Pursuit (52 page)

“There were no fingerprints?”

“I was told there were not. ODESSA destroyed them all.” Herzl sat down next to Brodsky. “Max, what do I do?”

“Let me think …”

Brodsky forced aside the shock of the revelation and attempted to put his mind to work on a logical consideration of the situation. His brain, trained in the intelligence service, tried to view the matter as it would any other security problem. Proof? There really was no proof that would satisfy a court, certainly not against Brigadier General Benjamin Grossman, Hero of Israel.

Brodsky closed weary eyes. He could see the scene as if it were before him.

Your honors, my client's son looks like a Nazi war criminal; we admit the resemblance and point out he also looks something like a well-known American film star. Will the prosecution next claim that Benjamin Grossman is also the father of that film star? The prosecution claims that both my client and von Schraeder were mechanical engineers. Your honors, you and I—and the prosecutors as well—are all attorneys. Exactly what does that mean? That I am you or you are the prosecutor? They made much of the fact that my client was the unfortunate one who had the piteous task of placing the body of von Schraeder into his shroud. My client never denied this. He could have. He could have easily disassociated himself from that death, but he did not. We ask for fingerprints, which we are quite willing, even anxious, to compare, but the prosecution says that ODESSA destroyed all fingerprints of von Schraeder and others. We know that ODESSA destroyed many records and fingerprints of many war criminals, but Benjamin Grossman, by the prosecution's own story, was a prisoner in a concentration camp in early 1944, over a year before the war ended, and before there was any great need for ODESSA to take the action we know they took at a later date. And then there is the matter of the broken shoulder. We admit our client had a broken shoulder as a child, in fact we were the ones who introduced x rays to demonstrate the fact—but to begin with, he did not receive it falling from a tree as the affidavit—which may or may not have been elicited from an old, senile woman by any number of means-claims happened to von Schraeder. Two people claim Benjamin Grossman said he fell from a tree as a child. Who are these witnesses? A man who has admitted on the stand that he was in love with the general's wife, and a young man whose hysterical testimony you heard, a young man who blames the general for the death of his wife when in fact, as you all know, the general was a victim of a vicious threat by the same group the prosecution claims destroyed the fingerprints of von Schraeder. An odd group, you must admit. Friendly one moment and threatening the next—and more than threatening—killing. And let us talk about that group, your honors. Tell me, your honors, if Benjamin Grossman were Helmut von Schraeder, would he immediately have gone to the authorities and told of that meeting in Argentina? Would he have spent a year in a horror camp such as Bergen-Belsen where even the prosecution admits he came close to death from starvation, depredation, and even typhus? Your honors, because of a few outlandish coincidences, one of our most honored people, one of our bravest and most decorated soldiers, is being pilloried in this courtroom and we are forced to question the motives of those who bring these monstrous charges against him. Who are they serving, these false accusers? What enemy of our beloved Israel is paying to see Benjamin Grossman brought down and thus see the Israeli Defense Forces weakened …?

That would be the scene in the courtroom, but in his soul Max Brodsky knew the charges were, indeed, true. He hated the knowledge, for Benjamin Grossman had been like a brother to him; but the charges were true. Ben Grossman and Helmut von Schraeder were the same person. A hundred little things would come to him in time, he knew, that should have led him to at least suspect the truth long before, things he never noticed in depth because who looked for such guilt in a Jewish prisoner in a concentration camp? Who questioned the small things, the oddities, the uncharacteristic responses from one who was supposedly a Jew, when they came from a person who, despite everything, did help him and many others to reach Israel? The thought came to Brodsky, as it had to Herzl, that he was thankful, at least, that Deborah had never known the truth about her husband. But would anyone ever know the truth? Without more proof than they had, how would they know it?

