The German Suitcase (15 page)

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

“Sounds like he’s out of the country,” Stacey said after Tannen finished the call with Gunther.

“Paris. His wife’s running down acquisitions. Our European operation’s awash in red ink. The boss decided to tag along and shake things up. Not a happy camper.”

“His wife’s with the Guggenheim, isn’t she?”

“Uh-huh, working on a Kandinsky show.”

“I was waiting for you to get into this with him,” Adam said, referring to the questions he had just raised.

“No way. Bad timing. Besides, it’s still too iffy. So, where’re we at here?” Tannen prompted, rhetorically. “Two tattoos. Same number. Different handwriting. Ergo, different people—one of whom is Dr. Epstein. And, now, numbers on a luggage tag—possibly in his handwriting that seems to match his tattoo; which gets us back to Adam’s idea that he tattooed himself because…”

“…he wasn’t Dr. Jacob Epstein, but wanted to be,” Adam said, finishing it.

“Yeah, I mean, what? He’s a Holocaust wannabe?” Stacey prompted, picking-up where she had left off when Gunther called. “Why would he make believe he was in a concentration camp when he wasn’t?”

“Survivor guilt?” Tannen ventured. “A lot of Holocaust survivors spent their lives feeling guilty about it; and/or about what they did to stay alive.”

Adam nodded. “Like things they weren’t proud of.”

“Whatever,” Tannen said, dismissing it; then his tone sharpening, he added, “The point is that Dr. E wanted to be a member of the club.”

“That’s one explanation,” Adam conceded, implying he had another. “Let’s not forget he’s Doctor Epstein. And we all know about Nazi doctors.”

“You mean Mengele and his ilk?” Tannen prompted.

“Mengele?” Stacey echoed with disdain. “I can’t believe that’s where you’re at. It’s ridiculous.”

“Really?” Adam said, smugly, stepping to Tannen’s computer. “May I?”

“Sure,” Tannen grunted.

“If you think it’s so ridiculous…” Adam said, accessing a story on the
Times
website that included a photo of a man with an aquiline profile, dimpled chin and arched eyebrows, “…check out this piece the paper did back in January on a Nazi doc named Heim. Ran some pretty ugly experiments on concentration camp victims. Never got caught. Matter of fact he practiced in Germany for a while after the war; but somebody blew the whistle on him and he fled to Cairo; lived there for thirty-what years before kicking the bucket in the early nineties. We know this because someone cleaning out a storage room in his building came across his briefcase. Sound familiar?”

Stacey’s eyes flared with anger. “That’s where all this is coming from, isn’t it?! It’s pure speculation, Clive. You don’t know for a fact that Dr. Epstein’s a Nazi. You have no reason to even suspect it, do you?!”

Adam was caught off guard and took a moment to collect himself. “No, no I don’t,” he replied, evenly. “I’ve just got this gnawing feeling in my gut that—”

“Then why even say it?!” Stacey challenged. “Are you that terrified of getting laid off? I can’t believe you’d cook up something like this to save your ass.”

Adam bristled with indignation. “Are you accusing me of fabricating a story?”

“It sure sounds like that’s what you’re doing!” Stacey replied, getting in his face. “For what? To sell newspapers?!”

“No! To sell luggage,” Adam retorted. “It’s my job that’s on the line. Not yours.”

“No, according to you, my ass is! You’re the one making speeches about fact checking! It’s on you to nail this down before deciding the man’s a war criminal!”

“Hey, hey?! Knock it off!” Tannen said, stepping between them. “Neutral corners. Now,” he commanded, directing them to opposite sides of the office. He gave them a few moments to settle; then, in the measured cadence of a mediator, said, “Okay. Now, Stacey, as I believe you pointed out earlier, we’ve no choice but to take this seriously. Right?” He waited until Stacey nodded grudgingly then, pursuing the logic, resumed. “And if what Adam suspects is true; if Dr. E is someone other than who he says he is; then the forearm in the snapshot from the suitcase that has the same prisoner number tattooed on it—belongs to the real Jake Epstein.”

“Works for me,” Adam said.

“Okay,” Tannen said, taking a moment to collect his thoughts, “But why would he agree to do the campaign? Why would he even allow the suitcase to be opened? It was his call. We gave him every chance to say no.”

“Yeah,” Stacey chimed in. “Why would he risk getting caught?”

“Because he wants to get caught,” Adam replied.

“Why?” Stacey challenged.

“Guilt,” Adam replied. “Not survivor guilt. Plain old, normal, everyday subconscious guilt. He’s damn-near ninety years old. Near the end of his life. He wants to fess up. Wants to make things right.”

