Boys from Brazil

by Ira Levin

  “May I stand on the sofa?” the co-pilot asked.

  Seibert said, “My God, why on earth not?”

  He poured gasoline over the folders and magazines, standing well back, and tossed a few splashes up onto the chart itself. Names gleamed wetly: Hesketh, Eisenbud, Arlen, Looft.

  The co-pilot carried the portrait out.

  Seibert put the can outside the door and went to the open file drawers. He took from one a few sheets of paper and twisted them into a white branch as he moved to the desk. He picked up the lighter there, a cylindrical black one, and pressed flame from it a few times.

  The pilot reported no one in the house and the windows open. Seibert had him take out the records and mementos and the fuel can. “Make sure my grandson’s there,” he told him.

  He waited a moment, lighter in one hand, white paper branch in the other. “Is he with you, Schumann?” he called.

  “Yes, sir!”

  He lit the tip of the branch and put the lighter back behind him; dipped the branch to strengthen the flame, and stepping forward, threw it onto the flame-bursting folders and magazines. Flame sheared up the wall.

  Seibert stepped back and watched the red-slashed center column of the chart blister and go brown. Names, dates, and lines, sheeted with flame, died away as blackness grew around them.

  He hurried out.

  Behind the house they stopped and watched awhile, well back from the wavering heat and the crackling: Seibert holding Ferdi’s hand, the co-pilot resting a forearm on the frame of Hitler’s portrait, the pilot with his arms full and the red can by his feet.

  Esther had her hat and coat on and one foot out the door—literally—when the phone rang. This was not her day. Would she ever get home? Sighing, she drew the foot back, closed the door, and went and answered the ringing phone in the faint light from the doorpane.

  An operator, with a call for Yakov from São Paulo; Esther told her Herr Liebermann was out of town. The caller, in good German, said he would speak to her. “Yes?” she said.

  “My name is Kurt Koehler. My son Barry was—”

  “Oh yes, I know, Herr Koehler! I’m Herr Liebermann’s secretary, Esther Zimmer. Is there any news?”

  “Yes, there is, and it’s bad news. Barry’s body was found last week.”

  Esther groaned.

  “Well, we’ve been expecting it—no word in all this time. I’m starting home now. With…it.”

  “Ei! I’m so sorry, Herr Koehler!”

  “Thank you. He was stabbed, and then dumped in the jungle. From a plane, apparently.”

  “Oh my God…”

  “I thought Herr Liebermann would want to know—”

  “Of course, of course! I’ll tell him.”

  “—and I also have some information for him. They took Barry’s wallet and passport, of course—those filthy Nazi pigs—but there was a piece of paper in his jeans that they overlooked. It looks to me as if he wrote down some notes while he was listening to that tape recording, and there’s a great deal here that I’m sure Herr Liebermann can make use of. Could you tell me where I can get in touch with him?”

  “Yes, he’s at Heidelberg tonight.” Esther switched on the lamp and turned her phone index. “In Mannheim, actually. I’ve got the number right here.”

  “Tomorrow he’ll be back in Vienna?”

  “No, he’s going to Washington from there.”

  “Oh? Well, perhaps I ought to call him in Washington. I’m a little…shaken up right now, as you can imagine, but I’ll be home tomorrow and able to talk more easily. Where will he be staying?”

  “At the Benjamin Franklin Hotel.” She turned the index. “I have that number too.” She found it and read it off slowly and clearly.

  “Thank you. What time is he due there?”

  “His plane lands at six-thirty, God willing; he should be at the hotel by seven or seven-thirty. Tomorrow night.”

  “Is he going there about this business Barry was investigating?”

  “Yes,” Esther said. “Barry was right, Herr Koehler. A lot of men have been murdered, but Yakov’s going to put a stop to it. You can rest assured that your son didn’t die in vain.”

  “It’s good to hear that, Fräulein Zimmer. Thank you.”

  “Don’t mention it. Good-by.”

  She hung up, sighed, and shook her head sadly.

