But no, this was intentional, he was sure of it. Hostility was coming at him from smiling Wheelock. And what would you expect from an anti-Semitic former penitentiary guard who trains dogs to tear people’s throats out? Loving kindness? Good manners?
Well, he hadn’t come here to make a new friend. He put his briefcase by his feet, rested his hands on his knees.
“To explain this, Mr. Wheelock,” he said, “I have to go into personal matters. Personal regarding you. About your son, and his adoption.”
Wheelock’s eyebrows lifted questioningly.
“I know,” Liebermann said, “that you and Mrs. Wheelock got him in New York City from ‘Elizabeth Gregory.’ Now please believe me”—he leaned forward—“no one is going to make trouble about it. No one is going to try to take your son away from you or charge you with any law-breaking. It’s long ago and not important any more, not directly important. I give you my word on this.”
“I believe you,” Wheelock said gravely.
A very cool customer, this momzer, taking it so calmly; sitting there running the tips of his forefingers apart and together, apart and together, along the edge of the green album cover. The spine of the album lay toward Liebermann; the cover sloped upward, resting, apparently, on something inside. “‘Elizabeth Gregory,’” Liebermann said, “wasn’t her real name. Her real name was Frieda Maloney, Frieda Altschul Maloney. You have heard it?”
Wheelock frowned thoughtfully. “Do you mean that Nazi?” he asked. “The one they sent back to Germany?”
“Yes.” Liebermann picked up his briefcase. “I have here some pictures of her. You’ll see that—”
“Don’t bother,” Wheelock said.
Liebermann looked at him.
“I saw her picture in the newspaper,” Wheelock explained. “She looked familiar to me. Now I know why.” He smiled. The “why” had almost been “vy.”
Liebermann nodded. (Was it intentional? Except for the mimicry Wheelock was behaving pleasantly enough…) He put back the loosened briefcase strap; looked at Wheelock. “You and your wife,” he said, trying to un-v his own w’s, “weren’t the only couple that got babies from her. A couple named Guthrie did, and Mr. Guthrie was murdered last October. A couple named Curry did; Mr. Curry was murdered in November.”
Wheelock looked concerned now. His fingertips were motionless on the edge of the album cover.
“There is a Nazi going about in this country,” Liebermann said, holding the briefcase on his lap, “a former SS man, killing the fathers of the boys adopted through Frieda Maloney. Killing them in the same order as the adoptions, and the same time apart. You’re the next one, Mr. Wheelock.” He nodded. “Soon. And there are many more after. This is why I go to the F.B.I., and this is why, while I go, you should be protected. And by more than your dogs.” He gestured at the door beyond the sofa end; the dogs were whining behind it now, one or two barking half-heartedly.
Wheelock shook his head in amazement. “Hmm!” he said. “But this is so strange!” He looked wonderingly at Liebermann. “The fathers of the boys are being killed?”
“Yes.”
“But why?” Perfect pronunciation this time; he too was trying.
Dear God, of course! Not mimicry at all, intended or unintended, but a real accent, like his own, being suppressed!
He said, “I don’t know…”
And the shoes and the trousers, of a city man not a country man; the hostility coming from him; the dogs closed away so as not to “annoy”…
“You don’t know?” the-Nazi-not-Wheelock asked him. “All these killings are taking place and you don’t know the rheason?”
But the killers were in their fifties, and this man was sixty-five, maybe a little less. Mengele? Impossible. He was in Brazil or Paraguay and wouldn’t dare come north, couldn’t possibly be sitting here in New Providence, Pennsylvania.
He shook his head at no-not-Mengele.
But Kurt Koehler had been in Brazil, and had come to Washington. The name would have been in Barry’s passport or wallet as next-of-kin…
A gun came out from behind the album cover, aiming its muzzle at him. “Then I must tell it to you,” the man holding the gun said. Liebermann looked at him; darkened and lengthened his hair, gave him a thin mustache, filled him out and made him younger…Yes, Mengele. Mengele! The hated, the so-long-hunted; Angel of Death, child-killer! Sitting here. Smiling. Aiming a gun at him. “Heaven forbid,” Mengele said in German, “that you should die in ignorance. I want you to know exactly what’s coming in twenty years or so. Is that ossified stare only for the gun, or have you recognized me?”
