Boys from Brazil

4

“WE’VE ONLY ELIMINATED four of the eleven,” Klaus von Palmen said, cutting into a thick sausage before him. “Don’t you think it’s too soon to talk about stopping?”

“Who’s talking about stopping?” Liebermann knifed mashed potatoes onto the back of his fork. “All I said was I’m not going to go all the way up to Fagersta. I didn’t say I’m not going to go to other places, and I also didn’t say I’m not going to ask someone else to go up to Fagersta, someone who won’t need an interpreter.” He put the sausage-and-potatoed fork into his mouth.

They were in Five Continents, the restaurant in Frankfurt Airport. Saturday night, November 9th. Liebermann had arranged for a two-hour stopover on his way back to Vienna, and Klaus had driven up from Mannheim to meet him. The restaurant was expensive—Liebermann acknowledged the reproach of invisible contributors—but the boy deserved a good meal. Not only had he checked out the man in Pforzheim, whose jump, not fall, from a bridge had been witnessed by five people, but after Liebermann had spoken to him from Gladbeck on Thursday night he had gone down to Freiburg too, while Liebermann had gone to Solingen. Besides, his look of shrewdness—the small pinched-together features and glittering eyes—at close range seemed maybe only part shrewdness and the other part malnutrition. Did any of these kids eat enough? So, Five Continents. They couldn’t talk in one of the snack bars, could they?

August Mohr, the night watchman at the chemical plant in Solingen, had turned out to be, as Liebermann had thought he might, a civil servant by day—a custodial worker in the hospital where he had died. But fire officials had thoroughly investigated the explosion that killed him, and had traced it to a chain of mishaps they were certain couldn’t have been prearranged. And Mohr himself was as unlikely a victim of Nazi plotting as Emil Döring had been. Semi-literate and poor, a widower for six years, he had lived with his bedridden mother in two rooms in a shabby boarding house. For most of his life, including the war years, he had worked in a Solingen steel mill. Mail or phone calls from outside the country? His landlady had laughed. “Not even from inside, sir.”

Klaus, in Freiburg, had thought at first that he was on to something. The man there, a clerk in the Water Department named Josef Rausenberger, had been knifed and robbed near his home, and a neighbor had seen someone watching the house the night before.

“A man with a glass eye?”

“She wouldn’t have noticed, she was too far away. A big man in a small car, smoking, was what she told the police. She couldn’t even tell what make of car. Was there a man with a glass eye in Solingen?”

“In Gladbeck. Go on.”

But. Rausenberger had belonged to no international organizations. He had lost both his legs below the knees in a train accident when he was a boy; as a result he hadn’t done military service or even set foot—artificial foot, that is—outside Germany. (“Please,” Liebermann chided.) He had been an efficient and painstaking worker, a devoted husband and father. His savings had been left to his widow. He had disapproved of the Nazis and voted against them, but nothing more. Born in Schwenningen. Never in Günzburg. One notable relation: a cousin, the managing editor of the Berliner Morgenpost.

Döring, Müller, Mohr, Rausenberger; none of them by any stretch of the imagination Nazi victims. Four of the eleven.

“I know a man in Stockholm,” Liebermann said. “An engraver, from Warsaw originally. Very clever. He’ll be glad to go up to Fagersta. The man there, Persson, and the one in Bordeaux are the two main ones to check on. October sixteenth was the one date Barry mentioned. If neither of those two was someone the Nazis could have and would have killed, then he must have been wrong.”

“Unless you haven’t heard about the right man. Or he was killed on the wrong day.”

“‘Unless,’” Liebermann said, cutting sausage. “The whole thing is ‘unless’ this, ‘if’ that, ‘maybe’ the other. I wish to hell he hadn’t called me.”

“What did he say exactly? How did it all happen?”

Liebermann went through the story.

The waiter took their plates and their dessert orders.

When he had gone, Klaus said, “Have you realized that your name might have been added to the list? Even if it wasn’t Mengele, recognizing you by telepathy—which I don’t for a moment believe, Herr Liebermann; I’m surprised that you do—but if any Nazi hung up the phone, he certainly would have made it his business to find out who Barry was talking to. The hotel operator would have known.”

Liebermann smiled. “I’m only sixty-two,” he said, “and I’m not a civil servant.”

“Don’t joke about it. If killers were being sent out, why not give them one more assignment? With top priority.”

“Then the fact that I’m still alive suggests they weren’t being sent out.”

“Maybe they decided to wait awhile, Mengele and the Comrades Organization, because you knew. Or even called the whole thing off.”

“You see what I mean about the ‘ifs’ and the ‘maybes’?”

“Did you realize that you may be in danger?”

The waiter put cherry cake before Klaus, a Linzer torte before Liebermann. He poured Klaus’s coffee, Liebermann’s tea.