Stacey sighed. She looked crestfallen. “I hate to say it, boss,” she said, her voice trembling. “I mean, the mere thought of it turns my stomach, but if Adam’s right, it’s a great fucking story.”

“Yeah, it is,” Adam said, sounding vindicated. “And, if I am right, the paper’s going to run it.”

“I applaud your parenthetical modifier,” Tannen said, sensing he had regained some measure of control. “It suggests that as the responsible, ethical, truth-seeking journalist we know you to be, you’ll be busting your ass to come up with the answers to a long list of questions, first. Won’t you?”

“And those questions are?”

“Is he the real Dr. Jacob Epstein or not? If not, who is he? Is he a Nazi? Is he a war criminal? Not all Nazis were; and not all Germans were Nazis. Last but not least, whatever and whoever he is…why is he masquerading as a Holocaust survivor? If that’s indeed what he’s doing. At the moment, all you’ve got is a theory. Speculation.”

Adam’s jaw tightened. He felt exposed, like a student whose outline for a term paper had just been savaged by his advisor. “Yeah, I guess, you’re right.”

“Voila!”
Tannen exclaimed, with a trace of sarcasm. “As Celine would say, ‘
Il la vu la lumiere!’
In the meantime, we better give Sol a heads-up on this.”

“Yeah, better he hear it from us…” Stacey paused and broke into a mischievous grin. “…than from some reporter for a tabloid.”

“Not funny,” Adam said, forcing a scowl. “On the other hand, she’s right. If I spotted this stuff, it’s only a matter of time before somebody else does. Which is another reason why I won’t sit on it forever.”

“Come on, Adam, you can’t sit on a story you don’t have—and you don’t have it,” Tannen said, pointedly. “We’ll deal with it if and when you do.” He held up the printouts Adam had brought with him. “I want Sol to see these? Okay?”

“Sure. They’re yours.”

“Thanks. Now, get your ass out of here. You’ve got a lot of work to do.”

Adam nodded. He looked beaten as he headed for the door.

Tannen cocked his head struck by a thought. “Hold it,” he called out. “Didn’t Dr. E say his med-school buddy…a…Max…Max…” he paused, searching for the name.

“…Kleist,” Stacey chimed-in, supplying it. “Max Kleist was the guy who gave him the suitcase.”

“Right. Didn’t Dr. E say he was in the SS?”

“Yeah, that’s right, he did,” Adam said, his eyes widening with intrigue as he drifted back toward them. “I forgot about that.”

Stacey nodded. “He also said he was an anti-Nazi who was conscripted and forced to serve.”

Adam groaned. “That’s what they all said.”

“Enough,” Tannen said, his tone sharpening. “I was about to say, maybe you should find out whatever you can about Max Kleist, too, while you’re at it.”

“Maybe I should,” Adam said, suddenly re-energized.

“Okay, but from here on, there’s something all of us need to remember. Something really important—” Tannen said, with a strategic pause. “—the tar goes on a lot easier than it comes off.” He made eye contact with Adam and prompted, “Got it?”

“Yes, I do,” Adam replied as if he meant it; then glancing to Stacey, he added, “Despite what some people think, not all journalists are cold-blooded.”

Tannen waited until Adam had left the office, then turned to Stacey and prompted, “You okay?”

Stacey nodded and broke into a coy smile. “He’s not always cold blooded.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

Eva and Jake had spent several hours hiding in Mittenwald’s frigid darkness before the rumble of a locomotive and the flicker of a headlight got their attention. Each waited until the train came thundering into view before entering the station.

Eva went directly to the ticket window. She couldn’t see Major Steig observing from his vantage point in the station master’s office. Neither she nor Jake had any idea what he looked like; though the sight of an SS uniform would have caught their eye. Steig had never seen them in person, either, and was relying on the fugitive alerts to identify them—on photographs taken three years ago when, as bright-eyed altruists, they first came to medical school. They appeared different, now. Hardened by the horrors of war, having treated so many of its casualties, and by their current status as fugitives, they had taken on the distant stare and weary posture of combat soldiers. So, when Eva bought her ticket, the major—like the sergeant at the Starnberg checkpoint—didn’t recognize the lone, young woman whose turned-up collar was encircled by a scarf, and whose tumbling, raven-black hair was concealed beneath a knitted wool hat pulled down over her ears. Eva left the window and made her way between the barricades that funneled passengers to a stand-up desk where a Gestapo agent was checking documents.

Across the station, Jake was sitting on a bench, pretending to be reading a discarded newspaper. The headline read:
FüHRER VOWS VICTORY. PREDICTS ALLIES WILL SURRENDER BY EASTER
. Jake waited until Eva had left the ticket window before joining the short queue.

