Ruins of War (16 page)

“We know of Auschwitz, Mauthausen, Sachsenhausen, and Buchenwald. But bear in mind, the doctors who performed these kinds of atrocities were rotated around to different camps—two years at one camp, six months at another.”

Mason felt a chill when Marsden mentioned Buchenwald, the place where he’d stayed for two weeks. Somewhere in the camp, not far from the barracks where he slept, Nazi doctors had been doing unspeakable things.

“There are enough accounts to corroborate the existence of at least five doctors. We haven’t been able to establish their identities definitively yet, though. The two most talked about were known by nicknames to the inmates: the Angel of Death and Dr. Death. The Angel of Death was a doctor working at Auschwitz. Among the many other horrendous experiments he performed, we have accounts of him
vivisecting pregnant women, removing the uterus without anesthesia. We believe his name is Josef Mengele, but details are sketchy. The doctor referred to as Dr. Death, possibly Aribert Heim. We know he was at Mauthausen concentration camp in Austria. He injected toxic substances directly into the hearts of his victims and timed how long it took for them to die. But worst are the stories that he cut people open, removed an organ, and observed how long the victim would survive on the operating table. He studied thresholds of pain while, for example, removing the victim’s stomach.”

“That’s very close to what we’re dealing with,” Mason said.

Marsden pulled out a small photograph from a folder. “This is an ID photo taken from the personnel files at Mauthausen and believed to be Aribert Heim, a. k. a. Dr. Death. He’s still missing, by the way.”

The photograph showed a blond man around thirty, with a handsome, almost boyish face, a high forehead, and pronounced chin. Mason felt his excitement wane and fell back in his chair. “That’s not our guy.”

Marsden said, “Looking at that chap’s face makes it hard to imagine him performing such hideous acts. A demon with a choirboy’s face. And don’t forget that if there are two doctors of this nature, then there are certainly more. Either they are yet to be unmasked or they have melted into the chaos and escaped.”

A corporal arrived with a tray with a teapot, two cups, milk, and sugar. He poured out the tea into the cups and left. Marsden added sugar and milk, then passed a cup over to Mason. After Marsden took a sip, he slid another set of files across the table.

“These are the experiments conducted at Ravensbrück. I believe they are the closest in similarity to your killer’s penchant for dismemberment. One of the most heinous was a study for regenerating or transplanting bone and tissue to wounded German soldiers. Their insane idea was that they remove bone, muscle, or nerves from camp prisoners and transplant them onto battle-maimed soldier patients.”

Marsden opened one of the files in front of Mason and leafed through the documents until he found what he was looking for. It
was a black-and-white photograph of a large vat filled with a clear liquid. Floating in this liquid were scores of legs cut off at the hip, arms with shoulders, even a few complete lower torsos.

“They amputated entire legs and arms that included the shoulder blade from one victim then tried to transplant it onto another victim,” Marsden said.

Mason stared at the photograph, a devil’s butcher shop, a hideous and cruel display. His mind conjured images of the severed arms and legs of the killer’s victims. Was the killer’s dismemberment a coincidence, or was he performing a ritual to purge his sins for performing or assisting in these savage procedures?

“Obviously,” Marsden said, “all of the amputee victims died or were killed. Can you imagine being put to sleep on an operating table, only to wake up with someone else’s limb attached to your body? Then, if you recover your senses, your body rejects the foreign limb, sepsis sets in, then gangrene, and finally a painful death.”

Marsden handed Mason a set of papers stapled together. “Finally, this is my list of each camp’s known Nazi medical staff and the prisoner doctors. It is certainly not complete and is constantly being updated. Some are dead; some are still missing. A number of the names have to be confirmed. Therefore, it’s quite possible that your killer will not appear on the list. He’s likely managed, like many others, to elude detection.”

“Do you have photos of the doctors?”

“Only about half, I’m afraid to say.” Marsden gestured with his hands to include everything laid out on the table. “All these files contain duplicates of documents and photographs that you may take with you. There’s enough here to get you started. What I propose is having copies made of the camp records where the experiments we’ve discussed were performed. I will include all prisoner testimonials given when the camps were liberated, and those produced for the upcoming war crimes trials, and send everything to your headquarters. It’s a considerable amount of material, but in them you may discover witnesses or clues that may lead you to your killer.”

