A Song of Shadows

by John Connolly

  The meeting she had left was convened to discuss five war crimes cases at various stages of investigation, Engel’s among them. In attendance were the chief of the Human Rights and Special Prosecutions Section, two deputy chiefs, and two other investigating attorneys. Demers had gone through with them, in detail, her experiences with Marcus Baulman and Isha Winter, and recounted her conversation with Detective Gordon Walsh of the Major Crimes Unit of the Maine State Police. She had also discussed the deaths of Bruno Perlman, Ruth Winter, and the Tedescos in Florida, along with what was known – or suspected – about Ruth’s killer, Earl Steiger. She also mentioned to them Walsh’s theory that the murders of the Wilde family, and the disappearance of their son, could have some connection to everything else that was happening.

  ‘Can you offer us a conclusion?’ one of the deputy chiefs inquired.

  ‘Somebody is lying,’ was Demers’s reply. ‘And I think it may be Engel.’

  ‘What do you want to do with him?’

  ‘He’s wasted enough of our time,’ said Demers. ‘Put him on the next flight to Germany, and let them find somewhere to dump him.’

  ‘Engel’s case remains problematic for them. We’ve given them all we have on him, but they still feel it’s not enough to support a prosecution.’

  ‘We’ll accept deportation. They know that.’

  ‘But they don’t want him, not yet. You know how they are about the optics of these things. Without a trial, they feel that they leave themselves open to accusations of providing state support for criminals, and they already have their hands full with Fuhrmann. How about you talk to Engel one more time, just in case?’

  God, thought Demers: the Germans and their optics. They were obsessed with appearances, with procedure, with keeping their hands clean, yet their language and speech was peppered with casual references to shit and excrement. During one visit to Berlin, she had even heard a German lawyer refer to her behind her back as the Klugscheisser: the intelligence shitter. Toller, who dealt with them more regularly than she did, and was himself half Jewish, was of the opinion that the majority of Germans had never seen or met a Jew in their own country, so that when he visited he was an object of careful curiosity, like a living fossil. Most of the German Jews were gone. They were an abstraction. The Germans could think of them only in terms of victimhood.

  Demers took a calming breath. She was tired and angry, which wasn’t conducive to making wise decisions. Tackling Engel one last time was the smart thing to do, but she did not want to look at him again. She was sick of him. Engel was playing with them, doing all that he could to cling on in the hope of a reprieve. His lawyers were now trying to argue that an error had been made in the recording of Engel’s date of birth on certain relevant paperwork, and he had actually joined the SS as a minor. It smacked of desperation, but a 2003 decision in the case of Johann Breyer, suspected of being a guard at Auschwitz, found that someone who enlisted in the SS as a minor could not be held legally responsible for his actions. It was another delaying tactic to eat up money, resources, and time – both her own and Engel’s. The longer he stayed in the United States, the closer he came to dying on its soil.

  ‘Of course,’ she said. ‘I’ll talk to him tomorrow.’

  ‘Is there anything else we should know?’ she was asked by the second deputy director.

  ‘Just this: the INS records show that Baulman came into the United States from Argentina with another man, Bernhard Hummel. I ran him through the system, and I see some of the same irregularities in his paperwork that we found in Baulman’s. Hummel settled in Maine, not far from Baulman. Toller made a telephone call to Hummel’s home, but there was no reply. I overnighted a letter, requesting that he call us to schedule an interview.’

  ‘You’re sure he’s still alive?’

  ‘There’s no record of his death.’

  ‘Ask Engel about him. See what he says.’

  ‘I will. Thank you.’

  Now here was Toller informing her that Engel was lying incapacitated in a hospital bed. She asked him how bad the old bastard was, and learned that he was conscious, but entirely paralyzed along his left side.

  ‘Nyman is screaming blue murder,’ said Toller.

