Chapters (43)
His heart is pounding when he opens the magazine. He sees the picture of the accused in the courtroom, framed by DR. SCHOLL’S SHOE INSERTS and REFORMA RHEUMA-EASE COMFORTERS. Him on the far right, head cocked and looking off to the side. Who was he looking at? Lauren? He remembers looking away, how each of them kept trying to avoid the other’s gaze. He felt hollowed out on the inside. He couldn’t run away and couldn’t speak. He remembers the scraping of feet, the murmur in the courtroom; he remembers Judge Mortimer Byers. He remembers the absence, the whispering—where’s Sebold? The only one missing at the trial was this man who, thanks to Ettinger, he hadn’t met once. Maybe he would have gotten an even longer sentence if he had. Sebold’s office was a trap. The FBI was waiting behind a mirror and everyone he lured to the office was captured on film forever. He remembers the films being shown in the courtroom, one agent after the other blundering into Sebold’s office. There had never been anything like it. The papers the next day couldn’t get enough of this spectacular method for unmasking criminal activity.
The one person who didn’t show up in the film was him. Ettinger had vanished, just like Sebold. And he, Josef, was sitting with twenty-three Nazis and couldn’t open his mouth.
Carefully he opens Carl’s letter.
Since I haven’t gotten any mail from you for some time, I assume that you’re in the process of writing your report to me.
No, he’s only started it. Carl had asked him to finally explain everything once and for all.
The other letters are carbon copies. Carl is sending letters all over the place—to the journalists, to the editors at Stern, to the surviving agents.
Dear Herr Thorwald,
My brother, who is traveling the world without papers . . . may I ask for your help . . . we must combine our efforts to . . .
Josef swallows. He needs a break and puts on Duke Ellington.
* * *
Later he stares at a photo of Nikolaus Ritter for a long time and thinks about the Old Heidelberg again. The greasy hair, the smug, broad smile. Now Ritter is sitting with reporters in his apartment in Hamburg, reminiscing. For him, the exporter, things couldn’t be better. He pompously explains that the Jew Lily Stein received assistance in leaving the country, and in exchange she was to perform a few services for military intelligence.
Right at the bottom his eye is caught by a letter from a reader. A former agent guesses that military intelligence had already calculated in advance that the operation would be uncovered. So he’s not the only one this idea has occurred to.
He sighs and closes the magazine. It’s over.