When he had gone, Liebermann, tearing open a packet of sugar, said, “I’ve been in danger for a long time, Klaus. I stopped thinking about it; otherwise I would have had to close the Center and do something else with my life. You’re right; ‘if’ there are killers, I’m probably on the list. So finding out is still the only thing to do. I’ll go to Bordeaux and have Piwowar, my friend in Stockholm, go to Fagersta. And if those men too can’t have been victims, I’ll check out a few more, just to be sure.”

Klaus, stirring his coffee, said, “I could go to Fagersta; I speak some Swedish.”

“But for you I’d have to buy a ticket, right? And for Piwowar, I won’t. Unfortunately that’s a factor. Also, you shouldn’t skip lectures so casually.”

“I could skip every lecture for a month and still graduate with honors.”

“Oh my. Such a brain. Tell me about yourself; how did you become so smart?”

“I could tell you something about myself that might come as a surprise to you, Herr Liebermann.”

Liebermann listened gravely and sympathetically.

Klaus’s parents were former Nazis. His mother had been on close terms with Himmler; his father had been a colonel in the Luftwaffe.

Almost all the young Germans who offered to help Liebermann were children of former Nazis. It was one of the few things that made him think God might be real and at work, if only slowly.

“We’re awful.”

“No we’re not, we’re smashing. Ought to be doing it on film.”

“You know what I mean. Look at us; one, two, and in the kip. Tuppence says you forgot my name.”

“Meg for Margaret.”

“Full name.”

“Reynolds. Tuppence please, Nurse Reynolds.”

“Too dark to find my purse. Will you settle for this?”

“Mmm, yes indeed. Mmm, that’s lovely.”

“‘Blushing shyly, she said, “It won’t be only this one night, sir, will it?”’”

“Is that what’s on your mind?”

“No, I’m thinking about the price of pickles. Of course it’s on my mind! This isn’t my usual modus vivendi, you know.”

“I say. ‘Modus vivendi’!”

“There’s a straight answer.”

“I wasn’t trying to be evasive, Meg. I’m afraid it may be only tonight, but not because I want it that way. I have no choice in the matter. I was sent up here to…do some business with someone, and he’s laid out in your bloody hospital, on oxygen, with no visitors except the immediate fam.”

“Harrington?”

“That’s the chap. When I call in and report I can’t get to him, I’ll probably be pulled right back down to London. We’re dreadfully short of staff at present.”

“Will you come back when he recovers?”

“Not likely. I’ll be onto another case by then; someone else’ll take over. Assuming he does recover. It’s iffy, I gather.”

“Yes, he’s sixty-six, you know, and it was quite a bad attack. He has a strong constitution, though. Ran round the green every morning at eight sharp; you could set your watch. They say it helps the heart, but I say it harms it at that age.”

“It’s a pity I can’t get to him; I’d have been able to stay here a fortnight at the very least. Do you think we could get together at Christmas? We close up shop then; can you get free?”

“I might be able…”

“Lovely! Would you? I have a flat in Kensington, with a bed a mite softer than this one.”

“Alan, what business are you in?”

“I told you.”

“It certainly doesn’t sound like selling. Salesmen don’t have ‘cases.’ Except the carrying kind, and I didn’t notice any of those, not that I had much time to. Selling what, eh? You’re not really a salesman at all, are you?”

“Clever Meg. Can you keep a secret?”

“Of course I can.”

“Truly?”

“Yes. You can trust me, Alan.”

“Well—I’m with the Inland Revenue. We’ve had a tip that Harrington has bilked us out of something like thirty thousand quid over the past ten or twelve years.”

“I don’t believe it! He’s a magistrate!”

“They’re the ones, more often than you’d think.”

“My Lord, he’s Civic Virtue on a pedestal!”

“That’s as may be. I was sent to find out. Y’ see, I was to put a transmitter into his home, a ‘bug,’ and monitor it from my room here, see what I could pick up.”

“Is that the way you blighters operate?”

“Standard procedure in cases like this. I have the warrant in my briefcase. His hospital room would have been even better than his home. A chap’s a bit nervous in hospital; tells the wife where the loot is hidden, whispers a word or two to his solicitor… But I can’t get in to plant the bloody thing. I could show the warrant to your director, but like as not he’s Harrington’s pal; he’ll drop a word and it’s Johnny-out-the-window.”

“You bastard. You ruddy old bastard!”

“Meg! What are—”

“You think I don’t see what the game is? You want me to plant your whatsit for you. That’s why we ‘happened’ to meet so accidentally. Fed me your line of—Oh Christ, I should have known you were up to something, Handsome Harry falling for a fat old cow like me.”

“Meg! Don’t say that, love!”

“Get your hands off. And don’t call me ‘love,’ thank you. Oh Christ, what an ass I am!”

“Meg dear, please, lie back down and—”

“Keep off! I’m glad he did you out of something. You buggers get too much from us as it is. Ho! There’s a joke. Remind me to laugh.”

