The League of Night and Fog (33 page)

His father and other
Waffens-SS
commanders had managed to escape the aftermath of Germany’s defeat. They’d exchanged identity papers with dead civilians and fled to Bolivia, Mexico, America, Canada, England, Sweden. But they’d remained in touch, phoning one other to remember their heritage, to assure themselves that no matter how severely history had proved them wrong, they were still a part of their country’s elite.

Just as the
sons
of the elite had kept in contact. Miller had eventually been drawn into his father’s circle of former friends. He and the sons of those other fathers had pledged to help one another in case their fathers came under attack. On the first of each year, there’d been dues to be paid, twenty thousand dollars per family, a bribe to the one outsider who knew their secret, an insurance premium of sorts, blackmail that guaranteed his silence.

Now those bribes had proved useless. The pledge among the sons—to stand as one and defend the group—had turned out to be ineffectual. Despite precautions, their fathers
had
been attacked. They themselves, the sons of their fathers, were also under attack.

Insanity.

Let the past rest, Miller thought. The present and the future are what matter. Our fathers aren’t what you think they were. Bring them back. Leave us all alone. You’ve made a mistake. The Night and Fog has to end.

Yet the handsome young SS officer who gazed proudly from a
photograph that Miller couldn’t set down reminded him uncannily of his father. No! My father wouldn’t have lied to me!

But would he have dared reveal this sanity-threatening truth?

I have to be wrong, Miller thought. I looked at this same SS officer two days ago. It never occurred to me he might be my father.

Or maybe I didn’t
want
the thought to occur to me.

But the thought insisted now. Miller’s vision focused more narrowly onto the photograph, more intensely toward the SS officer’s forehead, just below the peak of the ornate military cap.

He tried to believe that what he saw on that forehead was an imperfection in the photograph itself, a scratch on the negative, but he couldn’t convince himself. The scar was identical to the one on his father’s forehead, the consequence of a near-fatal car accident when he’d been ten.

How is it possible to love a monster?

But how is it possible to know if someone you love
is
a monster?

Before he realized what he was doing, Miller picked up the phone.

“T
he U.S. Justice Department? Who told you this?”
Halloway pressed the phone harder against his ear.

“An Associated Press reporter.”

“Jesus Christ.”

“He said my father was a Nazi war criminal,” Miller said. “The commander of a goddamned SS extermination team.”

“But that’s absurd!”

“Is it? I’m beginning to wonder. Some of the things he told me—”

“You mean you actually believed him? He’s a
reporter
! He’ll tell you anything!”

“But I took another look at those photographs and—”

“You were supposed to destroy the damned things!”

“One shows my father in a Death’s Head SS uniform! In front of civilian corpses!”

“A photograph from World War Two? How do you know what your father even looked like back then? That photograph proves nothing!”

“My father had a scar on the top right corner of his forehead! So does this SS officer!”

“Coincidence!”

“That’s not a good enough explanation!” Miller’s voice rose. “I have to know!
Was
my father in charge of a Nazi extermination squad? What about all the other fathers? Were
they
mass murderers too?”

“If you’re suggesting
my
father … ? That’s ridiculous! It’s insulting! I don’t have to listen to—!”

“Stop evading the question, Halloway! Answer it!”

“I won’t dignify—!”

“Were they Nazi war criminals?”

“Of course not! They were SS, yes!
Waffen-SS!
Legitimate soldiers! Not the Death’s Head–SS who killed the Jews! But outsiders don’t understand that distinction! Civilians think
all
SS were war criminals. So our fathers had to lie. The Night and Fog made the same mistake we feared the immigration authorities would make, the same mistake the U.S. Justice Department and the Associated Press reporter are making.”

“You’re trying to tell me the Justice Department can’t tell the difference between
Waffen-SS
and Death’s Head–SS? Bullshit!”

“Then how did they make this mistake?”

“My father, your father, and the other members of the group used to phone each other on days that were special to them. April twentieth. November eighth. January thirtieth. Do those dates mean anything to you?”

“Of course,” Halloway said. “They were birthdays for some of the members of the group.”

