CHAPTER 10

“So Heinrich Müller is dead. Pity,” Feinberg said deliberately, sucking his teeth as though it helped him digest the information.

“Let’s not waste too many crocodile tears on him. He wasn’t what you would call a choirboy,” Caine put in sarcastically.

“That he wasn’t,” Feinberg agreed. “In a way, he achieved a certain celebrity. You see, Müller was the SS officer responsible for the massacre of tens of thousands of Jews at Babi Yar in the Ukraine. A Russian poet wrote a famous poem about it.” The corners of his eyes behind the bifocal lenses crinkled as he ventured an apologetic smile. “I’m afraid I can never remember poetry. Still it’s a pity you weren’t able to get more out of him. He’s been on my list for a long time.”

“He wasn’t exactly in a talkative mood,” Caine observed.

Feinberg smiled appreciatively and began to stuff his pipe with tobacco in a slow, deliberate manner. He carefully tamped the tobacco down, lit it, then dissatisfied with the draw, he tamped it down again, with the precision of an old man who has lived alone for a long time. He would pursue Nazi fugitives in the same careful way, Caine mused, with the strict, plodding attention to detail that was bound to trip them up in the end. Except that Caine was on a deadline, and he knew he could never work that way in any case.

Feinberg was a big man, perhaps six foot, with a large frame that had already begun to shrink with age, giving his untidy navy suit the appearance of being too big for him. His remaining wisps of hair were disheveled and combined with his wire-rimmed bifocals to give him the air of a quiet scholar, far too preoccupied with his work to pay much attention to appearances. Which was probably close to the truth, Caine realized, as he glanced around the cramped two-room apartment on Rudolf Platz, which served as the office for the Jewish Relief Center.

Both rooms of the apartment had every inch of wall space lined with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves bursting with files, creating the claustrophobic atmosphere of a Dickensian counting house—file cabinets that looked as if they had been ransacked, spilled papers onto old desks and a moth-eaten couch, and motes of dust floated like water lilies on the musty air. Scrooge would have felt right at home here, Caine mused. From the front room that served as a cramped reception area came the pecking sound of the petite brunette, Feinberg’s granddaughter, at an ancient manual typewriter. The typing was regular and insistent, like the rapping of a methodical woodpecker. Feinberg’s desk was piled high with folders, tilted precariously, like paper Towers of Pisa.

“Peru, ja, that fits,” Feinberg said, pensively tapping his pipe stem against his teeth, unconsciously falling into the rhythm of the typewriter’s deliberate tapping. “Quoth the Raven, ‘Nevermore,’” Caine thought, following Feinberg’s nearsighted gaze to the small grimy window. Through it he could see the jumble of buildings surrounding Saint Stephen’s Cathedral and beyond to the heavy afternoon traffic on Franz-Josefs-Kai, along the pea-soup-green Danube Canal.

The traffic moved slowly in the cold rain that had been falling all day. Pedestrians with black umbrellas scurried across the square, looking like moving mushrooms from the third-floor vantage of the window rattling restlessly with the wind. But the gray weather couldn’t dampen the spirits of a group of blue-uniformed gymnasium students, drinking beer and roughhousing in the small park in the middle of the square. After all, it was Fasching, the carnival season when the German-speaking world relentlessly pursues pleasure as if it were a military duty. The season when every night is party night, from posh white-tie affairs like the Opernball to all-night student parties in the Brauerei, when beer and heuriger wine is downed endlessly from liter-size glasses and adultery is not grounds for divorce. Looking out at the handsome young people larking in the baroque splendors of the city, the streets glistening in the rain, he found it hard to believe that Adolf Hitler had been born in this picture-postcard land.

“Why does Peru fit?” Caine asked.

“About three years ago, I got a letter from a Jew named Samuel Cohen. He owned a small clothing store in Iquitos in the Peruvian Amazon. He claimed to have spotted Mengele in Iquitos.”

“That’s not much to go on.”

“Cohen had been an inmate at Auschwitz and Treblinka, before immigrating to Peru after the war. Naturally I wrote back asking him for details, but he never answered. I wrote again and about six months later I received a note from his wife. She wrote that he had been killed in an auto accident while on a business trip to Lima.”

