The Prize by Irving Wallace Read Free Book Online Page A

horror compound south-west of Warsaw in Poland. For reasons that Stratman would learn later, Emily had been the sole Jewess to survive the transfer to Auschwitz, and, in the waning days of the war, had been sent south to Buchenwald instead. However, Rebecca Stratman had been less fortunate. Several months before the liberation, with her pink slip of paper, she had been carried off to Auschwitz, and had been one of three million naked women, children, men, to suffer death by gas in the camp’s busy extermination chamber.
     
    And so it was young Emily, alone, who had become Max Stratman’s charge and his conscience, and the more so because of what Stratman had learned (from an American Army psychiatrist, who had confiscated concentration camp dossiers intact) of her existence in the female hell that was Ravensbruck. Emily had been emotionally damaged beyond repair, Stratman had learned—in a manner that he could not, to this day, revive in his own mind—and she had needed her uncle not only then, but now, just as Stratman had decided that she needed the security that he must offer her following his death.
     
    After recovering his niece, Stratman had been placed, along with other rescued German scientists, in detention quarters, Farm Hall, an old country house not far from Cambridge in England. Here he had learned of his brother Walther’s lonely death months before in a Siberian labour camp, where he had been interned after his part in Stratman’s escape had been exposed. Today, for Emily, there was only her uncle, Max Stratman knew, only he, himself alone.
     
    The events had occurred long ago. The traumatic results of those past events were ever present.
     
    Only a minute or two had passed, but for Stratman it had been two decades. He turned from the window and met Dr. Ilman’s gaze.
     
    ‘My mind was wandering,’ he said apologetically. ‘Perhaps senility. I forget what you asked me, Fred.’
     
    Dr. Ilman carefully placed his cigar in a tray. His voice was soft. ‘I had only inquired—why it was important to change your life—make more money—for Emily’s future. But you must have your reasons—’
     
    ‘I do.’ He nodded at the coiled graph paper on the physician’s desk. ‘You have not given me the results of the cardiograph, Fred.’
     
    ‘No, I haven’t.’ Dr. Ilman took up the graph paper, unwound it, and passed his eyes over the jagged line. ‘Max, I’m not going to let you take any new job that requires travel, excitement, worry, no matter how much money is in it.’ He looked up. ‘You can still have a long life ahead, and it’s my duty to see that you don’t throw those years away.’
     
    Stratman waved his hand at the graph paper. ‘Don’t give me riddles, Fred. I’m not one of your old women patients who needs hand holding. What’s wrong with me?’
     
    Dr. Ilman straightened in his chair. His tone was now brisk, professional. ‘There have been changes of T waves in this electrocardiogram—inverted T waves—they clearly indicate an early coronary insufficiency. Do you understand?’
     
    ‘I think I understand.’
     
    ‘No panic. Behave, and you’ll have years enough to discover ten more uses for solar energy. But take that new job, and—listen, Max—I wouldn’t give ten to one on your lasting more than a couple of years.’
     
    Stratman sat immobile. ‘I don’t need more than two or three years, Fred,’ he said quietly.
     
    ‘You need a lifetime, like every human being,’ Dr. Ilman said sharply. ‘Believe me, Max, it’s more important to Emily to have you alive than to have an inheritance after you are dead.’
     
    Stratman shook his head. ‘ Verzeihung —Fred, you do not understand, you do not know.’ He pushed himself out of the chair. ‘Thank you. Do you see me again?’
     
    ‘Regularly. Next week to start with.’
     
    Stratman smiled faintly and started for the door. At the door, Dr. Ilman’s voice caught him.
     
    ‘Max, about the job,