As far as he was aware, the police had largely dismissed Amanda"s description of the man at her window as a nightmare, and Werner supposed that was what he was. He still wasn"t sure what had brought him to the house that night, although he suspected that one element of it was the desire to spare Earl Steiger the trouble of doing the job, and to save a little money in the process. The war chest was nearly empty now, but it didn"t matter. His role as protector, inherited from his father, was almost at an end. Soon the last of his charges would be gone from this world.
A kind of madness had overcome him as he approached the Winter house. He wanted Ruth Winter to see him as he truly was, to witness his glory in her final moments. He stripped in the car, and walked through the darkness to her home. Only the sight of Amanda Winter asleep in her bed had saved her mother, for Werner sensed that, if he entered the house, the child might hear him and take fright, and then he would be forced to kill her too. He even thought, as he watched her, that she might already be half-awake. He didn"t want to kill Amanda. That wasn"t part of the deal by any stretch of the imagination.
Sanity returned to him after he had watched the girl for a time, or perhaps it was only a different kind of mania. He heard the sea call his name, and it spoke in the voice of Bruno Perlman. He almost thought that he could see Perlman standing amid the surf, beckoning to him, the hollow of his ruined eye like the gateway to the void into which Werner must ultimately, and inevitably, descend.
And he thought that it might not be the worst way to die, even as Perlman took solid form, the waves breaking against him, the stink of him sharp even against the salty tang of the night air. Werner barely felt the intense cold of the water as he entered it. Let oblivion come, he thought. Let the old horrors deal with the residue of their sins; I have watched over them for long enough. I will take this peace. I will lose myself in blackness, and I will sleep.
Only as the waves closed over his head did he realize that the voice that spoke to him was not his own. Salt water flooded his mouth and nose. He opened his eyes and saw Perlman floating before him, his teeth bared in rage as he recognized that he was about to lose his prize. Werner broke the surface, his body already going into shock. He fought his way back to sh.o.r.e, uncertain that he had the strength to make it, kicking all the while at surf and seaweed, and at the hands that he felt clawing at his legs even unto those final seconds when he crawled to the sh.o.r.e and lay shivering on the sand. He barely recalled returning to his car, and since then he had kept his distance from the water.
One memory of that night remained beyond dispute: he had watched over these old Germans for long enough, and mortality could not come soon enough to those that remained.
But Baulman was still a problem. Werner wasn"t sure that he could be trusted to remain silent if the Justice Department put further pressure on him, yet Baulman was one of those whom Werner had sworn to protect. Then again, he had sworn to protect Hummel, but he viewed his death as a kind of mercy killing. Baulman was different. Werner would have to consult on the matter, if it became an issue, although he was already certain of the answer he would receive.
Do it.
It would not be quite as much of a blessing as Hummel"s death, but it would be close. All Baulman had left was his dog, and even she was old. Werner would send them on their way together.
At least Oran Wilde was dead and buried. Werner had kept him alive for longer than was wise, but it had been necessary. He had required the boy"s blood to sow doubt and confuse investigators, and he didn"t know enough about pathology to be certain that a.n.a.lysis of the fluids wouldn"t reveal if the boy had been dead or alive when it was taken from him. Instead Werner locked Oran in the bas.e.m.e.nt, and made sure that he didn"t suffer at the end.
Werner dried himself, put on a fresh shirt and pants, and attached his clerical collar. He was just combing his hair when the doorbell rang.
He answered it to find the detective, Charlie Parker, standing on his doorstep.
Parker"s first reaction to Pastor Werner was that Soames had been wrong in thinking him gay. There was an as.e.xuality to the man, but at first Parker could not pinpoint the source of this impression. As their conversation continued, he concluded that Werner had directed his s.e.xual impulses away from both males and females, channeling them into his belief system. Parker had seen the pastor around town, but they had never spoken until now. Like most of the inhabitants of Boreas, he had appeared content to leave Parker in peace.
Werner was doing his best to hide his shock. The threat posed by Parker, and recognized by Steiger, was now upon him.