“That isn’t why you contacted the Mossad,” Caine said disgustedly. He had been hoping for a real lead, instead of a three-year-old maybe. The letter of credit he had cashed that morning and converted into Deutschmarks at the Handelsbank was burning a hole in his pocket. Some instinct had told him that Feinberg was on to something and he was anxious to get on with it. Feinberg’s pale-blue eyes were distorted like fish eyes by the bifocal lenses. Once they had saved his life, Feinberg had told him, when an SS guard in a jovial mood had plucked him out of a line of inmates scheduled for the gas chambers, slapped him on the back with a playful gesture, and told him that no one with blue eyes would be sent up the chimney that day. Now those eyes regarded Caine with a steady, serious gaze.

“Why is the CIA suddenly interested in Mengele?”

Caine shrugged elaborately, hoping he wasn’t overdoing it.

“That’s what I’m supposed to find out. Something’s up and Mengele is the key. So our mutual interests happen to dovetail at this point.”

“I don’t want him killed,” Feinberg said sharply, his old man’s voice a reedy treble. “I want him brought back to Frankfurt to stand trial. When the crime is so great, no punishment that man can devise will ever fit.”

“I thought you wanted revenge. Isn’t that what it’s all about?”

“Nein, not at all. My business is prevention, not retribution. I believe it was one of your American philosophers, Santayana, who said that those who do not remember history will be condemned to repeat it. A major war-crimes trial reminds the public that the Holocaust was not a myth, that it really happened. By reminding people of what happened, we help ensure that it will never happen again”—the old man’s eyes glinting with the zeal of the true believer. Perhaps it had been that fire, that consuming sense of a holy mission, that had kept him alive in the death camps, Caine reflected.

“What have you got?”

“You will bring him back to stand trial?”

“If I can,” Caine lied, trying Harris’s patented smile of sincerity on for size. “What have you got?” Come on, he thought. Come on.

“It will take money, a lot of money,” Feinberg said intently.

Caine took a thick wad of Deutschmarks out of his pocket and slapped it onto the crowded desk, as if he were laying down a bet. Feinberg’s eyes widened slightly and he allowed himself a nervous smile.

“What have you got?” Caine repeated.

Feinberg relit his pipe, took a few puffs, and then put it down. It was an uncomfortable moment for him. In the jargon of the intelligence trade, he was about to “drop his pants.” Come on, sweetie, Caine thought anxiously. Drop your pants and show the boys what you got. The Vaseline is on the table.

“About three months ago I got a curious call from a man who identified himself as Hans Gröbel. He said he had read about me in the newspapers and he had some information that he was sure would interest me. He was in Vienna on business and suggested that we get together for lunch. I get many such calls.” Fein-berg smiled apologetically. “Usually they’re just a nuisance, but this time, well, I guess my instincts were in good working order. Sometimes all the publicity I get has its uses,” he remarked. “At first I was going to hang up on him, but then he said something about ‘ein grosse Fisch,’ a big fish, and I knew that it would always bother me if I didn’t see him.

“Anyway,” Feinberg shrugged, “we met in a private dining room in the Griechenbeisl, near the post office. He was a short, fat man in his fifties, with dark hair and thick horn-rimmed glasses. He was dressed very neatly and he seemed very fastidious about his food. I wasn’t surprised when he told me he was ein Rechnungsführer,” searching for the word in English, “ja, an accountant. He seemed very upset because there were rumors where he worked that on account of the recession he might be one of those let go. He was very aggrieved on that point. He felt that after twenty years with the firm that they were betraying him. In his bookkeeping he had noticed something funny going on, and what with his changed attitude about his employers, he secretly began to make Xerox copies of certain things. He wouldn’t tell me what he had, but he offered to sell me the lot for fifty thousand marks in cash.” Feinberg’s eyes strayed to the money on the desk.

“I tried to explain to him that, the newspaper stories notwithstanding, I didn’t have that kind of money, and besides I had no idea what I might be buying. His papers might be worthless. I tried to bargain with him, but he was adamant about the price. It was a kind of obsession with him, the sum he had calculated he would need for his retirement. And he kept saying, ein grosser Fisch, as if that too were an obsession that he kept doggedly repeating, like a phonograph needle stuck in a groove.

“To tell you the truth, I was beginning to think he was a crank and tried to terminate the meal. Then he told me a little more about himself and I was able to check him out later. What he said turned out to be true and that’s when I contacted the Mossad for the money. Unfortunately they didn’t come through.” He hesitated delicately. “Until now,” Feinberg added, leaning forward across the desk.

