She went inside.
Seated at his desk, Drexler looked distressed. Lindsay could see it on his face instantly, the pinched quality, like something bitter was on his tongue or he was awaiting a shooting pain to pass. He looked lost in thought as well, barely registering her as she entered. When he finally looked up and saw her, really saw her—muddy clothes, tangled hair—he sat up straight.
“My God, you look a fright!”
“That’s a terrible thing to say to a woman,” she said, trying to make light, to deflect, but she realized she was shivering.
“Here, here,” he said, rising from his chair, and pointing at her normal seat in front of the desk. “Let me get you some tea.”
“I’m all dirty.”
“Nonsense. Sit.”
He walked to a sideboard and from over his shoulder, asked, “What on earth happened?”
“I fell into a mud puddle. The crowd was pretty crazy.”
“I’ll bet.”
She faced forward, at his open chair, exhausted suddenly. Despite the garish Nazi memorabilia, the office was pleasant. If she let her eyes lose focus, there was just the glow of a fire, bookshelves, a big desk. Like any other study. Cozy and safe. She wondered about Ben. Hopefully his new thug friends would be too drunk and fired up to reconvene tonight and she would find him in their tent later. Maybe they could try again in the morning.
Drexler handed her a saucer with a teacup on it. It felt warm in her hand. The smell of cinnamon wafted toward her.
Drexler resumed his seat behind the desk with his own teacup.
“So how did I do?” he asked.
“Wonderful,” she said. She meant it. Their eyes met and she smiled, but it was sad and she shook her head. “There’s still so much I don’t understand.”
“That’s why I sent for you. I told you I wanted us to be honest with one another. I fear that it’s been one-sided.”
Her pulse quickened. She fought to keep her eyes from going wide.
“I’ve been holding back,” said Drexler. “There’s one more story I have to tell you.”
Chapter 36
Deep in the woods, even in the dark heart of the New Jersey Pine Barrens, Christmas reached the Drexler clan. Stuffed after a full meal of carp, goose, and potato salad, the younger men had retreated to smoke in one of the compound’s outbuildings while the youngest wives readied the table for dessert. Henry Drexler pushed himself away from the table and announced he would gather the men. When his daughter-in-law, Eva, protested that one of the women could do it, he waved her off. He was in high spirits and told her he wanted to stretch his legs.
He took his coffee down the back stairs, leaving the noisy, extended family—his son’s wife, their friends—behind in the large house. He crossed the long, wide yard of their compound toward the low outbuilding. He stopped halfway between the main house and his destination and sipped his coffee. It was quiet out here. On bitter nights like this, though, his leg still ached. After all these years—the braces, the therapy—he still had a subtle limp, but he didn’t mind it anymore. It was something he had long since grown accustomed to, and at the age of sixty, it wasn’t about to change now.
At the edge of the woods, Henry heard a slight crunch on the carpet of fallen leaves.
His head swung in the direction of the noise. His eyes hadn’t yet fully adjusted to the darkness, so he turned his head slightly from side to side, trying to catch any motion by the treeline with his sharper peripheral vision. He took slow steps toward the sound to get as close as possible. He was within ten yards of the treeline when the darkness shifted. A doe turned and bounded deeper into the forest, revealing her profile. Suddenly the leaves crunched in three more spots as her three fawns followed.
Henry smiled. He looked up at the cold stars through the bare branches and wondered if he had ever had a better Christmas.
Finally, he flung the dregs of his coffee away and continued toward the garage. Two young men, friends of Felix with tattoos crawling up their forearms, stood watching him. They had seen the whole thing. Henry didn’t care. It was hard to care about the opinions of men who would scribble permanent graffiti on their bodies. These boys, he thought, all forward thrust, zero forward thinking. There’s a difference between a badge of honor and a billboard, he had once told Felix and his friends. But they didn’t listen. They never listened, at least not to him.
Inside the building, Felix was holding court. They all grew quiet when Henry walked in.
“By all means,” said Henry, “continue.”
“Just talking about the New Year,” said Felix.
“Big plans, eh?”
“Maybe,” Felix replied. “Maybe it’s the year to get something done. While Opa can still see it. Maybe we’re tired of waiting around.”
“Maybe we agree on something for once,” responded Henry.
“You?” laughed Felix. “Right.”
The room grew quiet. Though Henry wasn’t respected like his father, Dietrich—Felix’s beloved Opa, whom the boys all revered—Henry was still an elder. And this wasn’t a place where disrespect flourished for long.
Henry’s gaze drifted to the wall next to him and the assortment of tools mounted on little hooks. Hammers, pliers, crowbars. He looked slowly around the room at the faces of the surly young men who’d been listening to his son. At first they laughed quietly to themselves, but as he looked upon each of them, they grew uncomfortable enough to stare down at their own boots. Henry’s gaze settled on Felix once again.
“Dessert is nearly on the table. I recommend you big men come inside.”
Henry didn’t wait for them to follow him and crossed the yard back into the house. The wives had already put out the stollen. “They’ll be in shortly,” he told them, then sliced a large piece of the cake for himself, refilled his coffee, and headed out of the room.
