Ordinary Heroes

by Scott Turow

  Confronting him, I knew my features were swollen by weeping, but he was surely more changed than I. On the left side of his face, the skin shone, pink as sunrise, and his ear was a gnarly remnant melted to the side of his head, above which no hair grew for several inches. The end of his left sleeve was empty.

  "Major," I said, "by the order of General Roland Teedle, you are arrested and will appear before a general court-martial as soon as it may be convened."

  He smiled in response and waved the one good hand he had.

  "Oh, come off it, Dubin. Get in here and talk to me.''

  His power of attraction was durable enough that I nearly did it before thinking. Even with one hand, Martin probably could subdue me and engineer yet another escape.

  "I think not."

  He laughed, shaking his head at length. "Then pull up a chair out there, if you must. But we should have a word."

  I looked at Lieutenant Grove, who asked to brief me. As we walked down the dim hall, he whispered about what had transpired with the detail that had locked up Martin yesterday. While they were escorting him to the cell, he had informed his jailers about a mountain two hundred miles from here, where he claimed the Germans had stored all the stolen treasures of Europe. Thousands of gold bars and jewels were hoarded in the caverns, including American ten-and twenty-dollar gold pieces. A U. S. Army detachment, he said, could fake its way in and out just by saying they had come to take custody of the American tender and head home with every man a millionaire. Martin had offered to lead the way. Informed of this story, Grove had regarded it as preposterous. Instead, when he'd contacted OSS, Winters had confirmed that only a few days ago the 358th Infantry Regiment had taken a salt mine at Kaiseroda in the Harz Mountains, where they discovered a vast booty stored in the underground channels. Paintings, gems, rooms full of currency and coins. Billions' worth. Grove's theory was that Kaiseroda had been Martin's objective all along.

  "What does OSS think?"

  "Those fellows never say what they think."

  I weighed the possibility. It remained appealing to believe that Martin hadn't ever been intent on spying. Rather, he would resign from war and make himself rich forever. Perhaps. But I'd become reconciled to the fact that I'd never really understand Martin's motives. Only he could explain them, and no one could accept a word he said.

  A few minutes later, at Grove's order, an MP lugged a heavy oak chair down the stone hail for me. I sat outside Martin's cell, and he brought his small stool close to the bars. He still appeared chipper, even though his steps were mincing in his leg irons.

  "So," said Martin. "As you've long wanted. You have me in chains. I knew that was poppycock about house arrest."

  "You are far better off than any other prisoner here, Major."

  He accepted my rebuke with a buttoned-up smile. "Even down here, there's the smell." He was right, although it was remote enough that I could also detect the familiar rot bred by cellar moisture. "I had no idea what I was headed to. But your dogs were on my heels, Dubin. And with the camp about to be surrendered, I thought I'd mingle and depart. Once I was here, of course, it was plain that I'd have trouble passing as an inmate, even with my injuries. But I couldn't stand to leave. In three nights, Dubin, I killed four SS. They were easy pickings, trying to skulk out the back gate in the middle of the night. I just laid a trip wire." He gave a kind of disbelieving snort. "There won't be any killings that lie easier on my conscience."

  As ever, I had no idea whether to believe him. "And what about your plan to make yourself the new Croesus?" I asked. "Were you going to abandon that?"

  "You don't believe that, do you, Dubin? It was a ploy, I admit. I was happy to make those boys think I could make them each into a Rockefeller. But we're two hundred miles away. If I was heading for Kaiseroda, I'd have been there by now."

  "So where were you heading, Martin?"

  You want to know my plan? Is that why you're sitting here? Well, I shall tell you, Dubin. Gita knows, she'll tell you anyway when you find her. You do want to find her, don't you?" His hostility about Gita got the better of him, and he showed a quick vulpine grin. I was surprised and somewhat relieved by Martin's pettiness--it was a crack in his perfect edifice--but I felt little other reaction when he mentioned her name. Not today. "You can tell my friends in OSS what I was up to and save them some time. I'd rather talk to you anyway.

  I gave him nothing by way of response.

