Chapter 5

Benjamin Grossman could not remember a flight that interminable, that endless, but despite the everlasting hours and despite the fact that his mind raced the entire time, he could not come up with a solution. All my life a planner, he thought bitterly, and when I need a plan the most, I cannot find one! Getting the material would be no problem. He had often inspected the installation at what had once been the kibbutz of Ein Tsofar, and his access to all portions of that factory within a mountain was unquestioned. He had made many suggestions when the caves were being enlarged to provide for an installation undetectable from the air by planes or spy satellites.

No, getting his hands on the material was not the problem. Even the matter of how long it would be before the loss was detected was not the problem; in the United States it had taken years before the discovery was made and with care the same time could elapse in Israel before it was known. No, the problem was whether or not he should hand it over to ODESSA when and if he had it. His reasons for rejecting the organization back in Strasbourg in the first place had never changed; and to give in to blackmailers was merely to dig oneself deeper into a bottomless pit.

But the alternative to giving them the material was unthinkable. He had little doubt that ODESSA could reach into Israel and harm either Deborah or Herzl, although his knowledge of security made him realize that proper precautions could make it very difficult. But, would giving ODESSA the material with which they could destroy Tel Aviv, if they chose, be any protection for those he wished most to protect? Obviously not. Certainly not. That could not be the solution to the problem. It was an endless chase in his head, and the only answer he could see was hardly an answer at all; and that was that he desperately needed help.

He came down the steps from his plane the following day weary from his trip and from not having rested at all, and from having worn himself out in his search for an operative alternative to the step he was about to take. But there was no other way that he could see. He answered the newsmen who clustered about him asking the results of his trip, but he had no idea of what he was saying, and he excused himself with an abruptness unusual with him. He climbed into his car and as they pulled away from the airport he reached over and tapped the sergeant-driver on the shoulder.

“No, not Ramat Gan. Take me to Mossad headquarters.”

He leaned back and watched the scenery pass, realizing he had come to feel deeply attached to this country, that its possible destruction at the hands of ODESSA or anyone else was unthinkable, or if not unthinkable at least not in his own best interests. Here he had been happy, if not for the first year, certainly after that. Almost twenty-five years of happiness, and now this! He should have destroyed Schlossberg after the operation, as the two inmates who had assisted had been destroyed! But it was too late to worry about that. He closed his eyes, but behind the lids there sprang up a picture of Herzl, stretched out lifeless, and he opened them at once, as if by keeping his vision occupied with the orchards they were passing he could blot out that terrifying thought. Yes, he needed help and he needed it badly!

The car pulled up before the headquarters building; he climbed down and leaned in to the driver. “Call the Magen David Adorn,” he said. “Tell my wife I’m back and where I am. I’ll be home in an hour or so.” He turned and climbed the steps, trying to formulate the proper words, and then dropped the matter. The words would come, proper or not; what had to be said would be said.

The receptionist outside Max’s office smiled at her employer’s old friend. She spoke into the intercom and then looked up.

“You’re fortunate, General. Colonel Brodsky is free. He’ll see you now.”

Fortunate! Grossman thought with an inward grimace, and entered the room. Max got to his feet and walked around his desk, coming to him, smiling broadly.

“Ben, this is a nice surprise! I thought you were in Argentina.”

“I just got off the plane. I—”

Max frowned. “What’s the matter? You look terrible. Here, sit down—”

“No, I’d rather stand. You sit down. I’ve got a rather long story to tell you.”

Max went back and sat behind his desk, mystified, swiveling his chair to keep up with Grossman as Ben paced back and forth, trying in his mind for the right words. At last he took a deep breath and began, not looking at Brodsky, but keeping his eyes on the floor.

“Max, when I was in Argentina, the night before I left—the night before last—I was approached by two men. It took me a little while, but I finally recognized them. They made no attempt to hide their identity, I might mention. One of them was Franz Schlossberg—he was a doctor at both Maidanek and Buchenwald, and in Ward Forty-six. The other was Mittendorf, the commandant at Maidanek, They said they were from ODESSA. I had thought ODESSA had been disbanded years ago, but apparently not.”

“We’ve always known they still existed.” Max was listening very closely now.

“In any event, they knew a lot about me and my family. They even knew where Deborah worked. They—they threatened me—”

Brodsky frowned. “Threatened you? In what way?”