“Meg! Yes, you’re right, it’s true; I was hoping you’d lend a hand, and that is why we met. But it isn’t why we’re up here now. Do you think I’m so loyal to the bleeding Rev that I’d bed down with someone I wasn’t keen on, just to get a wretched little twister like Harrington? And want to go on doing it for a fortnight or more? He’s nothing compared to most we go after. I meant every word I said, Meg, about preferring large women, and mature ones, and wanting you to come stay with me at Christmas.”

“Don’t believe one bloody word.”

“Oh Meg, I could…tear my tongue out! You’re the best thing that’s happened to me in fifteen years, and now I’ve spoiled it all with my stupidity! Will you just lie back down, love? I’m not going to mention Harrington ever again. I wouldn’t let you help me now if you begged me.”

“I shan’t, so don’t worry.”

“Just lie back down, love—that’s the girl—and let me hold you and kiss these nice big—Mmmmm! Ah, Meg, you’re really heaven! Mmmmm!”

“Bastard…”

“You know what I’ll do? I’ll call in tomorrow and tell my super that Harrington’s mending and I think I’ll be able to plant the bug in a day or two. Perhaps I can stall him till Thursday or Friday before he pulls me back. Mmmmm! I’m queer for nurses, did y’ know that? My mum was one, and so was Mary, my wife. Mmmmm!”

“Ah…”

“You mayn’t like me, but your nipple does.”

“Did you really mean it about Christmas, bastard?”

“I swear I did, love, and any other time we can manage. Maybe you could even move to London; have you ever thought of doing that? There are always posts for nurses, aren’t there? That was Mary’s experience.”

“Oh, I couldn’t. Not just pick up and move. Alan? Could you…really stay a fortnight?”

“I could get away with more than that, if I had the bug in; I’d have to wait till he’s out of the tent and talking to people…But I’m not going to let you do it, Meg; I meant it.”

“I already know—”

“No. I won’t risk spoiling our relationship.”

“Oh bosh. I already know you’re a bastard, so what difference will it make? I want to help the government, not you.”

“Well… I suppose I shouldn’t stand in the way of getting my job done.”

“I thought you’d come round. What must I do? I can’t wire things.”

“There’s no need to. You simply bring a package into his room. The size of a sweet box. It is a sweet box actually, nicely done up in flowered paper. All you do is unwrap it, put it close to his bed—on a shelf or night table or such, the closer to his head the better—and you open it.”

“That’s all? Just open it?”

“It goes on automatically.”

“I thought those things were tiny.”

“The telephone ones. Not this kind.”

“It won’t make a spark, will it? The oxygen, you know.”

“Oh no, it can’t possibly. Just a microphone and a transmitter under a layer of sweets. You mustn’t open it until you have it in the right place; it doesn’t do to jiggle it around too much once it’s broadcasting.”

“Do you have it ready? I’ll put it in tomorrow. Today, I should say.”

“Good girl.”

“Fancy old Harrington a tax cheat! What a stir it’ll make if he’s brought up on charges!”

“You mustn’t breathe a word of this to anyone until we have evidence.”

“Oh no, I’d never; I know that. We must assume he’s innocent. It’s quite exciting! Do you know what I’m going to do after I open the box, Alan?”

“I can’t imagine.”

“I’m going to whisper something into it, something I’d like you to do to me tomorrow night. In exchange for my helping. You will be able to hear, won’t you?”

“The moment you open it. I’ll be listening with bated breath. Whatever can you be thinking of, you wicked Meg? Oh yes… ooh, that feels very nice indeed, love.”

Liebermann went to Bordeaux and Orléans, and his friend Gabriel Piwowar went to Fagersta and Göteborg. None of the four sixty-five-year-old civil servants who had died in those cities was any more imaginable as a Nazi victim than the four who had already been checked out.

Another batch of clippings and tear-offs came in, twenty-six this time, six of them possibles. There were now seventeen, of which eight—including the three of October 16th—had been eliminated. Liebermann was certain Barry had been wrong, but reminding himself of the gravity of the situation if, he decided to check out five more, the ones most easily checked. Two in Denmark he delegated to one of his contributors there, a bill collector named Goldschmidt, and one in Trittau, near Hamburg, to Klaus. Two in England he checked out himself, combining business with pleasure—a visit with his daugher Dena and her family, in Reading.

The five were the same as the other eight. Different, but the same. Klaus reported that the Widow Schreiber had propositioned him.

A few more clippings came in, with a note from Beynon: Afraid I can’t justify this to London any longer. Has anything come of it?

Liebermann called him; he was out.

But he returned the call an hour later.

“No, Sydney,” Liebermann said, “it was only wild geese. Thirteen I checked, out of seventeen that could have been. Not one was a man the Nazis would plan to kill. But it’s good I checked, and I’m only sorry that I put you to so much trouble.”

“Not a bit of it. The boy hasn’t turned up yet?”

