The German Suitcase (23 page)

Max raised a brow in tribute, and thought for a moment. “He came here because…because intoxicated and arrogant he didn’t want to wait his turn at the SS brothel and…and as a doctor…perhaps with certain proclivities…he preferred to take his pleasures in this room. Do we all have the story straight?”

“Yes, sir,” the sergeant replied more strongly.

Max whirled on the Madam. “That goes for you too! One word to the contrary to anyone, anyone, and you’ll all be charged with conspiring to break the Nuremberg Laws. Statements signed by two SS captains will be sent directly to Reichsführer Himmler! Have I made myself clear?!” He drove the point home with an angry glare and waited until the Madam had nodded, then asked, “Do you have any scotch or whiskey, here?”

“No, Captain, no it’s not allowed,” she replied.

Max shifted his look to Kruger. “You think we could get a bottle from the officers club without anyone asking questions?”

“Sure. I buy one every so often to keep in my quarters,” Kruger replied, heading for the door. “Be back as soon as I can.”

“Now,” Max said, returning his attention to the SS men. “It’s well after curfew; and I don’t want these prisoners shot by the tower guards on their way back to the Revier. So, you will escort Dr. Epstein and Dr. Friedman safely to their quarters. When finished, you will report this—as we discussed—to the Duty Officer as you would any such incident.”

“Yes, Sir.”

Max turned from the SS men and crossed to Jake and Hannah. He had retrieved Hannah’s uniform bottom and helped her into it, and draped Max’s greatcoat over her shoulders. Exhausted, emotionally spent, and in pain from the wounds Radek had inflicted, Hannah was leaning against him for support, her head buried in his shoulder. Max wrapped his arms around them and, in trembling Yiddish, whispered, “Comfort her and care for her wounds, Jake; but do it in your quarters, in private. You both know the story. You were summoned here in an emergency and found Radek dead. I know it won’t be easy, but try to act as if nothing else happened. Okay?”

Jake nodded, somberly.

Hannah managed to whisper, “Thank you…”

After they had left with their SS escort, Max had the Madam shut down the brothel for the night and confined her to her quarters; then he spent some time checking the examining room for anything that might contradict the cover story he had concocted. Everything seemed to be in order, and he was nodding to himself in satisfaction when he noticed something incongruous about the position of Radek’s corpse.

“I’ve been thinking,” Max said when Kruger returned with the bottle of whiskey, “Any doctor responding to this emergency would have checked Radek’s life signs and initiated emergency treatment, right?”

“Right…” Kruger replied and, knowing what Max was thinking, added, “…which means they would have moved him off there onto his back.”

“Exactly.” Max grasped a handful of Radek’s hair, and, applying steady upward pressure, began pulling his head free of the cabinet. His flesh and brain matter disengaged from the steel corner with a sickening, slushy thwack. Max continued pulling upward, bending Radek’s body at the waist into a kneeling position; then steadying it, he cocked his head back, and nodded to Otto who was holding the bottle. “Down the hatch!”

Kruger unscrewed the cap, worked the neck of the bottle between Radek’s teeth and tilted it upright. He left it there until the whiskey spilled out the sides of his mouth and down the front of his shirt. Max grasped Radek beneath his arms and pulled him over onto his back; then took the bottle of whiskey from Kruger and smashed it on the floor as if Radek had dropped it when he stumbled.

“That does it,” Kruger said, starting for the door.

“Hold it,” Max said, stopped by something that had occurred to him. “We’d better get him back in uniform, or they might think one of the whores was in here with him and saw what happened.”

They pulled up Radek’s jodhpurs, buttoned the fly, buckled the belt, and set the suspenders on his shoulders. Max noticed the riding crop on the floor and slipped it into the top of Radek’s boot. When finished, they stepped back and took one last look around, admiring their handiwork.

“What do you think?” Kruger prompted.

Max tilted his head and smiled. “I think this was the night you stopped blocking it all out. I knew your soul was alive in there, somewhere, Otto.”

