Hatteras Blue (20 page)

The next chord rolled over the scattered audience, cut into the susurration of her breath. She stood watching him, ready to run, but he did not move.

"Who are you?" she said, her throat unlocking at last Hie feet that he was so old calmed her a bit

He had taken something from inside his suit coat and was holding it up. She bent closer cautiously. Some kind of folder, leather, with a card inside.

"Perhaps you can't read it in this light My name is Yitzhak Ruderman, Miss Hirsch. I am of the Mossad. You may recognize us as the major Israeli intelligence agency."

This time the shock was less. She still stared, but now she could speak. "Intelligence? I don't understand. Why did you try to—"

"Kill you?" Ruderman chuckled apologetically, though the shadowed eyes did not change. "A mistake. A flawed interpretation of orders based on an incomplete understanding of the situation. We seldom operate that way, I assure you. And really, we didn't know you'd be aboard."

"I see," she said, though she didn't "What do you want?"

"Can we find a less public place to talk?"

She hesitated as he pointed back down the street Should she? She wished she had more street experience, knew her job better. Would it be dumb to go with him? She wished for Galloway, even Keyes, but there was no one near, not even strangers. Finally she decided that she would. He was so old and frail she felt she could handle him, as long as he was alone. She put her hand in her purse, as if there was a gun in it "All right. Just for a moment. I warn you—I'm a law officer."

"I understand."

The car was different Instead of the Mercedes this was a Buick, new, shining some undefinable but bright color under the starlight It was the one she'd walked around a hundred feet up the road This made her wonder how long he'd been watching her. She slid into the passenger side, keeping the door open and her eyes on him. He closed his door, took out a pack of cigarettes, and offered her one silently. "No, thank you," she said. "I quit"

"A moment ago—"

"I mean, I'm trying to."

"Ah," he said. He lit his with a small gold lighter. As it illuminated his face she saw sad eyes, graying hair. He puffed for several seconds, as if organizing his thoughts.

"Bernice Hirsch. Twenty-three years old. Born in New York, Orthodox family. Honor student in high school. Two years at Cornell, two more at Columbia Political involvement, demonstrations against nuclear arms and against repression of Soviet Jews. Religious involvement since high school, none. Graduated with a degree in psychology. Came to North Carolina after her parents ended her affair with a married doctor. Now a parole officer with Dare County, living alone in a rented cottage in Kitty Hawk." He glanced at her.

The only thing she could say was, "So you're a good boy, you do your homework."

'Tell me, Miss Hirsch. How did a nice Jewish girl from New York end up in North Carolina?"

"That's my business. Maybe I wanted to get away from all that nice Jewishness. Why?"

"Because we want you to do something for us, Miss Hirsch. Something important to our country."

'You mean Israel, don't you?"

"That is our country. Yours and mine. The country is the people and the people are Israel."

"Wait a minute, Mr.—Mr. Ruderman. You're assuming way too much. I left that behind when I left Cornell. That doctor you mentioned was Pakistani. I'm not ... I'm just not into being a Jewish princess anymore."

He settled deeper into his seat, half-turned toward her. In the darkness she could see his silhouette and the dying star of the cigarette. "Oh? But being what you are is not something you can run away from. It's not a matter of choice. You are what you are from the moment you are conceived. The world did not begin with us. To deny our blood changes nothing; its laws operate whether we acknowledge them or not We merely deny our deepest selves."

"Nice try, but tough luck My guilt gland doesn't work anymore. Let me tell you something you missed, Mr. Ruderman."

"I want to hear it"

"My father lost his first family. They left Germany before the war and went to Paris. The Nazis caught them there. I don't know what he had to do to survive. He never talked about it To the end of his life he never bought anything made in Germany."

She had a sudden image of her father while she spoke, of his wary, shielded eyes, mouth always closed. And then, immediately, of his face above her all the Fridays of her childhood, candlelight in his beard, his heavy hand on her head. Looking full at the light he would mumble, his mouth still nearly closed, asking God to make her like Sarah, Rebecca, Rachel, Leah; his eyes defenseless then, but still inaccessible, distant and hurt, unreachable now by anything in this world. "He was a good man."

"And?"

"He died of cancer. Terribly. All his piety and mitzvahs, good works, they were useless. So maybe it's naive. But I just can't believe in a god who does that It's easier not to be a Jew."

"You're a bitter young woman. But forgive me, this is not a new story. I—"

She was suddenly violently angry. Why was she telling him all this? "Forget it. I don't want to discuss it, damn you! Why don't you just tell me what you want?"

"All right. I will try to make it simple for you. We want the man who hired your boat"

"Keyes?"

"What he calls himself doesn't matter. His real name is Erich Straeter. He was
Schutzstaffel
SS."

"Him? No way! He's way too young."

"They took them very young during the last year of the war. And a little dye, a little exercise—he does not look his age, that's true. But it is Straeter."

She was still suspicious, but she thought it over. If it was true ... perhaps that was why she felt so strange around him. Why he'd made that scene, why he looked at her and brushed against her in the close quarters of the boat She'd thought it was sexual, but...

Ruderman seemed to guess what she was thinking. "Many of them took a special interest in young Polish and Jewish girls. They liked to cause them pain. In ways, my dear, that I would not like to have to describe."

"If he is SS," she said slowly, "or was—why are you telling me? What do you want me to do about it? Help you capture him, put him on trial, like Eichmann?"

Ruderman finished the cigarette. He chain-lit another, and the spent butt made a fiery arc into darkness. "No. Capturing him is secondary. We'll get him. But first we want what he came here for."

"He came to the Banks for some kind of salvage. That's all I know."

"We know that, of course. He is looking for a wreck on the sea bottom off the cape."

