Instruments of Night (32 page)

“Block Ten?” Eleanor asked.

Graves shrugged.

“Let’s follow it,” Eleanor said. She placed the arrow on “Block 10” and clicked.

There was a pause. Then a different page flashed into view.

“There he is,” Eleanor said. “Karl Clauberg.” She stared at the name a moment. “Of course, this isn’t necessarily the same Clauberg who gave Mr. Davies the box. But if it is, then why would—” She stopped, clearly realizing that without more information, further speculation was unwarranted. She returned her attention to the screen, positioned the arrow on “Clauberg,” and clicked.

Without a word, Eleanor clicked on “Letters on Sterilization.”

“Project head,” Eleanor murmured, then immediately clicked on “Auschwitz Image.”

The first photograph showed two rows of emaciated young girls. They were naked, their skulls large and imposing above their withered bodies. They sat, staring vacantly at the camera, without smiles, their heads shaved, their ribs clearly visible beneath pale, malnourished flesh. Beneath the picture, the caption read:
Subjects of sterilization experiments conducted by Dr. Karl Clauberg on Block 10, Auschwitz. Ages 8–10.

In the second photograph, several doctors could be seen standing at what appeared to be a metal hospital bed. A tall man, his back to the camera, peered to the right, as if awaiting the arrival of the young girl destined next to he upon the bed. A second, considerably shorter doctor stood to the left, his body draped in a white medical coat. He looked to be in his early forties, with a receding hairline and a sloping belly. He was laughing, and Graves sensed that he’d just told a joke which the other doctors had been in the process of enjoying at the instant the picture had been taken. A third doctor, a fair-haired woman, seemed no less amused. Her lips were parted in a wide smile, but as Graves looked closer, he saw that the levity did not extend to her eyes. Beneath the photograph, he read:
Nazi physician Karl Clauberg (at left) who performed medical experiments on prisoners in Block 10, Auschwitz (1941–44). Others pictured are Drs. Rudolph Ernst and Hanna Klein.

Eleanor leveled her gaze on the woman in the white coat, studying the face closely, noting the wide mouth, the broad nose, the strangely mirthless smile. “Amazing how much they looked alike,” she said softly. “Greta and her mother.”

G
reta Klein did not seem surprised to see them again. Graves wondered if she’d been waiting expectantly through the years as he had, waiting for the knock at the door, the pointed finger, the accusing voice, saying the same words Kessler had said when Graves had refused to give his name,
You can keep your name, boy, but I know who you are.

“Hello, Miss Klein,” Eleanor said.

Greta was seated by the window. She said nothing, but Graves detected a subtle dread rising in her, the sense that the fatal hour had come at last.

Eleanor walked over to Greta and presented her with a copy of the photograph she’d discovered minutes before. “Your mother,” she said quietly.

Greta drew the paper from Eleanor’s hand, stared at it mutely, then lowered it to her lap. “She is ashes now,” she said quietly, “like the others.”

“No. Not like the others,” Eleanor said. “Hanna Klein worked with the German doctors at Auschwitz.” She
waited for Greta to respond. When she didn’t, she added, “On sterilization experiments.”

Greta closed her eyes, as if against a scene too dreadful to witness again.

“On young girls,” Eleanor continued. “About your age at the time.”

The eyes opened again. A terrible grief was fixed within them. “My mother was a doctor, a scientist. She had done research in this … area. Sterilization. Before the war. As a scientist, you see. The doctors knew of her work. Her mind. They valued it. They used her.” She drew herself up, growing bold in defense of her mother. “She had no choice. They would have killed her if she had refused to help them. They would have killed me too. My mother knew this. She did it so that we could survive. But they killed her anyway. Marched her with the others. Into a barn. And burned it.”

“How did you escape?”

At Eleanor’s question, Greta looked like a child returned to a nightmare. “The Russians were near. They were coming to the camp. It was chaos. The soldiers were running about, gathering people, marching them to the west. Away from the Russians. I hid in a locker. A metal locker. Until the Russians came. They took me to another camp outside Krakow. We lived in tents. That’s where Mr. Davies found me. Skin and bones. He had papers for me, papers to America. That is how I knew he was my father.” She lifted her head, as if to regain a birthright she had never really possessed. “Mr. Davies would not have come so far to save me. All the way to Krakow. For a little girl. A nobody. The daughter of someone who was no more than an … associate.”

