Ring of Lies (35 page)

A blue vein was throbbing in the Nazi's forehead. He seemed entertained. He stood next to a white apparatus the size of a washing machine and pressed a button. The noise was repugnant. A bone grinder.

Dr. Rauch let out a delayed piggish giggle followed by a snort.

It was hard to breathe.

Schlaff held his hands up to the crematorium door, his face glowing with pure delight. “I love to feel the heat on my hands! I can sense the work getting done, the filth being cleaned away. By the way, do you know who is grilling in there right now? She arrived yesterday morning, after a long journey . . .”

Alex turned his head away. His eyes encountered the wall of jars. Across the room the Führer was shrieking on the giant screen, his mustache as big as Rauch's head.

They were burning Jane.

Here.

Right in front of him.

He wanted to scream, but there was no one to hear his pain.

“I didn't have a chance to devote time to her before tonight. Did you know it takes two hours to burn a body?”

The figure 1126C glowed red on the control monitor beside the iron door.

“She'll burn down to about four and a half pounds of ashes. Your jar will be heavier. Which shelf would you like?”

He had had enough of Schlaff's sick games.

“You are witnessing history in the making, Jew-boy. This is not an ordinary cellar. It's a small-scale extermination camp, the first in a chain to be built around the world.”

Laughing, he added, “Even McDonald's began with a single branch.”

“Why don't you take your medication and go lie down,” Alex said.

Schlaff ignored him. “It's a shame the Mauser brothers will no longer be able to do their part for the cause.

“They started out in my kitchen, did you know that? Washing dishes. We knew one another from the Stasi. Those were the days! I saw right away that their place was not in the kitchen but in the slaughterhouse.”

“Hey, Oskar,” Alex called out. “Have you heard the latest news from Damascus?”

Schlaff froze. “What?”

“We butchered your uncle tonight, on the roof, next to the cage.”

Schlaff's expression grew dark. “You . . . you're . . . you are trying to buy time.”

“Why not try calling Uncle Alois and find out for yourself. You don't want to miss the funeral. I heard he begged for his life. Just like you begged the boys at the orphanage in Nuremberg before they took turns raping you.”

Schlaff's face went red. Beads of sweat glittered on his brow.

“Call Uncle Alois, Oskar, and you'll see that you're all alone in the world again.”

Schlaff's arrogant facade shattered. It could be heard throughout the cellar.

“Passover is coming, Oskar. We Jew-boys need blood. Go on, make the call!”

Schlaff pulled his cellphone from his pocket but quickly realized that it was pointless.

“Go outside. You'll get a signal there. Or are you scared to leave me here?”

The German looked distressed. He glanced at the lifeless body of Sepp Mauser.

“You've got my phone, Oskar. I'll do you a favor and tell you where to find the picture of Uncle Alois's dead body.”

Schlaff approached him quickly, still holding his phone, and punched Alex on the chin.

His head dropped and salinity spread in his mouth.

Schlaff was standing in front of him; the smile had disappeared.

Alex spat a mixture of saliva and blood in his face. The red goo slid down the German's cheek. Without wiping it away, Schlaff stepped back out of reach.

Dr. Rauch stood frozen at the far end of the cellar, next to the screen. Schlaff unzipped his coverall and took out Alex's phone.

“Curiosity killed the cat, Oskar,” Alex said quietly, spitting blood onto the floor.

Schlaff's face fell. He blanched and let out a scream, staring in horror at the image.

Schlaff went to the wall of jars and returned holding an old yellow tin can. On the label were a red stripe, a black stripe, and a skull.

Alex managed to read:
ZYKLON B
.

“Did you know that this extraordinary product was developed by a Jew? Fritz Haber, his name was. Ironic, no?”

Schlaff opened the can very carefully and held it up to Alex's face. It was half-full of pale crystals a little larger than coarse sea salt.

“I imagine you've been wondering why it's cold down here.” He paused dramatically. “When the crystals reach a temperature of twenty-six degrees Celsius, Jews tend to die instantly.”

Schlaff pulled open a metal drawer in the gas chamber wall and poured the crystals in. Then he pressed a button, and something started beating.

Alex was paralyzed with fear. He couldn't feel his arms.

“I have turned the heater on. As soon as they're hot enough, the crystals will start to emit hydrogen cyanide, but I'm afraid you won't get to see that,” Schlaff said, struggling to smile.

