Ring of Lies

by Roni Dunevich

  A stranger’s hand stroked my head. Someone embraced me at the edge of the roof.

  The deputy commandant.

  Thick smoke darkened the street. Something exploded behind the café. Perhaps the small gas tanks.

  I pray only that my dear ones were already dead when the flames engulfed them. I lay on the edge of the roof, the terrible smell of smoke and congealed tar filling my nose. I thought of hurling myself to the street. For I would never, never find consolation.

  I remain alone in the world, uprooted, cut off from all that made me who I am.

  We are like brothers, the deputy commandant said. We shall always be brothers.

  He embraced me. We wept together.

  ABU RUMANEH, DAMASCUS | 19:27

  “Justus ratted us out!” Orchidea called up to the dark roof. She saw the small moon of light cast by the flashlight, and then the silhouettes of Paris and the old man.

  She waved the flash drive. “It’s all here.”

  “What?!” Paris called in a choked voice, keeping the flashlight on the old man, who was snarling like a wild animal.

  Her eyes gradually adjusted to the darkness. She came closer. Paris seemed agitated. “What’s wrong?” she asked.

  Taking advantage of the distraction, the old man rose with surprising agility and headed for the stairs. Paris leaped at him and grabbed him by the coat.

  “Tell her who you are!” he snapped, his voice cracking.

  “Don’t shout,” she said. “Someone might hear you.”

  “I . . . I am George Fischer. I am a Syrian citizen.”

  “Keep lying and I’ll gouge out your other eye,” Paris said, catching him in a headlock.

  “That’s the name on his papers,” she confirmed.

  “What do you want from me?” the old man pleaded.

  Paris forced him back down on the stool.

  “He’s ninety-nine,” he said.

  “Unbelievable!” she exclaimed.

  “Who are you people?” the old man said, raising his voice.

  “I found a PowerPoint file on his flash drive,” she told Paris. “He has a partner in Germany who’s responsible for organizing the killing of the Nibelungs. The Mukhabarat surveilled them, and then the Germans took them out. There’s a video that shows Justus telling them everything he knows about the Ring and how it operates, about the Orchid Farm and the inhalers. The filthy traitor. He sold us out.”

  “No way!” Paris sputtered. Bending over, he shrieked into the old man’s face, “Do you know who I am?”

  He aimed the flashlight at the German’s face.

  The man shook his head.

  “You raped my father’s first wife!”

  “What?”

  “You murdered her, and you murdered her children!”

  “What do you want from me?”

  “You burned them alive in a café in Paris!”

  Fischer’s face fell. His one eye gaped. “Who the hell are you?” he shouted in rage.

  “My name is Trezeguet. Trezeguet! Gerard Trezeguet!”

  The old man froze. The blood drained from his face.

  “And you’re going to die today!”

  “Who is he?” Orchidea asked.

  “I’m George Fischer,” the old man said beseechingly.

  “Liar!” Gerard screamed.

  “So who is he?” she repeated.

  “He’s a Nazi war criminal.”

  “What?” The roof seemed to shake under her feet.

  “He was the commandant of the Drancy concentration camp.”

  Paris’s chin was trembling.

  “He sent one hundred and twenty-five thousand Jews to their death!”

  His breathing was labored, his chest rising and falling.

  “He is SS-Hauptsturmführer Alois Brunner!”

  ABU RUMANEH, DAMASCUS | 19:38

  “From France alone, he sent twenty-four thousand Jews to Auschwitz,” Gerard went on.

  “But, Gerard,” she said. It felt strange to call him by his real name. “Alois Brunner is dead.”

  “Not yet!”

  Without warning, he grabbed the old man’s head and stuck his fingers into his mouth.

  “What are you doing?” she cried out.

  Gerard’s strong fingers nearly dislocated Brunner’s jaw. He felt around roughly between his false teeth.

  “Stop it, Gerard!” she shouted.

  “I have to be sure he’s not hiding a cyanide capsule in his teeth,” Gerard said, wiping his wet fingers on Brunner’s coat. The old Nazi sat in silence, staring bitterly at the empty cage beside him.

