Of course, the leap from mystical visions to believing that a man had used kabbalah magic to physically disappear from Auschwitz was a big one. Then again, the readers of Mysterious World were leapin’ fools.
But the real meat of the article was courtesy of Loretta. She’d found an almost-eyewitness, a survivor named Biederer in Tel Aviv. Denton had interviewed him over the phone. Biederer’s story was amazing—two enemies wrestling, a flash of light… But Beiderer had also said something not too cool. He’d mentioned that “other people” had been talking to him recently about Kobinski.
Denton knew very well who those “other people” were: Schwartz!
Denton hadn’t seen or heard from the man, not directly. Yet he was convinced that Schwartz knew what he was up to, was doing everything in his power to work against him, was dogging his every move.
The more Denton thought about this whole kabbalah magic thing, the more he’d become convinced that there was some seriously heavy-duty power there. What if Schwartz was the head of some secret fraternity of kabbalist magicians? After all, Schwartz was reputed to be one of the greatest living kabbalists, wasn’t he? And the man was so damned secretive. He’d totally lied about his familiarity with Kobinski, tried to put Denton off the scent, tried to block his getting any of Kobinski’s work.
Why? Because Kobinski had written big-time kabbalah secrets, that’s why. Maybe it wasn’t all that clear in the pages Denton had seen so far, but he just knew there were pages out there that contained powerful spells and formulas or whatever of kabbalah. That’s why Schwartz didn’t want them found.
Which was a little bit scary. Denton’s latest imaginings of Schwartz included candlelit rooms in that nice stone building and clusters of chanting bearded-and-fringed men swearing blood oaths and mumbling Hebraic incantations. It included ritual knives intended for Those Who Revealed the Secrets. He wished to God he hadn’t seen the movie ¼.
Denton tried to put the problem of Schwartz from his mind. Because the alternative was to give up, and he couldn’t do that. Molly Brad was just the kernel of it; he knew that now. He didn’t bother to analyze his motives. He just wanted it. And Denton always got what he wanted.
Fortunately he, and not Schwartz, had the services of Mr. Fleck.
When Denton found the address he was able to convince himself to pull into the driveway.
The farm was of medium size. It was late August and the corn was high. The house was large and typically German: white and rectangular with brown beams and window boxes. But the paint was chipped and the only car in the driveway was a small, older economy car. It appeared the German junk police never made it out this far, because a pile of rusting trash sprawled behind the barn. The place was strangely quiet.
Denton got out. He stood for a moment next to his car, certain he was being watched. The house windows were dark and curtained. He had a brief image of a butchery in there, with dripping flanks of meat hanging on hooks in the kitchen. Lovely.
He plastered a smile on his face and crossed on wooden legs to the door. Then he did see a face, a woman’s face, studying him and the car from the kitchen window. He turned up the wattage on his smile for her. She came to the door.
“Ja?” she asked, opening the door a crack.
“Frau Kroll? I’m Denton Wyle, the buyer Mr. Fleck contacted you about.”
She scrutinized him and the car, with the face of someone drinking arsenic, and then she let him in.
“Sit, please, Mr. Wyle,” she told him in heavily accented English.
He sat at a pine kitchen table, old but sturdy, with what looked like handmade looped yarn place mats in blue and white. German kitsch. The rest of the kitchen was at least fifty years old, with cabinetry that had not been all that grand to begin with. A rusting long-necked tap stuck out of a cracked basin filled with dishes. The wood floor was sticky and warped under his soles. Denton put his briefcase awkwardly between his feet, still smiling. Without asking, Frau Kroll brought him a cup of coffee. It was hot and thick as sludge.
“Well…” he said, not sure how to lead in. So! Someone in your family was a Nazi?
It was obviously not Frau Kroll herself. She was in her mid-forties, with a worn, bruised look and a pasty face. The skin around her eyes was brown in raccoonlike rings. Her hair was a thin blond-gray that hung limply on either side of her hard face. Her clothes were old and poorly made. She looked like she could chew nails, and if her chipped teeth were any evidence, she did.
“It’s beautiful country,” Denton tried. He forced down another sip of coffee, grimacing at the taste.
A man entered the room, making Denton flinch. He was large, ugly, and gangly, as weathered as the woman and around the same age. He wore filthy jeans and a field jacket.
“This is my husband,” Frau Kroll told Denton.
“Guten Tag, Herr Kroll.” Denton considered rising for a moment and shaking hands, but the man shifted his gaze out the window.
“You have some manuscript pages for sale?” Denton asked Frau Kroll, still smiling.
She went into the next room and returned with an old file folder, very old, it appeared from the faded green color and the thick, they-knew-how-to-make-stuff-back-then cardboard. She placed it on the table and motioned to Denton. “You look.”
Denton was definitely getting the sense that these people were as anxious and uncomfortable as he was. He cleared his throat and opened the folder.
Inside, without any further protection whatsoever, were pages of Kobinski’s manuscript. Denton knew them at once. The top page was written on a heavy toweling, brown all around the edges, with a bug squashed among the text. It was unexpected to suddenly be right there within finger’s reach of an original—not in plastic, not under glass, not a Xerox. He drew in a hissing breath.
He looked up. The Krolls were watching him with painful hope and greed.
He wished for tweezers. If he’d been prepared, been professional, he would have brought some. There were more pages under the first, a lot more. In lieu of the proper tools, he carefully closed the folder and, propping it on its fold, tried to open it to the second page, then the third. The first three pages were written on the same toweling—it looked like the same session to him. Beyond this was a page of a faded brown postal wrap, then a short piece on a half sheet of wax paper (ink light and hard to read on that one), then more toweling.
There were ten pages. The last two contained nothing but mathematical equations, very neatly and carefully transcribed. Those must be the pages the Yad Vashem entry had mentioned.
Denton must have lingered too long, because Frau Kroll reached for the folder. “Enough,” she said, snatching it from him. He wanted to scream at her to be careful, but she placed the folder safely in front of her on the table. He smiled weakly. His dumbfoundedness was misread.
“It’s real,” the woman insisted, fiddling nervously at the folder’s edge. “From my father. He died, eh, few months…”
“A few months ago?”
“Yes. He was only a worker.” She said it fiercely, eyes darting to her husband. “Only cleaning things in the camps. He sleep outside camp.”
“Of course.” Denton nodded sympathetically. Yeah, cleaning up things like, oh, Jews.
“And a few things from the camp he keep.” Her eyes darted back to Denton. “This,” she poked at the folder, “is from Auschwitz.”
“I know it is. I can tell it’s genuine.”