  "You know, Dubin, you needn't be so peeved with me. I'd have kept my word to you in Savy. About surrendering? I had every intention. You don't think I prefer this, do you?" He lifted his handless arm, so that the bright red stump, a distorted knobby shape, crept out of the sleeve. I could have debated with him about dropping me off when he knew I wouldn't find Algar at his headquarters, or the last two and a half months that Martin had spent on the run since Gita helped him flee from Oflag XII-D. But I discovered that I had one enduring gripe with Robert Martin over and above all the others.

  "You took advantage of my regard for you, Major. You made me think you were a bright shining hero and used my admiration as the means to escape.

  "All for the right reasons, Dubin."

  "Which are?"

  "I was doing a good thing, Dubin. You'll understand that. The Nazis, Dubin, have been working on a secret weapon that can destroy the world--"

  I erupted in laughter. It was a starkly inappropriate sound given where we were and the noise ripped along the rock corridor.

  "Laugh if you like, Dubin. But it's the truth. It's the one way the Germans could have won the war, even now may still hope to. The Allies have long known this. The Germans have had their best physicists laboring feverishly. Gerlach. Diebner. Heisenberg. In the last several months, their principal workplace has been at a town called Hechingen, only a few miles down the road. Their efforts are rooted in the theorems of Einstein and others. They want to build a weapon, Dubin, that will break apart an atom. There's enough power there to blow an entire city off the map."

  As usual, Martin seemed in complete thrall of his own entertaining nonsense. I was not much of a scientist, but I knew what an atom was and understood its infinitesimal size. Nothing of such minute dimension could conceivably be the killer force Martin was pretending.

  "There is a race taking place now, Dubin. Between American intelligence and the Soviets. They each want to find the German scientists, their papers, and their materiel. Because whoever holds this weapon, Dubin, will rule the world. Ask your chums at OSS. Ask if this isn't true. Ask if there is not a group of physicists in Germany right now, working hand in glove with OSS. The code name is Alsos. Ask. They'll tell you they're going after these physicists even while we speak."

  "This is where you were headed? Hechingen?" "Yes. Yes."

  I leaned back against the hard chair. Martin's dark hair was tousled over his brow and he had an eager boyish look, despite the relative immobility of the features on the florid side of his face. I was amazed at the magnitude of what he was confessing, probably unwittingly.

  "If what you're saying is so, if all this Buck Rogers talk about a secret weapon bears any speck of truth, they'll hang you, Major. And well they should."

  "Hang me?"

  "Surely, you aren't working for OSS. Of that I'm certain. So it's quite obvious you were going to Hechingen to capture these scientists for the Soviets and spirit them off to the Russians."

  "That's false, Dubin. Entirely false! I want neither side to prevail. I want neither Communists nor capitalists to stand astride the globe."

  "And how then is it that you know all this, Major? The plans of the Americans? And the Soviets? If you are not at work for the Russians, how do you know their intentions?"

  "Please, Dubin. I was informed of all of these matters by OSS last September. When I returned to London. But certainly not by the Soviets. I've told you, Dubin. I belong now to neither side."

  "Would the Soviets say that?"

  "I have no idea what they'd say. But listen to me.
Listen. I was going to Hechingen, Dubin. But not for any country. My goal was destruction. Of the whole lot. The materiel. The papers. And the men. Let their dreadful secret die with them. Don't you see? This is a second chance to contain all the grief in Pandora's box. If this weapon survives, no matter who has it, there will be constant struggle, the victor will lord it over the vanquished, the vanquished will plot to obtain it, and in the end it is no matter which side has it, because if it exists, it will be used.

  There has never been a weapon yet invented that hasn't been deployed. Men can call that whatever they care to, even curiosity, but this device will be released on the globe. Let the world be safe, Dubin."

  He was clever. But I'd long known that. No one--not Teedle, not me--would ever be able to prove he was working for the Soviets rather than for the sake of world peace. He and Wendell Willkie. It was, as I would have predicted, a perfect cover story.

  "Dubin, find Gita. Find Gita. She will tell you that what I am saying is true. These are my plans. And there is still time to carry them out. No more than a few days. American forces will reach Hechinger shortly, depending on how the fighting goes. It's only a few miles up the road. Find Gita, Dubin."

