them that if they pooled their influence, the whole could be far, far
greater than the sum of its parts. Collectively, there was very little
they couldn’t affect, direct, orchestrate. But, you know, Sigma was a
living thing. And like living things, it evolved.”
“Yes,” Anna said. “With funds provided by the largest corporations in
the world, along with funds stolen from the state Reichsbank. We know
who the founding board members were. You’re the last living member of
that original board. But who are your successors?”
Strasser looked down the hall, but he seemed to be staring at nothing.
“Who controls it now? Give us names!” Ben shouted.
“I don’t know’.” Strasser’s voice cracked. “They kept people like me
quiet by sending us money regularly. We were lackeys, finally excluded
from the inner councils of power. We should all be billionaires many,
many times over. They send us millions, but it is crumbs, table
scraps.” Strasser’s lips curled up in a repellent smile. “They give me
table scraps, and now they wish to cut me off. They want to kill me
because they don’t want to pay me anymore. They’re greedy, and they’re
ashamed. After all I did for them, they regard me as an embarrassment.
And a danger, because even though the doors have been shut to me for
years, they still think I know too much. For making possible everything
they do, how am I repaid? With contempt!” A growing sense of rage–the
pent-up grievance of years–made his words hard, metallic. “They act as
if I am a poor relation, a black sheep, a foul-smelling derelict. The
swells gather in their fancy-dress forum, and their biggest fear is that
I will crash their party, like a skunk at a kaffeeklatsch. I know where
they gather. I am not such a fool, such an ignoramus. I would not join
them in Austria had they asked me to.”
Austria.
“What are you talking about?” Ben demanded. “Where are they gathering?
Tell me.”
Strasser gave him a look that combined wariness and defrance. It was
clear that he would say no more.
“Goddamnit, answer me!”
“You are all the same,” Strasser spat. “You would think somebody my age
would be treated with respect! I have nothing more to say to you.”
Anna was suddenly alert. “I hear sirens. This is it, Ben. We’re out
of here.”
Ben stood directly in front of Strasser. “Herr Strasser, do you know
who I am?”
“Who you are … ?” Strasser stammered.
“My father is Max Hartman. I’m sure you remember the name.”
Strasser squinted. “Max Hartman … the Jew, our treasurer … ?”
“That’s right. And he was an SS officer as well, I’m told.” But
Sonnenfeld had said that would merely have been a cover, a ruse. His
heart was pounding, he dreaded hearing Strasser’s confirmation of Max’s
ugly past.
Strasser laughed, flashing his ruined brown teeth. “SS!” he laughed.
“He was no SS. We gave him fake SS papers so odessa would smuggle him
out of Germany into Switzerland, with no questions asked. That was the
deal.”
Blood roared in Ben’s ears. He felt a wave of relief, a physical
sensation.
“Bormann chose him personally for the German delegation,” Strasser went
on, “Not just because he was skilled at moving money around, but because
we needed a … a false head ”
“A figurehead.”
“Yes. The industrialists from American and elsewhere were not so
comfortable with what the Nazis had done. A Jewish participant was
necessary to provide legitimacy to show that we weren’t the wrong kind
of Germans, to show that we were not zealots, not Hitler disciples. For
his part, your father got for himself a good deal he got his family out
of the camps, and a lot of other Jewish families as well, and he was
given forty million Swiss francs almost a million dollars U.S. A lot of
money.” A horrible smile. “Now he calls himself ‘rags to riches
story.” Is a million dollars rags? I don’t think.”
“Ben!” Anna shouted. Quickly she flashed the leather wallet that held
her Department of Justice credentials. “Now you want to know who / am,
Herr Strasser? I’m here on behalf of the U.S. Justice Department’s
Office of Special Investigations. I’m sure you know who they are.”
“Oh ho,” Strasser said. “Well, I’m sorry to disappoint you, but I’m an
Argentine citizen and I don’t recognize your authority.”
