The Bourne Sanction

Bourne read them all. The aftermath of despair, atrocities, and death hung in these rooms, unable to escape. There was a different kind of silence here than the one on the Leitenberg. He was aware of the soft scuff of shoe soles, the whisper of sneakers as tourists dragged themselves from one exhibit to another. It was as if the accumulated inhumanity stifled the ability to speak, or perhaps it was that words-any words-were both inadequate and superfluous.

They moved slowly down the room. He could see Petra’s lips move as she read letter after letter. Near the end of the wall, one caught his eye, quickened his pulse. A sheet of paper, obviously stationery, contained a handwritten text complaining that the author had developed what he claimed was a gas far more effective than Zyklon-B, but that no one at Dachau administration had seen fit to answer him. Possibly that was because the gas was never used at Dachau. However, what interested Bourne far more was that the stationery was imprinted with the wheel of three horses’ heads joined in the center by the SS death’s head.

Petra came up beside him, now her brows knitted together in a frown. “That’s damn familiar.”

He turned to her. “What do you mean?”

“There was someone I used to know-Old Pelz. He said he lived in town, but I think he was homeless. He’d come down to the Dachau air raid shelter to sleep, especially in winter.” She pushed a stray lock of hair behind one ear. “He used to babble all the time, you know how crazy people do, as if he was talking to someone else. I remember him showing me a patch with that same insignia. He was talking about something called the Black Legion.”

Bourne’s pulse began to pound. “What did he say?”

She shrugged.

“You hate the Nazis so much,” he said, “I wonder if you know that some things they gave birth to still exist.”

“Yeah, sure, like the skinheads.”

He pointed at the insignia. “The Black Legion still exists, it’s still a danger, even more so than when Old Pelz knew it.”

Petra shook her head. “He talked on and on. I never knew whether he was speaking to me or to himself.”

“Can you take me to him?”

“Sure, but who knows whether he’s still alive. He drank like a fish.”

Ten minutes later Petra drove down Augsburgerstrasse, heading for the foot of a hill known as Karlsburg. “Fucking ironic,” she said bitterly, “that the one place I despise the most is now the safest place for me.”

She pulled into the lot outside the St. Jakob parish church. Its octagonal baroque tower could be seen throughout the town. Next door was Hцrhammer’s department store. “You see there at the side of Hцrhammer’s,” she said as they clambered out of the car, “those steps lead down to the huge air raid bunker built into the hill, but you can’t get in that way.”

Leading him up the steps into St. Jakob, she led him across the Renaissance interior, past the choir. Adjacent to the sacristy was an unobtrusive dark wooden door, behind which lay a flight of stone stairs curving down to the crypt, which was surprisingly small, considering the size of the church above it.

But as Petra quickly showed him, there was a reason for the size: Beyond it lay a labyrinth of rooms and corridors.

“The bunker,” she said, flicking on a string of bare lightbulbs affixed to the stone wall on their right. “Here is where my grandparents fled when your country bombed the shit out of the unofficial capital of the Third Reich.” She was speaking of Munich, but Dachau was close enough to feel the brunt of the American air force raids.

“If you hate your country so much,” Bourne said, “why don’t you leave?”

“Because,” Petra said, “I also love it. It’s the mystery of being German-proud but self-hating.” She shrugged. “What can you do? You play the hand fate deals you.”

Bourne knew how that felt. He looked around. “You’re familiar with this place?”

She sighed heavily, as if her fury had left her spent. “When I was a child my parents took me to Sunday Mass every week. They’re God-fearing people. What a joke! Didn’t God turn his face away from this place years ago?

“Anyway, one Sunday I was so bored I snuck away. In those days, I was obsessed with death. Can you blame me? I grew up with the stench of it in my nostrils.” She looked up at him. “Can you believe that I’m the only one I know who ever visited the memorial? Do you think my parents ever did? My brothers, my aunts and uncles, my classmates? Please! They don’t even want to admit it exists.”

Seemingly weary again. “So I came down here to commune with the dead, but I didn’t see enough of them, so I pushed on and what did I find? Dachau’s bunker.”

She put her hand on the wall, moved it along the rough-cut stone as caressingly as if it were a lover’s flank. “This became my place, my own private world. I was only happy underground, in the company of the one hundred and ninety-three thousand dead. I felt them. I believed that the soul of each and every one of them was trapped here. It was so unfair, I thought. I spent my time trying to figure out how to free them.”

“I think the only way to do that,” Bourne said, “is to free yourself.”

She gestured. “Old Pelz’s crash pad is this way.”

As they picked their way along a tu

After a short time, the tu

“It’s the third room on the left,” Petra said.

But before they reached it, the doorway was filled with a hulking body topped by a head like a bowling ball with hair standing up like the quills of a porcupine. Old Pelz’s mad eyes looked them over.

“Who goes there?” His voice was as thick a fog.

“It’s me, Herr Pelz. Petra Eichen.”

But Old Pelz was looking in horror at the gun on her hip. “The fuck it is!” Hefting a shotgun, he yelled, “Nazi sympathizers!” and fired.

Thirty-Four

SORAYA ENTERED The Glass Slipper behind Kiki and ahead of Deron. Kiki had called ahead, and no sooner were they all inside than the owner, Drew Davis, came waddling over like Scrooge McDuck. He was a grizzled old man with white hair that stood on end as if it were shocked to see he was still alive. He had an animated face with mischievous eyes, a nose like a wad of chewed-up gum, and a broad smile honed to perfection on TV ops and stumping for local politicos, as well as his good works throughout the poorer neighborhoods of the district. But he possessed a warmth that was genuine. He had a way of looking at you when you spoke with him that made you feel he was listening to you alone.

He embraced Kiki while she kissed him on both cheeks and called him “Papa.” Later, after the introductions, when they were seated at a prime table that Drew Davis had reserved for them, after the champagne and goodies had been served, Kiki explained her relationship with him.

“When I was a little girl, our tribe was swept by a drought so severe that many of the elderly and newborn grew sick and died. After a time, a small group of white people arrived to help us. They told us they were from an organization that would send us money each month, after they’d set up their program in our village. They had brought water, but of course there wasn’t enough.

“After they left, thinking of broken promises, we fell into despair, but true to their word water came, then the rains came until we didn’t need their water anymore, but they never left. Their money went for medicines and schooling. Every month I, along with all the other children, got letters from our sponsor-the person sending the money.