by By Jon Land
Danielle hadn’t moved an inch. “Tell me about you and my father. About the money, everything. The truth.”
“Your father saved my life, Pakad.” Hessler took a deep breath. “That’s where the story really begins....”
* * * *
CHAPTER 84
I
n the 1956 war,” Hessler continued, “we were both assigned to a secret detachment sent across the Sinai to infiltrate Egypt and capture Nasser. It was a bold and striking plan, the first embarked upon by those who had grown out of the Haganah rebel force and the even more militant Irgun. We had drilled and trained for months. No one outside of a select few in the military and government knew about the force or the plan. Military records would show that we never actually left our units. Military records would show that the members of our strike force were never even acquainted with each other.
“Our mission failed miserably when we happened upon an Egyptian patrol. Bad timing, coincidence, poor intelligence—the reason didn’t matter. The entire Egyptian patrol, nearly forty men, was slaughtered. In this fierce battle there would never be any record of, though, eight of the dozen in our party were killed outright, two mortally wounded and two critically. I was one of these last two and the other was your father who literally carried me out of the desert on his back.”
Paul Hessler heaved a long, deep sigh.
“A hundred times I begged your father to leave me behind. But, being the stubborn ass that he was, he was hearing none of it, and days later the two of us were spotted by an Israeli helicopter on a reconnaissance mission and rescued.
“I don’t remember any of those final hours myself; your father filled them in for me later. But on that day I swore I would repay him somehow. Years later, once I finally had the financial means to make good on my promise, I appeared at your home in Israel with a check in my wallet. Our mission to take Nasser hostage was so secret we hadn’t seen each other in all the years since. Looking at your father made me realize how much older we both had gotten. I met you that day. Your father introduced us, but I guess you don’t remember.
“Your father, of course, refused the money, and we parted as lifelong friends never to meet again face to face. As soon as I returned to the United States, though, I opened an account in his name and deposited the money in the hope someday he might change his mind.”
Hessler’s voice softened.
“I learned of his death after the funeral had already taken place and tried to figure out how to tell you of the gift that now belongs to you. Over a million dollars, if I remember correctly.”
“What about before?”
“Before what?”
“Before the Sinai, before the Haganah. I’m talking about Germany!”
Hessler shook his head very slowly. “We met only once before the 1956 war, and that was in a refugee camp in 1947. Then we came to Palestine on board the same boat.”
Danielle turned back to look at Mundt.
“He’s lying,” the big man insisted. “Tell her the truth.”
“I have.”
Mundt pushed his way past Ben, eyes bulging, pistol tight in his hand. “You’ve lied all your life!”
“Most of it, yes. But not about this.”
“I saw where you buried Hessler.”
Hessler climbed to his feet frowning, and stared perplexedly at Mundt. “That’s impossible. No one ever found his body. I’m sure of that much.”
“You dressed him in your uniform and coat—”
“Uniform and coat?”
“—and then you shot him.”
“Shot him?” Paul Hessler sounded utterly mystified. He looked dazedly toward Ben Kamal. “Please tell me what this man is talking about. Someone tell me.”
“I’m the son you, Karl Mundt, abandoned, goddamnit!”
A single quick lunge brought Mundt to Hessler before either Ben or Danielle could intervene. He grasped Hessler by his suit jacket’s lapels and slammed him into the faux rock side of the waterfall, hearing the old man’s breath escape him in a rash.
“You ran away and left me for dead after the war. To think, this is the first time I’ve ever seen my father face-to-face. I didn’t know how I would feel. But I know now.”
Hessler’s eyes swam with fear and puzzlement, as he tried to find his breath.
“My mother and I were both dead to you,” Mundt continued. “You had a new life to start. You befriended the real Hessler in the camp just so you could kill him and take his place when the time was right. Weiss saw you do it. Weiss knew everything!”
“Weiss,” Paul Hessler barely managed to repeat.
“The commandant of the labor camp outside Lodz on the road to Leczyca. Remember?”
“No,” Hessler said through a grimace, having finally found his breath. He no longer looked scared. “You’re mistaken. I wasn’t in that camp at all.”
“What?”
Hans Mundt pushed Hessler hard against the side of the waterfall again, but this time the old man seemed not to feel it.
“I’m not Karl Mundt,” he said.
* * * *
CHAPTER 85
A
fter all these years, still you refuse to acknowledge me!”
Hessler looked almost calm now. “Because I’m not your father. Your father is dead. I realize that now.”
“I don’t believe it, not a word of it!” Mundt ranted, still clutching the man he believed was his father by the lapels.
