in German. Carol wished she knew the language better. Her verbal memory only worked in English; there was no way she could reproduce conversation in a foreign language. Tadeusz replied in a tone of rebuke, then returned to English. 'I apologize, we shouldn't exclude you from our discussion, but Darko's English isn't as good as mine. He's simply being over-protective. He's always anxious when I step out of my administrative role and get involved in the action. But sometimes I like to see things for myself. So, are you able to come to Rotterdam at the weekend to inspect your goods?'
She nodded. 'I'd like that. And that gives me enough time to have things in place at my end. I need to make sure my people have everything ready.'
'How many can you take?' Tadeusz asked.
'Thirty, to begin with,' she said. It was a figure she'd agreed with Morgan. Not too many for safe passage in a container, not so few that it wouldn't be worth Tadeusz's while. 'Then, after that, twenty a month.'
'That's not so many,' Krasic objected. 'We can supply many more.'
'Maybe so, but that's all I need. If this goes as well as I expect, it's entirely possible that I will expand my operation. A lot depends on my source for the paperwork. I'm getting top-class documentation, and I don't want to risk that by taking the pitcher to the well too often. So, for now, it's twenty bodies a month. Take it or leave it, Mr Krasic.' Carol had no difficulty in sounding tough. She'd spent enough hours in interview rooms with hard cases to have honed her skills in that area. She accompanied her words with a level gaze and unsmiling expression.
'Those numbers will be fine,' Tadeusz said. 'Thirty in the first shipment followed by twenty a month. Yes, we could use an outlet for more than that, but frankly I'd rather ship twenty knowing it wasn't going to backfire than send sixty with no certainties. Now all we have to settle is the financial arrangements.'
Carol smiled. She'd done it. And in record time. She wished she could see Morgan's face when he got her next email. Everything was in place. This weekend in Rotterdam they would finally nab Tadeusz Radecki and bring his empire crashing down around his ears. 'Yes,' she said cheerfully. 'Let's talk money.'
Tony had encountered plenty of clinical psychologists - and cops too - who had built walls between themselves and the distressing experiences their work exposed them to. He couldn't find it in his heart to blame them for imposing that distance. No sane person would seek out the sights they had to see, the verbal torrents of pain and anger they had to hear, the fractured remnants of human beings they had to deal with. However he had promised himself at the start of his clinical career that he would never shy away from empathy, whatever the cost. If the price became too high, he could always do something else for a living. But to lose the capacity to comprehend the pain of others, perpetrators as well as victims, was a kind of dishonesty, he believed.
The sheaf of papers he had brought back from Schloss Hochenstein stretched that credo almost to breaking point. The dispassionate lists of names, diagnoses and so-called treatments conjured up such a vision of hell that he found himself wishing he could assimilate the material with calm scientific objectivity. Instead, he felt harrowed to his very core. Simply being in possession of this information was enough to steal sleep from his nights for a long time to come, he knew only too well.
Dr Wertheimer had been right about the obsessive record keeping of the Nazi medical establishment. There were hundreds of names, spread out across the whole country. Every child had its accompanying set of vifcd statistics - name, age, address, names and occupations of parents. The reason for their hospitalization came next. Most common was 'mental retardation', closely followed by 'physical handicap'. But some of the explanations for removing children from their families were profoundly chilling. 'Congenital laziness.' 'Anti-social behaviour.' 'Racially contaminated.'
What must it have been like for the parents of such children, having to stand by while their offspring were dragged from them, knowing that to protest would be to bring retribution crashing down on their own heads without any prospect of saving their child? They must, he thought, have entered a state of denial that would have destroyed them emotionally and psychologically. No