Ring of Lies (28 page)

The envelope was throbbing in Alex's pocket. Taking the S-Bahn was too dangerous. There were security cameras everywhere.

The obese cabdriver's body spilled over the seat. His chubby fingers were strangled by gaudy rings. The radio chattered quietly, and pale lines of text flickered on the display unit. Traffic was inching westward along 17th of June Street. It was dark in the back of the cab. The answers were waiting for him in the envelope. He would have to be patient.

The cabbie's round eyes glanced at him in the mirror. Alex ordered him to stop in Charlottenburg, just before the on-ramp to the A100 autobahn. He paid the fare and climbed out, and then rode southward in the company of an elderly Turkish driver who hummed to himself the whole way.

Alex got out in Grunewald center and made it the rest of the way by foot, the envelope and its secrets blazing in his pocket. He entered the yard of the late Justus Erlichmann, and rain mixed with snow began falling. The Glock was still in the doghouse. He opened the door, kept still, and listened.

A quick check of the large house revealed nothing. He sat down at the breakfast bar in the kitchen, opened the sealed envelope, and spread out the folded sheets of paper.

The clock on the wall ticked solemnly.

The dozens of items in Justus's estate were listed in meticulous detail over two pages. This was followed by a clause relating
to Gunter: a large sum was to be set aside to provide for the care and burial of his elderly father should he outlive his son.

The shocker was contained in the next clause: Justus Erlichmann willed his entire estate to two individuals.

Alex instructed Butthead to find out who they were and to pass the information on to Exodus. It would take time.

He went over in his mind what he'd discovered, but he could find no logical explanation. A man and woman were about to learn that they had each come into more than half a billion euros in real estate, artwork, and German government bonds. Alex stared at the two names on the sheet of paper in front of him.

They meant nothing to him.

“Turn the place upside down,” Paris said, his eyes flashing. “I'm going to find him.”

“Maybe he has another apartment in the building?” Orchidea suggested.

“I don't think so,” he said as he left. She heard his footsteps running up the stairs.

Inside the apartment, time had stopped in the seventies. The sparse furnishings conveyed a sense of emptiness.

The spartan bedroom contained nothing more than a bed, a chair, and a wardrobe. On the floor by the bed was a pile of three books, with a rectangular magnifying glass on top. She moved them apart with her foot. One was Nietzsche's
Beyond Good and Evil
in the original German, another a German guide to medicinal herbs. The last book was missing its cover, the tattered pages held together with a thick orange rubber band. Scraps of newspaper marked several pages. She bent down and picked it up. In small letters at the top of the page:
Adolf Hitler
. On the opposite page:
Mein Kampf
.

She dropped the book in repulsion and wiped her fingers on her coat. Gripping her gun, she aimed it ahead of her at a low angle as she opened the wardrobe. Cheap, old clothes and the smell of plain laundry powder and mothballs.

In the kitchen she found a small table and a single straight-backed chair. The corner of the refrigerator door was held to
gether with a wide strip of masking tape. It was empty except for a few fruits and vegetables and some odd-looking seeds in a glass jar.

A transistor radio stood on the yellowing marble countertop, its brown leather casing scratched and cracked. Two bowls were on the floor, one holding water and the other a few scraps of dog food.

The bathtub was stained with rust. The cabinet revealed medicine bottles and suppositories, a red first-aid kit, and a tub of Vaseline.

The living room was bare save for an ancient television perched on a wooden crate in front of a worn upholstered armchair. A door led out to the balcony, but it was covered by a dusty blind; the pull tape was torn.

The study was furnished solely with a desk and a wooden chair. On the corner of the desk sat a pile of papers and documents arranged in perfect order, all the edges lined up. Beside it was a magnifying glass the size of an appetizer plate and an older-generation computer with a boxy monitor. The computer wasn't on. The only up-to-date item in the whole apartment lay next to the keyboard: a flash drive.

Orchidea downloaded the contents onto her phone. The drive held a single PowerPoint file.

She opened it.

Paris reached the
top of the stairs, turned on his flashlight, and held it alongside his silenced gun. He pushed on the creaking door and stepped out onto the dark roof. As he spun to the right, the flashlight picked up a jumble of small satellite dishes. He
shifted to the left. The old man was sitting on a stool, trapped in the sudden beam of light. He was gazing at a wooden cage with rusty metal netting.

He turned toward Paris slowly, and his jaw dropped.

Paris rushed at him. The sunglasses were gone. The man's left eye socket was empty.

Paris swallowed.

The old man raised his hands in the air, mumbling in Arabic.

Paris remained silent.

