that they were just as happy now to do business with America? When overzealous officials at Nuremberg had a few of them convicted, your John J. McCloy, the American High Commissioner, had their sentences commuted. The 'excesses' of fascism were regrettable, but industrialists had to look after each other, right?"
Once again, he could almost detect Peter's passionate voice in her re countings Dully, he said, "I still have a hard time getting my mind around it financial partnerships when the two sides were at war?"
"Things aren't always as they seem. Hitler's senior-most intelligence officer, Reinhard Gehlen, had already begun planning his own surrender in 1944. The high command knew which way the wind was blowing, they knew Hitler was mad, irrational. So they bartered. They microfilmed their files on the USSR." buried them in watertight drums in the mountain meadows of the Alps, not a hundred miles from here, and presented themselves to the American Counterintelligence Corps to make a deal. After the war, you Americans put Gehlen in charge of the "South German Industrial Development Organization." "
Ben shook his head blearily. "It sounds like you both got pretty immersed in this stuff. And it sounds like I'm way out of my depths." He knocked back the rest of the brandy.
"Yes, I suppose we did get rather deep into all of this. We had to. I remember something Peter told me. He said the real question isn't where they are. It's where they aren't. That the real question isn't who can't be trusted, but who can be. Once it sounded like paranoia."
"But no longer."
"No," Liesl agreed, her voice trembling slightly. "And now they have arrayed their forces against you, through both official and unofficial channels." She hesitated. "There is something else I must give you."
Once more, she disappeared into the bedroom, and then came back with a plain cardboard box, the sort a dry cleaner might package a shirt in. She opened it on the rough-hewn table in front of them. Papers.
Laminated ID cards. Passports. The folding currency of modern bureaucracy.
"They were Peter's," Liesl said. "The fruits of four years in hiding."
Ben's fingers quickly sorted through the identity papers as if they were playing cards. Three different names, all appended to the same face. Peter's face. And, for all practical intents, his own. "
"Robert Simon." Smart. There must be thousands of people with that name in North America. "Michael Johnson." Likewise. "John Freedman." These look like good work, professional work, if I'm any judge."
"Peter was a perfectionist," Liesl said. "I'm sure they are flawless."
Ben continued to go through the documents and saw that the passports came with matching credit cards. In addition, there were documents for "Paula Simon" and other spousal identities: if Robert Simon needed to travel with his "wife," he'd be prepared. Ben marveled, but his admiration was shadowed by a deep sadness. Peter's precautions were meticulous, obsessive, exhaustive and yet they could not save him.
"I've got to ask, Liesl: Can we be sure that Peter's pursuers the Sigma group or whoever they are aren't on to them? Any of these could be flagged."
"Possibilities are not likelihoods."
"When was the last time he used "Robert Simon'? And under what circumstances?"
Liesl closed her eyes in concentration, retrieving the details with remarkable precision. After twenty minutes, Ben had satisfied himself that at least two of Peter's aliases, unused in the last twenty-four months, were unlikely to have been detected. He tucked the papers into the capacious inside pockets of his leather coat.
He placed a hand on Liesl's and looked into her clear blue eyes. "Thank you, Liesl," he said. What an astonishing woman she was, he thought once more, and how lucky his brother was to have found her.
"The shoulder wound will scab over and heal in a matter of days," she said. "You will find it considerably harder to shed your identity, though these documents will help."
Liesl opened a bottle of red wine and poured each of them a glass. The wine was excellent, deep and rich and tannic, and Ben soon began to relax.
For a few moments the two of them silently watched the fire. Ben thought: If Peter had hidden the document here, where could it be? And if not here, where? He'd said it was hidden away safely. Had he left it with Matthias Deschner? But that made no sense: Why would he go to such lengths to open a bank account because of the vault that came with it, and then not put the incorporation document