Side Effects (1984) Read online

  “Willi, Willi,” Müller said, shaking his head. “You try my patience. I shall give you until tomorrow night. Meanwhile, we shall organize our data and present them at the same time.”

  “Excellent,” Becker said, reveling in being on the offensive at last. “And, please, do try to have some of your human subjects available for examination. It would lend so much to the understanding of your work.” This time, Müller and Rendl shared a more pronounced look.

  “You don’t really care, Willi, do you?” Müller said suddenly.

  “I … I’m afraid I don’t know what you mean, Franz.”

  “You see only yourself. Your place in history. The here and now mean nothing to you. Germany, the Reich, the Jews, the Americans, the prisoners, your colleagues—all are the same to you. All are nothing.”

  “You have your mistresses, and I have mine,” Becker said simply. “Is immortality so homely that I should throw her out of my bed? You are right, Franz. I do not concern myself with petty day-to-day issues. I have already reached planes of theory and research that few have ever even dreamed of. Should I worry about the price of eggs, or whether the Führer’s hemorrhoids are inflamed, or whether the prisoners here at Ravensbrück are pathetic inside the wire or without, on top of the dirt or beneath it?”

  “Willi, Willi, Willi.” Müller’s voice and eyes held pity rather than reproach.

  Becker looked over at Rendl, and there, too, saw condescension, not ire. Don’t you dare pity me, he wanted to scream. Revere me. The children of your children will prosper because of me. The lebensraum for which so many have fought and died will be attained not with bullets, but with my equations, my solution. Mine!

  Müller broke the silence. “We are all with the same laboratory. We all stand to lose much if we fall into disfavor—either now with the Reich or soon with the Allies. I expect a full disclosure of your work with Estronate Two-fifty, Dr. Becker.”

  Becker nodded his acquiescence and silently prayed that his portrayal of a beaten man would be convincing.

  Minutes later, the three men from the Blue Unit were gone. Becker closed his eyes and massaged the tightness at the base of his neck. Then he poured three fingers of Polish vodka from a bottle Edwin had sent him, and drank it in a single draught. The encounter with Müller and Rendl, triumphant though it had been, had left him drained. He fingered his chronometer. Was there time for a nap? No, he decided. No sleeping until this filthy camp with its petty people and skeleton prisoners was a thing of the past.

  He walked briskly from his office to the low, frame, barracklike building that housed the Green Unit’s biochemical research section. With glances to either side, he backed through the rear door and locked it from the inside. The wooden shutters were closed and latched, creating a darkness inside that was tangible.

  The flashlight was by the door—where he had hung it that morning. Using the hooded beam, Becker counted the slate squares making up the top of his long central workbench. Reaching beneath the fifth one, he pulled. The cabinet supporting the slate slid out from the others. Beneath it, hidden from even a detailed search, was the circular mouth of a tunnel.

  “And the rockets red glare, the bombs bursting in air.…” Alfi Runstedt sang the words as he dug, although he had no idea of their meaning. The song, he knew, was the American anthem, and this day, at least, that was all that mattered. As a child in Leipzig, he had spent hours beside his family’s new Victrola memorizing selections from a thick album of anthems of the world. Even then, the American “Star Spangled Banner” had been his favorite.

  Now, he would have the chance to see the country itself and, even more wonderful, to become an American.

  “Oh say does that star spangled ba-a-ner-er ye-et wa-ave.…” With one syllable, he rammed the spade into the sandy soil. With the next, he threw the dirt up to the side of the grave. The trench, three feet deep, was better than half done. Lying on the grass to Alfi’s left, two meters from him, were the corpses of the peasant woman and her son, which would be laid inside as soon as the proper depth was reached. Alfi Runstedt paid them no mind.

  He was stripped to his ample waist. Dirt, mingling with sweat, was turning his arms and walrus torso into a quagmire. The thick, red hair on his chest was plastered into what looked like a fecal mat. His SS uniform pants were soaked and filthy. “… and the home of the brave. O-oh say can you see.…”

  “Alfi, take a break if you need one. We cannot make any moves until dark. I told you that.” From his perch atop a large boulder, Willi Becker gazed down into the narrow crypt.

