Blauvelt told you.’
Hans looked down and watched his shoes shuffling against the floorboards. Anxiety rose up reinvigorated. ‘How is that relevant to my work now?’
‘Just tell me,’ Doctor Falke growled, ‘what Blauvelt told you.’
‘Very well…’ Hans began. ‘If you insist...’
‘It’s not Paul. Not directly, anyway.’ Blauvelt slumped down into a chair, burying his head in his shirt collar. ‘It’s the clinic.’
‘The clinic? What do you mean? What’s happened? The bombing last night? A fire?’
Walter tried to speak but his words were muffled. ‘The wagon…’ He lifted his head a little and tried again.
‘You mean..?’
‘I mean that the wagon came. At ten o’clock sharp,’ Walter continued. ‘Breakfast was over. The children were playing outside in the courtyard garden or resting in their rooms. Two Gestapo officers accompanied a man in a white coat. He thrust some official documents under my nose. They could have been faked. The Gestapo were real enough, that was all that mattered. They said, “We are closing the clinic for health reasons. All the inmates here will be showered prior to transfer to a location within the safety of the Reich.” Which was nonsense because a lot of the children had only just arrived here from Hamburg. Then he gave me this sly half-grin and said, “the Reich must protect all her people, no?” They told me I had to co-operate and I made some stupid comment about getting the nursing staff to start showering the boys and girls straight away. But he said, “No. We have a mobile facility waiting in the car park. We will take care of everything.” You know about the gas wagons, Hans?’ Walter asked me, looking up for the first time. ‘They’re real. I’ve seen them.’
‘People always talk, Walter, but I never believed it. Can you be sure?’
‘The wagon was parked round the back, behind some rubbish, apparently. ‘There was a small truck that came and went throughout the day, transporting the bodies. The boys and girls disappeared behind the rubbish and climbed into the rear of the truck. They held hands; some skipped; others giggled hysterically with excitement. One girl refused to get in until the nurse fetched her favourite doll. And I did nothing. Nothing!’ Walter screamed. ‘They made me attend, made me watch as the engine started and a valve was switched so that the carbon monoxide fumes were diverted inside the locked compartment. I heard nothing else but I saw the van rocking. Rocking like a train. Don’t you see what that means? They were trying to get out, Hans! They were trying to get out! ‘
‘He told me about their plans to set up a brain bank to allow Reich scientists to map the human brain in all its manifestations, study its aberrations and hopefully cure them. He told me how they had given him the task of organising and cataloguing the ‘specimens’. He would have to see them, touch them and all the while remember names, faces, voices.’
‘But he did it, though. Didn’t he?’ Falke whispered.
‘For the sake of his son. It was blackmail.’
‘And not for science? Not for the racial purity of the Volk?’
‘Never. Not Walter. He was a man of principle. It put twenty years on him.’
Dr. Falke let out a short laugh, tinged with contempt. ‘Is that why he killed himself? Did his precious principles finally catch up with him?’
‘No,’ Hans sighed. ‘He found out his son had been long dead anyway. Killed near Krakow.’
Falke turned to look at Hans, his brow creased.
‘But it was still blackmail. He acted to protect the one life he thought he still could. Wouldn’t any father do the same?’
Falke turned away, but before he did Hans was certain he saw a tear welling in the corner of his eye. ‘Ernst?’
‘Please forgive me, Hans,’ he said, sniffing and reaching for a handkerchief. ‘This war, what we’ve all been through…’
‘I apologise for upsetting you. But you were very insistent.’
‘Indeed, Herr Asperger,’ Falke announced, taking a deep breath. ‘Let me be frank. What interests me is the brain bank and who, if anyone, has profited from it. So I must ask you directly: Did you at any time use tissue samples or organ specimens from the Vienna Brain Bank?’
Hans crumpled beneath the weight of the question, the dark corners of the room with their evil forebodings suddenly converging across his face, burying him in suffocating horror. He fought for breath through a wave of dizziness and forced his eyes to focus on his accuser’s reflection that seemed to float angrily above the whole city, its features mapping the countenance of a vengeful god.
‘Dr. Falke… Ernst. I swear on my family’s lives that I have never and would never willingly take part in any such undertaking.’