“No. I had a letter from his father. He’s been down there twice, in Brazil, and twice to Washington; he doesn’t want to give up.”

“Pity. Let me know if he finds anything.”

“I will. And thank you again, Sydney.”

None of the final few clippings was a possible. Which was just as well. Liebermann turned his attention to a letter-writing campaign aimed at getting the West German government to renew attempts to extradite Walter Rauff—responsible for the gassing of ninety-seven thousand women and children and living then (and now) under his own name in Punta Arenas, Chile.

In January of 1975 Liebermann went to the United States for what was to have been a two-month speaking tour, a counterclockwise circuit of the eastern half of the country starting and ending in New York City. His lecture bureau had booked seventy-odd engagements for him, some at colleges and universities and the majority in temples and at luncheon meetings of Jewish groups. Before being sent on the tour he was escorted to Philadelphia and put on a television program (along with a health-food expert, an actor, and a woman who had written an erotic novel; but invaluable and hard-to-arrange publicity, Mr. Goldwasser of the bureau assured him).

On Thursday evening, January 14th, Liebermann spoke at Congregation Knesses Israel in Pittsfield, Massachusetts. A woman who had brought a paperback copy of his book for him to autograph said as he wrote in it that she was from Lenox, not Pittsfield.

“Lenox?” he asked. “That’s near here?”

“Seven miles,” she said, smiling. “I’d have come if it were seventy.”

He smiled and thanked her.

November 16th: Curry, Jack; Lenox, Massachusetts. He hadn’t brought the list with him but it was there in his head.

That night, in the guest room of the congregation’s president, he lay awake, listening to snowflakes patting at the windowpanes. Curry. Something with taxes, an assessor or auditor. Killed in a hunting accident, someone’s wild shot. Aimed shot?

He had checked. Thirteen out of seventeen. Including the three on October 16th. But only seven miles? The bus ride to Worcester wouldn’t take more than two hours, and he didn’t have to be there till dinnertime. Even after dinnertime in a pinch…

Early the next morning he borrowed his hostess’s car, a big Oldsmobile, and drove to Lenox. Five inches of snow had fallen and more was coming down, but the roads were only thinly covered. Bulldozers pushed snow aside; other machines threw snow away in rushing arches. Incredible; back home everything would have been stopped dead.

In Lenox he found that no one had admitted shooting Jack Curry. And no, off the record, Police Chief DeGregorio wasn’t sure it had been an accident. The hit had been suspiciously clean; smack through the back of the red hunting cap. That seemed more like good aim than bad luck. But Curry had been dead five or six hours when he had been found, and the area had then been walked over by at least a dozen people; so what could the police have been expected to find? Not even the shell had turned up. They had nosed around for someone with a grudge against Curry, but hadn’t found anyone. He had been a fair and even-handed assessor, a respected and well-liked townsman. Had he belonged to any international group or organization? The Rotary; beyond that, Liebermann would have to ask Mrs. Curry. But DeGregorio didn’t think she’d want to talk much; he heard she was still pretty broken up about it.

At midmorning Liebermann sat in a small untidy kitchen, sipping weak tea from a chipped mug and feeling miserable because Mrs. Curry was going to cry any minute. Like Emil Döring’s widow, she was in her early forties, but that was the only resemblance: Mrs. Curry was lank and homely, with boyishly chopped brown hair; sharp-shouldered and flat-chested in a faded floral housedress. And grieving. “No one would have wanted to kill him,” she insisted, massaging below her flooding eyes with reddened crack-nailed fingertips. “He was…the finest man on God’s green earth. Strong, and good, and patient, forgiving; he was a…rock, and now—Oh God! I—I’m—” And she cried; took a crumpled paper napkin and pressed it to one streaming eye and the other, laid her forehead on her hand, her sharp elbow on the tabletop; sobbed and shook.

Liebermann put his tea down and leaned forward helplessly.

She apologized in her crying.

“It’s all right,” he said, “it’s all right.” A big help. Seven miles through snow he had come, to start this woman crying. Thirteen out of seventeen wasn’t enough?

He sat back, sighed, and waited; looked about dispiritedly at the small streaky-yellow kitchen with its dirty dishes and old refrigerator, carton of empty bottles by the back door. Wild Goose Number Fourteen. A fern in a red glass on the windowsill behind the sink, a can of Ajax. A drawing of an airplane, a 747, taped to a cabinet door; pretty good from where he sat. A cereal box on the counter, Cheerios.

“I’m sorry,” Mrs. Curry said, wiping her nose with the napkin. Her wet hazel eyes looked at Liebermann.

“I’ll only ask a few questions, Mrs. Curry,” he said. “Did he belong to any international group or organization of men his own age?”

She shook her head, lowered the napkin. “American groups,” she said. “The Legion, Amvets, Rotary—no, that’s international. The Rotary Club. That’s the only one.”

“He was a World War Two veteran?”