  Alfi stopped his digging and dragged a muddy wrist across his muddy forehead. “It is nothing, Herr Oberst. Believe me, nothing. I would dig a thousand such holes in the ground for the honor you have done me and the reward you have promised. Tell me, do you know if many American women are thin like Betty Grable? One of the men in the barracks at Friedrichshafen had her picture by his cot.”

  “I don’t know, Alfi.” Becker laughed. “Soon, you shall be able to see for yourself. If we meet the boat in Denmark and if my cousin has made all the arrangements, we should be in North America with valid papers within a few weeks.”

  “Big ifs, yes?”

  “Not so big. The biggest if anyplace is money, and hopefully we have enough of that. We’ll need some luck, but our chances of making it out undetected seem rather good.”

  “And you do not think me a traitor or a coward for wanting to leave with you?”

  “Am I?”

  “You are different, Herr Oberst. You have research to complete. Important research. I am just a junior officer in an army that is losing a war.”

  “Ah, but you are also my aide. My invaluable aide. Was it not you who informed me of the old system of drainage pipes running beneath Ravensbrück?”

  “Well, it was just my fortune to have worked with the sanitation department when I was younger and—”

  “And was it not you who chose to keep that information our little secret and to help me with the connecting tunnel?”

  “ Well, I guess—”

  “So don’t say you are not deserving, Unteroffizier Runstedt. Don’t ever say that.”

  “Thank you, Oberst. Thank you.” And at that moment, Alfred Runstedt, the man who had overseen or assisted in the extermination of several thousand Ravensbrück prisoners, the man who had, not an hour before, calmly strangled to death a woman, her young son, her husband, and her father, wept with joy.

  Hollywood, New York, baseball, Chicago—now just words, they would soon be his life. Since the June invasion at Normandy, and even more frequently since the abortive July attempt to assassinate the Führer at Rastenburg, in eastern Prussia, he had been forced to endure the recurrent nightmare of his own capture and death. In one version of the dream, it was execution by hanging; in another, by firing squad. In still another, ghostly prisoners, totally naked, beat him to death with sticks.

  Soon, the nightmares would stop.

  The grave was nearly deep enough. The wooded grove which was serving as an impromptu cemetery accepted the evening more quickly than did the adjacent field and was nearly dark when Becker pushed himself off the rock. “So, just a few more spadefuls, is it?” he said.

  “I think so,” Alfi answered. He had donned a wind-breaker against the chill of dusk. His uniform shirt, hanging on a branch, would be kept clean for a final display.

  “Cigar?”

  “Thank you, Herr Oberst.” Alfi paused to light the narrow cheroot, one of a seemingly endless supply possessed by Becker.

  “I think you are deep enough now,” Becker said after a half dozen more passes. “Let me give you a hand.”

  Alfi scrambled from the grave. One with the arms, and one with the legs, the two men unceremoniously tossed the bodies of the woman and the boy into the pit. Alfi replaced the dirt with the spade. Becker helped, using his foot.

  “Forgive me if I am out of line, Herr Oberst,” Alfi said as he shoveled, “but is there any possibility of notifying
my sister at the munitions plant in Schwartzheide that, contrary to the reports she will receive, I am alive and well?”

  Becker chuckled and shook his head. “Alfi, Alfi. I have explained to you the need for secrecy. Why do you think I waited until only a few hours ago to tell you of my escape plan? I, myself, have been measuring every word for weeks, afraid I might give it away. For now, and for the foreseeable future both of us must remain among the lamentable casualties of the war. Even my brother, Edwin, at the camp in Dachau will not know.”

  “I understand,” Alfi said, realizing that he did not—at least not totally.

  “By the morning, you and I shall be both free and dead.” Becker stamped on the topsoil of the grave and began throwing handfuls of dusty sand and pine needles over the fresh dirt.

