Eagles fly, p.15
Eagles Fly, page 15
For a moment his father seemed puzzled, but then his eyes narrowed. He glanced again at the sketch and then back up at his son. “You’re saying that Jim Locke is going to try to impersonate Stew Engstrom?”
Kelsey shook his head. “I think Locke has killed the vice president and is the man they pulled out of Mt. McKinley Park.”
For a moment the elder Kelsey held his breath, but then he laughed out loud, thumping his right fist lightly on the table.
Kelsey felt like a five-year-old boy caught with his hand in the cookie jar. Yet he could not shake the persistent feeling about Engstrom, or rather Locke, that nagged at his gut.
When his father had calmed himself sufficiently to speak, he leaned forward. “You can’t be serious, Richard.”
“I am, Father,” Kelsey said. “And it’s not only the face. Locke’s build is the same as Engstrom’s, and when he came to us, his fingertips were burned with acid. Engstrom’s fingertips were burned in a campfire. It’s too much of a coincidence.”
“No, Richard, it’s just too fantastic. Even if you fixed Locke so he looked exactly like Engstrom, he could never get away with the impersonation. The thousand and one trivial day-to-day details would be impossible to act out.”
“Since Engstrom’s wife died a couple of years ago, there has been no one intimately close with him. It could be done.”
“How about his secretaries, the senators and congressmen he meets with every day, the journalists?” the old man said. He shook his head. “Locke is a mechanical engineer, not an expert in politics or government. He could not pull it off.”
Something Kelsey had been trying to remember suddenly popped into his mind. “The day after Locke’s first operation, I went to his room to see him. As I was leaving I noticed a few books he had been reading lying on the stand by his bed. They were about the presidency and American government. Strange reading, wouldn’t you say, for a mechanical engineer from London?”
“I’ll tell you what, Richard,” his father said, pushing away from the table. “I’m going to Washington tonight, as a matter of fact, to attend a cocktail party at which Stew Engstrom is going to be the guest of honor.”
Kelsey stood up, and the two of them went across the room to the door.
“I know Stew personally. I’ve known him for ten years. We’ve done some business together. I’ll take a close look at him tonight. Ask him a couple of questions about business dealings we’ve had. If he is an imposter, there would be no way for him to know details such as those.”
They stopped at the door and faced each other. Once again Kelsey felt a wave of love for his father. Once when he was a young boy, new in the neighborhood, he had shouted at the other children that his father could do anything. Now as an adult he could almost believe that was true.
“Thanks, Father. I’m being stupid about it, I know, but I just can’t shake the feeling.”
His father smiled. “I’ll indulge your little fantasy, Doctor, but you’re on a wild-goose chase.”
“Marion said the same thing.”
His father looked sharply at him. “You’ve dragged Marion into this nonsense?”
“Why not?”
The elder Kelsey smiled and shook his head. “When you were twenty I thought you had finally grown up. Then when you turned thirty and received your medical degree, I thought you had become a mature adult. But I can see that you’re still in need of a firm hand.”
Kelsey squeezed his father’s shoulder affectionately. “My dad can do anything,” he said, and they both laughed and left the dining room.
At the elevator the expression on his father’s face turned serious. “I wouldn’t mention this to anyone else, Richard. They might lock you up in an asylum.”
“I’ll keep it to myself,” Kelsey said. The elevator doors slid open. “Call me when you get back from Washington. I want to know what you think.”
“I’ll call you from Washington first thing in the morning,” the old man said, and Kelsey got on the elevator.
It was a quarter after one when Kelsey got back to the Institute. Marion was waiting for him with a message from O’Hare Airport.
“Carlson’s plane has been delayed by weather, and he may be a little late,” she said.
“Good,” Kelsey said over his shoulder as he went into his office with Marion right behind him.
He went behind his desk and sat down, then looked up at his wife waiting expectantly.
“Well?” she said. “What did he say?”