She nodded. “The Air Force. He won the D.F.C., the Distinguished Flying Cross.”

“In Europe?”

“The Far East.”

“This one is personal, but I hope you won’t mind. He left his money to you?”

Cautiously she nodded. “There’s not too much…”

“Where was he born?”

“In Berea, Ohio.” She looked beyond him, and with an effortful smile said, “What are you doing out of bed?” He looked around. The Döring boy stood in the doorway. Emil, no, Erich Döring, gaunt and sharp-nosed, his dark hair disordered; in blue-and-white-striped pajamas, barefoot. He scratched his chest, looking curiously at Liebermann.

Liebermann rose, surprised; said “Guten Morgen” and realized as he said it—and the boy nodded and came into the room—that Emil Döring and Jack Curry had known each other. They must have; how else could the boy be visiting? With growing excitement he turned to Mrs. Curry and asked, “How does this boy come to be here?”

“He has the flu,” she said. “And there’s no school anyway because of the snow. This is Jack junior. No, don’t come too close, hon. This is Mr. Liebermann from Vienna, in Europe. He’s a famous man. Oh, where are your slippers, Jack? What do you want?”

“A glass of grapefruit juice,” the boy said. In perfect English. An accent like Kennedy’s.

Mrs. Curry stood up. “Honest to Pete,” she said, “you’re going to outgrow them before you ever wear them! And with the flu!” She went to the refrigerator.

The boy looked at Liebermann with Erich Döring’s deep blue eyes. “What are you famous for?” he asked.

“He hunts for Nazis. He was on Mike Douglas last week.”

“Es ist doch ganz phantastisch!” Liebermann said. “Do you know that you have a twin? An exactly-like-you boy who lives in Germany, in a town there called Gladbeck!”

“Exactly like me?” The boy looked skeptical.

“Exactly! I never before saw such a…resembling. Only twin brothers could be so much the same!”

“Jack, you get back in bed now,” Mrs. Curry said, standing by the refrigerator with a juice carton in her hand, smiling. “I’ll bring it in.”

“Wait a minute,” the boy said.

“Now!” she said sharply. “You’ll get worse instead of better, standing around that way, no robe, no slippers; go on.” She smiled again. “Say good-by and go.”

“Jesus H. Christ,” the boy said. “Good-by!” He stalked from the room.

“You watch your tongue!” Mrs. Curry looked angrily after him, and at Liebermann, and turned to a cabinet and yanked its door open. “I wish that he paid the doctor bills,” she said; “then he’d think twice.” She pulled out a glass.

Liebermann said, “It’s amazing! I thought he was the boy in Germany visiting you! Even the voice is the same, the look in the eyes, the moving…”

“Everyone has a double,” Mrs. Curry said, pouring a careful stream of grapefruit juice into the green glass. “Mine is in Ohio, a girl Big Jack knew before we met.” She put the carton down and turned, holding the filled glass. “Well,” she said, smiling, “I don’t like to be inhospitable, but you can see I’ve got an awful lot here that needs doing. Plus having Jack at home. I’m sure nobody shot Big Jack on purpose. It was an accident. He didn’t have an enemy in the world.”

Liebermann blinked, and nodded, and reached for his coat on the chairback.

Astounding, such a sameness. Peas in a pod.

And even more astounding when, on top of the sameness of their gaunt faces and skeptical attitudes, you put the sameness of sixty-five-year-old fathers who were civil servants, dead by violence within a month of each other. And the sameness of their mothers’ age, forty-one or -two. How could so much sameness be?

The wheel pulled toward the right; he straightened it, peering through the wiper’s fast flickings. Concentrate on the driving!

It couldn’t be only coincidence, it was too much. But what else could it be? Was it possible that Mrs. Curry of Lenox (who praised her dead husband’s forgiveness) and Frau Döring of Gladbeck (no model of faithfulness, it seemed) had both had affairs with the same gaunt sharp-nosed man nine months before their sons were born? Even in that unlikely event (a Lufthansa pilot commuting between Essen and Boston!), the boys wouldn’t be twins. And that’s what they were, absolutely identical.

Twins…

Mengele’s main interest. The subject of his Auschwitz experiments.

So?

The white-haired professor at Heidelberg: “Not one of the suggestions made so far has recognized Dr. Mengele’s presence in the problem.”

Yes, but these boys weren’t twins; they only looked like twins.

He wrestled with it in the bus to Worcester.

It had to be a coincidence. Everyone had a double, as Mrs. Curry had said so unconcernedly; and though he doubted the statement’s truth, he had to admit he’d seen plenty of look-alikes in his lifetime: a Bormann, two Eichmanns, half a dozen others. (But look-alikes, not look-the-sames; and why had she poured the grapefruit juice so carefully? Had she been very concerned, and afraid a shaking hand might betray her? And then the quick kicking-him-out, suddenly busy. Dear God, could the wives be involved? But how? Why?)

