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Back The One from the Other Save as PDF
Chapters (50)
  1. Praise
  2. Title Page
  3. Copyright Page
  4. Dedication
  5. Epigraph
  6. ONE
  7. TWO
  8. THREE
  9. FOUR
  10. FIVE
  11. SIX
  12. SEVEN
  13. EIGHT
  14. NINE
  15. TEN
  16. ELEVEN
  17. TWELVE
  18. THIRTEEN
  19. FOURTEEN
  20. FIFTEEN
  21. SIXTEEN
  22. SEVENTEEN
  23. EIGHTEEN
  24. NINETEEN
  25. TWENTY
  26. TWENTY-ONE
  27. TWENTY-TWO
  28. TWENTY-THREE
  29. TWENTY-FOUR
  30. TWENTY-FIVE
  31. TWENTY-SIX
  32. TWENTY-SEVEN
  33. TWENTY-EIGHT
  34. TWENTY-NINE
  35. THIRTY
  36. THIRTY-ONE
  37. THIRTY-TWO
  38. THIRTY-THREE
  39. THIRTY-FOUR
  40. THIRTY-FIVE
  41. THIRTY-SIX
  42. THIRTY-SEVEN
  43. THIRTY-EIGHT
  44. THIRTY-NINE
  45. FORTY
  46. FORTY-ONE
  47. FORTY-TWO
  48. EPILOGUE
  49. AUTHOR’S NOTE
  50. Teaser chapter

I opened and closed both sets of glass doors and went into the office. Straightaway I understood that I had not come too late. Far from it. On the blotter in the center of Gruen’s desk were four new American passports. I picked one up and opened it. The woman I had known as Frau Warzok, Gruen’s wife, was now Mrs. Ingrid Hoffman. I looked at the others. Heinrich Henkell was now Mr. Gus Braun. Engelbertina was Mrs. Bertha Braun. And Eric Gruen was now Eduard Hoffman. I started to write down the new names. Then I just pocketed all four passports. They could hardly go anywhere without them. Nor without their air tickets, which were also on the blotter. These were U.S. military tickets. I checked the date, the time, and the destination. Mr. and Mrs. Braun and Mr. and Mrs. Hoffman were leaving Germany that night. They were all booked on a midnight flight to Langley Air Force Base in Virginia. All I had to do was sit down and wait. Someone—Jacobs, probably—would surely be along quite soon to collect these tickets and the passports. And when he came, I would make him drive me up to Mönch, where, with three fugitives from Allied Justice cornered, I would take my chances and call the police in Munich. Let them sort it out.

I sat down, took out my gun—the one given to me in Vienna by Father Lajolo—worked the slide to put one up the spout, thumbed off the safety, and laid the weapon on the desk in front of me. I was looking forward to seeing my old friends again. I thought about smoking a cigarette and then decided against it. I didn’t want Major Jacobs smelling the smoke as he came through the front door.

Half an hour passed and, becoming a little bored, I decided to poke around the filing cabinet; when, eventually, I spoke to the police, it might look better if I had some documentary evidence to support what I was going to tell them. Not that Gruen and Henkell had experimented on Jews at Dachau. But that they had continued their medical experiments on local German POWs. They wouldn’t like that any more than I did. If, by some chance, a court wasn’t inclined to indict Gruen, Henkell, and Zehner for what they had done during the war, no German court could have ignored the murders of German servicemen.