Frameshift

by Robert J. Sawyer

  “Well, I—”

  “The knife that did it is gone, but judging by the cut it made, it was very similar to the one that killed Chuck Hanratty.”

  “Wait a minute—,” said Pierre.

  “And you just happen to be at the scene of both killings.”

  “Wait a goddamn minute—”

  “I think you should come downtown with us, make another statement.”

  “I didn’t do it. She was dead when I found her. Look at her; she’s been dead for hours.”

  Munroe’s one long eyebrow knotted together in the middle. “How would you know that?”

  “I’m a Ph.D. in molecular biology; I know how long it takes for blood to turn that dark.”

  “All just coincidence, is that right?”

  “Yes. Yes.”

  “You say you worked together?”

  “That’s right. At the Human Genome Center, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.”

  “Someone tried to kill you, and now, four months later, someone does kill her. Is that it?”

  “I guess.”

  Munroe looked unconvinced. “You’ll have to hold tight until the coroner arrives; then we’ll head downtown.”

  Pierre was sitting on a wooden chair in a small interrogation room at Berkeley police headquarters. The room smelled of sweat; Pierre could also smell Officer Munroe’s coffee. The lights overhead were fluorescents, and one of the tubes was strobing a bit, giving Pierre a headache.

  The metal door had a small window in it. Pierre saw a flash of blond hair through it, then the door opened, and—

  “Molly!”

  “Pierre, I—”

  “Hello, Mrs. Tardivel,” said Officer Munroe, moving between them. “Thank you for coming down.” He nodded at the sergeant who had escorted Molly to the room.

  It was a sign of how upset she was that Molly didn’t reflexively correct Munroe about her name. “What’s going on?” she asked.

  “Were you with your husband last night between five and seven?” The coroner’s initial analysis suggested that Joan Dawson’s death had occurred between those hours.

  Molly was wearing an orange sweatshirt and blue jeans. “Yes,” she said. “We’d gone out to dinner together.”

  “Where?”

  “Chez Panisse.”

  Munroe’s eyebrow climbed his forehead at the mention of the expensive restaurant. “What was the occasion?”

  “We’d just found out that we’re going to have a baby. Look, what’s—”

  “And you were there from five o’clock on?”

  “Yes. We had to go that early to get in without a reservation. Dozens of people saw us there.”

  Munroe pursed his lips, thinking. “All right, all right. Let me make a phone call.” He stepped out of the room. Molly surged toward Pierre, hugging him. “What the hell’s going on?” she said.

  “I went by Joan Dawson’s house this morning. She’d been murdered—”

  “Murdered!” Molly’s eyes were wide.

  Pierre nodded.

  “Murdered…” repeated Molly, as if the word were as foreign as the occasional French phrases that passed Pierre’s lips. “And they suspect you? That’s crazy.”

  “I know, but…” Pierre shrugged.

  “What were you doing at Joan’s place, anyway?”

  He told her the story.

  “God, that’s horrible,” said Molly. “She was—”

  Just then, Munroe reentered the room. “Okay,” he said. “Good thing you got that accent, Mr. Tardivel. Everybody at Chez Panisse remembered you. You’re free to go, but…”

  Pierre made an exasperated sound. “But what? If I’m free—”

  Munroe held up his beefy hand. “No, no. You’re cleared. But, well, I was going to say watch your back. Maybe it is all coincidence, but…”

  Pierre nodded grimly. “Yeah. Thanks.”

  Molly and Pierre left the station; Molly had taken a taxi over. They got into Pierre’s Toyota, which was stiflingly hot, having sat for two hours now in direct sunlight in the police parking lot. As they drove back to the university, Pierre asked her which of the campus’s libraries might have People or Time.

  “Doe, probably—on the fourth floor. Why?”

  “You’ll see.”

  They headed there. Pierre refused to tell Molly what he was looking for, and he was careful to keep thinking in French, lest she pluck it from his mind. A librarian got the back issues Pierre wanted. He quickly leafed through them, nodded at what he found, then spread a copy of People out on a worktable and took some pieces of paper—flyers about the library’s overdue-fines policy—and used them to mask everything except a small photograph: a 1942 picture of John Demjanjuk.

