Frameshift by Robert J. Sawyer Read Free Book Online Page B

Meir Shamgar, had just overturned the conviction of John Demjanjuk.
    Demjanjuk had now been held prisoner in Israel for five and a half years. His appeal had been delayed three years due to a heart attack suffered by Judge Zvi Tal. And during those three years, the Soviet Union had fallen and formerly secret files had been made public.
    Just as Maria Dudek had said, the man who had operated the gas chamber at Treblinka had been Ivan Marchenko, a Ukrainian who
did
bear a resemblance to Demjanjuk. But the resemblance was only passing.
    Demjanjuk had been born April 3, 1920, while Marchenko had been born February 2, 1911. Demjanjuk had blue eyes while Marchenko’s were brown.
    Marchenko had been married before the outbreak of World War II.
    Demjanjuk’s son-in-law, Ed Nishnic, had gone to Russia and tracked down Marchenko’s family in Seryovka, a village in the district of Dnepropetrovsk. The family had not seen Marchenko since he’d enlisted in the Red Army in July 1941. Marchenko’s abandoned wife had died only a month before Nishnic’s visit, and his daughter broke down and cried upon learning of the horrors her long-missing father had perpetrated at Treblinka. “It’s good,” she was reported to have said between sobs, “that mother died not knowing.”
    When those words had been relayed to him, Avi’s heart had jumped. It was the same sentiment he’d felt upon learning that Ivan had forced his own father to rape a little girl.
    The KGB files contained a sworn statement from Nikolai Shelaiev, the other gas-chamber operator at Treblinka, the one who had been, quite literally, the lesser of two evils. Shelaiev had been captured by the Soviets in 1950, and tried and executed as a war criminal in 1952. His deposition contained the last recorded sighting by anyone anywhere of Ivan Marchenko, coming out of a brothel in Fiume in March 1945. He had told Nikolai he had no intention of returning home to his family.
    Even before Maria Dudek had spoken to Mike Wallace, even before Demjanjuk was stripped of his U.S. citizenship, Avi had known that the last name used by Ivan the Terrible while at Treblinka might indeed have been Marchenko. But that was of no significance, Avi had assured himself: the name Marchenko was intimately linked to Demjanjuk, anyway. In a form Demjanjuk had filled out in 1948 to claim refugee status, he had given it as his mother’s maiden name.
    But before the first trial, the marriage license of Demjanjuk’s parents, dated 24 January 1910, had come to light. It proved his mother’s maiden name wasn’t Marchenko at all; rather, it was Tabachuk. When Avi had questioned Demjanjuk about why he’d put “Marchenko” on the form, Demjanjuk had claimed he’d forgotten his mother’s real maiden name and, considering the matter of no consequence, had simply inserted a common Ukrainian surname to complete the paperwork.
    Right, Avi had thought. Sure.
    But now it seemed it had been the truth. John Demjanjuk was not Ivan…
    … and Avi Meyer and the rest of the OSI had come within inches of being responsible for the execution of an innocent man.
    Avi needed to relax, to get his mind off all this.
    He walked across his living room to the cabinet in which he kept his videotapes.
Brighton Beach Memoirs
always cheered him up, and
A
    Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum
, and…
    Without thinking it through, he pulled out a two-tape set.
    Judgment at Nuremberg.
    Hardly lightweight but, at three hours, it would keep his mind occupied until it was time to go to bed.
    Avi put the first tape in his VCR and, while the stirring overture played, popped some Orville Redenbacher’s in the microwave.
    The movie played on. He drank three beers.
    The tables had been turned at Nuremberg: Burt Lancaster played Ernst Janning, one of four German judges on trial. It seemed like a small, supporting role, until Janning took the stand in the movie’s final half hour…
    The case against Janning hinged on the matter of