"Pastor Werner?" said Parker. "I"m-"
"I know who you are."
It came out sharper than Werner would have liked, so he tried to moderate its impact by adding, "I"m sorry. We have a soup supper at the church hall this evening, followed by prayers. I was about to leave."
Parker checked his watch. "It"s at six o"clock, right?"
"Yes."
"It"s not even five yet, and I won"t keep you long. I just have a few questions."
"What kind of questions?"
"About the town and your father."
"You sound like a policeman."
"Old habits die hard."
"Are you engaged in an investigation, Mr Parker?"
He said it casually, but he saw the light change in Parker"s eyes. Be careful with this one, thought Werner. Be very careful.
"Of a kind," said Parker. "I"m trying to understand what happened here to Ruth Winter, maybe to Bruno Perlman as well. I was involved, at least as far as Ruth Winter is concerned, so it"s personal as much as professional."
"But n.o.body has hired you?"
"No. This one"s on my own dime."
"In that case," said Werner, "your time is like money. I can spare you half an hour, but then I will have to go. Come in, come in."
He stepped aside, and welcomed the hunter into his home.
60.
Marie Demers came out of a meeting in the Justice Department on Pennsylvania Avenue to find Toller rushing down the hallway toward her: Thomas Engel, who was being held in the Metropolitan Correctional Center in Manhattan, had just been moved to Lower Manhattan Hospital following what was believed to be a stroke.
The meeting she had left was convened to discuss five war crimes cases at various stages of investigation, Engel"s among them. In attendance were the chief of the Human Rights and Special Prosecutions Section, two deputy chiefs, and two other investigating attorneys. Demers had gone through with them, in detail, her experiences with Marcus Baulman and Isha Winter, and recounted her conversation with Detective Gordon Walsh of the Major Crimes Unit of the Maine State Police. She had also discussed the deaths of Bruno Perlman, Ruth Winter, and the Tedescos in Florida, along with what was known or suspected about Ruth"s killer, Earl Steiger. She also mentioned to them Walsh"s theory that the murders of the Wilde family, and the disappearance of their son, could have some connection to everything else that was happening.
"Can you offer us a conclusion?" one of the deputy chiefs inquired.
"Somebody is lying," was Demers"s reply. "And I think it may be Engel."
"What do you want to do with him?"
"He"s wasted enough of our time," said Demers. "Put him on the next flight to Germany, and let them find somewhere to dump him."
"Engel"s case remains problematic for them. We"ve given them all we have on him, but they still feel it"s not enough to support a prosecution."
"We"ll accept deportation. They know that."
"But they don"t want him, not yet. You know how they are about the optics of these things. Without a trial, they feel that they leave themselves open to accusations of providing state support for criminals, and they already have their hands full with Fuhrmann. How about you talk to Engel one more time, just in case?"
G.o.d, thought Demers: the Germans and their optics. They were obsessed with appearances, with procedure, with keeping their hands clean, yet their language and speech was peppered with casual references to s.h.i.t and excrement. During one visit to Berlin, she had even heard a German lawyer refer to her behind her back as the Klugscheisser: the intelligence s.h.i.tter. Toller, who dealt with them more regularly than she did, and was himself half Jewish, was of the opinion that the majority of Germans had never seen or met a Jew in their own country, so that when he visited he was an object of careful curiosity, like a living fossil. Most of the German Jews were gone. They were an abstraction. The Germans could think of them only in terms of victimhood.
Demers took a calming breath. She was tired and angry, which wasn"t conducive to making wise decisions. Tackling Engel one last time was the smart thing to do, but she did not want to look at him again. She was sick of him. Engel was playing with them, doing all that he could to cling on in the hope of a reprieve. His lawyers were now trying to argue that an error had been made in the recording of Engel"s date of birth on certain relevant paperwork, and he had actually joined the SS as a minor. It smacked of desperation, but a 2003 decision in the case of Johann Breyer, suspected of being a guard at Auschwitz, found that someone who enlisted in the SS as a minor could not be held legally responsible for his actions. It was another delaying tactic to eat up money, resources, and time both her own and Engel"s. The longer he stayed in the United States, the closer he came to dying on its soil.
