Ruins of War (23 page)

“Any rumors of him performing other types of operations without anesthesia?”

Oberheuser crushed out her cigarette, and Wolski offered her another. After he lit it for her she said with a quiet and unsure voice, “None that I had anything to do with.”

“Then he may have.”

“He assisted Dr. Kiesewetter in several studies. What they did or how they did them is none of my affair. I will not substantiate rumors.”

“Then there were rumors about Kiesewetter and Ramek operating on subjects without anesthesia?” Wolski asked.

“There were always rumors. But I will not tell you something I did not see with my own eyes.”

“How long did he stay at Ravensbrück?”

“To my knowledge, nine months. Like I said, he followed Dr. Kiesewetter to Mauthausen. In early 1944.”

“Was it usual at Ravensbrück for SS doctors to take prisoner doctors with them when they were transferred?”

“Yes. However, Dr. Kiesewetter seemed to rely heavily on Ramek. Who knows? Maybe they both had erections while operating and then simultaneously ejaculated at the moment of the subject’s death, like some depraved men’s club.”

Mason leaned forward and looked into her eyes. “Frau Doktor, I hope you’re not telling us fairy tales just so you won’t be turned over to the Russians.”

The doctor glared at Mason. “I have far more to lose if you discover I am lying. And how can I be sure that once you’re finished with me you won’t hand me over to the Russians? Or that you’re lying about that favorable report?”

“We’ll do what we promised, Frau Doktor,” Wolski said. “The
Judge Advocate’s office assured us that they will deny the Russian petition in exchange for talking to us. We will also submit the favorable letter today.”

A three-way staring contest lasted a few moments until Wolski asked, “Do you have anything to add?”

Oberheuser tossed her cigarette into the ashtray and stared at the table. Her hand shook and her eyes watered. She shook her head and used the table for support as she stood. Her lawyer moved over to the table to help steady her. Wolski walked over to the door and knocked. The two MPs entered, and Mason watched as this now-broken woman allowed the guards to attach her shackles and lead her away.

Wolski feigned a shudder of disgust. “She was more disturbed by the idea of two doctors ejaculating than them cutting open a live patient.”

“Aside from her twisted mind, do you think she’s telling the truth?”

“You saw her eyes. She was back there in the camp, reliving all the madness. . . .” Wolski shuddered again. “She was telling
her
truth, anyway.”

“Now we get to hear from an inmate, Dr. Blazek. Another truth, another camp, and another nightmare.”

A
t three o’clock Mason and Wolski were led to a two-story house, just outside the Dachau camp enclosure, reserved for the camp commander and visiting war crimes lawyers and investigators. They waited in the front foyer where the escorting sergeant had left them. A tall, lanky JAG captain with a bald pate and wire-rimmed glasses slid open the living room pocket doors, closed them again, and entered. He introduced himself as Arnie Patterborn.

“Dr. Blazek is ready for you now. But just a few ground rules. It took him four months in a hospital to recover, and he’s still weak. You name a disease and he had it when Mauthausen was liberated. This trip, our deposition, and identifying the camp perpetrators has taken a lot out of him. So try to make this as brief as you can. If he drifts off subject, which he tends to do, then gently get him back on track. We still have to return him to Prague this evening. The Czechs don’t want us to keep him overnight, and I don’t think they’ll be too happy if they know he’s being interviewed in a criminal investigation. I’ll be in the room with you, and if I determine you’re pushing him too hard, then I’ll cut it short.”

Mason and Wolski agreed. Patterborn slowly slid open the doors like stage curtains opening on a somber play. The living room curtains were drawn halfway. The reduced incoming daylight and the
mahogany paneling made the room quite dim. Blazek sat in a wheelchair with a blanket across his lap. Mason knew the man was in his late forties, but he looked sixty-five. His white hair topped an angular face made more so by his sunken cheeks and white goatee.

Patterborn introduced them.

“Forgive me, gentlemen, for not greeting you properly,” Blazek said. “My heart and kidneys are not what they should be.” He spoke perfect German with a thick Czech accent.

Mason and Wolski sat on a sofa facing Blazek. Patterborn took a chair off to one side.

“We’re very happy you’re willing to talk to us, Dr. Blazek,” Mason said.

“Captain Patterborn told me all about your investigation. A terrible thing. Terrible.”

“We hope our questions won’t be too tough on you, bringing up bad memories and all,” Wolski said.

“The memories are burned into my psyche. Your questions will have no effect on their constant presence in my mind.”

