When they both were ready, the nurse said, ‘This way.’ They went with her into the corridor, and then into a small office, barren of all but a cigarette-scarred table holding several ashtrays and surrounded by five straight chairs.
But then, to Garrett’s dismay, the nurse left, and he found himself alone with Farelli. He extracted a cigar, and made much of preparing it, and when he looked up, he saw that the Italian was already drawing deeply on a cigarette as he stood by the window.
‘Still snowing,’ said Farelli.
Garrett said nothing. Now that the surgery was over, now that the worth of his discovery had been dramatized so remarkably and would soon be known around the world, the exhilaration had gone out of him. There could be no pleasure, he knew again, because Farelli existed, and somehow the transplantation would not be Öhman’s or even Garrett’s, but Farelli’s own, just as the discovery itself and the Nobel Prize in physiology and medicine this afternoon would be Farelli’s own.
As long as Farelli lived, Garrett’s instinct told him, Farelli would be the savant and the man, and he, himself, would be the shadow. Yet what could be done about it? He had tried everything, and everything had failed. There was only one hope. Öhman had been against it. Craig had deterred him from it. Or perhaps what had restrained him, actually, had been neither one of them, but his own good conscience.
Yet now this conscience of his did not seem good, but a weakness that would relegate him to eternal obscurity. But for this conscience, he would not have to live out the remainder of his days as pretender to the throne. Except for this conscience, he would have the throne.
He studied Farelli’s smug profile against the frosted window with undisguised contempt. There would never be another opportunity like this one. If he was not man enough to speak now, there would not be another chance. By late tomorrow, after they had their cheques from the Foundation, Farelli would be off on a triumphal tour of the continent, gathering all the laurels from here to Rome, and he would go back to Pasadena with his limited success, and his grief that only Saralee and Dr. Keller and the group would know. If he attempted to expose his enemy next year, it would be too late, like pelting a Nobel idol with minute sour grapes. It would have to be now or not at all.
How to begin? Casually, he decided, cautiously. No blunt accusation. Rather, the responsibility of power. Toy with the mouse, do not destroy it with one swipe of the paw, but let it destroy itself in its consternation and fear.
To begin, then. ‘The King will be happy with the result,’ said Garrett.
Farelli came around from the window, surprised to hear Garrett’s non-combative tone. ‘He will be extremely happy,’ said Farelli.
‘I heard you had breakfast with him yesterday.’
‘I was extremely pleased. I had taken the liberty to volunteer our-’
‘I know. I heard all about it.’ Garrett paused, wondering how the opening would come. ‘What did you find to talk about?’
‘He was gravely concerned about Count Ramstedt. I tried to reassure him by explaining details of the surgery. I told him of our experiences with-’
‘Your experiences,’ said Garrett. It was a small point. But Garrett wanted every point correct.
‘No, ours. I had read your papers and had some knowledge of your specific cases. He was gracious enough to inquire about our medical backgrounds. Here, I could only speak of myself.’
This was the opening, and blindly, his voice wavering, Garrett struck. ‘You told him about your-your visit to Dachau concentration camp, I presume? I mean, as part of your medical history?’
At once, Garrett saw that he had scored, and the thrill of impending mastery coursed through his veins.
Farelli’s Latin face was fixed in an attitude of historic wonderment, the face of Julius Caesar in the Senate chamber beneath Pompey’s statue, astonished by Tillius who had ripped the toga from him, the face of Caesar who saw Casca with the dagger of truth. Garrett waited on his lofty perch, almost expecting the Italian below to shout the classic ‘Casca, you madman, what are you doing?’ Then, at last, he would show him the madman’s full design.
But for all his wonderment, Farelli’s first voice was mild. ‘Did you say Dachau? How do you know about that?’
‘Oh, I just know it. Things get around.’
‘Something like that does not get around, as you say it. I have never spoken of that.’
‘I can’t say I blame you. In your boots, I wouldn’t speak of it either.’
Farelli shrugged. ‘There are some moments of one’s life one prefers to forget.’
At last, Garrett had his dominance. He addressed Farelli with the complacent censure of the superior to the weak. ‘What I want to know is this-how could you go through with it?’
‘How? Because I was forced to go through with it. I was a prisoner of the blackshirts in Regina Coeli, and I had no choice. It was a gamble to survive.’
‘But there are limits to what a man-’
‘One does not weigh or examine, under the choice of life or death. It is easy now, so far away in time, to be logical about what is unreal. But when the OVRA gave me the immediate choice of the firing squad or the experiment at Dachau-well, Dachau was an unknown quantity. I had heard, I had read-but I did not know. The muskets of the firing squad, I heard every morning at daybreak. I told myself-say no to the OVRA, Farelli, and you are surely dead-but say yes, and who knows what waits at Dachau. I was promised it would only be temporary, several days, no more. So I went through with it.’ He paused. ‘I do not think of it often any more. They brought five of us to Dachau-’
‘Yes, I know,’ said Garrett with scorn.
‘You know? I still am puzzled how you know.’
‘Dr. Brand of Berlin, Dr. Gorecki of Warsaw, Dr. Brauer of Munich, Dr. Stirbey of Bucharest-and you.’
Farelli’s bewilderment showed. ‘You are correct. That is correct. Poor Brand and Brauer, they had the worst of it. They were Jews, and I believe they were meant to be killed anyway. They died-terribly.’
‘How long after the experiment?’ asked Garrett. It was all coming out now, easier than he had expected, and Farelli was sealing his own doom.
‘After the experiment? No, they both died during it, each in their first time. I was made to watch them through the window of the Sky Ride Wagon-that was what the high-altitude box was called, the Sky Ride Wagon-Brauer, such a decent young man, his lungs rupturing, and Brand choking, until his heart failed.’ Farelli had become excited. ‘You can imagine how I felt when they forced me into the high-altitude chamber. I thought I was the next victim-’
Garrett was positive that Farelli had made an error. He raised his voice, interrupting, voice cracking. ‘You-they-you say they put you in the experiment chamber-inside it?’
‘Yes, of course,’ said Farelli. ‘What have you heard? I thought you knew the entire story.’
‘Some of it, but-’
‘The Nazi Fascists had been using Jews, Polish and Russian prisoners for their guinea pigs, and one day Himmler wrote that instead of common prisoners, it might be wise to obtain five qualified doctors, heart specialists, who were also Jews or political prisoners, and try the experiments on them. The idea was that we would undergo fifteen-mile-altitude tests, without equipment, and be brought to the point of death, but not quite. Then we would be revived, and be made to set down our reactions and judgments, as physicians who had endured this, in medical papers, for the benefit of the Luftwaffe and the Medical Service of the Waffen-SS. I was the fourth one that day. Brand and Brauer had died, and they dragged out Stirbey half-dead-he is in a sanatorium in Vienna still-and then, it was my turn-’
Garrett reached blindly for a chair, and found himself in it. God Almighty, God Almighty, he thought, and felt like a man who had slipped to the brink of the Grand Canyon, and been snatched from the fall by an unseen hand, and still had not recovered from what might have been.