I wasn’t sure I wanted to know why Maria had been to Bernstein’s house before; but I had more important questions to ask as I tooled south on Highway 240, heading back toward the District of Columbia. At after four in the morning, traffic was light, and an alternate route was a good idea-it would not have been an easy tail job.
“Is Bernstein married?” I asked her.
“He was. He lost his wife in the war.”
I smirked. “What, Dresden?”
“Actually … yes. They didn’t have any children. He lives alone.”
“I’m liking this. I do hope you’re not lying. Any guard dogs? Alarms?”
“I’m not lying, and there’s no dog, no alarm.”
“Good. Now describe the neighborhood, and the layout of the house-quickly but in detail.”
She did, interrupting only to guide me through the shade-tree-rich suburban streets of the Bethesda area. Soon we’d turned off Fairfield Drive onto a quiet lane where a wooded area had been developed for housing. In the yellow glow of streetlamps sat half a dozen interchangeable new homes on either side, those anonymous boxy white cookie-cutter clapboard dream houses that were popping up these days like toadstools in every spare patch of suburban real estate. Their slightly sloping, generous lawns were golf-green immaculate, their yards stingily dotted with baby trees, while behind them loomed father forest, part of which they’d displaced.
Bernstein’s house, rather isolated on the cul-de-sac, although the smallest house in the little development, was no exception; like all of these homes, it had an attached two-car garage, and we were half a block away from the darkened house when he drove the Caddy up inside. Maria touched my arm, signaling me to stop and wait, and I did, and we watched him pull down the garage door. Soon a light switched on inside the house, creating a warm glow behind the drawn curtains of the living room.
Cutting the lights well before I got there, I guided the Studebaker up the gentle slope of the driveway, gliding to a stop.
“What now?” Maria whispered.
“Now,” I said, withdrawing the nine-millimeter from under my arm, “you drop in on the doc.”
She gave me a sharp look. “What’s my excuse for being here?”
“Don’t worry about it,” I said. “It’s not gonna get that far.”
She clutched my sleeve again. “Nathan … don’t underestimate this man. He … he’s capable of terrible things.”
“Concentration-camp-type things, you mean? Or is he just a strict boss?”
Then we were standing on his front stoop, a few cement steps up from the lawn, and the nurse was ringing the doctor’s bell and I was standing with my back to the house, against the outer wall, just to the right of the door, covering up the street numbers and mail slot. The nine-millimeter, in my right hand, was tucked behind me.
The door opened, and Bernstein, in that clipped precise middle-European-accented English, said, “Why, Maria-what are you doing here at this late-”
That was all he got out before I bulled my way in, grabbing onto Maria’s arm with my left hand, yanking her along-not really trusting her, after all-and sticking the nose of the automatic, clutched in my right fist, into the bastard’s neck.
“Shut the door, Maria,” I said, “then come around where I can see you.”
She shut the door and scurried into view.
“I see you don’t keep shabbes, Doc,” I said, digging the snout of the nine-millimeter into his neck, dimpling it; he was lifting his chin, looking down at me with unblinking blue-gray eyes. “Electric lights, driving after sundown-but then, that’s right, you’re not Orthodox, are you?”
“Mr. Heller, what in-”
“That’s all right, Doc. Neither am I.”
I withdrew the gun from his neck, gave him a push-not a shove, I’m no sadist-to back him off from me, a ways; he put his hands up, without being asked, and that pale well-chiseled face of his had gone white as milk, only his expression was curdled. Keeping the automatic trained on my reluctant host, I took the place in, the living room, anyway-checking to see if Maria had been truthful about the layout. To the left, an archway leading (she’d said) to the bedrooms and a TV room; just behind and to the right of Bernstein, an archway into the kitchen. So far, it seemed, she’d played it straight.
We were in the largest room in the house-cream-color plaster walls and a Chinese blue pile carpet, and a modern living-room suite with medium-blue boucle overstuffed sofa, matching easy chair and blond modern occasional pieces. Still, the place was underfurnished-Bernstein was a bachelor, after all-and the living room in particular didn’t look lived in, like a display room in a furniture store, only a little less homey. Nothing of the person living here showed.
“Nice digs, Doc-you’re really enjoying the all-American good life, great job, Cadillac, nice new house … that wonderful postwar world they promised us fighting men, looks like you wound up with it. Congratulations.”
Bernstein’s voice was calm, soothing; he patted the air with his upraised palms. “Mr. Heller-you’ve obviously had a relapse of your battle neurosis. You’ve fixated upon me for some reason, and I would suggest-”
“If I even suspect you’re layin’ a posthypnotic suggestion on me, you son of a bitch, I’m going to repaint these walls red. Guess how.”
His voice remained soothing, reasonable. “Can we talk about this, whatever it is?” He craned his neck to look at his nurse. “Maria? Can you explain?”
“I’m his hostage, too,” she shrugged, but her hands were on her hips, not in the air.
I nodded to a mirror with birds painted on it, over the sofa. “Gee, with your Zionist leanings, Doc, I’d figure you’d have a painting of Palestine on display, or maybe a big autographed picture of you and Ben-Gurion. I mean, you are the guy that suggested I embrace my Jewish side.”