Kelsey smiled. “He called it a wild-goose chase, just like you did.”
Marion came a little closer to the desk. “I don’t know if I believe that any longer,” she said. “You’ve almost got me believing in fairy tales.”
“We’ll know for sure tomorrow morning,” he said.
“What do you mean?”
“Dad is leaving for Washington this afternoon to attend a cocktail party this evening at which Stewart Engstrom will be the guest of honor.”
“Does your father know him?”
Kelsey nodded. “Said they had business dealings a few years ago. He’s going to ask Engstrom a couple of questions about something only the real Engstrom knows. He’ll telephone me first thing in the morning.”
Marion seemed relieved. “Good,” she said. “Then we can get back to normal.”
“Have I been that bad?”
“I wouldn’t call it an obsession. Yet. But unless you get some kind of a positive answer from somewhere, it could become a crusade.”
Kelsey looked at his watch. “We still have a half hour or so before Carlson and his delegation gets here. There’s something I want you to do for me.”
“I’ve already done it,” Marion said. “Do you want me to put the call through?”
Kelsey looked at his wife in open amazement. “Farley Chemicals, London?”
Marion nodded. “Robert Farley, president. I got the phone number this morning. He lives in London.”
“I’ll call him at his office.”
“It’s a little after seven in the evening there. I thought you might be phoning him when you got back from lunch, so I got his home number as well,” Marion said. She came around the desk, picked up the phone, and a moment later the Institute’s telephone receptionist was on the line. “Ruth, I want you to put through that call I spoke to you about earlier this morning.”
She turned away from the phone and looked down at her husband. “Close your mouth, sweetheart,” she said. “You look dumb with it hanging open.”
It took several minutes for the overseas call to go through, and during that time Kelsey tried to organize his thoughts. One thing was certain, he told himself, and that was, he was not going to tell Farley anything other than the fact that as Locke’s doctor, he wanted to talk with the man.
Marion was speaking into the phone again. “Mr. Robert Farley, president of Farley Chemicals?” she said. “I have Dr. Richard Kelsey calling from the United States. One moment please,” she said, and handed the phone to her husband.
“Mr. Farley, I’m Dr. Richard Kelsey. I’m calling from Chicago.”
“Yes, Dr. Kelsey, what can I do for you this evening?” the man said. His voice was rough with a heavy English accent. But there was something else in his speech that made Kelsey wonder if English was the man’s native tongue.
“I’m trying to locate a Mr. James Locke, who was, or is, an engineer working for you. It was to my clinic in Lake Geneva that he came twelve months ago after his accident.”
There was a silence on the line except for the occasional hiss and pop of the transatlantic connection.
“Mr. Farley?” Kelsey spoke into the phone.
“Yes, Doctor, I’m still here, but I’m afraid you’ve made some sort of mistake.”
“Mistake?” Kelsey said. Marion was standing beside him, and he looked up at her.
“Yes. You see, we did have a fellow by the name of Jim Locke working here. Damned fine engineer, too. But he was killed in a motoring accident fourteen months ago.”
“Are you certain?” Kelsey said, confused. “I mean about when it happened.”
“One tends to be rather sure about details like that. So you see, Dr. Kelsey, you must have made a mistake. You could not have worked on our poor Jim Locke.”
“I see,” Kelsey mumbled. “You don’t happen to know if there is another Farley Chemicals in or around the London area?”
“I don’t believe so,” the man said.
“Thank you for your help,” Kelsey said, and he hung up the phone.
“What about a mistake?” Marion started to say when the telephone receptionist buzzed and Kelsey picked up the phone again.
“Yes,” he said.
“Dr. Carlson has arrived, and your father is holding on line two.”
“All right, Ruth. Tell Dr. Carlson I’ll be right with him. I’ll take my father’s call first.”
“Yes, sir,” the woman said.
Kelsey’s mind was still reeling from his talk with Farley when he punched the button for line two and his father came on.