  Barry Nyman was leading Engel’s legal team. He was determined to convince Demers that he was defending Engel on principle, but if he was, then it was a principle with zeros and a decimal point after it. This was another aspect of the case that bothered her. Nyman didn’t work for free – he could take his protestations that he was working pro bono and stick them up his ass – but Engel’s financial resources were limited, and somehow Nyman was still being paid: possibly in cash, and certainly under the table, but paid nonetheless, even though Demers figured that the funds were almost bled dry, or else Nyman might have made a bid for a Supreme Court hearing for his client.

  Meanwhile, Nyman had unsuccessfully argued that Engel should be allowed to remain in his own home pending deportation. Engel had suffered a series of minor strokes over the previous years, and Nyman tried to convince the US Magistrate that his frail health would be put at risk in a prison environment, probably so that when Engel was back in his own bed, a by-the-hour expert physician could be found to swear that moving him again might prove fatal. The Magistrate had disagreed, but Demers knew that Nyman was certainly already making an application to have the original decision reversed on the grounds of Engel’s emergency hospitalization, if the Magistrate had not already done so himself. A bail application would immediately follow, and was likely to be granted.

  ‘I’m going up there,’ Demers said.

  ‘Now?’ said Toller.

  ‘Yes, now. Do me a favor: just get me on the Delta Shuttle. I’ll pick up an overnight bag on the way.’

  61

  Werner didn’t offer Parker anything to drink. It was just as well. The detective felt as though his lone kidney had probably dealt with enough liquids for the day. They sat in a corner of the living-cum-dining room that Werner had converted into a home office, Werner in an old recliner by his desk and Parker on a chair pulled from the small dining table. A crucifix hung on the wall behind Werner: Christ set in bronze against dark, angled wood.

  ‘I wanted to ask you about your father,’ said Parker. ‘I believe he underwent a Damascene conversion.’

  ‘An apt metaphor,’ said Werner. ‘My father was involved in anti-interventionist circles before Pearl Harbor. He was not alone in that. A great many people believed that the United States should not get involved in another European war.’

  ‘As I understand it, your father was more than anti-interventionist: he was a leader of the Bund.’

  Werner shrugged.

  ‘Are you asking me for a history lesson, Mr Parker? I can give you one, although it will, of necessity, be brief. There has been a German community here in Boreas since the last century. During – and after – World War I, that community, like German communities throughout the United States, found itself the object of suspicion and hatred. German music was banned, German-language books burned. In 1918, a German coal miner named Robert Prager was lynched by a mob in Collinsville, Illinois. This experience made German Americans insular and defensive, and not without justification.

  ‘Then, after the war, another wave of German immigrants arrived here, my father among them. They were intelligent men and women, some of whom had fought the communists on the streets of Berlin, and they wanted no part of the new Germany. They saw it as humiliated, flawed, and unstable.’

  ‘How many of them were fascists?’ asked Parker.

  Werner smiled.

  ‘Quite a number, I should imagine!’

  Parker smiled too, just to be polite. ‘Was your father one of them?’

  ‘No,’ said Werner. ‘But he was angry and bitter. When Hitler came to power in 1933, my father rejoiced. He was by then a US citizen, and became a founder member of the Friends of the New Germany, which later morphed into the German American Bund. But the Bund never really gained much
of a foothold in Maine – the German community here was just too small – and my father also grew increasingly uneasy about its activities. He was not interested in indoctrinating youth with Nazi policies, or marching through the streets in brown shirts and jackboots. He welcomed the revival of Germany, he was angry about the Jewish boycott of German goods here – and why would he not be, as the pastor of a German congregation? – and he wished his adopted homeland to remain neutral, because he did not want to see it come into conflict with the country in which he was born. These were not unreasonable sentiments at the time.’

  ‘Didn’t he show propaganda films in your church hall?’

  ‘You have been doing your homework,’ said Werner.

  ‘One of the benefits of being a member in good standing of the Maine Historical Society, and having friends at the University of Southern Maine. They e-mailed me what they had on him.’

