Rebecca Temple Mysteries 3-Book Bundle

by Warsh, Sylvia Maultash

  The book tumbled to the carpet. She thought he would fall, but he stayed upright, cradling his bleeding neck with his hand. Moaning in pain, he stumbled forward onto the sofa, still holding the sword. His eyes were closed in a grimace as she stepped toward him. With one quick movement, she pulled the sword from his hand.

  As she stood, her chest heaving from the effort, someone opened the front door.

  “Dad?”

  Erich appeared at the entrance of the living room in his navy jacket, blinking in bewilderment.

  “Go next door and call an ambulance!” Rebecca shouted. “Get the police!”

  “What’s going on?” He looked at the sword in her hand and Salim bleeding on the sofa. “Did you do that?”

  “It’s a long story,” she said.

  “Where’s my father?”

  Salim took a deep noisy breath and opened his eyes. “Look who’s here! Where is your father? An excellent question.”

  The blow had just stunned him. But she had his weapon.

  “Erich!” Sentry shouted. “Dad?”

  “He’s hurt but he’s all right,” Rebecca said.

  Erich rushed behind the chairs to where his father lay on the floor. “Did you do this?” he cried at Rebecca.

  “Don’t be stupid!” said Sentry.

  “He stabbed you?” Erich said.

  “It’s astonishing that he looks like you, Eisenbaum. Since that’s impossible.” Salim removed his hand from his neck. The bleeding had stopped. “I’ve been thinking about that and I’ve come to a remarkable conclusion. It’s a family resemblance. He looks like Frieda. Am I right? When’s your birthday, Dr. Sentry?”

  Erich hesitated. “What?”

  “Your birthday, please.”

  “November 30, 1945.”

  “My God! Let me look at you.”

  “What the hell are you talking about?” Erich stood up to stare at him.

  Salim gaped, running his eyes over the younger man’s face. “That means you were conceived in winter. Yes. A very cold February. I remember the wind blowing outside through the pines.” He blinked away the memory. “You have to believe me — I never knew. When the Russians were close, I ran for my life. She understood. Your mother was the bravest woman I ever knew.”

  “My mother?” Erich’s eyes narrowed with puzzlement. “You know my mother?”

  Salim said to Sentry. “You never told him?”

  “Told me what?”

  Sentry’s eyes were closed, his eyebrows arched together, as he sat against the bookcase.

  “Told me what?”

  Even as he stood, the information was probably filtering into Erich’s brain like a trickle of dirty water. Slow but inevitable, it would find a path into meaning.

  “Who are you?” he asked Salim.

  “That’s not so easy to answer. I was someone else when I knew your mother.”

  “How did you know my mother?”

  “We worked in the same hospital.”

  “When did she work in a hospital? She was an athlete.”

  Salim peered at Erich with irritation. “It appears we’re not speaking about the same woman. You must face the truth, son.”

  Erich shrunk away, crouching down over Sentry again. “What’s he talking about, Dad?”

  Sentry leaned his head back against the bookcase, weary. “You can’t remember her the way she was. She was so beautiful. And brilliant. She was too sensitive to survive the war intact. Not meant for this evil world. She sacrificed herself for so many. This is what you should remember.”

  “Aunt Frieda? My mother?” Erich’s face went pale. He stared fixedly at the wall. “I used to have these dreams. Or maybe they were memories. She was rocking me to sleep in her arms. She called me Erich-mouse. She was the only one who ever called me that. I’d forgotten.”

  “That was our grandmother’s pet name for us,” said Sentry. “Frieda-mouse. Wolfie-mouse. Luise-mouse. So many gone. Another life.”

  The fondness for mice, thought Rebecca, recalling the children’s books. Not rodents, but a connection home.

  “I wish I’d known while she was alive.”

  “I’m alive,” said Salim.

  Erich rose to his feet and turned to face Salim. “You were in the camp? What were you to my mother?”

  Salim glanced at Rebecca and Sentry, neither of whom rushed to speak. “I loved her. She loved me. That’s the important part.”

  Rebecca realized their silence was meant to protect Erich. “The phone’s not working,” she said. “Please go next door and call the police.”

