Back from the Dead by Peter Leonard Read Free Book Online

would Rausch have kept the apartment like this? Even the mother’s bedroom appeared untouched, clothes hanging in the closet, grey hair webbed in brushes and combs in the bathroom as if she had been grooming that very day.
    The apartment, cluttered with old-world bric-a-brac, was an odd contrast to the squared-away neatness of Rausch’s room with its framed military insignias and weapons: pistols, rifles, shotgun, sub-machine gun and assorted combat knives. Rausch, it appeared, was a big German momma’s boy, who, if provoked, might be able to single-handedly take out a platoon.
    Zeller had found cardboard boxes stacked in the closet. He carried them out, and set them on the floor in the salon. The boxes were filled with files on former Nazis, prominent citizens still living in Germany, police officers, politicians, judges. There were profiles and photographs in each of the folders, Zeller wondering why Rausch would have this information – until he dug a little deeper and discovered the boxes were the property of a Jewish organization known as the ZOB that helped German authorities find and prosecute war criminals.
    There was a file on Ernst Hess, profiling his life, Nazi party affiliation, SS number and alleged war crimes, including several photographs of Hess in an SS uniform, posing in front of a pit filled with dead Jews. Similar pictures had been featured in the article about Hess published in Der Spiegel.
    There was an audio cassette in the folder that said Cantor Interview on the label in black marker. He slid the tape in his pocket, took the ZOB file on Hess and walked out of the apartment. He went back to his car and drove to the autobahn.
    Zeller listened to the tape on the way to Wiesbaden. The interview was really a conversation between Lisa Martz of the ZOB and a Holocaust survivor named Joyce Cantor. Joyce, now an American citizen, was visiting Munich for the first time since the war, and bumped into a former Nazi in broad daylight on Maximilianstrasse. The Nazi had been responsible for murdering hundreds of Jews in the forest outside Dachau concentration camp in April, 1943.
    Her story was corroborated by a second survivor, Harry Levin, who had positively identified the Nazi as Ernst Hess. Although no names were mentioned, these eyewitness accounts were the basis of the article about Hess in Der Spiegel. The article appeared October 12th. But Hess had already disappeared a couple weeks earlier. He must have known he was going to be prosecuted.
    Zeller arrived in Wiesbaden at 5:17 p.m. Parked and got out at Kaiser-Friedrich-Platz, saw the neo-Gothic spires of the Marktkirche and made his way through the marketplace. Vendors were starting to close up for the day, breaking down their stalls, packing their goods in vans and trucks.
    He crossed the street, entered a building he hadn’t been to since his time with the Stasi, rode the elevator to the fourth floor and walked to the end of the hall. Zeller knocked on the door.
    “We’re closed,” a voice said from inside.
    He turned the handle, surprised it was unlocked, opened the door and went in. “That’s no way to talk to a former client.”
    Leon Halip, sitting in a leather swivel chair, was studying an image on an angled drafting table, high-beam gooseneck lamp providing illumination. He looked over the top of his eyeglasses at Zeller, massaging swollen fingers, one hand rubbing the other. Next to him a dark-haired teenager was trimming the border around a photograph with an X-Acto blade. Leon Halip at sixty-two looked like an old man, blinking and squinting, trying to focus on him.
    “Former client, uh? So former I do not recognize you.”
    “Friedrich Benz.” It was the name on the forged documents Leon had made for him years earlier when he left the Stasi.
    Leon smiled and nodded. “Ah, yes, Herr Benz. August 1963, if I’m not mistaken. Of course I remember you.”
    “I heard you were no longer in the trade,” Zeller said. “But you appear