The Sleepwalkers (29 page)

The answer had slowly dawned on him.

Downstairs in the Police Presidium . . .

As soon as he got back from Paris, he’d hurried there, but the Great Gustave was nowhere to be found. All the flourish, all the magic, that had been the King of Mystics had vanished. Left in the cell was a melancholy little man, Gershon Lapinksy. A man chastened not merely by the certainty that his days of wealth
and fame were over, but a terrible knowledge that could no longer be blotted from his memory. During their hypnotic session Kurt had left Gustave fully cognizant of all he’d previously managed to black out . . . the face of every person he’d sent sleepwalking into oblivion.

“I’ve been trying for days to rehypnotize myself,” he confessed. “But it doesn’t work anymore. And you want to know why?” His eyes brimmed with bitter pride. “Because a hypnotist needs a willing subject, Inspektor. And I no longer am one.”

When Willi told him about Sachsenhausen, his whole body seemed to collapse.

“Is that what happened to those girls?” Shaking fingers covered his eyes. “Oh, God. With the SS I knew it had to be bad. But that . . .” His head shrank between his shoulders. “Even a clairvoyant couldn’t imagine.” He burst into a fit of tears. “You know, Kraus,” he sniffed, “I never was a lucky fellow. Even from the beginning.” He dried his eyes with the handkerchief Willi handed him. “I was my mother’s thirteenth child. Can you imagine? Thirteen. If only I’d left well enough alone and stayed at her side. But all the other twelve, you see, died . . . and I didn’t want to be next. So I ran off and joined the circus.”

He swore he’d do anything to bring the SS doctors to justice.

This time Willi didn’t need a sixth sense to know the man meant it.

Now under the milky sheen of winter’s full moon Gustave had returned to life. The Great Gustave, working his magic on the townsfolk, bowing, clicking, shaking hands, welcoming one and all. Every few seconds Willi noticed him cast an eye toward the Black Stag Inn, the swastika flag above its entrance flapping unremittingly. They both were waiting for that door to open. It was well and fine the locals had turned out, but if the good doctors from that institute didn’t soon emerge, it was all for naught.

Why shouldn’t they come? A feast in honor of Thor. An evening of music and sumptuous fare—courtesy of the Great Gustave aboard his famous yacht. Why look a gift horse in the mouth? They had nothing to be suspicious about. All the most prominent people in town had got invitations. Nothing could be more innocuous. Yet that door refused to budge.

But down on the gangway the rest of the guests kept pouring aboard, all dressed in their Sunday best, so colorful in their red-and-black armbands. How grateful they were, these hardworking folk, to be treated to such an evening. How completely oblivious to the nightmare upstream born of their insanity. Willi wanted to forgive them. Two decades of war, grief, hunger, revolution, and economic disaster, had made rich soil for extremism, he understood. But what he’d seen at that asylum was the result of their mad grandiose fantasies—this lunatic obsession with blood supremacy. Ruthless, calculated exploitation and murder. It was hard to forgive. Impossible to forget.

He looked at his watch. Eight p.m. exactly. These doctors weren’t the types to come late. It was now or never.

I am the God Thor,

I am the War God.

He recalled the famous poem.

The blows of my hammer

Ring in the earthquake!

Meekness is weakness,

Strength is triumphant.

Longfellow must have known a few Nazis, Willi mused drily. Suddenly the inn door flung open. Furious laughter filled the night. Men in black uniform came stumbling out, carrying steins of beer, slapping each other on the back. Two. Three. Four. Willi
counted as they climbed aboard. But not until the gangway pulled in did he feel a moment of relief. All six safe in the hold. The rats had taken the bait.

For the musical presentation Gustave had managed to pull from his hat the great Irmgard Wildebrunn-Schrenk herself, one of Europe’s top sopranos. Heiner Windgassen, beloved tenor with the Bayreuth Festival, joined her, and with a surprise visit from the Potsdam Army Choir they offered up a stirring selection from
Götterdämmerung
: “Sieg-fried’s Rhine Journey,” “Brunhild’s Immolation.” The audience rocked the yacht with applause. “Only the best for my friends in Spandau!” The King of Mystics held out his arms as the performers took their bows. “In honor of our heritage. Our future. Our Führer.
Sieg Heil!
”

“Sieg Heil!”