  “I’m still confused.”

  “I’ll explain later.”

  After Erich left, Salim clasped his neck with his hand again and fell back into the sofa, eyes closed. Sentry moaned behind the chairs. Holding onto the sword, she found a clean tea towel in an open drawer of the buffet and stepped toward Sentry. She kneeled near his injured shoulder, cleaning the wound with the towel.

  “You okay?”

  “I feel like a fool.”

  “You are a fool!” Salim said from the sofa. “You had everything you needed. You should’ve left well enough alone.”

  “Look who’s talking! A German Egyptian! You changed your whole identity.”

  “I had no choice. I was running for my life. When the Russians were close, I threw away my uniform and put on a prisoner’s jacket. Berlin was destroyed. The buildings, the people I knew. I had no family. I made my way to Hamburg and got on a ship. Mohammed had often invited me to his home. This time I went. They are a remarkably generous people, the Egyptians. Friendly to a fault. I felt at home there. More than in my original home. Mohammed took me under his wing. I fell in love with the culture. And his sister. My friend became my brother-in-law. I converted to Islam. I’ve been fortunate to have two lives.

  “Maryam was past marriageable age in Arab society. They were very grateful to me for taking her off their hands. I just had to convert. It’s really very comforting, having religion. The Arabs say only Allah is perfect. They accept that man is weak.”

  “You expect me to believe you’re different? A leopard can’t change its spots.”

  “I’m not who you remember. When you learn a new language and culture, you become a different person, even in your gestures. You give yourself up, your old self, and create a new image, one you could never have imagined. Even your body moves differently. It’s like a rebirth. Then when a time comes that you’re forced to speak the old language, it’s like someone else’s mouth moving. That man is a stranger to me now. So you see, I can’t go back.”

  These last words came from right behind her. While she was tending to Sentry’s wound, Salim had kept talking and crept toward them.

  “Look out!” Sentry screamed.

  She turned sideways to see the glint of metal in Salim’s hand as he lunged at her. She rolled away, the knife grazing her thigh as he thudded to the ground. She’d been stupid. She’d forgotten he had killed the cop outside. Of course he had a knife.

  While he struggled to get to his feet, she grabbed for her purse. On her knees now, she rummaged inside the bag until she felt the cool metal can. He was lifting himself up, his hand holding the knife in a tight fist, about to strike again. In a second, she flicked off the top of the can, pointed it at his face, and pushed down hard on the nozzle. A triangle of spray hit his eyes.

  “Ahgghh!” He dropped the knife and brought both hands to his eyes. “Ahgghh! Help! Help!” He groped blindly toward the kitchen. “Water!”

  She collapsed on the ground beside Sentry. Her heart was racing. She saw blood trickling down her leg from the cut. It must have hurt, but she was too numb to feel it.

  chapter thirty-four

  She floated into the forest on icy wings, riding the wind through the pines. She tried to speak, but instead a song erupted from her throat. A mournful trill that made the animals on the forest floor pause and lift their eyes in acknowledgement.

  The wind swept her to the shore o
f a gunmetal lake, a mirror of the gunmetal sky. One a grey eye contained by the boundaries of earth, the other an infinite line, vast with possibilities. She had flown at the horizon with her heart full, even forgiving the village by the lake for their indifference. Then the searchlights found her in the sky. In an instant, the horizon shrank into a vault and closed over her with the finality of iron. High in that iron sky, stars twinkled dispassionately, hard as diamonds. No one saw her tumble to the ground. No one saw her gather every ounce of energy and fly to the nearest tree for shelter. But her membraned feet couldn’t balance on the iron branch. She trembled and fell for the last time.

  Lifting herself on a broken wing, she gazed into the lake: a tiny heart-shaped face looked back at her from the water. Where had she seen it before? A vague memory of grief squeezed her chest. The face smiled sadly and melted into the water; eyes, nose, mouth stretched upon the lake and dissolved into other eyes, another nose, another mouth, until Rebecca was looking at herself.