  The idea of using the bodies of the farmer and his son-in-law was sheer genius, Becker acknowledged. Originally, he had planned to have the two farmers supply him with transportation to Rostock. Their lorry would now run just as well with him at the wheel. The other refinements in his original plan were dazzling. When all was said and done, Müller and Rendl would be left to face the music with little or no suspicion that he was still alive.

  “… and the home of the brave.” Becker joined the startled Runstedt in the final line.

  Both Runstedt and Becker groaned repeatedly with the effort of dragging first one body and then another through the sewage pipe to the false cabinet in the biochemical research building. Intermixed with the sounds of their effort were the scratching and scraping of countless rats, scurrying about in the pitch darkness.

  The young farmer was, in height and frame, a virtual twin of Becker’s. The older man, like Runstedt, was heavy, but taller than Runstedt by several centimeters.

  “Don’t worry about the difference in your heights, Alfi,” Becker had reassured him. “By the time the explosion and fire are through with these bodies, no one will want to get any closer to them than it takes to remove our watches, rings, identification medallions, and wallets.”

  With Becker pushing from below, Runstedt hauled the corpses through the base of the cabinet and stretched them out on the wooden floor.

  “Perfect, perfect,” Becker said, scrambling through the hole. “We are right on time.”

  “Oberst,” Alfi said, “I have one question, if I may.”

  “Of course.”

  “How will we keep the tunnel from being discovered after the fire and explosion?”

  “Hah! An excellent point,” Becker exclaimed. “One, I might add, that I am not at all surprised to have you make. I have kept the steel plate you removed to make the opening in the pipe. It fits perfectly, and stays in place with several small hooks I have welded on. With ashes and debris piled on top, I doubt the pipe will ever be discovered.”

  “Brilliant. Herr Oberst, you are a truly brilliant man.”

  “Thank you, Unteroffizier. And now, we must check. Have you said anything to anyone which might suggest you are planning to leave tonight?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Good. And have you told the men in your barrack that you will be working late in the laboratory with me?”

  “Yes, Oberst.”

  “Wonderful. We are ready to arrange the ether, to set the charge and the timer, and to exchange clothes with our friends here.”

  “Then it is off to hot dogs and Betty Grable,” Alfi said.

  “Hot dogs and Betty Grable,” Becker echoed. “But first a toast to our success thus far. Amaretto?”

  “Cheroots! Amaretto! My God, Oberst, how do you keep coming up with these things?” Alfi took the proffered glass, inhaled the wonderful almond scent, and then drained the liqueur in a gulp. The cyanide, its deadly aroma and taste masked, took just seconds to work.

  Becker was removing his uniform and jewelry as Runstedt, writhing and vomiting on the floor, breathed his last.

  With some effort, Becker dressed the young farmer in his own uniform, adding a ring, billfold, identification necklace, and, finally, Edwin’s watch, an elegant piece which many in the camp associated with him.

  Next, he stepped back and, with the use of the hooded flashlight, surveyed the scene. Everything, everyone had to be perfectly placed.

  He undressed the farmer who was to have served as Alfi’s double, tossed the clothes to one side, and then dumped the naked body down the tunnel. “Now, Alfi, my most loyal of servants, we must find a place for you.” He shone the torch on the contorted, violet face by his feet.

  In minutes the arrangement was complete. The young farmer’s body lay in the center of the laboratory, his face resting beside a laboratory timer and a five-gallon tin of ether. Several other tins were spaced throughout the dry, wooden building. Alfi’s body lay near the door, as far from the explosive vapors as possible. It would be the validity of Runstedt’s face which would assure acceptance of Becker’s own demise.

  The simple elegance of the whole plan was as pleasing as a major research success, and Becker felt ballooned with pride as he made a final survey of the scene.

  He checked the small ignition charge and set the timer for ten minutes.

  Willi Becker was grinning as he dropped into the tunnel and pulled the workbench cabinet back in place. He sealed the drainage pipe opening, and without a glance at the farmer’s body, crawled toward the exit beyond the camp’s electrified fence.

  He was behind the wheel of the lorry, a quarter mile from the camp, when the peaceful night sky turned red-gold. Seconds later, he heard the muffled series of explosions.

