‘- until it became necessary for you to run away to South America. With your gold that had been melted down from Jewish teeth and your silver melted down from Jewish jewellery and your numbered Swiss bank account. Mr Heisel went home a happy man, you know. Oh, he had had a bad moment when he woke up in the dark and realized with whom he was sharing a room. But he feels better now. He feels that God allowed him the sublime privilege of breaking his back so that he could be instrumental in the capture of one of the greatest butchers of human beings to ever live.’
Dussander spoke slowly, enunciating carefully.
‘During the war I was a factory machinist—’
‘Oh, why not drop it? Your papers will not stand up to a serious examination. I know it and you know it. You are found out’
‘My job was to oversee the manufacture of—’
‘Of corpses! One way or another, you will be in Tel Aviv before Christmas. The authorities are cooperating with us this time, Dussander. The Americans want to make us happy, and you are one of the things that will make us happy.’
‘- the manufacture of drive-columns and power-trains for armoured cars and trucks. Later I helped to build Tiger tanks.’
‘Why be tiresome? Why drag it out?’
‘My reserve unit was called up—’
‘Very well then. You’ll see me again. Soon.’
Weiskopf rose. He left the room. For a moment his shadow bobbed on the wall and then that was gone, too. Dussander closed his eyes. He wondered if Weiskopf could be telling the truth about American cooperation. Three years ago, when oil was tight in America, he would have believed it. But the stupid Iranian militants had hardened American support for Israel. It was possible. And what did it matter?
One way or the other, legal or illegal, Weiskopf and his colleagues would have him. On the subject of Nazis they were intransigent, and on the subject of the camps they were lunatics.
He was trembling all over. But he knew what he must do now.
24
The school records for the pupils who had passed through Santa Donate Junior High were kept in an old, rambling warehouse on the north side. It was not far from the abandoned trainyards. It was dark and echoing and it smelled of wax and polish and 999 Industrial Cleaner — it was also the school department’s custodial warehouse.
Ed French got there around four in the afternoon with Norma in tow. A janitor let them in, told Ed what he wanted was on the fourth floor, and showed them to a creeping, clanking warehouse that frightened Norma into a uncharacteristic silence.
She regained herself on the fourth floor, prancing and capering up and down the dim aisles of stacked boxes and files while Ed searched for and eventually found the files containing report-cards from 1975. He pulled the second box and began to leaf through the Bs. BORK. BOSTWICK. BOSWELL. BOWDEN, TODD. He pulled the card, shook his head impatiently over it in the dim light, and took it across to one of the high, dusty windows.
‘Don’t run around in here, honey,’ he called over his shoulder.
‘Why, daddy?’
‘Because the trolls will get you,’ he said, and held Todd’s card up to the light.
He saw it at once. This report card, in those flies for four years now, had been carefully, almost professionally, doctored.
‘Jesus Christ,’ Ed French muttered.
Trolls, trolls, trolls!’ Norma sang gleefully, as she continued to dance up and down the aisles.
25
Dussander walked carefully down the hospital corridor. He was still a bit unsteady on his legs. He was wearing his blue bathrobe over his white hospital johnny. It was night now, just after eight o’clock, and the nurses were changing shifts. The next half hour would be confused — he had observed that all the shift changes were confused. It was a time for exchanging notes, gossip, and drinking coffee at the nurses’ station, which was just around the corner from the drinking fountain.
What he wanted was just across from the drinking fountain.
He was not noticed in the wide hallway, which at this hour reminded him of a long and echoing train station minutes before a passenger train departs. The walking wounded paraded slowly up and down, some dressed in robes as he was, others holding the backs of their johnnies together. Disconnected music came from half a dozen different transistor radios in half a dozen different rooms. Visitors came and went A man laughed in one room and another man seemed to be weeping across the hall. A doctor walked by with his nose in a paperback novel.