Chapters (50)
- Praise
- Title Page
- Copyright Page
- Dedication
- Epigraph
- ONE
- TWO
- THREE
- FOUR
- FIVE
- SIX
- SEVEN
- EIGHT
- NINE
- TEN
- ELEVEN
- TWELVE
- THIRTEEN
- FOURTEEN
- FIFTEEN
- SIXTEEN
- SEVENTEEN
- EIGHTEEN
- NINETEEN
- TWENTY
- TWENTY-ONE
- TWENTY-TWO
- TWENTY-THREE
- TWENTY-FOUR
- TWENTY-FIVE
- TWENTY-SIX
- TWENTY-SEVEN
- TWENTY-EIGHT
- TWENTY-NINE
- THIRTY
- THIRTY-ONE
- THIRTY-TWO
- THIRTY-THREE
- THIRTY-FOUR
- THIRTY-FIVE
- THIRTY-SIX
- THIRTY-SEVEN
- THIRTY-EIGHT
- THIRTY-NINE
- FORTY
- FORTY-ONE
- FORTY-TWO
- EPILOGUE
- AUTHOR’S NOTE
- Teaser chapter
The man digging threw down his spade. “That’ll have to do,” he said. “The ground is frozen solid. It’ll snow soon enough and the snow will cover it up, and that will be the end of him until the spring.”
And then my head throbbed painfully. Most likely it was the explanation of why the man was digging striking a few brain cells. I pushed my arm underneath my forehead and let out a groan.
“He’s coming around,” said the voice.
The man who had been digging stepped out of the grave and hauled me to my feet. The big man. The man who had hit me. Shlomo. The German Jew.
“For God’s sake,” said the voice, “don’t hit him again.”
Weakly I glanced around me. Gruen’s laboratory was nowhere to be seen. Instead I was standing on the edge of the tree line on the mountainside just above Mönch. I recognized the coat of arms painted on the wall of the house. I put my hand on my head. There was a lump the size of a golf ball. One that had just been driven in excess of a hundred yards. Shlomo’s handiwork.
“Hold the prisoner straight.” It was my interrogator speaking. His nose was not faring well in the cold. It looked like something from a song that was always on the radio these days. “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.”
Shlomo and Aaron—the younger one—each grabbed an arm and straightened me up. Their fingers felt like pincers. They were enjoying this. I started to speak. “Silence,” growled Shlomo. “You’ll get your turn, you Nazi bastard.”
“The prisoner will strip,” said the interrogator.
I didn’t move. Not much anyway. I was still swaying a bit from the blow on my head.
“Strip him,” he said.
Shlomo and Aaron went at it roughly, like they were looking for my wallet, flinging my clothes into the shallow grave in front of me. Shivering I folded my arms around my torso like a fur wrap. A fur wrap would have been better. The sun had dipped behind the mountain. And a wind was getting up.
Now that I was naked the interrogator spoke again.
“Eric Gruen. For crimes against humanity you are sentenced to death. Sentence to be carried out immediately. Do you wish to say anything?”