“You bastard,” Miller screamed, “if only you hadn’t lied!”

“Lied? About what?”

“April twentieth was someone’s birthday, all right. In 1889.
Hitler’s
birthday. November eighth is the anniversary of the so-called beer-hall rebellion, Hitler’s first attempt to take over the German government. That was in 1923. The rebellion failed. But ten years later he did gain control. On January thirtieth. Those are the three most sacred dates in Nazi tradition. And the three dates on which our fathers, despite the risk, couldn’t resist getting in touch with each other.”

“All right,” Halloway said, “so I didn’t realize the significance of those dates.”

“I don’t believe you. You know what those dates mean. I can hear it in your voice.”

“Obviously, you’re determined to believe what you want. But I assure you—”

“I’ve got another question,” Miller interrupted. “Our fathers were all senior officers. That means they didn’t serve together. They commanded separate units. When the war ended, they’d have been widely divided. What’s the basis of their bond? What makes them a group?”

“My father said they trained together,” Halloway answered.

“But the Nazi army was spread all over. The eastern front, the western front, the North African front. Russia, France, Italy, Egypt. If our fathers trained together, they probably never saw each other again throughout the war. You bastard, you lied again. The bond had nothing to do with their having trained together. Why, out of all the German soldiers who tried to conceal their war records, did this group get in touch with each other? They hid all over the world. But they stayed in touch. Goddamn it,
why
?”

Halloway didn’t answer.

“Who were they paying blackmail to?” Miller demanded. “Why?”

Silence on the other end of the line.

“I think the reporter was right,” Miller said. “I think there’s a hell of a lot my father didn’t tell me and you didn’t tell me either. But you will. I’m coming up there, Halloway. I’m coming to Canada to choke the answers out of you.”

“No! That’s crazy! You can’t come here! If the Justice Department is watching you, you’ll draw their attention to me and—!”

Halloway didn’t finish his sentence. Miller had slammed down the phone.

H
alloway slowly set down his own phone. For several seconds, he wasn’t able to move. With effort, he turned toward his father’s acrylic landscapes, which he’d been nostalgically studying when the phone rang. The row of paintings was broken periodically by patio windows through which he saw his guards patrolling the grounds.

As a rule, he would never have accepted Miller’s call at this number; instead, he would have gone to the secure phone in the nearby city, Kitchener. But he didn’t feel it was wise to risk leaving the estate, not even to visit his family at the safe house in the city. Achingly, longingly, he missed his wife and children, but he didn’t dare endanger them by bringing them back here.

Earlier, Rosenberg—dangerously out of control—had called from Mexico City, babbling that the authorities there had discovered the truth about his father. Similar frightened calls had reached him from the sons of the other fathers in the group. The past was being peeled away. The Night and Fog had managed its reprisal well, twisting its vengeance ever tighter and deeper.

But Halloway had a foreboding that the screw had not yet been fully turned, that another more forceful twist was yet to come. The ship, he kept thinking. By now, it would have passed through the Strait of Gibraltar and entered the Mediterranean Sea. Halloway wished he’d paid attention to Rosenberg’s second thoughts about that ship. He wished he’d acquiesced to Rosenberg’s fears and ordered the ship to return. Too late now. Even if Halloway tried, he wouldn’t be able to get through the complex system of contacts to warn the ship in time.

Whatever would happen now was out of his control. But if the Night and Fog knew about the ship just as they knew about
everything else, if the truth about that ship were revealed, we’ll face two enemies, the Night and Fog and our clients, Halloway thought, and I’m not sure which is worse.

T
he cargo ship
Medusa
had a registry as tangled as the snarl of snakes associated with her legendary namesake. Her ostensible owner was Transoceanic Enterprises, a Bolivian corporation. But a close examination of Transoceanic Enterprises’ incorporation papers would have revealed that the company, whose office address was a post office, was owned by Atlantis Shipping, a Liberian corporation, and in Liberia the company’s office was as difficult to find as the mythical continent after which Atlantis Shipping was named.

