“The crematoria,” Ed said. “They were going twenty four hours straight for nearly eighteen months after Liberation. Local residents used to shout about the air pollution, they had quite a smog problem around here in those days.”
He pulled the car to a halt behind a cluster of wooden buildings, and we got out.
“Ed,” I said as we walked across the gravel parking space, “I don’t know about you, but I’m in no mood for sightseeing. What are we here for anyway?”
“To talk to an old friend of mine. I spent two weeks here during field training studying camp administration and termination techniques and I got to know the old commandant pretty well. He’s stayed on as curator of the camp museum and archivist for his division, the Sonderkommando. Quite a guy, and he just might have some leads for us. If anybody knows Jews, he does: he killed four million of them.”
I just shook my head. The place was bleak, depressing despite the bright sunshine, and strangely deserted. A few tourists wandered around with their cameras, but despite the line at the gate I couldn’t spot many visitors, and if this wasn’t Saturday I doubted there’d be any. We headed up a path flanked by dusty rose bushes toward the largest of the buildings but I waved Ed to a stop at a concession stand. I needed something cold to drink, I was feeling worse every minute.
The old man behind the counter didn’t sell beer—“I asked for a license for Godsake they tell me this is a national shrine it wouldn’t be proper what a load of shit”—and ended up with a Schwarzenwasser instead. It only made me feel thirstier, and I left half of it in the bottle and escaped before the guy could sell me some of his pink spun-sugar ovens. “Specialty of the house, pal, people come all over the country for ’em…”
We walked up a flight of steps to a door marked Administration and into a small reception hall, bare except for a limp party banner drooping from a flagstand in one corner. There was no sign of human habitation, and dust swirled from the floor as we walked. The stale air was about ten degrees hotter than outside and my stomach started to churn faster than ever, but Kohler was his same fresh, cool self. Adrenalin, probably.
“He’d be upstairs, they only keep a skeleton staff here.”
If that was a pun, I could do without it. We mounted a flight of stairs and Kohler led me down a corridor painted in the universal mucous green of the federal bureaucracy, stopping at an unmarked door.
“I think this is it, it’s been seven years since I was up here.”
He knocked twice, and I started as a voice bellowed from within.
“Enter!”
The guy was impressive to look at, I’ve got to give him that, despite the rumpled tweed suit and white syntho tunic. Obviously a military man, still not comfortable in civvies. He must have been six-feet-four and over 250 pounds but none of it seemed to have gone to fat yet, I’d have put him at sixty, easy, but the face was unlined and tanned, the gray eyes clear and sharp, and only the snow-white hair, cropped in a Skorzeny cut, betrayed the man’s age. He stood ramrod straight behind his desk, and as we entered his heels clicked like a gunshot and he snapped his right arm toward the ceiling in the Party salute. We exchanged heils and he waved us into comfortable green leather armchairs. Unlike the rest of the dump, this room was spotless and freshly painted, lined with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, the desk polished to a high gloss and bare except for an ashtray and a marble bust of the Fuhrer. There was none of the mandatory Party poster art on the walls, only a single watercolor, a muted pastel skyscape that looked like an original Mussacher. Best of all, a cooler purred softly in the window, bathing me in chill, fresh air. For the first time in hours I began to relax, and the ice-cold Wurzbergers our host provided from a small icebox was a further bonus. He and von Leeb had the same taste for beer. I hoped that was all they had in common.
“Colonel Kastendieck, this is Lieutenant Bill Haider of the New York Police Department, he’s working on an important case with me. Bill, Colonel Fritz Kastendieck of the Sonderkommando, the man who ran this camp for five years. After a few other things, like being the first man into Chicago after the Bomb.”
I leaned across the desk and shook the Colonel’s hand. His clasp was firm, dry, and the smile he gave us was rueful.
“Ed should be my PR man. I’ve got to ask him to write the introduction to my memoirs.” From the name and rank I’d expected him to be German, but the voice was native American, with a faint Midwestern twang.
“How’s the book coming?” Ed asked.
The Colonel sighed.
“Slow. And much, much too long. There’s so much to put in, but my God, who’s going to want to wade through it after all these years? What I need is a good editor.”
Kohler turned to me.
“The Colonel is writing his own life story, combining it with the official history of the Sonderkommando. It’s going to be quite a book.”
“I ever get through with it.” He plucked a cigar out of his tunic pocket and bit off the end, spitting it neatly into a wastebasket at least five feet away. “Now come on, Ed, stop buttering me up with the amenities, you didn’t come up here for a social visit. When you called you said you needed my help on something. Let’s have it.”
Kohler shifted a bit uncomfortably on his chair.
“Fritz, I know I don’t need to say this, but I’ve got to just the same. Can you take what I’m going to say as Clearance Red?”
Kastendieck leaned back in his chair and whistled softly.
“Clearance Red. Haven’t had one of those since the Bormann Purge.” He puffed thoughtfully at his cigar. “You know the answer to that already, Bill. I’m still a general officer.”
Kohler nodded.
“It was a formality, but a necessary one.” He paused, and took a long sip from his beer. “I’m not going to tell you everything, Fritz, not because I don’t trust you but because I don’t want to place you in any more jeopardy than is necessary. So far, a lot of the people involved in this thing have developed a nasty habit—dying. So I don’t want to drag you in all the way, but I do need advice, and you’re the only guy I can think of competent to give it.”
Kastendieck stabbed his cigar in the air impatiently.
“Then cut the bullshit and get on with it.”
Kohler smiled. The two might not have seen each other for years, but it was obvious they were friends.
“We’ve had some information, not conclusive in itself but supported by some pretty persuasive evidence, that leads us to believe a Jew is alive and free in New York City. What are the odds on that?”
Kastendieck’s eyes narrowed the tiniest fraction, but his voice stayed the same.
“One hundred to one against. It’s impossible.” He hadn’t touched his own beer up till then but now he took a long swig. “If you were going to ask me about Latin America, say, I couldn’t be quite that sure. There, holed out with an Indian tribe or living off the jungle, I’d say there’d be a very, very slim chance. Say, ninety-eight to one. But here— never. Security was too tight from the very beginning, and even before Liberation the whole fucking country was computerized. Your Jew would have to have work papers, birth records, food credits, travel permits, the whole bit. Sure he could get a forgery that could last him a few weeks or months, but not the kind of stuff that would keep him alive and functioning for years. Where could he get hold of that kind of identification?”