“We understand you were a prisoner doctor at Mauthausen,” Mason said. “We’re hoping you might be able to give us information on a possible suspect.”

“The murderer. Yes . . .” Blazek paused a moment, as if to summon his memories. “I was at Mauthausen from the summer of 1942 until liberation this past May by your American army. Though I was a psychiatrist before my internment, I had practiced enough medicine to be chosen to work as a prisoner doctor. I was on block twenty-six in logistics and block thirty-two for convalescing inmates.”

“Did you know a Dr. Ernst Ramek, a German prisoner doctor?”

“My, yes. Toward the end of ’44 we were housed in the same block. We shared many talks together, whispering in the night. Dr. Ramek had a very troubled soul.”

“How do you mean?”

“We all—‘we’ meaning the prisoner doctors—felt a certain amount
of guilt about working with the SS doctors. We were better fed, better housed, and spared the appallingly brutal labor. We survived by agreeing to work for sadistic thugs. Administering medical care to inmates, while knowing that if they recovered, they must once again suffer in the quarries or the underground factories. We all to some degree made a pact with the devil for the chance of survival. Do not misunderstand me; we all lived with imminent death, hour by hour, day by day. We risked the nightly beatings and random murders by the kapos. We suffered from malnutrition and, in my case, contracting any number of diseases. . . .”

Mason interrupted Blazek to bring him back to the question. “And Dr. Ramek? All of you suffered, so why do you say that
he
had a troubled soul?”

“He never told me details of his participation, except to say that he assisted in savage, inhuman medical experiments. So his guilt, the guilt we all share, was amplified a hundredfold.”

“But he wasn’t the only prisoner doctor forced to assist in experiments like that,” Wolski said.

“Ah, but layered with his guilt, he admitted to fantasies and arousal in the act, only to be devastated afterward. I believe he was a troubled man before his internment. Being forced to participate in those experiments unleashed repressed feelings. Flights of fancy as a boy or adolescent, normally repressed, suddenly collided with reality.”

“Another witness who knew him claims that he started out as a kind and respected prisoner doctor,” Wolski said.

“Yes, he was kind and gentle to other inmates. He was never a monster. He simply lost his soul and, consequently, his sanity. I witnessed many inmates who, when faced with such terror and depravity, teetered on the edge of insanity. Dr. Ramek became trapped in a mental cycle of fantasies, desire, performance of the act, then the crushing disappointment that his fantasies had not been realized.”

“So, as long as he needed to fulfill his fantasies, he’d go on killing,” Mason said. “Like the man we’re hunting in Munich.”

For a time, Blazek fell silent. “During my long recovery, I’ve had time to consider the many men placed in the extreme environment of Mauthausen. The men who performed unimaginable cruelty . . . and the victims. What brought each to that point, and how does one go back to a normal life? How could a camp guard or a kapo or an SS doctor who for years performed inhumane acts settle back into normal society? There must be a dissociation between the two experiences, creating a duality that preserves the psyche. Dr. Ramek, and perhaps your murderer, could not maintain that duality, leaving them unable to recover from their experiences.”

“What if I told you that we believe Dr. Ramek and the Munich killer are the same person?” Mason asked.

“The same? Oh, no, that is not possible.”

Mason and Wolski exchanged looks of surprise. “How is that, Doctor?” Wolski asked. “They both fit the physical description, and their methods of killing . . .”

“It is not possible because Dr. Ramek is dead.”

There was a moment of silence as Mason and Wolski exchanged looks, the ticking of the clock on the mantelpiece the only sound.

“Are you sure?” Mason asked. “Perhaps he was transferred without your knowledge.”

“When news arrived at the camp that the American army was approaching, the Nazis tried to cover up the worst of their crimes. They destroyed documents, tried to burn all corpses, and killed many who’d witnessed the worst of the medical experiments. SS guards rounded up inmates who’d worked in the gas chamber and the crematoria, as well as many medical personnel, and shot them. They entered the block where Ramek worked and killed the prisoner staff—the medics, the radiologists, the pathologists—all of them. Many of the Nazi guards then fled in the night before the American troops arrived.”

“Did you actually see the killings in Ramek’s block?” Wolski asked. “Or see Dr. Ramek’s body?”

“No, but no one could have survived. Many of the bodies were burned, so identification was impossible.”

“But you can’t be sure that Ramek was killed,” Mason said.

“I can’t be sure, but I never saw him among the survivors.”

