to the trouble? They would just shoot us in the yard, the
“Maybe they were experimenting,” Lisa said. “Dachau was the prototype for other camps, the training ground for the SS. Many well-known Nazis learned their trade there.”
“There have been no corroborating accounts that Hess was a mass murderer until now,” Martz said. “The voices of the dead can’t speak, Harry, but you can.”
“What do you know about him?” Harry said.
“His father was a career soldier. His mother was a music teacher,” Lisa said. “He was raised in a strict German household. His middle name is Tristan after Wagner’s opera.”
“Seems appropriate when you realize Wagner was an anti-Semite,” Martz said.
Lisa said, “Hess fell out of a tree when he was a boy of nine or ten. His mother heard him crying and beat him with a stick for being weak. Later, a doctor came to the house, examined him, and discovered he had broken his leg.”
“Well you can begin to understand why he turned out the way he did,” Harry said, moving his chair back from Lisa’s desk so he could cross his legs.
“So if you have a bad upbringing murder is justified?” Lisa said, raising her voice.
“My dear, think how sensitive it is for Harry,” Martz said. “He is a civilized man, showing compassion.”
“The hell I am. He killed my parents,” Harry said. “And my daughter. I’m going to get the son of a bitch.”
Martz said, “What do you mean, your daughter?”
Harry told them what happened to Sara.
“Harry, I’m so sorry,” Lisa paused, eyes holding on him.
“I am, too,” Harry said.
“I can’t imagine-”
“Tell me more about Hess,” Harry said, changing the subject.
Lisa glanced at the open binder on her desk. “He joined the SS in 1939 at age twenty-two. He was on a fast track, an up-and-comer. Everyone thought he was related to Rudolf Hess, Hitler’s deputy. It helped his cause until May 10th, 1941, when Rudy flew a plane to Scotland to negotiate peace with the British. Then, of course, Ernst tried to distance himself from his famous namesake.” Lisa took off her glasses, rubbed her eyes. “After Dachau, he was transferred to Berlin. Assisted Adolf Eichmann in organizing the Wannsee Conference. Reinhard Heydrich brought top Nazi leaders to a villa in Wannsee, a suburb of Berlin. He wanted their buy-in on deporting all the Jews of Europe to extermination camps like Auschwitz.” She paused, put her glasses back on. “After the war he started a construction company to rebuild the cities that were bombed by the Allies.”
“And profited handsomely,” Martz said.
“He sold the company in 1967 for thirty-six million marks,” Lisa said. “And then bought an airship factory, started building Zeppelins.”
Harry said, “Tell me more about this Dachau survivor.”
“She saw an SS officer murder dozens of Jews. That’s why she’s anxious to talk to you.”
“Where does she live?” Harry said.
“Palm Beach, Florida,” Lisa said. “I’ll set up a phone call for today at 5:30. We’ll do it at the house. Harry, can you be there?”
“Of course.”
“With the photographs and your testimony we have a strong case against Hess.”
“Harry, do you remember where they took you in the forest the day of the massacre?” Martz said.
“It was a few miles outside Dachau.”
Martz looked at him. “Do you think you could find it?”
“I don’t know,” Harry said. “It’s been a long time. I don’t know if I can trust my memory. Let me think about it.”
Martz dabbed his wet eyes with a Kleenex.
“Were you at the camp during the liberation?” Harry said.
“I had been transferred to Ampfing to work in the munitions factory, but was brought back to Dachau in the autumn of 1944. I was in a barracks with Leon Blum.”
“The premier of France?” Harry said.
“The very same,” Martz said. “The Americans liberated us on April 29, 1945. They were so horrified by the conditions, they made the citizens of Dachau feed and clothe us. Made them come to the camp to see the naked, emaciated bodies of the dead piled up in the mortuary room next to the crematorium.”
“What did you do after?”
“I went home,” Martz said. “Whoever had been living there was gone.”
Just then, a bear of a man, mid-thirties, came in the room. He had dark curly hair and a full beard. Wore black horn rims and a white yarmulke.
“What did I miss?”
“Meet Harry Levin, Dachau survivor. Harry, this is Leon Lukiski, our other partner.”
“It’s an honor, sir,” he said.
“Harry has identified Ernst Hess, and has agreed to help prosecute him.”
“Great news,” Leon said. “Mazel tov.”
“I’ll fill you in,” Lisa said. “Harry, is there anything else?”
“Yeah. Do you have a shovel I can borrow?”
19
Harry went back to his hotel, showered, changed and called Cordell.
“Yo, Harry, where you been at? Thought the ’shirts came back for a three-peat.”
“I had a date.”
“You sly dog. She got any friends?”
“I’ll ask.” He paused. “Doing anything today, want to go on a field trip?”
“Field trip? We back in middle school?”
“Dachau,” Harry said. “The concentration camp.”
“Why you want to go there?”
He picked Cordell up at the Pension Jedermann on Bayerstrasse at 11:30. Cordell in a powder-blue leisure suit with beige stitching and a beige polyester shirt with musical notes scattered all over the front. “Man, you’re a dresser, aren’t you?” he said when Cordell got in the car.
“I’m fly, Harry. Got my fly on.”
“You sure do.”
“You know what fly mean, Harry?” Cordell said, grinning.
“Let me guess. Fashion-conscious. Am I in the ballpark?”
“OK, you in the right direction,” Cordell said. “I can hook you up with some cloth, style you.”
“Guys selling scrap don’t dress like that.”
“You be the first. They be looking at you with envy and shit.”
Harry wondered what Michalski, the buyer at the steel mill, would say if he showed up in a powder-blue leisure suit. It wouldn’t be pretty.
Harry drove through Altstadt, and once he had cleared the ancient spires he saw a Zeppelin hovering high above. “Look up there.” He pointed to the top edge of the windshield. “See it?”
“Yeah. More Nazis, Harry? Think it’s following us?”
“I don’t know. I guess we’ll find out.”
They got on the highway and drove northwest out of the city, Cordell looking through the windows, checking to see if the Zeppelin was still up there. “Don’t see nothing, Harry. We cool.” Cordell took a red Nazi armband out of
