clipped it against the screen. Chest X-ray. It took him a few moments
to orient himself.
The spinal column and ribs showed clearly as strong, graceful white
lines against the gray soft tissues and the almost burnt-black spaces of
the body cavities. After that it got tougher. A dozen shades of gray
overlapped one another in seeming chaos. Despite his initial confusion,
Stern believed that what he sought should be reasonably apparent even to
a layman. He tried to discern the subtle differences between the
anatomical parts, then groaned as the outlines of two pendulous breasts
emerged from the shadow of the internal organs.
''It's a bloody woman!' he muttered.
Then he noticed the small radiopaque ID-plate image on the top left
corner of the film. It read: Linah #004, 4-08-86.
Stern unclipped the film, ffimst it back into the folder and dropped it
on the floor. The outside of the next folder read: Stanton, Robert B.
#005. He dropped it. Smuts, Pieter #002.
The next file also belonged to Smuts. After three more names he did not
recognize, he returned to the storage shelves.
The first folder he pulled out measured an inch thick by itself.
The top-left corner read: Horn, Thomas Alfred #001.
With shaking hands Stern removed the top film from the file and clipped
it to the viewing screen. It showed two views of a hand positioned to
reveal a hairline fracture that Stern couldn't see and cared nothing
about. He jerked the film from the screen and let it fall to the floor.
The next three films showed a series of intestinal views enhanced by the
ingestion of barium sulfate. These, too, Stern let fall. A
comprehensive X-ray anthology followed: grossly arthritic knees, lumbar
spine, cervical spine-Stern tossed them all onto the growing pile at his
feet. Finally he found what he wanted-an X-ray of Alfred Horn's chest.
With mounting anticipation, he clipped the top edge of the film into the
clamp and stepped back.
No breasts on this film. Stern began with what he clearly
recognized-the spine. The ribs climbed both sides of the spine like
curved white ladders. The lungs were the dark ovals behind them. A
triangular white blob overlaid the spine. The heart, thought Stern. He
knew the heart to be situated slightly left of center in the body-a fact
he had learned during a silent killing course as a young man in
Palestine. So the left lung should be... here. He touched the film
with his right forefinger. Now... compare. Check each lung against the
other until Ifind a discrepancy.
He immediately found several. Opaque disks the size of small coins
seemed to float like celestial bodies in the dark lung spaces.
These disks were small scars left by a mild case of tuberculosis.
Stern did not know this, but he soon dismissed the disks as unrelated to
what he sought. The first suspicious thing he saw was a kind of
widening of two rib bones at one.spot in the left lung. They seemed
thicker than the other ribs, more built up somehow, not quite as smooth.
Stern had an idea. Pulling another stack of films from Horn's folder,
he rifled through them until he found what he wanted-an oblique X-ray of
Horn's chest-a picture shot -from the side with both arms held above the
head. When he pinned this film to the screen, the mark he sought jumped
out at him like a contrail against the sky. He swallowed hard, raised a
quivering finger to the film. Crossing the dark left lung in a hazy,
transverse line was the scar of a rifle bullet. A rifle bullet fired
seventy-one years ago. The opaque track diffused rapidly into the
surrounding shadows, but the path of the old bullet fragments was
plainly visible. With his heart pounding, Stern counted downward from
the collarbone to the scarred area-one rib at a time.
... four ... five ... six ... seven.'
He switched back to the first X-ray-the posterior/anterior view-and
carefully counted down again, this time searching for'the ribs with the
strange built-up areas.
'. . . three ... four . . . five ... six'-Stern felt sweat dropping
into his eyes- 'seven.'
'My God,' he murmured, feeling a catch in his throat.
'Hess- is alive.' Simultaneously a voice reverberated in his brain: The
bomb for Tel Aviv is real!
Folding the two stiff chest X-rays in half, Stern thrust them inside his
shirt between Zinoviev's notebook and his pounding heart.
He quickly gathered up the discarded films and folders from the floor,
shoved them back into the shelves, then slipped quietly out of the X-ray
room and into the dark hallway.
He sprinted to the library. In the musty darkness he tripped, picked
himself up, then moved carefully on toward the tall bookshelves.
Feeling his way across them to the corner, he found the tiny brass knob.
He turned it. He had already resolved that if he found anyone other
than Hess himself inside the secret shrine room, he would kill him.
The room was empty. Stern sat down behind the mahogany desk and
breathed deeply. He wanted to slow his racing heart. Above him the
bronze Phoenix screamed silently.
From the wall to his left a hundred Nazis gazed at him. As Stern
reached for the phone to call Hauer at the Protea Hof, he froze.
Someone had been in the room since his visit.
Across from the desk-where there h-ad been only red drapes before-hung 4
gigantic oil painting-twice lifesize-of Adolf Hitler.
Rendered in muted greens and browns, the dictator gazed down with sullen
intensity at the Jewish intruder. Someone had pulled back the drapes to
admire the Fuhrer. Gooseflesh rose on Stern's neck. His left cheek
began to twitch. After working his dry mouth furiously, the old Israeli
spat a wad of mucus across the desk onto the canvas. It struck Hitler
just above his groin. Stern raised his left arm, made a fist, and shook
it at the portrait.
'Never again!' he vowed. He lifted the phone.
455 A.M. Protea Hof Hotel, Pretoria
Hauer came off the bed like a fighter pilot hearing a scramble alar-m.
Gadi and Aaron sat half-conscious against the foyer walls; Professor
Natterman lay on the opposite bed, his right thigh wrapped in gauze, his
eyes half-closed from the effect of the morphine.
'Stern?' Hauer said.