“Our discussion this morning bothered me, Richard,” the old man said without preamble. “So I phoned Stew Engstrom a few minutes after you left. We talked for half an hour or so, and I thought I’d better call you.”
Kelsey sat forward. “Yes?”
“He’s Stew Engstrom. There’s no doubt in my mind. As a matter of fact, as we were talking he came up with a comment I had made five or six years ago that I had completely forgotten about. I promised that if he ever got elected as vice president, I’d donate five thousand dollars to his favorite charity. Well, he just reminded me. So your little flight of fancy has cost me plenty.”
Kelsey had barely heard the last part. “Are you certain, Father? Absolutely certain that the man you spoke with is Stewart Engstrom?”
“Absolutely, Richard,” the old man said. “Now you can stop your nonsense.”
For an instant Kelsey debated whether or not he should tell his father about his conversation with Farley. But something made him hold back. “You’re probably right,” he mumbled.
“Of course I am,” the old man said. “And now I’ve got my board meeting in a few minutes and you’ve got the AMA, so I’ll let you go.”
“Thanks, Father,” Kelsey said, and hung up the phone. None of this made any sense, and for the moment he completely blocked the waiting AMA delegation out of his mind. He took the sketch of Locke out of his breast pocket and spread it out on the desk in front of him.
Marion was hovering over him, deep concern on her face. “Do you mind telling me what’s going on, Richard?”
He looked up at her. “Farley said the James Locke who worked for him was killed in a car accident fourteen months ago. That’s the same time he was with us in Lake Geneva. And my father telephoned Stew Engstrom and said he’s the real McCoy.”
Marion said nothing, and Kelsey gazed again at the sketch. There was only one way to make absolutely certain that no mistake has been made, he told himself. Only one way.
He picked up the phone again and the receptionist came on.
“Dr. Carlson is getting a little impatient, sir,” she said, flustered.
“I don’t care,” Kelsey said. “Call O’Hare and get me a seat on the next plane for Washington, D.C. Call me as soon as you’ve confirmed it.”
“Yes, sir,” the woman said, even more flustered.
Marion snatched the phone from her husband. “Make that two seats, Ruth, and tell Dr. Carlson that I’ll be right out.”
“You’re not coming with me,” Kelsey said as she hung up the phone.
“Oh yes I am, Doctor. Just try and stop me.”
19
He had finally come to the decision he had been putting off for the past six months. It was a decision that he knew in his gut was his only choice. And yet he had avoided it all this time.
Like Asheim and so many others in Israel, Goldmann was a loner. His wife had been killed in Auschwitz, and he never had the time or the interest to remarry. Instead he had thrown himself body and soul into the creation of Israel and then Nazi hunting.
It was one of the reasons, he supposed, that he understood Asheim so well. The man had been very much like himself: a loner except for his children, who had thrown himself full tilt into his work.
He stopped his packing for a moment, went to the living room window, and looked out at the city of Tel Aviv, white, clean, and new in the bright fall sunlight.
They had come a long way since their war of independence in 1949. He had been a part of the tremendous changes sweeping the land. But then he had dropped out, creating the Nazi-hunting C-VII section, and plunging himself into his work.
From 1950 until 1960, Goldmann’s chief target was Adolf Eichmann, the mastermind and architect of the Nazi’s Final Solution.
He was traced to Argentina, where he was kidnapped and returned to Israel to stand trial. It was a triumph. But a short-lived one. Shortly after Eichmann’s execution in 1962, the Israeli government’s attitude toward escaped Nazi war criminals softened, and Goldmann’s C-VII section suffered.
But he did not quit his work then, nor would he now.
He turned from the window and went back into his bedroom, where he resumed packing his one suitcase and small attaché case.
Today was his birthday. He was sixty-four, and he felt every year of it. Time was running out for him.
