there are many who knew their fathers only as they were at home, not as Hitler's men."
Jorgen Lenz grew steadily more impassioned as he spoke. "We grew up in privileged homes. We drove through the Warsaw ghetto in the back of a limousine, not understanding why the children out there looked so sad. We watched our fathers' eyes light up when the Fuhrer himself called to wish the family a merry Christmas. And some of us, as soon as we were old enough to think, learned to loathe our fathers and everything they stood for. To despise them with every fiber of our being."
Lenz's surprisingly youthful face was flushed. "I don't think of my father as my father, you see. He's like someone else to me, a stranger. Shortly after the war ended, he escaped to Argentina, I'm sure you know, smuggled out of Germany with false papers. He left my mother and me penniless, living in a military detention camp." He paused. "So you see, I've never had any doubts or conflicts about the Nazis. Creating this foundation was the very least I could do."
The room was silent for a moment.
"I came to Austria to study medicine," Lenz continued. "In some ways it was a relief to leave Germany. I loved it here-I was born here-and I stayed, practicing medicine, keeping as anonymous as I could. After I met Use, the love of my life, we discussed what we could do with the family money she'd inherited-her father had made a fortune publishing religious books and hymnals-and we decided I'd give up medicine and devote my life to fighting against what my father fought for. Nothing can ever efface the darkness that was the Third Reich, but I've devoted myself to trying, in my own small way, to be a force of human betterment." Lenz's speech seemed a little too polished, too rehearsed, as if he'd delivered it a thousand times before. No doubt he had. Yet there didn't seem to be a false note. Beneath the calm assured ness Lenz was clearly a tormented man.
"You never saw your father again?"
"No. I saw him two or three times before his death. He came to Germany from Argentina to visit. He had a new name, a new identity. But my mother wouldn't see him. I saw him, but I felt nothing for him. He was a stranger to me."
"Your mother simply cut him off?"
"The next time was when she traveled to Argentina for his funeral. She did do that, as if she needed to see that he was dead. The funny thing was, she found she loved the country. It's where she finally retired to."
There was another silence, and then Ben said quietly but firmly, "I must say I'm impressed by all the resources you've devoted to shedding light on your paternal legacy. I wonder, in this connection, if you can tell me about an organization known as Sigma." He studied Lenz's face closely as he spoke the name.
Lenz looked at him for a good long while. Ben could hear his own heart thudding in the silence.
At last Lenz spoke. "You mention Sigma casually, but I think this may be the entire reason you have come here," Lenz said. "Why are you here, Mr. Simon?"
Ben felt a chill. He had let himself be cornered. Now the roads diverged: now he could try to hold on to his false identity, or come out with the truth.
It was time to be direct. To draw out the quarry.
"Mr. Lenz, I'm inviting you to clarify the nature of your involvement with Sigma."
Lenz frowned. "Why are you here, Mr. Simon? Why do you sneak into my house and lie to me?" Lenz smiled strangely, his voice quiet. "You're CIA, Mr. "Simon," is that right?"
"What are you talking about?" Ben said, baffled and frightened.
"Who are you really, Mr. "Simon'? Lenz whispered.
"Nice house," Anna said. "Whose is it?"
She sat in the front seat of a smoke-filled blue BMW, an unmarked police vehicle. Sergeant Walter Heisler was at the wheel, a beefy, hearty looking man in his late thirties, smoking Casablancas. He was cordial enough.
"One of our more, eh, prominent citizens," Heisler said, taking a drag on his cigarette. "Jurgen Lenz."
"Who is he?"
They were both looking out at a handsome villa a hundred yards or so down Adolfstorgasse. Anna saw that most of the parked cars had black license plates with white letters. Heisler explained that you had to pay to maintain such plates; it was the old,