‘Willingly? And what if you had no knowledge of how the specimens were obtained? What then?’ Falke continued ‘You see it is not just your professional reputation that precedes you, Herr Asperger.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘You are known to possess a certain naivety in the ways of the world, shall we say. You are also somewhat self-absorbed, intensely focused… Yes? Could not a man of such characteristics allow himself to be inveigled into such a monstrous enterprise?’
Hans closed his eyes. Walter had never tried to enlist him; he merely needed to unburden himself of his guilt. That Falke considered Hans a potential war criminal when in fact he had spent the last desperate months of the war saving lives was a cruel travesty. Because someone had indeed taken notice of his paper on the little professors; someone whose job it was to oversee that life unworthy of life should be relieved of it for the good of all. Far from colluding in the dissection of carbon monoxide damaged brains, Hans had strived to convince the Gestapo and the S.D. that these ‘little professors’ could serve the Fatherland in extraordinary ways: with their photographic memories behind enemy lines; with their uncanny faculties in code making and breaking; with their ability to solve complex scientific questions that might speed up the development of the wonder weapons the Third Reich then pinned so much hope to.
‘It’s not how you think.’
Falke turned to face him like a firing squad and shot him a look of contempt: ‘How would you know what I think?’
Any response Hans might have made was cut short by a knock at the door.
‘Come!’ Falke snarled.
The young boy from earlier entered, bowing slightly: ‘Excuse me, Herr Falke, your next appointment has arrived.’
‘Yes. Good.’ Falke stalked back behind his desk. ‘Dr. Asperger, I think that concludes our discussion. ‘You may rest assured that the hospital will be in touch with you in due course.’ He stood, refusing to meet Hans’ gaze.
Hans stood too, and extended his hand to the other man. Dr. Falke made no effort to take it. The arm hung between them like a half-completed bridge.
‘Goodbye, Dr. Asperger,’ he said coldly.
Ernst Falke sensed rather than heard the big American slip through the door behind him. He wondered how many of his countrymen he might have killed in just that way: the assassin stealing in like a casual breeze and then skilfully bringing the knife edge to bear.
‘You heard everything?’ Falke asked. ‘Your German must be very good.’
‘It’s good enough, my friend,’ the American spoke. He moved from behind Falke’s chair, gazing out over the city. ‘Is he clean?’
Falke toyed with the handle of his cup. ‘He’s not a Nazi, Sergeant Long. I’m positive.’
‘I tend to agree, Dr. Falke,’ and with a sarcastic grin added, ‘And please, call me Don.’
‘You are satisfied now? Is that the last of them?’ Falke tried and failed to keep the resentment from his voice. ‘Don.’
‘I hope you’re not forgetting who is boss here, Dr. Falke. You Austrians need us a lot more than we need you. I think the Russians intend to stick around.’ He nodded absently towards the big window to their left. ‘Besides, have you seen the mess this place is in?’
‘You didn’t answer my question.’
Long tur
ned from the window and sat on the edge of the desk, his thigh thick with muscle. Ernst almost expected the wood to start screaming for mercy, but doubtless the Americans had an ‘understanding’ with the local furniture, too. ‘Listen, we appreciate your cooperation, Dr. Falke.’
‘Really? I doubt my fellow countrymen would see spying as anything but a betrayal.’
‘Then you’ll be relieved to know that Dr. Asperger was indeed the last suspect. We won’t need to bother either of you again.’
‘So the research goes on? Using those poor children’s remains?’ Falke snapped. ‘And what if I want to make a fuss? What if he does?’
Sergeant Long laughed. ‘Maybe he will, but who’d listen? The guy’s a freak, if you ask me. And hell, we both know why you’re going to keep quiet. Come with me. It’s time for your reward.’
The big American leapt from the desk so sharply that for a second Dr. Falke thought he was going to pick him up and carry him out. But he knew what was to happen next. It was the reason he had moved down to the Austrian capital from Hamburg, working for the occupiers in their search for ex-Nazis and war criminals; following in the footsteps of his eight year old son. So he was still alive, Falke’s heart cried out; for though Long was a ‘tough cookie’ he was not a sadist; he wasn’t about to reward Ernst with a coffin.
They walked down a long dark corridor that led to the store rooms at the rear of the hospital. There was a loading bay open to the car park where much