He was young by comparison to the Odessa leadership, men who were in their early and mid-seventies. Soon they would all be dead, and at long last it would be finished. And yet the man they had moved by air ambulance from Buenos Aires to London, and from there to the clinic in Wisconsin, had to be the key. There was no doubt in Goldmann’s mind that the Odessa leadership was struggling to perpetuate itself.
It was the reason Benjamin had been murdered. It was the reason Asheim and the others had been killed. And it was one of the reasons Goldmann was going to Buenos Aires.
“We have decided to deactivate C-Seven, David,” his superior Colonel Joseph Yesodat told him yesterday morning after he had returned from Ze’Elim.
“Why the sudden change?” he asked softly.
Yesodat shook his head sadly. “We’ve made peace with the Egyptians, but our troubles with the Arab world aren’t over. No one cares these days about the Nazis. It’s been too long.”
“We struggled two thousand years against one oppressor. Are we going to give up against another after only thirty-five years?”
“It’s no use, my old friend. Your job is finished.”
“It will never be finished until all of them have been brought to justice,” Goldmann said with much feeling.
“Bring to justice a small group of old men?” Yesodat shook his head again. “We weathered a storm of negative world opinion over Eichmann, the worst of the lot. What do you suppose would happen these days?”
“There is the other thing,” Goldmann said. “This business about an Odessa-trained imposter?”
Goldmann nodded.
“First,” Yesodat said, ticking off points on his fingers, “I’m not as certain as you that such an organization as Odessa even exists. Second, we know nothing about the man the Odessa supposedly trained. Third, we know nothing except the ramblings of a dying old man about the supposed mission the Odessa is mounting. And fourth, even if Odessa did train this man to be an imposter, who could he impersonate to do us any harm?”
“I can understand your skepticism, but answer one question for me. Why have four of our people been murdered?”
“I don’t know. Perhaps there is some validity to the idea of an Odessa. Perhaps Major Asheim and the others were murdered for no other reason than the Germans are still fighting the war; they still hate the Jews; they don’t like us poking around in their business.”
“An interesting view,” Goldmann said. “But not quite consistent with your policy of hands off.”
Yesodat slammed his open palm on the desktop. “They say a Jew can argue the spots off a leopard, but until this moment I never believed it! David, for God’s sake, leave it alone! I didn’t make this policy. I am merely following orders. This came from the top.”
“Perhaps we should check a little more closely into Begin’s and Dayan’s war records.”
Yesodat turned white. “I know you don’t mean that, and I’ll pretend you didn’t say it.”
Goldmann hung his head. “Of course I didn’t mean it.” He looked up, anguish on his face. “What am I supposed to do after Auschwitz, and then thirty-five years of my life devoted to this project?”
“Retire.”
The single word was like a slap in the face to Goldmann. “What?” he said incredulously.
“Retire from the secret service. Ben Abel was favorably impressed with you yesterday. ‘A compassionate man,’ he called you. He wants to step down. You would be a logical choice to run the kibbutz,” Yesodat said, and his voice softened. “Asheim’s daughters and grandchildren are there. I know you could become close. They need a father, and you need a family.”
Goldmann finished packing, and he snapped the suitcase and attaché case shut, then set them by the front door. He went to the window and looked again out over the city he loved so well.
He had asked for thirty days leave to think over his decision. And Yesodat had been glad to give it to him, Goldmann supposed, for no other reason than to get the former C-VII chief out of the way.
His two assistants had been transferred to other duties, his offices were closed, and the records of thirty-five years of work were already in archives storage, where they would gather dust.
“No matter what your decision,” Yesodat had said yesterday in parting, “C-Seven is no more. We are done hunting Nazis.”
Almost the same words, he thought, that Deborah had spoken to him the day before at Ze’Elim.
“Our father is dead, so it is over now,” she had said, her voice maddeningly calm and devoid of emotion.
He had not known exactly how she would take the news of her father’s death, but the reaction, or rather lack of reaction, she showed had completely stunned him.
