back, a pistol casually in his right hand, a pistol with a large cylinder attached to the barrel. A silencer.
"Why do you think your husband is alive, Frau de
Vries?" asked the Nazi in German.
"More to the point, if by an impossible stretch of the imagination he is, why should we know anything about him? Really, my good woman, he was executed by the Stasi, that's common knowledge."
"It may be common knowledge, but it's a lie. If you live with a man for eight years, you know his voice when you hear it, no matter how garbled or incoherent."
"That's fascinating. You heard his voice?"
"Twice."
"The Stasi files say otherwise, most graphically, I might add."
"That's the problem," said Karin icily.
"It was too graphic.
in in "You:r,e not making sense."
"Even the most vicious of the Gestapo did not describe detail the torture and execution of prisoners. It wasn't their interest."
"That was before my time."
"Mine also, but there are records. Perhaps you should read them."
"I don't need instructions from you, madame.. .. These voices, how did you hear them?"
"How else? The telephone, of course."
"The telephone? He called you?"
"Not using his name, but with a diatribe of invective I was subjected to frequently during the last year of our marriage, before he was presumably executed by the Stasi."
"Of course you challenged this person on the telephone, did you not?"
"That only made his screams become more manic. My husband's a very sick man, Herr Nazi."
"I take the appellation as a compliment," said the neo, grinning and twirling the pistol in his hand.
"Why do you say your husband's sick, or, to put it another way, why do you tell me?"
"Because I think he's one of you."
"One of us?" asked the German incredulously. "
"Freddie de V," the Amsterdam provocateur, the consummate enemy of the movement? Forgive me, Frau de Vries, but now you've lost your senses! How could such a thing happen?"
"He fell in love with hate, and you people are the personification of hatred."
"You're beyond me."
"I'm beyond myself, for I'm no psychologist, but I know I'm right.
His sense of hate had nowhere else to go, but he couldn't live without it. You did something to him -as to what, I have a theory, but obviously no evidence. You channeled him, channeled his hatred, turning him against everything he believed in-"
"I've heard enough of this foolishness. You are truly a madwoman!"
"No, I'm quite sane. I even think I know how you did it."
"Did what?"
"Turned him against his friends, your enemies."
"And just how did we perform this miracle?"
"You made him dependent on you. During the final months, his mood swings became more extreme.. .. He was away much of the time, as I was, but when we were together, he was another man, depressed one minute, violent the next. There were days when he was like a child, a little boy who wanted a toy so badly that when he didn't get it, he ran out of the apartment and was gone for hours.
Then he'd come back, contrite, begging forgiveness for his outbursts."
"Madame," cried the neo, "I haven't the slightest idea what you're talking about!"
"Drugs, Herr Nazi, I'm talking about drugs. I believe you supply Frederik with narcotics, that's why he's dependent on you. No doubt you're holding him in a mountain retreat somewhere, feeding his habit or habits, extracting information from him with every move that's made against you. He is a treasure house of secrets, even secrets he's forgotten."
"You are insane. If we had such a man, there are other drugs that could produce those secrets in a matter of minutes Why should we spend time and money prolonging his life?"
"Because the Amytals and the scopolamine derivatives cannot produce secrets that are no longer remembered."
"So what good is such a source?"
"Situations change, circumstances vary. You run into an obstacle, be it a man or a strategy, you face him with it, and memories come back. Identities can be revealed, once familiar tactics explained."
"My God, you've read too much fiction."
"Our world-yours, and not too long ago, mine-is largely based on fictitious hypotheticals."
"Enough! You're too academic for me.. .. However, a question, Frau de Vries. Given a fictitious hypothetical, as you call it, say you're correct and we have your husband under the conditions you describe. Why do you want to find him? Do you seek a reunion?"
"That is the last thing I wish for, Nazi."
"Then why?"
"You could say I want to satisfy my morbid curiosity. What makes a man become another human being from the one you knew? How can