As Mason glanced at the typewritten pages of Marsden’s list, he said in a muted voice, “That will be great, Colonel.” He was too distracted to say more. The pages contained column after column of the atrocities. Even after all Mason had seen in his career as a cop, it couldn’t dull the emotions, the empathy for so many innocent victims. “I’m beginning to see why the killer believes he descended into hell. No one performing these procedures could be sane.”

“There are a few Nazi doctors who committed suicide at the end, though one will never know if that was out of unbearable guilt or fear of retribution. The frightening thing is, most of the Nazi doctors who have been discovered and interviewed appear as sane as you or I. They aren’t wide-eyed insane asylum escapees. They’re cold, calculating family men who all feel they were justified by furthering medical science or maintain they were unwilling puppets of the Nazi state. And while the majority of the SS guards and doctors emerged in relative health, it was the inmates who suffered from a great many psychological problems. Unfortunately, aside from accounts recorded by the liberating armies, there has been little official documentation on the mental health of inmates immediately after liberation. The priorities at the time were bringing the inmates back from the brink of death.”

“I don’t see how anyone could emerge from that kind of hell and remain sane.”

“Apparently, your killer didn’t.”

M
ason stood at the chalkboard in the operations room finishing up on a diagram. A web of lines linked columns of the known Nazi doctors with the medical experiments at the Ravensbrück, Mauthausen, and Buchenwald concentration camps, and the doctors’ movements between the camps. Next to him on the corkboard, Mason had pinned up the crime scene photographs, plus the photographs of doctors and experiments Marsden had given him.

Wolski sat at the desk talking on the phone trying to outargue a lawyer at JAG’s war crimes division, though it appeared the verbal battle was not going Wolski’s way. Mason and he had spent the morning poring over the documents Marsden had supplied, and now they were in the process of trying to set up interviews with Nazi camp doctors who’d worked with “Scholz” at Ravensbrück and Mauthausen.

Mason felt a presence behind him and turned to see Colonel Walton staring at the two boards with a furrowed brow.

“What a grim display,” Colonel Walton said. “You got all this from Marsden at the repository?”

“Yes, sir. Believe it or not, what you see here is just the tip of the iceberg. These are only the experiments that correspond to the killer’s mutilations. Also, since the killer could have been transferred, we
have the other camps where the human experiments mirror the killer’s methods.”

Wolski hung up the phone and walked over to Mason and Colonel Walton. “No go on Hans Eisele. His lawyer refuses to let him talk to us.”

“Did the JAG lawyer remind Eisele’s lawyer that his cooperation might help him avoid the death penalty?”

Colonel Walton scowled at Mason. “I assume
you
concocted this phony offer.”

“We passed the offer through JAG. They were okay with it as long as we let the doctor’s lawyers know it was nonbinding.”

“You went directly to JAG with this? Mr. Collins, I will not tolerate you going over my head. Run things through proper channels or I will shut you down.”

“I apologize, sir. I wanted to move on it first thing this morning. . . .” Mason decided to stop before he made it worse.

“In any case,” Wolski said to defuse the situation, “the deal’s not going to work with Eisele. The Dachau war crimes tribunal already sentenced him to be hanged. It came down just a few days ago. And JAG won’t even think of offering him an appeal or reduced sentence.”

“Sir, I do have another request to run past you,” Mason said, ignoring the colonel’s deepening scowl. “The doctors who performed human experiments at Ravensbrück are being held at Dachau.” He walked over to the corkboard and pointed to photographs of the doctors. “Among other things, these three amputated countless inmates’ arms and legs to study the viability of transplanting them onto injured soldiers.” He pointed to the photo of the vat filled with human limbs. “Since the witness puts the killer at Ravensbrück, I think the best next step is to talk to them.”

“The witness put him in the camp in 1942,” Colonel Walton said. “Even if one of these assholes talks to you, you’re probably not going to get enough information to find Scholz.”