This company was in turn owned by Mediterranean Transport, a Swiss concern owned by a Mexican concern owned by a Canadian concern. Many of the officers did not exist. Those who did were paid to provide no other service than that of allowing their signatures to be used on legal documents. Of the handful of actual directors, one was Aaron Rosenberg of Mexico City Imports; another was Richard Halloway of Ontario Shipping.

Medusa
regularly crisscrossed the Atlantic, carrying textiles, machinery, and food to and from Greece, Italy, France, Spain, England, Canada, Mexico, and Brazil. But the profit from these shipments was minimal, and if not for another cargo that was often hidden among the textiles, machinery, and food, neither Aaron Rosenberg nor Richard Halloway would have been able to maintain his luxurious lifestyle.

That cargo was aboard the
Medusa
as she proceeded toward her rendezvous with a freighter whose registration was equally tangled and whose owner had an opulent estate on the Libyan coast. Tomorrow night, off the coast of northern Africa, crates would be transferred.
Medusa
would continue toward Naples to deliver Brazilian coffee, her waterline higher now that she no longer carried plastic explosives, fragmentation grenades, antipersonnel
mines, pistols, assault rifles, machine guns, portable rocket launchers, and heat-seeking missiles.

Under usual circumstances, these weapons would have been smuggled out of Belgium, the principal European supplier of black-market arms, and transported under various disguises to Marseilles. There,
Medusa
would have picked up “medical supplies” and distributed them to various terrorist groups along the southern European coast.

But recent antiterrorist surveillance, the result of increased terrorist bombings, made Marseilles and other European ports too dangerous for arms smuggling. The alternative was to bring the arms from South America, where various civil wars had resulted in ample stockpiles of Soviet and American munitions, most of which were readily for sale. Thus
Medusa
had brought Brazilian coffee piled on top of Contra weapons supplied by the CIA across the Atlantic to meet a Libyan freighter in the Mediterranean thirty-six hours from now. Whatever Libya chose to do with the arms was not Transoceanic’s concern. The hundred-million-dollar fee was all Rosenberg and Halloway cared about.

T
el Aviv, Israel. The instant the helicopter touched down, Misha Pletz scrambled out. He ran toward the smallest of several corrugated-metal buildings at the south corner of the airport. A burly man in a short-sleeved white shirt waited for him.

“Did you bring it with you?” Misha shouted.

The burly man gestured toward a briefcase in his hand. “Do you want to read it in the car or—?”

“No. Right here,” Misha said.

They entered the air-conditioned building.

“We received the message forty minutes ago,” the man said, pulling a document from his briefcase. “When I saw the code name, I contacted you at once.”

Misha took the paper. He’d been at a kibbutz twenty miles
outside the city, fulfilling his promise to Erika and Saul to ensure that their son was protected. Leaving Christopher with Mossad-affiliated guardians had been one of the most difficult things he’d ever been required to do. “Your parents love you, and they’ll be back soon,” Misha had said. “I love you, too.” He’d kissed the boy, and unsure if Erika and Saul were even alive, afraid his emotion would distress their son, he’d hurried toward the waiting helicopter.

Flying back toward Tel Aviv, the pilot had told Misha to put on his earphones—headquarters wanted him. Though the helicopter’s radio was equipped with a scrambler, Misha’s assistant had refused to reveal the nature of the urgent message they’d received, but he
had
revealed its source. The Coat of Many Colors.

The code name had the force of a blow. It belonged to Erika’s missing father, Joseph Bernstein.

His eyes accustomed to the shadows of the building, Misha studied the document. “How did this come in? Which station, which country?”

“Our embassy in Washington,” the assistant said. “One of our people there was trained by Joseph ten years ago. So our man’s in a coffee shop this morning. He looks next to him at the counter and guess who’s sitting there?”

Misha tingled. “Is our man positive? There’s no possibility of doubt?”

“None. It was Joseph for sure. That’s probably why Joseph chose him for a relay—because they knew each other well. Apparently Joseph wanted to guarantee that the source of the message wasn’t suspicious to us. Contact lasted no longer than a minute. Joseph told our man we weren’t to worry about him. He was taking care of unfinished business, he said. The end was near.”