“No money,” the man stuttered in English. The open door to the stairs shed murky light on the roof.

Paris gestured with his gun for the man to get up and stand by the wall of the stairwell.

The old man didn't move.

Paris came closer, pressing the silencer to his throat.

“No money!”

“Shut up and get going!”

The old man rose. From up close he looked shorter, older, and frailer. His clothing smelled of old age. Paris searched his skeletal body. Touching him made his flesh creep. Skin and bones and empty pockets, aside from the old cellphone. Two simple keys hung from a rusty ring attached to his belt.

“What do you want?” the old man asked, his chin trembling.

“Sit down.”

The old man didn't move.

“
Sitz!
” Paris commanded.

He sat down. “Who are you?”

Paris took up position behind him and remained silent.

“What do you want?”

“Take off your gloves!”

“What?”

Paris pressed the silencer to his scrawny neck and bent over. “Take off your gloves and stop asking questions.”

The beam of light quivered around the old man as he slowly removed his right glove. His hand was shrunken, dotted with dozens of liver spots.

“Your bodyguard is dead,” Paris informed him. “There's no point trying to buy time.”

A look of disgust spread over the old man's face. He removed his left glove.

Paris's heart started racing.

The only finger that remained on the left hand was the thumb.

The gun was shaking in Paris's hand. He looked into the distance and hugged himself. The red warning lights on top of Mount Qasioun were blurred by his tears.

27 J
ULY
1944

We were in the Catacombs. Charlotte burst in, agitated, and shouted, Get back to the café, fast!

What happened? I asked.

She handed me a gun.

I flew up the stairs and ran as fast as I could. A Gestapo truck was standing in front of the café behind the commandant's black car.

Didier the shopkeeper grabbed my arm. Don't go, he said. It would be a shame to remember Jasmine this way.

Did he hurt her? I asked.

Didier burst into tears and embraced me.

And the children?

I am so sorry, Didier wept. Run, Roger, run! At least save yourself, he called after me. I ran off and, mad with despair, climbed to the roof of the building that overlooked the café. I crawled to the edge of the roof and saw the commandant below, screaming, throwing objects around, and smashing tables and chairs.

Jasmine and Sophie and Albert were nowhere to be seen.

The Gestapo men climbed back into the truck. The commandant came out of the café carrying a tin container. He sprayed the remainder of its contents over the smashed tables and straw chairs lying on the sidewalk. He screamed something in German, and everyone moved back. Then he tossed the butt of his cigar over his shoulder into
the dark puddle. Everything burst into flames. The fire climbed rapidly up to our apartment and began to consume everything.

Curious onlookers stared. Acquaintances wrung their hands. The firemen arrived too late. I lay on the edge of the roof and cried as the water flowed black from the burning café to the sidewalk, carrying with it the remains of my dear ones; of what I once was; of my life and my family—of all that I loved. A terrible pain cut through my heart. I have no country, no home, no family.

A stranger's hand stroked my head. Someone embraced me at the edge of the roof.

The deputy commandant.

Thick smoke darkened the street. Something exploded behind the café. Perhaps the small gas tanks.

I pray only that my dear ones were already dead when the flames engulfed them. I lay on the edge of the roof, the terrible smell of smoke and congealed tar filling my nose. I thought of hurling myself to the street. For I would never, never find consolation.

I remain alone in the world, uprooted, cut off from all that made me who I am.

We are like brothers, the deputy commandant said. We shall always be brothers.

He embraced me. We wept together.

“Justus ratted us out!” Orchidea called up to the dark roof. She saw the small moon of light cast by the flashlight, and then the silhouettes of Paris and the old man.

She waved the flash drive. “It's all here.”

“What?!” Paris called in a choked voice, keeping the flashlight on the old man, who was snarling like a wild animal.

Her eyes gradually adjusted to the darkness. She came closer. Paris seemed agitated. “What's wrong?” she asked.

Taking advantage of the distraction, the old man rose with surprising agility and headed for the stairs. Paris leaped at him and grabbed him by the coat.

“Tell her who you are!” he snapped, his voice cracking.

“Don't shout,” she said. “Someone might hear you.”

“I . . . I am George Fischer. I am a Syrian citizen.”

“Keep lying and I'll gouge out your other eye,” Paris said, catching him in a headlock.

“That's the name on his papers,” she confirmed.

“What do you want from me?” the old man pleaded.

Paris forced him back down on the stool.

“He's ninety-nine,” he said.

“Unbelievable!” she exclaimed.

“Who are you people?” the old man said, raising his voice.

