Hour of the Assassins (33 page)

“I walked right into it, didn't I?” Caine said.

“You are to be congratulated for having gotten this far, Herr Foster. You are the first man to find me in more than six years. How did you find me? Müller?”

“Sure, Müller,” Caine said. Maybe the bastard would think he was safe now and it might be easier for whoever came after him to get Mengele, he thought.

“I thought as much,” Mengele muttered. “You're a dangerous man, Herr Foster. Five of my
Kameraden
are dead thanks to you: Müller, Steiger, Hans and Fritz in Paraguay, Klaus in Vienna and Franz is crippled for life. Very impressive,” he admitted. “You must have Aryan blood in you. I would be curious to know your racial heritage. What were your parents?”

“Well,” Caine smiled, “my father was Little Black Sambo and my mother was Golda Meir.”

“
Schweirihund!
” Rolf shouted, and Caine saw the slap coming. At the last second he turned his face into it and caught the bottom of Rolfs little finger between his teeth. He bit savagely as Rolf screamed in pain and didn't let go until Helga kicked the inside of his knee, the pain flooding through his body. Caine spat out a thick stream of blood, together with a tooth and a piece of Rolf's finger.

“Fucking American!” Rolf cursed, nursing his hand and glaring balefully at Caine; but didn't try to slap him again.

“And don't you forget it,” Caine said coldly, rage coursing through him. His eyes were slits and he swore to himself he'd stay alive. He had only one thought now: to kill Mengele and Rolf, no matter what. He let the rage come because it would keep him going. He was still the hunter, he told himself.

“If you were about to be tortured yourself, what would you do?” he had asked Smiley Gallagher that time at Madame Wu's.

“There's only one sure way to survive torture,” Smiley had said, his breath wafting the sharp smell of fish sauce at Caine, that odor of fish that was as much a part of his memory of Vietnam as the stench of death itself.

“And that is?”

“You must never, under any circumstance, allow yourself to get caught,” Smiley had giggled.

“I was right, Herr Foster. You are a dangerous man. It's a pity I'm going to have to kill you. In some ways we are very much alike,” Mengele said calmly, his eyes as dark and empty as outer space.

“I'm nothing like you, you motherfucker,” Caine growled.

“Oh, but you are,” Mengele said with a mocking smile. Caine recognized the smile. It was exactly as the old Gypsy had described it. Wasserman had been right, he realized. Mengele was no ordinary sadist.

“In a way it is fitting that we should meet in the jungle like this, you and I. We are both strong men who know that the world is a jungle, where only the strong survive,” Mengele went on. “We are both killers, outcasts, who make our own rules. Neither of us is bound by the conventional morality of the bourgeoisie. And spare me your protestations of innocence. If I'm a murderer, so are you. After all you came here to murder me, didn't you? So you see, we have something in common after all.”

“I'm not even in your league,” Caine said angrily, a fine spray of blood spattering his shirt. “I never sent millions of human beings to the gas chambers. I never shot innocent women and babies. I never cut out eyes or healthy limbs. I never buried people alive or used them like laboratory animals. I never fumigated lice with mustard gas. You have that distinction all to yourself, you disgusting pervert!”

Mengele's black eyes bored into Caine, the dark irises like openings to a vortex of emptiness. They were the eyes of a machine. Mengele shook his head, as though he was troubled.

“I don't suppose you'll believe me when I tell you that I sincerely regret what happened in those days. That whole period is like a bad dream that I can hardly remember. It was all so long ago,” Mengele said, his mouth twitching with an old man's tremble.

“It's true,” he whispered, his eyes wide and fearful, as though he was seeing ghosts. “I did terrible things. We all did. It was as though we were possessed by demons. Men are capable of anything. Anything! Did you know that? Once you let the demons slip their leash, the most horrible things can happen. We gorged like leeches on the blood of our victims. We were drunk with it. I, worst of all. There was no stopping it.

“It was like a long sickness. When I think of it, it's as though I had no part in it. It's as if I were recalling a stranger. It's true, I was insane then, but so was the whole world. Everyone contributed to the crime. Everyone!” he thundered. “There are no innocents! We live in a jungle where every living thing survives by murdering other living things. We are all assassins, so who are you to judge me? How can you, a murderer, judge me for murder?”

