her personally died within days of talking to the authorities.
One in a car crash, one after a mugging. The crash victim was a woman. One woman who tried to quit her group Feuer— Fire— was also killed.” “Watched and whacked,” Herbert said. “Just like the mob.” “Not quite,” Liz said. “The retiree was drowned in a toilet after being beaten and slashed. This is one sick little schatze. Anyway, so much for sparing women.” Liz scanned back to Karin’s biography.
“Let’s see if we can see where Ms. Doring is coming from,” Liz said. She began reading, then said, “Here we are.
Her mother died when she was six and she was raised by her father. Bet you dollars to pesos there was some nasty business going on there.” “Abuse.” “Yeah,” Liz said. “Again, it’s a classic pattern. As a girl, Karin was either beaten, sexually abused, or both. She sublimated like crazy as a kid, then looked for a place to put her anger. She tried Communism, didn’t like it for whatever reason—” “It was dying,” Herbert contributed.
“Then she found the neo-Nazi movement and assumed the role of father figure, something her own father, never did.” “Where is Papa Doring now?” Herbert asked.
“Dead,” said Liz. “Cirrhosis of the liver. Died when Karin was fifteen, just about the time she became a political activist.” “Okay,” said Herbert, “so we think we know who our enemy is. She’s happy to kill men, willing to kill women. She assembles a terrorist group and roams the country attacking foreign interests. Why? To scare them off?” “She knows she can’t do that,” Liz says. “Nations will still have embassies, and businesses will still come. More likely it’s the equivalent of a recruitment poster. Something to rally other aggressive misfits around her. And by the way, Bob, it obviously works. As of four months ago, when this file was updated, Feuer had thirteen hundred members with an annual growth rate of nearly twenty percent. Of those members, twenty active, full-time soldiers move with her from camp to camp.” “Do we know where any of these camps are?” “They keep changing,” Liz said. “We’ve got three photographs in the file.” She accessed them in turn and read each caption. “One was taken at a lake in Mecklenburg, the second was shot in a forest in Bavaria, and the third was in mountains somewhere along the Austrian border. We don’t know how they travel, but it looks to me like they pitch tents whenever they get there.” “They probably move around in a bus or van,” Herbert said. He sounded dejected. “Guerrilla groups that size used to travel in patterns to establish regular supply lines. But with cellular phones and overnight parcel delivery, they can arrange for pickups just about anywhere now. How many camps do we know about?” “Just those three,” Liz said.
The phone beeped. It had to be Monica calling for her messages. Her roommate would be frantic, but Liz wasn’t going to answer.
“What about lieutenants?” Herbert asked. “Who does she rely on?” “Her closest aide is Manfred Piper. He joined her after they graduated from high school. Apparently, she handles all the military matters and Piper does the fundraising, runs checks on aspiring members, that sort of thing.” Herbert was silent for a moment, then said, “We don’t really have very much here, do we?” “To understand her, yes,” Liz said. “To catch her, I’m afraid not.” After a moment, Herbert said, “Liz, our German host thinks she may have pulled this heist off so she could pass out trinkets for Chaos Days, the little Mardi Gras of hate they have here. Considering her record of striking political targets, does that make sense?” “I think you’re looking at this the wrong way,” Liz said.
“What was the movie?” Herbert said, “Tirpitz. About the battleship, I guess.” Liz tapped into Pictures in Motion, a Web site listing movies in production around the world. After locating the film, she said, “The set was a political target, Bob. It was an American co-production.” Herbert was silent for a moment. “So either the memorabilia was a bonus, or the American crew was.” “You got it.” “Look,” Herbert said, “I’m going to have a chat with the authorities here, maybe pay a visit to one of these Chaos Days celebrations.” “Watch it, Bob,” Liz said. “Neo-Nazis don’t hold doors for people in wheelchairs. Remember, you’re different—” “You bet I am,” he said. “Meanwhile, give me a buzz on the cellular if you come up with anything else on this lady or her group.” “Will do,” Liz said. “Take care and ciao,” she added, using the other Italian word she knew.