“They want me to do something for them. They give me two weeks in which to do it. If not—”

“If not?”

Benjamin Grossman paused in his pacing. He raised his head and looked Max in the eye. His face was pale.

“Then Deborah would be killed. And Herzl.”

Max Brodsky’s face might have been carved from granite. “What is it they want you to do?”

“I can’t tell you that. But I’ll tell you this—” He leaned across the desk. “I want full protection for both Deborah and Herzl. Total!”

“You’ll get it,” Max said. “About what they wanted—”

“I want that protection now!”

“Ben, relax! You say you have two weeks. Let’s think a minute. What is it they want you to do?”

“Max, there’s no use in asking that question because I’m not going to answer. You’re wasting time! You spent enough time in the camps to know these men and how they operate! I want full protection for my family now! Not tomorrow, not a week from now, but now!”

“Ben,” Max said patiently. “I said, relax. You’ll get total protection for your family. You still have time. Herzl is in Europe someplace, still, isn’t he? Well, get him back if you want me to protect him fully. Or let me know where he is and I’ll have a reliable man there as soon as he can get there, and I’ll also contact the local authorities wherever he is. And I’ll have people at the first-aid station in fifteen minutes.” He frowned at his bare desk a moment and then looked up. “Is security involved in whatever it was they asked you to do?”

“No comment. You’re still wasting time!”

Brodsky’s look changed, becoming very official and very tough.

“You listen to me! If security is involved I mean to know! Your family will be protected, but when a general in the army is threatened, is asked to do something he won’t discuss, then we here at Mossad are concerned. Do you have any idea what names those two in Buenos Aires were using?”

“Max, for God’s sake-!”

“Just answer.”

Grossman sighed helplessly.

“Schlossberg called Mittendorf Klaus, but that was his name, and I have no idea what names they’ve taken. Or where they live. Schlossberg said he had a ranch, if that helps. He also said they had traveled far to get to Argentina to meet me, but that could be true or not. It’s obvious ODESSA has men in the Argentinian Government, or at least informers or sympathizers. It’s customary for a visiting dignitary, or negotiator—which I was—to be wined and dined, especially on the last night. My staff was, I later learned, and at a different restaurant. But I was practically sent to this restaurant, the way one forces a card in a trick, so they could talk to me. It was well organized.”

He sat down, facing Brodsky, looking at the other man angrily.

“You keep asking questions about those two, as if picking them up would help! Do you think ODESSA would stop, that their threats to Deborah or Herzl would be ended if you picked up Schlossberg and Mittendorf, even if you could? Someone else would take over. While you’re sitting there asking a lot of fool questions—”

“Nothing will happen to Deborah or Herzl,” Max said calmly. “And if we pick up those two, there will be two less of ODESSA for any future threats to Israeli generals. What did they want you to do?”

Grossman was already sorry he had come. “Max—!”

“At least tell me if you plan on doing it.”

“No! Not if you—”

The telephone rang. Max motioned Grossman to remain where he was while he answered. His face whitened as he listened to a hysterical receptionist. He turned his chair to stare wordlessly from the window as the details were given to him, and when he hung up he remained looking from the window blindly for several moments before he swung back. It was difficult to face his old friend, Benjamin Grossman.

“Ben—”

“What?”

If it were to be said it had to be said quickly.

“Deborah,” Max said quietly. His hand, clutching the edge of the desk, was white from the pressure. “She’s dead—”

“Dead?” It was said as if the word held no meaning to him.

“An explosive in a package delivered to the first-aid station, supposedly of some drugs they were expecting—”

“Dead—?” Grossman stared, unbelieving.

“There would have been no way to prevent it,” Max said, fighting to keep his voice even, to believe what he was saying, trying his best not to picture his ever-loved Deborah lying shattered and beyond help in the Magen David Adorn station. “Even if we had sent men there the minute you came in. But I’ll call Zion Films and find out where Herzl is, and get someone there to protect him—”

“There is no danger to Herzl. Not now,” Grossman said, his face blank, not even looking at Brodsky accusingly for the time that had been wasted. “Now you have those two weeks you kept talking about. Deborah was killed to let me know they mean business. Herzl is the threat.”