  “How do you know it’s him?” she asked.

  “He’s been hiding out in Damascus since the fifties, alternating between this apartment and a suite in the Hotel Dedeman. I checked to see if he was upstairs in his suite last night when you were in the shower.”

  He nodded to himself. “Mossad managed to get two letter bombs into his hands. In the first explosion he lost his eye, and in the second—four fingers on his left hand. Show her your hand, Alois!”

  “What if it’s not him?”

  “Show her your hand!” Gerard aimed the flashlight at Brunner’s left hand.

  The German raised it. His thumb was as wrinkled as lizard skin.

  She felt sick to her stomach.

  “It’s him,” Gerard said firmly. “I’ve seen his picture. I’ve been looking for him for years. Everyone thought he was dead, but nobody could point to a grave. Beate Klarsfeld tracked him to this address.”

  He raised his gun and aimed it at Brunner’s forehead.

  “Don’t you dare shoot him!” she exclaimed. “Give me your gun.”

  Gerard lowered his weapon. “No way,” he said with a snicker before raising it again.

  Orchidea pointed her gun at Gerard’s head. “Give it to me!”

  “Have you lost your mind?” he growled.

  “Hand it over!” she ordered.

  “Okay, okay,” he chuckled nervously, lowering the gun until it was pointing down at the whitewashed roof. “I won’t hurt him.”

  “Give me the gun!” she demanded.

  “Are you going to shoot me?”

  “Just give it to me.”

  He handed her the gun.

  “I’m sorry,” she said.

  It was getting cold.

  “Why didn’t you tell me about your family?” she asked.

  “I didn’t have a chance.”

  “I asked you in Subchi Park if you recognized him. You lied to me.”

  “I couldn’t . . . I wasn’t sure.”

  “Don’t kill me,” Alois Brunner said suddenly in a broken voice.

  They both looked at him.

  All of a sudden there was a switchblade in Gerard’s hand. He thrust the shining blade into the Nazi’s heart.

  “This is for my family!” he shouted, breathing heavily. He pulled the knife out and thrust it into the old man’s abdomen. “This is for Roger Trezeguet!” Again he pulled it out and thrust it in. “This is for Jasmine!” Stabbing him for a fourth time, he shouted, “This is for Sophie and Albert!” Tears welled up in his eyes. Wailing, he wiped them away with his sleeve. He was crying out loud.

  The knife was still stuck in Brunner’s torn abdomen. Through clenched teeth, the German whispered hoarsely, “The Fourth Reich . . . is . . . already.”

  Thick black blood spilled from his mouth. His body was twitching. He fell to the floor, a pool of blood forming around his torso.

  A shot rang out.

  Gerard dropped the flashlight.

  ABU RUMANEH, DAMASCUS | 19:49

  Gerard Trezeguet’s body was thrown backward, hitting the cage. He clutched at the netting, tearing the top from the wooden frame. The cage cracked and collapsed, and he slid to the ground.

  Orchidea spun in the direction of the open doorway to the stairs, where the shot had come from. Dropping and rolling across the roof, she fired two shots at the head of the broad figure she saw, followed by t
wo to his midsection. The shooter slumped to the floor, and the gun fell from his hand. She went over to the cage, retrieved Gerard’s flashlight, and examined him. “No!”

  The Frenchman’s breathing was shallow. His hands were pressed to his chest in an effort to stop the bleeding. She unzipped his fleece jacket and raised his shirt. Blood was bubbling from an entry wound near his heart.

  She’d been relying on him to get her out of Damascus, and here he was, lying wounded and bleeding. She stroked his head and bit her lip. When the initial wave of panic subsided, her mind started racing. After the noise of the shots, the whole world would come running; they had to leave—now. She called Alex and told him that Brunner was dead and the Frenchman was injured.

  “Why did he stab him?”

  “He said something about his father . . . their family . . . murder. I didn’t understand it all.”

  A gunshot wound to the chest meant that she had to get him to a hospital. But a hospital was out of the question. “What should I do?”

  There was a pause.

