Authors: John Connolly
‘No.’
‘Are you certain?’
‘Yes.’
‘He lived in Augusta. That’s not too far from you, is it?’
‘Lots of people live in Augusta,’ said Baulman. ‘I haven’t met most of them either.’
‘So you know of him?’
‘Yes, but only from what I have learned on TV.’
‘Which mentioned Lubsko.’
‘I suppose it must have.’
‘Just to bring you up to speed, then. Lubsko was a nasty piece of SS trickery, designed to make prisoners – wealthy prisoners – believe that an alternative to being worked or gassed to death might be available, and their families might be also be saved. Small, clean huts, with gardens in which vegetables could be grown. No mistreatment. No brutality. No gas chambers. But you had to be willing and able to pay for it. Those who were sent there were very carefully selected. They were prisoners who were strongly believed to have squirreled away significant wealth, maybe in the hope that, even if they didn’t survive the war, their children might, and they would be looked after. So these wealthy men and women would be brought from other concentration camps and shown an alternative way of seeing out the war – along with their families – if only they could afford it, the clear implication being that, if they chose not to reveal the whereabouts of their gold, or their paintings, or their gemstones, they, and their children, and anyone else related to them by blood, would be dead within days.
‘Most paid up, Mr Baulman. They died anyway, of course, once they’d been bled of whatever they had managed to hide. Lubsko operated on a regular cycle, so every month a new set of families would be transferred once the camp had been scrubbed of their predecessors. To further strengthen the illusion of possible salvation, a pair of Judas goats was kept there: a German couple masquerading as liberal intelligentsia, victims of political rather than religious persecution, as it was deemed too difficult to have Aryans pretend to be Jews for fear their imposture would be discovered.
‘Only one person survived the camp: a young woman named Isha Górski. The Russians were advancing, and the guards were ordered to get rid of all remaining prisoners and torch the camp. Isha survived by hiding among corpses. Later, when she came to this country, she married a Jew named Isaac Winter and—’
‘Isha Winter,’ said Baulman softly, as though he had just made the connection.
‘Mother of Ruth Winter. You’re telling me that you did not know her history?’
‘No, I was aware of none of this. How could I be? I was a not friend of hers. I do not think I ever met the woman.’
‘Were you avoiding her?’
‘No! Why would I avoid her?’
‘For fear that she might recognize you.’
‘But how could she? I told you: we did not know each other.’
‘You live – what, maybe ten miles from Pirna? Surely you must have visited the town.’
Baulman didn’t even have to pretend to sound weary. ‘I rarely go into Pirna. It is a small town. Things are expensive there. When I shop, I shop at the big supermarket outside Boreas, or maybe go to Bangor.’
‘And you don’t socialize?’
‘Miss,’ said Baulman, ‘I am over ninety years old. My wife is dead. My friends are dead. Whom do you suggest I socialize with?’
He thought that he caught the man named Ross smiling. Demers did not smile.
‘I still do not understand what all of this has to do with me,’ Baulman continued. ‘I think someone has been telling lies.’
‘Reynard Kraus, the man whom you deny that you are, was sent to Lubsko as a general assistant with “special duties” at the start of 1944. Those duties included murdering children by lethal injection. We have confirmation of that in a note from Josef Mengele to the RSHA inquiring after Kraus’s progress, and confirming that Kraus had attended the killing by injection of groups of children at Auschwitz, following which he had been permitted to perform the procedure himself, under Mengele’s expert gaze. Apparently Mengele was concerned that his pupil might embarrass him, but the RSHA’s response was entirely positive: Kraus had given no cause for complaint at Lubsko, and his conduct reflected well on his tutor.
‘You see, Mr Baulman, the difficulty with Lubsko was that, in order for the illusion of possible salvation to be maintained, very particular types of guards had to be used to staff the camp. They couldn’t be your usual brutes. They had to possess a degree of refinement, of sensitivity. But that presented problems when it came to disposing of the prisoner intakes because refined, sensitive individuals tend to be bad at executing terrified naked men, women, and children. That was where Engel came in. We think that he and a couple of other men were kept off camp, and were only brought in when the killing needed to be done. But children – or the few that had survived the other camps – were dealt with separately: a quiet injection was deemed less damaging to morale, even that of a killer like Engel. That became Reynard Kraus’s job.’
