Hour of the Assassins (14 page)

Without a word Caine placed the file back into the newspaper and handed it back to Grzabowski.

“Why?” Grzabowski wanted to know, his breath rapid and nervous. “Why did you want to see this?”

Caine glanced at Grzabowski's watery blue eyes, wondering if there was anything more than professional curiosity in the question. There was really nothing to say. He shrugged and walked away, the snow creaking under his feet like an old floor.

That should have been it, he thought as he drove. Of course Mengele never headed east; the Communists didn't know anything, or even care. He knew he should have gone directly to the airport before Grzabowski had a chance to think about it. Instead he had checked out of the Europejski and driven to Krakow. And all for no reason at all. Except that he had to. Some instinct, some thought below the conscious level was driving him to Oswieçim and the only rational reason he could give himself was that that was where it all began. That and the knowledge that, as every good agent knew, when you get a hunch like that you follow it. It comes from some part of the brain that thinks more profoundly than the conscious mind. Sometimes it's called “instinct,” or “mission feel”; the name really doesn't matter. It doesn't reason, so you have to rationalize what you're doing, Caine thought. It just tells you what you have to do.

The snowstorm had emptied the small village of any sign of life as he drove slowly through Oswieçim. A single streetlamp cast a pale yellow light that failed to brighten the drab row of houses along the road. On an impulse Caine made a U-turn and parked in front of a
kawiarnia
, its smoky light spilling ineffectually through the frosted window. He went in and sat down at the counter. The restaurant was empty except for the counterman wiping his hands on a dirty, threadbare apron and two workmen morosely drinking vodka at a corner table. The counterman glanced at Caine without interest. Caine ordered
bigos
and
herbata
tea, then glanced around but no one paid any attention to him. It surprised him, because the Poles usually have a lively interest in strangers, especially foreigners. But in this strange, bleak landscape nothing seemed to matter, as though they were all trapped in some limbo beyond the grave. Caine ate the
bigos
slowly, the sauerkraut soggy and wilted. But at least the
herbata
was hot. He wasn't really hungry, he realized. It was just that he had an uncanny dread of what he was about to do and had decided to have lunch as a way of putting it off for a while. At last he took one more sip of tea and paid the dour counterman, leaving the
bigos
half-finished. When he stepped outside, he saw that it had stopped snowing.

The midday sky was a solid slab of steel gray. If anything it seemed even colder and bleaker than before. Except for the soft keening of the wind, the silence was absolute. He got back into the Volga and started the engine. The sound of the engine kicking over seemed unnaturally loud. Then he realized that he was holding the wheel in what was almost a death grip. He forced himself to relax, and taking a deep breath, he let in the clutch. There was no need to ask directions. The main gate of the camp was clearly visible at the end of the street on the outskirts of the village.

He parked the car by the steel gate, the chilling words written in iron letters arching over the gateposts.
Arbeit Macht Frei
. Work makes freedom. The high barbed-wire fence still stretched out from the gate as far as he could see in either direction. Beyond the fence he could see the vast, snow-covered camp. The naked twisted limbs of a few long-dead trees stood in a line on the other side of the fence, like skeletons thrown up by the frozen earth. In the distance he could see a cluster of boxlike barracks, like a city of cargo crates. Beyond the barracks were the brick chimneys of the crematorium, gray in the bleak afternoon light. The camp lay empty and white under the snow, like bones long since picked clean and crumbling to dust. Just outside the gate was a small wooden guard's hut. On the door of the hut was a small sign with a single word painted in black gothic letters.
Auschwitz
.

He heard the faint sounds of a violin playing a Gypsy melody coming from the hut. He walked over to the hut, the snow crunching under his feet with the sound of someone chewing crackers. The same instinct that had prompted him to come here in the first place was now screaming at him to leave. After a moment he knocked loudly on the door. Abruptly the music stopped. For a long time nothing happened and he was about to go back to the car when the door opened.