Mason couldn’t believe they’d come this close to identifying the killer only to learn they were following another dead end. It had to be the same man. “Maybe he was afraid of reprisals by the other inmates, because he worked with the camp doctors, and he slipped away after the guards had fled and before the camp was liberated.”

“It is possible, but I believe I am the only surviving inmate who knows the truth about his activities. And I was not going to condemn the man. He suffered as much from the Nazi killing machine as anyone. If he had survived, why would he evade his liberators, and risk capture by the retreating Germans? They would surely have killed him to cover up their crimes. No, gentlemen, I doubt very much they are the same man. I’m sorry if I disappointed you.”

Mason and Wolski fell silent. Both were at a loss for words.

Patterborn broke the silence. “I think Dr. Blazek has had enough for one day.” He stood to signal that they were done.

Mason ignored him. “Dr. Blazek, could you please give us a physical description of Dr. Ramek?”

“Gentlemen, please,” Patterborn said. “I must insist—”

Blazek raised his hand. “Mr. Collins would not be a good policeman if he took no for an answer.”

Patterborn looked at his watch and sat on the edge of the chair.

“I want you to keep one thing in mind,” Blazek said. He gestured to himself. “I was a healthy and physically fit man before my three years in the camp. After six months, I wager my own family would have had trouble recognizing me. Having said that, Dr. Ramek, as you know, was very tall with long legs. He had a strong jaw and chin. . . .” Blazek looked away and appeared to drift off.

“His hair? Did he have any scars or features that stood out?” Mason asked.

“Brown hair, I believe, though we all had our heads shaved to help control lice. No scars or features that were remarkable. Long, powerful arms and big hands for a surgeon. He was quite strong even in his weakened state. He always joked that he got his height from his mother’s side . . . the Lang family.”

Blazek chuckled at the reference, but Mason and Wolski were stunned into silence. The junk man—Alfred Lang!

“You see?” Blazek said, mistaking their silence for lack of understanding. “
Lang
in German is ‘long.’ Lang? Tall? The tall side of the family?” Blazek fell silent and gestured to Patterborn. “I think it’s time to say auf Wiedersehen to these two nice gentlemen.”

Mason wanted to rush out of there and immediately call headquarters. Instead, he stood and offered his hand. “Thank you, Dr. Blazek. Your information has been a great help.”

“Good luck, Mr. Collins. I wish you all the best.”

Wolski did the same, then followed Mason out the door.

They were almost at a dead run as they reached the gates; a rash act running at armed guards and the entrance to Dachau, but Mason couldn’t help himself. He had to call headquarters and get every CID investigator and MP available to surround and descend upon Ramek’s workshop.

A
nerve-wracking forty-five minutes later, Mason and Wolski pulled into the shoe factory courtyard. Wolski squeezed the jeep into the midst of what seemed to be their headquarters’ entire contingent of vehicles: jeeps, sedans, and troop carriers. MPs and twenty-plus German police searched surrounding buildings or controlled the growing crowd of onlookers.

Mason and Wolski raced through the snarl of vehicles and humanity. They both skidded to a halt in front of the open doors of the workshop. The workshop lay empty except for the larger machinery and empty shelves.

“Son of a bitch!” Mason said. He saw Timmers emerge from the workshop and rushed up to him. “Did you find anything?”

“Whoever was here cleaned the place out pretty good,” Timmers said. He then thrust his thumb toward the remaining workshop machines. “Techs checked for fingerprints, but it looks like he wiped down the machines.” He pointed to the open trapdoor. “Wanna check out the dungeon?”

Mason felt like he’d been hit in the stomach and couldn’t catch his breath. He looked at Wolski, and Wolski appeared to be feeling the same thing. They’d had Ramek in their hands
and
in the place where
he had butchered his victims. They had stood in the workshop, while Ramek’s chamber of horrors lurked just below their feet. And they had walked away.

Timmers headed for the trapdoor, oblivious to their reaction. Mason pushed down his frustration and anger, and then gestured for Wolski to come along. They followed Timmers down the cement stairs.

“Forensics and an evidence team are down here now,” Timmers said. “I had to come up for air. It’s nasty down there. You’re not gonna believe what we found.”

The three investigators wove past crime scene techs and MPs in the long corridor and entered the twenty-by-twenty-foot space. The stagnant air stank of mildew and chlorine. Seeping moisture and black mold stained the low ceiling and walls. In this fetid gloom, it was Ramek’s operating table that chilled Mason’s spine. The eight-foot-long table with a thick wooden top and metal support sat in the middle of the room, with leather straps hanging from the sides. A lieutenant from forensics and an evidence tech stood over the table, examining it carefully.