“It turns out that during the war our Herr Gröbel had worked as an accountant in Amt Two of the RSHA. Do you know about the RSHA?”

Caine shook his head, and with a satisfied nod Feinberg went on.

“The Reichssicherheitshauptamt, or Reich Central Security Office, was the centralized bureau set up by the Nazis to handle internal security matters, including the camps. Their office was directly responsible for the death of over fifteen million people. The bureau consisted of six sections, or Amts, each of which had a specific function. Amts One and Two, where Gröbel worked, handled administrative and financial matters, respectively. Amt Three was the SD, the infamous security Polizei, which also acted as the controlling department of the entire RSHA. Amt Four was the Gestapo, where Eichmann worked. Amt Five handled criminal activity, and Amt Six was the Abwehr, the Reich’s foreign intelligence agency.”

“I appreciate the history lesson,” Caine said irritably, “but what difference does it make?” Take it easy, he told himself. Don’t spook him, because he’s got something, and suddenly Caine’s senses were completely alive. Something told him he was getting close. Feinberg worked on a shoestring; all you had to do was to look at the office to know that. So he wasn’t about to spend fifty thousand marks on hot air and sauerkraut. He had something.

“Don’t you see,” Feinberg said intently, his eyes sparkling with intelligence, as though with passion, “after all those years with the RSHA, they trusted him. After the war he spent twenty years with the same company, so if there was something funny, something that would indeed lead to ein grosser Fisch, he would be sure to spot it.”

“But he didn’t tell you what it was?”

“No, he didn’t. But he did call me about two weeks ago to tell me that he had been laid off and was I still interested. I told him yes and asked him to give me a little more time to get the money. We agreed that as soon as I got it, I would send him a note, care of poste restante in Stuttgart. At first I called some people, but since I couldn’t be specific, I wasn’t getting very far in raising the money. Your timing couldn’t have been better, Herr Foster. As soon as I got Amnon’s call, I sent the note and Gröbel called me. I’m meeting him, alone, tomorrow night.”

“Where?”

“He said alone, Herr Foster, and he knows them well enough to mean it. He knows what they would do to him if anyone ever found out that he had been saving those copies for years.”

“What makes you think that some funny accounting is worth over twenty thousand dollars?” Caine asked, playing dumb. He was close and he knew it.

“Because,” Feinberg paused to matter-of-factly light his pipe, “for the past twenty years, Hans Gröbel has been an accountant for the firm of Mengele and Sons, in their headquarters office in Günzburg.”

Bingo, Caine thought exultantly. Follow the money and it’ll lead you right to the son of a bitch’s doorstep.

“When do I get to see the goods?” he asked.

“We can go over them together tomorrow night. I’ll meet you here in my office at midnight,” the old man replied, sucking monotonously at his pipe, like a baby at the breast.

A light, wet snow was falling from an invisible sky, the flakes swirling like moths around the solitary light of a streetlamp. The fat wet flakes decorated the windshield with a fragile lace pattern, forcing him to flick on the windshield wipers every so often. The wet surface of the dark street glistened like black ice as it reflected the electric sign of the tavern. Perhaps if the visibility had been better, or if he hadn’t been so tired, he would have seen them sooner.

There were two of them, one on each side of the shiny street. They were both wearing the black leather trench coats that were the hallmark of the Stadtspolizei and made them almost invisible in the dark night. They approached cautiously, ready to dive into a doorway and start firing the second he hit the ignition. He still had time to start the car and make a break for it, but they were almost too close and he knew if he did, he would leave Feinberg exposed and that was what he was there for, to chaperone Feinberg and to see that the exchange went off without a hitch. So he just sat where he was, his hands on the steering wheel and did nothing, a ripple of fear shuddering down the length of his spine. This was the way it would end for him, as it had for so many others. With a silenced soft-nosed bullet in some dark side street, and no one to ever know or care. The morning papers would carry a brief paragraph about a gangland killing, assailants unknown; that was how police departments everywhere handled intelligence casualties. That was how it would happen. It came with the territory.

He let the fear come because it sent a shot of adrenaline through him which he needed desperately, not having slept in two days. After his meeting with Fein-berg he had flown to Marseille for an r.d.v. with Claude at that dingy café, two blocks off the crowded Canebière. Claude was a tiny man, almost a midget, with a large skull topped by an oversized beret, which gave him the outlandish appearance of a nineteenth-century bohemian. He affected the air and manners of an artiste, as though he were about to join Lautrec for a bout of table sketching and absinthe at the Moulin Rouge.

