“I wanted to tell him that I couldn’t believe that. God wasn’t at Belzec that I could see, and I wanted to ask him about the gray stuff on the walls and bunk sides, but he shook his head, and, like a magician doing a trick, he stepped back into the sunlight. I yelled at him to stop, but he didn’t answer. Then I ran after him, but the place was empty. I just stood there for a second, all alone with the cans of food, and that dried mud or whatever it was. I meant to go back and make one more list of what I’d found. I even turned around to do it; but I couldn’t. I couldn’t. Don’t ask me why, that’s part of what I have to ask Speiser. Something in there scared the shit out of me, and after a minute or two, sweating and shaking, I gave up and left the place.

“The van was gone by then, but I wasn’t worried. They were taking the healthy ones to DP camps, and I thought they’d be there for days yet and I could question them in the morning. But Resistance Jews had started hijacking the trucks and helping the refugees get to Palestine; or as close to Palestine as they could. And they got that truck and all the men on it.”

Bianco put the paper cup down, “I don’t know where they are now. Or if they’re anywhere.”

Abrams stared at Bianco for a moment without saying anything, then he asked, “Is that it?”

Bianco nodded.

“Cans of food,” Abrams said, “and gray dust on a wall? That’s what you want to ask Speiser about?”

“Yes,” Bianco said.

“You waited seven months in Nuremberg, away from your wife, kids, home, to ask about shit like that? And a spooky feeling that grabbed you after you’d had a couple of flasks of whisky?”

“I know it sounds lame.”

“Lame isn’t the word. Speiser probably won’t even know what you’re talking about.”

“He will though. He requisitioned that food . . . he forged the papers to get it, and we thought it was for him and his brass. But all we found in their mess was moldy potatoes.”

Abrams opened Bianco’s file and started writing. “I’m asking Pearce to send you home, Major.”

Bianco jumped up. “You can’t do that. If you send me home now, I’ll never find out. . . .”

Abrams went on writing.

Bianco said, “Listen to me, for Christ’s sake; just listen.” He pulled a folded piece of paper out of his pocket and shoved it in front of Abrams. It was a list: of names arranged in alphabetical order:

Alldmann, Dabrowa, Poland

Dworkin, Dabrowa, Poland

Feldsher, Dabrowa, Poland

Fineman, Dabrowa, Poland

Gershon, Dabrowa, Poland

The list went on down the page.