Mason continued, “The canvasses, the interviews have come up dry. The CID in Stuttgart isn’t having any luck tracking down Heidi
Mendel. So, while the other investigators track down night passes and permits, and Inspector Becker checks liveries and wagon owners, Wolski and I can go at these doctors. They are to be tried at the international war crimes trials at Nuremberg, but that won’t take place until late next year. That means they’ll have a long time to think about their possible death sentences. If we can get the JAG lawyers to agree, I want to offer them the same nonbinding deal.”

“Plus, we have a trump card,” Wolski said. “At the Dachau trial thirty-six of the forty defendants were sentenced to death. We can hold that over them like the carrot and the stick.”

“What about former inmates who worked as medical staff?” Colonel Walton said. “Why not go after them?”

“They’re spread all over the place. We’re tracking down the ones we have names for, but they’ve either gone back to their native countries or are in Russian-occupied zones. It’s going to take some time to find any willing or able to talk, then interview them. These doctors, however, are thirty minutes away.” Mason paused. “We need a name for our suspect, sir. A real name. Can we do this?”

Colonel Walton nodded. “I’ll handle it.” He walked up to the chalkboard. “You’ve listed vivisection and surgery without anesthesia. What about talking to those doctors?”

“That’s why we were trying to talk to Eisele,” Wolski said. “He allegedly conducted vivisections and unnecessary amputations at Buchenwald. We’re trying to track down some of his staff. There were also two doctors doing the same kinds of things at Mauthausen, a Hermann Richter and Aribert Heim, but their whereabouts are unknown.”

“There are still two of those maniacs out there?” Colonel Walton said.

“Probably more than that,” Wolski said.

“Jesus.” Colonel Walton felt for his cigarettes in his front pocket, but came up empty.

Mason offered him one and lit it for him. Colonel Walton made it to the door before turning back to them. “Oh, and you two have nothing
to do with my missing cognac and scotch?” He eyed them with suspicion. They both shook their heads. “I’m going to get to the bottom of this. I assure you.”

“Maybe get Havers on it for you, sir,” Wolski said.

“Bah,” Colonel Walton said with a wave of his hand and left the room.

Mason looked at Wolski. “Do you still have some of his scotch?”

“Sure. Hidden in your office.”

Mason feigned a scowl before turning back to the chalkboard.

Wolski whistled. “We have our work cut out for us. I wonder how many Nazi doctors are going to be willing to talk to us.”

“And I wonder how I’m going to restrain myself from beating them to a pulp.”

T
he last place I want to be caught in, dead or alive,” Mason said.

“This time the bad guys are the inmates and the good guys are running the camp,” Wolski said.

That gave Mason little comfort. He was back in the kind of place he’d sworn never to come near again, a concentration camp. Passing through Dachau’s stone-arched gate made the hairs on his arms stand up. Wolski was right, though: Instead of the Jews and political prisoners from Germany and every country Nazi Germany had occupied, the prisoner barracks now housed Nazi war criminals, SS officers, and high-ranking Nazi officials.

Still, the transition did nothing to dispel the haunting images of the walking skeletons, the overflowing mass graves, the heavy pall of disease and rotting corpses.

“Maybe this wasn’t a good idea,” Mason said.

“What, you coming here, or interrogating Nazi doctors?”

“Both.”

Wolski stopped the jeep in front of the main administration building. They climbed out, but Mason paused at the base of the steps to stretch his neck.

Wolski could clearly see the tension building in Mason. “Just try
to take it easy in there, or we’ll never get anything out of the bastards.”

They entered the building and showed their IDs and Colonel Walton’s written orders. They handed over their weapons and were escorted by two MPs to a small interview room with a single high, barred window. A small square table bolted to the floor sat in the middle with three chairs arranged around it. No one was there yet, so Mason and Wolski sat in the chairs. One of the guards remained, and stood inside the room next to the door.

Wolski read off the file in front of him: “Dr. Fritz Fischer, a major in the Waffen-SS and assistant to Ravensbrück’s chief doctor, General Karl Gebhardt. This guy’s a real charmer. He partook in the experiments removing muscle and bone from inmates and transplanting them onto other patients. He also participated in the sulfanilamide experiments where they made cuts on a patient then inserted infectious bacteria, or wood shavings, glass, or the like, into the wound and let it fester. Both procedures resulted in agonizing death or injury.”

