Revelation

'Some people have been trying to trace survivors for sixty years.'

'We have about sixty hours. Maximum.'

The archivist's mouth showed disapproval. 'If this were a subject for jokes, I would say that is a very bad one.'

'We have to try,' Findhorn said.

'What can possibly make the quest so urgent?'

'You don't want to know.'

The archivist looked at Findhorn curiously. Then, 'Which camp was she sent to?'

'I don't know.'

She sighed. 'If you could tie down the date on which she was transported, you might find some information in Nazi archives, say the ones held by the USA in the Berlin Documentation Centre, or by the French archive in the Wehrmachtauskunftstelle, which is also held in Berlin. The Nazis liked to document everything. In fact they were quite meticulous.'

'Is there really no central point for information?'

She smiled tolerantly, to smooth the sharpness in her voice. 'What did you expect, a survivors' coffee club? If you had a few months to spare, I might have suggested that you go to Europe. You could have tried the Rijksinstituut voor Oorlogsdocumentatiae in Amsterdam or the Centre Documentation Juive Contemporaire in Paris. There is the Weiner Library only a couple of Underground stops away from here. In the States there is the Center for Holocaust Studies in Brooklyn as well as the Simon Wiesenthal Institute in Los Angeles, and there are centres in Washington and Chicago. Or of course you could have tried to gain access to the archives of Yad Vashem in Jerusalem.'

Findhorn's experience of information retrieval was search engines on the Internet, specialist librarians with a same-day response time, huge centralized databases with point-and-click access. The impossibility of the task was beginning to sink in.

The archivist was still talking. 'You will find two things in common about all these places. One, the staff are understanding and sympathetic. Two, names are jealously guarded. The pain is private to those who survived, not something for public intrusion. And as I said, there are no formal lists of survivors, only people who chose to share their memories with these places.'

'The flying time alone —' Romella started to say.

'— is the least of your worries. The procedures for gaining access to documentation are often cumbersome and time-consuming. A letter of introduction is always helpful.' The archivist leaned back in her chair and looked at them over steepled hands. 'What information exactly do you have about this Lisa Rosen?'

Romella said, 'She was a student at Leipzig University in 1933, when she was aged about twenty. She was arrested and disappeared in 1939.'

The archivist's eyebrows were raised expectantly. She fingered her gold necklace, waiting. Then she said, 'And?'

'That's it.'

She shook her head, almost amused. 'Let's try anyway.'

They were in a room stacked with filing cabinets, tapes, discs, books, papers and a computer with printer and scanner attached. She led them to a cabinet, pulled open a drawer marked R-S and began on a card catalogue.

It produced ten Lisa Rosens.

'Understand these are ten who survived, emigrated and chose to tell their stories to us. The great majority of Lisa Rosens simply did not survive. This alone tilts the odds heavily against you. Of those who did get through, most emigrated to Israel or the States, not here. And most of those who came here have kept their stories to themselves or their families, or at most shared them with small survivor groups.' She paused, looking at them with a degree of sympathy. 'Even in the unlikely event that she survived, in all probability she will never be found. And you will certainly not trace her in three days.'

'We have to,' said Findhorn.

Romella looked through the cards. 'None of them fit. Munich, Berlin, Dryans, wherever that is. Oh, here's a Leipzig, a girl who survived Theresienstadt.'

'Twelve years old at liberation,' the Archivist pointed out.

'What about Willy Rosen, her brother?'

There were nine Wilhelm Rosens. None of them fitted.

'Okay,' Findhorn said with a tone of finality. 'Thanks for your trouble.'

She took them through a room with three busy secretaries and walls covered with blown-up photographs of pyramids of hair, of human-packed cattle trucks, of skeletal creatures in striped tunics. At the exit she said, 'You could try Leipzig itself, perhaps tracing contacts through the University admissions records. 'I've known people make surprising progress with telephone directories.'

They stepped out of the door, stunned, and found themselves in a cold London morning, sixty years in the future. They made their way to a tube entrance. Businessmen were queuing to buy newspapers. Two old men at a bus stop were having a spirited argument over some football match. The street had a trattoria, a cafe, a video shop, an amusement arcade, closed at this early hour. There was an air of unreality, even triviality, about it all. Reality lurked behind the camera-protected door they had just left, in the mementos and the papers and the whispered tales on the tapes. In spite of the sunshine, the air was sharp and cold.

Romella found a telephone booth and insisted that Findhorn stay out of earshot. She spoke earnestly for a couple of minutes while Findhorn flapped his arms for warmth. Then she put down the receiver and they started to walk briskly towards Piccadilly. 'Okay. Doug wants you to phone him. He thinks he's onto something with the green Merc. I've started Stefi on the Leipzig problem. To save time I'm going straight there.'

'You go to Leipzig. I'm heading for Japan.'

They were on a pedestrian crossing. She stopped, looking at Findhorn in astonishment. 'You're mad.'

'Matsumo and I may make an alliance. He wants this thing killed.'

'You want to bet your life on that?'

A blue Mazda hooted impatiently. They moved off the road. Findhorn said, 'If you'd sunk twenty billion dollars looking for oil in the Arctic, would you want your investment undercut with a free energy machine?'

'Killing Petrosian's secret isn't in the deal,' she said angrily.

'The deal is irrelevant. I'm beginning to think that whatever Petrosian discovered could set the planet alight.'

Romella's face was grim. 'You don't know that for sure either. What right do you have to take a decision that could affect the whole planet?'

'What right do I have to pass it on? Petrosian didn't. This is contingency planning in case we have to move fast. First we need to find the secret.'

'I'd mention the fortune it could make you except that you'd start flaunting your damned principles.'

A sudden shower of freezing rain was sending Leicester Square pedestrians scurrying in all directions. They carried on, oblivious. Findhorn said, 'It's Mission Impossible, Romella, but somehow you'll have to find Petrosian within forty-eight hours if he's still alive. By that time I should be back from Kyoto and we can take it from there.'

Romella's next comment was like a blow to Findhorn's stomach. 'If you're going to kill the secret, you'll have to kill whoever is holding it.'

'I know.'

'You can't do it, right?'

Findhorn stayed silent. 'But it's okay to hand the job over to someone else.'

The silence was painful, but Romella pursued the point ruthlessly. 'You need somebody killed, Fred? The Whisky Club people can do that. You don't need to deliver yourself to Matsumo's gangsters.' Romella waved at a taxi. 'You'll end up in the Sea of Japan.'

The taxi had completed a U-turn in the busy street and was pulling up on a double yellow line. Fred said, 'He needs me as an ally.'

She shook her head. 'And once you're of no more use to him?'

'Don't think I haven't sweated over that. But what else can I do? Look, take me to that cybercafe in Staines. It's practically on the way.'

* * *

Findhorn, attuned to subtle intonations in his brother's voice, knew immediately that Doug had something to say. 'Fred? Have I got news for you! How many green Mercs were sold in Switzerland over the past eighteen months?'