Two Graves

Now the marching soldiers came to a halt before them—young, beaming, rosy-cheeked, glowing with health and athleticism. Standing in rows, they finished their song:

Denn heute da hort uns Deutschland

Und morgen die ganze Welt!

The commander, Scheermann, dressed in a Waffen-SS uniform, strolled along the line of now-silent soldiers, turned and looked at Pendergast, and then at Alban. He walked around them in a slow circle.

“Well done,” he said to Alban in perfect English. “He is the last one. I leave it in your hands.”

“Thank you, mein Oberfuhrer,” Alban responded.

The boy turned to Pendergast with a smile. “Well, this is it, Father.”

Pendergast waited. He looked over at the field hands, the slave twins, standing in a disorganized bunch, staring slack-jawed. They appeared not to have the slightest idea what was going on. The uniforms, the soldiers, the two groups of twins staring at each other across an unfathomable gulf of biology, of genetics…

Glancing from the soldiers to the enslaved field hands, Pendergast saw many of the same faces. Only where the defectives’ faces were discouraged and hollow, the soldiers had the look of those who had found their place in the world and were supremely satisfied with it. This was how it should be. All was in order.

The horror of it closed off Pendergast’s throat; he almost couldn’t bear the knowledge that this was where his wife had come from, that she had been bred here, an early iteration of this vast eugenics experiment, stretching across at least three generations from the concentration camps of World War II to the forests of Brazil. Bred, no doubt, with the ultimate aim of creating a true master race, capable of establishing and maintaining a Fourth Reich, without the imperfections—mercy, compassion, shortsightedness—of their merely human forebears.

The idea was monstrous. Monstrous.

Scheermann, the Oberfuhrer, said quietly: “Alban? We are waiting.”

Alban took a step forward, his smile growing. With a brief glace at the Oberfuhrer, he swung his fist and punched Pendergast in the side of the head with such force that it knocked the FBI agent to the ground.

“Fight,” he said.

Pendergast rose, blood trickling from his mouth. “I’m afraid I can’t give you that satisfaction, Alban,” he said.

Another blow sent Pendergast sprawling again.

“Fight. I will not have my father die like a cowardly dog.”

Again Pendergast rose, his pale eyes on his son. Again the fist swung hard. Yet again Pendergast went down.

A cry went up from among the ragged slaves. And now, out of nowhere, Tristram emerged.

“Stop it!” he shouted. “That’s my father. And your father, too!”

“Precisely,” said Alban. “And I’m glad you’re here to see this, Schwachling.”

He turned and struck Pendergast again. “What a coward our father is. How disappointing!”

Tristram rushed at Alban, but with the utmost clumsiness; Alban deftly stepped aside while sticking out his foot—a schoolboy trick—and sent Tristram sprawling.

A manly laugh went up among the soldiers.

Pendergast got up from the dirt and stood silently, awaiting the next blow.

81

THE LAUGHTER DIED AWAY. ALBAN LOOKED DOWN AT HIS brother, lying in the dirt. Then he turned slowly back to Pendergast. Reaching down, he removed his sidearm, a Walther P38 that he had lovingly restored by hand. He felt the cool, heavy weapon in his hands. It had been given to him by Fischer when he turned ten, and he had replaced the original grips with elephant ivory he had carved himself.

His twin, Forty-Seven, sat up in the dirt, staring at the pistol.

Alban said, offhandedly: “Don’t worry, brother, I’ve no intention of damaging my own personal blood and organ farm.” He hefted the gun. “No—this one’s for Father.”

Der Schwachling rose to his feet.

“Go back to your own kind,” Alban said. Meanwhile, the Nazi officers waited, expectantly. As did the brigade of superior twins. Waiting to see what he would do, how he—the one chosen for the beta test—would end this. This was the moment. His moment.

He would not make a mistake. Alban ejected the magazine to make sure it was full, then slid it back into place. With slow deliberation, holding his arm straight, he racked a round into the chamber.

His twin, however, did not move. He spoke in German, his voice loud and clear: “Is this good? ”

Alban laughed harshly and, in return, quoted Nietzsche: “What is good? All that heightens the feeling of power in man, the will to power, power itself.”

“That’s sick,” said his twin.

Alban waved as if at a pesky insect, highly conscious of his audience. The only one missing was Fischer. “What are you, Forty-Seven, but a bag of blood and organs—a genetic garbage dump? Your opinions are as meaningless as the wind in the trees.”

This elicited another round of laughter from the soldiers. He couldn’t help but glance at his father, who stared at him with those strange eyes. He seemed unable, now, to read anything in that look. No matter: it was irrelevant.

His twin—who clearly didn’t know when to stop—spoke up again, but this time he spoke not to Alban, but to his own people. “You heard him. He called me and all of you my own kind. How much longer are we going to be treated like storage bags of blood and organs? How much longer are we going to be treated like animals? I am a man.”

And now a low murmur from the crowd.

“Don’t strain yourself, brother,” said Alban. “If you want to see the power of will, watch this.” He pointed the pistol at his father.

“Brother?” the twin cried, again addressing the crowd of defectives. “You hear that word? Can’t you see how wrong this is? Brother against brother? Son murdering his own father?”

To Alban’s mild surprise, the defectives responded. There was a sharp and growing murmur, more restless movement.

“Oh, ho!” Alban cried facetiously. “Speech, speech!”

This, to his relief, elicited a merry round of laughter from the soldiers. And he told himself it was, in fact, quite amusing, this crowd of pathetic imbeciles getting themselves all exercised with the pent-up frustrations and privations of many years. But he found himself shocked at the articulateness of Forty-Seven. That was not supposed to be allowed. And as he glanced around, he was unable to suppress an uneasiness developing in his forward-time sense, like an approaching storm. The ever-branching paths were narrowing, coming together and converging in his mind, leading toward a single future.

He looked back at his father, who was staring at him with glittering eyes. His finger moved to the trigger. It was time to get this over with.

“This is not right!” Forty-Seven cried out loudly, turning to the crowd. “Deep inside, you know it’s wrong! Open your eyes! We are all brothers—sisters—twins! We share the same blood!”

The world-lines whipped and curled about in Alban’s mind, a sudden five-alarm fire. He saw it, felt it: the great turning of the wheel. This couldn’t be happening, not with their careful indoctrination, their years of planning and refining… and yet it was happening, and he could already begin to glimpse, like the ghostly image of an underpainting, how all this was going to end. The murmur of the defectives was growing into a hubbub, then into a roar, and the crowd moved tentatively forward, their hoes and shovels and scythes raised, some picking up rocks.