“Where are you going now?” asked Eva.
He held up the plate. “Papa’s favorite.”
His pretty daughter-in-law looked at him with sad eyes. They both knew the old man was long past enjoying cake.
Henry climbed the stairs and walked quietly to the last door of the long hallway and peered inside. He hadn’t expected any changes, but after all these years, he was still tentative about entering his father’s room without permission.
Wagner’s Die Walküre soared, softly, from a portable CD player in the corner. The old man lay there, his position unchanged from before dinner, from the day before, and the day before that. His open mouth was unshaven and cataracts cast a film over his eyes. The doctor had been amazed the man was still alive. Everyone was—everyone but Henry. For all of Henry’s life, Dietrich had been larger than life, a force of nature, and Henry knew the old man would die when he damn well felt like it and not a moment before. Defiant to the bitter end.
The floorboard creaked beneath him and Dietrich’s head lolled toward the door. With his cataracts, the old man couldn’t see his son. In fairness, Henry thought, his father never truly saw him.
“Merry Christmas, Papa.”
“Frohe Weihnachten.”
When it was the two of them, his father always spoke in his native tongue. Dietrich had never been one to make things easy.
“I brought you your favorite.”
The old man grunted dismissively. Henry entered the room anyway and placed the plate on the bedside table. He took the wooden chair next to the bed. “I thought you might enjoy the aroma at least.”
They sat in silence for a time.
“Tell me, do you ever have any regrets, Papa?”
Useless as they were, the old man rolled his opaque eyes. “Boy, please. I’m tired.”
“I would like to know.”
“I have many,” the old man said, a cruel smile playing across his cracked lips, “Heinrich.”
“I don’t mean between us, we’re past that. I meant in life. Your grand vision.”
“I’ll not talk vision with you. You don’t have the stomach for it
. You never did.”
“A man can change, you know.”
“I’ve never trusted bookish men,” said Dietrich. He let his head settle back on the pillow. “Or even considered them men.”
“When I was a very young man, I would have done anything you asked of me, eagerly, and without question,” said Henry. He patted his own leg cheerfully. “I may not have been able to run an obstacle course, but I have so many other skills, Papa. Modern skills. We could have been unstoppable. But the time for that has passed. The time for a lot of things has passed.”
“The Reich sleeps, that is all. As will I, as soon as you cease your yammering and leave me be.”
“Very well,” said Henry.
Another grunt.
“One last thing before I go. I found something you might find interesting.” He removed a folded piece of paper from his pocket. It was an article he had found online from the Local section of The Washington Post. The headline read SEARCH CONTINUES FOR THE BEAST OF BARCROFT. Henry read the story aloud; it provided the latest update about a number of bizarre animal sightings in the shadow of Washington, D.C., culminating in two very public killings in Arlington, Virginia. The article stated that since November, the culprit, believed to have been a gray wolf, was still at large. The authorities, with the help of the National Zoo, had made no progress in catching the anomalous animal but they stressed that no further attacks or credible sightings had been reported.
“What do I care about a wolf?” asked Dietrich.
“Because it’s not a wolf at all.” Henry reached for his coffee and took another sip. “It’s one of yours.”
Henry detected a catch in the old man’s breathing.
“Wouldn’t you like to know which?” asked Henry.
“You’re lying,” said the old man.
“Oh, Papa, encrypting your old case files might throw off your idiot acolytes, but me? Nothing can stay buried from me.”
The old man stiffened at the word buried.
“What do you have?” demanded Dietrich.
Henry had found Dietrich’s trove hidden in the woods years ago, and now he wanted the old Nazi to know it. “Everything.”
“You’re bluffing,” said the old man with a raspy laugh, but the tremor in it betrayed him.
“Even the chest,” said Henry.
“Put it back now,” said Dietrich. It pleased Henry to note his father was speaking English now. “Bury it, deeper than before. Tonight.”
“I don’t think so. This,” said Henry, rattling the article so that Dietrich could hear it, “this was just a trial run. This was nothing.”
“Listen to me, boy,” said Dietrich, speaking quickly now, breathlessly. “You’re playing with forces you cannot comprehend. If you have a shred of…loyalty left for me—if you have any affection for anyone—you will stop immediately. This folklore isn’t some weapon you can wield.”
“I don’t have to wield it,” Henry countered. “That’s the beautiful thing about the Internet. There are so many desperate people out there eager to wield it for me. Lost souls…people searching for meaning…for answers…for revenge…or all of the above.”
“Once these things are called forth, you cannot control them,” Dietrich insisted.
“Who wants to control them?”
“Then why?”
Henry stood and stretched. He walked to the door, but instead of leaving, he locked it and returned to his father’s bedside.
“Just because I never shared your vision doesn’t mean I don’t have one of my own.”
Dietrich’s eyes, which had never bothered to find him before, looked in vain to search Henry’s face.
“You’re insane.”
“No. I’m bookish, remember?”