  “All right,” said Pierre, pointing at the table. “Go have a look at that photo and tell me if you recognize the person in it.”

  Molly leaned in and stared at the photo. “I don’t—”

  “It’s an old photo, from 1942. Is it anyone you know?”

  “That’s a long time ago, and—oh, I see. Sure, it’s Burian Klimus, isn’t it? Gee, he must have had his ears fixed.”

  Pierre sighed. “Let’s go for a walk. There’s something we have to talk about.”

  “Shouldn’t you go tell them at the lab about Joan’s murder?”

  “Later. This can’t wait.”

  “That photo wasn’t of Burian Klimus,” said Pierre as they walked out of Doe Library and headed south. It was a beautiful early autumn afternoon, the sun sliding down toward the horizon. “It’s of a man called John Demjanjuk.”

  They passed by a group of students heading the other way. “That name’s vaguely familiar,” said Molly.

  Pierre nodded. “He’s been in the news a fair bit over the years. The Israelis tried him for being Ivan the Terrible, the gas chamber operator at the Treblinka death camp in Poland.”

  “Right, right. But he was innocent, wasn’t he?”

  “That’s right. It was a case of mistaken identity. Someone else who looked a lot like Demjanjuk was the real Ivan the Terrible. And he’s still at large.”

  “Oh,” said Molly. And then, “Oh.”

  “Exactly: Burian Klimus looks like Demjanjuk—at least somewhat.”

  “Still, that’s hardly reason enough to suspect him of being a war criminal.”

  Pierre looked up. An airplane contrail had split the cloudless sky into two equal halves. “Remember I told you a federal agent came to see me after Chuck Hanratty attacked me? Well, I found out today that he’s with the part of the Department of Justice that’s devoted to tracking down Nazis.”

  “I find it hard to believe that a man who won a Nobel Prize could be that evil.”

  “Well, Klimus didn’t win the Nobel Peace Prize, after all. Anyway, the man who operated the gas chambers—Ivan Marchenko—he’d been a prisoner of war himself before volunteering for service to the Nazis. Who knows what he did before or after the war? Who knows what level of education he had?”

  “But a Nobel laureate—”

  “You know who William Shockley was?” asked Pierre.

  “Umm, the inventeur of the transistor?”

  Pierre smiled. “You’re cheating.”

  Molly blushed a little.

  “But, anyway, yeah, Shockley invented the transistor, and he won a Nobel Prize for that in 1956. He was also a raving, out-and-out racist. He claimed that blacks were genetically inferior to whites, and that the only smart blacks were smart because they had some white blood in them. He advocated sterilization of the poor, as well as anyone with a below-average IQ. Believe me, I’ve read enough biographies of Nobel laureates to know that not all of them were good people.”

  “But even if Burian is this Ivan Marchenko—”

  “If he’s Marchenko, then, well—” He looked down at Molly’s stomach. “Then the baby is Marchenko’s, too.”

  “Oh, shit—I hadn’t even thought about that.” She lowered her eyes. “I keep thinking of it as your baby…”


  Pierre smiled. “Me, too. But, well, if it is the child of Ivan the Terrible, then…then maybe we don’t want to continue with the pregnancy.”

  They’d come to the plaza just inside Sather Gate. Pierre motioned for them to rest on one of the benches placed against the low retaining wall. Molly sat down, and Pierre sat next to her, placing an arm over her shoulders.

  She looked at him. “I know we’ve only known for sure that I’m pregnant for a day, but, well, I’ve felt pregnant ever since the implantation was done. And I’ve wanted this so long…”

  Pierre stroked her arm. “We could try again. Go to a regular clinic.”

  Molly closed her eyes. “It’s so much money. And we were so lucky to get an implantation on the first attempt this time.”

  “But if it is Marchenko’s child…”

  Molly looked around the plaza. People were walking in all directions. Some pigeons were waddling by a few feet away from them. She turned back to Pierre. “You know I love you, Pierre, and I admire the work you do is a geneticist. And I know geneticists believe in ‘like father, like son.’ But, well, you know my speciality: behavioral psychology, just like good old B. F. Skinner taught. I honestly believe it doesn’t matter who the biological parents are, so long as the child is brought up by a caring mother and a loving father.”