A small, wizened old man with a dark complexion peered uncertainly up at him. His dark eyes were almost lost in baggy wrinkles and his wispy gray mustache was stained yellow by tobacco. The old man wore a fraying guard's cap, a moth-eaten Russian Army overcoat over baggy blue serge pants stuffed into high rubber boots, and a sweat-darkened Gypsy scarf around his neck. The skin on his neck was corded and wrinkled like an old turkey that had somehow survived Thanksgiving.

“Excuse me, please …” Caine began uncertainly in German.

“Of course.” The old man smiled tentatively, his few remaining teeth showing black and solitary, like charred tree stumps in a forest desolated by fire.

“Terrible weather,” Caine said, just for something to say. He didn't want to be alone in this place.

“In winter the wind is cold,” the old man pronounced, shaking his head. Caine couldn't decide whether he was being sarcastic or merely simple.

“You want to see the
lager, hein?
” the old man said, his German slurred by the syllables of Central Europe. Without waiting for a reply, he shut the door behind him and began walking through the gate. Caine caught up with him in a few strides. They passed under the iron arch and marched toward the barracks, white puffs of breath rising over their heads.

“Are you a Jew?” the old man asked.

“No, why?”

“Not so many people come here. A few Poles and Russians, but mostly Jews.”

“What about Germans?”

“Germans?” The old man hawked and spat, the spittle crackling as it hit the icy ground. Then he began to laugh in a strange high-pitched monotone. Somehow the sound of his laugh was eerie, like a human echo of the keening wind. Then he stopped and looked up at Caine.

“
Deutschen, niemals
” he said. Never. Then he gestured at the wide empty space around them.

“This is where the prisoners were lined up for roll call at dawn. Also for public executions and torture. Once I saw a man torn to pieces by the dogs almost on this very spot. They tied raw meat to his testicles. He was screaming while they ate him. They called it ‘special punishment.'”

“What had he done?”

The old man looked at Caine uncomprehendingly.

“He was a prisoner. That was his crime.”

Caine reached into his coat and took out a cigarette, then offered the pack to the old man, who took one cigarette and pocketed the pack. They lit up and stood for a moment, smoking.

“Everyone was lined up here for roll call, even the dead,” the old man continued. “They kept careful records of everyone's number, the Germans. Sometimes it was difficult to tell the living from the dead. There were those who died and still walked around. We called them
Musselmen
. They never lasted long.” He shrugged. “Did you know that a man can die and still walk around?” the old man added. “They felt nothing. That's what it is to be dead. To feel nothing.”

Caine followed the old man into one of the barracks. They stood in an empty space near the door. Along both walls ran a line of wooden shelves from floor to ceiling, a narrow corridor between them. They began to walk down the corridor. It was intensely cold. Yet even in the bitter chill there was a faint smell coming from the wood itself. It seemed to have traces of urine and carbolic acid and something else. Then as the old man stopped by one of the shelves colored with old dark stains, Caine recognized the scent that brought with it a sudden whiff of Indochina. It was the smell of death. The old man pointed at the shelf above his head.

“That was my bunk,” he said.

In spite of the cold Caine began to sweat. He wanted to get outside again, like that feeling of wanting to wake up while in the middle of a nightmare. Instead he quietly followed the old man to the far wall, then back again to the door.

They walked across the parade ground in silence, the only sound the crunch of snow crust breaking under their boots. The old man led him to a long, rectangular brick building. The sign over the door read,
BATH HOUSE.
Inside, a long line of hooks along both walls led to a set of large tiled rooms. Above each of the doorways was the single word:
SHOWER ROOM.
The floors sloped towards a drain in the center of the room. On the ceiling directly above the drain was a shower head from which had sprayed Cyklon B instead of water. The walls were in shadows. The only light came from the dim gray corridor.

“When the doors were shut, the screaming always began,” the old man said, his voice echoing faintly. “The Jews always sang their death prayer.”

“How do you know all this?”

