by By Jon Land
“Hurry up! There are others in line out here.”
The boy heaved again, his empty stomach spasming violently. He tried to push himself back to his feet but the cramps seized him again and kept him doubled over.
“I said, come out of there!”
The gun barrel jabbed him in the ribs just before a heavy boot kicked him in the rear. The boy crumpled into a ball and felt the shadow of the labor camp commandant, or Haupsturmfuehrer, Gunthar Weiss, loom over him.
“You worthless piece of scum! You know the rules, if you don’t work, you die. What’s it to be, then, eh?” Poking him harder now. “What’s it to be?”
The boy tried to move, couldn’t. Tried to breathe but Weiss’s gun barrel dug deeper into his ribs, closing down his lungs.
“Mundt!” Haupsturmfuehrer Weiss barked.
Seconds later another soldier the boy did not recognize snapped to attention and approached. Although no more than twenty years of age, he was a virtual twin of the Haupsturmfuehrer. The same man, only younger.
“Mundt, you will take this boy behind the building and shoot him,” Weiss ordered unhesitantly. “He is a useless piece of shit, and it is time you broke your rifle in.”
“Yes, Haupsturmfuehrer!”
“Get moving now! Go!”
The boy felt a powerful arm hoist him brutally to his feet.
“And, Mundt, one bullet and no more. If I hear a second shot, I’ll put one of my own in you. If the shot doesn’t finish him, use your bayonet or your knife. Are we clear?”
“Clear, Haupsturmfuehrer!”
“Then move!”
The boy lacked the strength to walk and was dragged by Mundt across the muddy field toward the rear of a former stable that had been converted into a barracks or Pferdebaraken. The intense, bitter stench of glue and tanning dye from the nearby factory made him retch yet again. Behind the old wooden building, its holes patched with strips of blankets and cloth, Mundt let him drop to the ground. The boy cowered there, shaking horribly and racked again by dry heaves.
“Look at me!” came the order.
The boy did his best to gaze up through the tangle of his soiled hair at the young Nazi who towered over him in his boots and warm great coat. The soldier’s hair was close-cropped and his features and eyes dark for a German. The boy recognized him as a youthful member of the Waffen SS, which was directly responsible for factory camps, or Judenlager, such as this one.
“You’re a Jew, aren’t you?” The boy noticed Mundt’s rifle was still shouldered. “Answer me!”
“What’s the difference? You going to kill me twice?”
“So the little shit has a tongue.”
The boy trembled harder and tightened his arms around his thin shirt. “It’s not my fault I’m so weak. It’s my leg. I broke it before they took me from the ghetto and it didn’t set right.”
Mundt turned his gaze downward. “Looks fine to me.”
“Then just kill me and get it over with.”
Mundt knelt down, so close the boy could smell the soap on his skin. “I’m not going to kill you.”
The boy looked up, afraid to hope. “What?”
“You’re going back inside the factory and you’re going to work harder than you ever did before. Because if you slack I’m going to finish the job the Haupsturmfuehrer told me to. Do you understand?”
The boy nodded. “I... understand.”
Mundt raised his rifle and fired a single shot that echoed loudly in the wind. For a moment the smell of cordite drowned out the stench of the dyes pumping from inside the factory. Then he knelt down and helped the boy to his feet, almost gently.
“What’s your name?”
“Hessler,” the boy managed through his dry, cracking lips. “Paul Hessler.”
* * * *
H
unched over his hotel bed, Hans Mundt found his head was aching too much to continue his review. He gathered the letters and notes carefully into a pile and returned them to the worn briefcase his mother had told him had once belonged to his father, Karl. Karl Mundt, whose first and only posting in the army of the Reich had been as a guard in one of the Nazi labor camps located outside of Lodz.
The names of three men...
Last night he had handed them over to the former head of Israel’s Mossad, and by tonight, Hans Mundt was quite certain, the men would all be dead.
He lay atop the bed that was now cleared of his notes and letters and waited for the call he was expecting to come any moment from Abraham Vorsky.
* * * *
CHAPTER 24
P
aul Hessler once again scanned the autopsy report his contact in Mossad had delivered that morning, still not believing it could be right. And yet his son’s killer could be no other man.
After all these years, Paul thought to himself, why had the man resurfaced after all these years?
It didn’t matter. The investigation had effectively been shut down. Paul Hessler knew what he needed to know. The involvement of the National Police was now superfluous, so he’d had the case closed as quickly as he had opened it. He tried to tell himself he was doing them a favor, but in reality he feared Danielle Barnea would be clever enough to uncover the truth. He had chosen her for the case because he knew she was the best, and now he was dismissing her for the same reason.