"Of course," she said. "I"ll talk to him tomorrow."
"Is there anything else we should know?" she was asked by the second deputy director.
"Just this: the INS records show that Baulman came into the United States from Argentina with another man, Bernhard Hummel. I ran him through the system, and I see some of the same irregularities in his paperwork that we found in Baulman"s. Hummel settled in Maine, not far from Baulman. Toller made a telephone call to Hummel"s home, but there was no reply. I overnighted a letter, requesting that he call us to schedule an interview."
"You"re sure he"s still alive?"
"There"s no record of his death."
"Ask Engel about him. See what he says."
"I will. Thank you."
Now here was Toller informing her that Engel was lying incapacitated in a hospital bed. She asked him how bad the old b.a.s.t.a.r.d was, and learned that he was conscious, but entirely paralyzed along his left side.
"Nyman is screaming blue murder," said Toller.
Barry Nyman was leading Engel"s legal team. He was determined to convince Demers that he was defending Engel on principle, but if he was, then it was a principle with zeros and a decimal point after it. This was another aspect of the case that bothered her. Nyman didn"t work for free he could take his protestations that he was working pro bono and stick them up his a.s.s but Engel"s financial resources were limited, and somehow Nyman was still being paid: possibly in cash, and certainly under the table, but paid nonetheless, even though Demers figured that the funds were almost bled dry, or else Nyman might have made a bid for a Supreme Court hearing for his client.
Meanwhile, Nyman had unsuccessfully argued that Engel should be allowed to remain in his own home pending deportation. Engel had suffered a series of minor strokes over the previous years, and Nyman tried to convince the US Magistrate that his frail health would be put at risk in a prison environment, probably so that when Engel was back in his own bed, a by-the-hour expert physician could be found to swear that moving him again might prove fatal. The Magistrate had disagreed, but Demers knew that Nyman was certainly already making an application to have the original decision reversed on the grounds of Engel"s emergency hospitalization, if the Magistrate had not already done so himself. A bail application would immediately follow, and was likely to be granted.
"I"m going up there," Demers said.
"Now?" said Toller.
"Yes, now. Do me a favor: just get me on the Delta Shuttle. I"ll pick up an overnight bag on the way."
61.
Werner didn"t offer Parker anything to drink. It was just as well. The detective felt as though his lone kidney had probably dealt with enough liquids for the day. They sat in a corner of the living-c.u.m-dining room that Werner had converted into a home office, Werner in an old recliner by his desk and Parker on a chair pulled from the small dining table. A crucifix hung on the wall behind Werner: Christ set in bronze against dark, angled wood.
"I wanted to ask you about your father," said Parker. "I believe he underwent a Damascene conversion."
"An apt metaphor," said Werner. "My father was involved in anti-interventionist circles before Pearl Harbor. He was not alone in that. A great many people believed that the United States should not get involved in another European war."
"As I understand it, your father was more than anti-interventionist: he was a leader of the Bund."
Werner shrugged.
"Are you asking me for a history lesson, Mr Parker? I can give you one, although it will, of necessity, be brief. There has been a German community here in Boreas since the last century. During and after World War I, that community, like German communities throughout the United States, found itself the object of suspicion and hatred. German music was banned, German-language books burned. In 1918, a German coal miner named Robert Prager was lynched by a mob in Collinsville, Illinois. This experience made German Americans insular and defensive, and not without justification.
"Then, after the war, another wave of German immigrants arrived here, my father among them. They were intelligent men and women, some of whom had fought the communists on the streets of Berlin, and they wanted no part of the new Germany. They saw it as humiliated, flawed, and unstable."
"How many of them were fascists?" asked Parker.
Werner smiled.
"Quite a number, I should imagine!"
Parker smiled too, just to be polite. "Was your father one of them?"