“They found traces of blood and a few bone chips,” Timmers said. “It’s not a real operating table. It looks like it came from a slaughterhouse or something.” He led them over to the table and knelt, shining his flashlight underneath the table.

The idea that Ramek had sliced open his victims on a butchering table was not lost on Mason. He forced his legs to move and approached the table. He knelt and looked where Timmers aimed his flashlight. A metal label had been affixed to the wooden underside with a serial number.

Mason read the label. “MGF GmbH, Munich.”

“Inspector Becker checked it out for us,” Timmers said. “It’s a company that manufactured equipment for slaughterhouses and meat-processing plants. They switched over to war production in ’39.”

“This was probably salvaged from one of the damaged factories,”
Mason said as he stood. “We’ll access the manufacturer’s files and see who they sold this table to.”

The nightmarish scene had so transfixed Mason that he hadn’t noticed Inspector Becker standing in a corner of the room, staring at something on the floor. Just above his head, a pipe hung from supports fixed in the concrete ceiling. Mason walked over and greeted him, then flicked on his flashlight and trained it on the spot where Becker had been staring.

“Bloody rags and two buckets full of blood,” Becker said, then indicated the suspended pipe. “This must be where he hung the bodies to drain them of blood.”

Both of them stared at the contents in a moment of silence. Mason felt a chill imagining the macabre scene.

“Wolski and I interviewed this man,” Mason said in a soft voice. “We were here, at his workshop. We questioned him. . . . We let him go. . . .”

Becker nodded. “I wonder how many times I have done the same thing, whether from ignorance or lack of evidence. I, too, let a murderer slip through my fingers because I had the wrong information.”

Mason said nothing, but he appreciated Becker’s words. “We just came from Dachau. Herta Oberheuser gave us his name: Dr. Ernst Ramek.”

Becker looked at Mason. “Then some good news. My team and I can now check city and state records, medical records, perhaps even his SiPo arrest record.”

Mason nodded. “Wolski and I will get with a sketch artist and have Ramek’s portrait drawn up.”

“We are closing in on him.”

“There’s something else you should see,” Timmers said. He led Mason, Wolski, and Becker to the opposite corner, where a narrow door opened up into a second room of the same size. “Looks like he spent some time down here.” He pointed to a cot, small table, and
chair that were placed near a wood-burning stove. A tech was trying to lift fingerprints off the stove surface.

“He had the stove vented up to the roof,” Timmers said. “Looks like he planned to stay here awhile.” He swung the beam of his flashlight to the facing wall. “This is what I wanted to show you.”

They walked over to a set of metal shelves containing packaged medical supplies and surgical tools: saws, retractors, cotton bandages and rags, scalpels, suture needles, and two bottles of diethyl ether.

“Right out of some Frankenstein movie,” Timmers said.

“This stuff is all U.S. Army issue,” Mason said.

“Not sure why he left it all behind.”

“Maybe he ran out of time,” Wolski said.

“Or maybe he couldn’t risk being caught with U.S.-issued medical supplies,” Mason said. That got Mason thinking. “He couldn’t have found or stolen all this. He must be using the black market to buy them.”

“And he’ll need more if he wants to keep going,” Wolski said. “If we can find out who his supplier is, we put surveillance on him and see if he shows up looking to buy.”

Mason turned to Becker. “Put together any information you have on black marketers, especially in medicine, and we’ll do the same.” He decided not to mention Laura’s possible inside information on black marketers, but made a mental note to talk to her when he found a spare moment.

“I will take care of that right away,” Becker said and left.

“We’re still waiting on a genny and lights,” Timmers said. “Who knows what else we’ll find when that happens.”

“Any witnesses?” Mason asked.

“No one yet.”

“When we were here, he had a ton of stuff up top,” Wolski said. “He had to have made several trips in a wagon to get it all out.”

“You guys were here?” Timmers said. “You had him and let him get away?”

“If you’d read my daily report the way you’re supposed to, you’d know that.”

“Damn, what’s the colonel gonna say?”

“Forget what the colonel’s going to say. Ramek hired a driver the time we were here. Wolski has the driver’s name and address. Get Cole and Mancini to pick him up. Then get a couple of teams together and find out if anyone within a four-block radius spotted a wagon loaded with radios, clocks. He even moved two goddamned cars and a goddamned motorcycle!”