At the security desk, the leather-jacketed Gestapo man glanced at Eva’s ticket and smirked. “Venice? All of northern Italy is under the Führer’s rule, now,” he bragged, going on to review her travel pass, and visa. “You’ll feel right at home.”

“It is my home,” Eva said, wishing she hadn’t.

“Passport,” he said, staring at her icily.

Eva took it from her purse, reflecting on Max’s warning about the Gestapo’s uncanny skill at detecting pseudonyms, and handed it to him. Would the agent ask her name? Or use it in some way to test her? He glanced from her passport to her face and back, then stamped her documents with a bright green Reichsadler, and returned them. Eva forced a smile, shouldered her rucksack and began walking from the desk.

“Fraulein Haussmann?” the Gestapo agent called out.

Eva froze and turned back toward him, trying not to seem intimidated. Lisl Haussmann, the pseudonym she had chosen, was the name of a high school teacher in Venice who had been her mentor. It had a comfortable familiarity and recalled pleasant times which she hoped would be reflected in her demeanor.

“Is that one N or two?” the Gestapo agent asked.

“Two,” Eva replied, calmly.

“I just wanted to be sure I had it right.” His sly smile left no doubt he’d been testing her.

As the Gestapo agent turned his attention to the next traveler, Eva hurried through the door that led outside to the platform. Another line of barricades funneled passengers to a door in the middle coach of the train through which everyone boarded; and where the other Gestapo agent was checking documents for the Imperial Eagle stamp to make certain no one had managed to skirt the security check inside. The locomotive was building up steam for departure when Eva joined the queue.

Inside, Jake had purchased his ticket and was at the security desk. The Gestapo agent reviewed his papers and stamped his passport. “Thank you Herr Dietrich.” Like Eva, Jake had chosen a familiar name as a pseudonym, that of Erich Dietrich, a childhood friend with a quirky sense of humor who made him laugh. He picked up his suitcase, and walked away, suppressing a sigh of relief. They had made it. By morning, he and Eva would be in Venice. Dare he even allow himself to think it?! All he had to do was cross the station, go through the door to the platform, and board the train.

Major Steig may not have spotted Eva, but he had an immediate flicker of recognition when Jake stepped to the ticket window, moments ago. The major’s eyes had darted from the fugitive alert to Jake’s face several times. The three-year-old photo, now a poor match for Jake’s hardened countenance and the cap that kept his face in shadow, made it hard for Steig to be certain; but he had nothing to lose; and, now, having deployed his SS henchmen, he moved swiftly from the station master’s office in pursuit of his prey. “Dr. Epstein?” he called out. “Dr. Jacob Epstein?”

“Yes?” Jake said, glancing back over his shoulder. It was instinct, pure reflex, an unthinking reaction from a lifetime of conditioning as Max had warned. He gasped at the sight of an SS major striding toward him in his black greatcoat and silver death’s head gleaming atop his cap, then dropped his suitcase and ran.

“Halt!” Steig shouted, pulling his sidearm from its holster. “Stop him! Stop him!”

Three uniformed SS men emerged from concealment in pursuit. Despite his desperation, Jake had the presence of mind to run toward an exit opposite the one that led outside to the platform and waiting train, leading them away from Eva.

“Halt!” Steig shouted again, firing several shots overhead as Jake sprinted toward the door. The transom shattered, showering him with glass as another SS man burst through it from outside blocking his way. Jake froze and raised his hands. The SS man drove the butt of his rifle into his stomach, sending him to the floor, then raised it, preparing to deliver another blow to his skull.

“No! I want him alive!” Steig shouted. “He has information that—” The piercing shriek of the train whistle interrupted him. “The train! Stop the train and search for this woman!” he shouted, waving the alert with Eva’s picture; but by the time the Major and several of the SS men had run through the station and onto the platform, the train had already departed and was a distance down the tracks, gaining speed.

It didn’t matter if Dr. Eva Sarah Rosenberg was on the train or not, the major thought as he watched the light from the last car receding in the darkness. He had no doubt he’d get her, eventually. It was the Kleists’ blood that Steig smelled, now. They were the prize. And Dr. Jacob Israel Epstein was the key to winning it. The major went back into the station, picked up Jake’s suitcase, and joined the SS men who were holding him. “I believe this is yours, Doctor. Perhaps you’d like to scrub-up before we question you. I’m a stickler for hygiene when it comes to exploratory surgery.”