“What exactly was your mother’s association with Mr. Davies?” Graves asked. “Beyond the personal, I mean.”

“They had similar interests,” Greta answered matter-of-factly. “In medicine. Science.”

“Were they also associated with Andre Grossman in some way?”

Greta did not seem in the least alarmed by the sudden mention of Grossman’s name. “Grossman knew my mother. That is all.”

“How did he know her?”

“They were in the camp together. Grossman also worked for the doctors there. I often saw him coming out of the building they worked in.”

“Block Ten,” Eleanor said.

Greta’s face stiffened. “Block Ten, yes,” she said. The name appeared to fill her mind with dreadful images. “In the morning Grossman would come there. To get names from the head doctor. Names of the girls he wanted. Then Grossman would go to the roll call and pull these girls from the lines. ‘Come with me,’ he would say to them. ‘You are going to be saved.’ Then he would take them to Block Ten. He was like that goat. The one that leads the others to the slaughterhouse. Saves itself in that way.”

Graves recalled himself as a boy, moving toward the darkened house, leading Kessler to his sister. “The Judas goat,” he said.

“That is what Grossman was,” Greta said. “I thought he was dead. Killed with my mother and the rest. I never expected to see him again. Then, he was here. Suddenly. At Riverwood. Standing at the door when I opened it. He could not believe it was me. That I, too, was alive. In America. Both of us. At Riverwood.”

Graves saw the door of the main house open, Greta’s eyes meet Grossman’s astonished gaze.

“He said nothing,” Greta continued. “Then—later—he came to me. Secret. At night. To my room. He asked, ‘How did you get here?’ In German. Always he spoke to
me in German. So he would not be understood by them. He did not want anyone to know who he was, what he was. What he had done. To the girls. Leading them away. This was his terror. That someone would discover what he’d done in the camp.” Her eyes shifted to the window. “He said to me, ‘To be silent is the only way to survive.’” She continued to stare out the window, the dark grounds beyond them. “He was right.”

Graves could tell that Greta had reached the end of what she wanted to tell them. He urged her forward with a question.

“Was Grossman a thief?”

“No.”

“A blackmailer?”

She turned to him. “Why do you ask such a question?”

“Miss Davies believes that Grossman intended to steal something from Mr. Davies. An enameled box he kept in his office.”

Something appeared to give slightly in Greta’s determined self-control, the ever-weakening restraint that had kept her tongue in check down through the years. “Grossman was not a thief.” Her tone took on a quality of defense. “He would never have stolen anything from Riverwood.

“Then why was he interested in the box?”

Greta hesitated briefly. “Grossman was an artist. He had worked for a museum. Mrs. Davies believed he might be interested in the little box her husband kept in his office. The one you mentioned. A rare thing. That is what Mrs. Davies told him the box was. A work of art.”

“The Kaminsky box,” Graves said.

“Yes,” Greta said. She stopped abruptly, as if a red light had illuminated in her mind. Then she began again, speaking more cautiously now, measuring her words, like one making her way through a treacherous wood. “Grossman
had seen the box before. The head doctor, the one in charge of Block Ten, had this portrait of himself. It hung in his office in Block Ten. The doctor had brought the painting from Berlin. To make himself important. Show how rich he was. In the portrait he is holding the box.” Her lips twisted into a bitter sneer. “He thought he was a god. This fat little man.”

“Karl Clauberg?” Graves asked.

At the mention of Clauberg’s name, Greta’s eyes caught fire. “He wanted always to be the big shot. Always boasting to my mother and the other doctors about what a great scientist he was. How one day his ‘secret formula’ would be used to sterilize millions of people at a time. Now it had to be injected, but soon it could be given in a way that no one would detect. This new way was already being tested, Clauberg claimed. When the test was over, he would be more famous than Copernicus or Galileo.”

“Did Grossman hear all this?”

“Everyone heard it,” Greta answered. “Everyone in Block Ten. Clauberg was always talking in this way.” She scoffed at his pretentions. “One day he noticed Grossman looking at the portrait he brought from Berlin. He pointed at the box. ‘That is a Kaminsky box,’ he said. ‘Very rare. Very valuable.’ Clauberg told Grossman that he had given the box away on behalf of the Führer. It was very valuable, but he had given it away nonetheless. Out of his love for the Fatherland. To a great friend of German science. This is the way Clauberg talked. Always to make himself big.”