“I found a PowerPoint file on his flash drive,” she told Paris. “He has a partner in Germany who's responsible for organizing the killing of the Nibelungs. The Mukhabarat surveilled them, and then the Germans took them out. There's a video that shows Justus telling them everything he knows about the Ring and how it operates, about the Orchid Farm and the inhalers. The filthy traitor. He sold us out.”

“No way!” Paris sputtered. Bending over, he shrieked into the old man's face, “Do you know who I am?”

He aimed the flashlight at the German's face.

The man shook his head.

“You raped my father's first wife!”

“What?”

“You murdered her, and you murdered her children!”

“What do you want from me?”

“You burned them alive in a café in Paris!”

Fischer's face fell. His one eye gaped. “Who the hell are you?” he shouted in rage.

“My name is Trezeguet.
Trezeguet!
Gerard Trezeguet!”

The old man froze. The blood drained from his face.

“And you're going to die today!”

“Who is he?” Orchidea asked.

“I'm George Fischer,” the old man said beseechingly.

“Liar!” Gerard screamed.

“So who is he?” she repeated.

“He's a Nazi war criminal.”

“What?” The roof seemed to shake under her feet.

“He was the commandant of the Drancy concentration camp.”

Paris's chin was trembling.

“He sent one hundred and twenty-five thousand Jews to their death!”

His breathing was labored, his chest rising and falling.

“He is SS-Hauptsturmführer Alois Brunner!”

“From France alone, he sent twenty-four thousand Jews to Auschwitz,” Gerard went on.

“But, Gerard,” she said. It felt strange to call him by his real name. “Alois Brunner is dead.”

“Not yet!”

Without warning, he grabbed the old man's head and stuck his fingers into his mouth.

“What are you doing?” she cried out.

Gerard's strong fingers nearly dislocated Brunner's jaw. He felt around roughly between his false teeth.

“Stop it, Gerard!” she shouted.

“I have to be sure he's not hiding a cyanide capsule in his teeth,” Gerard said, wiping his wet fingers on Brunner's coat. The old Nazi sat in silence, staring bitterly at the empty cage beside him.

“How do you know it's him?” she asked.

“He's been hiding out in Damascus since the fifties, alternating between this apartment and a suite in the Hotel Dedeman. I checked to see if he was upstairs in his suite last night when you were in the shower.”

He nodded to himself. “Mossad managed to get two letter bombs into his hands. In the first explosion he lost his eye, and in the second—four fingers on his left hand. Show her your hand, Alois!”

“What if it's not him?”

“Show her your hand!” Gerard aimed the flashlight at Brunner's left hand.

The German raised it. His thumb was as wrinkled as lizard skin.

She felt sick to her stomach.

“It's him,” Gerard said firmly. “I've seen his picture. I've been looking for him for years. Everyone thought he was dead, but nobody could point to a grave. Beate Klarsfeld tracked him to this address.”

He raised his gun and aimed it at Brunner's forehead.

“Don't you dare shoot him!” she exclaimed. “Give me your gun.”

Gerard lowered his weapon. “No way,” he said with a snicker before raising it again.

Orchidea pointed her gun at Gerard's head. “Give it to me!”

“Have you lost your mind?” he growled.

“Hand it over!” she ordered.

“Okay, okay,” he chuckled nervously, lowering the gun until it was pointing down at the whitewashed roof. “I won't hurt him.”

“Give me the gun!” she demanded.

“Are you going to shoot me?”

“Just give it to me.”

He handed her the gun.

“I'm sorry,” she said.

It was getting cold.

“Why didn't you tell me about your family?” she asked.

“I didn't have a chance.”

“I asked you in Subchi Park if you recognized him. You lied to me.”

“I couldn't . . . I wasn't sure.”

“Don't kill me,” Alois Brunner said suddenly in a broken voice.

They both looked at him.

All of a sudden there was a switchblade in Gerard's hand. He thrust the shining blade into the Nazi's heart.

“This is for my family!” he shouted, breathing heavily. He pulled the knife out and thrust it into the old man's abdomen. “This is for Roger Trezeguet!” Again he pulled it out and thrust it in. “This is for Jasmine!” Stabbing him for a fourth time, he shouted, “This is for Sophie and Albert!” Tears welled up in his eyes. Wailing, he wiped them away with his sleeve. He was crying out loud.

The knife was still stuck in Brunner's torn abdomen. Through clenched teeth, the German whispered hoarsely, “The Fourth Reich . . . is . . . already.”

Thick black blood spilled from his mouth. His body was twitching. He fell to the floor, a pool of blood forming around his torso.

A shot rang out.

Gerard dropped the flashlight.