  “Take him to Dr. Abu Luka in Maaloula,” Alex said finally.

  DIARY

  2 AUGUST 1944

  He taught us the train routes and departure times, and the vulnerable spots along the tracks. He participates in every operation and saves Jews.

  Such is the deputy commandant.

  Yesterday we stopped a train that had departed from the Bourget-Drancy station. During a brief battle, we—a handful of Resistance fighters—succeeded in killing a dozen SS men and saving 278 children who were on their way to Auschwitz.

  I couldn’t save my own children.

  3 AUGUST 1944

  My embraces are empty. No trace is left of my family, no portrait, no smile or utterance. I am alone in the world, and my loneliness is beyond measure. Every thought of my loved ones floods my eyes with tears.

  GRUNEWALD, BERLIN | 18:59

  Justus Erlichmann was sitting in front of the camera in a white T-shirt, spilling everything about the makeup of the Ring and the identities of the Nibelungs: addresses, phone numbers, meeting places. He divulged details of his special relationship with the Israeli prime minister and the head of Mossad, the Hochstadt-Lancet virus, the design of the Cube, and how to arm the inhalers, with an appalling nonchalance and outrageous composure.

  In one scene, speaking directly into the Syrians’ camera, Erlichmann talked about the plans for the Bolu operation, including the abduction of the Iranian general, the location of the spice warehouse, and the identity of the Nibelung assigned with the task of getting rid of the body.

  So the Syrians had known about the mission well in advance, but they had only passed the information on to the Turks after Istanbul was taken out, presumably hoping to spark a crisis between Israel and Turkey.

  Justus had managed to fool the polygraph, Reuven, and everyone else. He had been collaborating with Alois Brunner, which explained the large sums he’d transferred to the neo-Nazi group. It seemed that the swastika had always been carved into his heart, but unfortunately Israel had never bothered to rummage through his activities.

  The Nibelung Ring was history. The Syrian Mukhabarat had marked their targets and surveilled the Nibelungs. Then the Mauser brothers—the Stasi twins—had gone from city to city, strangling their victims to death.

  Her, too. Jane, too.

  Despicable neo-Nazi house.

  He struggled to put his thoughts in order. Alois Brunner was the Israelite. Was Justus Erlichmann the Mud Man?

  Had Justus orchestrated the assassinations and hidden the bodies? Where? Why did he decide to kill his own people, the people he himself had recruited and trained?

  And what about Brunner?

  Alex had heard the story of the escaped Nazi war criminal early in his Mossad career. Alois Brunner had vanished after the war, turning up later in Egypt and then moving to Damascus in 1954. It was said that somewhere along the way, he had worked for the CIA. Six years after he arrived in Syria, he was arrested on suspicion of drug trafficking. As soon as he identified himself as a high-ranking SS officer, he was released.

  Brunner taught the Mukhabarat the art of torture. His technique employed a modern version of the rack, born more than five hundred years ago in the dungeons of the Spanish Inquisition.

  Israeli pilots who had been held captive in Syria spoke of ordeals similar to the ones described by survivors of the Drancy internment camp, over which Brunner had presided.

  Brunner had also brokered a deal with the Stasi for the sale to the Mukhabarat of thousands of miniature listening devices. That was the start of the unholy trinity between the Nazi fugitive, the East German Stasi, and the Syrian Mukhabarat.

  For decades Brunner had been in hiding, protected by armed guards, giving rise to the belief that he was dead.

  The first letter bomb exploded in 1961 in a post office in Damascus, killing two Syrian postal workers and taking out one of Brunner’s eyes. The second package was sent in 1980 by the German Society of Friends of Medicinal Herbs, and took off four fingers of his left hand.

  But Alois Brunner refused to die.

  The debt was still outstanding.

  Along with the video, Orchidea had sent him two phone numbers she had found scrawled on a scrap of paper on Brunner’s desk. Alex called Butthead and requested an immediate trace.

  Then he called Reuven.