  “Good-bye, Josef Rendl,” he said. “I shall enjoy reading in The New York Times of your trial and execution. And as for you, Dr. Müller, it is game and match between us, eh? A shame you shall never know who really won. Perhaps someday, if you survive, I will send you a postcard.”

  His wife and son were waiting for him in Rostock. As Becker bounced down the road, he began humming the “Star Spangled Banner.”

  THE PRESENT

  1

  Sunday 9 December

  The morning was typical of December in Massachusetts. A brushed aluminum sky blended into three-day-old snow covering the cornfields along Route 127. Dulled by streaks of road salt, Jared Samuels’s red MGTD roadster still sparkled like a flare against the landscape.

  From the passenger seat, Kate Bennett watched her husband negotiate the country road using only the thumb and first two fingers of his left hand. His dark brown eyes, though fixed on the road, were relaxed, and he seemed to be singing to himself. Kate laughed.

  “Hey, Doc,” Jared asked glancing over, “just what are you laughing at?”

  “You.”

  “Well, that’s a relief. For a moment there I thought you were laughing at me.… Tell me what I was doing that was so funny, I might want to write it down.”

  “Not funny,” Kate said. “Just nice. It makes me happy to see you happy. There’s a peacefulness in you that I haven’t seen since the campaign began.”

  “Then you should have turned on the bedroom light last night at, oh, eleven-thirty, was it?”

  “You didn’t just pass out after?”

  “Nope. Five minutes of absolute Nirvana … then I passed out.” He flashed the smile that had always been reserved for her alone.

  “I love you, you know,” Kate said.

  Jared looked at her again. It had been a while since either of them had said the words outside the bedroom. “Even though I’m not going to be the Honorable Congressman from the Sixth District?”

  “Especially because you’re not going to be the Honorable Congressman from the Sixth District.” She checked the time. “Jared, it’s only nine-thirty. Do you think we could stop at the lake for a bit? We haven’t in such a long time. I brought a bag of bread just in case.”

  Jared slowed. “Only if you promise not to poach when goddamn Carlisle starts hitting to my backhand.”

  “Once. I stole a ball from you once in almost two years of playing together, and you never let me forget it.
”

  “No poaching?”

  Was he being serious? It bothered her that after almost five years of marriage she couldn’t always tell. “No poaching,” she vowed finally, wary of making a response that would chip the mood of the morning. Lately, it seemed, their upbeat moods were becoming less frequent and more fragile.

  “The ducks bless you,” Jared said in a tone which did nothing to resolve her uncertainty.

  The lake, more a large pond, was a mile off 127 in the general direction of the Oceanside Racquet Club. It was surrounded by dense thickets of pine and scrub oak, separated by the backyards of a dozen or so houses—upper-class dwellings in most communities, but only average in the North Shore village of Beverly Farms. At the far end of the ice cover, hockey sticks in hand, a trio of boys chased a puck up and down a makeshift rink, their bright mufflers and caps phosphorescing against the pearl-gray morning. Nearer the road, a spillway kept the surface from freezing. Bobbing on the half-moon it created were a score of ducks. Several more rested on the surrounding ice.

  The couple stood motionless by their car, transfixed by the scene.

  “Currier and Ives,” Kate said wistfully.

  “Bonnie and Clyde,” Jared responded in the same tone.

  “You’re so romantic, Counselor.” Kate managed a two-second glare of reproach before she smiled. Jared’s often black sense of humor was hit or miss—“kamikaze humor,” she had labeled it. “Come on, let’s duck,” she called.

  Her runner’s legs, objects of the fantasies of more than a few of her fellow physicians at Metropolitan Hospital of Boston, brought her easily down the snowy embankment, her auburn hair bouncing on the hood of her parka.

  As she approached the water, a huge gander, honking arrogantly, advanced to get his due. Kate eyed the bird and then threw a handful of bread over his head to a milling group of smaller mallards and wood ducks. A moment later, from atop the bank, Jared scaled an entire roll precisely at the feet of the gander, who snatched it up and swaggered away.