  She opened her eyes with a start. Where was she? Warm. Protected. She lay in Nesha’s arms in her own bed. She wasn’t a bird. She wasn’t in a camp. She was one of the lucky ones. But what if her mother’s family hadn’t moved from Poland to Canada when Flo was a girl? Her mother would have been a teenager when the Nazis put her into a camp and killed her, along with her family. Rebecca would never have been born. Where were the millions of unborn progeny of those who had perished? She felt Nesha’s breath on her cheek. It was the American Thanksgiving, she remembered. Thank you, Whoever Is Responsible, for my life.

  A grey November light filtered through her bedroom window. She had taken the day off and told Iris to reschedule her patients. After last night, Rebecca needed some recovery time. It wasn’t just the stitches the resident had put into her thigh to close the wound from Salim’s knife — four stitches after waiting in Emerg for two hours. It was the stress of having her life threatened, of seeing someone else’s blood issue from a wound she’d inflicted.

  Fitzroy, all in a lather, had found her in Emerg last night.

  “You should’ve called me! Not try to do things yourself! You could’ve been killed!”

  “I couldn’t call you,” she said softly. “He cut the phone line.”

  His large face flushed with anger, then concern. “Yes, of course he did. I’m sorry.” He took a deep breath, his barrel chest rising and falling beneath his coat. “I shouldn’t have relied on the surveillance cop. It was my fault.”

  She was sitting up on a gurney in one of the cubicles, holding a wad of gauze against her leg as she waited for the resident.

  “I’ll go hurry them up,” he announced, turning to go.

  “Detective,” she said. “You saved my life.”

  “Look, I feel bad enough —”

  “If I didn’t have that can of Mace, he would’ve killed me.”

  Fitzroy’s face lit up, his mouth lifting from ear to ear. “Right!” he said. He looked behind himself, snickering. “He’s just across the way at the sink. They’re washing the stuff out of his eyes. I hope it stings. I hope it stings like hell. The bastard killed a cop.”

  Nesha had rushed in then, his face pale with worry.

  “I’m all right,” she said, as he hovered over her in his worn leather jacket.

  Fitzroy gave her a grin before disappearing.

  Nesha kissed her forehead and took her free hand. “I’m not letting you out of my sight again.”

  She smiled, taking in the brown, melancholy eyes. She wished he could stay in the country long enough to make that threat count.

  Erich stuck his head into the cubicle. “You all right?”

  He exchanged a perfunctory nod with Nesha, who gripped her hand tighter.

  “I’ll be fine. How about your father?”

  As soon as she said it, she realized the ambiguity. If Erich had any reservations, he hid them admirably.

  “You saved his life. He’ll be okay. No fencing for a while.”

  She hadn’t asked him about the man in custody, his biological father, or the matter of his startling origins.

  The scenes of last night played over and over as she lay in bed, her head too heavy to lift. Nesha adjusted his arms around her.

  The next time she woke up, it was past two. The aroma of coffee and eggs wafted up from the kitchen. Nesha was cooking. Her leg pulsed with pain, but she couldn’t lie there any longer. She threw on her bathrobe and went downstairs.

  “I was just going to bring this up on a tray,” Nesha said.

  He was distributing fried eggs and toast on two plates. She poured the coffee.

  “I think I dreamt about a concentration camp. The one Frieda was in.”

  On the way home from the hospital the night before, Rebecca had told him about Sentry and Salim. Eisenbaum and Brenner. And Frieda.

  “You know, Ravensbrück was one of the bad ones,” he said. “She was lucky she survived. Probably because a Nazi loved her. Very rare in a camp.”

  “I wonder if she loved him back,” Rebecca said. “Or if she knew she’d never see him again. He may as well’ve fallen off the face of the earth when he went to Egypt. I guess that’s what he meant to do.”

  “They would’ve welcomed him there with open arms.”

  “Why?”

  “Ever heard of Arab Nazis? The Grand Mufti of Jerusalem?”

  “No.”

