The general antiseptic impression was marred by the photo covering a whole wall. A small child's foot hung out of a crematorium oven next to piles of ashes with smiling uniformed Gestapo members poking it with their riding crops. Bold letters below said NEVER FORGET. . .
Aimee's stomach lurched, but she forced herself to stay. She sat down at the nearest flashing computer terminal. She leaned her head against the screen, but still the photo wouldn't go away. What about that little foot? The mother who'd washed it, the father who'd tickled it, the grandmother who'd knitted socks for it, the grandfather who'd hoisted it on his shoulders? Probably all gone. Generations gone. Only ghosts remained.
So Soli Hecht reminded himself of why he worked here, Aimee realized. As if he needed the motivation, being a survivor of Treblinka himself. She started punching keys, playing with possible passwords to access Soli's hard drive. She considered the possibility of the attic effect, that all data storage survives on the hard drive. A user, like Hecht, would think he'd erased information by deleting it. But nothing ever went away. All written code was routed through the computer hardware and lodged in there somewhere, something she was paid well to find in her computer forensic investigations.
She discovered the password Shoah and found the terminals in Soli's foundation linked with the center's system downstairs and rubbed her hands excitedly. Methodically, she began accessing the hard drive, checking both data banks for Lili's name.
Soli's last computer activity was dated Friday, the day of his accident, two days after Lili's murder. No files had been opened or new files added. As she read his E-mail she grew disappointed. There was only a brief message from the Simon Wiesenthal Center. Where would Soli's floppy backup disks be?
The locked file cabinets yielded to a wiggling paperclip and Aimee searched, keeping her gaze averted from the photo. Hundreds of pages of testimony from survivors about Klaus Barbie, the "Butcher of Lyon" which Soli had successfully documented. Aimee kicked the nearest cabinet; nothing newer than 1987. Baffled, Aimee began a systematic search of the whitewashed rooms. She emptied the files and took the file cabinets apart, checked under the computer for anything taped to its underside, and checked the carpet seams. Three hours later she remained thwarted. Nothing. Not even one floppy disk.
Something to do with Lili had to be here, she felt it. Would Soli have taken it with him? Even if he had, he'd have a copy or backup disk. At times like this, Aimee knew it was best to walk away and come back with a fresh eye to catch something she might have overlooked. She decided to go downstairs and check the center's microfiche file for cheat sheets from the Occupation.
The third-floor library system was clear, concise, and immaculately cross-referenced. Microfiche files of Jewish newspapers and bulletins rolled before her eyes.
An hour later, she found the old grainy photo with a brief article, "Non Plus Froid": Students at the lycee on rue du Plâtre demonstrate patriotism for our French workers in Germany. This wool drive contributes to keeping our men warm this winter.
She saw Sarah and Lili, yellow stars embroidered on their dresses, standing by piles of coats in a school yard. There, too, was the face Odile Redonnet had identified as Laurent de Saux. On his neck, peeking from his shirt collar, was a butterfly-shaped birthmark.
She copied the article, complete with photo, on a laser copier standing flush with the wood-paneled library entrance. It eliminated distortions and blurs due to yellowed unarchival newsprint so that even minor facial distinctions were clear. The quality was excellent and irrefutable. She wondered how Laurent de Saux had hidden that birthmark.
Here was proof that Laurent knew Lili and Sarah. His identity remained the question. She had to check the bloody fingerprint against the French national file. Of course, she thought. Find a Laurent de Saux and check him against the bloody print!
That was when she heard the echo of footsteps. She froze. A raspy, hacking cough came from the hallway. Security? She dove under a nearby trestle table, clutching the copy in her hand. Then she realized the copy machine's cover stood suspiciously open and the red light blinked irritatingly.
Her leather bag lay on the marble floor by the machine. She peered from under the table and saw an elderly man, probably a retired flic, in a security uniform. She'd have to overpower him to log back on to Soli's computer and finish her search.
He hawked and spit into the metal garbage can near her head. Finally he switched off the machine, closed the cover with a thump, and flicked off the lights. He left a scent of last night's onion meal in the library.
And then she realized where Soli could have hidden things. Somewhere disturbing and offensive. That had to be it. The only place she hadn't looked! Silently, she rolled the copies into her bag, slipped off her heels again, and padded back up to the fifth floor.
Inside Hecht's foundation she approached the wall. Up close to the Gestapos' leering faces in the photograph she felt around. Smooth all the way to the tips of the riding crops, then she felt an indentation and slight groove. Pressing it, she heard a click, then felt a part of the wall open to her right with a swinging whoosh. A drawer slid out on tracks holding several disks in envelopes. She found a floppy titled "L. Stein." Steadying her hands, she took a deep breath and attempted to open the disk. But it didn't work.
The floppy was a WordPerfect file that had been protected with a password. She tried Soli's birthdate, his birthplace, events and names from the Holocaust. No success. Then she tried the names of all the concentration camps. Nothing. She tried Hebrew prayers and simple configurations of biblical references. Nothing. She needed Rene's code-breaking software to pick the lock of the file on Soli's disk.
She prayed that Rene had made it to her cousin Sebastian's by now. She punched in Sebastian's number on Hecht's white phone.
Sebastian answered. "He's here."
Rene got on the line.
"Are you all right?" she said.
"Just a graze, I'll live," he said. "I've hooked up the laptop."
Thank God, Rene was a computer fiend like she was. "Download this and let's try to crack it," she said. "Let's talk it through step by step."
Rene's fingers clicked over the keys nonstop.
Aimee checked her screen.
"OK, download complete," Rene said. "What are we looking for?"
"We're searching for Soli Hecht's password. I can't open the disk."
After a few minutes, Rene mumbled something that sounded like "Azores."
"What's what?" Aimee asked.
"Beat your neighbors out of doors," he said.
"Care to elaborate?"
"The old card game," Rene said. "'Beat your neighbors out of doors'—popular during the war. Even in her eighties my grandmother could ace me every time."
"Am I missing something here?" Aimee asked. "What are you talking about?"
"Remember the Jigny case?" he said. "I used our software to pick the password lock and got the first couple of letters."
"Go on, Rene," she said.
"Well, after getting the first couple of letters I guessed that the key was in a fantasy game," he said. "The guy's kid loved Dungeons and Dragons, a real aficionado, so that made it easier. I got the password and opened the file. We bought a new computer system with our fees from that one."
She blew a noisy kiss through the phone. "Haven't I said you're a genius! I don't know if Soli played many card games in Treblinka. He'd have been fourteen or sixteen then. All I know is he was intense and methodical—that's from what I've seen of the office in his foundation."