His heart was overflowing. Sounds were growing fainter and receding into the distance.

Something landed heavily
and painfully on his face.

A fucking bucket of water.

“Open your eyes!” Schlaff ordered.

He was going to die.

“You have stopped laughing, Jew-boy. Don't worry—by noon you and your British girlfriend will be together again, side by side here on the shelf.”

Schlaff pressed a button on the remote and a thick glass door slid closed with a pneumatic whoosh, locking Alex into the gas chamber.

“No!!!” he heard himself scream.

The cell was sealed off.

He could see Schlaff's lips moving, but he could no longer hear his voice. His ears filled with the chilling sounds of his racing heart and labored breathing.

Suddenly, Schlaff's voice blasted at him from behind. Psychopath. A gas chamber with an intercom.

Soon it would start filling with gas.

“There were six of us,” Schlaff shouted. “Six doing God's work, what you see here on the shelves.” He stepped closer to the glass wall. “You killed the twins,” he scolded, “my two finest talents. Now there are four of us left. Only the good doctor and I are here. Guess where the other two are, and what they are carrying in their luggage?”

The inhalers.

Hochstadt-Lancet!

“In just a few hours we will begin to fulfill my revered uncle's last wish. At the age of ninety-nine, he was finally about to hear the first heartbeat of the Fourth Reich!” Schlaff was screeching. Spittle sprayed from his lips.

“Endlösung der Judenfrage Zwei,” Schlaff said, his eyes ablaze with fervor. “The Final Solution Two!

“Very soon, six million Jews will die again—but this time, there is no need for concentration camps. You Jew-boys are already concentrated in one place!”

He paused like a seasoned orator, allowing time for his mind-numbing message to sink in.

“I'm going to be dead in a few minutes anyway,” Alex said, “so do you mind telling me why Justus ratted us out?”

“Erlichmann, that piece of junk . . .” Schlaff muttered. “Hypnosis,” he barked abruptly. “We took him from his bed in the middle of the night. Dr. Rauch drugged him while he was asleep, and we brought him here. When he regained consciousness, Rauch hypnotized him. Justus was a fool—but a genius. He held every detail in his head. Then we brought him out of the trance and drugged him again. He was back at home before dawn. He slept until noon but had no memory of his nighttime adventure.”

“How did you find out he was running the Ring for Mossad?”

“You have a lot of questions, Jew-boy,” Schlaff chuckled. “By the way, the temperature has already reached eighteen degrees.”

“Aren't you going to grant me my last wish? I want to know what happened.”

“Very clever, Jew-boy. Justus tried to play games with us—he stopped paying. Did you know he had been giving us money every month for a long time? One day he came home and found a dead pig in his living room with a Star of David branded on its chest. He got the message. I demanded ten times the normal amount, and he paid up like a good boy.”

“How did you find out he was working for Mossad?”

“You have to pay for what you did, Jew-boy. You killed the Mauser brothers. They were my bloodhounds! I would point to the garbage in the street and they would go fetch. We had to kill
your people where we found them. Abducting a pro can be risky. But all the others were brought here alive.”

“You were going to tell me about Sepp.”

Schlaff licked his lips. He seemed to be considering his answer.

“Dear departed Sepp had Justus in his sights for quite a while without his ever knowing. One rainy day, Justus went to Grunewald. Sepp was watching. He saw Justus get into a car. Sepp snapped pictures of everyone, including the man in the backseat. I recognized him instantly. I had seen him on TV. It was Reuven Hetz, the head of Mossad. I realized that Justus could be of great service to us. Question time is over, Jew-boy. Twenty-one degrees!”

Luftwaffe bombers flew in formation on the screen behind Schlaff. Cut.

A Panzer factory. Cut.

Children beaming with pleasure. All blue-eyed blonds. Cut.

Hundreds of columns of Wehrmacht soldiers. Sieg Heil! Sieg Heil! Sieg Heil!

A moment of silence fell over the dungeon of horrors. Alex looked at the iron door of the crematorium where Jane was being burned to ashes and was filled with infinite sorrow.

“I see that you are enjoying the films,” Schlaff said. “Before you take your last breath, you might benefit from some wisdom from a great man. Listen to what the Führer says in
Mein Kampf
. It is from the chapter entitled ‘Race and People.'
”

Schlaff goose-stepped across the cellar, his legs straight and his knees locked. Keeping up his maniacal march, he recited the words from memory in the tone of a professor lecturing his students.

