‘Yes?’
‘Uhhh-hear this,’ said Öhman. ‘The next we know of Farelli, he turns up as a doctor-no longer a prisoner, but a doctor-in Nazi Germany.’
The intake of Garrett’s breath hissed through the silent bedroom. ‘Nazi Germany,’ he repeated, as if it were a blessing. Then quickly, ‘How do you know? Is there proof?’
‘That is the point,’ said Öhman seriously. ‘By our standards, the evidence is flimsy, almost cryptic, but it is evidence. For a while, I was unsure, and was going to withhold it from you. It was so fragmentary. It could be misleading. On the other hand-’
‘Read it to me.’
‘-I felt, in view of Farelli’s behaviour towards you, in view of our-uhhh-friendship, I owed it to you, in all fairness, as something you could think about and measure.’ He lifted the typescript from his lap, but still did not consult it. ‘As you know, Dr. Garrett, the German medical profession, which we esteemed so highly in the years before Hitler, which we showered with Nobel honours-the German medical profession disgraced itself in the Second World War.’
Garrett remembered the stories from Nürnberg in 1947. ‘You mean the Nazi medical trial before our tribunal at Nürnberg?’
‘I mean what led to it. Throughout the war, almost two hundred German physicians comported themselves in such a manner as to make the Marquis de Sade appear sweet and gentle by comparison. These German doctors employed helpless human beings-Jewish men and women, Polish and Russian prisoners of war, their own nationals who opposed Hitler-instead of guinea pigs and rats, for their sadistic experiments. I am-uhhh-it is sickening to know the truth of their record. Do you recollect the record?’
‘It was so long ago,’ said Garrett. ‘And, anyway, I was in the Pacific.’
‘For their insane experiments, these long-worshipped doctors injected human prisoners with typhus, deadly typhus. They sterilized the sexual organs of Jews with X-rays, and murdered most of them. They tried out synthetic hormones on defenceless homosexuals and killed some. They injected yellow fever into persons, not animals. They tried out poison gas on persons, not animals. They made artificial abscesses on persons, not animals to study blood poisoning. They severed healthy limbs in order to experiment with transplants. The list is too nauseating-I will not go on.’
He stared down at the typescript. ‘Then, one day, with the approval of Himmler and the Reich Air Ministry, they undertook a long series of horrible experiments-in the name of aviation medicine, and presumably designed to learn valuable information for their Luftwaffe pilots-with a decompression chamber, to study heart action at abnormally high altitudes. These tests were the ultimate in-uhhh-savagery. According to my notes, Dr. Sigmund Rascher had proposed the tests to Himmler, and Himmler had approved. The decompression chamber was moved into the Dachau concentration camp, and, one by one, these prisoners were led into the torture chamber-and the air was let out of the box-so that the prisoner, without oxygen or any equipment-the guinea pig-would reflect the human condition of a flyer in rapid ascent to an altitude of thirteen or fourteen miles. It was terrible, Dr. Garrett. I have heard the case histories. In the first minutes, perspiration and lack of control; in five minutes, spasms; in eight minutes, the dropping of respiration; in twelve minutes, boiling of the blood and rupturing of the lungs, with the human victim tearing out his hair in bunches and gouging out the flesh of his face to relieve his suffering, and attempt to find oxygen when there was no oxygen-and all this while, the-uhhh-doctors were studying the victim through an observation window, and checking their cardiographs, and later, making their calm autopsies on the corpses.’
Öhman paused. He saw that Garrett had grown pale. Both men were silent. Only the ticking of Garrett’s travelling clock, on the bedstand, could be heard.
Öhman sighed. ‘The names of all the doctors participating in these high altitude experiments are known. One of them was Dr. Carlo Farelli.’
‘Farelli-’ Even Garrett, who considered his enemy capable of any enormity, did not consider him capable of this. Garrett sat stunned. At last, he found words. ‘You have proof?’