Hessler’s high-placed contacts also helped him expedite the arrangements to have his son’s body returned on the same flight with him to the United States. He insisted on making all the travel arrangements himself, anything to keep himself busy and focused on something other than yesterday’s tragedy, even if it was just for a moment.
Paul was set to leave his fortified suite at the Hilton for the flight home when his phone rang.
“Yes,” he answered.
“Mr. Hessler? This is Burnstein in New York. I worked for your son. I’m terribly sorry, sir.”
“What is it, Burnstein?”
“Well, I’m sorry for the intrusion, but I just wanted you to know that I went ahead and cancelled all the plans for next week.”
“What plans?”
“The reception your son arranged a few days ago.”
The phone felt suddenly heavy in Paul’s hand. “What reception?”
“Er, I assumed you knew.”
“Well, Burnstein, clearly I don’t.”
“He never told me the specifics, sir,” Burnstein stammered, “Just that you were going to be celebrating something.”
“We won’t be anymore.”
“I know that, sir. I’m sorry.”
“Then I can assume we’re finished,” Paul said and hung up the phone.
But Burnstein’s words lingered in his mind. Why had Ari planned a party and why had he kept it a secret from him? His son had been acting strangely as of late. Almost too happy and energetic. Always seeming on the verge of telling Paul something, right up to their last conversation in the back of the car when Ari said he had a surprise he would share once they were back in New York.
Paul wondered if that surprise had something to do with this party. Now, caught in the firm grasp of grief once more, he realized he would never know.
* * * *
CHAPTER 25
I
s this all you really want to discuss?” Ben Kamal asked Danielle Barnea, as she drove toward the Golan Heights.
“You said you wanted to compare notes.”
“And we have. You’re having a body exhumed for autopsy without a supervisor’s permission, and I’m searching for a family that disappeared suddenly from their home. I’m also having police officers canvass all Shahir Falaya’s neighbors.”
“Why?”
“Because someone went to great lengths to break into his house and remove the hard drive from his computer. A neighbor might have seen something without realizing.”
“And what do you think we’ll learn in the Golan, Inspector?”
“You’re avoiding the issue.”
“No, I
just don’t want to talk about it.”
“With me or at all?”
“Who else could I possibly discuss this with?”
“My point exactly.”
Behind the wheel, Danielle sighed. “I don’t like thinking about what the doctor said.”
“You have to. We have to.”
“It’s only been a few hours. I need time to let what the doctor said settle in.”
“It won’t help. Believe me. News like this never settles in. It only festers until it totally obsesses you. Something I know about.”
“Is that supposed to make me feel better?”
“There’s nothing I can say that will make you feel better.”
Danielle hadn’t really intended to say anything, but the words spilled out anyway. “It feels worse this time than the first. The first time I lost a baby it was earlier on in the pregnancy, and it happened so suddenly I didn’t have time to feel as bad as I do now.”
“Because this time you have a choice.”
“Do I really, Ben?”
“It’s not fair to do this to yourself, Danielle.”
“You’re telling me to have an abortion.”
Ben’s voice lowered. “I feel as if I’ve lost this baby twice: first when you told me you wanted to raise him alone and then again this morning when the doctor explained what he had found. I don’t know how many more opportunities I’m going to get to be a father. Without you, probably none. But I know I’d rather take that chance than let a baby come into the world with the kind of problems this one is likely to have.”
Danielle smiled sadly. “You know, it’s funny. This case we’ve stumbled onto seems to be about murdered children and I feel I can still do something for them. They’re dead and yet I want to help them so bad. But I can’t do anything for my own baby who’s still alive.”
“I have a confession to make,” Ben said, and she looked over at him in the passenger seat. “I was glad when Moshe Baruch was named commissioner of National Police. Glad because I thought he might fire you, and you would come to live with me in the United States.”
“You’d leave Palestine?”
“For you and the baby? Just say the word. I wouldn’t even bother to pack.”
“Even now?”
“Even more.”
Danielle slowed her car for the checkpoint leading into the Golan Heights. “I don’t deserve you, Ben.”
“You’ve got me, all the same.”
* * * *
T
he family of Yakov Katavi lived among the seventeen thousand Israelis who have settled amidst the scenic lush hills and streams of the Golan Heights. Their settlement in Mevo Hama was composed of white stucco-faced ranch homes situated on a flat stretch of wide-open ground that afforded a comfortable amount of land for each family. From this section of the plateau that formed the Golan the residents of Mevo Hama near the Syrian border had a clear view of the fenced-off minefields and ruins of Syrian villages and army bases that had been overrun during the Six-Day War of 1967.