The closed-casket funeral was a small one, restricted to the immediate family, to Max, Morris Wolf, and several close friends of the dead woman. Herzl’s plane had arrived in time for the funeral and he stood at graveside, dazed by the sudden and inexplicable death of his mother, and listened to the murmured ceremony without actually accepting that it was happening. He dropped his handful of soil on the casket with the others and walked away, trying to comprehend the tragedy. Someone had purposely killed his mother; it had been no accident. The receptionist had come back from a coffee break to find the package on her desk; they had been expecting a small package with drugs that day and she had automatically supposed that had been it. She had had no way of knowing; God, no! If she had she would have cut off her arm before—

Herzl stared at the men bending down, shoveling earth on top of his beloved mother. Could her death in any way have been connected to his investigation in Munich and London and Angeründe? Who would want to kill his mother? Could someone he had seen, someone he had talked to—? But that was impossible. Still, nothing new had happened in the family except his trip to dig into the pasts of Nazi war criminals.…

He found himself standing outside the cemetery fence, shaking hands with Morris Wolf, seeing the sadness on the crippled face, and watching him walk slowly away with the others, leaving him with his father and Max Brodsky. Through the fence he could see the men complete their task of filling in the grave, see the earth left over as if it represented above the ground someone he loved very much beneath the ground. He discovered that his father was speaking to him, and turned.

“Let’s go home, son.” Benjamin Grossman was shaking his head as if with ague, as if still trying to comprehend the suddenness and totality of his loss. “We have to start to plan how we live from now on.”

“Later,” Herzl suddenly said, and turned to Brodsky. “Max, I want to talk to you—”

“Yes?”

“No, I mean I want to go with you and talk.”

“Today?” Brodsky asked, surprised.

“It’s important.” How could he go home and look into the face of a father he knew to be one of the leading Nazi war criminals? His revulsion would be apparent in everything he did, everything he said. He could not possibly go home and share sorrow with the man he knew to be his father. He needed to talk to someone first, and the logical person was Max Brodsky. At least, Herzl thought, drawing the small amount of comfort he could derive from the thought, at least Mama never knew of her beloved Benjamin’s history.…

“If it’s really that important,” Brodsky said, conceding, and turned to Grossman. “Ben, go home and get some rest. I’ll bring Herzl over as soon as we’re through talking. We’ll sit and discuss things.”

“Discuss things,” Grossman said, repeating the words as if by rote, and wiped tears from his eyes. He seemed to have aged years in the one day since his wife’s death. “Discuss things …” he said again, and walked slowly to his car.

Herzl climbed into Max’s car and sat beside him as Max swung the wheel as if to go to his apartment.

“No,” Herzl said. “Zion Films, on Dizengoff. I have something to show you.” Brodsky obediently turned the wheel again. He knew that whatever Herzl had on his mind had to be important to take the boy from his father on a day such as this. Herzl looked across the car. “Max, who sent that bomb? Do you know? Arabs?”

“Not Arabs,” Brodsky said quietly, his knuckles white on the steering wheel. “They may have handled the delivery, but we’ll probably never prove it. The bomb was sent by an organization called ODESSA.”

Herzl felt his stomach contract in sudden panic. Somehow, then, in some inexplicable fashion, his investigation had been responsible. But in what way? He felt the blood drain from his face.

“They threatened your father in Argentina,” Brodsky went on, not noting the look of horror on Herzl’s face change slowly to puzzlement. “Two men, a Dr. Schlossberg and a Klaus Mittendorf. Schlossberg was at both Maidanek and Buchenwald; Mittendorf was the commandant at Maidanek. Both are still wanted for their war crimes. They live somewhere in South America, and they’re active in ODESSA, if you know what that is.”

“I know.” Herzl was now totally confused. “Why did they threaten him?”

“He won’t say, and I didn’t have time to get it out of him.”

“It doesn’t really matter,” Herzl said. “Whatever it was he must have refused them and they killed my mother. Is that it?”

“He had no time to refuse them or give in to them,” Max said bitterly. “They threatened both your mother and you, the two things your father loves above everything else. They killed your mother to demonstrate their power, to prove they’re serious.” He glanced over at Herzl. “But you’ll be totally protected …”

Herzl didn’t even hear this last statement. His mind was racing, trying to understand this information, to fit it into what he had discovered in Europe.

