David Morrell - League of Night and Fog

by League of Night

  Erika. "I met your father only once, when we were married. I never had a chance to get to know him. Was he in one of the camps?"

  "My father and mother almost never talked about what had happened to them during the war. When I was young, though, I once overheard them mention it to each other. I didn't understand, so I pestered them with questions. It was the only time they discussed the war in my presence.

  Other times, they were willing to talk about the pogroms, the persecutions. They wanted the to know about the Holocaust, in detail, as history. But their own experience... They were both in the Jewish ghetto in Warsaw when the Nazis laid siege to it" Saul grimaced, understanding. In 1943, Nazi soldiers had surrounded the Warsaw ghetto.

  Jews were forced into it, but no one was allowed to leave--except in groups being transported to concentration camps. The 380,000 Jews were were reduced to 70,000. Those that remained revolted against the Nazis.

  In a massive retaliation that lasted four weeks, the Nazis crashed the rebellion and razed the ghetto. Of the Jewish survivors, 7,000 were executed on the spot. Twenty-seven thousand were sent to labor camps.

  "My father and mother were part of the group the Nazis sent to

  Treblinka." Saul shuddered. Treblinka hadn't been a labor camp but rather a death camp, the worst of the worst. Arriving prisoners lived less than one hour.

  "But how did your mother and father survive?"

  "They were young and strong. They agreed to do the work--removing the corpses from the gas chambers and burning them--that even the SS couldn't stomach. That's why my parents didn't talk about the war. They survived at the expense of other Jews."

  "What other choice did they have? As long as they didn't collaborate with the Nazis, as long as they didn't participate in the killing, they had to do what they could to stay alive."

  "The first and last time my father talked to me about it, he said he could justify what he did in his mind--but not in his soul. I always thought that's why he joined the Mossad and dedicated his life to

  Israel. To try to make amends."

  "But even helping to dispose of the bodies would have given your parents just a temporary reprieve. The Nazis fed slave laborers almost nothing.

  Eventually your parents would have been too weak to work. The SS would have killed them and forced other Jews to dispose of the bodies."

  Treblinka," she said. "Remember where this happened." He suddenly realized what she meant. The prisoners at Treblinka had revolted against their guards. Using shovels and clubs as weapons, more than fifty bad subdued their captors and managed to escape. "Your parents took part in the revolt?"

  "First in Warsaw, then at Treblinka." She smiled wanly. "You've got to give them credit for persistence." Saul felt her pride and shared it, squeezing her hand again. He scanned the wall. "An obsession. A lifetime's worth. And you never suspected."

  "No one else did either. He couldn't have kept his position in the

  Mossad if they'd known what was festering in his mind. They don't trust fanatics." She seemed startled by a thought.

  "What's wrong?"

  "My mother died five years ago. That's when he asked to retire from the

  Mossad, moved from Israel to here, and in secret began setting up this room."

  "You're saying, your mother was the controlling influence?"

  "Subduing his obsession. And when she died..."

  "His obsession took over." Saul imagined ghosts around him. "God help him."

  "If he's still alive."

  "This room... Have we found the reason he disappeared?"

  "And if we have, was he taken?" Erika asked. "Or did he run?"

  "From what?"

  "His past" As Erika's expression became more grim, he spoke before he realized. "You don't mean... suicide?"

  "An hour ago, if anyone had suggested it, I'd have said my father was too strong to give up, too brave to destroy himself. But now I'm not sure. This room... His guilt must have been intolerable."

  "Or his hatred for those who'd made him feel guilty." On the counter, an open book--spread with its pages flat, straining the spine--attracted

  Saul's attention. He picked it up and read the tide. The Order of the

  Death's Head: The Story of Hitler's SS. The author was Heinz Hohne, the text in German, its publication date 1966. Where the pages had been spread open, a passage was underlined in black. Saul mentally translated.

  The sensational fact, the really horrifying feature, of the annihilation of the Jews was that thousands of respectable fathers of families made murder their official business and yet, when off duty, still regarded themselves as ordinary law-abiding citizens who were incapable even of thinking of straying from the strict path of virtue.

  Sadism was only one facet of mass extermination and one disapproved of by SS Headquarters. Himmler's maxim was that mass extermination must be carried out coolly and cleanly; even while obeying the official order to commit murder, the SS man must remain "decent"

  "Decent?" Saul murmured with disgust In the margin beside the passage, a cramped hand holding a black-inked pen had scribbled several words in

  Hebrew--two groups of them. "My father's handwriting," Erika said.

  "You're the expert in Hebrew."

  "They're quotations. Prom Conrad's Heart of Darkness, I think. The first group says, "The horror, the horror.'"

  "And the second group?" She hesitated. "What's the matter?"

  She didn't answer. "You're having trouble translating?"

  "No, I can translate."

  "Then?"

  "They're from Heart of Darkness as well... "Exterminate the brutes.'"