“Then let me show you. I can prove everything I’ve said. I can prove Karl Mundt is dead.”
Paul Hessler felt the big man finally release him, mumbling to himself, trying to make sense of what he had just heard.
Still leaning against the wall, Hessler turned toward Danielle. “I’m sorry about your baby. I hope I am able to help.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Tell her, Inspector.”
“Lot four-sixty-one,” Ben started, wishing he could have chosen a better time to explain. “The reason those four students in Israel and Palestine had to die....”
“I don’t understand.”
Ben looked toward Hessler before responding. “Ari Hessler arranged their deaths to keep a medical discovery secret,” he said and proceeded to explain the existence of Lot 461. He went on to outline the fact that it might be capable of saving the baby she was carrying.
When Ben had finished his story, Danielle was at first speechless. Then she turned back to Paul Hessler. “I’m sorry about your son.”
“I am, too. More than you can possibly know. I feel that he is doubly lost to me. But it is his name, and my family, I must protect now, Pakad. You agree to keep this between us, as Inspector Kamal has proposed, and I will do everything in my power to help you save your own child.”
Danielle found herself overwhelmed by the prospects. The sudden return of hope after a week of misery set her heart beating faster. Still, she found the thought of letting cold-blooded killers go unpunished revolting. But what had duty done for her? Where had it gotten her besides a suspension at the hands of a hateful superior? Danielle had done so much, always everything she was told without question or protest, and this was how she had been treated in return.
“When can we do this?” she asked Hessler.
“I don’t know, Pakad. I’ll put experts on your case immediately. We can draw blood tonight at my institute and begin the process. It might take months. It might happen too late to be of any good to you.”
“I’ll take that chance. The quicker we get started the better.”
Paul Hessler looked back at Hans Mundt. “As soon as you have all heard the true story.”
* * * *
A
nna Krieger’s ford Explorer was stopped at a traffic light in view of the Towers when she saw a pair of dark Suburbans emerge from the private underground garage. The powerfully built security men standing on either side of the open bay made sure the vehicles had merged safely into traffic before retreating down the ra
mp.
Anna felt the hairs on her neck prickle and stand on end, like those of an animal catching the scent.
Could Paul Hessler be inside one of those Suburbans? Why else would there be such a security presence?
Still unsure of exactly how she was going to proceed, Anna lifted the tiny walkie-talkie to her ravaged lips. “I think I have Hessler in view. Proceed on my tail.”
* * * *
H
essler insisted that his chief of security, Franklin Russett, drive them himself to their destination, while six of his guards—ex-soldiers, all—followed in the second Suburban.
Hessler sat next to Russett in the front seat, didn’t speak until they had pulled out of the garage. “I’m going to ask you some questions, Russett. Answer truthfully and no recriminations will come of it. You have my word. Is that agreeable?”
Russett checked the car’s other occupants in the rear-view mirror, seeming to sense where this was going. He nodded in assent.
“Mr. Russett,” Hessler resumed, “in Israel did you use your considerable contacts to help my son Ari retain the services of a number of professionals with a certain deadly expertise?”
“They weren’t all Israeli.”
“Please answer my question.”
‘Yes, sir, I did.”
Paul Hessler fought to remain calm. “These men, I just learned, were retained to murder high school students. Is that correct?”
“They were hired to preserve the interests of Hessler Industries, sir. Each of them top of the line. Very discreet as well, if that’s where your concern lies.”
“My concern lies with the fact that you helped my son become a murderer.”
“In the best interests of the company, sir.”
“Ari’s words or yours?”
“Both of us, sir. We were after criminals, blackmailers. I reported the fact they were high school students to your son once the first was identified. He ordered the operation to go forward anyway and, for the record, I agreed with him.”
“And your killers continued their work even after my son’s death?”
“I made sure of it.”
“I appreciate your honesty.”
“I’m not proud of what I did, sir, but if I—”
“I’ve heard enough, thank you, Mr. Russett.” Paul Hessler swung round to face the others. “I’m sorry. This is something I will always be deeply ashamed of. If there was a way to make things right, if there was anything I could do ...”
“I hope you’re not talking to me,” Hans Mundt snapped from the rear-most seat.
“Inspector Kamal and Chief Inspector Barnea just got their answers, Herr Mundt. Yours are coming soon.”
“Why can’t you just tell me?”
“Did you come to find your father or not, Herr Mundt?”
“You know I did.”
“Then you will leave satisfied, too.”
