DIESER BRIEF IST MIT UNGEBROCHENEM SIEGEL
EMPFANGEN WORDEN. NEUAUFBAU ODER TOD.
«What does it say?»
«That you’ve examined the seals and are satisfied.»
«How can I be sure?»
«Young man, you’re talking with a director of La Grande Banque de Genève.» The Swiss did not raise his voice but the rebuke was clear. «You have my word. And, in any event, what difference does it make?»
None, reasoned Holcroft, yet the obvious question bothered him. «If I sign the envelope, what do you do with it?»
Manfredi was silent for several moments, as if deciding whether or not to answer. He removed his glasses, took a silk handkerchief from his breast pocket, and cleaned them. Finally he replied. «That is privileged information…»
«So’s my signature,» interrupted Noel. «Privileged, that is.»
«Let me finish,» protested the banker, putting back his glasses. «I was about to say it was privileged information that can’t possibly be relevant any longer. Not after so many years. The envelope is to be sent to a post-office box in Sesimbra, Portugal. It is south of Lisbon, on the Cape of Espichel.»
«Why isn’t it relevant?»
Manfredi held up the palms of his hands. «The post-office box no longer exists. The envelope will find its way to a dead-letter office and eventually be returned to us.»
«You’re sure?»
«I believe it, yes.»
Noel reached into his pocket for his pen, turning the envelope over to look once again at the waxed seals. They had not been tampered with; and, thought Holcroft, what difference did it make? He placed the envelope in front of him and signed his name.
Manfredi held up his hand. «You understand, whatever is contained in that envelope can have no bearing on our participation in the document prepared by La Grande Banque de Genève. We were not consulted; nor were we apprised of the contents.»
«You sound worried. I thought you said it didn’t make any difference. It was too long ago.»
«Fanatics always worry me, Mr. Holcroft. Time and consequence cannot alter that judgment. It’s a banker’s caution.»
Noel began cracking the wax; it had hardened over the years and took considerable force before it fell away. He tore the flap open, removed the single page, and unfolded it.
The paper was brittle with age; the white had turned to a pale brownish yellow. The writing was in English, the letters printed in an odd block lettering that was Germanic in style. The ink was faded but legible. Holcroft looked at the bottom of the page for a signature. There was none. He started reading.
The message was macabre, born in desperation thirty years ago. It was as though unbalanced men had sat in a darkened room, studying shadows on the wall for signs of the future, studying a man and a life not yet formed.
FROM THIS MOMENT ON THE SON OF HEINRICH CLAUSEN IS TO BE TESTED. THERE ARE THOSE WHO MAY LEARN OF THE WORK IN GENEVA AND WHO WILL TRY TO STOP HIM, WHOSE ONLY PURPOSE IN LIFE WILL BE TO KILL HIM, THUS DESTROYING THE DREAM CONCEIVED BY THE GIANT THAT WAS HIS FATHER.
THIS MUST NOT HAPPEN, FOR WE WERE BETRAYED—ALL OF US—AND THE WORLD MUST KNOW WHAT WE REALLY WERE, NOT WHAT THE BETRAYERS SHOWED US TO BE, FOR THOSE WERE THE PORTRAITS OF TRAITORS. NOT US. AND PARTICULARLY NOT HEINRICH CLAUSEN.
WE ARE THE SURVIVORS OF WOLFSSCHANZE. WE SEEK THE CLEANSING OF OUR NAMES, THE RESTORATION OF THE HONOR THAT WAS STOLEN FROM US.
THEREFORE THE MEN OF WOLFSSCHANZE WILL PROTECT THE SON FOR AS LONG AS THE SON PURSUES THE FATHER’S DREAM AND RETURNS OUR HONOR TO US. BUT SHOULD THE SON ABANDON THE DREAM, BETRAY THE FATHER, AND WITHHOLD OUR HONOR, HE WILL HAVE NO LIFE. HE WILL WITNESS THE ANGUISH OF LOVED ONES, OF FAMILY, CHILDREN, FRIENDS. NO ONE WILL BE SPARED.