  Mengele hung up too, picked up his brown canvas suitcase, and got on the shorter of the two lines at the Pan Am ticket counter. He had brown hair combed to the side and a full brown mustache, and was wearing a high padded neck-brace. So far it seemed to be doing its job of making people avoid his eyes.

  According to his Paraguayan passport he was Ramón Aschheim y Negrín, a comerciante en antigüedades, a dealer in antiquities; which was why he had a gun in his suitcase, a nine-millimeter Browning Hi-Power Automatic. He had a permit for it, as well as a driver’s license, a full complement of social and business credentials, and in his passport, page after page of visas. Señor Aschheim y Negrín was setting off on a multinational buying trip: the States, Canada, England, Holland, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Germany, and Austria. He was well supplied with money (and diamonds). His visas, like his passport, had been issued in December, but they were still valid.

  He bought a ticket for New York on the next flight out, leaving at 7:45, which in conjunction with an American Airlines flight would get him into Washington at 10:35 the next morning.

  Plenty of time to get settled in at the Benjamin Franklin.

  6

  THE PROFESSOR OF BIOLOGY

  —whose name was Nürnberger and who, behind his close-trimmed brown beard and gold-rimmed glasses, looked to be no more than thirty-two or -three—bent back his pinky as if to snap it off and present it. “Identical appearance,” he said, and bent back his next finger. “Similarity of interests and attitudes, probably to a greater degree than you’re presently aware.” He bent back his next finger. “The placement with similar families: this is the giveaway. You put these together and there’s only one possible explanation.” He folded his hands on his crossed legs and leaned forward confidingly. “Mononuclear reproduction,” he told Liebermann. “Dr. Mengele was apparently a good ten years ahead of the field.”

  “It’s not surprising,” Lena said, shaking a small bottle in the kitchen doorway, “since he was doing research at Auschwitz, in the forties.”

  “Yes,” Nürnberger agreed (while Liebermann tried to get over the shock of hearing “research” and “Auschwitz” in one sentence; forgive her, she’s young and Swedish, what could she know?). “The others,” Nürnberger was saying, “English and Americans for the most part, didn’t begin until the fifties and still haven’t worked with human ova. Or so they say; you can bet they’ve done more than they admit. That’s why I say Mengele was only ten years ahead rather than fifteen or twenty.”

  Liebermann looked at Klaus, sitting at his left, to see if he knew what Nürnberger was talking about. Klaus chewed, examining a stub of carrot-stick. His eyes met Liebermann’s and looked a you see? at him. Liebermann shook his head.

  “And the Russians, of course,” Nürnberger said, rocking back comfortably on his campstool, cupping a knee with interlaced fingers, “are probably even farther along, with no church and public opinion to contend with. They probably have a whole school of perfect little Vanyas somewhere in Siberia; even older, perhaps, than these boys of Mengele’s.”

  “Excuse me,” Liebermann said, “but I don’t understand what you’re talking about.”

  Nürnberger looked surprised. Patiently he said, “Mononuclear reproduction. The breeding of genetically identical copies of an individual organism. Have you studied any biology at all?”

  “A little,” Liebermann said. “About forty-five years ago.”

  Nürnberger smiled a young man’s smile. “That’s just when the possibility of it was first recognized,” he said. “By Haldane, the English biologist. He called it cloning, from a Greek word meaning ‘a cutting,�
� as from a plant. ‘Mononuclear reproduction’ is a far more explicit term. Why coin a new word when the old ones convey more?”

  “Cloning is shorter,” Klaus said.

  “Yes,” Nürnberger conceded, “but isn’t it better to use a few more syllables and say exactly what you mean?”

  Liebermann said, “Tell me about ‘mononuclear reproduction.’ But bear in mind please that I studied biology only because I had to; my real interest was music.”

  “Try singing it,” Klaus suggested to Nürnberger.

  “It wouldn’t make much of a song if I could,” Nürnberger said. “Not a pretty love song like ordinary reproduction. There we have an ovum, or egg cell, and a sperm cell, each with a nucleus containing twenty-three chromosomes, the filaments on which the genes, hundreds of thousands of them, are strung like beads. The two nuclei merge, and we have a fertilized egg cell, forty-six chromosomes. I’m speaking now of human cells; the number is different in different species. The chromosomes duplicate themselves, duplicating each of their genes—it really is miraculous, isn’t it?—and the cell divides, one set of identical chromosomes going into each resulting cell. This duplication and division occurs again and again—”

  “Mitosis,” Liebermann said.