The café was ripe with the sour smell of garlic and Algerian red wine and Gauloise smoke, and every few seconds Claude glanced up at people he obviously knew, but who never approached their corner table. The café was frequented by serious men, smugglers making the run to Tangiers, ex-Legionnaires and hard-faced rogue cops from the SDECE, who growled softly in the French-Corsican patois of the French underworld and left them alone. They knew how to conduct business, these types, Caine thought.

Claude had already gone through half a bottle of cognac even before Caine sat down, but if it had any effect on the little man, Caine couldn’t see it. They agreed on a price of $5,000 for a new American passport and international driver’s license, but timing was a problem. Claude said he would need three days and he explained something about the watermark problem, as they walked to Claude’s studio for the photographs.

After paying him $2,500 as a down payment, Caine caught a taxi to the airport, but there was some kind of a labor dispute going on and he had raced back to the station to catch the express back to Vienna. The train didn’t arrive at the Bahnhof in Vienna till late afternoon and he’d barely made it to the car-rental agency on the Kärtner Ring, just before closing. All they could let him have was a VW bug with a sticky clutch, but time was running out and he took it. He drove over to the Rudolf Plate and watched the light in Feinberg’s office, until it went out. Then he had carefully tailed Feinberg to the r.d.v., in a Heuriger-style tavern on Walfischgasse, near the Opera Haus. Sounds of accordion music and Fasching revelry filtered out to the darkening street from the Heuriger, as the snow began to fall. A short time after Feinberg had gone in, a taxi had dropped off a short man bundled in a dark wool overcoat who answered Feinberg’s description of Gröbel. Caine watched Gröbel pay the driver and nervously glance at the street before entering the Heuriger.

However, either his fatigue or the bad visibility had let him miss the two men in trench coats and now he could no longer mother-hen the r.d.v. He would have to be the red herring, mindful of the fact that herrings usually ended up on someone’s plate. As he watched them approach, he found himself wishing that he’d been able to get the new ID from Claude, instead of being forced to face the Stadtspolizei with the tattered Foster cover.

There was a gentle tapping on the car window. One of the black raincoats was there and he was doing his tapping with the muzzle of a Walther PPK and motioning for Caine to roll down the window.

“Get out of the car,” he said, an unlit cigarette dangling from his mouth. It was a bad sign, because it meant he knew how easily a lit cigarette can be spotted at night and that meant he knew what he was doing.

“Do you speak English?” Caine said hopefully, with a wide idiotic tourist grin, spreading from ear to ear.

“Your German is excellent Herr Foster. Outside, please, Police,” the man said coldly and he wasn’t smiling. Caine got out of the car.

“What are you doing here?”

“Isn’t this the way to the American embassy?”

The second policeman had come up and they bracketed him for the frisk, which was handled with quick efficiency. The first policeman hefted the Bauer in his hand for a moment, before slipping it into his coat pocket.

“Interesting little toy. What are you doing with a gun, Herr Foster?” he said calmly, snowflakes clinging to his eyelashes, like tears.

“I’m afraid of the dark.”

“He makes jokes, Franz,” the first policeman said.

“Funny man,” Franz said with a thin-lipped smile as he snapped the handcuffs on Caine’s wrists. “We’ll have some fun tonight, funny man.”

Franz was the one to watch out for, Caine thought, watching the sensuous way he smiled and almost subconsciously caressed the Walther with his fingertips. When he squeezed the trigger, it would be with an expression of pure enjoyment. In a way Franz reminded him of Van Dagen, the Belgian ex-Legionnaire and mercenary he had met in Paris just after the collapse of Biafra. Violence was a narcotic for these men, the confrontation with death the ultimate trip. “L’heure douce,” the sweet hour, was the way Van Dagen had referred to combat. The sweet hour.

The two men marched him over to a black Mercedes parked across the street. The first policeman opened the rear door and gestured with the Walther.

“Get into the car.”

“I think I’d rather walk. It’s such a lovely eve—” Caine couldn’t finish the sentence because Franz had savagely jammed the muzzle of his gun into Caine’s solar plexus, doubling him over against the rear fender.

“Get into the car.”