Mason shot up from his chair. His lungs yearned for more air, and he moved to the small window and took deep breaths. Outside the high window he could see the top third of a guard tower, and he knew that just beyond the walls around him lay row after row of prisoner barracks and high barbed-wire fences. Visions of Buchenwald . . .

“Chief, are you okay?” Wolski asked.

Mason forced a smile and turned to face the room. They heard heavy footsteps approaching the door. Wolski took a spot near the window, and Mason moved to stand near the table. Two MPs entered, escorting a man six feet tall and in his early thirties. He looked more soldier than doctor, with his broad chest and the nose of a boxer who’d lost too many bouts. He marched in stiffly, his jaw clenched and nostrils flared. Mason was struck by the eyes: His eyes showed a bit too much white, the kind of eyes that made people purposely cross the street to avoid getting too close to the one who possessed them.

The first MP removed Fischer’s handcuffs, while the other stepped
outside and returned with a chair, placing it in a corner. Fischer’s German lawyer entered, a pudgy, gray-haired man. The lawyer had insisted on being present during the interrogation, and Mason had agreed. He looked at them with tired blue eyes and sat without a word.

“We’ll be right outside,” one of the guards said, and they closed the door behind them, leaving the lone MP to stand guard inside the door.

“Have a seat,” Mason said to Fischer in German.

“I prefer to stand,” Fischer said.

Mason stepped into his line of sight. “That wasn’t a request.”

Finally those wide eyes made contact with Mason’s. He stepped around Mason and sat with his back straight and arms in his lap. Mason came around the table to face Fischer, but remained standing.

“What do you want?” Fischer said. “I have already been interrogated many times. I have nothing more to add.”

“We’re army detectives and not here to interrogate you about your activities at the camp. You give us any information that could help us, and we make sure a letter commending your cooperation in a military matter is put in your file. Might even be enough to sway the judges to spare you the death sentence. Did you understand our offer, Herr Fischer?”

Fischer said nothing.

“I’ll take your silence and the fact that you’re here as a yes.”

“I will not incriminate anyone,” Fischer said while maintaining his gaze at the opposite wall. “You are wasting your time.”

“How about we decide what’s a waste of our time?” Mason said and sat across from Fischer. He placed the photograph of “Dr. Scholz” in front of Fischer. “We believe that this man, a surgeon, was involved in experiments at Ravensbrück, including the sterilization of female inmates.”

“I told you, I will not incriminate anyone, and certainly not my fellow doctors.”

“Even if it means stopping him from killing your own people?”

Mason signaled for Wolski to give him a file folder from his satchel. Wolski stepped over to the table and handed Mason the files. He remained at the table, while Mason laid out crime scene photographs of the three victims in front of Fischer.

“These victims were your own people.” He pointed to each one. “These two were doctors, and she was a nurse. They were all Nazi Party members and ex–medical staff at Mauthausen.” The last part was a lie, but Mason hoped it might inspire him to talk if the victims happened to be fellow Nazis and fellow murderers in the guise of science.

It seemed to work. Fischer finally glanced at the photographs. He blinked, swallowed hard, and looked away. That was the most Mason felt he could expect from the cold-blooded butcher.

“He’s going after former concentration camp medical personnel,” Mason said, continuing with the lie. “And, believe it or not, we’re assigned to stop him. Now, I’ll ask you once again, do you know this man? Can you identify him for us?”

Fischer returned his gaze to the wall.

“We’re not involved in prosecuting anyone for what was done in the camps. All I ask is his name, so we can bring him to justice.”

“If you truly believed in justice,” Fischer said, “neither I, nor anyone loyal to one’s country, pledged to perform one’s duty, would be put on trial for war crimes. We all believed in acting for the greater good of the Fatherland and pledged to carry out all orders without question. You are army. You understand that orders must be obeyed. That loyalty is a sacred duty of all soldiers.”

Mason leaned in toward Fischer’s face. “My army never ordered the mass slaughter of millions of people. My superiors never ordered me to maim, mutilate, and execute innocent prisoners.”

