Man Who Wanted Tomorrow (23 page)

Kurnov felt his concentration wavering. It would be the anaesthetic, he thought. He
wouldn't
let the man beat him.

“The capture of Heinrich Köllman is to be Israel's final coup … that and the destruction of as many Nazis as we could kill in the process,” enlarged Perez. “We could easily get the small fry, of course. But that wouldn't have been spectacular enough. We knew you were in the Soviet Union, although we didn't know the name you'd adopted. Or that you'd become so important. All that has been a bonus …”

Kurnov's head began to loll. He pulled himself up, fixing his eye just below the man's mouth. They wouldn't see him collapse. Even in the end, he'd prove a Nazi was stronger than a Jew.

“I never guessed, as I watched you and Mengele and Grüber grope into the psychiatry of deprivation, that I'd one day become a psychiatrist … and be able to practice upon you the very science you were trying to perfect. I've used your entire capture as a thesis, Heinrich. I'm going to lecture in psychiatry now and I'll use the whole experiment to teach my pupils … I've even taken recordings as we've been speaking, so that nothing will be missed.”

Perez laughed. “That's the beautiful irony, isn't it, Heinrich? Your capture and complete defeat being used to train people you once used as guinea pigs.”

The explanation was definitely part of the assault upon his senses, Kurnov decided, calculated to encourage self-anger at his own stupidity.

“It was my ability as a psychiatrist which initially led to my being entrusted with the job of getting you out of the Soviet Union. That's why I chose the phony raid upon Lake Toplitz …”

He hesitated.

“… That went so badly wrong … The only thing that didn't work out as I planned …”

Kurnov had seized a word, like a drowning man grabbing a lifebelt.

“Phony?” he asked.

Perez laughed again.

“Oh yes, Heinrich. Phony. All I did was work upon your fear … I manipulated you entirely, through fear …”

Kurnov shook his head, unable to comprehend. He wasn't meant to, of course. Not yet. He had to be teased sufficiently to the brink of collapse.

“We had plenty of accounts from the Jews who survived Buchenwald and Auschwitz of the experiments upon the Russians … I saw them myself. But we had no documentary, irrefutable proof. And the relationship between the Soviet Union and Israel isn't one where they would accept sworn evidence from Jewish ex-prisoners. And we didn't know your adoptive name, either. So I had to do two things: discover the name, and create the evidence. That's why I mounted the dive in Toplitz. All I wanted was some Nazi debris … anything would have done, for us to produce at a Jerusalem press conference …”

The acceptance of what he was being told began to settle, and Kurnov slumped in the chair, held there only by the bonds that secured him. For the second time in his life he had panicked, he realized.

There had been no need to come out of the Soviet Union. Had he stayed, behind the barrier he had created for himself in Russia, he would have been safe for the rest of his life.

“You mean …?” he groped, needing the confirmation.

“Yes, Heinrich,” said Perez. “There is no fourth box from Toplitz. There never has been. We had no proof at all that you were Heinrich Köllman until your carefully recorded confession here tonight. Our only lead was knowing that the surgeon, Bock, controlled the money you'd hidden away from the Nazis. Because he never used it, we guessed you were still alive. And that, as far as we could establish, you were somewhere in Russia. That became my strongest lever. I knew if you thought we had evidence of the Russian atrocities you'd have to come out from wherever you were hiding. Apart from the obvious communication problems, you couldn't ask the Nazis to recover it for you. Because they wanted you as much as we did. And it would have been equally impossible to get an undetected message to the surgeon from Russia. I
knew
you'd have to expose yourself … nobody could have been entrusted with recovering something as important as this … that's why I knew you'd need to take over from Bock.
No one
could get involved but you, could they?”

Perez stopped, looking down.

“The deaths of the commando squad were my only mistake,” he reiterated. “If they hadn't been assassinated, the whole project would have gone off perfectly.”