“Why did they pick Benjamin Grossman to get whatever it was they wanted? Why Benjamin Grossman out of all the Israelis?”

Brodsky shrugged. “I assume they picked someone they thought had enough authority to put his hands on what they wanted; and also someone they thought could be pressured through threats to his family.”

“That’s the only reason?”

“That’s the only one I can figure out.”

“I may be able to give you a better one,” Herzl said quietly, and felt his hatred for Helmut von Schraeder grow. Because of that Nazi criminal, an innocent, lovely woman—his mother—had been buried that day, and it made little difference if that criminal’s loss was as great as his own, or not. Brodsky was looking at him curiously.

“What do you mean?”

“I’ll show you when we get to Zion Films,” Herzl said, and went on to get some information that had puzzled him during his investigation. “Max, you were transferred from Buchenwald to Bergen-Belsen, weren’t you?”

“That’s right,” Brodsky said, wondering what Herzl had in mind.

“That’s odd …”

“What’s odd?”

“To be transferred from Buchenwald to Bergen-Belsen …”

“What’s odd about it? Horrible, maybe, but not odd. Actually,” Brodsky said, his intelligence-service mind insistent upon exactitude at all times, “we were supposed to be transferred to Natzweiler, where they also did medical experiments under a Dr. Hirt, but Natzweiler was on the verge of being liberated by the Allies, and the train was rerouted to Bergen-Belsen instead.” He smiled grimly. “Do I remember that night! We were jammed into these cars like cattle, worse than cattle. That’s where I met your father …”

Herzl nodded. It all made sense, now. He had been unable to correlate von Schraeder’s actions before, with his being transferred—obviously at his own arrangement—to a horror camp such as Bergen-Belsen; but if the man’s plan was to be sent to a camp soon to be liberated, then it made sense. Brodsky turned into Dizengoff, drove down it three blocks, and drew the car up before the building that housed Zion Films. He turned to Herzl as he set the hand brake.

“Exactly what is it you want to show me?”

“Something you’ll find hard to believe,” Herzl said expressionlessly, “even as I found it hard to believe.” Even, he thought, as I find it almost impossible to believe that Mama is dead. She never got a chance to meet Miriam Kleiman—he forced the thought away, wiped his eyes to take away the sting, and climbed down.

The films were in the projection room, untouched as he had requested in his call from Angermünde, the case locked. He sat Brodsky down, closed the door to make sure they remained undisturbed, and opened the sealed can, beginning to thread the projector.

“This first bit of film was taken in Vienna in 1938,” he said, and completed the threading task. “It was during Anschluss. Watch.” He switched off the light and pressed the projector switch; the film began to roll. At the proper time he stopped the machine. Helmut von Schraeder’s handsome smiling face filled the small screen. Brodsky frowned.

“Who is that?”

“Don’t you recognize your favorite nephew? Don’t you know me when you see me?” Herzl asked sardonically, waited a moment while an amazed Brodsky stared at the almost identical resemblance. Herzl started the forward action of the film again. “In Vienna in March of 1938, ten years before I was born—I was known as Lieutenant Helmut von Schraeder.” The film changed. “This next one,” he went on, “was filmed in Poland soon after the invasion in 1939. I was Captain von Schraeder by this time, standing there with those officers. Now they are leaving me with the maps. See how I roll them up, as if there was something wrong with my arm. See me wink, first with the right eye and then with the left, as if I were entertaining a small child—my son, possibly—who loved to see me do it …”

He tried his best to keep his voice impartial, the voice of a good commentator, nothing more, but the bitterness of his discoveries during his investigation, added to his wretchedness at his mother’s death and funeral, could clearly be heard. Brodsky was sitting, staring at the screen, his face rigid.

“This film was shot at Maidanek, where I was assistant to the commandant, whose name was Klaus Mittendorf. Our chief medical officer was a Dr. Franz Schlossberg. I was a colonel by now. Schlossberg and Mittendorf, two men you mentioned before, who approached Benjamin Grossman in Argentina and tried to blackmail him for what you suspect may be Israeli security secrets. In any event, I was known as the Monster of Maidanek. My job was to see to it the gas chambers and the crematoria ovens functioned at top efficiency. I did a very good job; here you see me being decorated by none other than Eichmann himself for my excellent performance.”

