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
This was the cue I had been waiting for. “It’s true,” I had told him, bowdlerizing the lecture he had given me in his office. “I was in the SS. But that doesn’t mean I’m not interested in justice, Herr Doktor. Men who have murdered women and children deserve to be in prison. People need to know that doing wrong will be punished. That’s my idea of a healthy Germany.”
“Lots of people would say that many of these men were POWs who were only doing their duty, Herr Gunther.”
“I know. I’m perverse that way. Contrarian.”
“That sounds unhealthy.”
“It could be,” I said. “On the other hand, it’s easy to ignore someone like me. Even when I’m right. But it’s not so easy to ignore Bishop Neuhausler. Even when he’s wrong. Imagine the hurt to my job satisfaction when I read what he had to say about the Red Jackets in the newspapers. It was like no one had told him that Ivanov was a chiseler and a thief with an ax to grind.”
“Neuhausler is the creature of people much more unscrupulous than myself, Herr Gunther,” said Kaufmann. “I hope you can appreciate that I had nothing to do with that.”
“I’m doing my best.”
“People like Rudolf Aschenauer, for one.”
I had heard this name before. Aschenauer was the Nuremberg attorney and legal adviser to nearly seven hundred Landsberg prisoners, including the infamous Otto Ohlendorf, and a member of the right-wing German Party.
“As a matter of fact,” said Kaufmann, “I’ll have to speak to Aschenauer to get you into Landsberg, to see Gebauer. He is Gebauer’s lawyer. He was the lawyer for all of the accused of the Malmedy massacre.”
“Gebauer’s one of them?”
“That’s why we want him out of an American prison,” said Kaufmann. “I’m sure you can imagine why.”
“Yes,” I said. “In this particular instance I probably can.”
I parked my car and walked up the castle esplanade to the gatehouse of the fortress, where I showed my papers and a letter from Aschenauer’s office to the black American GI on duty. While I waited for him to find my name on his clipboard, listing the day’s visitors, I smiled amiably and tried to practice my English.
“It is a nice day, yes?”
“Fuck off, kraut.”