almost ten thousand people at Grafeneck: first, an injection of morphine to calm them, then the gas, although by the time they got to the Jews, they had dispensed with the morphine. After Grafeneck, Magda moved around hospitals as part of Operation Brandt, the expansion of the euthanasia program to geriatrics and the war-wounded, before being posted to the Ukraine in the Ostrausch, the "Eastern Rush", the great colonization, and there she met Lothar Probst. As a regional commander, Probst was responsible for Aktions on the Ukrainian-Polish border: he worked alongside a man named Wilhelm Westerheide, and together they reduced the Jewish population from twenty thousand to five hundred in the s.p.a.ce of fourteen months. One of their tricks was to force Jews in the local ghetto to hand over money and valuables in return for guarantees of protection which, of course, never came. That was why Probst was chosen for Lubsko: he had experience of deception.