Liebermann blinked, took a breath. “I recognize you,” he said.
Mengele smiled. “Rudel and Seibert and the others,” he said, “are a bunch of tired old ladies. They called the men home because Frieda Maloney talked to you about babies. So I have to finish the job myself.” He shrugged. “I really don’t mind; the work will keep me young. Listen, put the briefcase down very slowly and sit back with your hands on your head and relax; you have a good minute or so before I kill you.”
Liebermann put the briefcase down slowly, to the left of his feet, thinking that if he got a chance to go quickly to the right and open the door there—assuming it wasn’t locked—maybe the dogs whimpering on the other side would see Mengele with the gun and go for him before he could get off too many shots. Of course, maybe the dogs would go for him too; and maybe they wouldn’t go for either of them without Wheelock (dead in there) giving a command. But he couldn’t think of anything else to try.
“I wish it could be longer,” Mengele said. “Truly I do. This is one of the most satisfying moments in my life, as I’m sure you can appreciate, and if it were at all practical to do so, I would gladly sit and talk with you like this for an hour or two. Refute some of the grotesque exaggerations in that book of yours, for instance! But alas…” He shrugged regretfully.
Liebermann folded his hands on top of his head, sitting erect on the front of the sofa. He began working his feet farther apart, very slowly. The sofa was low, and getting up from it quickly wasn’t going to be easy. “Is Wheelock dead?” he asked.
“No,” Mengele said. “He’s in the kitchen making lunch for us. Listen closely now, dear Liebermann; I’m going to tell you something that’s going to sound totally incredible to you, but I swear to you on my mother’s grave that it’s the absolute truth. Would I bother to lie to a Jew? And a dead one?”
Liebermann flicked his eyes to the window at the right of the settee and looked back at Mengele attentively.
Mengele sighed and shook his head. “If I want to look out the window,” he said, “I’ll kill you and then look. But I don’t want to look out the window. If someone were coming, the dogs out in back would be barking, yes? Yes?”
“Yes,” Liebermann said, sitting with his hands on his head.
Mengele smiled. “You see? Everything goes my way. God is with me. Do you know what I saw on television at one o’clock this morning? Films of Hitler.” He nodded. “At a moment when I was severely depressed, virtually suicidal. If that wasn’t a sign from heaven, there’s never been one. So don’t waste your time looking at windows; look at me, and listen. He’s alive. This album”—he pointed with his free hand, not taking his eyes or his gun off Liebermann—“is full of pictures of him, ages one through thirteen. The boys are exact genetic duplicates of him. I’m not going to take the time to explain to you how I achieved this—I doubt whether you’d have the capacity to understand it if I did—but take my word for it, I did achieve it. Exact genetic duplicates. They were conceived in my laboratory, and carried to term by women of the Auiti tribe; healthy, docile creatures with a businesslike chieftain. The boys bear no taint of them; they’re pure Hitler, bred entirely from his cells. He allowed me to take half a liter of his blood and a cutting of skin from his ribs—we were in a Biblical frame of mind—on the sixth of January, 1943, at Wolf’s Lair. He had denied himself children”—the phone rang; M
engele kept his eyes and his gun on Liebermann—“because he knew that no son could flourish in the shadow of so”—the phone rang—“godlike a father; so when he heard what was theoretically possible, that I could”—the phone rang—“create some day not his son but another himself, not even a carbon copy but”—the phone rang—“another original, he was as thrilled by the idea as I was. It was then that he gave me the position and facilities I required to begin my pursuit of the goal. Did you really think my work at Auschwitz was aimless insanity? How simple-minded you people are! He commemorated the occasion, the giving of the blood and skin, with a beautifully inscribed cigarette case. ‘To my friend of many years Josef Mengele, who has served me better than most men and may serve me some day better than all. Adolf Hitler.’ My most cherished possession, naturally; too risky to take through customs, so it sits in my lawyer’s safe in Asunción, waiting for me to come home from my travels. You see? I’m giving you more than a minute”—he looked at the clock—