  “Paris killed Alois Brunner, but Paris was shot by one of Brunner’s guards. It’s serious. Orchidea took out the guard. They’re on their way to Dr. Abu Luka in Maaloula, but he can’t do much more than bandage the wound. We have to get them out of there immediately.”

  A bottle was opened.

  A drink was poured.

  Sipping.

  Pitiful.

  Swallowing. A deep breath.

  “Will you organize the extraction, Reuven?”

  “It’s too risky.”

  “They’re our people.”

  “That’s just it. They’re not.”

  Alex disconnected.

  His call to the prime minister’s office was answered immediately.

  ABU RUMANEH, DAMASCUS | 20:04

  Paris’s gray jacket was stained black with blood, and his eyes were squeezed shut. Blood dripped onto the whitewashed roof. Air entered his chest through the hole, making a whistling sound. She knew that a punctured lung meant that his condition could deteriorate rapidly, and she knew what she had to do. She sat him up on the creaky wooden stool. His body swayed.

  Clenching her jaw, she pulled the knife out of Alois Brunner’s body and wiped the blade on his coat. She cut a five-inch square from the dead bodyguard’s shirt and then ran down to Brunner’s apartment and grabbed the first-aid kit and the tube of Vaseline from the bathroom cabinet.

  Returning to the roof, she held the flashlight between her teeth as she lifted Gerard’s shirt from behind. Damn! It was so dark. She felt around for an exit wound and finally convinced herself that there was none. Thank God.

  His breathing was shallow. The light from the stairwell fell on his face. He was turning blue and shifting restlessly. The ominous trill of a muezzin’s call rose into the night air.

  She glanced at her watch and counted thirty-four breaths a minute. Way too fast. The injured lung could collapse. She disinfected the wound with a cotton ball soaked in alcohol, spread a thick layer of Vaseline around it, and placed the square of cotton over it, holding it in place with Band-Aids in three sides. The one-directional valve she had improvised should let out the air trapped in his chest without allowing new air in. The bandage rose and fell with each rasping breath.

  After a few minutes, she noticed a slight improvement. Gerard was breathing noisily.

  “Can you stand up?”

  He nodded. She helped him up from the stool. He was heavy. She shoved her shoulder under his arm to support him and led him to the stairs, and he leaned on her, gritting his teeth in silence. They descended slowly, one step at a time.

  He skipped a bre
ath.

  Her heart skipped a beat.

  The stairs seemed endless. He sent a silent kiss into the air, managing to smile through his pain. His eyes sparkled bewitchingly. Hers, filled with tears.

  The trek down the stairs went on and on. At last they reached the entrance, her blouse stuck to her back and her knees nearly buckling under her. She sat him down on the ground, leaning him against the wall just inside the iron gate.

  “I’ll be right back.”

  She raced to the Nissan. She could already hear the wail of sirens approaching, rapidly growing louder.

  She drove the car onto the sidewalk in front of the gate. The veins in his neck looked a little less swollen, but his lips were purple. She counted eighteen breaths a minute. Better.

  She sat him down in the backseat and buckled him in. His movements were lethargic. Sitting up meant that his internal organs wouldn’t press on his diaphragm, making it easier for him to breathe. But Gerard was slipping away.

  There was a blood smear on the door of the white Nissan. She wiped it away with her sleeve and jumped in.

  She drove down Hadad Street and turned left into Al-Mahdi ben Barakeh, which cuts across Damascus diagonally toward the northeast.

  The cursed Jabal Qasioun was up ahead. She was going in the right direction. She had to pass the mountain to the east, and then, if she was lucky, she’d make it onto the M1.

  She looked for a sign pointing the way to the highway but didn’t see one. She didn’t look back. Nothing good could appear in the rearview mirror.

  Police sirens shrieked nearby. The back of her neck went cold. She glanced at Gerard. He was quiet. She prayed for him to hold on.

  Ben Barakeh Street was congested. Grasping the wheel with her left hand, she reached back and touched his face. It was cold and dry. Drivers honked incessantly. A shadow of despair fell over her heart.

  “Why didn’t you tell me who he was before we went up there?”

  He coughed wetly and said hoarsely, “I wasn’t positive . . .”