“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.
5
AN INDICTMENT CHARGING Frieda Altschul Maloney and eight other persons with mass murder at the Ravensbrück concentration camp was expected to be handed down at any moment; so when, on Friday, January 17th, Yakov Liebermann presented himself at the offices of Frau Maloney’s attorneys, Zweibel & Fassler of Düsseldorf, he wasn’t accorded a warm or even room-temperature welcome. But Joachim Fassler was lawyer enough to know that Liebermann hadn’t come there to gloat or kill time; there was something he wanted, and therefore something he would offer or could be asked for in exchange. So, after switching on his recorder, Fassler received Liebermann in his office.
He was right. The Jew wanted to meet with Frieda and question her about certain matters in no way related to her wartime activities and having no bearing whatsoever on the approaching trial—American matters involving the period from 1960 to 1963. What American matters? Adoptions that she or someone else had arranged on the basis of information she had got from the files of the Rush-Gaddis Agency.
“I know of no such adoptions,” Fassler said.
Liebermann said, “Frau Maloney does.”
If she saw him and answered his questions fully and candidly, he would tell Fassler about some of the testimony that was going to be presented against her by witnesses he had located.
“Which ones?”
“Not their names, only some of their testimony.”
“Come now, Herr Liebermann, you know I’m not going to buy that kind of pig in a poke.”
“The price is cheap enough, isn’t it? An hour or so of her time? She can’t be very busy, sitting in her cell.”
“She may not want to talk about these alleged adoptions.”
“Why not ask her? There are three witnesses whose testimony I know about. You can either hear it cold in the courtroom or have a preview tomorrow.”
“I’m truly and honestly not that concerned.”
“Then I guess we can’t do business.”
It took four days to work it all out. Frau Maloney would speak to Liebermann for half an hour about the matters that interested him, provided that A) Fassler was present; B) no fourth party was present; C) nothing was written down; and D) Liebermann permitted Fassler to search him for a recording device immediately prior to the interview. In return Liebermann would tell Fassler all he knew about the probable testimony of the three witnesses and give each one’s age, sex, occupation, and present mental and physical condition, with particular regard to any scars, deformities, or disabilities resulting from experiences at Ravensbrück. The testimony and description of one witness would be supplied prior to the interview; those of the other two subsequent to it. Agreed and agreed.
On Wednesday morning, the 22nd, Liebermann and Fassler drove together in Fassler’s silver-gray sports car to the federal prison in Düsseldorf where Frieda Maloney had been confined since her extradition from the United States in 1973. Fassler, a stout and well-groomed man in his mid-fifties, was almost as pink-cheeked as usual but—when they identified themselves and signed in—hadn’t yet regained his customary swaggering assurance. Liebermann had told him about the most damaging witness first, hoping that the fear of worse to come would make him, and through him Frieda Maloney, anxious not to give short weight in the interview.
A guard took them up in an elevator and led them along a carpeted corridor where a few guards and matrons sat silently on benches between walnut doors marked with chrome letters. The guard opened a door marked G and showed Fassler and Liebermann into a square beige-walled room with a round conference table and several chairs. Two mesh-curtained windows gave daylight through adjacent walls, one window barred and the other not, which struck Liebermann as odd.
The guard switched on an overhead light, making scarcely a difference in the already light room. He withdrew, closing the door.
They put their hats and briefcases on the shelf of a corner coatrack, and took their coats off and hung them on hangers. Liebermann stood with his arms outstretched and Fassler searched him, looking pugnacious and determined. He felt the pockets of Liebermann’s hanging coat and asked him to open his briefcase. Liebermann sighed but unstrapped it and opened it; showed papers and the Farago book, closed and restrapped it.
He satisfied himself about the windows—the unbarred one gave on a high-walled yard far below; the barred one had black rooftop close beneath—and then he sat down at the table with his back toward the unbarred window; but immediately got up again so he wouldn’t have to rise or not rise when Frieda Maloney came in.
Fassler opened the barred window a bit and stood looking out through it, holding aside the beige mesh curtain.
Liebermann folded his arms and looked at a carafe and paper-wrapped glasses on a tray on the table.
He had reported Frieda Altschul’s record and whereabouts to the German and American authorities in 1967. The record had been in the Center’s files, distilled from conversations and correspondence with dozens of Ravensbrück survivors (the three soon-to-be witnesses among them); the whereabouts had been given him by two more survivors, sisters, who had spotted their former guard at a New York racetrack and followed her to her home. He himself had never met the woman. He didn’t look forward to sitting at the same table with her. Aside from everything else, his middle sister Ida had died at Ravensbrück; it was entirely possible that Frieda Altschul Maloney had had a hand in her death.
He put Ida from his mind; put everything from it except the Rush-Gaddis Agency, and six or more boys who looked alike. A former file clerk at Rush-Gaddis is coming in, he told himself. We’ll sit at this table and talk awhile, and maybe I’ll find out what the hell is going on.
Fassler turned from the window, pushed his cuff back, frowned at his watch.
The door opened and Frieda Maloney came in, in a light-blue uniform dress, her hands in her pockets. A matron smiled over her shoulder and said, “Good morning, Herr Fassler.”
“Good morning,” Fassler said, going forward. “How are you?”
“Fine, thanks,” the matron said. She gave her smile to Liebermann, and covered it with closing door.