  Pierre thought about this. They’d argued nature-versus-nurture once or twice before on their long evening walks, but he’d never expected it to be anything more than an academic debate. But now…

  “You could find out for sure,” said Pierre. “You could read Klimus’s mind.”

  Molly shrugged. “I’ll try, but you know I can’t dig into his mind. He has to be thinking—in English, in articulated thoughts—directly about the topic. That’s all I can read, remember. We can try to maneuver the conversation in such a way that his thoughts might turn to his Nazi past, but unless he actually formulates a sentence on that topic, I won’t be able to read it.” She took Pierre’s hand and placed it on her flat stomach. “But, regardless, even if he is a monster, the child in here is ours.”

  It was late afternoon on the West Coast, and therefore early evening in Washington. Pierre struggled through the DOJ voice-mail system to get to the appropriate mailbox: “This is Agent Avi Meyer. I’m in Lexington, Kentucky, until Monday, October eighth, but am checking my voice mail frequently. Please leave a message at the tone.”

  Beep!

  “Mr. Meyer, this is Dr. Pierre Tardivel at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory—remember me? Look, one of our staff members was killed last night. I need to talk to you. Call me either here or at home. The number here is…”

  C h a p t e r

  24

  Joan Dawson’s funeral was held two days later in an Episcopalian church. Pierre and Molly both attended. While waiting for the service to begin, Pierre found himself fighting back tears; Joan had been so kind, so friendly, so helpful…

  Burian Klimus arrived. It seemed wrong to take advantage of such a solemn occasion, but opportunities for Molly to actually see Klimus were few and far between. When the old man sat down in a pew at the back, Molly and Pierre got up and moved over to sit next to him, Molly right beside him.

  “It’s such a shame,” said Molly, in a low voice.

  Klimus nodded.

  “Still,” said Molly, “what a lifetime to have lived through. Somebody said Joan had been born in 1929. I can’t imagine how frightening it must have been for a ten-year-old girl to see the world go to war.”

  “It was no easier for a twenty-eight-year-old man,” said Klimus dryly.

  “I’m sorry,” said Molly. “Where were you during the war?”

  “The Ukraine, mostly.” And Poland.

  “Spend any time in Poland?” said Molly. Klimus looked at her. “My, ah, father’s family was there.”

  “Yes, for a short time.”

  “There was a camp there—Treblinka.”

  “There were several camps,” said Klimus.

  “Terrible places,” said Molly. She tried a different tack. “‘Burian’—is that the Ukrainian equivalent of ‘John’? Every language seems to have its own version of John: ‘Jean’ in French, ‘Ivan’ in Russian.”

  “No, it’s not. In Ukrainian, ‘John’ is also ‘Ivan.’” He looked embarrassed for a moment. “‘Burian’ actually means ‘dwells near the weeds.’”

  “Oh. Still, I love Ukrainian names. They’re so musical. Klimus, Marcynuk, Toronchuk, Mymryk…Marchenko.”

  Ivan Marchenko, thought Klimus, the names falling together naturally in his mind. “Yes, I suppose they are,” he said.

  “The war must have been terrible, and—”

  “I don’t like to think of it,” Klimus said, “and—oh, excuse me. There’s Dean Cowles; I should really say hello.” Klimus rose and walked away from them.

  As Pierre drove himself and Molly to the cemetery, he turned to look at his wife. “Well? Any luck?”

  Molly shrugged. “It’s hard to tell. He certainly didn’t think anything along the lines of, Gee, my secret identity is Ivan the Terrible and I killed hundreds of thousands of people. Of course, that’s not surprising—most people who have done terrible things in their pasts have built up psychological defense mechanisms to keep the memories from coming to mind. Still, he does know the name ‘Ivan Marchenko’—he put those two names together at once in his head.”

  Pierre frowned. “Well, I’m seeing Avi Meyer this afternoon. Maybe he’ll have concrete answers about Klimus’s past.”