“On second thought, I think I’ll get into the car,” Caine managed to gasp, and climbed in with Franz right behind him. The first policeman got into the driver’s seat and pulled out, the wheels slipping slightly on the slushy surface. Caine glanced over at Franz, who smiled back with his sniggering look, except that his eyes were as blank and empty as those on a monument. Caine was worried because it was all wrong. And then he had it. They had called him by name! They knew who he was and he had made a fatal error. He wasn’t the red herring, he was the target! They hadn’t been after Feinberg or Gröbel, they had come for him.

It was all wrong, because it meant that they had been put on him by either the Nazis, or else—and it was just as bad—Harris had lied and the Company was running him on a blind mission. Either way, the pickup meant that they weren’t really interested in interrogating him, because all he knew was that Mengele might be somewhere in Peru. What it meant was they they were going to terminate him and there wasn’t a damn thing he could do about it, because Franz was holding the Walther very steadily and he didn’t look like he was going to make any mistakes. He hadn’t realized that Mengele’s reach could extend all the way to the Vienna Stadtspolizei, unless it was Company business. Their reach could extend to Tierra del Fuego, if they wanted to.

The Mercedes slithered down the heavily trafficked streets, the snow falling through the beams of the headlights as though it would never stop, as though a new Ice Age were beginning. Franz fished into his pocket for a stick of gum and began chewing it, but the gun never moved from the vicinity of Caine’s ribs. He would know for certain what they were going to do when they reached Schotten Ring. If they turned into the Ring toward the Danube, it meant that they were taking him to the central police station for questioning and there might be a way out. If they headed out on Währingerstrasse toward Kahlenberg, then it was a one-way trip and they just wanted to do it without fuss in a quiet place. Caine didn’t think they would take him to the Vienna Woods to listen to an open-air concert in three-quarter time.

The first policeman concentrated on his driving, as he slowed to approach the intersection, occasionally flicking his eyes to the rearview mirror to check on Caine. Their motion was smooth and almost dream-like, the only sound the slapping of the windshield wipers and the low rumble of the snow tires on the wet pavement. They bumped carefully over the slick tram tracks and then there was the tick-tick of the directional signal. A pretty blonde with a bottle in her hand in a crowded BMW in the adjoining lane glanced over at him and then waved the bottle playfully at him. She drunkenly mouthed a one-word invitation: Fasching. She ran her tongue lasciviously over her lips and smiled, her eyes bright with seduction. She reminded him a little of C.J. He wondered if he would ever see her again. He tried to smile back, but it was impossible because the Mercedes was making the turn across the intersection. It was Währingerstrasse.

“Don’t worry,” Franz said, stopping chewing long enough to give Caine a comforting smile. “We just want to take you to someplace quiet and ask you some questions.”

Of course, Caine thought. They didn’t want him to panic into giving them any trouble, because he couldn’t stop the sweat from breaking out over his face and Franz had picked up on it at once. They were very good and only wanted to keep it clean. This way to the showers, they had told them at Auschwitz. A surge of anger coursed through him and he let it happen because he needed the adrenaline. He wasn’t about to die like a steer being led to the slaughter. In the darkened car his eyes glowed as green as the dashboard dials as they began to go through the suburbs.

“Questions about what?” he asked.

Franz’s thin lips parted in a smile as the gum flicked between his teeth like a snake’s tongue.

“You can tell us all about der Seestern. In fact, I’m sure you’ll want to cooperate, won’t you, funny man.”

“Shut up, Franz,” the driver said sharply.

“He knows all about it,” Franz said airily. “Don’t you, funny man?”—jamming the Walther hard into Caine’s ribs.

“You got a big mouth, Franz,” the driver said angrily.

Der Seestern, the Starfish again, Caine thought rapidly. What the hell was going on? Who or what was it? Except it looked like he would never find out because Franz wouldn’t have ever mentioned it if they had the slightest intention of letting him live. The question was rapidly becoming academic, he realized. The only thing that mattered now was sheer survival.

