AL01 - Murder in the Marais

He looked upset. 'I have to get back.' He slapped some francs on the table and hurried away.

She rose, carefully putting the folded newspaper in her backpack, more confused than before. What did the boarded-up window have to do with the photo she'd deciphered?

AIMEE STOPPED at the corner kiosk near her office on rue du Louvre. Maurice, the owner, nodded at her. He had a clipped mustache and bright sparrowlike eyes.

'Usual?' he said.

She smiled and placed some francs on a fat pile of newspapers.

Maurice whisked a copy of Le Figaro with his wooden arm into hers. An Algerian war veteran, he ran several kiosks but wasn't above dog-sitting Miles Davis occasionally.

She clutched her paper and climbed the old, worn stairs to her floor. All the way up she wondered why Lili would feel guilt over Arlette's murder she supposedly hadn't even seen. And if she'd recognized an old Nazi, why hadn't she talked about it?

Back in her office, she logged onto both her and Rene's computer terminals. She knew where she had to look. Files not destroyed by the Germans had been centralized. On Rene's terminal she accessed the Yad Vashem Memorial in Jerusalem and downloaded the R.F. SS Sicherheits-Dienst Memorandum file 1941–45. Thick black Gestapo lightning bolts were emblazoned across her computer screen as the documents came up.

On her terminal she bypassed a tracer link and downloaded GROUPER, the back door into Interpol. She accessed GROUPER and queried under Griffe, Hartmuth, the name under the newspaper photo Lili had written over. A pleasantly robotic, digitally mastered voice said, 'Estimated retrieval time is four minutes twenty seconds.'

Rene's screen displayed a long report in German titled Nachtrichten-Nebermittlung, dated August 21, 1942. Even with her rudimentary grasp of German she could figure out the general idea. Addressed to Adolf Eichmann in Berlin, the subject of the report was 'Abtransport von Juden aus Frankreich nach Auschwitz' or 'Transportation for French Jews to Auschwitz.' According to Aimee's rough translation, there had been no provisions made for Jewish transport to Auschwitz in October and the Gestapo chief was asking Eichmann what he was going to do about it.

Well, here was a zealous Nazi, she thought; in August he was already worried about getting enough people to the gas chambers in October. An Adolf brown-noser, he probably stayed up nights worrying about the possibility of empty ovens. The report had been signed R. A. Rausch, Obersturmfuhrer. Two other signatures, those of K. Oblath and H. Volpe, were listed as underling Si-Po Sicherheitspolezei und Sicherheitsdienst responsible for Jewish roundups.

Back on her terminal, she checked for a reply to her GROUPER query. A loud whir, then a reggae version of the 2001: A Space Odyssey theme came on. GROUPER access came via an eclectic server today, she thought. Old Soviet war records flashed on the screen. She ran the names of the three Gestapo she had found: Rausch, Oblath, and Volpe. Each name came up as deceased. That was odd.

Searching deeper, she found each one separately listed as dead in the Battle of Stalingrad in 1943. Why would Rausch, the head of the Gestapo, be sent to the front in 1943, Aimee wondered.

She checked other memorandums from the file. Rausch was still signing memos deporting Jews from Paris in 1944 but he'd been listed as dead in 1943? Aimee sat back and let out a low whistle.

Interpol identity files cross-referenced to the postwar U.S. Documents Center in Berlin, circa 1948, appeared on her screen. In them, a Hartmuth Griffe had been listed dead, as a combatant in the Battle of Stalingrad. That was all.

These records had obviously been tampered with. Here was proof. But not enough proof to identify who, if any, of these Nazis was still alive.

Sinta had told her that Lili felt ghosts were haunting her. But it had been Rachel's threatening fax that warned her to leave the ghosts alone.

Sunday Evening

'RESERVE A SEAT FOR me on the late flight to Hamburg, please.' Hartmuth's fingers thumped on the elegant walnut secretary that served as the hotel's reception desk.

That afternoon he'd realized he'd had enough. He'd placate Cazaux by signing the treaty, and make the Werewolves happy. The European Union agreement sanctioned concentration camps but maybe Cazaux meant it when he'd promised to delete the racist provisions afterwards.

Hartmuth had thought he could stop it. He realized now how futile that was—the Werewolves couldn't be stopped. Now he just wanted to toe the accepted party line and get back to Germany. The Werewolves would win, no matter what; their claws stretched everywhere.

'Of course, Monsieur, I'll inform you when the reservations are completed,' the clerk said.

And I can escape the ghost of Sarah hovering in my mind, Hartmuth thought, courteously thanking him. How foolish he'd been to think she might have survived! But deep inside, a tiny hope had fluttered. There would be no records of her either, he'd taken care of that himself in 1943. Hartmuth gazed sadly over Place des Vosges below him.

'Excuse me, Herr Griffe,' the clerk bowed abjectly. 'I almost forgot, this came for you.' He handed Hartmuth a large white envelope.

Hartmuth thanked him again absentmindedly and went to the elevator. As he entered and nodded to the other occupants, he idly noticed his name on the envelope. It was scrawled in the familiar cursive script of his time, not how people wrote these days, squat and uniform. The system had changed after the war, like so much else. As the elevator stopped and let a couple off, he looked forward to this evening when his plane took off. Finally he would be safe. He'd make it out of Paris.

Hartmuth noticed a bulge in the envelope. And then he panicked. Had he trustingly picked up a letter bomb? This was Paris, after all. Terrorist attacks happened all the time! His hands started shaking so much he dropped the envelope. But the only thing that happened was that a piece of ivory bone wrapped in faded yellow cloth rolled soundlessly onto the carpeted elevator floor.

He kneeled and gently unfolded the tattered yellow star, the childishly embroidered J with broken black threads that every Jew had been required to wear. Could this be Sarah's? He'd seen it for so many years in his dreams, reminding him of her. He cupped the bone in his hands. Nothing else was in the envelope. Could she be alive after all these years? Had she survived?

The bone had been their signal. She would leave a bone lying on a ledge outside the catacombs. It had meant 'Meet me tonight.' Who else would send a message like this? Tears brimmed in his eyes.

He would go and meet her where they had always met. When night fell and the lights hid behind the marble salamander on the arch.

Hartmuth took the elevator back down and he went to the reception desk.

He smiled. 'Excuse me again, there's been another last-minute change. Cancel that flight for me tonight. Who delivered that last message for me?'

'I'm sorry, Herr Griffe, I just came on duty at two and the message was already here.'

'Of course, thank you,' Hartmuth said. He felt the pounding of his heart must be audible to the clerk. In several hours it would be dark. They had always met just after sunset, the safest time since Jews were forbidden on the streets after 8:00 P.M.

He walked out of the lobby, through the courtyard bursting with red geraniums, to the sun-dappled Place des Vosges. He entered the gate, closed it behind him, and let his feet and mind wander. Duty. Hartmuth knew all about that since most of his life was based on it—his political life, marriage, and being an upright German.

The plane trees still held some foliage, but yellow leaves fell and danced in the bubbling fountains. Toddlers bundled in warm jackets chased pigeons and tumbled onto the grass with cries of glee. Like his daughter, Katia, had done once. Before she'd blindly stepped in front of a GI troop truck on the outskirts of Hamburg and died in Grete's