The snow had stopped, the sun shone. Massachusetts swung past—dazzlingly white hills and houses.

Mengele’s obsession with twins. Every account of that subhuman scum mentioned it: the autopsies on slaughtered twins to find genetic reasons for their slight differences, the attempts to work changes on living twins…

Now listen, Liebermann, you’re going a little bit overboard. More than two months ago you saw Erich Döring. For less than five minutes. So now you see a boy who’s the same type—with a strong resemblance, granted—and in your head you’re doing a little mixing and matching, and presto: identical twins, and Mengele at Auschwitz. The whole thing is that two men out of seventeen happened to have sons who look alike. So what’s so astounding?

But what if it’s more than two? What if it’s three?

You see. Overboard. Why not imagine quadruplets while you’re at it?

The widow in Trittau had given Klaus the eye, and offered him more. In her sixties? Maybe. But probably younger. Forty-one? Forty-two?

In Worcester he asked his hostess, a Mrs. Labowitz, if he could make an overseas call. “I’ll pay you back, of course.”

“Mr. Liebermann, please! You’re a guest in our home; it’s your telephone!”

He didn’t argue. The place was a mansion practically.

It was five-fifteen. Eleven-fifteen in Europe.

The operator reported no answer at Klaus’s number. Liebermann asked her to try again in half an hour, hung up; thought for a moment, and got her back. Turning the pages of his address book, he gave her Gabriel Piwowar’s number in Stockholm and Abe Goldschmidt’s in Odense.

A call came for him just as he was sitting down to dinner with four Labowitzes and five guests. He apologized and took it in the library.

Goldschmidt. They spoke in German.

“What is it? More men for me to check?”

“No, it’s the same two. Did they have sons about thirteen years old?”

“The one in Bramminge did. Horve. Okking in Copenhagen had two daughters in their thirties.”

“How old is Horve’s widow?”

“Young. I was surprised. Let me see. A little bit younger than Natalie. Forty-two, say.”

“Did you see the boy?”

“He was at school. Should I have spoken to him?”

“No, I just wanted to know what he looks like.”

“A boy, skinny. She had his picture on the piano, playing a violin. I said something, and she said it was old, when he was nine. Now he’s nearly fourteen.”

“Dark hair, blue eyes, sharp nose?”

“How can I remember? Dark hair, yes. The eyes I wouldn’t know anyway; it wasn’t colored. A skinny boy playing a violin, with dark hair. I thought you were satisfied.”

“So did I. Thank you, Abe. Good-by.”

He hung up; the phone rang in his hand.

Piwowar. They spoke in Yiddish.

“The two men you checked, did they have sons nearly fourteen years old?”

“Anders Runsten did. Not Persson.”

“Did you see him?”

“Runsten’s son? He drew my picture while I waited for his mother. I kidded him about taking him into my shop.”

“What does he look like?”

“Pale, thin, dark-haired, a sharp nose.”

“Blue eyes?”

“Yes.”

“And the mother is in her early forties?”

“I told you?”

“No.”

“So how do you know?”

“I can’t talk now. People are waiting for me. Good-by, Gabriel. Be well.”

The phone rang again; the operator reported that there was still no answer at Klaus’s number. Liebermann told her he would place the call later.

He went into the dining room, feeling light-headed and hollow, as if his working parts were somewhere else (in Auschwitz?) and only his clothes and skin and hair there in Worcester sitting down with those whole all-there people.

He asked and answered the usual questions, told the usual stories; ate enough not to distress Dolly Labowitz.

They drove to the temple in two cars. He gave the lecture, answered the questions, signed the books.

When they got back to the house he put the call in to Klaus. “It’s five A.M. there,” the operator reminded him.

“I know,” he said.

Klaus came on, groggy and confused. “What? Yes? Good evening! Where are you?”

“In Massachusetts in America. How old was the widow in Trittau?”

“What?”

“How old was the widow in Trittau? Frau Schreiber.”

“My God! I don’t know, it was hard to tell; she had a lot of make-up on. Much younger than he was, though. Late thirties or early forties.”

“With a son almost fourteen?”

“Around that age. Unfriendly to me, but you can’t blame him; she sent him off to her sister’s so we could ‘talk in private.’”

“Describe him.”

A moment passed. “Thin, about as high as my chin, blue eyes, dark-brown hair, a sharp nose. Pale. What’s going on?”

Liebermann fingered the phone’s square push buttons. Round ones would look better, he thought. Square didn’t make sense.

“Herr Liebermann?”

“It’s not wild geese,” he said. “I found the link.”

“My God! What is it?”

He took a breath, let it blow out. “They have the same son.”

“The same what?”

“Son! The same son! The exact same boy! I saw him here and in Gladbeck; you saw him there. And he’s in Göteborg, Sweden; and Bramminge, Denmark! The exact same boy! He plays a musical instrument, or else he draws. And his mother is always forty-one, forty-two. Five different mothers, five different sons; but the son is the same, in different places.”