Jake was taken to an interrogation chamber in the basement of the SS Station in Garmisch. The major put the suitcase on a table in the dank, stone cavern, and began rifling the contents.
“Mein Kampf?!”
he exclaimed, coming upon the book amidst the clothing he’d disrupted. He made the obvious assumption, and flipped the pages without really looking at them or, as Jake feared, noticing the dust jacket didn’t match. Steig turned it over, shook it several times, then threw it back into the suitcase. “Judging by your reading matter, Epstein, there may be hope for you yet,” he said facetiously, his breath visible in the cold air. At the jerk of the major’s head, one of the SS men closed the suitcase, opened the door to an anteroom, and tossed it atop other pieces of luggage and duffel bags piled on the floor.

Jake spent the night in the freezing chamber being threatened and beaten by the major and his SS thugs. He’d been relieved that Steig hadn’t noticed the KK monogram on the suitcase and refused to even recognize the name Kleist let alone implicate them as enablers of his escape attempt. He knew the major needed his signed testimony to accuse citizens as prominent as the Kleists of harboring Jews; and the sheer pleasure of frustrating him reinforced his resolve not to cooperate. By the time the sun was rising over Zugspitze, his face bloodied, his body aching, Jake had taken all the punishment they had dished out with courage and silent dignity.

Steig looked bleary-eyed and exasperated. He drained a mug of cold coffee, then put a sheet of paper and a pen on the table in front of Jake. “Simply write that the Kleist family helped you to avoid being arrested by the SS. Sign it. And you’re a free man.”

Jake glared at him with contempt. “Sure…”

“You hear what I said? A free man!” Steig screeched; then, in a friendlier tone, said, “Your exemption will be restored. You will be able to practice medicine; and you will be free to travel anywhere you wish.”

“I give you the Kleists’ heads, and you let me keep mine?” Jake said in mocking paraphrase. “Is that it?”

Steig nodded. “Precisely. You have my word as an officer and a gentleman.”

“Four Germans for one Jew? Our stock is on the rise.” Jake swept the paper and pen onto the floor, then locked his eyes onto Steig’s and said, “Go to hell!”

Steig backhanded him across the face, knocking him from the chair. Jake moaned in pain and tried to get to his feet. One of the SS thugs stomped a heel into his back, then pulled his sidearm and pressed the muzzle against Jake’s head.

“No,” Steig said, seething at having failed to break him. “Take him to Munich with the others. The Reichsführer has uses for doctors. Even Jewish ones.”

Jake was taken from the interrogation chamber and loaded into the rear of a canvas-backed military truck with a group of local residents who had been identified as Jews and arrested. The vehicle had just started to pull away when an SS guard shouted after it. The truck lurched to a stop and backed up a short distance. A moment later, a valise came sailing over the tailgate into the rear of the truck, landing amidst the huddled prisoners. It was followed by a suitcase, and then another and another; several duffel bags came next, then more suitcases. Jake’s Steinbach was one of them.

Six hours later, literally freezing to death, they arrived at the main deportation center in Munich which was adjacent to the rail yards on the city’s perimeter. Lugging their suitcases, the prisoners were herded into a corral with hundreds of other Jewish deportees who had been given brushes and buckets of white paint, and were writing personal data on their luggage.

“Name, year of birth, and the prisoner reference number and group number that you were assigned when you got here,” the SS man kept repeating as if to children. “In case you’ve forgotten, this is group number twelve. You people are always getting your bags mixed up. It will be much easier to identify them later if you do as I instruct. Name, year of birth, and your prisoner reference number and group number that…”

“My valise has a luggage tag,” one of the prisoners said. “May I omit the information that—”

“No!” the SS guard shouted, striking him with his truncheon. “Tags get ripped off. Paint is forever. No questions. Do as instructed!”

Though it pained Jake to deface such a fine piece of luggage, he wisely complied. When finished, he and the others were herded into a freight car by SS men who used truncheons to pummel resisters and stragglers and those who went in search of a child or loved one from whom they had become separated. The door rolled shut with the chilling screech of steel on steel and the harsh clank of wrought iron hasps, plunging the interior of the freight car and its human cargo into darkness. Some were moaning in pain. Many were weeping. Others were shouting and pounding on the wooden sidewalls in protest. They were packed-in so tightly there was barely enough room for everyone to stand, let alone breathe. Perhaps, Jake thought, their combined body heat would keep them from freezing to death en route to their destination.

The train lurched forward with several sharp jerks, then started to roll, heading out of the yard on rails that glistened from constant use. Every train departing the Munich freight yards on that spur had the same destination. Indeed this one—and all others that had preceded it, and all those that would follow—went to one place and one place only, making no stops in its 500 kilometer journey through Czechoslovakia to the town of Oswiecim in southeastern Poland and a concentration camp of the same name that in German was called Auschwitz.