“Okay. You don’t have to yell. I ain’t the one who’s gonna jump down your throat.”

Mason jabbed his finger toward the exit, and Timmers trotted off. Mason rubbed his face in frustration.

“At least we know his face, his name, and his alias,” Wolski said. “Plus, we’ve shut him down for a while. He’s going to have to acquire equipment and find another secure location. That’s going to take time.”

Mason looked around and cursed under his breath. “If he hasn’t left town.”

Mason and Wolski emerged from Ramek’s torture chamber and stepped outside the workshop. Mason looked up at the surrounding ruins, the dark windows staring like sad eyes.

Wolski said, “If he needs to keep on killing without a break, then he’ll be desperate. He’s bound to make a mistake. We’ll get him.”

“He left the buckets of blood and rags for us to find. To taunt us. He
planned
for this. He could be looking down on us right now from one of these buildings, enjoying his triumph. He’ll be up and running in no time.”

“Sir, you’d better see this,” an MP said to Mason. He stood among the jumble of vehicles. His blanched face was enough to prompt Mason to hurry through the cars behind the MP without question. He stopped three paces from the jeep that had brought Wolski and him to the workshop. The back of the passenger’s seat, the seat Mason had
sat in on the way over, was slashed to shreds and smothered in crimson, coagulating blood.

•   •   •

T
he thrill had been worth the risk. He had jeopardized everything to get close enough that he could have easily slashed the investigator’s throat. In the chaos of MPs and German police, no one noticed him brush past Investigator Collins while fingering the scalpel he held deep in his pocket. And how simple it had been to slip in and out of the shoe factory courtyard wearing a German police uniform and carrying the forged identity papers attesting to his membership in the Landespolizei as
a newly transferred
Wachtmeister
. He had acquired this new disguise in his final trade with Rudolph for the Mercedes. He might even be among the squad of German police who would find the slashed bodies of Rudolph and his clumsy bodyguard. Departing the chaos of the factory had been just as easy, blending in with the rest of the green-uniformed
Landespolizeien
, then slipping through the small crowd gathered to watch the spectacle. Just another
Wachtmeister
moving out to search for witnesses.

Now he stood on the edge of the vast site where demolition crews dumped the rubble collected from so many of the ruins. His eyes were fixed on a blazing pyre, and he wept as he watched his collection of clocks and radios, the Horex motorcycle, and the Altmann car, his labors of love, go up in flames. He had spared a few of his favorite objects from the flames, but the rest could not be left for the masses to pilfer, the greedy, undeserving creatures that would plunder his treasures. No, he could not face that. They would return to the ashes from which they had emerged. Let their remains rise up to the heavens, as he would do one day soon.

In the distance, a fire truck blared its siren. He let out a shriek of anger, and his body shook. That American detective had violated his sanctuary. He would have real revenge.

Finally he turned away from the blaze and slipped into the shadows.

Thirty minutes later he was home. He changed out of his uniform and put on his street clothes. This day was worthy of a diary entry, and he sat at the small table in the dark room. Yes, he had lost his treasures, his place of sacrifice, and some of his medical equipment, but today’s entry would be filled with more triumph than defeat. Because the greatest prize in the trade for the Mercedes, and the one Rudolph had had the most difficulty obtaining, was an American military police uniform. If he were careful, the American uniform would enable him to move about the city with impunity. He could approach without detection and kill the vile detective when the time was right. All that remained was the method.

He must think. Weigh his options. The voices would do anything to keep him from escaping their torment. The obstacle must be removed. As Rudolph and his bodyguard had been. The crime boss had become too curious about his request.

“Why would a humble tinker want police uniforms?” Rudolph had asked.
“What have you got going on the side?”

Rudolph had threatened to withhold the uniforms. Clearly he’d begun to suspect Ramek was hiding something sinister. The bodyguard had been fooled by Ramek’s act of timidity. Killing both of them had been so easy.

The rest of Rudolph’s crew would be looking for him. The police manhunt would intensify. He was doomed either way, but that was the price for ascension. But ascension, he now realized, could only be achieved by making the ultimate sacrifice. It would involve the suffering of a true innocent. He saw it clearly now: It would be like Abraham preparing to sacrifice his son. Only his willingness to obey, his duty performed up to the final act, could compel God to stay his hand and deliver him to the kingdom of heaven.

But it began with the selection. And now, Ramek knew, his final Chosen One must be the ultimate symbol of innocence . . . a child.