“You Catholics are all alike,” Kruger teased. “Eager to absolve even the most egregious sinner.”

“Well,” Max said with a sideways glance to Radek’s corpse. “There are a few exceptions.”

“A few too many, I’m afraid.”

Max nodded, ruefully, and studied Kruger’s eyes for a moment. “You’re worried about this, aren’t you?”

“Very,” Kruger replied. “The cover story you spun is nothing short of brilliant; but Radek was one of Himmler’s fair-haired boys; and, as we know all too well, able to operate without deference to rules or rank.” He locked his eyes onto Max’s and, sounding threatened, added, “Steig and his little pack of attack dogs in Schellingstrasse aren’t going to let this go.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

The launch party for the Steinbach advertising campaign was in full swing. Gunther Global’s offices in the upper reaches of the Seagram Building were filled with a standing room only crowd. Michael Jackson’s death and Sarah Palin’s resignation of Alaska’s governorship were the default topics of conversation. Banners overhead proclaimed:

TRAVELLING COMPANIONS FOR LIFE.

SURVIVING HARROWING JOURNEYS

Samples of the new line were stacked on brass luggage carts that had once plied the Plaza’s corridors. Posters of the kick-off ad featuring Dr. Jake Epstein and Sol Steinbach, and of ads featuring other owners of vintage Steinbachs who had agreed to participate were on display. Among them: A well-travelled diplomat with a distinguished career in the foreign service; a family that had survived the ditching of a jetliner in the Hudson River; a canny businesswoman who had spent decades roaming the globe to bring economic growth to third world countries. Flat screen monitors displayed TV spots and internet ads with travel-themed music tracks that included: Sinatra’s version of
Come Fly With Me
, Nat King Cole’s version of
Route 66,
Peter Paul and Mary’s
Leaving On A Jet Plane
, Elton John’s
Rocket Man
, Ray Charles’s
Hit the Road Jack
, Madonna’s
Holiday
, U2’s
The Wanderer
, and Iggy Pop’s
Passenger
.

Uniformed servers—balancing trays laden with tinkling flutes of sparkling prosecco and glistening morsels of sushi—slipped silently between groups of marketing mavens, chic buyers, and brown-suited distributors who were engaging cliques of fashion writers, travel journalists, and newspaper reporters.

Adam was among the latter. Stacey had accepted his emailed mea culpas and pleas to crawl, kneel, beg and grovel his way back into her heart; and he had not only apologized for his mean-spirited behavior; but also for allowing his concerns about job security to tempt him to proceed unethically; for pressuring her to be part of it; and, for clinging to the suspicions that had been driving him to write a story similar to one
The Times
had run earlier, exposing the fugitive Nazi doctor whose briefcase had been found in a Cairo basement. Indeed, the person Adam thought might be a Nazi war criminal, impersonating Holocaust survivor Jake Epstein turned out to be long dead. Now, having recommitted to writing a human interest story, Adam intended to approach Jake at the party and arrange an interview.

The high-pitched pinging of flatware on crystal silenced the crowd, calling attention to Mark Gunther who was standing at a podium flanked by Sol Steinbach and Dr. Jacob Epstein. Gunther Global’s CEO always managed to project quiet confidence born of success in the cutthroat competition for advertising accounts and the grueling miles of marathons. However, as of late, his confidence had been shaken by the possibility that his company and client would be irreparably damaged by the blunder of featuring a Nazi war criminal in a major campaign. Now, that his fears had been assuaged, Gunther spoke with emotion and eloquence about the themes of the campaign, going on to introduce Jake and Sol as survivors of the most horrific and momentous period in modern history. The room filled with thunderous applause as the three men left the podium and began working the crowd.

Gunther joined a group of partygoers that included his wife Grace, Ellen Rother, Tannen and his companion, Celine. “I don’t know how you did it,” Gunther said in an aside to Tannen. “But I’d no doubt you and Stace would pull it off.”