  How artful it was. How inevitable. Find Gita. She will persuade you to join my cause. And open the door to yet one more escape.

  "She is here, Dubin. In the Polish sub-camp. There are Jews there from her town. She is nursing them. Go to the Polish camp. You'll find her. She will tell you this is true."

  "No." I stood. "No more lies. No more fantasies. No more running away. We're going to Frankfurt. As soon as the armored vehicle arrives.

  Tell your story there, Martin. You must think I'm a child."

  "I speak the truth to you, Dubin. Every word. Every word. Ask Gita. Please."

  I turned my back on him while he was still assailing me with her name.

  Chapter 31.

  GITA LODZ, OF COURSE

  This woman, Gita Lodz, is, of course, my mother. I have no slick excuse for the months it took me to catch on, or for the elaborate tales I told myself during that period to hold the truth at bay. I guess people will inevitably cling to the world they know. Bear Leach's eventual explanation was more generous: "We are always our parents' children."

  But sitting in the Tri-Cities Airport, reading the last of what my father had written, I had understood the conclusion of his account this way: Deceived yet again by Gita Lodz, Dad had proceeded to his final ruin and let Martin go. And then somehow, even while my father was absorbing the desolation of his most catastrophic mistake, he must have met this other woman at Balingen, Gella Rosner, and been transformed. It was love on the rebound, a lifeline to the man drowning.

  In retrospect, all of that seems laughable. But for months I accepted it, and was frustrated and confused by only one omission: Dad never mentioned the courageous young Polish Jewess I'd been brought up to believe he instantly fell in love with in the camp.

  As for Barrington Leach, from the time I asked him what had become of Gita Lodz, he had realized how misled I was. Yet he made no effort to correct me, although I often visited with him, trying to glean every detail he recalled about my father's story. Bear was a person of gentleness and wisdom, and, given all his caveats at the start, clearly had promised himself that he would tell me only as much as I seemed willing to know. He presented me with the recorded facts. It was up to me to reach the obvious conclusions. Bear kept his mouth shut, not so much for my parents' sake as for mine.

  One day in April 2004, my sister phoned me at home to discuss our mother's health, which was declining. Sarah wanted my views on whether she should accelerate her plans to visit in June around the time of my parents' anniversary, which had been an especially hard period for Mom in 2003 in the wake of Dad's death. I knew my parents' marriage had lasted almost fifty-eight years. They'd made no secret of their wedding date, June 16, 1945. Yet until that moment, I'd never connected the dots. I stood with the telephone in my hand, jaw agape, while Sarah shouted my name and asked if I was still there.

  By then, it had become my habit to see Barrington Leach once a month. I went mostly for the pleasure of his company, but my excuse to write off the expenses was that Bear was helping me edit Dad's typescript for publication. (Because of the scam I'd run on my mother and sister, my plan, at that point, was to tell them Dad's account was actually my work, based on my lengthy research.) When I saw Bear, I'd hand over the most recent pages and receive his comments about what I'd done the previous month. Not long after he was wheeled into the front room for our visit in late April, I told him what had occurred to me while I was on the phone with my sister the week before.

  "I just realized a few days ago that my parents got married right before Dad's court-martial. Did you know that?"

  "I should say so," answered Bear. "I'm the one who arranged it."

  "Arranged the wedding?"

  "Not their meeting," said Bear. "But getting the military authorities to allow them to wed, yes, that was my doing. Your father was concerned, quite rightly, that when he was convicted, as was inevitable, he would be transferred immediately to a military prison in the U. S. He was therefore desperate to marry before the proceedings, so that your mother, as a war bride, would have the right to immigrate to the States. She had remained an inmate in a displaced persons camp that had been erected after burning down the Balingen huts. The conditions were far better, of course, but she was anything but free. It required countless petitions to the Army and the Occupation Authorities, but eventually your mother and a rabbi, also held at Balingen, were allowed to visit your father for half an hour at Regensburg Castle for their wedding. I was the best man. In spite of the circumstances, it was quite touching. They appeared very much in love."