The sirens were louder, just a few blocks away it seemed.
Anna turned back to him. “So I guess we’ll see how serious the
Argentine government is about extraditing war criminals. Out the back
way, Ben.”
Strasser’s face flashed with rage. “Hartman,” he said hoarsely.
“Come on, Ben!”
Strasser crooked a finger at Ben, beckoning him. Ben could not resist.
The old man began to whisper. Ben knelt down to listen.
“Hartman, do you know your father was a weak little man?” Strasser
said. “A man without a spine. A coward and a fraud who pretends to be
a victim.” Strasser’s lips were inches from Ben’s ear. His voice was
singsong. “And you are the fraud’s son, that’s all. That is all you
are to me.”
Ben closed his eyes, fought to control his anger.
The fraud’s son.
Was this true? Was Strasser right?
Strasser was clearly enjoying Ben’s discomfort.
“Oh, you’d like to kill me right now, isn’t that right, Hartman?”
Strasser said. “Yet you don’t. Because you’re a coward, like your
father.”
Ben saw Anna starting down the hall.
“No,” he said. “Because I’d much rather you spend your remaining life
in a stinking jail cell in Jerusalem. I’d like your last days to be as
unpleasant as possible. Killing you is a waste of a bullet.”
He ran down the corridor, following Anna to the back of the house, as
the sirens grew louder.
Crawl, don’t walk. The Architect knew that the effort to maintain
orthostatic blood pressure in his head would be made much more difficult
by standing erect, when there was as yet no absolute need to do so. It
was a rational decision, and his ability to make it was almost as
reassuring as the Clock he had retained in an ankle holster.
The front door was open, the hallway deserted. He crawled, in a
standard infantry crawl, indifferent to the wide smear of blood he was
leaving as his shirt front draped against the blond flooring. Every
yard seemed like a mile to him. But he would not be deterred.
You’re the best. He was seventeen, and the drill instructor told him
so, in front of the entire battalion. You’re the best. He was
twenty-three, and his commanding officer at Stasi had said so in an
official report that he showed young Hans before forwarding it to his
superior. You’re the best. These words from the head of his Stasi
directorate: he had just returned from a “hunting trip” in West Berlin,
having dispatched four physicists-members of an internationally
distinguished team from the University of Leipzig–who had defected the
day before. You’re the best a top-level Sigma official, a white-haired
American in flesh-toned glasses, had spoken those words to him. It was
after he had stage-managed the death of a prominent Italian leftist,
shooting him from across the street while the man was in the throes of
passion with a fifteen-year-old Somali whore. But he would hear those
words again. And again. Because they were true.
And because they were true, he would not give up. He would not succumb
to the nearly overpowering urge to surrender, to sleep, to stop.
With robotic precision, he moved hand and knee and propelled himself
down the hallway.
Finally, he found himself in a spacious, double-height room, its walls
lined with books. Lizardlike eyes surveyed the area. His primary
target was not present. A disappointment, not a surprise.
Instead, there was the wheezing, sweating weakling Strasser, a traitor
who, too, was deserving of death.
How many more minutes of consciousness did the Architect have left? He
eyed Strasser avidly, as if extinguishing his light might help to
restore his own.
Shakily, he rose from the floor into a marksman’s crouch. He felt
muscles in his body trying to spasm, but he held his arms completely
still. The small Clock in his arms had now acquired the weight of a
cannon, yet somehow he managed to raise the firearm until it was at the
precisely correct angle.
It was at that moment that Strasser, perhaps alerted by the old-penny
odor of blood, finally became aware of his presence.
The Architect watched the raisin-like eyes widen momentarily, then fall
closed. Squeezing the trigger was like lifting a desk with one finger,
but he would do so. Did so.
Or did he?
When he failed to hear the gun’s report, he first worried that he had
not executed his mission. Then he realized that it was his sensory
awareness that was beginning to shut down.
The room was swiftly darkening: he knew that brain cells starved of