“Who's better qualified?” Caine asked simply.

Mengele turned away, his hands gripping the counter for support. With shaky hands he poured himself a glass of papaya juice from a pitcher and sipped at it. He offered the half-filled glass to Caine, who shook his head. Mengele took a deep breath, and when he began again, there was a whine of self-justification in his voice.

“I am not the man I was. You must believe me. Look at me! I've changed over the past thirty-five years. You've changed! The world has changed, so why not Mengele? Look at this place,” he said, gesturing at the laboratory. “This is my penance. I've dedicated my life to helping men, not killing them. Can't you see that? What more must I do? I only want to preserve life.”

“Why don't you go back to Germany to stand trial. They'll give you a chance to testify, I'm sure. You can tell them all how wonderful you are.”

“What good will that do? Will my testimony and death bring back even one of all those millions? Will it? At least here I can be of some use. There are hundreds, thousands, of Indians who are alive today because of me. By staying here, I do the greatest good for the greatest number. Isn't that truly what morality is all about? I shall finish my life here in the jungle,” he said definitively, nodding his head.

“You're so full of shit, it's coming out of your ears,” Caine retorted. “What about all the people you had killed who tried to bring you to justice? What about Nora Aldot? Shit, you haven't changed!”

“Surely every human being has a right to survive. How can you condemn me for simply trying to stay alive? I didn't go after them, they came after me. How can a dead man do penance?” Mengele argued persuasively, his hands outstretched as though he were addressing a jury.

“You fucking malignancy!” Caine said coldly, his eyes fixed on Mengele, like a cat on a mouse. “Do you think there's anything you can say or do that'll wipe out what you've done? Do you?”

Mengele's eyes, caught in Caine's glance, were as hollow and empty as the sockets of a skull. His hands clutched at the counter behind him as though to a life preserver.

“Is there no redemption, then?” Mengele asked in a tremulous whisper. Caine shook his head solemnly from side to side, though somewhere he knew that the question would always haunt him. When he opened his mouth, blood dribbled over his lower lip and down his chin, giving him a reddish goatee.

“Not for you,” he said finally.

“Damn Jew!” Mengele screamed wildly and lurched against the counter, smashing the pitcher and glass to the floor, slivers of glass exploding like tiny pieces of shrapnel. “Jewish scum!” Mengele howled, his face suddenly and totally red, like the eye of a mud hen.

Helga cocked the Bauer and shoved the muzzle against the bridge of Caine's nose, her fat face gloating with satisfaction.

“Now, Herr Doktor?” she asked hopefully. “Can I kill him now, this
Schweinhund
?”

“
Nein
,” Mengele snapped authoritatively. “We still have questions to put to Herr Foster.”

Mengele stood there arrogantly, once more in complete control. His pupils were cold pinpoints, like those of a hawk. Out of the corner of his eye Caine watched Helga waddle away, her bloated body jiggling with disappointment. Then with a shattering sense of déjà vu Caine watched fascinated as Mengele carefully cracked his knuckles, one by one, precisely as the old Gypsy had described it, and when Mengele coldly examined Caine again, Caine couldn't repress a shiver, because he was finally seeing what only the dead had seen. Dr. Josef Mengele was about to operate.

“I have wasted enough time with you on idle discussion. I want to know everything you know about the Starfish Conspiracy,” Mengele announced.

That was it, Caine thought. The Starfish Conspiracy. It was the unknown factor that from the beginning had dogged his footsteps like a shadow, till it tripped him up in the end. He didn't need to look at Mengele's impassive face to know that unless he gave Mengele something to chew on, they would make his death extremely unpleasant. Not that it mattered now. Not that anything did.

“How long have you known about it?” Caine admitted.

“Over a year. It's taken you a long time to track me down.”

“Who told you about it? Müller? I knew that was a mistake,” Caine said, guessing.

“Excellent,” Mengele said, raising his eyebrows. He was clearly enjoying himself. “Yes, Heinrich was one of the few
Kameraden
who refused to betray me. Now its your turn to answer my questions. Tell me, Hen-Foster, who sent you?”

“I'm a field agent for the CIA. Did you know that we were involved?”