‘As I explained-inconclusive proof. I shall read it to you.’ He read from the typescript. ‘ “Report to German Experimental Institute for Aviation Medicine. Attention Dr. Siegfried Ruff. Lieutenant General Dr. Hippke. Subject: Experiment 203 of heart action at high altitudes. Place: Dachau altitude chamber. Test persons: Five criminals, volunteers. Test levels: 30,000 to 70,000 feet. (Results to be forwarded under separate cover.) Test effects: Two casualties. Physicians participating: Dr. A. Brand, Berlin; Dr. I. Gorecki, Warsaw; Dr. S. Brauer, Munich; Dr. J. Stirbey, Bucharest; Dr. C. Farelli, Rome… Signed, Dr. S. Rascher, 3 April, 1944.” ’ Öhman stopped, looked up, and laid the paper aside. ‘There it is.’
Garrett plucked at his blanket and stared at the opposite wall. ‘Dr. C. Farelli, Rome,’ he intoned, as if reading an epitaph. He shook his head in daze. ‘Incredible. Is there more?’
‘That is all. There is nothing else.’
‘There can’t be two C. Farellis in Rome, both heart specialists?’
‘There were not two. There was only one. Our investigator checked.’
Suddenly, Garrett turned on Öhman. ‘With that damning evidence, how could you let Farelli share the prize with me?’
‘This evidence was weighed by my colleague with all else that was ninety-nine per cent favourable. He felt that this mere mention of Farelli’s name was too little with which to disqualify him. He did not submit it to the Caroline staff of judges.’
‘Too little to disqualify him?’ said Garrett sarcastically.
‘Farelli’s political record was otherwise good. He had been a prisoner through most of the war. This one blot, my colleague felt-uhhh-he felt Farelli might not have had a part in conducting the tests that day, might have only been a foreign observer.’
‘Is that what you think, Dr. Öhman?’
‘To be honest with you, I do not know what to think. I can only guess that Farelli may have weakened under long confinement-possibly even punishment-and at last, to buy some freedom, some relief, abandoned his resistance and bent to Mussolini’s will. In short, in those days, Il Duce was doing what he could to hold up his end with Hitler. There is evidence he offered some physicians to co-operate in various endeavours with Hitler’s medical researchers. Farelli was a notable cardiac man, even that far back, and I suppose Mussolini offered him a parole if he would join with other Italian doctors in flying over to Germany and lending a hand in these-these-uhhh-experiments.’
‘It’s no excuse,’ said Garrett relentlessly.
‘I do not say it is. But it is the only explanation I can find for such hideous behaviour.’
‘He should have been hung at Nürnberg with all the rest,’ said Garrett. ‘Instead, your weakling friend suppressed that and gave him the Nobel Prize.’
For a moment, Öhman felt national pride and tried to defend his colleague. ‘He weighed this-this one indefinite mention-against Farelli’s career before, and in all the years since. He felt Farelli’s contribution to mankind was proved, but the one fragment of evidence of collaboration was unproved That was the decisive factor.’
Garrett’s emotions had gone through many convolutions. At first, he had been revolted by the information-a description of an act of brutality and cowardice so low and foreign to his pedestrian nature and normal academic background that he had recoiled from the monstrosity and thought that he wanted no part of it. But gradually, as he became used to the evidence, as he again suffered the ache of his chin and stomach, his hatred for the Italian returned. Farelli had humbled him and humiliated him without mercy, in public and in private, the typical behaviour of a man who would have assisted his German medical friends in butchery at Dachau. Here was evidence that the soft Swedes, ever fearful of trouble, had tried to suppress. And so gradually, Garrett’s mind substituted for petty revenge the soul-satisfying and loftier notion of moral indignation and retribution, in the name of all humanity. He had a duty to humanity, to God, to protect the world from this Roman Eichmann. In an hour’s time, from grovelling defeat, he had vaulted, using Öhman’s pole, to a height of power and superiority. With Öhman’s generous revelation, he could wipe Farelli from his life, from the lion’s share of honours, and, at the same time, know saintliness for helping all unsuspecting fellow men.