The film ran out. Herzl switched on the lights, threaded the film for respooling, and pressed the proper button. There was a whir as the film began running back.

“From Maidanek,” Herzl said, his eyes fixed on the running film, not looking at Brodsky at all, “I was transferred to Buchenwald. Here I contracted typhus—strange in a camp where the officers’ quarters were kept spotlessly clean, usually by Jehovah’s Witnesses prisoners—and I died of it. If I wasn’t the only officer to die of typhus at Buchenwald, I was certainly one of the very few. And do you know the strangest part of the entire affair?” Now he turned and looked Brodsky in the eye. “Who do you think attested to my death? Who was the only man brave enough to take up a body dead of the dread disease typhus, wrap me in my shroud, jam my uniform and all my identification into the burial bag with me, and see to it that I was burned to an unidentifiable crisp in the camp crematorium without a single other soul seeing me? And then swear freely that he had done so? By the sheerest of coincidences, the only man who ever saw Helmut von Schraeder dead was a man named Benjamin Grossman—”

“No!”

“Yes,” Herzl said quietly. “I have a copy of the testimony taken at the war-crimes trials.”

Brodsky stared at him speechlessly. The film completed its rewinding and flapped helplessly. Herzl turned the machine off and stood looking down at Brodsky. His face was tortured.

“I don’t like saying this, but there is more, much more. Benjamin Grossman had experimental surgery on his face as a helpless victim in Ward Forty-six at the same time that von Schraeder was dying there—except it wasn’t experimental surgery and he wasn’t a victim. It was plastic surgery, performed by Dr. Franz Schlossberg, one of the leading plastic surgeons in Germany before the war. I should not be greatly surprised if, before his surgery, Benjamin Grossman didn’t look a great deal like his son does now. Add to this the fact that both Benjamin Grossman and Helmut von Schraeder were both raised in Hamburg and could answer questions about it, both were mechanical engineering graduates, both had reputations as fierce soldiers who loved battle. And then add this—do you remember once when we three were out to play tennis and I asked my father why he didn’t serve overhand like others, and he said he had fallen out of a tree when he was a small boy and had broken his shoulder and it had been badly set? You saw the films; now I’ll tell you something. When Helmut von Schraeder was a young man, he also fell from a tree and broke his shoulder, and it was badly set. And I have an affidavit from his old nurse to that effect. And thereafter he could not salute properly, or roll maps properly—or serve a tennis ball properly …”

Brodsky was looking stunned. “It’s insane—”

“It’s true.”

“It’s impossible—”

“But it’s true,” Herzl said, and then he broke, his voice trembling. “Max—Uncle Max—what should I do?”

Brodsky rubbed a heavy, callused hand across his deep-lined face. “Ben Grossman … God! It’s impossible. Unbelievable …” He looked up. “Has anyone else seen these films?”

“They are file films; these are just copies. I saw them first in a library in Munich. I imagine many copies exist and they’re available to anyone who wants to see them.” He suddenly understood. “Nobody here at Zion has seen them yet, if that’s what you mean.”

“But nobody anywhere else ever drew the conclusions from them you did.”

“Nobody knew Benjamin Grossman as well as I did,” Herzl said bitterly.

“There were no fingerprints?”

“I was told there were not. ODESSA destroyed them all.” Herzl sat down next to Brodsky. “Max, what do I do?”

“Let me think …”

Brodsky forced aside the shock of the revelation and attempted to put his mind to work on a logical consideration of the situation. His brain, trained in the intelligence service, tried to view the matter as it would any other security problem. Proof? There really was no proof that would satisfy a court, certainly not against Brigadier General Benjamin Grossman, Hero of Israel.

Brodsky closed weary eyes. He could see the scene as if it were before him.

