“Well, that’s neither here nor there. The fact is, I really can’t help you. If there is a Jew out there it’s a miracle to me how he ever survived. A miracle.”
“Fritz,” Kohler asked, “the ones who did escape from here, those who reached New York, who harbored them? I mean was it individuals, friends, or an organized group?”
Kastendieck still looked a bit disconcerted.
“Both,” he replied. “Friends in some cases, other times they were sheltered by local cells of the Resistance. You were only a kid them, Ed, you too Haider, but we had a lot of trouble right up until the early fifties. Shit, even within the regular Army there were a lot of officers who refused to accept the Ultimatum, even after Chicago and Pittsburgh were A-bombed. I remember right after the St. Louis War Crimes Trials, when they shot Patton and MacArthur, there was a lot of grumbling in the ranks. My own buddies,” he said with a trace of dismay, as if the betrayal still rankled. “I had to turn in at least three of them to your boys, Ed. Guys I’d served with.” He shook his head. “I know it’s hard to believe now, what with the new generation and all, but in those days there were still a lot of people who believed Germany was an enemy, and actually thought the Jews were human beings. Human beings mind you, like you and me. Shit, some of them even thought the same thing about the blacks and Slavs. There probably are still a few nuts like that left, but not many.” He took another cigar out and this time he missed the wastebasket. “If I were you, I’d check your Christie files. Those were the ones we had the most trouble with then, and there must be some hanging around who haven’t converted or accepted reality.”
“That was the first thing I thought of,” Kohler said. “I went through every dossier myself, even took a few in for interrogation. Nothing there, just harmless crackpots. And all of them have been under routine surveillance for years.”
“What about the Japs?” Kastendieck said. “They’ve always been soft on Jews, we had a hell of a time getting them to turn over the few thousand in their territories.”
Kohler glanced at me.
“The Japs are interested all right, Fritz. But they don’t have him. They’re looking, same as us.”
Kastendieck cocked an eyebrow.
“Ah, the plot thickens. And have our little yellow friends anything to do with all those people who’ve developed that bad habit of up and dying?”
Kohler forced a smile.
“You don’t miss much. Let’s just say I wouldn’t drop in to your neighborhood sukiyaki parlor for a while.”
Kastendieck smiled wryly and finished his beer.
“I only wish I could help you more, Ed. You know, it gets pretty boring sitting around up here all the time, poring over old records, shepherding gawking tourists I through our museum, watching kids scratch their initials on the ovens. Sometimes I wish I Were out on the front lines again, like you and the Lieutenant here.”
“Don’t,” Kohler said fervently. “I’d exchange places I with you any day. Particularly today.”
The Colonel shrugged.
“Well, you know if I can help out in any way all you have to do is call. I’m just sorry I couldn’t give you any leads.”
“I didn’t expect much, Fritz. But I knew you’d dealt with Jewish escapes in the past, and I wanted to talk it over with you.” He glanced at his watch. “We’ve got to get back to the city. The next time you’re in town give me a ring, Dorothy would like to see you and Betsy again. We’ll set it up for dinner.”
“Will do.”
Kastendieck’s massive frame heaved out of the chair and we exchanged hearty handshakes. He walked out to the parking lot with us, past a gaggle of kids clustered around the refreshment stand, gobbling up the pink sugar ovens.
“These kids,” Kastendieck complained as Ed unlocked the car, “their schoolteachers take them out here for a field trip and all they do is buy a lot of junky souvenirs from the concessions and crack dirty jokes about the mummies in the museum. Shit, I went into the little movie theatre we have over in the annex one day when the senior class from Croton High was visiting, we showed ’em a color film of our best mass executions, and when the lights went on all the little creeps were either necking or jerking off. They think it was ail a big joke, a lot of fun, they never think about all the hard work and dedication and sacrifice it took to eliminate four million Jews. That means nothing to the spoiled little brats.”
Kohler assured him posterity would not forget, and we drove off.
“Hell, Ed,” I said after a while, “I needed the beers, but I don’t know what else we got out of all that.”
“Just call it a background briefing. Old Fritz confirmed a couple of things I’ve been thinking myself.”
“Like what?” I asked as we swung back onto the Parkway.
“Like there’s a wrong note to this whole fucking thing, something off, if I could just place it. Fritz doesn’t believe a Jew could have survived twenty-five years in our society, and I don’t believe it either. Especially a Jew crazy enough to wear a mezzuzah, crazy enough to bury a Jew skull like it was a human being. It’s wrong, all wrong. That’s not survival instinct, which this guy would have to have in spades, that’s suicide instinct. It doesn’t make sense.”
“I’m with you there, none of it does. But we’re still stuck with the same problem: who is he and where is he? The how doesn’t bother me, not for the time being at least.”
Kohler was silent for a couple of minutes. Then, “You’re wrong, Bill. The how may be all that matters. Because I’ve got the feeling, crazy as it sounds, that this Jew hasn’t been around for twenty-five years. I’ve got the feeling he’s a recent arrival.”
“Arrival from where?”
“As God is my witness, Bill, I don’t know. I’m not even sure I want to know.”
Something about the way he said that chilled me, and , I stayed silent for the rest of the ride back.
When we reached Gestapo headquarters I went up to Kohler’s office and had another of his Steinhagens while he busied himself on the phone. I knew I shouldn’t drink, keeping alert was a survival mechanism now, but I was ? too jumpy, I needed something to calm me down. Ever since we’d got back to the city I’d had that prickly target feeling crawling up the small of my back, even though Kohler went through a half-dozen evasion maneuvers between the drive and Centre Street and swore we weren’t tailed. I was beginning to know how the goat felt when the white hunter tied him to a tree as tiger bait.
“My men are on the way from the airport,” Kohler said, replacing the receiver. “They should be here in a half hour.”
“How are you going to brief them without giving the show away?”
“They’re professionals, they’re not interested in why they’re doing something. Anyway, I can tell them half the truth—we’re out to capture a Jap assassin. They don’t need to know anything more.”
Beck came in with a sheaf of papers under his arm and sprawled into a chair. He looked as cool as ever but there were little lines of strain around the mouth and eyes, which made me feel a bit better. Maybe he did have a breaking point, just like us lesser mortals.
“I’ve been in touch with every bureau in the country and checked out all the border controls between Mexico and Canada. None of them has a thing on the Jap, not even a rumor. We’ve intensified surveillance on Imperial Mission personnel here and in Washington and I’ve rounded up a couple of dozen known nip sympathizers, but we’ve got nothing out of them so far.”