“I see,” Mengele muttered disgustedly. “So that was the fifth arm of
der Seestern
.”

So that was it, Caine thought excitedly. The Starfish was named for a five-armed conspiracy with a single objective. ODESSA, Mengele's former
Kameraden
, was one arm and the CIA might be another, if Harris had lied to him in Berlin. But why did they want Mengele out of the way?

“Why did they want you out of the way?” he asked.

“I don't know,' Mengele admitted. “Unless it was—”

And then Caine had it. There could be only one reason that Mengele was a danger to them, even in his jungle hideout. Because it might come out.

“Unless it would be bad publicity for them,” Caine finished for Mengele. He shook his head, because the whole thing was insane. It meant that all of them—Wasserman, Harris, Gröbel, and God knows who else—had all been in on it.

There is a moment in every agent's life when he wonders if he has become truly paranoid, because he begins to suspect everyone of conspiracy. Caine wondered if he had reached that point The whole thing was getting all mixed up, he thought, and he had to consider dismissing the whole idea as impossible. Then he shrugged mentally, because it didn't look like he was ever going to find out.

“I walked right into it, didn't I, like a fly blundering into a spiderweb?” Caine said disgustedly. “Müller alerted you about the Starfish Conspiracy, so you knew they would send someone. I set off alarm bells in Paraguay, Bariloche, and Vienna to let you know I was on the way. The colonel in Pucallpa let you know I was coming by radio and you had Rolf here to identify me, just to make sure. Inger was the decoy, in case I had any tricks up my sleeve. All you had to do was sit back and wait, like a spider in the middle of his web.”

“Just so,” Mengele said. “So there's only one thing left before we finish with you, before I step on you like an insect. Where is von Schiffen?”

“Von Who?” Caine asked. He was genuinely astonished.

“How tiresome,” Mengele remarked. “And our discussion was going so well,” he sighed. “Still, I'll give you one more chance. Perhaps your position isn't entirely clear. You are going to die. It's up to you whether we do it quickly, or whether you die a few days from now, screaming in agony, begging for me to kill you. So I'll ask you once again, where is von Schiffen?”

“Why do you want to know?”

Mengele shrugged. This agent was a dead man in any case. It didn't matter what he told him. Besides, the man clearly had Aryan blood in him. Perhaps he could be reasoned with.

“Von Schiffen is the Starfish, didn't you know? Once he learns that you failed, he will send others. I have to eliminate him before he gets me. Have you forgotten what I said before? I want to live. Surely every human being has a right to fight for his survival. Now, where is von Schiffen?”

Caine took a deep breath, returning Mengele's cold gaze with his own ruthless stare. It was time to show and tell—only he didn't have the foggiest idea who von Schiffen was, and even if he did, it wouldn't matter. The only consolation he would have as he died was that Mengele would still be worrying about this von Schiffen character. It wasn't much, he reflected. But still, men have died for less.

“Whatever gave you the idea that you're a human being?” Caine said carefully.

Mengele smiled and Came knew he had been right. It was not a human smile. He had to hang on to one thought now, only one. If he ever got free again, even for a second, he would kill Mengele as mercilessly as he would a plague-carrying rat.

“That was a very foolish thing to say. You see, here in the jungle one has no need of elaborate torture apparatus. The jungle itself provides all the discomfort necessary to persuade you to do anything I say. Take him to the Anthill,” Mengele ordered.

Rolf placed the muzzle of the Winchester against Caine's back as Helga began to carefully untie his feet, squatting between his legs like a giant toad. It was useless to hope, Caine realized. He could barely move.

“I don't think I'm going to like the Anthill,” Caine said. He really didn't think he was going to like it at all.

“
Nein
, I'm sure you won't,” Mengele said, and patted Caine's hair paternally with the same comforting air of a doctor prescribing foul-tasting medicine for the patient's own good that he used as a bedside manner with the Indians.

“We built a tin shed over an anthill,” Mengele said conversationally. “Of course, the shed is incredibly hot and uncomfortable, like an oven in the sun. But that is nothing. You see, my friend, this is the Amazona and these are fire ants. Any one of them is from two to five centimeters long and can give you a bite far more painful than any beesting. You will be bitten thousands and thousands of times. They never stop.