"No," said Werner. "But he was angry and bitter. When Hitler came to power in 1933, my father rejoiced. He was by then a US citizen, and became a founder member of the Friends of the New Germany, which later morphed into the German American Bund. But the Bund never really gained much of a foothold in Maine the German community here was just too small and my father also grew increasingly uneasy about its activities. He was not interested in indoctrinating youth with n.a.z.i policies, or marching through the streets in brown shirts and jackboots. He welcomed the revival of Germany, he was angry about the Jewish boycott of German goods here and why would he not be, as the pastor of a German congregation? and he wished his adopted homeland to remain neutral, because he did not want to see it come into conflict with the country in which he was born. These were not unreasonable sentiments at the time."
"Didn"t he show propaganda films in your church hall?"
"You have been doing your homework," said Werner.
"One of the benefits of being a member in good standing of the Maine Historical Society, and having friends at the University of Southern Maine. They e-mailed me what they had on him."
"I hope that not all of it was bad. But yes, he showed German propaganda films to sympathetic groups, both in Maine and New Hampshire, including Campaign for Poland, Victory in the West and Feuerstaufe, or Baptism of Fire. I know all these names because I found the original films in the bas.e.m.e.nt some years ago. I handed them over to the National Archives. I couldn"t think what else to do with them. I simply recognized that they were very rare. Reprehensible now, but rare."
"Why did he show them?"
"In part because he wanted to believe the truth of them, I think, but he was also under some pressure from the Bund. It was growing increasingly extreme, and had begun to infiltrate cultural organizations and German churches. German Americans were reluctant to speak out against it, though. Many could still recall the persecution they had endured after the last war, and believed it was important that they remain united. My father, as a pastor and a community leader, felt deeply conflicted. But by 1938, I think, anti-n.a.z.i sentiment and, by extension, anti-Bund sentiment was growing so strong that most German Americans felt they had no choice but to reject it. My father was particularly vocal in his rejection of the Bund. It made him some enemies, but he never regretted it.
"And then, after the war, when the scale of the n.a.z.i atrocities became apparent, he wanted to make recompense. He wrote submissions to the Citizens Committee on Displaced Persons, worked with the Lutheran World Federation on the issue, and pet.i.tioned public representatives to support Truman"s efforts to accommodate refugees. When the second DP Act came into force in 1950, he was heavily involved in finding sponsors for German immigrants, but he made no distinctions, and worked just as hard for other races and ethnicities."
"He found a sponsor for Isha Winter, didn"t he?"
"I did not know that," said Werner.
"It"s what she told me."
"He certainly wrote many supportive letters on behalf of displaced persons, and a.s.sisted them once they arrived here. It does not surprise me that she was one of them, although I knew nothing of her past until the recent unfortunate events brought it to light. But I would not have thought that Isha Winter"s case was especially problematic for the US government. She was the sole survivor of an experimental concentration camp. The decision to admit her can"t have been difficult."
"Did your father make mistakes?"
"In what sense?"
"Did he provide sponsorship or support for war criminals?"
"I can"t say. If he did so, it was unwittingly. Why do you ask?"
"Because two men from Maine, Engel and Fuhrmann, have been in the news lately. You can"t have missed them. Fuhrmann has been extradited and Engel is awaiting deportation, both for crimes allegedly committed during World War II. The Justice Department believes that there might be others hiding in this state. It has a.s.signed an investigator named Marie Demers to the case."
"You"re very well informed."
"As I told you, I"ve taken an interest. Could Engel and Fuhrmann be among those helped by your father?"
"I can"t answer your question, Mr Parker. I don"t know the names of every man and woman my father a.s.sisted because there were hundreds of them. I just know how hard he worked to make up for the sins of other Germans. And I sense that you"re trying to besmirch his legacy, which I find objectionable. I think we"re finished now."
Werner stood, and Parker stood with him.
"This is a sensitive issue," said Werner. "You must understand that."
"People are dying, Pastor," said Parker. "You must understand that."
Werner didn"t argue. He wanted the detective gone from his house. He needed s.p.a.ce in which to think. He followed Parker to the door.
"I see you wear a cross," he said, indicating the old pilgrim"s cross that the detective wore around his neck. He didn"t want the detective to leave angry. Concessions had to be made to avoid it.