  “Yes.”

  “The things that stay in the mind!”

  “And in nine months,” Nürnberger said, “we have the billions of cells of the complete organism. They’ve evolved to perform different functions—to become bone or flesh or blood or hair; to respond to light or heat or sweetness, and so on—but each of those cells, each of the billions of cells that constitute the body, contains in its nucleus exact duplicates of an original set of forty-six chromosomes, half from the mother, half from the father: a mix that, except in the case of identical twins, is absolutely unique—the blueprint, as it were, of an absolutely unique individual. The only exceptions to the forty-six-chromosomes rule are the sex cells, sperm and ova, which have twenty-three, so that they can merge, fulfill each other, and begin a new organism.”

  Liebermann said, “So far it’s clear.”

  Nürnberger leaned forward. “That,” he said, “is ordinary reproduction as it occurs in nature. Now we go into the laboratory. In mononuclear reproduction, the nucleus of an egg cell is destroyed, leaving the body of the cell unharmed. This is done by radiation and is, of course, microsurgery of the most sophisticated order. Into the enucleated egg cell is put the nucleus of a body cell of the organism to be reproduced—the nucleus of a body cell, not a sex cell. We now have exactly what we had at this point in natural reproduction: an egg cell with forty-six chromosomes in its nucleus; a fertilized egg cell which, in a nutrient solution, proceeds to duplicate and divide. When it reaches the sixteen- or thirty-two-cell stage—this takes four or five days—it can be implanted in the uterus of its ‘mother’ who isn’t its mother at all, biologically speaking. She supplied an egg cell, and now she’s supplying a proper environment for the embryo’s growth, but she’s given it nothing of her own genetic endowment. The child, when it’s born, has neither father nor mother, only a donor—the giver of the nucleus—of whom it’s an exact genetic duplicate. Its chromosomes and genes are identical to the donor’s. Instead of a new and unique individual, we have an existing one repeated.”

  Liebermann said, “This…can be done?”

  Nürnberger nodded.

  “It’s been done,” Klaus said.

  “With frogs,” Nürnberger said. “A far simpler procedure. That’s the only acknowledged instance, and it caused such a flap—at Oxford in the sixties—that all later work has been done on the quiet. I’ve heard reports, every biologist has, of rabbits, dogs, and monkeys; in England, America, here in Germany, everywhere. And as I said before, I’m sure they’ve already done it with humans in Russia. Or at least tried. What planned society could resist the idea? Multiply your superior citizens and prohibit the inferior ones from reproducing. Think of the savings in medical care and education! And the improved quality of the population in two or three generations.”

  Liebermann said, “Could Mengele have done it with humans in the early sixties?”

  Nürnberger shrugged. “The theory was already known,” he said. “All he needed was the right equipment, some healthy and willing young women, and a high degree of microsurgical skill. Others have had it: Gurdon, Shettles, Steptoe, Chang…And of course, a place where he could work without interference or publicity.”

  “He was in the jungle by then,” Liebermann said. “He went in in ’59. I drove him in…”

  Klaus said, “Maybe you didn’t. Maybe he chose to go.”

  Liebermann looked uneasily at him.

  “But it’s pointless,” Nürnberger said, “to talk about whether or not he could have done it. If what Lena told me is true, he obviously did do it. The fact that the boys were placed with similar families proves it.” He smiled. “You see, genes aren’t the only factor in our ultimate development; I’m sure you know that. The child conceived by mononuclear reproduction will grow up looking like his donor and sharing certain characteristics and propensities with him, but if he’s raised in a different environment, subjected to different domestic and cultural influences—as he’s bound to be, if only by being born years later—well, he can turn out to be quite different psychologically from his donor, despite their genetic sameness. Mengele was obviously interested not in breeding a particular biological strain, as I think the Russians might be, but in reproducing himself, a particular individual. The similar families are an attempt to maximize the chances of the boys’ growing up in the right environment.”