“Each animal mates only with one of its own species. The titmouse cohabits only with the titmouse, the finch with the finch, the stork with the stork, the fieldmouse with the fieldmouse, the housemouse with the housemouse, etc.”

Schlaff was in the midst of worship.

“Every crossing between two breeds that are not quite equal results in a product that holds an intermediate place between the levels of the two parents. For this reason, it must eventually succumb in any struggle against the higher species!” Spittle sprayed from his lips, and his shrill voice increasingly became an imitation of the Führer's.

Rauch mouthed the text along with him, like a pious member of the flock.

“The stronger must dominate and not mate with the weaker, which would signify the sacrifice of its own higher nature!”

Schlaff turned abruptly to Alex. “Do you understand what the Führer is saying, Jew-boy?”

The gas chamber was getting stuffy.

“Twenty-four degrees!” Schlaff announced like a TV weatherman.

If only he had a hammer, he'd smash the fucking intercom, the glass wall, and Schlaff's skull. “Do you know who thrust the knife into Uncle Alois's heart in Damascus?”

Schlaff went rigid.

“Did Uncle Alois ever tell you how he burned down the Café Trezeguet?”

There was a satanic fire in Schlaff's eyes.

“Roger Trezeguet's son killed Uncle Alois. A Jew-boy. A JEW-BOY!”

Schlaff had apparently toyed with him enough. “Do . . . do
you . . . ha . . . have . . . anything t . . . to say . . . before you d . . . die, Jew-boy?” He looked down at the remote in his hand. The red button had lit up. His finger was already on it.

It was over. There was no way to save himself.

Alex took a final look at the crematorium, where Jane's remains were being burned.

Maybe they'd never had a real chance. Maybe she was right and he'd never really lived, never gotten a taste of the joy of life. It was time to say good-bye to the only person he had left: Daniella.

“You did a nice job down here, Schlaff. A gas chamber, a crematorium, refrigerators for the bodies, shelves for the jars, even a giant screen. But you forgot the most important thing, Oskar—a mirror. So you can look at yourself and see what you really are, not what you imagine in your sick fantasies.”

Schlaff snorted contemptuously.

Alex didn't let up. “You hate Jews and you hate Muslims and you hate Justus Erlichmann and Gunter Erlichmann. You hate everyone, everyone who isn't you—everyone who's different from you.”

“Shut up, Jew-boy!”

“Did it ever occur to you that what you really hate is yourself?”

Schlaff gave him a patronizing look. “Congratulations, twenty-six degrees! Any last words, Jew-boy?”

He wasn't going to give the scum the pleasure. He had no intention of begging.

“Shut up and press the button.”

Oskar Schlaff pressed the red button.

A loud sucking sound horrified Alex. A fucking vacuum pump!

In a minute, death would flow in, replacing the air being pumped out.

Schlaff had no compunctions.

Alex remembered Daniella as a baby. Taking her first steps. The first time she said “dada,” and later “I love you.” Planting a kiss on his cheek. His Daniella. He tried to force himself to find comfort in the memories.

Naomi quietly crept into his mind, along with their muted life together, devoid of excitement or joy.

Then came Jane, the love of his life; the greatest regret of his life. She was a few feet away, but it was the closest they'd ever come. His heart filled with remorse over the lost women in his life.

A dull pain throbbed behind his eyes. The pressure in his head was mounting. The oxygen was running out.

“You are about to die, Jew-boy!”

The pressure increased. His head was pounding:
bo-boom, bo-boom
. He felt woozy.

He remembered the machine gunner in Leipzig. The pool of blood around his head was getting smaller, being soaked back up. The man rose from the dead, sat up, leaned on his arm, and stood.
And then, as if wiping away a bad dream, he passed his gloved hand over his face, picked up the machine gun, and fired a heavy barrage at the Wehrmacht troops.

“It is time,” Schlaff shrieked, bursting the bubble of his thoughts and pointing the remote at the gas chamber. There was a click, and then another, and the glass in front of him turned white.

Something splattered on it.

Red.

Something banged against the glass.

A head.

Schlaff's.

A large red hole had opened in the German's cheek. Blood was pouring out. His face was pressed against the glass door. He collapsed onto the floor, the blood smearing down the glass.

Someone was there.

The pressure behind his eyes was blinding.

A shape.

A gun.