NONE MUST INTERFERE. GIVE US OUR HONOR. IT IS OUR RIGHT AND WE DEMAND IT.
Noel shoved the chair back and stood up.
«What the hell is this?»
«I’ve no idea,» replied Manfredi quietly, his voice calm but his large, cold blue eyes conveying his alarm. «I told you we were not apprised…»
«Well, get apprised!» shouted Holcroft. «Read it! Who were these clowns? Certifiable lunatics?»
The banker began reading. Without looking up, he answered softly. «First cousins to lunatics. Men who’d lost hope.»
«What’s Wolfsschanze? What does it mean?»
«It was the name of Hitler’s staff headquarters in East Prussia, where the attempt to assassinate him took place. It was a conspiracy of the generals: Von Stauffenberg, Kluge, Höpner—they were all implicated. All shot. Rommel took his own life.»
Holcroft stared at the paper in Manfredi’s hands. «You mean it was written thirty years ago by people like that?»
The banker nodded, his eyes narrowed in astonishment. «Yes, but it’s not the language one might have expected of them. This is nothing short of a threat; it’s unreasonable. Those men were not unreasonable. On the other hand, the times were unreasonable. Decent men, brave men, were stretched beyond the parameters of sanity. They were living through a hell none of us can picture today.»
«Decent men?» asked Noel incredulously.
«Have you any idea what it meant to be a part of the Wolfsschanze conspiracy? A bloodbath followed, thousands massacred everywhere, the vast majority never having heard of Wolfsschanze. It was yet another final solution, an excuse to still all dissent throughout Germany. What began as an act to rid the world of a madman ended in a holocaust all its own. The survivors of Wolfsschanze saw that happen.»
«Those survivors,» replied Holcroft, «followed that madman for a long time.»
«You must understand. And you will. These were desperate men. They were caught in a trap, and for them it was cataclysmic. A world they had helped create was revealed not to be the world they envisioned. Horrors they never dreamed of were uncovered, yet they couldn’t avoid their responsibility for them. They were appalled at what they saw but couldn’t deny the roles they played.»
«The well-intentioned Nazi,» said Noel. «I’ve heard of that elusive breed.»
«One would have to go back in history, to the economic disasters, to the Versailles Treaty, the Pact of Locarno, the Bolshevik encroachments—to a dozen different forces—to understand.»
«I understand what I just read,» Holcroft said. «Your poor misunderstood storm troopers didn’t hesitate to threaten someone they couldn’t know! ‘He will have no life … no one spared … family, friends, children.’ That spells out murder. Don’t talk to me about well-intentioned killers.»
«They’re the words of old, sick, desperate men. They have no meaning now. It was their way of expressing their own anguish, of seeking atonement. They’re gone. Leave them in peace. Read your father’s letter …»
«He’s not my father!» interrupted Noel.
«Read Heinrich Clausen’s letter. Things will be clearer. Read it. We have several items to discuss and there isn’t much time.»
A man in a brown tweed overcoat and dark Tirolean hat stood by a pillar across from the seventh car. At first glance, there was nothing particularly distinguishing about him, except perhaps his eyebrows. They were thick, a mixture of black and light-gray hair that produced the effect of salt-and-pepper archways in the upper regions of a forgettable face.
At first glance. Yet if one looked closer, one could see the blunted but not unrefined features of a very determined man. In spite of the pockets of wind that blew in gusts through the platform, he did not blink. His concentration on the seventh car was absolute.
The American would come out of that doorway, thought the man by the pillar, a much different person from the American who went in. During the past few minutes his life had been changed in ways few men in this world would ever experience. Yet it was only the beginning; the journey he was about to embark on was beyond anything of which the present-day world could conceive. So it was important to observe his initial reaction. More than important. Vital.