‘I am not Reynard Kraus. I have told you this before.’
‘We’ve struggled to find pictures of Kraus,’ said Demers, as though she had not heard him. She flipped through some papers before her, and came up with a single photocopied page.
‘Is this your driver’s license, Mr Baulman?’
He peered at the document.
‘Yes.’
‘It’s from your most recent renewal, right?’
He looked at the date.
‘Yes.’ The state required people over sixty-five to renew their license every four years. He had been pleased not to be deprived of it.
‘Thank you.’
She put the document back in the pile before her, like a magician hiding a card.
‘And this?’
He accepted a photocopied picture from her. It was the photograph taken of him when he first immigrated to the United States in 1952.
‘Again, this is me.’
He’d had some work done after the war, just enough to blur his appearance in case anyone might remember Reynard Kraus: a thinning of the nose, a tightening of the eyes, a reduction in the size of his earlobes, which were conspicuously large, a family trait.
‘And this one?’
He recognized his party membership photo immediately, even though it was blurred and damaged. He peered at it. He took off his glasses, wiped them on his tie, and examined it again.
‘It is a very bad photo,’ he said.
‘It was part of a batch that someone tried to burn,’ said Demers. ‘Thankfully, the fire was put out before it could do too much damage.’
‘I cannot tell who this is,’ he said, ‘but I do not think that it is me.’
‘You don’t think that it’s you,’ asked Demers, ‘or you know it isn’t?’
Baulman was conscious of walking on treacherous ground. He was tempted to deny entirely that this was his photo, but it still bore some resemblance, he supposed, to the man who had come to the United States in 1952. Already he was thinking forward to any possible attempts to deport or extradite him, just in case it came to that. A good lawyer might be able to use that photo in his favor.
‘It looks a little like me, but it is not me,’ he concluded. ‘Is this where the mistake was made?’
‘I don’t think there is a mistake, Mr Baulman. Is this your handwriting?’
He looked at the document before him. It was some of the paperwork from his Petition for Naturalization filed in 1958, after he had lived in the US for long enough to apply.
‘Yes.’
‘And this?’
Another document, this time is German. It was a requisition from, filed during his time at the RSHA and dated 1942. Again, there were superficial similarities between the handwriting on the American form and the German, but he had practiced hard at changing his handwriting in the intervening years.
‘No.’
‘We’ve begun preliminary handwriting analysis, Mr Baulman. Already we’ve picked up some points of similarity.’
Baulman didn’t think ‘points’ would be enough. He was growing more confident. They had very little on him, and nothing that would stand up as evidence. He was increasingly convinced that all they really had was Engel’s testimony against him, but Baulman knew what hearsay was worth in a court of law, especially coming from an old Nazi trying to save his skin.
Demers set the three photographs of Baulman side by side: young, older, old.
‘We’re thinking of showing these photos around to see if they jog anyone’s memory.’ Only now did she smile at him. ‘We’ll be in touch again once we’re done. Thank you for your time, Mr Baulman.’
She stood, and the others stood with her.
‘Wait!’ said Baulman. ‘What do you mean by this “showing around”? Showing it to what people? You cannot do this. This is not legal. You are spreading lies about me!’
But they did not reply as they trooped out, and then a uniformed officer appeared at the door to escort Baulman from the building. Still, Baulman knew what they planned to do.
They were going to show his picture to Isha Winter.
45
T
he surgeon gave Parker the all-clear, along with more painkillers and some advice – about taking it easy, not straining himself, and not chasing armed men over dunes – only some of which he intended to take. He made a call to Angel and Louis, and read a newspaper in his room while he waited for them to pick him up.
Only once did he venture from his room, and that was to peer through a window at Cory Bloom. A man was sitting by her bed, his face in profile. He was holding Bloom’s hand and speaking to her, even though she was asleep. Parker did not disturb them. Shortly after midday, a worried-looking female nurse appeared at the door, along with an orderly pushing a wheelchair. He looked worried too.
