Liebermann folded his hands on top of his head, sitting erect on the front of the sofa. He began working his feet farther apart, very slowly. The sofa was low, and getting up from it quickly wasn’t going to be easy. “Is Wheelock dead?” he asked.
“No,” Mengele said. “He’s in the kitchen making lunch for us. Listen closely now, dear Liebermann; I’m going to tell you something that’s going to sound totally incredible to you, but I swear to you on my mother’s grave that it’s the absolute truth. Would I bother to lie to a Jew? And a dead one?”
Liebermann flicked his eyes to the window at the right of the settee and looked back at Mengele attentively.
Mengele sighed and shook his head. “If I want to look out the window,” he said, “I’ll kill you and then look. But I don’t want to look out the window. If someone were coming, the dogs out in back would be barking, yes? Yes?”
“Yes,” Liebermann said, sitting with his hands on his head.
Mengele smiled. “You see? Everything goes my way. God is with me. Do you know what I saw on television at one o’clock this morning? Films of Hitler.” He nodded. “At a moment when I was severely depressed, virtually suicidal. If that wasn’t a sign from heaven, there’s never been one. So don’t waste your time looking at windows; look at me, and listen. He’s alive. This album”—he pointed with his free hand, not taking his eyes or his gun off Liebermann—“is full of pictures of him, ages one through thirteen. The boys are exact genetic duplicates of him. I’m not going to take the time to explain to you how I achieved this—I doubt whether you’d have the capacity to understand it if I did—but take my word for it, I did achieve it. Exact genetic duplicates. They were conceived in my laboratory, and carried to term by women of the Auiti tribe; healthy, docile creatures with a businesslike chieftain. The boys bear no taint of them; they’re pure Hitler, bred entirely from his cells. He allowed me to take half a liter of his blood and a cutting of skin from his ribs—we were in a Biblical frame of mind—on the sixth of January, 1943, at Wolf’s Lair. He had denied himself children”—the phone rang; Mengele kept his eyes and his gun on Liebermann—“because he knew that no son could flourish in the shadow of so”—the phone rang—“godlike a father; so when he heard what was theoretically possible, that I could”—the phone rang—“create some day not his son but another himself, not even a carbon copy but”—the phone rang—“another original, he was as thrilled by the idea as I was. It was then that he gave me the position and facilities I required to begin my pursuit of the goal. Did you really think my work at Auschwitz was aimless insanity? How simple-minded you people are! He commemorated the occasion, the giving of the blood and skin, with a beautifully inscribed cigarette case. ‘To my friend of many years Josef Mengele, who has served me better than most men and may serve me some day better than all. Adolf Hitler.’ My most cherished possession, naturally; too risky to take through customs, so it sits in my lawyer’s safe in Asunción, waiting for me to come home from my travels. You see? I’m giving you more than a minute”—he looked at the clock—
Liebermann got up and—a gunshot roared—stepped around the sofa end, reaching. A gunshot roared, a gunshot roared; pain flung him against hard wall, pain in his chest, pain farther down. Dogs barked loud in his wall-pressing ear. The brown wood door thumped and quivered; he reached across it for its glass-diamond knob. A gunshot roared; the knob burst apart as he caught it, a small hole in the back of his hand filling with blood. He clutched a sharp part of knob—a gunshot roared; the dogs barked wildly—and wincing in pain, eyes shut tight, he twisted the part-knob, pulled. The door threw itself open against his arm and shoulder, dog-howling; gunshots roared, a thundering salvo. Barks, a cry, clicks of an empty gun; a thud and clatter, snarls, a cry. He let go the cutting part-knob, turned himself back gasping against the wall; let himself slide downward, opened his eyes…
Black dogs drove Mengele into a spread-legged side-sprawl on the settee; big Dobermans, teeth bared, eyes wild, sharp ears back. Mengele’s cheek slammed against the settee arm. His eye stared at a Doberman before him, shifting amid the legs of the overturned table, jaw-grappling his wrist; the gun fell from his fingers. His eye rolled to stare at Dobermans snarling close against his cheek and underjaw. The Doberman at his cheek stood between his back and the settee’s back, its forepaws treading for purchase at his shoulder. The Doberman at his underjaw stood hind-legged on the floor between his spread legs, leaning in over his updrawn thigh, body down low against his chest. Mengele raised his cheek higher against the settee arm, eye staring down, lips trembling.
A fourth Doberman lay big on the floor between the settee and Liebermann, on its side, black ribs heaving, its nose on hooked rug. A light-reflecting flatness spread out from beneath it; a puddle of urine.
Liebermann slid all the way down the wall, and wincing, sat on the floor. He straightened his legs out slowly before him, watching the Dobermans threatening Mengele.
Threatening, not killing. Mengele’s wrist had been let go; the Doberman that had held it stood snarling at him almost nose to nose.
“Kill!” Liebermann commanded, but only a whisper came out. Pain lancing his chest enlarged and sharpened.
“Kill!” he shouted against the pain. A hoarse command came out.
The Dobermans snarled, not moving.
Mengele’s eye clenched tight; his teeth bit his lower lip.
“KILL!” Liebermann bellowed—and the pain ripped his chest, tore it apart.
The Dobermans snarled, not moving.
A high-pitched squealing came from Mengele’s bitten-closed mouth.
Liebermann threw his head back against the wall and closed his eyes, gasping. He tugged his tie knot down, unbuttoned his shirt collar. Undid another button under the tie and put his fingers to the pain; found wetness on his chest at the edge of his undershirt. Brought the fingers out, opened his eyes; looked at blood on his fingertips. The bullet had gone right through him. Hitting what? The left lung? Whatever it had hit, every breath swelled the pain. He reached down for the handkerchief in his trouser pocket, rolled leftward to get at it; worse pain exploded below, in his hip. He winced as it gored him. Ei!
He got the handkerchief out, brought it up, pressed it against the chest wound and held it there.
Raised his left hand. Blood leaked from both sides of it, more from the ragged break in the palm than from the smaller puncture in the back. The bullet had gone through below the first and second fingers. They were numb and he couldn’t move them. Two scratches bled across the palm.
He wanted to keep the hand up to slow the bleeding but couldn’t; let it fall down. No strength was in him. Only pain. And tiredness…The door beside him drifted slowly toward closing.
He looked at Mengele.
Mengele’s eye watched him.
He closed his eyes, breathing shallowly against the pain burning in his chest.
“Away…”
He opened his eyes and looked across the room at Mengele lying side-sprawled on the settee among the close-snarling Dobermans.
“Away,” Mengele said, softly and warily. His eye moved from the Doberman before him to the Doberman at his underjaw, the Doberman at his cheek. “Off. No more gun. No gun. Away. Off. Good dogs.”
The blue-black Dobermans snarled, not moving.
“Nice dogs,” Mengele said. “Samson? Good Samson. Off. Go away.” He turned his head slowly against the settee arm; the Dobermans withdrew their heads a little, snarling. Mengele made a shaky smile at them. “Major?” he asked. “Are you Major? Good Major, good Samson. Good dogs. Friend. No more gun.” His hand, red-wristed, caught the front of the settee arm; his other hand held the frame of the settee’s back. He began turning himself up slowly from his side. “Good dogs. Off. Away.”