The recrimination he had been fighting against engulfed Kurnov. He twitched against the manacles holding him and slowly tears began to run down his face. There was no sound as he cried.

“If their deaths served any purpose,” continued Perez, reflectively, “it was to focus world attention far better than we had hoped upon the raid. And the box which Shapiro recovered was seen as absolute proof of our story. All we had to do then was talk about the fourth box we believed contained your records, create a story based here in Berlin, and wait for you to capture yourself.”

There was no way he could have known, Kurnov tried to reassure himself, wanting to control the tears. He couldn't break down in front of them and give them the satisfaction of knowing they'd broken him. He'd made a mistake, certainly. But there was no way he could have avoided it.

“It had to be Berlin, of course,” said Perez, shifting on the desk. “That was most important. Everything had to be connected with memories that would fill your mind and unsettle you. In any other environment, you might have developed doubts and pulled back. But I knew Berlin would smother your mind, like a blanket. All we had to do was pressure Bock, knowing he would be the only man you could approach. And watch for you to get here.”

He smiled across the narrow gap between them. He was very excited by what he had done, Kurnov knew.

“And you came, just like I said you would. Nobody else thought I could manipulate a man's mind as I have manipulated yours. Do you know, Heinrich, there has scarcely been a moment since this began that I couldn't have guessed exactly what you were thinking? I anticipated everything … the trauma of returning to Berlin … the fear of knowing that everyone would be looking for you … the apprehension that the Russians might discover what you were doing … the memories … everything …”

“What are you going to do?” asked Kurnov. If they intended killing him, they would have done it immediately. They wouldn't have waited this long to torture him, either. The detailed account that Perez was giving wasn't the boasting of a man who had succeeded in springing a perfect trap. So what was the purpose?

“That's always the greatest fear, isn't it, Heinrich? Not knowing. It's quite easy to send a man insane, just from apprehension, once fear has been instilled in him, isn't it?”

Kurnov stared up, waiting. Was that it? Were they trying to crush his mind? He snatched at the flicker of hope. He'd be able to resist, he decided. He'd be able to anticipate the pressures and easily counteract them.

“It's very clever,” said Perez, without any conceit. “You see, Heinrich, Israel knows that the world is irritated by her … that it would lose more than it gained by another Eichmann trial … you're the last spectacular
coup
, but even that is only for our own satisfaction. No one else will know we're involved …”

He glanced at his watch.

“… Only two hours ago, Jerusalem announced an abject apology for intruding into Austria and said all inquiries about what was alleged to have been recovered from the lake would be handed over to the appropriate authorities …”

Kurnov felt his mind wavering again and tried desperately to understand what Perez was saying.

“You're in a whirlpool, Heinrich. And there's no possible way you can stop yourself being sucked down.”

“For God's sake …” pleaded Kurnov, confused.

“Listen carefully,” insisted Perez. “Listen to what's going to happen to you …”

Kurnov snapped up, eyes fixed on Perez's face and then regretted the gesture. It had been part of the psychiatry, he realized, and was carefully prepared to determine the degree of mental erosion.

“Like I said, I knew you'd have to come out of hiding. Although we didn't know your identity, we had some clear indications that you had achieved a position of some authority, so there'd be no difficulty in your getting exit permission. I also knew that the Organisation der Ehemaligen S.S. Angehörgen would be desperate to get the evidence, too. Not because it involved you, although that was sufficient reason, but because we were careful to announce it contained evidence against nearly every surviving Nazi …”

He paused, to make a point.

“It was quite easy to test how close the Nazis were. It was obvious that with the facilities they command, they would put an intercept on the Israeli embassy telephone. We experimented. We staged a fictitious meeting between someone from the embassy and the person supposd to have the box. Within two hours, they turned up. So we knew we had them, just like we had you.”

“I don't understand … I still don't understand,” protested Kurnov.

“Last night we baited the real trap,” said Perez. “And they all walked into it, all fifteen of them …”

He coughed, tired by the explanation.