Hessler looked toward Danielle. “Once we are finished, we will go straight to the Institute, Pakad, to begin the process. You understand there are no guarantees of success whatsoever and plenty of risk.”
“I’m used to those kinds of terms.”
“My experts will advise you that Lot four-sixty-one has been tried only on terminal patients for whom potentially fatal doses are not a concern. They will say they have no idea how much of the programmed substance to use in treating an unborn fetus, much less what the side effects might be.”
“Whatever they are,” said Danielle, looking back at Ben, “they’re better than genetic termination.”
Ben nodded, happy he could do this for her, all the while wishing he didn’t have to in such an underhanded fashion. Had he become the kind of person he had spent his career hunting, a man willing to do anything to further his own ends?
But he owed Danielle that much. In spite of their recent estrangement, she had taught him to live and hope again. Now, thanks to Paul Hessler and Lot 461, he had been able to do the same for her.
“You still haven’t told us where we’re going,” Ben noted.
“Just over the New Jersey border,” Hessler said, as Franklin Russett pushed the lead Suburban through the night. “Palisades Park.”
* * * *
T
he thwock of the doors of the two Suburbans closing came one after the other. They had pulled both vehicles through the steel fence enclosing the property on which the castle had been rebuilt, high on the cliffs of Palisades State Park overlooking the Hudson River. Scaffolding remained in place over a large measure of the castle wall so workmen could complete their reconstruction efforts.
Even that, though, did little to detract from the awesome scope of the site. The wall was uneven, high in some places and lower in others, just as it had been five hundred years before. The moonlight and spray of the floods powered by industrial-strength generators was bright enough for Ben and Danielle to see the slitted holes, high up in the topmost battlements, through which arrows could be shot and spears hurled with virtual impunity. Paul Hessler’s restoration efforts had been so complete and exacting that the entire group stared in amazement.
The only portion not completed was a gap that would soon be filled by a fully functional gatehouse and mechanical gate that in ancient times would have helped keep enemies from gaining access. Tonight that chasm opened into a spacious courtyard that fronted the castle itself. Hessler led the way across it with Franklin Russett clinging stubbornly to his side. Russett had left the armed guards who had accompanied them posted near the entrances of both the fence and the castle.
Once inside, Hessler ordered Russett to wait for them at the bottom of the narrow stone stairway that spiraled upward through the central tower. Russett protested, but Hessler was adamant and took the lead up the dimly lit stairs as his security chief looked on in consternation.
“I told him if you wanted to kill me, I’d be dead already,” Hessler said, setting a slow but steady pace.
“I haven’t made my decision yet,” Hans Mundt reminded.
Hessler didn’t respond. Danielle could see a composed look in his eyes and detected an almost soothing, complacent sound in his voice. She couldn’t identify exactly when or why it had happened. But clearly something had changed in Hessler. A weight seemed to have been lifted from him; not enough to compensate for the loss of his son, of course, nor to mitigate the crimes for which Ari was responsible, but considerable all the same.
Struggling for breath by the time they reached the top tower room, Hessler sat down on the stone bench and held its edge with both hands, gazing about the tower almost reverently.
“I remember seeing this place from the forest, coming here to seek refuge from the storm. It saved my life.”
“All that is well known,” chided Mundt impatiently. “Already part of the great Hessler legend.”
“There’s one part no one has ever heard until now.”
“And what’s that?”
“I wasn’t alone.”
* * * *
CHAPTER 86
T
errified and freezing, Paul Hessler first dismissed the sounds as rats, or even larger animals foraging in the floors above. It was only when he listened closer, able to filter out the storm beyond, that he recognized the sounds as the clatter of boots on a stone floor like the one on which he had collapsed.
Perhaps someone else had taken refuge from the storm here in the abandoned castle, someone perhaps willing to share food and maybe a change of clothes.
His soaking shoes sloshed noisily as Paul began to climb the stairs, and he sat down to squeeze some of the water from them before continuing. He didn’t want to give his presence away and risk startling the castle’s other guest until he absolutely had to. So he trudged on slowly, careful to avoid a misplaced step in what quickly became near total darkness.
The luscious scent of birch wood flaming in a hearth reached him just before he heard the crackling as the flames ate at the bark. He imagined embers rising through one of the chimney stack
s he had glimpsed from beyond and again blessed his luck.
Recharged, Paul Hessler continued on, stopping at the stop of the stairs in a doorway to find a figure roasting what looked like a small rabbit in the fire over a makeshift spit. Paul didn‘t speak, just shuffled slightly forward and waited for the figure to turn.