He pondered the question. Suppose that nobody ever did know the truth? Because among the many truths that were to be known was the additional truth that Benjamin Grossman had truly done great deeds for Israel. Did he therefore deserve redemption? Could a man who had committed the crimes Helmut von Schraeder was known to have committed ever earn forgiveness? Could he ever redeem himself no matter what acts of contrition or contribution he performed? Suppose that nobody ever learned the truth.…

But a Dr. Schlossberg and a Klaus Mittendorf somewhere in South America both knew the truth, as well as all of ODESSA, and as long as they knew it, others would have to be given it, for otherwise there could be a threat to Israel's security. A true Benjamin Grossman might put the interests of Israel ahead of even the safety of his loved son, depending upon the degree of security they could give the boy; but a Helmut von Schraeder would have no such compunction …

“Max—”

Brodsky looked up.

“Max, am I wrong? Did I make the whole thing up in my head? Am I crazy?”

Brodsky took a deep breath. “No, you're not wrong. You're not crazy.”

“What should I do?”

Brodsky sighed and sat more erect. His mind was finally working.

“First, I'll take the film with me. And the affidavit and the copy of the war-crimes-trials testimony, and everything else you have, notes, everything. And then I'll take you home to your father, and you will act as if there was nothing between you two except what there has always been between you, love and respect—”

“I can't!”

“You can and you will!” The sternness left Brodsky's voice. “Herzl, it's essential.”

“But, why?”

“Because I want to know what he does, what he says, where he goes, and when …”

“And then what will you do?”

Max Brodsky shrugged and came to his feet. “That I don't know,” he said heavily. “Yet.”

Chapter 6

It had taken a good deal of surveillance by Hans Richter to identify two of the Mossad security men who looked like taxi drivers on a break in the neighborhood of the Grossman apartment, but he had done that as a routine and not because he meant to attempt to reach the general at home. He assumed, quite correctly, that all mail and packages intended for that address would be x-rayed and thoroughly examined prior to delivery, considering the fate of the woman who had opened a package at the first-aid station, and considering that the son was still under threat. He was equally sure that any attempt to give the general his instructions for delivering the uranium by some exotic scheme such as a false milk bottle in the morning would be equally unsuccessful. He correctly calculated, in addition, that the apartment telephone would be tapped and that communication in the general's office would be equally unsuitable for his purpose, since in his experience conversations in and out of high military offices were normally tapped. These multiple precautions, however, did not disturb Richter in the least. He cared not a whit about the telephones the Mossad tapped, because the one
he
had tapped belonged to a certain Sergeant Mordechai Saul.

Sergeant Saul had been the personal driver for General Grossman ever since the general had earned his latest promotion. At the moment Sergeant Saul was on a day-to-day pass, for it was assumed the general would not be going to his office for a decent period following the death of his wife. Still, Saul stayed at home and near the telephone, for he knew the general was not a religious man and would not observe the normal period for mourning. In fact, if Saul knew the general, he would try to ease his pain with work and more work. So Mordechai Saul was not surprised to receive a call from General Grossman some five days after the funeral, advising him that the general expected to be picked up and taken to his office at seven-thirty o'clock the following morning. Saul said, “Sir!” with the proper deference and went back to the television program he had been watching, but his evening was not to remain undisturbed, because less than twenty minutes later there was a knock on the door of his room and he opened it to see a fellow soldier standing there, also a sergeant, he noted.

“Yes?” Saul said, surprised at anyone calling at that late hour.

“General Grossman wishes to be sure the car has ample gasoline when you pick him up tomorrow,” the stranger said.

“I filled it yesterday and it's still in the garage downstairs,” Saul said, irritated that anyone would think he would overlook such a detail.

“Still, he would like me to check personally,” the stranger said apologetically, and shrugged. “You know generals.”