  “He was the Muslim Brotherhood delegate in Palestine. Hajj Amin al-Husseini. Organized the murder of Jews in the twenties and thirties. For this, the English appointed him Grand Mufti. Meanwhile, remember in Cairo the founder of the Brotherhood was writing letters to Hitler, telling him what a stellar fellow he was? Well, Hitler saw an opportunity and the Brothers became a secret arm of Nazi intelligence. When Hitler actually got into power, he sent the Mufti arms. In 1936 they fomented the Arab Revolt when they rose up and murdered Jews and Arabs who disagreed with them. After that the Mufti escaped to Berlin, where he spent the war.”

  “Where did you learn all this?”

  “Some people golf. I like to sift through old records at the Wiesenthal Institute in L.A.”

  “So the Mufti went to Berlin. Then what?”

  “He worked for the war effort, recruiting Bosnian Muslim volunteers. He organized them into their own battalions.”

  “I don’t understand. They fought for the Germans?”

  “They were put into the Waffen SS and fought partisans in the Balkans. They also hunted down Serbs, Jews, and Gypsies. I’ve seen pictures of them marching in formation wearing their fezzes. Twenty thousand of them. The Mufti flew from Berlin to Sarajevo to inspect his Muslim army.”

  “What happened to him after the war?”

  “He was declared a Nazi war criminal. But the English let him escape to Cairo.”

  “Why would they do that?”

  “For the same reason the Americans hired ex-Nazis to work for them after the war. To fight the Communists. You’re too young to remember the beginning of the Cold War. The Communists were the new bogeyman. So Arab fundamentalists became allies against Arab Communist sympathizers. The ex-Mufti ran Arab Palestine till he died in 1974. Then his relative took over.”

  “But I thought Yasser Arafat ...”

  He was chewing on a piece of toast with a smug look.

  “Arafat is related to the Mufti?”

  “His real name is too complicated to remember. But it ends in ‘al-Hussaeini.’ They belong to the same clan. Arafat shortened his name to hide his kinship because the ex-Mufti was discredited. Even if you supported the Nazis, these days you don’t call yourself a Nazi. Especially if you’re courting the Western media.”

  “You must spend a lot of time reading up on this stuff.”

  “If we don’t remember the past, we can’t understand the present.”

  “Sometimes we have to get beyond the past to be able to live in the present.”

  “You think I’m obsessed. I think I’m a realist. What do you think happened to people who ke
pt their heads in the sand when Hitler was consolidating his power? They didn’t survive. The man who tried to run you down? He’s a direct link to the Grand Mufti. The Nazis may be gone, but their legacy lives on. Every time an Arab terrorist kills an Israeli, Hitler laughs in hell.” He stared into his coffee. “The funny thing is, Brenner seems to be one of the human ones.”

  The phone rang. Rebecca reached over and lifted the receiver off the wall.

  “Hi, sweetheart. Are you feeling better today?” Rebecca knew her mother had held off calling earlier not to disturb her. “Much better.”

  “How’s your leg?” There was something else in her voice.

  “It’ll heal. Don’t worry.”

  “Did Jeff Herman call you? Susan’s left him. Is she with you?”

  When Rebecca got off the phone, she hurried up the stairs.

  “Where you going?” Nesha asked.

  “Getting dressed.”

  “Why?”

  “I’m going to find Susan.”

  Nesha insisted on driving. “Where are we going?”

  “Mount Sinai.”

  “You’re an optimist.”

  “It’s the only thing that keeps me going.”

  He dropped her at the hospital, then drove off to find a parking spot.

  Rebecca rode the elevator upstairs impatiently, rushing off in the direction of the preemie unit.

  Inside, her father stood, enthralled, against one of the walls. She followed his eyes. Wearing a hospital gown, Susan sat in a rocking chair beside the incubator holding Miriam against her chest. Both mother and daughter had their eyes closed as if no one else existed. Alicia, the nurse, stood off to one side, beaming.

  Rebecca felt her heart expand in her chest. Her eyes burned with tears.

  Alicia waved at her to approach. The nurse opened her mouth in a laugh, barely able to contain herself.

  “She been here since yesterday!” the woman said in a hoarse whisper. “Slept in the waiting room. Wanted to know everything. About the IV, the baby’s heart, her oxygen level. Gave her a bit of a bottle. You know the way it is, drop by drop. Wouldn’t leave to go eat. I had to pry her away.”