  Bear said only that and glanced down to the pages I'd handed him, allowing me to work my way through this information in relative privacy. Despite the horrors of the camp, or Mom's unfamiliarity with the military, or even her limited English at the time, someone as innately canny as she was couldn't possibly have failed to grasp the essentials of Dad's situation. She knew he was under arrest, and as such, had to be gravely concerned for her new husband. Clearly, then, Mom recalled a great deal more about Dad's court-martial than she'd been willing to acknowledge to me. Yet even at that moment, my first impulse was to accept her reluctance as a way of honoring Dad's desire for silence.

  But somehow my mind wandered back to the question that had perplexed me for half a year now. Why did Dad say he desperately hoped his children would never hear his story? Out the paned windows of Northumberland Manor's sitting room, there was perfect light on the red maple buds just showing the first sign of ripening, and beholding them with the intense museum attention Dad wrote of, a moment of concentrated sight, I found the truth hanging out there, too. It was simple. My father's remark about keeping this from his children was not philosophical. It was practical. Dad had not wanted the truth to emerge at his trial, or to survive it, because it would have imperiled his wife and the lie she was to be obliged to live. That is why it would have been a disaster to call Gita Lodz as a witness. That is why he hoped we never heard the story--because that silence would have meant they had made a life as husband and wife.

  Bear's head was wilted in his wheelchair while he read, and I reached out to softly clutch his spotted hand and the fingers crooked with disease.

  "She's my mother. Right? Gita Lodz?"

  Bear started, as if I'd woken him. His cloudy eyes that still reflected the depth of the ages settled on me, and his lower jaw slid sideways in his odd lopsided smile. Then he deliberated, an instant of lawyerly cool.

  "As I have said, Stewart, I was not there when you were born.

  "But the woman you saw my father marry--that was Gita Lodz?"

  "Your father never said that to me," he answered. "Anything but. It would have compromised me severely to know that, inasmuch as I had spent months begging the military authorities for permission to allow David to marry a concentr
ation camp survivor of another name. I would have been obliged to correct the fraud being perpetrated. I believe that was why he never contacted me once we were back in the U. S. A.--so that I didn't have to deal with any second thoughts about that."

  Despite failing on the uptake for months, I now bounced rapidly along the path of obvious conclusions. I instantly comprehended why Gita Lodz, hero of the French underground, came here pretending to be the former Gella Rosner (whose name was Americanized as Gilda), David Dubin's war bride, allegedly saved from the Nazi hell called Balingen. In the spring of 1945, my parents had every reason to believe that OSS would never have permitted the sidekick of Robert Martin, suspected Soviet spy, to enter the United States. Indeed, as someone who had repeatedly abetted Martin's escapes, Gita stood a good chance of being prosecuted if OSS and Teedle had gotten their hands on her. A new identity was the only safe course. One that could never be disproved amid that ocean of corpses. One more role to add to the many the would-be Bernhardt had already played flawlessly. And one that guaranteed that Gilda would be welcome in David's family. A Jewish bride. As his parents wished. And as Gita herself, when she was younger, had once wanted to be.

  And, probably not insignificantly, it was also a weighty declaration for my father. When I had changed my last name in 1970, Dad had never really responded to my implication that I was reversing an act of renunciation from decades before. There was only one thing he cared to be clear about.

  "Do not doubt, Stewart," he said to me once, "that Balingen made me a Jew." Since I knew he would never describe what he'd witnessed there, I did not pursue the remark. On reflection, I took it as one more way of telling me how devoted he was to my mother. And even now I'm not completely certain of the precise nature of the transformation he was alluding to. I don't know if he meant that he had realized, as had been true for so many in Germany, that there was no escape from that identity, or, rather, as I tend to suspect, that he owed the thousands annihilated there the reverence of not shirking the heritage that had condemned them. Certainly, there was a touching homage in Gita's new persona, which allowed one of the millions who perished to be not only remembered, but revived. But I see that Dad was also making an emphatic statement about himself, about what an individual could stand for, or hope for, against the forces of history.