by what he found out. The Second World War was a conflict that had
clear rights and wrongs, and yet many of those involved were utterly
indifferent to what was at stake. There were numerous corporations
whose only concern was to maintain their operating margin. Some, alas,
even viewed the war as an opportunity to be exploited an opportunity to
increase their profits. The victors never adequately came to grips with
this legacy of corporate double-dealing. It was never convenient to do
so.” Her sardonic half-smile reminded Ben of his brother’s banked sense
of outrage, his smoldering anger.
“Why not?”
“Too many American and British industries might have had to be seized
for trading with the enemy, for collaboration. Better to sweep the
problem under the carpet. The Dulles brothers, you know, made sure of
it. Tracking down the real collaborators it wouldn’t have looked good.
It would have blurred the lines between good and evil, interfered with
the myth of Allied innocence. Forgive me if I don’t explain myself very
well these are stories I have heard many times. There was a young
attorney in the Justice Department who dared make a speech about
collaborations between American businessmen and the Nazis. He was
immediately fired. After the war, German officials were called to task,
some of them. And yet the citadel of Axis industrialists was never
probed, never disturbed. Why prosecute German industrialists who had
done business with Hitler who had, really, made Hitler possible given
that they were just as happy now to do business with America? When
overzealous officials at Nuremberg had a few of them convicted, your
John J. McCloy, the American High Commissioner, had their sentences
commuted. The ‘excesses’ of fascism were regrettable, but
industrialists had to look after each other, right?”
Once again, he could almost detect Peter’s passionate voice in her re
countings Dully, he said, “I still have a hard time getting my mind
around it financial partnerships when the two sides were at war?”
“Things aren’t always as they seem. Hitler’s senior-most intelligence
officer, Reinhard Gehlen, had already begun planning his own surrender
in 1944. The high command knew which way the wind was blowing, they
knew Hitler was mad, irrational. So they bartered. They microfilmed
their files on the USSR.” buried them in watertight drums in the
mountain meadows of the Alps, not a hundred miles from here, and
presented themselves to the American Counterintelligence Corps to make a
deal. After the war, you Americans put Gehlen in charge of the “South
German Industrial Development Organization.” ”
Ben shook his head blearily. “It sounds like you both got pretty
immersed in this stuff. And it sounds like I’m way out of my depths.”
He knocked back the rest of the brandy.
“Yes, I suppose we did get rather deep into all of this. We had to. I
remember something Peter told me. He said the real question isn’t where
they are. It’s where they aren’t. That the real question isn’t who
can’t be trusted, but who can be. Once it sounded like paranoia.”
“But no longer.”
“No,” Liesl agreed, her voice trembling slightly. “And now they have
arrayed their forces against you, through both official and unofficial
channels.” She hesitated. “There is something else I must give you.”
Once more, she disappeared into the bedroom, and then came back with a
plain cardboard box, the sort a dry cleaner might package a shirt in.
She opened it on the rough-hewn table in front of them. Papers.
Laminated ID cards. Passports. The folding currency of modern
bureaucracy.
“They were Peter’s,” Liesl said. “The fruits of four years in hiding.”
Ben’s fingers quickly sorted through the identity papers as if they were
playing cards. Three different names, all appended to the same face.
Peter’s face. And, for all practical intents, his own. ”
“Robert Simon.” Smart. There must be thousands of people with that
name in North America. “Michael Johnson.” Likewise. “John Freedman.”
These look like good work, professional work, if I’m any judge.”
“Peter was a perfectionist,” Liesl said. “I’m sure they are flawless.”
Ben continued to go through the documents and saw that the passports
came with matching credit cards. In addition, there were documents for
“Paula Simon” and other spousal identities: if Robert Simon needed to
travel with his “wife,” he’d be prepared. Ben marveled, but his
admiration was shadowed by a deep sadness. Peter’s precautions were
meticulous, obsessive, exhaustive and yet they could not save him.
“I’ve got to ask, Liesl: Can we be sure that Peter’s pursuers the Sigma
group or whoever they are aren’t on to them? Any of these could be
flagged.”
“Possibilities are not likelihoods.”
“When was the last time he used “Robert Simon’? And under what
circumstances?”
Liesl closed her eyes in concentration, retrieving the details with
remarkable precision. After twenty minutes, Ben had satisfied himself
that at least two of Peter’s aliases, unused in the last twenty-four
months, were unlikely to have been detected. He tucked the papers into
the capacious inside pockets of his leather coat.
He placed a hand on Liesl’s and looked into her clear blue eyes. “Thank
you, Liesl,” he said. What an astonishing woman she was, he thought
once more, and how lucky his brother was to have found her.
“The shoulder wound will scab over and heal in a matter of days,” she
said. “You will find it considerably harder to shed your identity,
though these documents will help.”
Liesl opened a bottle of red wine and poured each of them a glass. The
wine was excellent, deep and rich and tannic, and Ben soon began to
relax.
For a few moments the two of them silently watched the fire. Ben
thought: If Peter had hidden the document here, where could it be? And
if not here, where? He’d said it was hidden away safely. Had he left
it with Matthias Deschner? But that made no sense: Why would he go to
such lengths to open a bank account because of the vault that came with
it, and then not put the incorporation document in the vault?
Why hadn’t any document been in the vault?
He wondered about Deschner. What was his role, if any, in what had
happened at the bank? Had he secretly alerted the banker that Ben was
in the country illegally? If so, the timing didn’t track: Deschner
could have done so before Ben had been admitted to the vault. Was it
possible that Deschner had gotten into the vault–as he easily could
have despite his claim that he could not–months or years before, taken
the document, then given it to his brother’s pursuers? Yet Liesl had
said she trusted her cousin … Contradictory thoughts swirled around in
his brain, warring with one another until Ben couldn’t think clearly
anymore.
Liesl spoke at last, interrupting his troubled ruminations. “The fact
that you could so easily follow me here worries me,” she said. “No
offense, please, but again, you’re an amateur. Think of how much easier
it would have been for a professional.”
Whether or not she was right, it was crucial to reassure her, Ben
sensed. “But keep in mind, Liesl, that Peter had told me you two lived
in a cabin in the woods, near a lake. Once I figured out which hospital
it was, that narrowed things down considerably. If I didn’t know as
much, I’d probably have lost you pretty early on.”
She said nothing, just stared with unease at the fire.
“You know how to use that thing?” Ben asked, glancing toward the
revolver she’d left on a table by the door.
“My brother was in the army. Every Swiss boy knows how to fire a gun.
There’s even a national holiday where Swiss boys go off to shoot. My
father just happened to believe that a girl is every bit the equal of a
boy and should learn to use a gun too. So I’m prepared for this life.”
She rose. “Well, I’m famished, and I’m going to make some dinner.” Ben
followed her to the kitchen.
She lit the gas oven, then took a whole chicken from the tiny
refrigerator, buttered it and sprinkled it with dried herbs, and put it
in the oven to roast. While she boiled some potatoes and sauteed some
greens, they made idle conversation about her work and his, about Peter.
After a while, Ben retrieved the photograph from his jacket pocket.
He’d verified, enroute, that the wax envelope had protected it from
water damage. Now he showed it to her. “Do you have any idea who these
men might be?” he asked.
Her eyes suddenly registered alarm. “Oh, my God, that has to be your
father! He looks so much like you two. What a handsome man he was!”
“And these others?”
She hesitated, shook her head, clearly troubled. “They look like
important men, but then they all did in those heavy business suits. I’m
sorry, I don’t know. Peter never showed this to me. He just told me