When Pasternak had come to work for Groza, he had wondered about the man’s family. Groza would never speak of them, but the officer who had arranged for Pasternak to meet Groza told him the story.
“Groza was betrayed. The Securitate picked him up and tortured him for five days. They promised to free him if he would give them the names of his associates in the underground. He wouldn’t talk. They arrested his wife and his fourteen-year-old daughter and brought them to the interrogation room. Groza was given a choice: Talk or watch them die. It was the hardest decision any man ever had to make. It was the lives of his beloved wife and child against the lives of hundreds of people who believed in him.” The man paused, then went on more slowly. “I think in the end what made Groza decide the way he did was that he was convinced that he and his family were going to be killed anyway. He refused to give them the names. The guards strapped him in a chair and forced him to watch his wife and daughter being gangraped until they died. But they weren’t through with Groza yet. When it was over and their bloody bodies were lying at his feet, they castrated him.”
“Oh, my God!”
The officer looked into Lev Pasternak’s eyes and said, “The most important thing for you to understand is that Marin Groza does not want to return to Romania to seek vengeance. He wants to go back to free his people. He wants to make certain that such things can never again happen.”
Lev Pasternak had been with Groza from that day on, and the more time he spent with the revolutionary, the more he came to love him. Now, he would have to decide whether to give up his return to Israel and go to Romania with Groza.
Pasternak was walking down the hallway that evening, and as he passed Marin Groza’s bedroom door, he heard the familiar screams of pain ring out. So it’s Friday, Pasternak thought. The day the prostitutes came. They were selected from England, North America, Brazil, Japan, Thailand, and half a dozen other countries, chosen at random. They had no idea what their destination was, or who they were going to see. They were met at Charles de Gaulle Airport, driven directly to the villa, and, after a few hours, taken back to the airport and put on a return flight. Every Friday night the halls resounded with Marin Groza’s screams. The staff assumed that kinky sex was going on. The only one who knew what was really happening behind the bedroom door was Lev Pasternak. For the visits with the prostitutes had nothing to do with sex. They were a penance. Once a week Groza stripped himself naked and had a woman tie him to a chair and whip him mercilessly, until his blood flowed, and each time he was whipped he would see his wife and daughter being raped to death, screaming for help. And he would cry out, “I’m sorry! I’ll talk. Oh, God, please let me talk…”
The telephone call came ten days after Harry Lantz’s body was found. The Controller was in the middle of a staff meeting in the conference room when the intercom buzzer sounded.
“I know you asked not to be disturbed, sir, but there’s an overseas call for you. It sounds urgent. A Miss Neusa Munez is calling from Buenos Aires. I told her—”
“It’s all right.” He kept his emotions under tight control. “I’ll take the call in my private office.” He excused himself, went into his office, and locked the door. He picked up the telephone. “Hello. Is this Miss Muñez?”
“Yeah.” It was a voice with a South American accent, coarse and uneducated. “I got a message for you from Angel. He din’ like the nosy messenger you sent.”
He had to choose his words carefully. “I’m sorry. But we would still like Angel to go ahead with our arrangement. Would that be possible?”
“Yeah. He say he wanna do it.”
The man held back a sigh of relief. “Excellent. How shall I arrange his advance?”