“You mean me and that ‘quirky little genius of mine’ who cooked up the Steinbach campaign?” Tannen prompted, echoing the sarcastic wisecrack Gunther had made after his flight from Paris.

Gunther laughed, good naturedly. “Looks like she knows how to work a room, too,” he said, eyeing Stacey who was chatting with Hannah Epstein and Steinbach’s wife, Bernice, both wearing chic summer dresses. “She’s definitely corner office material. Wouldn’t surprise me if she ended up in yours one of these days.”

“
Mais oui
!” Celine exclaimed, with a sly glance to Tannen. “By then, Bart will be occupying yours!
Non?”

“
Non
,” Tannen replied with a laugh. “By then Mark will have sold out to S&S and Stacey will be their creative director,” he went on, referring to Saatchi & Saatchi, the highly creative British agency with offices in eighty countries.

Like her colleagues, Stacey was aglow with the sense of accomplishment and validation creative people experience when their ideas become reality. “This must be a special moment for you,” Hannah Epstein prompted, seeing the look on her face.

“And for your husband,” Stacey replied. You have no idea just how special, she thought, concealing the relief she felt at having it all come out right in the end. Indeed, neither Hannah, Jake nor their son Dan knew of Adam’s suspicion and the personal destruction it had threatened; nor of how Stacey had been caught in the middle; torn between her innate affection for Jake, her professional loyalty to her client and employer, and her personal commitment to Adam and his career; but all that had been put to rest. Now, she was gazing like a lovesick teenager at Jake, his white mane shimmering in the light as he held court, nearby, in a circle of admiring partygoers. “So, did he capture your heart the first time you saw him?” Stacey asked Hannah, unabashedly. “I mean, the morning he walked into our conference room…God, mine just melted on the spot.”

Hannah smiled in reflection. “Oh yes…mine still skips a beat when he enters a room. It’s always been that way for me with Jake. There’s something about his voice, too. A certain…timbre. I hear it all the time.”

“I knew Sol was ‘the one’ the day I saw him trying to talk Bergdorf’s into carrying his line,” Bernice offered in her smoker’s baritone. “My father was the luggage buyer, and I was working in the stockroom on summer vacation.” She winked, mischievously. “Sol spent half the summer ‘working’ in there too.”

Stacey laughed, then emitted a wistful sigh, still gazing at Jake. Refined, educated, culturally engaged, a kind and gentle man, he was all she had ever hoped for in a father figure. The complete opposite of her own, and the men in her family, who were crusty, hard-driving, Westerners. Emotionally distant, they drove pick-ups with crew cabs and winches, and names like Dakota, Frontier, Ridgeline and Sierra, and spent their spare time clearing brush and mending fences in emulation of their favorite ex-Presidents.

“Your husband’s a truly special man, isn’t he?” Stacey went on. “I mean, the more I learn about him the more amazing he becomes.”

Hannah broke into a knowing smile.
“Sie sind lustern,”
she said, feigning she was jealous.
“Sie sind lustern nach meinem Mann, junge Dame.”

Stacey looked baffled.

Bernice was cackling with delight. “She said, you’re lusting after my husband, young lady.”

“Ooops!” Stacey said with an impish grin. “What can I say? He’s a hunk, a hottie, a hottie and a half.”

The three women broke into laughter and, collecting Sol Steinbach en route, drifted toward Jake’s group that included Dan Epstein and Adam, who had just mentioned the interview.

“Of course,” Jake said. “I’ve been looking forward to it. Anytime this week is fine. Dan?”

His son palmed his Blackberry, checked his schedule and said, “Friday at ten would work. Foundation HQ.”

“What’s Friday at ten?” Stacey asked as she and Hannah and the Steinbachs joined them.

“I’m interviewing Dr. Epstein,” Adam replied, a broad smile dimpling his signature two-day growth.

“Great,” Stacey said, plucking a flute of prosecco from a passing tray. “Here’s to Dr. Epstein!” She raised her glass and clinked it to his. “I was just telling Mrs. Epstein how we keep finding out he’s even more amazing than we thought.”