  ‘I hope that not all of it was bad. But yes, he showed German propaganda films to sympathetic groups, both in Maine and New Hampshire, including Campaign for Poland, Victory in the West and Feuerstaufe, or Baptism of Fire. I know all these names because I found the original films in the basement some years ago. I handed them over to the National Archives. I couldn’t think what else to do with them. I simply recognized that they were very rare. Reprehensible now, but rare.’

  ‘Why did he show them?’

  ‘In part because he wanted to believe the truth of them, I think, but he was also under some pressure from the Bund. It was growing increasingly extreme, and had begun to infiltrate cultural organizations and German churches. German Americans were reluctant to speak out against it, though. Many could still recall the persecution they had endured after the last war, and believed it was important that they remain united. My father, as a pastor and a community leader, felt deeply conflicted. But by 1938, I think, anti-Nazi sentiment – and, by extension, anti-Bund sentiment – was growing so strong that most German Americans felt they had no choice but to reject it. My father was particularly vocal in his rejection of the Bund. It made him some enemies, but he never regretted it.

  ‘And then, after the war, when the scale of the Nazi atrocities became apparent, he wanted to make recompense. He wrote submissions to the Citizens Committee on Displaced Persons, worked with the Lutheran World Federation on the issue, and petitioned public representatives to support Truman’s efforts to accommodate refugees. When the second DP Act came into force in 1950, he was heavily involved in finding sponsors for German immigrants, but he made no distinctions, and worked just as hard for other races and ethnicities.’

  ‘He found a sponsor for Isha Winter, didn’t he?’

  ‘I did not know that,’ said Werner.

  ‘It’s what she told me.’

  ‘He certainly wrote many supportive letters on behalf of displaced persons, and assisted them once they arrived here. It does not surprise me that she was one of them, although I knew nothing of her past until the recent unfortunate events brought it to light. But I would not have thought that Isha Winter’s case was especially problematic for the US government. She was the sole survivor of an experimental concentration camp. The decision to admit her can’t have been difficult.’

  ‘Did your father make mistakes?’

  ‘In what sense?’

  ‘Did he provide sponsorship or support for war criminals?’

  ‘I can’t say. If he did so, it was unwittingly. Why do you ask?’

  ‘Because two men from Maine, Engel and Fuhrmann, have been in the news lately. You can’t have missed them. Fuhrmann has been extradited and Engel is awaiting deportation, both for crimes allegedly committed during World War II. The Justice Department believes that there might be others hiding in this state. It has assigned an investigator named Marie Demers to the case.’

  ‘You’re very well informed.’

  ‘As I told you, I’ve taken an interest. Could Engel and Fuhrmann be among those helped by your father?’

  ‘I can’t answer your question, Mr Parker. I don’t know the names of every man and woman my father assisted because there were hundreds of them. I just know how hard he worked to make up for the sins of other Germans. And I sense that you’re trying to besmirch his legacy, which I find objectionable. I think we’re finished now.’

  Werner stood, and Parker stood with him.

  ‘This is a sensitive issue,’ said Werner. ‘You must understand that.’

  ‘People are dying, Pastor,’ said Parker. ‘You must understand that.’

  Werner didn’t argue. He wanted the detective gone from his house. He needed space in which to think. He followed Parker to the door.

  ‘I see you wear a cross,’ he said, indicating the old pilgrim’s cross that the detective wore around his neck. He didn’t want the detective to leave angry. Concessions had to be made to avoid it.

  ‘I find it gives me consolation,’ said Parker.

  ‘So you have faith?’

  ‘No.’

  Werner looked confused. ‘But why wear it if you do not believe?’

  ‘That wasn’t your question,’ Parker replied. ‘You asked if I had faith. I don’t. Faith is belief based on spiritual conviction instead of proof. You could say that the nature of my convictions has changed recently. Faith is no longer an absolute requirement.’