Rain clouds were lifting off the cliffs high above the Sea of Galilee and the settlement when Danielle edged her car along a narrow road toward the Katavi home. The best wine in Israel came from vineyards planted in the Golan, and the duck vines that filled the fields for as far as she could see convinced her that the Katavis must be among those who grew and harvested the grapes. A well-known hot spring was located in Mevo Hama, accounting to a great degree for the character of the soil. The air smelled of the fresh, sweet grapes that dominated the plateau in marked contrast to the stench of car exhaust that seemed to perpetually hover over Tel Aviv, and even Jerusalem now. Danielle was so accustomed to the polluted air she scarcely noticed it, until the Golan reminded her what fresh air smelled like.
She turned off the main road and angled down an even narrower one that sliced through a tunnel of ripening vines. The Katavi home appeared in a clearing up ahead, set well back from the road. Upon Danielle’s instructions, a pair of soldiers had been posted here since that morning, although only one was visible now. That soldier raised one hand, while keeping the other fastened menacingly on his Uzi submachine gun.
“Can I help you?” he said, coming around to the driver’s side of the car once Danielle had come to a stop.
Danielle showed the man her identification. “You should have been told to expect us.”
“Of course, Pakad.”
“Yakov Katavi is home from school?”
“Inside with his mother right now.”
She turned to Ben. “Let’s go have a talk with the boy, Inspector.”
The soldier tensed as he stood beside the door of Danielle’s car, eyeing Ben suspiciously. “I have clearance for you, Pakad. No one else.”
“This is Inspector Bayan Kamal of the Palestinian Police. He is here on my authority.”
“You can discuss this with the sergeant posted inside the house with the family, while I stay out here with Inspector Kamal.”
“Fine,” Danielle said, obviously annoyed, then climbed out and headed up the walk toward the home’s front door.
The soldier kept his eyes on Ben while Ben followed Danielle’s progress up the pressed-gravel road to the front door. She knocked briefly, then turned the knob.
The door started inward and Ben watched Danielle freeze just inside instead of proceeding. She had started to swing back toward him when the door slammed closed behind her, and Ben saw the Israeli soldier posted at the car window bringing his Uzi around.
* * * *
CHAPTER 26
B
en hurled himself across the front seat of Danielle’s Jeep, just managing to jerk the barrel of the Uzi aside before the soldier opened fire. The submachine gun’s bullets stitched a jagged design through the Jeep’s upholstery and shattered the rear window.
Ben’s scorched hands continued to cling to the Uzi’s stock and barrel, as the soldier caught him under the chin with the gun’s butt. Stars exploded before his eyes and Ben’s teeth mashed together. His jaw ached as much as his chin, his eyes filling with water that stole his vision.
But he didn’t need totally clear sight to see the soldier had pushed too much of his upper body into the Jeep, sacrificing balance in the process. Ben managed to jerk his own body upward and slammed the soldier’s skull hard against the roof. Still holding the Uzi down, Ben snapped the side of his head up into the soldier’s face.
He felt, actually felt, the man’s nose crush on impact. The bones compressed like an accordian, only they didn’t ease back, and Ben heard the soldier gasp in pain. He could smell blood now, heard the man’s raspy breathing all focused through his mouth. But the man held enough presence of mind to cling to his Uzi, fighting to twist the barrel into Ben’s midsection.
Ben tried to smash the soldier with his skull again, missed, and felt the force of the lost blow shove both of them against the door. One of their flailing arms struck the latch and popped it open, leaving both men to spill out into the road.
* * * *
I
f Danielle had gone for her gun upon seeing one of the real Israeli soldier’s bodies lying across the Katavis’ foyer, she knew she’d be dead now. Instead she had dropped to the floor, her momentum slamming the door closed as bullets split the air above her. Flecks of wood and plaster flew in all directions, coughed up with the thumps of impact.
Danielle rolled and managed to free her pistol, firing in a wide arc toward the figure in a soldier’s uniform that hurled itself over a couch in the home’s living room. Danielle fired into the fabric, watched puffs of stuffing jump into the air. The gunman popped back up over the rear of the couch, firing. His barrage obliterated a trio of family pictures hanging on the wall, and Danielle felt glass and pieces of the Katavis’ memories rain down upon her.
She glimpsed the body of a woman lying just to one side of the couch, while slumped in a chair with a neat bullet wound in his forehead sat a boy she was certain must be Yakov Katavi. Next to him a table
had been spilled over, the computer upon it smashed into oblivion.
But it was the pictures of the Katavis that bothered her the most, just as they had in the Saltzman home. Frozen moments of happy times, now lying torn and tattered between two of the subjects who would never smile for the camera again. The pictures of mother and son more alive than they were.