Fischer’s lawyer stood. “Herr Collins, you will not harass my client.”

Wolski cleared his throat as a signal for Mason to calm down. Mason held up his hands to the lawyer. “My apologies.”

The lawyer sat, satisfied that he had scored a small victory.

“Dr. Fischer,” Mason began again, “the point is, there is no more war. There is no more Nazi Party. There are no more orders to obey. It’s peacetime, yet a fellow doctor you worked with is torturing and killing German citizens. He isn’t doing it because of orders. He’s not doing it for science, to better the Aryan race or that kind of thing. He’s out there committing horrible crimes on the German people. A German butchering victims for his own designs.”

“No German would do such a thing. And this man is innocent of any charge you bring against him.”

“Just then, you talked as if you know him.”

Fischer blinked again.

“You do, don’t you? Come on, Dr. Fischer, just his name.”

“I will not give you his name. I won’t betray a solemn trust. I knew him. I knew his wife. I am telling you, this man would not, could not, ever do such a thing.”

“Did you know that his wife died in Stuttgart? His son as well? So it’s possible that the grief was too much for him. It pushed him over the edge. We want to bring him in, not kill him. Help us, Doctor.”

Fischer shook his head and muttered to himself. “It’s not possible. He was a good husband and father. A solid man who believed in our cause, believed in his science, a thoracic surgeon with a first-rate reputation. He was an avid hunter; he cultivated roses. A gentleman. He lived life to the fullest. I have too much respect for him. Therefore, I will not betray him. That is final.”

Wolski walked over to the table. “What about giving us names of those who may have assisted him? You won’t have to betray him by giving us those names: staff, nurses, any prisoner doctors. . . .”

Fischer’s eyes narrowed. “You want me to name prisoner doctors so you can find witnesses to testify against me.”

“Christ almighty,” Wolski said. “Can’t you get it through that thick Nazi skull? We have nothing to do with prosecuting you. We’re trying to find a killer.”

“Herr Collins,” Fischer’s lawyer said.

Mason held up his hands again to acknowledge the objection.

“I understand your reluctance to talk about former colleagues,” Mason said. “That’s why we offered this deal. If you help us, we’ll help you. You know how many of your German comrades were sentenced to death in the Dachau war crimes trial, the first of many trials. And you will be tried by an international tribunal—not just Americans, but by French, English, and Russian prosecutors. They have even more reason to seek vengeance than we do. I want you to think hard about what we’re offering you. I can’t guarantee anything, but it can certainly help.”

Mason paused to let that sink in. He pointed to the photographs. “The killer who did this is right here in front of you.” He moved to the opposite side of the table from Fischer and leaned in to get into his line of sight. “Come on. Give us a name. Anything.”

“As you said,” Fischer said, “the war is over. There is no National Socialist German Workers’ Party. All we have left as a people is our bonds to our fellow Germans.”

“This man is a mad butcher of men, Doctor. If you won’t help us”—Mason jabbed the photographs of the victims—“then their blood is on your hands.”

Fischer grabbed the edges of the table. “He was none of those things. I have told you enough. To name him or give you any more information would confirm my association with any experimental procedures. To say more would be an admission of guilt.”

Fischer folded his arms and let out an impatient sigh. He turned to his lawyer and nodded. The lawyer stood as a sign that they were done.

“I’ll give you one more chance to put something positive in your file. The rest of it is pretty damaging.”

Fischer remained stony. Mason looked at Wolski, who shrugged. He nodded to the guard. The guard went up next to Fischer. “Let’s go.”

When they left, Mason gathered up the photographs. “Who’s next?”

“Two more today. Gebhardt before lunch and Herta Oberheuser after.”

Wolski opened a file folder. “Gebhardt’s a major general—” He grunted with surprise. “Get this, he was the president of the German Red Cross. How’s that for irony?”

One of the MP guards knocked and entered. “Gebhardt’s changed his mind. He refuses to talk to you guys. I know you were supposed to interview Herta Oberheuser after lunch, but she’s available now, if it’s okay with you.”

“Show her in.”