  An hour of searching brought them back to the confusion with which they'd started. In that shadowy room, Saul finally couldn't bear it any longer. He had to get away. Erika closed a box of documents. "How could my father have come back repeatedly to pin those photographs to the wall and go through these records? The persistent exposure must have affected him."

  "There's still no proof he committed suicide."

  "There's no proof he didn't either," Erika responded grimly. They extinguished the lamp and stated up the stairs. In the darkness, Saul suddenly remembered something. He gripped Erika's shoulder. "There's one place we didn't look." He guided her back down the stairs, scanning the flashlight along the floor. "What are you.."

  "Misha wouldn't tell us what we'd find down here. He didn't want us to have preconceptions. But inadvertently he did tell us something about this room. During the war, the doctor hid his sick est Jewish patients down here. And also hid their files."

  "He said that, yes. But how does... ?" Erika's voice dropped. "Oh."

  "Yes, job" The doctor hid the files beneath the floor, Misha said. There must be a trap door."

  Saul scanned the flashlight across the floor. In a corner, behind a stack of boxes, he found a layer of dust mat seemed contrived. He felt a niche where fingers could grab and lifted a small section of concrete.

  A narrow compartment. The stark gleam from the flashlight revealed a dusty notebook. Saul flipped it open. Though the words were written in

  Hebrew, Saul couldn't fail to recognize a list. Of names.

  Ten of them. All Jewish.

  The rain persisted. Christopher slept on the sofa. Beside him, Misha stared toward the open bedroom door. Saul stepped through, gesturing angrily with the notebook. "So you found it," Misha said. Erika entered, even more angry. "We almost didn't. That makes me wonder if you meant for us to find it."

  "I wasn't sure."

  "Whether you wanted us to find it, or whether we would?"

  "Does it matter? You did."

  "For the first time, I'm beginning not to trust you," she said. "If you hadn't found it and you'd still insisted on wanting to hunt for your father, I'd have resisted," Misha said. Christopher squirmed in his sleep.

  "Think about it," Misha said. "Prom my point of view. How do I know how soft you got in the desert?"

  "You should try it so
me time," Erika said. "I'm allergic to sand."

  "And to telling the truth?"

  "I didn't lie. I merely tested you."

  "Friends don't need to test each other."

  "Professionals do. If you don't understand, you did get soft in the desert."

  "Fine. So now we've found it." Saul's grip tightened around the notebook. 'Tell us the rest. What does the list of names mean?"

  "They're not the names of Jewish patients the doctor hid in the war,"

  Erika said. "The notebook's dusty, yes, but the paper's new. My father's name is included. The handwriting isn't his."

  "Correct. The notebook belongs to me."

  "What do the names on the list have to do with what happened to my father?"

  "I have no idea."

  "I don't believe that You wouldn't have made the list if there isn't a connection among them."

  "Did I say there isn't a connection? We know their backgrounds, their addresses, their habits, their former occupations."

  "Former?"

  "These men are all ex-Mossad, all retired. But you asked how they related to what happened to your father, and that puzzle I haven't been able to solve yet"

  "They claim they don't know my father? They won't answer your questions? What's the problem?"

  "I haven't been able to ask them anything."

  "You're doing it again. Evading," Erika said.

  "I'm not. These men share two other factors. They survived the Nazi death camps..."

  "And?"

  "They've all disappeared." church militant

  Despite the worsening heat of the desert, excitement overcame exhaustion, making Drew and Arlene stumble quickly toward the tire tracks in the sand at the far end of the pass. After their encounter with the two Arab assassins, they'd taken the small canvas sheet from

  Arlene's knapsack and anchored it across a space between two rocks where, protected from the sun, they'd sipped water sparingly, then eaten some of the dates and figs the killers had carried with them. But the killers hadn't brought enough food to sustain them long out here. "What about their water supply?" Drew had wondered. "We searched the slopes from where they shot at us." He held up two canteens and shook them.

  Water sloshed hollowly. "Not enough here for them to walk any distance.

  So how did they hope to get back?" With a sudden thrill of understanding, they got to their feet, ignoring the hammer force of the sun. Reaching the end of the pass, they veered to the right, followed the indentations in the sand, and came to a clump of boulders behind which a jeep had been hidden. "Outsiders, for sure,"

  Drew said. "No local villager has a jeep, let alone a new one. It even has air-conditioning. Those killers were used to traveling firstclass."

  The jeep had a metal top. The angle of the sun cast a shadow over the driver's side. Arlene welcomed the slight relief from the scorching blaze as she peered through the open driver's window. "Small problem."

  "What?" he asked. "No ignition key."

  "But we searched both bodies and didn't find it on them."

  "So logically they must have left it in the jeep." But fifteen minutes later, they still hadn't found the key. "In that case..." Drew climbed inside. "What are you doing?" she asked. "Waiting?"

  "For what?"

  "You to hotwire the ignition." She laughed and leaned beneath the dashboard. But after she started the engine, as they jolted across the bumpy desert, he lapsed into sober silence. He had many questions.

  Though he didn't want to, he had to talk to the priest.