CHAPTER ELEVEN Thursday, 11:52 A.M., Toulouse, France
The wood-paneled room was large and dark. The only light came from a single lamp which stood beside the massive mahogany desk. The only items on the desk itself were a telephone, fax machine, and computer, all of them collected in a tight semicircle. The shelves behind the desk were barely visible in the shadows. On them were miniature guillotines. Some were working models, made of wood and iron. Others were made of glass or metal, and one was a plastic model sold in the United States.
Guillotines had been used for official executions in France until 1939, when murderer Eugen Weidmann was beheaded outside St. Peter’s Prison in Versailles. But Dominique didn’t like those later machines: the guillotines with the large, solid buckets to collect the heads, screens to protect the executioners from the spray of blood, shock absorbers to cushion the thunk of the blade. Dominique liked the originals.
Across from the desk, lost in the ghostly dark, was an eight-foot-tall guillotine which had been used during the French Revolution. This device was unrestored. The uprights were slightly rotted and. the trestle was worn smooth from all the bodies that “Madame La Guillotine”, had embraced.
Drawn nearly to the cross-beam on top, the blade was rusty from rain and blood. And the wicker basket, also the original, was frayed. But Dominique had noticed particles of the bran which had been used to soak up blood, and there were still hairs in the basket. Hairs which had snagged the wicker when the heads tumbled in.
It all looked exactly as it did in 1796, the last time those leather straps were fastened under the armpits and over the legs of the doomed. When the lunette, the iron collar, had held the neck of its last victim— held it within a perfect circle so the victim couldn’t move. However much fear possessed them, they couldn’t squirm from the ram and its sharp blade. Once the executioner released the spring, nothing could stop the eighty-pound deathblow. The head dropped into its basket, the body was pushed sideways into its own leather-lined wicker basket, and the vertical plank was ready to receive the next victim. The process was so quick that some bodies were still sighing, the lungs emptying through the neck, as they were removed from the plank. It was said that for several seconds, the still-living brains in decapitated heads enabled the victims to see and hear the ghastly aftermath of their own execution.
At the height of the Reign of Terror, executioner Charles Henri-Sanson and his aides were able to decapitate nearly one victim every minute. They guillotined three hundred men and women in three days, thirteen hundred in six weeks, helping to bring the total to 2,831 between April 6, 1793, and July 29, 1795.
What did you think of that, Herr Hitler? Dominique wondered. The gas chambers at Treblinka were designed to kill two hundred people in fifteen minutes, the gas chambers at Auschwitz designed to kill two thousand. Was the master killer impressed or did he scoff at the work of relative amateurs?
The guillotine was Dominique’s prize. Behind it, on the wall, were period newspapers and etchings in ornate frames, as well as original documents signed by George Jacques Danton and other leaders of the French Revolution. But nothing stirred him like the guillotine. Even with the overhead lights off and the shades drawn he could feel it, the device which was a reminder that one had to be decisive to succeed. Children of nobles had lost their heads to that sinister blade, but such was the price of revolution.
The telephone beeped. It was the third line, a private line which the secretaries never answered. Only his partners and Home had that number.
Dominique leaned forward in the fat leather chair. He was a lanky man with a large nose, high forehead, and strong chin. His hair was short and ink black, a dramatic contrast to the white turtleneck and trousers he was wearing.
He hit the speaker button. “Yes?” he said quietly.
“Good morning, M. Dominique,” said the caller. “It’s Jean-Michel.” Dominique glanced at his watch. “It’s early.” “The meeting was brief, M. Dominique.” “Tell me about it,” he said.
Jean-Michel obliged. He told him about the lecture he had been given under torture, and about how the German considered himself M. Dominique’s equal. Jean-Michel also told him about what little he had picked up about Karin Doring.