“I’ve been telling her that for sixty years!” Jake cracked, eliciting laughter from the group.

“No, seriously,” Stacey went on. “We didn’t know you’d been to hell and back twice. I mean—”

“Twice?” Jake interrupted with a devilish twinkle, his accent thickening when he joked. “I’ve only been married once!”

“I heard that Jake Epstein,” Hannah joked with a fetching pout.

“You’ve gotten me in trouble with the boss, young lady,” Jake teased. “Now, what could you have possibly learned that would make you say that?”

Stacey broke into a chastened smile. “Well, for starters, I learned that you’re not only a survivor of Auschwitz but also Dachau.”

“Yeah,” Steinbach chimed-in. “I’d no idea you were there. All the anti-Nazis in Leipzig who weren’t Jews ended up in that place.”

Jake nodded, somberly. “Yes, yes there were many political prisoners at Dachau. By the time I arrived the Nazis had lost their obsession for record-keeping and were frantically destroying them. It’s a wonder anyone knows anything about who was where. Europe had become lost in the fog of war as someone once said.”

“Those snapshots of ID numbers,” Stacey went on, energized by Jake’s reminiscence. “They were taken to make a record of them as Ellen thought. Weren’t they?”

Jake nodded smartly. “My friend, Max, took them. I believe I mentioned him.”

“Yes, you did. Max Kleist, right? You sponsored his family for the Yad Vashem award. Another one of those amazing things we learned about you!”

Jake smiled self-consciously and nodded again.

“God, it’s so incredible,” Stacey gushed, unable to contain her enthusiasm. “I mean, that he was at Dachau when you were transferred.”

“Max wasn’t just there, he was on the ramp!” Jake exclaimed, getting caught up in Stacey’s fervor. “I wouldn’t be here now, if he wasn’t!” He paused for a moment, trying to recall something, then nodded. “If my memory serves me…” he said, his voice taking on a more hushed timbre, “…it was about a week later that Max took the snapshots. A group of us had gathered in the Revier…that’s what we called the prison hospital. Max came with his camera and…and one by one he had us put our arm on the table and photographed the tattoo.”

Adam’s mind was racing. Hearing Jake tell the story made the puzzling detail that had first caught his eye sparkle with renewed clarity. Regardless of who took the snapshots or why they were taken, he knew, now, beyond any doubt, that the forearm in the snapshot with number A198841 tattooed on it was Jake Epstein’s, not an imposter’s. He also knew that Jake Epstein, the one right in front of him, had the exact same number tattooed on his arm—but in different handwriting. This wasn’t news. It had been identified, investigated and dismissed. Indeed, Maximilian Kleist M.D. Captain, Waffen-SS, the man Adam suspected of being a Nazi war criminal, impersonating the real Jake Epstein, had died long ago. What’s more, he had taken the snapshot—the one that had raised Adam’s suspicions—to insure that Jake, among others, didn’t just vanish without a trace. Like Ellen, Stacey, Tannen, Steinbach and the Gunthers, Adam had accepted the handwriting enigma as one of the many unfathomable mysteries that were part of the fog of war as Jake had just said; but the fog had suddenly lifted, and the glaring incongruity was still there. How could he ignore it? How could he, in good conscience, write Jake’s story without asking him about it? “Excuse me, Dr. Epstein,” Adam said in a casual tone. “This could wait til Friday; but I was struck by something you just said. Would you mind talking about it, now?”

“Yes, he would,” Dan Epstein replied. “My father’s already answered enough questions for one day.”

Jake sighed, dismissing Dan with a wave of his hand, and nodded to Adam. “Please…”

“Great,” Adam said, stealing an anxious glance at Dan as he slipped a hand into his pocket and turned on his recorder; then, he took a deep breath and looked into the old fellow’s kindly face. “I know it’s been a long time, Dr. Epstein, but over the years, did you ever notice the numbers on your arm are different than the ones in the snapshot taken at Dachau?”