Elie put down the paper and nibbled on the Erdbeertoertli, its crust practically melting on his tongue. The confetti strawberries were too sweet for his palate, and he washed it down with a bit of coffee. The steam rising from the coffee made him rub his neck, still tender after several months of healing. The news of an Arab joint command, dominated by the belligerent Nasser, was a realization of Israel’s worst fears. Elie knew he had little time to waste. As soon as the Hoffgeitz Bank began transferring Klaus von Koenig’s fortune to the accounts in Paris, he would return to Jerusalem.
“K. v. K. stands for Klaus von Koenig.” Tanya looked away from the Mauser and the cigarette lighter, two personal objects Klaus had carried on him every day until his death. “He was in charge of budget and finance at the SS Central Command, reporting directly to Himmler.”
“You knew him?”
“I lived with him.”
Lemmy’s face paled. “As a sex slave?”
“As a lover.”
“You loved a Nazi?”
“I loved a man, a wonderful man, despite who he was, or what he was.”
“I don’t understand.”
“It didn’t start that way. I was only thirteen.” Tanya closed her eyes, taking herself back to that horrifying day. “We arrived in the morning. My mother. My little sister, Edna. A train filled with Jews from Lindau, Germany, our hometown. My father had died a year earlier. He had always thought of himself as a German first and a Jew second. But when they burned down his bookstore, it just broke his heart. At least he didn’t live to see us arrive at Dachau. Three days in a cattle car, no room to sit, no water, no toilet. No dignity. We were made to strip naked and line up by the doors to the showers, shivering from cold and fear. The doors opened. My mother and Edna were pushed in, but someone grabbed my arm and pulled me aside. I wanted to go with them, but my mother shook her head. She knew.”
Tanya wiped her eyes. It had been a long time since she had allowed these memories to surface. She felt Lemmy’s hand on her arm. “To this day I cannot remember my mother clothed. She’s forever naked in my mind, holding Edna’s hand as the steel doors were shut behind them. I know she was a beautiful woman, always dressed tastefully. I know it, but I cannot visualize her the way she had been before Dachau. I can’t, and there are no photos left to remind me. It’s as if our past, our nice little family life in Lindau, never existed.” Tanya took a deep breath. “Anyway, there I was, standing with my hands over my breasts. It was so cold. I saw a tall man in a long coat and an officer’s cap. The others looked like midgets around him. He took off his coat and draped it around me.” Tanya rubbed her neck with her hand. “I can still feel the stiff collar chafing against my skin.”
“And then?”
“I was lucky.” She shrugged. “Not only to stay alive, but to be with Klaus.”
“Lucky?”
“I was numb with grief, alone in the world, with no one to protect me. He could have used me and put me back in line, but he didn’t. He took me to his home and nurtured me back to life like a precious bird with broken wings.”
Lemmy’s mouth was slightly open, his expression incredulous.
“You think I should have hated Klaus?”
He nodded.
“Because he was a monster, responsible for killing millions of innocent people, our people, right?”
“Yes.”
“And you’re correct. He was part of that evil machine. But with me he was someone else. He was a confident, impeccable man, who showed me only kindness and devotion. He was the first man I’d ever been with-as a woman. He was there for me, strong and caring, very patient and considerate. I know it sounds crazy, but I knew that he really loved me. I was his angel, and he was mine.”
“But he was a Nazi!”
Tanya rolled a lock of her hair around her finger, as a girl would do. “If you were a young woman, perhaps you would understand. I was just becoming a woman then. My body and my emotional universe revolved around those feelings. Klaus von Koenig loved me, really loved me, like no one else before or after. He was a formidable man. Senior SS officers trembled before him. But with me he was different. He saved my life, but he treated me as if I saved his. There was nothing he wouldn’t do for me, and I was happy with him, would have stayed with him even after the war, would have gone to Argentina and borne his children. I would have.”
“Then why didn’t you?”
“Because we were ambushed by two starved, half-frozen Jewish partisans, one of whom was your father.”
Lemmy held up the gun. “That’s how he got this Mauser?”
She nodded. “Abraham shot Klaus in the head just before dawn, on the first day of 1945. My seventeenth birthday.”
“I didn’t know my father was a partisan.”
“War turns everyone into something else, often irreversibly. They had come from a shtetl, two Jewish boys, raised to take over their fathers’ peaceful professions. The war transformed them into soldiers of Nekamah. Revenge. An eye for an eye.”
Lemmy put down the Mauser. “So you went from the Nazi to my father?”
“Don’t judge me.” Her voice softened. “You should have seen Abraham when he was your age. Lean and strong, with blond hair and piercing blue eyes.” She gestured at Lemmy. “You look like him. We could have built a life together, but the Germans were losing the war, and he was obsessed. Nekamah. Nekamah. Nekamah. I thought he would quit, but he didn’t. He is that rare kind of a man-totally committed, but not to a person, not to a lover, not to an offspring, but to a higher cause.” She choked with emotions that had long been suppressed. “And then we lost each other and have remained separated all these years. But I’m glad I found out Abraham was alive, because it led to our first encounter, remember?”
“How could I forget?” Lemmy touched her forehead where the bruise had long healed. He pulled her closer, and Tanya rested her cheek against his bare chest, smooth and taut over his hard muscles, scented with soap. He cradled her face in his hands and leaned down to kiss her lips.
Chapter 34
The Hoffgeitz Bank resided in a three-story stone mansion at the corner of Bahnhofstrasse and Augustinergasse. Elie rang the bell. The lock clicked, and an elderly man opened the door. “ Guten morgen,” he said with a curt bow.
Elie handed him a business card that carried only the name Rupert Danzig and a P.O. Box in Paris. “I’m here to see Herr Hoffgeitz.”
The cozy lobby could have been a living room in an old-money residence. The leather sofas were worn yet elegant, and the oil portraits on the walls told of a long ancestry. When the man held out his hand for Elie’s coat, Elie noticed a ring on his finger, the familiar serpent intertwined with LASN. The cuff of his dark-navy suit shone with age, but the creased face was carefully groomed, the gray eyes alert, and the back not yet stooped.
The man hung Elie’s coat in a closet and picked up a telephone on a side table. A moment later Gunter Schnell appeared through another door. “How can we assist you, Herr Danzig?”
“Greetings from my commander, Obergruppenfuhrer Klaus von Koenig.”
A facial twitch was all that revealed Gunter’s surprise. He gave a shallow bow and beckoned Elie. They went down a hallway with closed doors, accompanied by the muffled sounds of typewriters, men’s voices, and ringing phones, and entered a windowless room with a round mahogany table and straight-back chairs.
Elie waited alone. No sound penetrated the walls or the door, but he detected a trace of cigar smoke. He lit a cigarette.
More than a half hour passed. Elie noticed a rotary phone on a small shelf, picked up the receiver and listened. There was no dial tone, but he could tell someone was listening at the other end. He put down the receiver.