“I was a
Sonderkommando
here. That's how I stayed alive,” the old man said simply, flicking his cigarette ash. “While they screamed, we had to search through the clothes, looking for valuables. There were always a few babies hidden by their mothers in the clothes pile. We used to throw the babies in with the next batch. Then we always waited five minutes after the last screams, while the gas was sucked out. When we opened the door, we would find the bodies tangled in a pyramid, sometimes up to the ceiling. They were always covered with blood, as they clawed each other to escape. Also vomit and excrement. That was the hardest job, untangling the bodies. Often we had to break the dead fingers and feet in order to do it.”

“Let's get out of here,” Caine said, his voice echoing in the gray darkness.

They walked out past the rusting hooks, their footsteps almost muffled and indistinct. Outside the bleak afternoon sky had darkened. The faint clouds of their breath dissolved into the barren air. The old man shuffled his feet awkwardly in the snow that had begun to take on the gray color of the light, as though they were standing in an endless field of ashes.

“Do you want to see the crematorium?” the old man asked with a vaguely disappointed air.

“No.”

They stood in the frozen emptiness, like ghosts lost beyond time, the wind ruffling the gray wisps of the old man's mustache. They were like two dying archeologists who had excavated an ancient tomb only to find it empty.

“Tell me about Mengele,” Caine said finally.

“
Ach
, that one. Come, I'll show you.” The old man beckoned him with a Mediterranean hand gesture that means “go away” to an American and “come here” to a Southern European.

They hiked side by side in silence to a large wooden building, traces of whitewash still visible on the walls. Inside, the old man led him to a large empty room. The only things left in the room were a few decaying pipe fixtures, where a sink had once stood.

“This was Mengele's.
Laboratorium
. He would operate here on his
experimentieren
. Very scientific,
Hauptstürmführer
Mengele.” The old man nodded. “Here he would amputate healthy limbs, turn young boys into women, with breasts and everything, even women into men. In this corner”—the old man pointed—“he kept a large glass jar. It was filled with human eyeballs preserved in formaldehyde. They were all blue, the eyes.”

Then he stopped, because Caine was smiling. It was a strange, bestial smile, like the death rictus of a wolf. Now at last he understood why he had come, Caine thought. It was going to be so easy to kill Mengele. The old man shuffled uneasily and the moment died. Caine looked around at the room, finding it difficult to imagine the horrors that had happened here. It was just a bleak, ordinary room.

“If you saw Mengele today, would you still recognize him?” he asked.

“He must be an old man by now.” The old man shrugged. “Yes, I would recognize him.”

“Suppose he had altered his appearance?”

“I would recognize his smile. It was almost like yours just now,” the old man added uneasily.

“Anything else? Any other mannerisms? Something he couldn't change?”

The old man took off his cap and scratched his head, as though digging for something. At last he put his cap back on and glanced at Caine. “There is one thing. He used to crack his knuckles before he would operate. Very slowly and carefully. He was proud of his hands,” the old man said, jamming his own hands into his overcoat pockets.

Caine followed the old man across the camp to the hut. The frigid wind had strengthened, blowing granules of snow across the lengthening afternoon shadows. When they reached the hut, the man invited him inside. Caine sat patiently on an old army cot while the old man brewed them some
herbata
tea over a little kerosene stove. The wind shrieked through the cracks as they sat quietly drinking their tea. The old man tried the radio, but there was nothing on except for a Polish announcer gloating over the latest inflated production figures.

“It doesn't get good till after six
P.M.
Then sometimes you can get Radio Warsawy,” he apologized.

Then the old man slapped his forehead. He had just been reminded of something and he began rummaging among his things in an old trunk. He pulled out a half-empty bottle of cheap Polish vodka, opened it, and handed it to Caine.

“What's this?”

“For the Silvesterabend. A Happy New Year,” the old man explained shyly.

It was New Year's Eve, Caine thought. He had completely forgotten. For a moment he felt a pang of loss. He would have liked to share it with C.J., both of them naked in front of the flickering fireplace and toasting each other with snifters of Courvoisier, instead of here in this desolate place. Happy New Year, he thought grimly, wondering, as everyone does, what the new year would bring. Then he shrugged. For him it was easy. He would either be rich—or dead.