The doors to the buffet were thrown open. Whole roast pigs and legs of lamb were spread among mountains of sauerkraut and potato. Beer and wine for all.

Willi watched from a dream hiding place—behind a two-way mirror overlooking the galley. Before him a panel of switches identified a score of hidden microphones, allowing him to tune in or out on practically any conversation on deck. This advanced spy system, seemingly set up just for him, was in fact all Gustave’s—the means by which the King of Mystics had gathered tidbits for his “mind-reading” demonstrations.

“But where on earth have you been?” Willi turned up the mike with special interest on Gustave’s conversation with several of the institute doctors. The speaker it turned out was none other than Oscar “Jew-damm” Schumann, the orthopedic genius. “We’d thought you’d been abducted by men from Mars or something.”

There’d been endless speculation following Gustave’s arrest. The Master was sick. The Master was dead. The Master was
having plastic surgery. Finally, with the help of Fritz at Ullstein Press, pictures began appearing in the papers of the Master enjoying the solitude of a monastic retreat in the Carpathians.

“Just needed to recharge my spiritual batteries a bit,” Gustave replied in a half whisper. “Say, Schumann . . . you and your buddies stick around after the rest of the crowd goes home, eh? I’ve some extra-special goodies you won’t want to miss out on.”

With sublime satisfaction Willi watched the surgeon throw an appreciative arm around the Great Gustave’s shoulders.

A brass band was brought out. There were folk songs and riotous polkas. It was a night the people of Spandau would not soon forget—but a working night nonetheless. Precisely at eleven the band packed up. The townspeople bid tipsy farewells, thanking Gustave a million times. By midnight no one was left except the six doctors from the Institute for Racial Hygiene, eager to discover what Thurseblot goodies Gustave had in store.

From studying their dossiers Willi knew each by heart. Next to Schumann, with the long nose and bushy eyebrows, was Theodor Mollbaecker, a specialist in soft-tissue infection and leading proponent in the use of antibacterial sulfonamides. Wolfgang Heink, next to him, was the neurologist who specialized in lower-limb disorders. The fat one so drunk he could barely stand was Sigmund Wilderbrunn, Germany’s leading practicioner of sterilization methods. That little one with the bad toupee was Horst Knapperbusch, endocrinologist and foremost theoretician on the effect of X-rays on genital glands. Last but not least, Mr. Bunny Teeth, Josef—whose last name Willi by now knew to be Mengele—an expert on racial differences in body structure, focused almost exclusively these days on the genetic traits of twins and dwarfs. He would have instantly clamped the cuffs on all six had Gustave not preferred a more delicate approach.

“You don’t know what an honor it is for me to host such esteemed scientists.” Gustave held out a welcoming hand. “Please, comrades . . . you must join me in my private suite. Come! I’ve
been waiting all evening for this surprise.” Willi watched the doctors follow like eager ducklings, full of fantasies no doubt of big-breasted fräuleins under magic spells. Ten minutes later Gustave buzzed him to come down. Entering the dimly lit suite, Willi felt his throat clench, viselike. All six doctors were lying as if dead on the floor—deep in a hypnotic trance.

The Third Eye
’s engines roared as they sailed upriver to Sachsenhausen. On the way Gustave commanded Oscar Schumann to get up, follow him, and use the radio transmitter he was handing him. “You are to summon every guard on Asylum Island to come at once to the pier. When we arrive, they will board this yacht and join our festitivies as my guests.” Sure enough, when they pulled up, all twelve SS guards, skulls and crossbones glistening in the moonlight, were eagerly waiting. One by one as they pranced on board, soldiers of the Potsdam Army Choir—changed from tuxedos into uniforms—took each prisoner. Willi’s eyes burned with tears.

He’d got every last rat.

The problem now was medical care for all those penned up at the pig farm. If the transport of ninety-five had in fact arrived that morning after their raid, there could be hundreds out there, he knew. All he could do was help them get to the Brandenburg Medical Center. How doctors down there would cope with the arrival of so many half-dead people was another matter.