“I…don’t understand.”

“Neither do I! The link was supposed to give us the reason, yes? And instead it’s crazier than what we started out with! Five boys exactly the same!”

“Herr Liebermann—I think it may be six. Frau Rausenberger in Freiburg is forty-one or -two. With a young son. I didn’t see him or ask his age—I didn’t imagine it was in any way relevant—but she said maybe he would go to Heidelberg too; not to study law, to study writing.”

“Six,” Liebermann said.

Silence stretched between them; stretched longer.

“Ninety-four?”

“Six is already impossible,” Liebermann said, “so why not? But even if it were possible, and it isn’t, why would they be killing the fathers? I honestly think I’ll go to sleep tonight and wake up in Vienna the night this all started. Do you know what Mengele’s main interest was at Auschwitz? Twins. He killed thousands of them, ‘studying,’ to learn how to breed perfect Aryans. Would you do me a favor?”

“Of course!”

“Go to Freiburg again and get a look at the boy there; see if he’s the same as the one in Trittau. Then tell me whether I’m crazy or not.”

“I’ll go today. Where can I reach you?”

“I’ll call you. Good night, Klaus.”

“Good morning. But good night.”

Liebermann put the phone down.

“Mr. Liebermann?” Dolly Labowitz smiled at him from the doorway. “Would you like to watch the news with us? And have a little nosh? Some cake or fruit?”

Hannah’s breasts were dry and Dena was crying, so naturally Hannah was upset. That was understandable. But was it any reason for changing Dena’s name? Hannah insisted on it. “Don’t argue with me,” she said. “From now on we’re calling her Frieda. It’s the perfect name for a baby, and then I’ll have milk again.”

“It doesn’t make sense, Hannah,” he said patiently, trudging along beside her through the snow. “One thing has nothing to do with the other.”

“Her name is Frieda,” Hannah said. “We’re changing it legally.” The snow opened in a deep canyon before her and she slid down into it, Dena wailing in her arms. Oh God! He looked at the snow, unbroken now, and lay on his back in darkness, in a bed in a room. Worcester. Labowitz. Six boys. Dena grown up, Hannah dead.

What a dream. Where had he pulled that from? Frieda yet! And Hannah and Dena sliding into that canyon!

He lay still for a minute, blinking away the terrible sight, and then he got up—pale light scalloped the window shades’ bottoms—and went into the bathroom.

He hadn’t been up once during the night; a really good sleep. Except for that dream.

He went back into the bedroom, brought his watch over to one of the windows, squinted at it. Twenty to seven.

He got back into the warm bed, pulled the blankets up around him, and lay and thought, morning fresh.

Six identical boys—no, six very similar boys, maybe identical—lived in six different places, with six different mothers all the same age, and six different dead-by-violence fathers, all the same age, similar occupations. It wasn’t impossible; it was real, a fact. So it had to be dealt with, unraveled, understood.

Lying still and at ease, he let his mind float free. Boys. Mothers. Hannah’s breasts. Milk.

The perfect name for a baby…

Dear God, of course. It had to be.

He let it all come together…

Part of it, anyway.

It explained the grapefruit juice, and the way she’d rushed him out. The way she’d rushed the boy out too. Quick thinking, pretending his bare feet and no bathrobe were what worried her.

He lay there, hoping the rest of it would come. The main part, the Mengele part. But it didn’t.

Still, one step at a time…

He got up and showered and shaved, trimmed his mustache, combed his hair; took his pills, brushed his teeth, put in his bridge. Dressed and packed.

At twenty after seven he went into the kitchen. The maid Frances was there, and Bert Labowitz in shirt-sleeves, eating and reading. After the good-mornings he sat down across the table from Labowitz and said, “I have to go to Boston earlier than I thought. Can I go with you?”

“Sure,” Labowitz said. “I leave at five of.”

“That’s perfect. I have to make one phone call. Just to Lenox.”

“I’ll bet someone warned you about Dolly, the way she drives.”

“No, something came up.”

“You’ll enjoy the ride more with me.”

At a quarter of eight, in the library, he called Mrs. Curry.

“Hello?”

“Good morning, it’s Yakov Liebermann again. I hope I didn’t wake you.”

Silence. “I was up.”

“How is your son this morning?”

“I don’t know, he’s still sleeping.”

“That’s good. That’s the best thing, a lot of sleep. He doesn’t know he’s adopted, does he. That’s why you got nervous when I told him he has a twin.”

Silence.

“Don’t get nervous now, Mrs. Curry. I won’t tell him. As long as you want it a secret, I won’t say a word. Just tell me one thing, please. It’s very important. Did you get him from a woman named Frieda Maloney?”

Silence.

“You did, ja?”

“No! Just a minute.” The thump of the phone being put down, footsteps going away. Silence. Footsteps coming back. Softly: “Hello?”