Liebermann got up and—a gunshot roared—stepped around the sofa end, reaching. A gunshot roared, a gunshot roared; pain flung him against hard wall, pain in his chest, pain farther down. Dogs barked loud in his wall-pressing ear. The brown wood door thumped and quivered; he reached across it for its glass-diamond knob. A gunshot roared; the knob burst apart as he caught it, a small hole in the back of his hand filling with blood. He clutched a sharp part of knob—a gunshot roared; the dogs barked wildly—and wincing in pain, eyes shut tight, he twisted the part-knob, pulled. The door threw itself open against his arm and shoulder, dog-howling; gunshots roared, a thundering salvo. Barks, a cry, clicks of an empty gun; a thud and clatter, snarls, a cry. He let go the cutting part-knob, turned himself back gasping against the wall; let himself slide downward, opened his eyes…
Black dogs drove Mengele into a spread-legged side-sprawl on the settee; big Dobermans, teeth bared, eyes wild, sharp ears back. Mengele’s cheek slammed against the settee arm. His eye stared at a Doberman before him, shifting amid the legs of the overturned table, jaw-grappling his wrist; the gun fell from his fingers. His eye rolled to stare at Dobermans snarling close against his cheek and underjaw. The Doberman at his cheek stood between his back and the settee’s back, its forepaws treading for purchase at his shoulder. The Doberman at his underjaw stood hind-legged on the floor between his spread legs, leaning in over his updrawn thigh, body down low against his chest. Mengele raised his cheek higher against the settee arm, eye staring down, lips trembling.
A fourth Doberman lay big on the floor between the settee and Liebermann, on its side, black ribs heaving, its nose on hooked rug. A light-reflecting flatness spread out from beneath it; a puddle of urine.
Liebermann slid all the way down the wall, and wincing, sat on the floor. He straightened his legs out slowly before him, watching the Dobermans threatening Mengele.
Threatening, not killing. Mengele’s wrist had been let go; the Doberman that had held it stood snarling at him almost nose to nose.
“Kill!” Liebermann commanded, but only a whisper came out. Pain lancing his chest enlarged and sharpened.
“Kill!” he shouted against the pain. A hoarse command came out.
The Dobermans snarled, not moving.
Mengele’s eye clenched tight; his teeth bit his lower lip.
“KILL!” Liebermann bellowed—and the pain ripped his chest, tore it apart.
The Dobermans snarled, not moving.
A high-pitched squealing came from Mengele’s bitten-closed mouth.
Liebermann threw his head back against the wall and closed his eyes, gasping. He tugged his tie knot down, unbuttoned his shirt collar. Undid another button under the tie and put his fingers to the pain; found wetness on his chest at the edge of his undershirt. Brought the fingers out, opened his eyes; looked at blood on his fingertips. The bullet had gone right through him. Hitting what? The left lung? Whatever it had hit, every breath swelled the pain. He reached down for the handkerchief in his trouser pocket, rolled leftward to get at it; worse pain exploded below, in his hip. He winced as it gored him. Ei!
He got the handkerchief out, brought it up, pressed it against the chest wound and held it there.
Raised his left hand. Blood leaked from both sides of it, more from the ragged break in the palm than from the smaller puncture in the back. The bullet had gone through below the first and second fingers. They were numb and he couldn’t move them. Two scratches bled across the palm.
He wanted to keep the hand up to slow the bleeding but couldn’t; let it fall down. No strength was in him. Only pain. And tiredness…The door beside him drifted slowly toward closing.
He looked at Mengele.
Mengele’s eye watched him.
He closed his eyes, breathing shallowly against the pain burning in his chest.
“Away…”
He opened his eyes and looked across the room at Mengele lying side-sprawled on the settee among the close-snarling Dobermans.
“Away,” Mengele said, softly and warily. His eye moved from the Doberman before him to the Doberman at his underjaw, the Doberman at his cheek. “Off. No more gun. No gun. Away. Off. Good dogs.”
The blue-black Dobermans snarled, not moving.