Henry snatched one of the pillows propping up the frail old man and pressed it over his father’s face. Dietrich thrashed and his thin arms reached up to claw at Henry’s hands. As weak and wasted away as the old man was, there was more strength in him than Henry would have guessed. Still some fight. One of the old man’s fingernails sliced his wrist and Henry’s vision went red around the edges. He pressed the pillow harder. He wanted to drive it straight through the back of Dietrich’s head, but he restrained himself from breaking the old Nazi’s neck. Suffocation was best—no outward signs of foul play. Still, it was difficult to resist.
The old man ceased squirming. His arms floated back down to the bed. Henry stared at the man’s sunken chest where his nightshirt had fallen to the side. No movement. Just in case, Henry kept the pillow in place for a minute or two more.
Finally, Henry removed the pillow and stared into the terror-stricken face of his dead father. His eyes, though filmed over, were as gaping as his mouth. Henry closed both, replaced the pillow from where he had snatched it, and arranged the old man’s limbs in repose. Finally he sank into the wooden chair again until his own heartbeat slowed and the twitching in his eyelids abated. It was over. After all of these years, his father’s reign of terror was over.
But Henry’s was just beginning.
He glanced at the bedside table. His coffee was cold, but the stollen was still there. He retrieved the plate and spiked a piece of the cake with his fork. It was the one thing he and his father had in common. They both had loved it, with its dried fruit, marzipan, cinnamon, and rum. And little Eva was becoming quite the baker. This year she made the stollen’s icing from scratch instead of using powdered sugar from the store. He lifted the forkful toward his dead father, toasting him, then took a bite. It was marvelous.
Best Christmas ever, he thought.
Chapter 37
Ben came to, bound to the chair. His aching head pried him from his sleep, and when he opened his eyes, he instantly regretted it. First, the lights seemed brighter, to the point of making his eyes water. He saw Anson and Hendrix and a few others standing there, watching him. Also, he realized no good could come of his being awake in his present circumstance. He closed them again, playing possum.
“Nice try,” said Hendrix.
“Wakey, wakey, little snitch,” came a familiar voice. Felix emerged from a dark corner and slapped him hard across the face. It swung his head around and stung his cheek, as bracing and icy-hot a sensation as if he had just plunged into a freezing lake. “Little bitch.”
“What the fuck, guys?” said Ben. “Haven’t I had enough initiation since the moment I got here?”
“Did you think I wouldn’t notice you rolling out of here, McCarver?”
Ben’s eyes drifted to the pegboard hung with tools. Hammers, pliers, crowbars. He quickly looked away so as not to give them any ideas.
“Did you think,” continued Felix, circling him, “that I’d let you bail? After everything I told you? You think I’m going to let that stand?”
“Dude, I didn’t bail. I’m right fucking here! Yes, Lindsay and I ducked into the woods, because I didn’t want to have sexy time in a tent surrounded by a thousand people watching another twenty try to play Kid Rock! You were great though…”
Ben didn’t see the punch coming. His head snapped back and the front two legs of the chair left the ground for a moment. The world went wonky. His eyes watered, blinding him. Blood sprang from his nose.
This is bad, he thought.
“Stop lying,” said Felix.
“Christ, Felix. We came back. I don’t know what else to say.”
Felix turned his back on Ben. “Then I’ll just have to ask your girl next, won’t I?”
“Don’t you—”
Another punch, this one from the side, this time rearing the chair up on its two side legs. More so than painful, it was a sudden, thought-obliterating jolt. Ben thought it came from Hendrix, but it could have been any of the other half-dozen men in the garage, looming in and out of the shadows like wolves.
“I came back,” he heard himself say.
“Something about you rubbed me the wrong way,” said Felix. “Right from the jump.”
Feeling’s mutual, thought Ben.
“But you were such an eager-to-please little bitch. Desperate to show your loyalty. And you had me. I came around. I don’t like to feel foolish. It really makes me mad.”
“I am loyal, God damn it.” His head ached in so many places, it made it hard to think. Careful, came a weak thought from inside the throb. “Look, man, I’m telling you, I’m not the guy you need to watch out for. Breaux is up to something. He’s running some sort of con. Either with your father or against him, I don’t know, but he knows I know something and he’s following me…”
Ben heard footsteps from behind him and braced for another shot. When one didn’t come, he waited for the feet they belonged to to walk into his field of vision.
“And here I thought we were friends,” said Breaux.
Chapter 38
Lindsay was so exhausted, the adrenaline from the woods long since depleted, that this new information was almost too much to process. She fought to keep her voice even, to keep the horror out of it. Drexler, on the other hand, looked relaxed. No, she thought, unburdened.
Confession is good for the soul.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’ve upset you.”
“I’m…I’m just trying to wrap my head around it.”
“If there’s one person in this camp I’ve been able to talk to, it’s been you. I don’t want to lie to you anymore. Tonight is too important.”
“What happens tonight, Henry?”
“Tell me, do you believe people are inherently good or evil?”
It was hard to think, to formulate an answer.
This kindly old man had just confessed to murdering his father. A Nazi, but still.
“I think there’s…goodness in everyone,” she said. “People lose their way.”
“No one is the villain of their own story, eh?”
“Things get complicated. Twisted. But it’s never too late to start over. This place…it’s not healthy for you. We can leave anytime, Henry.”
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