“Yes?”

“We got him through an agency. In New York. It was a perfectly legal adoption.”

“The Rush-Gaddis Agency?”

“Yes!”

“She worked there from 1960 to 1963. Frieda Maloney.”

“I never heard the name before! Why are you butting in this way? What difference does it make if he does have a twin?”

“I’m not sure.”

“Then don’t bother me again! And don’t come near Jack!” The phone clicked. Silence.

Bert Labowitz drove him to Logan Airport and he caught the nine-o’clock shuttle to New York.

At ten-forty he was in the office of the assistant executive director of the Rush-Gaddis Adoption Agency, a lean and handsome gray-haired woman, Mrs. Teague. “None at all,” she told him.

“None?”

“None. She wasn’t a caseworker; she wasn’t qualified for that. She was a file clerk. Of course, her lawyer, when she was fighting extradition, wanted to present her in the most favorable light, so he implied that she played a more important role here than she actually did; but she was simply a file clerk. We notified the government lawyers—we were very anxious, naturally, to have our association with her put in its true perspective—and our head of personnel was subpoenaed as a witness. She was never called on to testify, though. We considered issuing some sort of statement or press release afterwards, but we decided that at that point it was better simply to let the matter fade away.”

“So she didn’t find homes for babies.” Liebermann pulled at his ear.

“Not a one,” Mrs. Teague said. She smiled at him. “And you have the shoe on the wrong foot: it’s a question of finding babies for homes; the demand far exceeds the supply. Especially since the change in the abortion laws. We’re able to help only a small fraction of the people who apply to us.”

“Then too? In 1960 to ’63?”

“Then and always, but it’s at its worst right now.”

“A lot of applications?”

“Over thirty thousand last year. From every part of the country. Of the continent, in fact.”

“Let me ask you this,” Liebermann said. “A couple comes to you, or writes to you, in that period, 1961, ’62. Good people, fairly well-off. He’s a civil servant, steady job. She’s—now let me think a second—she…is about twenty-eight or twenty-nine, and he’s fifty-two. What chance is there for them to get a baby from you?”

“None whatsoever,” Mrs. Teague said. “We don’t place where the husband’s that old. Forty-five is our cut-off, and we’ll only go that high if there are special factors involved. We place mostly with couples in their early thirties—old enough to be stable in their marriage and young enough to assure the child of continuing parental presence. Or the likelihood of it, I should say.”

“So where would a couple like that get a baby?”

“Not from Rush-Gaddis. There are agencies a bit more flexible. And of course there’s the gray market. Their lawyer or doctor might know of a pregnant teen-ager who doesn’t want to abort. Or who can be paid not to.”

“But if they came to you, you turned them down.”

“Yes. We’ve never placed with anyone over forty-five. There are thousands of more suitable couples, waiting and praying.”

“And the applications that were turned down,” Liebermann said, “they were filed maybe by Frieda Maloney?”

“By her or one of the other clerks,” Mrs. Teague said. “We keep all applications and correspondence for three years. It was five then, but now we’ve cut it down; we’re short of space.”

“Thank you.” Liebermann stood up with his briefcase. “You helped me very much. I’m grateful to you.”

At a telephone mini-booth across the street from the Guggenheim Museum, with his suitcase and briefcase on the sidewalk beside him, he called Mr. Goldwasser at the lecture bureau.

“I have some very bad news. I have to go to Germany.”

“When?”

“Now.”

“You can’t! You’re at Boston University tonight! Where are you?”

“In New York. And tonight I have to be on a plane.”

“You can’t be! You accepted the booking! They’ve sold the tickets! And tomorrow—”

“I know, I know! You think I enjoy canceling out like this? You think I don’t know it’s a headache for you, and for them, and you could even sue me? It’s—”

“Nobody’s talking about—”

“It’s life or death, Mr. Goldwasser. Life or death. Maybe even more.”

“God damn it. When will you be back?”

“I don’t know. I may have to stay there awhile. And then go someplace else.”

“You mean you’re canceling the whole rest of the tour?”

“Believe me, if I didn’t have to—”

“This has only happened to me once in eighteen years, and then it was a singer, not a responsible person like you! Look, Yakov, I admire you and I wish you well; I’m speaking not just as your representative now but as a fellow human, a fellow Jew. I ask you to think very carefully: if you cancel a whole tour this way, on a moment’s notice—how can we possibly go on representing you? No one will represent you. No group will contract for you. You’re finishing yourself as a speaker in the United States of America. I beg you, please think.”

“I thought while you was talking,” he said. “I have to go. I wish I didn’t.”

He took a taxi out to Kennedy Airport and exchanged his return ticket to Vienna for one to Düsseldorf via Frankfurt: the earliest flight out, leaving at six o’clock.

He bought a copy of Farago’s book on Bormann and spent the afternoon sitting by a window reading.