He looked nervous for a moment, then bounced back. “I told you, Mr. Wells, I don’t do that kind of thing.”
“Yeah, I believe you,” Versace said, closing the door after the twins had got in beside me.
I watched as Lister walked swiftly into the darkness.
“Gordy’s okay,” the young man next to me said. “He looks after us.”
“Randy,” I said, extending a hand. “Gwen. I’m Matt Wells.”
“Oh, we know who you are,” the girl said, squeezing my hand gently. Her palm was damp, her smile slack. “Gordy said you’re a writer. You going to write about us?”
“Maybe. But we need to talk to you first.”
“You guys cops?” Randy said to the men in the front seats.
“Yup,” Clem replied.
“Thought as much,” the young man said. “We learned how to spot you the first week we were here.”
“Is that right?” Clem said, accelerating on to the freeway. “You want to tell us what you’ve been doing since you got here?”
I’d thought they might be reluctant to talk, but that wasn’t the case. Gordy had told them to answer all our questions, and they did. Before we reached the house over the Maryland state line that Versace had borrowed from his absent sister, they’d given us a full rundown.
Gwen and Randy had spent the first week in D.C. seeing the sights and being wined and dined. Then came the modeling work that Lister had arranged for them. There was nothing tasteless, just fashion shoots and the like. Then Gordy had told them about a residential course Woodbridge ran that would be useful in their future careers. The twins hadn’t given it a second thought, though they knew enough not to tell their parents. It struck me that they were as naive as five-year-olds and their permanent smiles began to grate. I wondered if they’d always been like that.
They didn’t know where they’d been driven as the van had darkened windows. Randy thought it was up north because of the cold. From the descriptions they gave of the barbed wire and low buildings, as well as the pine forests and snow-clad mountain ridges, I reckoned that it was the camp where I’d been held. The alternative, that there were several such installations, was too depressing to consider. You’d have thought the twins might have objected to being put into uniform-gray, with badges bearing the letters NANR-and taught how to handle rifles and pistols, but apparently not. I asked if they’d been given any drugs or if their memories had been affected, but they claimed not. They were vague about the timeline of all this, though, which made me suspicious. They claimed they’d been back in Washington for a couple of months, having escaped from the camp during a power failure.
Then I hit pay dirt. I had asked if they knew Larry Thomson. They said no, so I showed them the photo on my phone.
“That’s the Fuhrer,” they said in unison, their eyes wide.
I struggled to conceal my shock. “What?”
“The Fuhrer,” they repeated.
“He visited us at the camp,” Randy went on. “We were greatly honored. He’s a very busy man.”
The combination of servility and corrupted innocence turned my stomach. What had been done to these kids?
“He talked to me for nearly a minute,” Gwen said eagerly. “He asked me about Nazi ideology. Of course, I knew everything by heart.”
“Nazi ideology?” Versace said, in disbelief.
I raised a hand. “Just what are the aims of the NANR?”
“The North American Nazi Revival is dedicated to the eradication of Jews and all other under-races from the U.S.A., whatever the cost,” they recited. “We obey the Fuhrer and his officers without question. We fight for the Greater Germany, of which the U.S.A. will become part after the global conflict is won. We are dedicated to the extermination of all existing religions, under the instruction of the Antichurch of Lucifer Triumphant.”
The twins sat back and beamed at us. It was as if a death sentence had been read out by preschoolers.
“I guess under-races includes blacks,” Clem said slowly.
“Oh, yes,” Gwen replied, with a smile.
“Well, pardon me, darling,” said Versace, “but shouldn’t you be trying to eradicate and exterminate my partner here right now?”
Randy and Gwen exchanged anxious glances.
“We…we aren’t…aren’t authorized to act without orders from our superiors,” the young man said, lowering his eyes.
“Well, that is a relief,” Clem said, with a hollow laugh. “Tell me, if you liked these people so much, why did you escape from the camp?”
Again they looked at each other, but it was impossible to tell what passed between their dead eyes.
“Well…” Randy began.
“It’s all right,” his sister interrupted. “I’m…I’m almost over it.” She licked her lips repeatedly. “They…some of the comrades…they took advantage-”
“They raped her,” Randy said, his cheeks red. “Men and women. With gun barrels. They made her-”
Gwen touched his arm. “It’s over. We’re free of them.”
I wasn’t sure if that was really the case, given that Gordy Lister had known exactly where to find them. They’d been taken advantage of and terribly abused, but they still seemed to admire the man they called the Fuhrer. What did that say about the power he exerted?
The atmosphere gradually lightened, but I still felt like I was sitting next to a pair of highly sensitive explosive devices. Then I thought about the Antichurch of Lucifer Triumphant. The twins may have seen human sacrifices at the camp but, given their condition, I could hardly just ask them that straight out.
“How about the Antichurch?” I said. “Did you go to services?”
“Rituals,” Gwen corrected. “Of course we did. We all did.” Then her expression went blank, as if a shutter had suddenly been closed.
Randy’s gaze stayed down. Versace swore under his breath.
“The Fuhrer,” I said, involuntarily lowering my voice. “Did he have anyone with him when he visited the camp?”
“Of course,” Randy said. “The professor was always with him.”
“This prof got a name?” Versace growled.
The twins shook their heads.
“What did he look like?” Clem asked.
They both smiled.
“No,” Gwen said, “the professor is a woman. She’s tall, like the Fuhrer, and very distinguished. In her sixties, I’d say. Like him.” She gave a sudden laugh. “Of course she is like him. After all, they’re twins. They were plenty of our kind at the camp.”
Now we were getting somewhere. Thomson-the leader of the NANR and eminence grise behind Woodbridge-had a twin sister. Nikolaus A. N. Rothmann, Mengele’s helper, had twin children, a boy and a girl, who would be in their sixties now. But did that mean they were responsible for the murders? I thought about the diagrams, the squares and rectangles that had been left on the victims. Something was stirring in my memory, something I’d seen in the camp.
Then I thought of someone else. Gavin Burdett. Not only was he in Washington, but I’d tailed him to the occult supplies shop in East London. He was a dishonest investment banker with an interest in underage girls. Could he also be responsible for the murders in Washington? If so, how much were the Rothmann twins involved?
Pinker showed the twins into their rooms at his sister’s house-we had decided to use it in case anyone tried to find the detectives at home. Clem told Gwen and Randy that they would be put in a drug rehabilitation program as soon as possible. They seemed happy enough and showed no sign of wanting to be anywhere else, though that probably meant they didn’t need a fix yet. The house had high-security windows and doors, so they’d find it hard to break out when they did, and Versace would be playing nursemaid. Then again, they had been trained how to use weapons at the camp. I didn’t feel good about leaving the detective there on his own, but Clem and I had work to do.
“Hey, Field Goal,” Versace said, as we headed for the door.