It would have to be in the car, he knew, his eyes flicking around the interior of the Mercedes without moving his head, measuring distances. Once he started moving, he would be irrevocably committed and there would be no time to see and no chance to correct. It had to be inside, because outside the car they could create any distance they wanted and Franz would be smiling and chewing his gum as he fired into Caine’s body, making his last futile run. That was the one thing he must never do: give up. He had seen many men collapse and die in Asia because the organism just gave out, and it was always the same. The collapse of the will to go on suffering, to live, invariably preceded any physical collapse. No, it would have to be inside the car, with the driver too preoccupied to do anything for the first four or five seconds. That left only Franz to deal with. He began to move his body slightly, to get Franz conditioned to his movements. The door on his side could be used as a fulcrum, but he needed a natural movement for the reaction to occur, like the slight lean on a curve.

Time was running out; they were already nearing the autobahn beside the woods. The tall, dark shadows of trees, gleaming and heavy with snow, began to crowd down to the road. He began the rhythmic kokyu breathing, because it had to come now and he wanted to clear his mind and to look a little sick, with sweat induced by slight hyperventilation, to fractionally decrease the distance between him and Franz. Given the way he felt, he didn’t think looking sick was going to be anything of a problem. Franz looked over at him, annoyed. He wanted it clean. Alles in ordnung, everything in order, Caine thought.

“Don’t try it,” Franz said, the gun held steady, as if a statue were holding it. Franz was good. He had noted Caine’s movements and he was ready. It wasn’t going to work. Caine sighed with defeat and slumped back a tiny bit closer to the door. Franz smiled happily as he chewed, his teeth a pale phosphorescent blue in the dark car, almost like the color of the snow at night. Caine had been right about him. He was truly going to enjoy the killing.

The Mercedes skidded slightly as the first policeman took a wide curve into the woods and began to reduce speed. Caine let the hate and anger come from the dark and ancient corners of his subconscious in a blinding surge, drowning any conscious thought. Those ancient instincts that could transform a man into a berserk animal, would make him fight without quarter for his very existence, as the centrifugal force allowed him to complete the lean against the car door. The instant his shoulder hit the side, he twisted slightly and kicked savagely with a recoil movement of both legs at Franz’s gun hand. The explosion of the gun going off echoed deafeningly within the confined space of the car, succeeded by a roar of cold air as the window beside his head shattered and exploded out to the darkness. His right foot had Franz’s forearm pinned against the opposite door, as a savage pain flooded up from his groin from a blow by Franz’s left hand and Caine kicked again with his left foot, feeling it connect with bone. The car slewed sideways as the driver tried to brake on the icy road, but Caine couldn’t worry about that as he slapped his palms together and whipped the twin hand edges at Franz’s temple with everything he had in him. Franz tried to duck the blow, howling at the driver, as the blow caught the side of his neck, stunning him for a second. That was all Caine needed. With a sudden heave he sprang for Franz’s throat, his bound hands like steel claws that bit mercilessly into the flesh, and with a surge that seemed to emanate all the way from his groin, he smashed Franz’s head through the opposite window, exploding the glass and covering them both with screaming wind and blood.

He scarcely had time to register the fact that Franz’s badly gashed skull and neck had gone slack, when he sprang for the driver, who was fumbling at his shoulder holster while he frantically tried to control the erratically skidding car with one hand. Caine brought his hands over the driver’s head and yanked back and down with all his might, using his weight and legs against the front seat, as the handcuff’s chain bit deep into the driver’s neck. He pulled the head down backward across the headrest, trying to snap the straining neck, but the man was incredibly strong and he was still holding the wheel as the car skidded wildly out of control. The driver had managed to free his Walther and twisted his arm backward to point it at Caine. But Caine’s hands were locked fruitlessly around the driver’s throat and there was nothing he could do except haul at the neck. His body tensed involuntarily as he waited for the split second of sound that would be death, the muzzle pointed into him. Then there was an explosion and sudden savage G-forces were tearing at him as the car smashed into the trees and the driver’s body tried to leap through the windshield, despite the handcuffs around his neck. Caine felt his arms being wrenched out of their sockets with the force and then there was only tangled darkness as the car began to roll over. He felt a dull blow somewhere in his body, but he didn’t know where, because it wasn’t his body anymore and then there were only flickering images and somebody screaming with a voice like his own. Then there was nothing.

Death is cold. He hadn’t known that it would be so cold. And dark and wet. He tried to move, but he couldn’t, so he simply rested and tried to see. He was looking at a strange rounded shape that formed out of the darkness, and it took him a long while before he realized that he was staring at his own shoe as it rested against the roof of the Mercedes. He was pinned under the heavy body of the driver, his handcuffed hands still locked around the man’s throat. Like an electrician testing circuits, he tried systematically to feel the damage to the different parts of his body, but he could feel only two sensations, numbness and pain. But at least nothing seemed to broken. Something had hit him near his eye. It felt sticky but he could still see.

