"Your mother had already been down in the light well."
Stein shook his head. "Maman never went in there. Refused."
Something clicked in her brain-the closeness of Javel's shop, the light well where his fiancee had been found, and now where Lili Stein's blood traces were fifty years later. Everything was pointing to Javel.
She braced herself to explore an ugly avenue. "Monsieur Stein…"
"Abraham." He smiled for the first time.
"D'accord. Call me Aimee." This made it harder. Too bad, she liked this man, felt his pain almost as her own. "Please don't be offended. I'm sorry to ask this. Many women who fraternized with the Nazis got branded with swastikas on their foreheads after Liberation. Would there be a connection?"
Abraham sighed. "I've heard that, too. But Maman was definitely not a collaborator. On the contrary, she pointed them out, as she self-righteously told me one time."
His eyes squinted in pain and he buried his face in his hands. Aimee reached over to him and stroked his arm. She waited until he stopped shaking and gave him a napkin.
Giggling students scurried across the cobbled street, past the almost empty sidewalk cafe. She reached in her backpack and pulled out the first thing her hand touched. It was the wrinkled copy of The Hebrew Times she'd wrapped Lili Stein's coat in.
She gasped. Cochon l'assassin-Swine assassin-in bold angular handwriting was scrawled across a small photo and accompanying article. She smoothed the newspaper. Politicians and ministers were outlined by fat red lines in that writing. Aimee couldn't make out the faces but she could read the names.
She thrust the paper at him. "Your mother wrote that, didn't she?"
"Ah yes, Maman ranted about this one night. A Nazi liar strutting in black boots, she knew all about him. She carried on so but when I asked her particulars, she shut up. Wouldn't discuss it. Maman wasn't the easiest person to deal with." Abraham grimaced. "But family is family, you know how that is."
Aimee nodded as if she did, but she didn't.
He continued. "Last week, Sinta noticed Maman went out a lot." Abraham paused to drink some mineral water. "Sinta remembers her saying that she wasn't going to be put off by ghosts anymore." He stopped, hesitating.
"Go ahead, Abraham." She wondered what he was afraid to tell her.
"I doubted you before, Aimee." He looked down. "Blame it on my old-fashioned thinking about women. But now, wrong or right, I worry for you."
She was touched by his concern and didn't know what to say.
Abraham spoke in a measured tone. "The last words I can remember Maman saying were 'I'll come to Ital's later,' as if she was expecting something."
Aimee felt conflicted, wanting to tell Abraham that his mother had been expecting her. But if she did, that could put Abraham in danger and put her no closer to Lili's murderer.
Abraham continued. "Then Maman said, 'You will take the boards down from my window tonight.'"
She sat up. "What did she mean by that, Abraham?"
"I don't know," he said.
"Obviously it struck you as unusual," she said. "What do you think she meant?"
"With Maman you never knew…but maybe she felt guilty."
"Guilty? For what?"
"That's just a feeling I got," he said. "No concrete basis."
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?
AIMÉE 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, Obersturmführer. 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.