“Nice dogs,” Mengele said. “Samson? Good Samson. Off. Go away.” He turned his head slowly against the settee arm; the Dobermans withdrew their heads a little, snarling. Mengele made a shaky smile at them. “Major?” he asked. “Are you Major? Good Major, good Samson. Good dogs. Friend. No more gun.” His hand, red-wristed, caught the front of the settee arm; his other hand held the frame of the settee’s back. He began turning himself up slowly from his side. “Good dogs. Off. Away.”
The Doberman in the middle of the room lay motionless, its black ribs still. The urine puddle around it had fragmented into a scatter of small puddles glinting on wide floorboards.
“Good dogs, nice dogs…”
Lying on his back, Mengele began pulling himself up slowly into the corner of the settee. The Dobermans snarled but stayed where they were, finding new paw-holds as he moved himself higher, away from their teeth. “Away,” he said. “I’m your friend. Do I hurt you now? No, no, I like you.”
Liebermann closed his eyes, breathed shallowly. He was sitting in blood that leaked down behind him.
“Good Samson, good Major. Beppo? Zarko? Good dogs. Away. Away.”
Dena and Gary were having some kind of trouble between them. He had kept his mouth shut when he was there in November, but maybe he shouldn’t have; maybe he—
“Are you alive, Jew-bastard?”
He opened his eyes.
Mengele sat looking at him, erect in the corner of the settee, one leg up, one foot on the floor. Holding the settee’s arm and back; scornful, in command. Except for the three Dobermans leaning at him, softly snarling.
“Too bad,” Mengele said. “But you won’t be for long. I can see it from here. You’re gray as ashes. These dogs will lose interest in me if I sit calmly and talk nicely to them. They’ll want to go pee or get a drink of water.” To the Dobermans he said in English, “Water? Drink? Don’t you want water? Good dogs. Go get a drink of water.”
The Dobermans snarled, not moving.
“Sons of bitches,” Mengele said pleasantly in German. And to Liebermann: “So you’ve accomplished nothing, Jew-bastard, except to die slowly instead of quickly, and to scratch my wrist a little. In fifteen minutes I’ll walk out of here. Every man on the list will die at his time. The Fourth Reich is coming: not just a German Reich but a pan-Aryan one. I’ll live to see it, and to stand beside its leaders. Can you imagine the awe they’ll inspire? The mystical authority they’ll wield? The trembling of the Russians and Chinese? Not to mention the Jews.” The phone rang.
Liebermann tried to move from the wall—to crawl if he could to the wire hanging down from the table by the doorway—but the pain in his hip spiked him and held him, impossible to move against. He settled back into the stickiness of his blood. Closed hi
s eyes, gasping.
“Good. Die a minute sooner. And think while you die of your grandchildren going into ovens.”
The phone kept ringing.
Greenspan and Stern, maybe. Calling to see what was happening, why he hadn’t called. Getting no answer, wouldn’t they worry and come, get directions in the town? If only the Dobermans would hold Mengele…
He opened his eyes.
Mengele sat smiling at the Dobermans—a relaxed, steady, friendly smile. They weren’t snarling now.
He let his eyes close.
Tried not to think of ovens and armies, of heiling masses. Wondered if Max and Lili and Esther would manage to keep the Center going. Contributions might come in. Memorials.
Barking, snarling. He opened his eyes.
“No, no!” Mengele said, sitting back down on the settee, clutching the arm and back of it while the Dobermans pushed and snarled at him. “No, no! Good dogs! Good dogs! No, no, I’m not going! No, no. See how still I sit? Good dogs. Good dogs.”
Liebermann smiled, closed his eyes.
Good dogs.
Greenspan? Stern? Come on…
“Jew-bastard?”
The handkerchief would stick to the wound by itself, so he kept his eyes closed, not breathing—let him think—and then he got his right hand up and gave the middle finger.
Faraway barking. The dogs out in back.
He opened his eyes.
Mengele glared at him. The same hatred that had come at him over the telephone that night so long ago.
“Whatever happens,” Mengele said, “I win. Wheelock was the eighteenth one to die. Eighteen of them have lost their fathers when he lost his, and at least one of the eighteen will grow to manhood as he grew, become who he became. You won’t leave this room alive to stop him. I may not leave it either, but you won’t; I swear it.”
Footsteps on the porch.
The Dobermans snarled, leaning at Mengele.