Mordechai Saul knew only one general, and he thought it very odd for the general he knew to send someone to check the fuel in his car. Still, generals were permitted to have whatever idiosyncrasies they desired as far as sergeants were concerned, and it was possible that the murder of his wife had made the general supercautious in all matters. With a shrug, Saul flipped off the television and walked down the steps with the stranger behind him. Saul opened the garage door, then opened the front door of the car; he took out the ignition key, leaned over, and inserted it in the lock. He turned it to the right and the fuel-supply needle obediently slid to the extreme edge of the dial.

“See?” Sergeant Saul said disdainfully.

His answer was a sharp blow across the nape of his neck with the hard edge of Hans Richter's hand. Richter bent over the body of the unconscious man, saw that he was still breathing, and instantly closed the garage door. He flipped on the headlights for illumination and disrobed Saul; he then wrapped Saul's army blouse about the handle of the tire jack he located in the car's trunk and proceeded to beat the sergeant to death with the muffled jack handle, the blouse absorbing most of the sound as well as a good part of the blood.

When Richter was quite sure Saul was dead, he smiled and calmly loaded Saul and the jack handle into the trunk of the car, tossed the soiled uniform on top, closed the trunk, and then opened his shirt. From about his waist he removed a thin coil of wire. One end of the wire had been divided into two strands, and each strand held an earplug similar to a doctor's stethoscope; the other end was fitted with a small battery-operated pickup head. With patience Richter went over the car from one end to the other, from top to bottom. Taped inside the rear bumper he located the first of the signal broadcasters; a second was discovered inside the left-front hubcap. There was no third, nor did a thorough search for any possible voice pickup inside the cab reveal any further danger to his security. Richter nodded. Apparently General Grossman had gone to the authorities with some story of danger to his family and whatever had been said had aroused Mossad to the point of putting a bug on the general's car. It really made no difference though, Richter thought as he carefully removed the two bugs and placed them on the garage floor; he would replace them in the morning when he was finished with his night's work. Satisfied that everything was in order, he raised the garage door, backed the car out, got out to close the garage door again, got back in the car, and drove swiftly from the city.

He took the road to the airport, but turned off it after two miles, bumping over rough sand dunes, with only the aid of his parking lights, to end up in a grove of trees he had reconnoitered a few days before in a rented car. Here he switched off the headlights altogether and got out. In the distance the string of lights from cars traveling the main airport road gave sufficient glow for him to do his work. He brushed aside the sand that covered the shovel he had hidden on his previous visit and then opened the trunk and dragged out Saul's flaccid body. Then he dug a grave and twenty feet away he dug a second one. After he had placed Saul's body in one and the bloody uniform in the other, he filled both. Then, a shovelful at a time, he took all excess sand and walked a good distance away before scattering it to blend into the dunes. It was a hard job, but ODESSA did not train men to take the easiest path. The spot Richter had selected for the dual burial was as deserted a one as he had been able to find within a reasonable distance of the city; still, there was no sense in taking a chance simply to avoid a little labor.

When at last he had scattered leaves and a few branches over the sites of the two graves, he took the shovel a fair distance in another direction, buried it under the sand, brushed it over, and then returned to the car. He climbed inside and set his wristwatch alarm to ring and wake him at six. He knew the clock in his head would wake him a minute or two before the wristwatch buzzed, but Hans Richter had not been trained to take chances.

General Benjamin Grossman had spent five days in deep thought. His son Herzl had seemed excessively withdrawn for those five days, but that was only to be expected after the death of the boy's mother. But the boy would recover; it was the way with youth. Benjamin Grossman was not as sure that he, himself, would ever recover from the loss of his Deborah, but he supposed that in time he, too, would be able to look back on her death without that terrible pain and anger he felt at the moment. He would retire from the army as soon as the uranium was delivered; take Herzl with him to another place. Surely the boy would not object to leaving a country that now held such tragic memories for them both. They could build a new life; he could still work as an engineer and Herzl was now so wrapped up in film-making that the greater opportunities offered elsewhere should be an additional incentive. Herzl would marry and give him grandchildren, and he would be as good a grandfather to them as he had been a father to Herzl.