ourselves that it was.”
“Then you do know of it?”
Lenz leaned forward. “You have to remember that in the tumult following
the war, there were all sorts of wild tales. One of those was the
legend of Sigma, vague and shrouded as it was. That some sort of
alliance was forged among the major industrialists of the world.” He
pointed at two faces. “That men like Sir Alford Kittredge and Wolfgang
Siebing, one revered and one reviled, made common cause. That they met
in secrecy, and forged a clandestine pact.”
“And what was the nature of that pact?”
Lenz shook his head hopelessly. “I wish I knew, Mr. Hartman–may I
call you Ben? I’m sorry. I’d never taken the stories seriously until
now.”
“And your own father’s involvement?”
Lenz shook his head slowly. “You’re exceeding my own knowledge. Perhaps
Jakob Sonnenfeld would know of these things.”
Sonnenfeld–Sonnenfeld was the most prominent Nazi hunter alive. “Would
he help me?”
“Speaking as a major benefactor of his institute,” Lenz replied, “I am
certain he’ll do his best.” He poured himself a fortifying quantity of
spirits. “We’ve been dancing around one issue, haven’t we? You still
haven’t explained how you came to be involved in all of this.”
“Do you recognize the man next to your father?”
“No,” Lenz said. He squinted. “He looks a little like … but that’s
not possible either.”
“Yes. That’s my father next to yours.” Ben’s voice was flatly
declarative.
“That makes no sense,” Lenz protested. “Everyone in my world knows
about your father. He’s a major philanthropist. A force for good. And
a Holocaust survivor, of course. Yes, it looks like him–like you, in
fact. But I repeat: that makes no sense.”
Ben laughed bitterly. “I’m sorry. But things stopped making sense for
me when my old college buddy tried to murder me on the Bahnhofstrasse.”
Lenz’s eyes looked sorrowful. “Tell me how you found this.”
Ben told Lenz about the events of the past several days, trying to stay
as dispassionate as he could.
“Then you, too, know danger,” Lenz said solemnly. “There are filaments,
invisible filaments, that link this photograph to those deaths.”
Frustration welled up in Ben as he struggled to make some sense of
everything Lenz was telling him, tried to rearrange the pieces of
information to make a coherent picture. Instead of becoming clearer,
things were even more bewildering, more maddening.
Ben was first conscious of Use’s return to the room from the scent of
her perfume.
“This young man brings danger,” she said to her husband, and her voice
was like sandpaper. She turned to Ben. “Forgive me, but I cannot keep
silent any longer. You bring death to this house. My husband has been
menaced by extremists for so many years because of his fight for
justice. I am sorry for what you have undergone. But you are careless,
the way you Americans always are. You come to see my husband under
false pretenses, pursuing some private vendetta of your own.”
“Please, Use,” Lenz interjected.
“And now you have brought death here with you, like an unannounced
guest. I would be grateful to you if you would leave my house. My
husband has done enough for the cause. Must he give his life for it,
too?”
“Use is upset,” Lenz said apologetically. “There are aspects of my life
that she has never grown accustomed to.”
“No,” Ben said. “She’s probably right. I’ve already put too many lives
in jeopardy.” His voice was hollow.
Use’s face was a mask, the muscles immobilized by fear. “Gute Nacht,”
she said with quiet finality.
Walking Ben to the foyer, Lenz spoke with murmured urgency. “If you
want, I’ll be glad to help you. To do what I can. Pull strings where I
am able to, provide contacts. But Use is right about one thing. You
can’t know what you’re up against. I’d advise you to be cautious, my
friend.” There was something familiar about the harrowed look on Lenz’s
face, and after a moment Ben realized that it reminded him of what he’d
seen on Peter’s. Within both men, it seemed, a passion for justice had
been worn down by vast forces, and yet it could be mistaken for nothing
else.
Ben left Lenz’s house, dazed. He was far over his head: why couldn’t he
just admit that he was powerless, hopelessly unequipped for a task that
had defeated his own brother? And the very facts he had already
established now ground deeper into his psyche, like glass shards under
his feet. Max Hartman, philanthropist, Holocaust survivor,
humanitarian-was he, in fact, a man like Gerhard Lenz, a confederate in
barbarity? It was sickening to contemplate. Might Max have been
complicit in Peter’s murder? Was the man behind his own son’s death?
Was this why he’d suddenly disappeared? So he wouldn’t have to face his
own exposure? And what about the complicity of the CIA? How the hell
did an Obersturmfuhrer in Hitler’s SS come to emigrate and settle in the
States, if not with help from the U.S. government? Were allies of his,
very old friends indeed, behind the horrific events? Was there some
chance they were doing it on his father’s behalf–to protect him and
themselves as well–without the old man’s knowledge?
You talk of things you cannot understand, his father had said, speaking
past him as much as to him.
Ben was seized with conflicting emotions. Part of him, the devoted,
loyal son, wanted to believe that there was some other explanation, had
wanted to since Peter’s revelations. Some reason to believe his own
father was not a … a what? A monster. He heard his mother’s voice,
whispering as she died, pleading with him to understand, to try to heal
the breach, to get along. To love this complicated, difficult man who
was Max Hartman.
While another part of Ben felt a welcome clarity.
I’ve worked hard to understand you, you bastard! Ben found himself
shouting inwardly. I’ve tried to love you. But a deception like this,
the ugliness of your real life–how can I feel anything but hatred?
He had parked, once again, a good distance from Lenz’s house. He did
not want his license plates to be traced back to him; at least, that had
been his thinking before, when he had assumed Lenz was one of the
conspirators.
He walked down the path in front of Lenz’s house. Just before he
reached the street, he saw, in his peripheral vision, a light come on.
It was the interior dome light of a car, just a few yards away.
Someone was getting out of the car and walking toward him.
Trevor saw a light come on across the street and turned his head to
look. The front door was open. The target was chatting with an older
gentleman, whom he assumed was Lenz. Trevor waited until the two men
had shaken hands and the target was strolling down the front path before
he got out of the car.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR.
“I want you to run the plates,” Heisler said on the police radio. He
turned to Anna. “If is not you, and not us, then who is it? You must
have some idea.”
“Someone who’s also staking out the house,” she said. “I don’t like
this.”
She thought: Something else is going on here. Should I tell Heisler my
suspicions about Hartman? Yet it was such a half-baked bit of
speculation –after all, what if Hartman was there simply to get
information out of Lenz, information about where some of his father’s
old friends might be living–and not to kill him?
Still… they had all the legal justification they needed to storm the
villa. And what if it turned out that, while they were all sitting here
watching the house, one of the city’s leading citizens was inside being
murdered? The outcry would be enormous; it would be an international
incident, and it would all be on her shoulders.
Heisler interrupted her thoughts. “I want you to walk by that car and
look at the man’s face,” he said. It seemed an order, not a request.
“Make absolute certain you don’t recognize.”
She agreed, wanting to see for herself.
“I need a weapon,” she said.
Heisler handed her his gun. “You took this from floor of car. I must
have left it. I did not give it to you.”
She got out of the car and started walking toward Lenz’s villa.
The front door of Lenz’s house came open.
Two men were standing there, talking. One older, one younger.
Lenz and Hartman.
Lenz was alive, she saw with relief.
The two men shook hands cordially. Then Hartman started down the path
toward the street.
And suddenly a light inside the Peugeot went on, and the man got out of
the driver’s seat, a trench coat draped over his right arm. That was
when she saw the man’s face for the first time.
The face!
She knew the face. She had seen it before.