“Yes, genuine,” she said, latching on to the word. A trickle of sweat ran down the side of her face. “You make offer?”
Herr Kroll turned from the window and leaned back against the cracked sink, arms folded over his chest.
“Hmmm…” Denton put his finger to his chin in a pleasant “well, let’s see” gesture, but inside he was kicking himself around. The Krolls obviously were on their own, didn’t even want to pay a commission to an agent. They probably had no idea what the manuscript was worth, and he was getting the distinct impression they were desperate for money. On the other hand, he didn’t want to risk offending them. Whatever he started with, they were likely to bid him up.
“Four thousand dollars, U.S.?” he offered, with a lilt to his voice and raised eyebrows to show that he wasn’t completely firm on that.
Frau Kroll glanced at her husband, her face neutral. They spoke for some time in German, their voices low and tense.
“You have hotel phone number?” she asked. “We call, yes? Another man comes also today.”
No.
“We talk to him first; then we call.”
Oh god, no.
“Well, that’s not a final offer,” Denton stammered. “If you—”
Herr Kroll turned at the sink to look out the window, hearing it the same instant Denton did. Tires. In the driveway.
Oh dear Lord and his host of angels.
Denton got up and peeked out the curtain of the kitchen door. His entire bloodstream turned to antifreeze. Moving up the driveway was a small car, a rental like his. There was a man in the driver’s seat wearing a hat, but Denton couldn’t see the face. He knew perfectly well who it was, though. He knew perfectly well!
For a moment Denton was frozen, like a rabbit in headlights. Then he turned to his hosts with frantic energy.
“You can’t—! I know this guy! He’s a rabbi, for god’s sake! A complete asshole! He’s a rabbi!”
The Krolls looked at him in alarm. They conferred in German. They looked upset, but more at his outburst than at the new arrival. Denton realized they didn’t know what he was talking about.
“A rabbi! A Jewish priest!”
That the woman comprehended. Her face grew dark and she went over to her husband to look out the window. She gave him the news, which he answered with a louder voice, hand gestures. They began arguing. A car door slammed outside.
Oh dear Jesus Christ.
In his mind Denton saw a bunny cowering in a corner, the wild-eyed, knife-waving chef-Schwartz approaching. He moved as far as he could from the kitchen door.
The Krolls were arguing, but Denton got the feeling the topic was the laxity (H. Kroll) or thoroughness (F. Kroll) of her background checks on her buyers. They didn’t seem very focused on the fact that a rabbi was approaching their door. Weren’t they going to do something? Chase him away? Grab a gun? Footsteps on the gravel outside.
“I’m telling you,” Denton all but screamed, “the guy’s a Nazi hunter!”
They both stared at him in shock. There was a knock on the door.
7.3. Aharon Handalman
Having Shimon Norowitz’s private phone number was some big deal, as it turned out. There was still an answering machine, and Norowitz still didn’t call back. Aharon had almost given up when finally, on a hot summer morning, the phone rang and Mr. Big Shot himself was on the line.
“So what have you made of it?” Aharon asked, skipping the preliminaries. “Did your code people come up with statistics?”
“We haven’t had time. It’s in the queue.”
In the queue! Aharon found words in his mouth it could do no good to utter. He scowled at thin air, stumped for a more moderate reply.
“Say, have you got any more of those notebook pages?” Norowitz asked casually. “The ones written by Kobinski in Auschwitz?”
“Why do you ask?”
“Why? Because I want to know.”
“I don’t have any more.”
“So now I know. Do you know of anyone who does?”
Aharon thought this over, his hand tightening on the receiver. “Was there something in the pages? In the math maybe?”
“Not especially.”
“But you had someone look at the doodling? Some mathematician?”
There was a pause. “Rabbi Handalman, if I had something to tell you, I’d tell you.”
“If you had someone look at it, the least you could do is say so. Out of respect only. Because, remember, I didn’t have to bring this to you.”
There was a pause. Aharon heard the shuffling of papers. “All right. If you give me a straight answer, I’ll give you a straight answer.”
“When have I not been straight?”
“Rabbi! Do you know of anyone who has any more material written by Kobinski?”
“No.”
“Very well.”
“Is that straight enough for you?”
“ ‘No’ is good. Thank you.”
“You’re very welcome. Now you: Did you have some scientist look at those pages?”
“Yes. Several.”
“And they said what?”
Norowitz hesitated. “They said they didn’t know what to make of it. That’s straight.”
Aharon picked at his beard. Straight as a crooked pin, maybe. “Didn’t know what to make of it good or didn’t know what to make of it bad?”
Norowitz sighed in exasperation. “Look, I have a very important call coming in. We’ll talk in a few weeks.”
“Bu—”
Norowitz hung up. Aharon sucked his teeth with his tongue. Kobinski’s manuscript. He had dismissed the pages because he hadn’t liked them. Maybe, so just maybe, he had dismissed them too soon.
After his last class of the day Aharon took a bus over to Yad Vashem. He felt different about it this time. He didn’t realize how different until one of the handles of the curved red doors was in his hand; then he remembered the abhorrence and anger he’d felt that first day. Today he had walked all the way up the drive from the bus stop and had not thought twice. He looked down at the handle in pained surprise, but it was a momentary remembrance. A second later, he was inside and heading for the Hall of Names with other things on his mind.
Anatoli Nikiel. He was Kobinski’s most devoted follower, according to Biederer, and his name appeared on Hannah’s list of barrack mates still alive. Aharon found the binder and stood in the stacks to read the two-page entry. Anatoli was a Russian Jew, prisoner of Auschwitz, number 173056. His hometown had been Rovno in eastern Russia. He’d been nineteen when sent to Auschwitz in 1943 and was still alive for the liberation in 1944. There was a snippet of camp records, his arrival on such-and-such transport. His name was on a list of those treated by the Americans after the war. There was no current address, nothing about relatives or friends.
Aharon went to the computers where the survivors’ testimonies were kept, even though nothing in Anatoli’s binder mentioned such a testimony. He searched on Anatoli’s name and found makkes, zip. Aharon did the numbers in his head. The man would be in his early eighties now, if still alive. If alive. He was probably dead.
Aharon sat at the computer until the hostile throat clearings of a young woman broke his reverie. He scowled at her. Her shirt covered her navel, thank god, at least she had that much respect for this place, but fit entirely too tightly at the bosom. In his contemplation of this immodesty his eyes lingered too long on the area, earning him another dirty look as the girl took his seat.
He wiped his hands on his vest. No Anatoli. What did he expect? Yad Vashem, as good as it was, wasn’t going to hand him everything on a silver platter.
Now to the other thing he’d come for. He’d been chewing it over since that last phone call with Norowitz. Hannah was listed on the register of people who’d copied Kobinski’s manuscript pages. Just thinking about it made his heartburn flare up. He didn’t want a man like Norowitz to even know his wife’s name, much less to have her on some… Well, any list of the Mossad’s was not a fit place for his wife.