  Cairo. The next afternoon. Sitting on the bed in the Westernstyle hotel room, Arlene listened to the spray of water from the bathroom as

  Drew took a shower. But her attention was focused on the telephone.

  She didn't know what to do. When the priest had contacted her in New

  York, directing her to go after Drew, he'd given her a Cairo telephone number. "Call me as soon as you bring him out of the desert." At the time, she'd been so grateful to be told where Drew was, to have the chance to be with him again, that she'd readily agreed to the priest's condition. But now that she and Drew were together, she hesitated.

  Whatever the Fraternity wanted from Drew, it would surely not be a dispensation. No, by definition, a summons from the Fraternity meant trouble. She'd lost Drew once when he entered the monastery. She'd lost him again when he fled to the desert. She didn't intend to lose him a third time. But what if the Fraternity's punishment for disobedience was... ? To kill Drew, whom they'd spared till now, and instead of killing her as well, leave her to grieve for the rest of her life. She decided to make the call. But her hand felt so heavy she couldn't raise it toward the phone on the bedside table. In the bathroom, the water stopped flowing. The door came open, and Drew stepped out, naked, drying himself with a large plush towel. She had to smile. After his six years in the monastery, after his monk's vow of celibacy, he had sexual inhibitions, true. But modesty? He was more comfortable with his body, naked or clothed, than any man she'd ever met. He grinned as he toweled himself. "Once a year, whether I need it or not" She touched her still damp hair. "I know. I feel like I lost a ton of sand." Drew had used her Egyptian money to buy shampoo, scissors, shaving soap, and a razor. His beard was gone now. He'd trimmed his hair. Tucked back behind his ears, it made his gaunt cheeks look even thinner. But the effect was attractive. He set down the towel. "I've had a lot of time

  ... too much... to think," he said.

  "About...?"

  "Some laws are God-made, others are human-made." She laughed. "What are you talking about?"

  "My vow of chastity. If Adam and Eve weren't allowed to have sex. God wouldn't have made them man and woman."

  "Is this your way of telling me sex is natural? I knew that already."

  "But as you've probably noticed, I've been confused."

  "Oh, that I've definitely noticed."

  "So I've decided..."

  "Yes?"

  "If you wouldn't mind..."

  "Yes?"

  "Choosing nature over artificial laws..."

  "Yes?"

  "I'd enjoy making love to you."

  "Drew..." It was his turn now to ask, "Yes?"

  "Come over here."

  In the late afternoon, with the draperies closed and the room in cool shadows, they held each other on the bed after making love. Naked, relaxed, enjoying the touch of each other's skin, neither spoke for quite a while. But preoccupations intruded. "The priest," Drew said.

  "I know. I wish we didn't have to."

  "But the problem won't go away."

  Brooding, he reached for his clothes. "There's something I'm curious about," Arlene said. He stopped buttoning his shirt. "Curious?"

  "Before, when you had to leave the monastery, you couldn't stop asking questions. About how the culture had changed in the six years you'd been away and who was president and what had happened in the world. But this time, after a year in the desert, you haven't asked me anything."

  His cheek muscles rippled. "Yes. Because the last time, I didn't like what I learned."

  "Then why call the priest? Why don't we disappear? Retreat. Together."

  "Because I no longer believe I can retreat. I want this settled. So I don't have to worry about the Fraternity. Or anyone else interfering with us. Ever again."

  Cairo was heat, noise, crowds, and traffic jams. Automobile exhaust fought to destroy the fragrance of Arabian food and spices sold at bazaars. The complex directions they'd been given over the telephone led Drew and Arlene through a maze of narrow streets. They reached a door to a restaurant whose Egyptian sign had an English translation:

  "The Needle's Eye." He glanced both ways along the lane, seeing no sudden reaction from anyone, no interruption of the natural rhythm of the crowd. Of course, the absence of unusual activity didn't prove they weren't being followed; a professional tail wasn't likely to give himself away so easily. On the other hand, at least they hadn't proved they were being followed, and for t
he moment, that consolation would have to do. They entered the restaurant's murky interior. Drew's first impression, apart from shadows, was one of smell. Pungent tobacco smoke. Strong coffee aroma. Next came touch--the gritty feel of the stone floor beneath his shoes. In a moment, his eyes adjusted to the layout of the restaurant--wooden tables and chairs, no tablecloths, but several ornate Arabian rugs on the walls, except in back, where behind a counter colorful bottles and polished brass containers were stacked on shelves below a mirror. Here and there along the walls, intricately carved wooden partitions surrounded the tables. Apart from a white-aproned waiter behind the counter and two men dressed in dark suits and red fezzes sitting at the far left corner table, the place was deserted. Drew and Arlene chose a table on the right. The table was equidistant between the entrance and what Drew assumed would be a rear exit through the kitchen behind the counter. They sat with their back to the wall. "What time did he say he'd meet us?" Drew asked. "He didn't exactly. All he said was, he'd be here before sundown." Drew tapped his fingers on the table. "You want some coffee?"