Your honors, my client’s son looks like a Nazi war criminal; we admit the resemblance and point out he also looks something like a well-known American film star. Will the prosecution next claim that Benjamin Grossman is also the father of that film star? The prosecution claims that both my client and von Schraeder were mechanical engineers. Your honors, you and I—and the prosecutors as well—are all attorneys. Exactly what does that mean? That I am you or you are the prosecutor? They made much of the fact that my client was the unfortunate one who had the piteous task of placing the body of von Schraeder into his shroud. My client never denied this. He could have. He could have easily disassociated himself from that death, but he did not. We ask for fingerprints, which we are quite willing, even anxious, to compare, but the prosecution says that ODESSA destroyed all fingerprints of von Schraeder and others. We know that ODESSA destroyed many records and fingerprints of many war criminals, but Benjamin Grossman, by the prosecution’s own story, was a prisoner in a concentration camp in early 1944, over a year before the war ended, and before there was any great need for ODESSA to take the action we know they took at a later date. And then there is the matter of the broken shoulder. We admit our client had a broken shoulder as a child, in fact we were the ones who introduced x rays to demonstrate the fact—but to begin with, he did not receive it falling from a tree as the affidavit—which may or may not have been elicited from an old, senile woman by any number of means-claims happened to von Schraeder. Two people claim Benjamin Grossman said he fell from a tree as a child. Who are these witnesses? A man who has admitted on the stand that he was in love with the general’s wife, and a young man whose hysterical testimony you heard, a young man who blames the general for the death of his wife when in fact, as you all know, the general was a victim of a vicious threat by the same group the prosecution claims destroyed the fingerprints of von Schraeder. An odd group, you must admit. Friendly one moment and threatening the next—and more than threatening—killing. And let us talk about that group, your honors. Tell me, your honors, if Benjamin Grossman were Helmut von Schraeder, would he immediately have gone to the authorities and told of that meeting in Argentina? Would he have spent a year in a horror camp such as Bergen-Belsen where even the prosecution admits he came close to death from starvation, depredation, and even typhus? Your honors, because of a few outlandish coincidences, one of our most honored people, one of our bravest and most decorated soldiers, is being pilloried in this courtroom and we are forced to question the motives of those who bring these monstrous charges against him. Who are they serving, these false accusers? What enemy of our beloved Israel is paying to see Benjamin Grossman brought down and thus see the Israeli Defense Forces weakened …?

That would be the scene in the courtroom, but in his soul Max Brodsky knew the charges were, indeed, true. He hated the knowledge, for Benjamin Grossman had been like a brother to him; but the charges were true. Ben Grossman and Helmut von Schraeder were the same person. A hundred little things would come to him in time, he knew, that should have led him to at least suspect the truth long before, things he never noticed in depth because who looked for such guilt in a Jewish prisoner in a concentration camp? Who questioned the small things, the oddities, the uncharacteristic responses from one who was supposedly a Jew, when they came from a person who, despite everything, did help him and many others to reach Israel? The thought came to Brodsky, as it had to Herzl, that he was thankful, at least, that Deborah had never known the truth about her husband. But would anyone ever know the truth? Without more proof than they had, how would they know it?

He pondered the question. Suppose that nobody ever did know the truth? Because among the many truths that were to be known was the additional truth that Benjamin Grossman had truly done great deeds for Israel. Did he therefore deserve redemption? Could a man who had committed the crimes Helmut von Schraeder was known to have committed ever earn forgiveness? Could he ever redeem himself no matter what acts of contrition or contribution he performed? Suppose that nobody ever learned the truth.…

But a Dr. Schlossberg and a Klaus Mittendorf somewhere in South America both knew the truth, as well as all of ODESSA, and as long as they knew it, others would have to be given it, for otherwise there could be a threat to Israel’s security. A true Benjamin Grossman might put the interests of Israel ahead of even the safety of his loved son, depending upon the degree of security they could give the boy; but a Helmut von Schraeder would have no such compunction …

“Max—”

Brodsky looked up.

“Max, am I wrong? Did I make the whole thing up in my head? Am I crazy?”

Brodsky took a deep breath. “No, you’re not wrong. You’re not crazy.”

“What should I do?”

Brodsky sighed and sat more erect. His mind was finally working.

“First, I’ll take the film with me. And the affidavit and the copy of the war-crimes-trials testimony, and everything else you have, notes, everything. And then I’ll take you home to your father, and you will act as if there was nothing between you two except what there has always been between you, love and respect—”

“I can’t!”

“You can and you will!” The sternness left Brodsky’s voice. “Herzl, it’s essential.”

“But, why?”

“Because I want to know what he does, what he says, where he goes, and when …”

“And then what will you do?”

Max Brodsky shrugged and came to his feet. “That I don’t know,” he said heavily. “Yet.”