'July 7, 1896.'
'Place of birth?'
'Berlin.'
'Under what name were you born?'
'Bernhard Gunther.'
My interrogator sighed and put down his pen. Almost reluctantly he opened a drawer and took out a file, which he opened. He handed me a German passport in the name of Eric Gruen. I opened it. He said: 'Is this your passport?'
I shrugged. 'It's my picture,' I said. 'But I've never seen this passport before.'
He handed me another document. 'A copy of an SS file in the name of Eric Gruen,' he said. 'That is also your photograph, is it not?'
'That's my photograph,' I said. 'But this is not my SS file.'
'An application for the SS, completed and signed by Eric Gruen, with a medical report. Height one meter eighty-eight, hair blond, eyes blue, distinguishing characteristic, subject is missing the little finger of his left hand.' He handed the document over. I took it with my left hand, without thinking. 'You are missing the little finger on your left hand. You can hardly deny that.'
'It's a long story,' I said. 'But I'm not Eric Gruen.'
'More photographs,' said my interrogator. 'A picture of you shaking hands with Reich Marshal Hermann Goring, taken in August 1936. Another of you with SS Obergruppenfuhrer Heydrich, taken at Wewelsburg Castle, Paderborn, November 1938.'
'You'll notice I'm not wearing a uniform,' I said.
'And a picture of you standing next to Reichsfuhrer Heinrich Himmler, believed taken October 1938. He's not wearing a uniform either.' He smiled. 'What did you discuss? Euthanasia, perhaps. Aktion T-four?'
'I met him, yes,' I said. 'It doesn't mean we sent each other Christmas cards.'
'A photograph of you with SS Gruppenfuhrer Arthur Nebe. Taken Minsk, 1941. You are wearing a uniform in this picture. Are you not? Nebe commanded a Special Action Group that killed--how many Jews was it, Aaron?'
'Ninety thousand Jews, sir.' Aaron sounded more English than American.
'Ninety thousand. Yes.'
'I'm not who you think I am.'
'Three days ago you were in Vienna, were you not?'
'Yes.'
'Now we're getting somewhere. Exhibit Eight. The sworn testimony of Tibor Medgyessy, formerly employed as the Gruen family butler, in Vienna. Shown your photograph, the one from your own SS file, he positively identified you as Eric Gruen. Also the statement of the desk clerk at the Hotel Erzherzog Rainer. You stayed there following the death of your mother, Elisabeth. He also identified you as Eric Gruen. It was foolish of you to go to the funeral, Gruen. Foolish, but understandable.'
'Look, I've been framed,' I said. 'Very handsomely by Major Jacobs. The real Eric Gruen is leaving the country tonight. Aboard a plane from an American military airfield. He is going to work for the CIA and Jacobs and the American government, to produce a malaria vaccine.'
'Major Jacobs is a man of the very highest integrity,' said my interrogator. 'A man who has put the interests of the State of Israel ahead of those of his own country, and at no small peril to himself.' He leaned back in his chair and lit a cigarette. 'Look, why don't you admit who you are? Admit the crimes you committed at Majdanek and Dachau. Admit what you've done and it will go easier for you, I promise.'
'Easier for you, you mean. My name is Bernhard Gunther.'
'How did you come by that name?'
'It's my name,' I insisted.
'The real Bernhard Gunther is dead,' said the interrogator and handed me yet another piece of paper. 'This is a copy of his death certificate. He was murdered by the ODESSA or some other old comrades organization in Munich, two months ago. Presumably so that you could assume his identity.' He paused. 'With this expertly forged passport.' And he handed me my own passport. The one I left at Monch before traveling to Vienna.
'That's not forged,' I said. 'That's a real passport. It's the other one that's a fake.' I sighed and shook my head. 'But if I'm dead, then does it matter what I say? You'll be killing the wrong person. But then of course that wouldn't be the first time you've killed the wrong person. Vera Messmann wasn't the war criminal Jacobs told she was. As it happens, I can prove who I say I am. Twelve years ago, in Palestine . . .'
'You bastard,' yelled the big man with the elephant ears. 'You murdering bastard.' He came toward me quickly and hit me hard with something in his fist. I think the younger man might have tried to restrain him, but it didn't work. He wasn't the type to be restrained by anything much except perhaps a heavy machine gun. The blow when it came knocked me off the chair. I felt as if I had been hit by fifty thousand volts. My whole body was left tingling, with the exception of my head, which felt as if someone had wrapped it in a thick, damp towel so I couldn't hear anything, or see anything. My own voice sounded muffled. Then another towel got wrapped around my head and there was just silence and darkness and nothing at all except a magic carpet that picked me up and floated me away to a place that didn't exist. And that was a place where Bernie Gunther--the real Bernie Gunther--felt very much at home.
FORTY-ONE
Everything was white. Excluded from the beatific vision, but purified from sin, I lay in a temporary place awaiting some sort of a decision about what to do with me. I hoped they would hurry up and decide because it was cold. Cold and wet. There was no sound, which is as it should have been. Death is not noisy. But it ought to have been warmer. Curiously, one side of my face seemed much colder than the other and, for a dreadful moment, I thought the decision about me had already been made and I was in hell. A small cloud kept visiting my head as if anxious to communicate something to me, and it was another moment or two before I realized that it was my own breath. My earthly torment was not yet over. Slowly I lifted my head from the snow and saw a man digging in the ground, just a few feet from my head. It seemed a curious thing to be doing in a forest in the middle of winter. I wondered what he was digging for.
'Why's it me who has to dig?' he moaned. This one sounded like the only real German of the three.
'Because you're the one who hit him, Shlomo,' said a voice. 'If you hadn't hit him we could have made him dig that grave.'
The man digging threw down his spade. 'That'll have to do,' he said. 'The ground is frozen solid. It'll snow soon enough and the snow will cover it up, and that will be the end of him until the spring.'
And then my head throbbed painfully. Most likely it was the explanation of why the man was digging striking a few brain cells. I pushed my arm underneath my forehead and let out a groan.
'He's coming around,' said the voice.
The man who had been digging stepped out of the grave and hauled me to my feet. The big man. The man who had hit me. Shlomo. The German Jew.
'For God's sake,' said the voice, 'don't hit him again.'
Weakly I glanced around me. Gruen's laboratory was nowhere to be seen. Instead I was standing on the edge of the tree line on the mountainside just above Monch. I recognized the coat of arms painted on the wall of the house. I put my hand on my head. There was a lump the size of a golf ball. One that had just been driven in excess of a hundred yards. Shlomo's handiwork.
'Hold the prisoner straight.' It was my interrogator speaking. His nose was not faring well in the cold. It looked like something from a song that was always on the radio these days. 'Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.'
Shlomo and Aaron--the younger one--each grabbed an arm and straightened me up. Their fingers felt like pincers. They were enjoying this. I started to speak. 'Silence,' growled Shlomo. 'You'll get your turn, you Nazi bastard.'
'The prisoner will strip,' said the interrogator.
I didn't move. Not much anyway. I was still swaying a bit from the blow on my head.
'Strip him,' he said.