"If you know everything, why bother to talk to me?"

'You'll see. He has found what he wanted?"

"Well—yes, I think he has."

The red glow twitched. "And what was it, Miss Hirsch? If you don't mind telling me."

"I don't see why not I heard Tiller say, after they came up, that it was some kind of submarine."

"Ah," said the old man softly. "Ah. Very good."

"Now you can tell me something. What's this— Schroeder—■"

"Straeter."

"What is he after? What's down there? A weapon, or something?"

"A weapon?" the shadowed man repeated. "No. More dangerous. Any weapon of those days could kill only a few."

"I don't understand you."

"It's gold. A lot of it. From all over Eastern Europe. From the Holocaust, Miss Hirsch. Pried from Jewish pockets by terror and from our mouths by murder. For that gold, rivers of blood."

She was silent He went on, his voice intimate in the closed car. "Enough, girl, to pay thousands of troops, buy thousands of guns. Straeter, and the other leaders, are ready. They have preserved their ideology for decades, waiting like a seed. They think now it is spring. In South America they will present themselves as a bulwark against communism from Cuba and Nicaragua They will speak a different language this time. Wear different uniforms. But they have the same goals. All they need is what is out there."

A shadowy^ hand waved toward the waterfront, and by extension, she supposed, toward the dark sea beyond. The cold voice seemed to turn toward her. "There are over a million Jews in South America, Miss Hirsch. Perhaps your father never told you what the Holocaust was like. But you must have imagined it, you must have heard. Will you let that begin again?"

"Why don't you just go to the FBI, or something, and have him arrested?"

"Think, Miss Hirsch. Any such funds are ours by right, and we intend to have them, but how could we prove that? We are better off without official attention. In that respect this man's penchant for secrecy, his arrangements with your friend, are admirable. We will let them recover it for us. We are, after all, operating in a foreign country. Publicity could embarrass us—and could lose us what is rightfully ours."

A clock ticked on the dashboard. That was the only sound. After a moment she said, 'You must have some reason for telling me all this."

When the old man opened the glove compartment a courtesy light came on.

"This is a shortwave radio, Miss Hirsch."

"I think—can I borrow your lighter?"

He held the flame for her while she lit one of her own. She tossed her hair back and glanced at the thing. It looked like the beeper Dr. Jamail used to carry when he came to her apartment in Prospect Park.

"So? What about it?"

"We will monitor this frequency day and night All you need do is signal us when the gold is aboard
Victory,:"

"If I did ... what would happen then?"

"We would handle everything after that."

She paused, then shook her head. "No, Mr. Ruderman. Sorry to disappoint you, but I'm not getting involved in this mess any deeper. I'd planned to go home tomorrow, before Tiller sails again. I think I'll stick with that."

'You won't help us?"

"I really don't see any reason to. You sound perfectly capable of handling the situation."

Ruderman smiled. "Well—I won't argue that. But we do need you, Bernice. I won't offer you money. That would be an insult. But I have to point out one other thing."

"What?"

"Galloway."

"What about him?"

"He's in this too."

"Sure he is. I mean, it looks like it. But I'm sure he doesn't know anything about this, this Straeter—about his past. It's just a paycheck to Tiller. You won't implicate him, will you? I have to have your promise."

'You have it." Ruderman smiled. "In fact, he deserves to be paid well for what will be hard and dangerous work. We would be generous to Mr. Galloway. Considerably more so than his current employer."

"What do you mean?"

"A man like Straeter would never leave him alive with such a secret. He will kill Galloway, and of course the black man as well, as soon as he can dispense with them. He has already killed Mr. Aydlett's father."

"What!"

"Burned his house," said Ruderman calmly. "With him in it. He was an old man. Blind."

Hirsch shivered. She looked at the radio, then picked it up. It was surprisingly light.

"We need no promises from you, Miss Hirsch. Simply take it back aboard with you. If you don't become convinced that I am telling the truth about Straeter, throw it overboard. But if you are, if you see that you and the others are in danger, use it."

She slipped it into her shoulder bag.

"Remember," he said softly, as she opened the door, 'You must call us at once when it is aboard. Don't delay a moment; that is the point when he will become truly dangerous."

Outside, on the road, she looked back to see him leaning out of the driver's side, watching her. She turned back, suddenly, on impulse. "One more question."

'Tes, Miss Hirsch."

"The note. The message you gave me, when we first met ... what did that mean? Who is Tarnhelm?"

The old man chuckled softly. "It's not a person. The Nazis were in love with Nordic mythology, the idea of the Gotterdammerung, the fall of the gods. The Tarnhelm was a kind of magic that could prevent it, or some say rebuild Valhalla after its destruction. It's meaningless, it was just their code name for the gold ... but Straeter, you see, recognized it immediately. Didn't he?"

She remembered his expression, that moment of surprise before he'd feigned puzzlement "You're right, he did."

He said nothing more. Yet she lingered, looking back at him. In the faint wash of starlight he still looked sinister, but she saw now that he was not. In a way he was heroic. An unobtrusive old man... "Thank you," she whispered. "For the warning. For the help."

He made a weary gesture. "Shalom, child. Go in peace."

* # ♦

Galloway sat on the pier and watched the sky.

One of the finest things about the Banks, he was thinking, was the stars. No city skygiow to wipe them out. No concrete and steel to ^ar you from them. If you were free enough, if you cotiid reach high enough ... they hung just out of his grasp overhead, glowing and shimmering in thousands. Burning like the napalm rush of coke against a night black as the inside of your skull when night bell rang and the block lights went out and you slid under the blanket and crossed off another day of your sentence, another day of the one life you had been given and had thoroughly soiled, ruined, and destroyed.