Mount Dragon (31 page)

“My name is Jacob Perlstein,” he said. “I am a historian with the Holocaust Research Foundation in Washington.”

“Ah, yes. I know your work well. Your reputation is without peer.” Perlstein was known around the world for the unflagging zeal with which he brought to light old records from Nazi death camps and the Jewish ghettos of eastern Europe. Levine settled into his chair, puzzled by the man's hostile air.

“I will come to the point,” the man said, his black eyes peering at Levine through contracted eyebrows.

Levine nodded.

“You have claimed that your Jewish father saved Jewish lives in Poland. He was caught by the Nazis and murdered by Mengele at Auschwitz.”

Levine did not like the wording of the question, but he said nothing.

“Murdered through medical experimentation. Is that correct?”

“Yes,” said Levine.

“And how do you know this?” the man asked.

“Excuse me, Mr. Perlstein, but I'm not sure I appreciate the tone of your questions.”

Perlstein continued to stare at him. “The question is simple enough. I would like you to tell me how you know this.”

Levine strove to conceal his irritation. He had told this story in countless interviews and at innumerable fund-raisers. Surely Perlstein had heard it before. “Because I did the research myself. I knew my father had died at Auschwitz, but that was all. My mother died when I was very young. I
had
to know what happened to him. So I spent almost four months in East Germany and Poland, combing Nazi files. It was a dangerous time, and I was doing dangerous work. When I found out—well, you can imagine how I felt. It changed my view of science, of medicine. It gave me deeply ambivalent feelings about genetic engineering, which in turn—”

“The files on your father,” the man interrupted brusquely. “Where did you find them?”

“In Leipzig, where all such files are kept. Surely you already know this.”

“And your mother, pregnant, escaped, and brought you to America. You took her name, Levine, rather than your father's name, Berg.”

“That's correct.”

“A touching story,” said Perlstein. “Odd that Berg is not a commonly Jewish name.”

Levine sat up. “I don't like the tone of your voice, Mr. Perlstein. I must ask you to say whatever it is you've come to say, and leave.”

The man opened his briefcase and took out a folder, which he laid distastefully on the edge of Levine's desk. “Please examine these documents.” He pushed the folder toward Levine with the edge of his fingers.

Opening the folder, Levine found a thin sheaf of photocopied documents. He recognized them immediately: the faded gothic typeface, the stamped swastikas, brought back memories of those horrible weeks behind the Iron Curtain, sifting through boxes of paper in damp archives, when only an overwhelming desire to know the truth had kept him going.

The first document was a color reproduction of a Nazi ID card, identifying one Heinrich Berg as an Oberstürmfuhrer in the
Schutzstaffel
—the German SS—stationed at the concentration camp of Ravensbrueck. The photograph still appeared to be in excellent shape, the family resemblance extraordinary.

He pawed through the rest of the papers quickly, in growing disbelief. There were camp documents, prison rosters, a report from the army company that liberated Ravensbrueck, a letter from a survivor bearing an Israeli postmark, and a sworn affidavit. The documents showed that a young woman from Poland named Miyrna Levine had been sent to Ravensbrueck for “processing.” While there, she had come into contact with Berg, become his mistress, and later been transferred to Auschwitz. There she had survived the war by informing on resistance movements within the camp.

Levine looked at Perlstein. The man was staring back, the eyes dry and accusatory.

“How dare you peddle these lies,” Levine hissed when he had at last found his voice.

Perlstein's breath rasped inward. “So, you continue to deny. I expected as much. How dare
you
peddle
your
lies! Your father was an SS officer and your mother a traitor who sent hundreds to their deaths. You are not personally guilty of your parents' sins. But the lie you are living compounds their evil, and makes a mockery of the work you do. You claim to be searching for truth for everyone else, yet the truth doesn't apply to you. You—who allowed your father's name to be carved among the righteous at Yad Vashem: Heinrich Berg, an SS officer! It is an insult to the true martyrs. And this insult shall be made known.” The man's hands trembled as they clutched the leather case.

Levine struggled to remain calm. “These documents are forgeries, and you are a fool to believe them. The East German communists were famous for faking—”

“Since this was brought to my attention several days ago, the originals have been examined by three independent experts in Nazi documents. They are absolutely genuine. There can be no mistake.”

Suddenly, Levine was on his feet. “Get out!” he screamed. “You're just a tool for the revisionists. Get out, and take this filth with you!” He stepped forward, raising one arm threateningly above his head.

The elderly man tried to snatch the folder, ducking in alarm, and the contents spilled onto the floor. Ignoring them, he retreated to the outer office, then out into the corridor beyond. Levine slammed his office door and leaned against it, the pulse hammering in his head. It was an outrageous, vicious lie, and he would clear it up quickly…he had certified copies of the real documents, thank God…he would simply hire an expert to debunk the forgeries. The slander against his murdered father was like a stab through the heart, but this was not the first time he had been foully attacked and it would not be the last—

His eye fell on the folder, its documents and their filthy lies lying scattered across the floor, and a sudden, terrible thought struck him.