The Thurseblot moon cast long shadows as he led twenty-five soldiers down the gangway. A still photographer and camera crew followed close behind. Across the waist-high fields of weeds they hurried toward the barracks. But with the strong southern wind blowing, the night air smelled too fresh, he noticed, too sweet. More surprising when they reached the pig farm, the gate was wide-open. The long, miserable huts inside were empty. Willi leaned against a door for support. How was it possible? Where could they have taken so many deathly ill people? It had only been two weeks. A hideous feeling coursed through his veins. Walking
fast, then jogging, then running, he led the detatchment back across the channel onto the Island of the Dead. In a clearing surrounded by half-trampled grass, there was no mistaking three huge new trenches covered in fresh black earth.

Not one prisoner found alive. Their shaved heads and gaunt faces hovered accusingly before Willi’s eyes. But for God’s sake, he had to acknowledge, he hadn’t done that badly. He’d beaten the bastards. Pulled the plug on the whole filthy operation. Arrested the whole sick pack of doctors. The guards. And most critically, got proof. Two dozen boxes of specimens. Two filing cabinets full of reports. Films. Photos. The hells of Sachsenhausen were all recorded history now. He only had to let the world know.

Sailing back across the Havel, he saw no reason to stop Gustave from rousing the malignant scientists from their hypnotic oblivion and confronting them with his fury. “You, Schumann.” The Master’s face trembled. “And you, Mengele.” Gustave held up a jar with human brains. “So much to offer the world—how could you?”

But even in handcuffs these dogs refused to be humbled.

“Our work happens to be very much for the world.” Schumann rolled his eyes as if bored. “Just not
your
world. In twelve months we learned more than most scientists do in lifetimes.”

“So much suffering. So much death! What gives you the right to play God?”

Mengele bared his teeth. “You think you can stop us? We’ll build bigger Sachsenhausens, you’ll see. More efficient. All across Europe. The time is nearer than you think, Gustave. We Germans have been soft too long.”

Docking at Spandau, Willi’s chest swelled with pride as he sent the whole depraved lot packing by army truck over to Moabit Prison and its famously impregnable walls. May they never be unleashed on humankind again, he prayed. What to do with the evidence was a tougher choice. Half of him wanted to dump it on von Schleicher. “Here—show it to the world!” But practically, he knew, such a mass of material would merely overwhelm unless it was collated, summarized. The logical place to work on it was the Police Presidium, only he didn’t dare. He would have taken it to his apartment had there been enough space. But he took it to Fritz’s. How incongruous the mud-splattered military vehicles looked in front of his chic glass house. “What’s this, an invasion?” Fritz said, laughing, when he saw them. But once he understood the contents, Fritz used his good arm to help lug it in.

For a day and a half the two of them sat on his white sofa, beneath the paintings by Klee and Modigliani, sorting through the hideous business. When they realized it was too much, they had Gunther come out to help. Even with all of them sifting and sorting though, they were still only able to piece together part of the picture. What a field day those mad scientists of Sachsenhausen had had.

In twelve months they’d forcibly sterilized hundreds of people. Vasectomy, castration, ovariotomy, tubal ligation, radiation—each was tested in comparison to the others. The result: X-ray radiation, the hoped-for “wave” of the future, had proven too
slow, too costly, too painful, for use in any mass sterilization program. For males, surgical castration was the most effective method, cheap and quick. For females the results were still “under investigation.” Several hundred more captives had been infected with everything from botulism to typhus, then given test medications. The result: the sulfonamide drugs, which Theodor Mollbaecker had invested so much hope in, did not prove of particular antibacterial value. Josef Mengele, Mr. Bunny Teeth, had conducted the most horrific experiments. Fixated on the role of genetics in heredity, he had anesthetized at least four sets of twins and five dwarfs, then dissected them while they were still alive, photographing and recording their organs. Oscar Schumann’s work had produced the most substantive results. Of twenty-five leg and arm transplants conducted over two months, all but seven had been successful. In the future, bone transplantation, according to Schumann, would be routine.