  ‘If that’s true, I would not wish to be you,’ said Werner. ‘I don’t want proof, not of what I now believe through faith. If I had proof, I would have no need of faith, and it is faith that sustains me. And, in my experience, people may say that they want proof, but the last time God gave it to them, they nailed it to a tree.’

  They shook hands, and Parker left. Werner returned to his desk and switched off the lamp.

  He would have to move Oran Wilde’s body.

  Werner’s soup supper was well attended, and everyone stayed on for the short prayer service. Afterward, as he was making his farewells, he noticed a bottleneck at the door of the hall, and went to investigate.

  The detective was there, handing out business cards.

  ‘My name is Charlie Parker,’ Werner heard him say. ‘I’m a private detective. I found Ruth Winter’s body out at Green Heron Bay. If you think of anything that might help in the investigation, anything at all, please contact me or Detective Gordon Walsh at …’

  Werner turned away.

  62

  Demers arrived at Engel’s bedside. As anticipated, the Magistrate had reversed his decision and granted bail. Nyman had filed a new appeal against Engel’s deportation based on health grounds. At the very least, deportation would now be delayed further.

  Engel’s wife and daughters were still on their way down to Manhattan from Maine, but their arrival was imminent. Demers didn’t have much time.

  Engel’s left eye was half closed, and his mouth hung open. His face resembled a rock formation that had collapsed on one side. His right eye swiveled toward her.

  ‘How are you feeling, Mr Engel?’ she asked.

  His reply was slurred, but it wasn’t hard to pick out the words ‘Like you fucking care.’

  ‘I spoke with Isha Winter,’ she continued. ‘She denied that Baulman and Kraus are the same man. You lied to me.’

  Engel started to gurgle, and the gurgle became a laugh. His body shook with the effort.

  ‘Don’t care,’ he said. ‘Going home. To Augusta. You lose.’

  He stank, she thought. He reeked of vomit and corruption and old sins. He had participated in murders untold, and was about to cheat the law at the last.

  She leaned in closer to him. She had intended to ask him about Hummel, but she knew she would get nothing out of him now.

  ‘I’ve spoken to the doctors,’ she whispered. ‘You’re dying. You can expect another stroke in the next six to twelve hours. If it doesn’t kill you, it’ll leave you in a vegetative state, but even that won’t last very long. You’re never going to see your home again, you bastard. You lose.’

  And his howls of rage followed her all th
e way down the hall until the elevator doors closed and silenced them.

  63

  Werner visited Theodora Hummel the next day to offer his condolences on the sad death of her father. She was a modestly unattractive woman who had never married, and was her father’s only child. Some work colleagues were with her in the family home when Werner called. She seemed surprised to see him. Her father had been a member of his congregation, but she had not set foot in his church – any church – in many years. She introduced Werner to her friends and offered him a drink. He then participated gamely in the commemoration of the foul old man who was her father, although he did not struggle to come up with anecdotes to amuse them, for – whatever his past – Bernhard Hummel had been something of a character, even if much of his wit, and many of his pranks, came at the expense of others, and were underpinned by petty cruelty.

  Eventually the friends began to drift away, until Werner and Theodora were left alone. He helped her clean up, and saw that she had done a lot of work on the house since her father was shipped off to Golden Hills. The kitchen, once dark and oppressive, with oak closets stained almost to black, had been extended and modernized, just as the living room was less forbidding than he remembered. Yet the changes were strangely characterless, and Werner felt as though he had wandered into the pages of a design catalog, and a cheap one at that. It wasn’t that Theodora Hummel had bad taste: rather, she appeared to have no taste of her own at all.

  Finally, Werner resumed his original seat, and waited for Theodora to join him. They sat on uncomfortable chairs, and pretended that they were celebrating the memory of a man who, in reality, would not be missed. It seemed about time to shed the pretense.

  ‘It must be hard for you,’ said Werner, ‘living here surrounded by so many memories of your father.’