He rushed to a locked filing cabinet, jammed in a key, and reached for a folder marked, simply, “Berg.”

The folder was empty.

“
Scopes
,” he whispered.

The next day, with a tone of infinite regret, the
Boston Globe
carried the story on the front page of its second section.

Muriel Page, a volunteer for the Salvation Army store on Pearl Street, watched the young man with the slept-on hair pawing through a rack of sport coats. It was the second time he had come in that week, and Muriel couldn't help feeling sorry for him. He didn't look like a self-medicator—he was clean and alert—no doubt just a young man down on his luck. He had a boyish, slightly awkward face that reminded her of her own grown son, married now and living in California. Except this young man was so
thin
. He certainly wasn't eating right.

The young man flipped through the rack at high speed, glancing at the jackets as they went by.

He stopped suddenly and pulled one out, sliding it on over his black T-shirt as he walked toward a nearby mirror. Muriel, watching out of the corner of her eye, had to admire the man's taste. It was a very nice jacket, with narrow lapels and little overlapping triangles and squares in red and yellow floating on a field of black. Probably dated from the early fifties. Very stylish, but not something—she thought a little mournfully—that most young men today would like. Clothes had been so much classier when she was a young lady.

The young man turned around, examined himself from various angles, and grinned. He came walking toward the counter, and Muriel knew she had a sale.

She removed the tag. “Five dollars,” she said with a cheerful smile.

The young man's face fell behind the black glasses. “Oh,” he said. “I was hoping…”

Muriel hesitated for just an instant. The five dollars probably represented several meals to him, and he looked hungry. She leaned forward and spoke conspiratorially. “I'll let you have it for three, if you won't tell anyone.” She fingered the sleeve. “That's real wool, too.”

The man brightened, smoothing his unruly cowlick with a self-conscious hand. “Very kind of you,” he said, fishing in his pocket and removing three crumpled bills.

“It's a lovely jacket,” Muriel said. “When I was a young lady, a man wearing a jacket like that…well!” She winked. The young man stared back at her, and instantly she felt silly. Briskly, she wrote out a receipt and handed it to him. “I hope you enjoy it,” she said.

“I will.”

She leaned forward again. “You know, just across the street we have a very nice place where you can get a bite of hot food. It's free and there are no strings attached.”

The man looked suspicious. “No religious harangues?”

“None at all. We don't believe in forcing religion on people. Just a hot, nourishing meal. All we require is that you be sober and drug-free.”

“Really?” he asked. “I thought the Salvation Army was a religious group of some kind.”

“We are. But a hungry person isn't likely to be thinking about spiritual salvation, just his next meal. Feed the body and you free the soul.”

The man thanked her and exited. Taking a covert peek out the window, she was gratified to see him head directly for the soup kitchen, take a tray at the door, and get in line, striking up a conversation with the man in front of him.

Muriel felt a tear well up in her eye. That absentminded, slightly lost expression was so much like her son's. She hoped that whatever had gone wrong in his life would straighten itself out before too long.

The following morning, the Pearl Street Salvation Army store and soup kitchen received an anonymous donation in the amount of a quarter of a million dollars, and no one was more surprised than Muriel Page when she was told it was in honor of her work.

Carson and de Vaca walked silently down the trail and back to the Mount Dragon complex. Outside the covered walkway leading to the residency compound, they stopped.

“So?” de Vaca prompted, breaking the silence.

“So what?”

“You still haven't told me if you're going to help me find the notebook,” she said in a fierce whisper.

“Susana, I've got work to do. So do you, for that matter. That notebook, if it exists, isn't going anywhere. Let me think about this a while. OK?”

De Vaca looked at him for a moment. Then she turned without a word and walked into the compound.

Carson watched her walk away. Then, with a sigh, he climbed the staircase to the second floor, stepping through the doorway into the cool, dark corridor beyond. Maybe Teece had been right about Burt's secret notebook. And maybe de Vaca was right about Nye. In which case, what Teece thought didn't matter as much anymore. But what concerned Carson most was that horrible moment on top of Mount Dragon, when he'd suddenly felt the strength of his convictions turn soft. Since his father died and the last ranch had failed, Carson's love of science—his faith in the good it could accomplish—had meant everything to him. Now, if…

 

But he wouldn't think about it any more today. Maybe tomorrow, he'd have the strength to face it again.

Back in his room, Carson stared at the drab white walls for a minute, summoning the energy to switch on his laptop and begin sorting through the X-FLU II test data. His eye fell upon the battered banjo case.

Hell with it
, he thought. He'd play a little; without picks, to keep the noise down. Just five minutes, maybe ten. Get his mind off all this. Then he'd get to work.

As he lifted the five-string from the case, his eye fell on a folded piece of paper lying on the yellowing felt beneath. Frowning, he picked it up and unfolded it on his knee.