  Avi Meyer flew directly to San Francisco from Kentucky, where he’d been investigating some octogenarian KKK members. He and Pierre had arranged to meet privately at Skates, on Berkeley’s Seawall Drive at the Marina. The restaurant jutted out over the Bay, supported by pillars that didn’t seem nearly strong enough to hold it up. Seagulls perched on the edge of its gently sloping roof, trying to hold on in a rising wind. It was midafternoon, with a leaden sky. They got a table by one of the huge windows, looking out across the water to San Francisco.

  “All right, Agent Meyer,” said Pierre as soon as he sat down, “I know you’re some kind of Nazi hunter. I also know that I was attacked, and my friend Joan Dawson is dead. Tell me the connection—tell me why you are poking around LBNL.”

  Avi sipped his coffee. He looked past the hanging plants and out the window. An aircraft carrier was moving along the Bay, heading for Alameda. “We routinely monitor university and corporate genetics labs.”

  Pierre tilted his head. “What?”

  “We also keep an eye on physics departments, political science, and several other areas.”

  “What on earth for?”

  “They’re natural places for Nazis to end up. I don’t need to tell you that there’s always been a whiff of controversy about genetics research. Creating a master race, discrimination based on genetic makeup—”

  “Oh, come on!”

  “You yourself mentioned Felix Sousa—”

  “He’s not part of HGC; he’s just a biochem prof at the university, and besides—”

  “—and there’s Philippe Rushton, up in your native Canada, giving a whole new meaning to ‘Great White North’—”

  “Rushton and Sousa are too young to be Nazis.”

  “The universities are lousy with people hiding from one thing or another; in Canada, half your profs are Vietnam draft dodgers.”

  “So’s your president, for Pete’s sake.”

  Avi shrugged. “You ever see The Stranger? Orson Welles film? It’s about a Nazi who takes a job as an American college professor. I can name over one hundred actual cases of the same thing.”

  “Which is why you think Burian Klimus is Ivan Marchenko.”

  Avi’s small mouth dropped open. “You’re good,” he said at last.

  “I need to know if it’s true.”

  “Why should you care? I’ve gone over your files from McGill and U of T—”

  “You’ve what?”

  “You wer
en’t a campus activist. Didn’t belong to any social-justice groups. Why should you care what Klimus might have done half a century ago? A French speaker from Montreal—why should someone like you care?”

  “Damn it, I told you before I’m not an anti-Semite. Maybe there is a problem with that in Québec, but I’m not part of it.” Pierre tried to calm himself. “Look, I’ve seen pictures of Demjanjuk. I know what he looked like as a young man, know he bore a resemblance to Klimus.”

  A waitress appeared. “Sprite,” said Pierre. She nodded and left.

  “Klimus looks even more like Marchenko than Demjanjuk did,” said Avi.

  Pierre blinked. “You’ve got photos of Marchenko?” None of the Magazine Database Plus articles mentioned the existence of such things.

  Avi nodded. “The Israelis have had Marchenko’s SS file since 1991.” He opened his briefcase, pulled out a manila envelope, and took two sheets from it. The first was a photostat of an old-looking form, with a small head-and-shoulders photograph attached to its upper-left corner. The second was a blowup of that photo. It showed a man of thirty, with a broad face (twisted here in a cruel frown), incipient baldness, and protruding ears.

  Pierre’s eyebrows went up. “You can certainly see the resemblance to Demjanjuk.”

  Avi frowned ruefully. “Tell me about it.”

  Pierre looked at the photostats.

  “So,” said Avi, tapping the enlarged photo, “is that Burian Klimus?”

  Pierre exhaled. “The ears are different—”

  “Klimus’s don’t protrude. But that’s an easy enough thing to have fixed.”

  Pierre nodded, and looked at the blowup again. “Yeah. Yeah, it could be Klimus.”

  “That’s what I thought when I saw Klimus’s picture in Time when he was named director of the Human Genome Center. If he is Marchenko, you have no idea what a monster that man was. He didn’t just gas people, he tortured them, raped them. He used to love to slice nipples off women’s breasts.”

  Pierre winced at that. “But do you have any proof, besides his appearance, that Klimus might be Marchenko?”

  “He’s a geneticist.”

  Pierre’s tone was sharp. “That’s not a crime.”

  “And he was born in the same Ukrainian town as Ivan Marchenko, and in the same year—1911.”