The driver’s body was heavy on him and he tried to free himself, but the body was immovable. A feeling of lassitude and warmth stole over him and he felt himself smile. It felt good to rest and he decided not to move. But somewhere in the darkness an alarm was going off and it took his groggy mind a while to realize that some part of him was screaming at him that the warmth was an illusion, that if he didn’t move, he would die. But I can’t move, he reasoned with the voice that was him. I tried and besides I don’t feel like it. Don’t give up, the voice cautioned, and then it handed him a memory from the brain’s data bank.

It was Hudson’s voice giving them their final instructions before the drop. Hudson was a grizzled Green Beret master sergeant who taught survival training for pilots, Special Forces, and Company types heading for Vietnam. He was shouting over the roar of the engines as they prepared for a parachute jump into the Chiriquí forest of Panama, for one week on their own in the jungle. Hudson cupped his hands and shouted,

“When you can’t go on anymore, when all you want to do is just lay there and die, when you’ve given up completely, remember my voice. Remember just one thing. TAKE ONE MORE STEP! Just one. If you do, it will save your life. Because once you take one step, you’re bound to take another.”

All right, Hudson, all right, he thought irritably. Just one, you bastard. And summoning up all his strength, he managed to pull his hands from around the driver’s head. The head lolled loosely against his chest, the neck broken. With sudden disgust at the thought of lying there under a corpse, he heaved sideways and managed to partially free himself. From a dozen parts of his body came shooting signals of pain. With another heave he managed to roll the body off him, then he had to rest. He panted heavily, his eyes glazed with fatigue and pain, like a winded animal. He began to paw at the already stiffening body of the driver with his own stiff and frozen hands, searching for the Bauer. He found it still stuck in the driver’s belt and dropped it into his jacket pocket. He shook his head, trying to remember something.

The keys, he thought dully. He had to find the keys to the handcuffs. Who had put them on him? Franz, he remembered. Where was Franz? He looked around. Franz wasn’t in the smashed, overturned car. Slowly, and with frequent pauses to rest, he managed to crawl inch by inch through the shattered upside-down window and into the snow. When he finally looked up, he could see the dark blot of Franz’s body lying in a snowdrift about ten yards away, where he had been thrown clear. Caine managed to crawl over on all fours, like a wounded animal, leaving dark prints of blood crystallizing on the snow.

Franz was still breathing, Caine realized as he began searching him for the keys. He found them in the pants pocket and it took him many tries before he was able to insert the key into the lock. Finally he held the key between his teeth and managed to turn it that way, releasing the fastening. Then like a toddler trying his first steps, he painfully managed to pull himself erect with the help of a tree trunk.

He took out the Bauer and briefly debated shooting Franz. Then he decided against it. The first Stadtspolizei on the scene might take the whole thing for an accident and he would need as much of a head start as possible to get clear of Austria and pick up his new cover in Marseille. He glanced at his watch and then down again at Franz. He still had forty-five minutes to make his r.d.v. with Feinberg. As for Franz, he would probably freeze to death in a little while anyway. He put the Bauer away and began to stagger toward the road.

“Mein Gott, what happened to you?” Feinberg said, his eyes wide behind his glasses at the sight of Caine swaying drunkenly in the doorway. Caine’s suit was torn and filthy and soggy with melted snow and blood. His hair was matted and his face was red and blue with bruises, like patches of raw hamburger. One of his eyes was swollen shut, the puffed skin showing all hues of a rainbow.

“I cut myself shaving,” Caine muttered thickly.

“Let me call a doctor,” Feinberg said anxiously and helped Caine over to the old sofa.

“There isn’t time. But I could use a drink,” Caine said through swollen purplish lips. He sat gingerly on the sofa, while Feinberg bustled through a metal file cabinet, finally coming up with a bottle of schnapps that he uncorked and handed to Caine.

“Prosit,” Caine toasted and drank deeply. The warmth of the harsh liquor flooded his veins like a benediction. He took another drink and passed the bottle back to Feinberg, who tilted it in a toast.

“L’chayim, to life,” Feinberg said and took a swig. To life, Caine thought, and smiled, remembering the icy feel of death in the overturned Mercedes. Amen, he thought. Good or bad, here’s to it.