  Lena came to the kitchen doorway.

  “The boys,” Liebermann said, “are…duplicates of Mengele?”

  “Exact duplicates, genetically,” Nürnberger said. “Whether or not they’ll grow up to be duplicates in toto is, as I said, another question.”

  “Excuse me,” Lena said. “We can eat now.” She smiled apologetically; her plain face became pretty for an instant. “In fact, we have to,” she said, “otherwise things will be ruined. If they aren’t already.”

  They got up and went from the small room of scavenged furniture, animal posters, paperback books, into an almost-the-same-size kitchen, with more animal posters, a steel-gated window, and a red-covered table—bread, salad, red wine in mismatched tumblers.

  Liebermann, uncomfortable on a small wire-backed chair, looked across the table at Nürnberger buttering bread. “What did you mean,” he asked, “about the boys’ growing up in ‘the right environment’?”

  “One as much like Mengele’s as possible,” Nürnberger said, looking at him. He smiled in his brown beard. “Look,” he said, “if I wanted to make another Eduard Nürnberger, it wouldn’t be enough simply to scrape a bit of skin from my toe, pluck a nucleus from a cell, and go through that whole procedure I described—assuming I had the ability and equipment—”

  “And the woman,” Klaus said, putting a plate before him.

  “Thank you,” Nürnberger said, smiling. “I could get the woman.”

  “For that kind of reproduction?”

  “Well, assuming. It only means two tiny incisions, one to extract the ovum and one to implant the embryo.” Nürnberger looked at Liebermann. “But that would be only part of the job,” he said. “I would then have to find a suitable home for Baby Eduard. He would require a mother who’s very religious—almost a maniac, in fact—and a father who drinks too much, so that there’s constant fighting between them. And there would also have to be in the house a wonderful uncle, a math teacher, who takes the boy out of there as often as he can: to museums, to the country…These people would have to treat the boy like their own, not like someone conceived in a laboratory, and furthermore, the ‘uncle’ would have to die when the boy was nine and the ‘parents’ would have to separate two years later. The boy would have to spend his adolescence shuttling between the two with his younger sister.”

  Klaus was sitting down with a plate at Lieberma
nn’s right. A plate lay before Liebermann—dry-looking meat loaf, carrots steaming a minty smell.

  “And even then,” Nürnberger said, “he might turn out very different from this Eduard Nürnberger. His biology teacher might not take a shine to him, as mine did. A girl might let him go to bed with her sooner than one let me. He’d read different books, watch television where I listened to radio, be subject to thousands of chance encounters that might make him more or less aggressive than I am, more or less loving, witty, et cetera, et cetera.”

  Lena sat down with a plate at Liebermann’s left, looked across the table at Klaus.

  Nürnberger, breaking meat loaf with his fork, said, “Mengele was aware of the chanciness of the whole thing, so he produced and found homes for many boys. He’ll be happy, I suppose, if a few, or even only one, turns out exactly right.”

  “Do you see now,” Klaus asked Liebermann, “why the men are being killed?”

  Liebermann nodded. “To—I don’t know what word to use—to shape the boys.”

  “Exactly,” Nürnberger said. “To shape them, to try to make them psychological Mengeles as well as genetic ones.”

  Klaus said, “He lost his father when he was a certain age, so the boys must do the same. Or lose the men they think are their fathers.”

  “The event,” Nürnberger said, “surely was of paramount importance in shaping his psyche.”

  “It’s like unlocking a safe,” Lena said. “If you can turn the knob to all the right numbers, in the right order, the door opens.”

  “Unless,” Klaus said, “the knob was turned to a wrong number in between. These carrots are great.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Yes,” Nürnberger said. “Everything’s delicious.”

  “Mengele has brown eyes.”

  Nürnberger looked at Liebermann. “Are you sure?”

  Liebermann said, “I’ve held his Argentine identity card in my hand. ‘Eyes, brown.’ And his father was a manufacturer, not a civil servant. Farm machines.”