‘I don’t need a chair,’ said Parker. The hospital had given him a crutch, but he had no intention of using it. He had only just decided to rid himself of his stick – his fall on the beach conveniently dismissed as an aberration – before the encounter with Steiger, and he wasn’t about to replace one support with another.
‘We thought it might be, um, quicker this way,’ said the nurse. She had a detectable Scottish accent.
‘You in that much of a hurry to get rid of me?’ Parker asked, as he shifted from his seat to the chair.
‘No, it’s just that, well, the men who are here to collect you are’ – she struggled to find the right word, and settled for ‘large.’
Parker closed his eyes. The fucking Fulcis. Maybe I should just stay here, he thought. I could barricade the doors. Then he had a vision of the Fulci brothers breaking through like a pair of rampaging monsters, tossing aside fragments of wood and furniture like so much kindling.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said, although he wasn’t sure what he was apologizing for.
‘They haven’t done any harm,’ said the nurse, walking alongside him as he was being pushed. ‘They just look intimidating. Are they friends of yours?’
‘Yes. Kind of.’
He felt about nine years old, like he was being picked up from school by a pair of embarrassing uncles. The Fulci brothers had their hearts in the right place – well, most of the time, depending on the other parties involved, and the degree of offense that they’d caused. The trouble was that the same couldn’t be said for their brains, which had a resistance to chemical intervention to rival the Ebola virus.
‘They can’t help how they look, I suppose,’ said the nurse, adding, slightly hopefully, ‘I imagine they’re lovely men, really.’
He was wheeled into an elevator.
‘That depends,’ said Parker.
‘On what?’
‘On whether or not they like you.’
‘Oh, that’s the same for most people, isn’t it?’
Parker recalled the tale of the driver – an insurance salesman, if he remembered correctly – who had consistently parked in the disabled spot at the back of the Fulcis’ mother’s house. He’d received one warning, which he ignored. That in itself was surprising. People who were warned by the Fulcis usually stayed warned. The next time he offended, the Fulcis pushed his car into the sea with their truck. The salesman was lashed to the driver’s seat when they did it, and as the water climbed slowly to the level of his chest, he tried to tell them that he intended to reconsider his parking habits, although the ball gag in his mouth muffled his words somewhat.
Subsequently, when he’d started to dry off, he might have made noises about pressing charges, until it was pointed out to him that the Fulcis knew where his house was and were not above, as Tony Fulci put it, ‘picking that up as well and putting it in the fucking ocean,’ a point they emphasized by returning the salesman to his car and pushing the car, once more, into the sea, this time until the water reached his chin. Since then, the Fulcis’ mother had enjoyed problem-free parking – and her vehicle insurance bill had gone down into the bargain.
‘Maybe they react more emotionally than most people,’ said Parker.
‘I always think big men like that have very deep feelings,’ said the nurse.
‘That must be it.’
The elevator opened, and he was wheeled through the lobby and out the main door, where the Fulcis’ monster truck stood waiting by the curb, although it was hard to see because the Fulcis themselves were standing in front of it. Had they stood in front of the hospital itself, then it would largely have disappeared too. They were dressed in matching Izod golf shirts and tan pants that could have been filled with air and used as barrage balloons. As they lumbered in Parker’s direction, the security guard at the door uttered an involuntary ‘Fuck me.’
‘Don’t run,’ said Parker. ‘It’ll just set them off.’
The guard glanced at Parker to see if he was joking. When he looked away again, he didn’t appear reassured.
‘How you doin’, Mr Parker?’ said Paulie.
The Fulcis had a habit of calling him ‘Mr Parker.’ He supposed that it was a token of respect, in the same way that Tony, the less well-adjusted of the two – although this, too, varied depending on circumstance, inclination, and possibly the cycles of the moon – had once told Parker that if anyone ever pissed him off,
ever
, Tony would feed him to crabs ‘and wouldn’t even ask why.’
‘I’ve been better,’ Parker replied.
‘Sure, sure. You want us to push you?’
He looked ready to fight the orderly for control of the chair, which wouldn’t have worked out well for anyone involved.