“… They're dead,” he went on. “We've destroyed the Organisation der Ehemaligen S.S. Angehörgen in Berlin … there'll never be another moment when the Nazis in Egypt and South America can feel completely secure, knowing that they have a control setup here.”

“Why are you telling me all this?”

“Oh, it's very important to you, Heinrich,” assured Perez. He stood, moving closer to the tethered man. Kurnov pulled away, expecting to be hit, but then realized Perez was holding up something for him to see. Oh God, he thought, how completely they'd trapped him. There were over a dozen photographs, perfectly taken through an infra-red filter with a fast film. Print followed print, each more damning than that which preceded it. There was Kurnov giving the Nazi salute … standing admiringly before the picture of Hitler and the Nazi flag … even kneeling in a position that looked like homage before one of the busts at the side of the room.

Happy at Kurnov's reaction, Perez pulled back, edging on to the desk again.

“How about this?” he commanded. Kurnov's voice filled the room, the tape recording perfect.

“… The Führer was a great man … Another three years and we would have perfected the germ experiments that would have rid Europe of every Jew, gypsy and black … It was the Führer's own instructions that the freezing experiments should be conducted not only on Jews, but on the Russian prisoners as well … The Russians would shoot me, if they knew … For them to discover I'm the person responsible for Russian deaths in a concentration camp … would drive the fools insane …”

Perez stopped the machine.

“I never guessed you would offer so much for the tape recording, while you believed all the time that you were manipulating the mind of a deranged Nazi,” admitted Perez.

“There's a movie film, of course,” added the Israeli. “We've several copies of everything. But one is in a briefcase that the West German police recovered two hours ago lying beside the body of a very famous man in West Berlin. He's known now as Frieden, but it won't take long to establish that he was a former Standartenführer for the area that covered Buchenwald. He's one of the Nazis we killed. But ballistics examination of the bodies will show the bullets all came from guns still in their hands or around their bodies … with their fingerprints on them … a classic case of Nazis falling out over something very important …”

He paused.

“… And you will be that very important reason, Heinrich. That will be the only conclusion the police will be able to draw. Another gun was taken from the scene. That's got your fingerprints on it, which we carefully took when you were unconscious …”

Kurnov's head began to move again, unable to accept what was being explained to him.

“Think how the police will reconstruct it all, Heinrich. Fifteen men, who will be proven within twenty-four hours all to have been Nazis, all dead after what looks like an internal fight. Inside a basement flat in the apartment-block they uncovered a room, decorated exactly like this, a shrine to Nazism. And inside the briefcase by the body of the obvious leader, there is a record of you bargaining for the evidence that the world has been assured was uncovered from Toplitz … plus the confession of why you had to leave Russia to retrieve it. There's only one possible reconstruction, isn't there?”

He paused, as if he expected Kurnov to give it. Kurnov just moaned.

“The only assumption can be that, with a group of Nazis still loyal, you went tonight to collect the evidence from another group … After the bargaining, there was a fight … a fight from which you and perhaps others escaped … presumably with the evidence you'd come to collect, apparently unaware of the recordings Frieden intended to use for blackmail …”

“Stop,” shouted Kurnov, hysteria very close now. “I don't want to hear any more. It's madness … madness …”

“No, it's not,” rejected Perez. “It's perfectly simple. And there's even better to come …”

Kurnov stared, dully.

“This was as far as we had planned it,” he conceded. “We wanted to create the situation where the West German police, with fingerprints proving you were Heinrich Köllman and a full tape-recorded confession of war crimes, would be hunting you in West Berlin for involvement in murder. But now the Russians have made it even better. They've been aware of what you've been doing here. We know that: I was quite surprised you missed the surveillance. We even had to block them following you tonight. It seems they've drawn the same conclusion as that which we've tried to implant in the minds of the police. Four hours ago, they announced you'd defected. And that you were a Nazi, undoubtedly contacting old associates. What better confirmation will the authorities want?”