“What happened?” Feinberg asked, a genuine concern written over his sad Jewish face.

Caine shrugged. “I’m not sure, but a couple of boys from the Stadtspolizei tried to take me for a one-way ride to the Vienna Woods.”

“What happened to them?”

“Let’s say that I made a lasting impression on them,” Caine replied, and smiled grimly. Feinberg shuddered. It wasn’t a pretty smile.

“Can what happened be traced back to this office?”

Good, Caine thought. Feinberg was thinking like a professional.

“No. You’re clear. Have you got the goods?”

Feinberg nodded excitedly, his eyes gleaming with enthusiasm. He went over to the desk and brought back a sheaf of Xerox copies.

“I was just going over it when you arrived. Look for yourself. I’ve marked the significant entries with blue ink.”

Caine quickly scanned the pages, the certainty sprouting up within him like a mushroom after a rainstorm. Over a period of almost six years the firm of Mengele and Sons had made quarterly contributions averaging around seventy-five thousand marks to a medical hospital in the Peruvian Amazon, near the town of Pucallpa, called the Mendoza Institute. The drafts had been countersigned by the head of the institute, a Dr. Felix Mendoza. Audaciously, the company had taken the contributions off their corporate income taxes as a charitable deduction.

“Who is this Dr. Felix Mendoza?” Caine asked.

“I was waiting for you to ask,” Feinberg said, the excitement sparkling in his voice like the bubbles in a glass of soda pop. He went back to the desk and brought over an opened copy of the International Who’s Who. He handed it to Caine, who devoured the entry on Dr. Felix Mendoza.

The brief paragraph indicated that Dr. Felix Mendoza had been born in Lima and had studied medicine at the University of Munich. In 1973 he established the Mendoza Institute as the first medical facility for the natives of the Peruvian Amazon. The institute had been patterned after the Albert Schweitzer Hospital in Ghana and had the enthusiastic support of the Peruvian government, which had publicly hailed Mendoza as “the Schweitzer of South America.” As a result of his charitable efforts for the Indians, Mendoza had been twice nominated for the Nobel peace prize.

“Have you got an atlas?” Caine asked, and Feinberg ran to the shelves and found it almost immediately. They jostled each other in their excitement, until they found the map of Peru. With a cry of triumph Feinberg stabbed at the map with his finger.

“There it is!”

His finger pointed at the dot marked PUCALLPA. It lay several hundred miles south of Iquitos, along the Amazon tributary called the Ucayali. Iquitos itself was situated near the juncture of the Ucayali and the Amazon rivers. For a long moment the two men looked at each other, their eyes bright with discovery.

Got you, you bastard! Caine thought exultantly. All the pieces fitted perfectly. Müller’s anguished cry of “Peru.” Cohen’s sighting of Mengele in Iquitos and subsequent death in Lima. The payments of Mengele and Sons to support the jungle hospital. The almost complete safety and isolation provided by the jungle hospital, founded in 1973, the year Mengele had gone to ground in nearby Paraguay. Mendoza’s education at the University of Munich, Mengele’s alma mater. Even the brazen similarity in the names: Mengele—Mendoza. He was dead certain. The hunt was over. He had found Josef Mengele.

Caine smiled broadly and then the two men were hugging each other, Caine wincing at Feinberg’s embrace. Feinberg grabbed the bottle and raised it in a toast. Suddenly his eyes were brimming with tears as he pronounced the ancient Hebrew prayer of thanksgiving, with a bittersweet quaver in his voice: “Blessed art Thou, O Lord our God, King of the Universe, who has preserved us and sustained us and brought us through to this time,” and he drank a long swallow of schnapps.

Caine raised the bottle to his lips. “Amen,” he said, his one good eye glinting green in his swollen face, like an emerald in a statue of Buddha.

For the moment it didn’t seem to matter that he had stumbled across something called “the Starfish” and that it wasn’t very friendly. It didn’t matter that he didn’t know what the game was, or who the players were. Or even that he was hotter than August in Death Valley. All that really mattered was that he had pulled it off. He had managed to do in seven weeks what five governments were unable to accomplish in thirty years. Of course, he had to admit, they hadn’t been trying very hard. In his mind’s eye he was already composing the cable he would send to Wasserman from Marseille: “Have located the missing parcel. Stop. Initiating Phase two.”