“Obviously Mr. Forrestal’s death has unsettled you,” he said gently, the invisible eyebrows raising. “I only want to help you, Mr. Heller-why don’t you just put down the gun … after all, I’m unarmed, I’m in no way a threat to you … and we’ll talk.”
I pointed with the automatic, toward the archway just behind him. “We’ll talk in the kitchen, Doc. Come on, Maria-we’re all going to sit down, like one big happy family.”
The kitchen was small and blindingly white, closed white window blinds, white dinette set with chrome legs and white-and-chrome chairs, white cupboards, sparkling white Westinghouse refrigerator and gas range, with only the black-and-white speckled linoleum floor for relief. A shining steel electric percolator and toaster sat on the white countertop, but otherwise the kitchen had that same unlived-in look as the living room.
This was not a home; it was a place to hide.
I had Bernstein sit with his back to the countertop while I sat across from him, the stove behind me, my arm resting on the tabletop, nine-millimeter trained on him. Maria sat to my right, and both of them I directed to sit with their hands folded on the tabletop. The three of us sat there like we were waiting for Mom to serve us something.
His fingers interlocked prayerfully, Bernstein-his complexion seeming less albino-like in contrast with the harsh whiteness of the kitchen-asked, “Are you ready to tell me what this is about, Mr. Heller?”
“Sure, Doc-why don’t we start with Roswell?”
“Roswell,” he said. He pretended to think about that, shrugging. “And what is Roswell?”
“My intelligence may be limited, Doc, but don’t insult it, okay?”
His mouth twitched, or was that a sneer? “Have I treated you disrespectfully, Mr. Heller? I’d prefer you dispense with the ‘Doc’ cuteness. My name is Dr. Bernstein.”
“No it isn’t. I don’t know what it is, but it sure as hell isn’t Bernstein-though speaking of cute, that Jew routine of yours sure was. The Star of David tie tack-nice touch, Doc.”
His nostrils flared; the gray-blue eyes showed no fear, just an icy cast. “Gun or no gun, I won’t stand for this. My name is Joseph Bernstein and I’m a Jew … unlike you, Mr. Heller, a proud Jew, and this is some bizarre case of mistaken identity on your part. If necessary, I can get you the documentation to prove who I am.”
I smiled at Maria, whose eyes-like those of a spectator at a tennis match-were moving from me to Bernstein and back again, as our conversation bounced along on its merry way. “I’m sure you can, Doc,” I said. “I bet you have a better pedigree than a prize-winning poodle. I’m curious, though-as a member of the master race, does this Zionist masquerade sicken you, or amuse you?”
A sneer, this time, no question. “This farce sickens me.”
The nine-millimeter in my fist remained trained on him.
“And please, as our little talk progresses, Doc, let me save you some time-spare me about how you weren’t really a Nazi, you were a man of science, caught up in winds of political change not of your choosing. Serving science and mankind, as best you could, under unfortunate circumstances. Hating Hitler, much as you now love Uncle Sam. One word of that shit and I just fucking shoot you-clear?”
Now, finally, a little fear was melting the icy eyes; he swallowed thickly. “You’re a very sick man.”
“Well, why don’t we pretend I’m on your couch and you can have a listen to my crazy story. And it’s a crazy story, all right. Seems some Nazi scientists were working on a project at White Sands involving a flying-saucer-like vehicle. Actually, it was shaped more like a wedge, and I’m just piecing this together, but I understand, during the war, you Germans were trying to build a saucer-shaped bomber, that could lift off vertically, since all your runways were shot to shit; and this project grew from that wartime research. Now somehow, at White Sands, for some reason, Japanese engineers and pilots were also involved …”
Bernstein’s mask slipped; my mention of the Japanese startled him. He clearly didn’t expect me to have such esoteric information.
“… possibly because their knowledge, combined with their small stature, made them ideal pilots. And, since Uncle Sam is willing to collaborate with Nazis, why not with Nips? Fair’s fair, isn’t it? Anyway, there was a crash, maybe the craft got struck by lightning; seems to have been a midair explosion, over the Brazel ranch, scattering some debris, with the vehicle crashing, or crash-landing, some miles away.”
Those eyes of his didn’t blink much-the icy-gray eyes fixed on me like a cobra looking at a mouse; it would have been unsettling, if I hadn’t had the gun.
I went on with my tale: “Colonel Blanchard and his boys found the craft with the crew mostly dead, with maybe one left alive. In the darkness of the night, some of the witnesses apparently took the craft for one of those new-fangled flying saucers they’d been hearing and reading so much about-the Japanese crew, in their silver flight suits, maybe with their heads shaved, maybe with swelling around their eyes … traumatic hematoma can cause that … must have looked pretty damn strange. Like little men from outer space, in the dark, next to their ‘flying saucer.’ How do you like my story so far?”
“Delusions like these, Mr. Heller, can get a man committed.”
“I’ll bet. You could probably even arrange a little shock therapy, huh, Doc? Now some of the witnesses knew they weren’t looking at spacemen, recognizing a Jap when they saw one, puffy eyes or not … and some of the fringe players didn’t really see much at all-Major Marcel just found some weird debris, that p.r. guy Haut just issued the press release as ordered, Maria’s mortician sweetie just had some phone calls for small caskets, then got the bum’s rush when he dropped by the base hospital. Maria here was the one who ‘saw’ the autopsies and the weird corpses. That’s where the black propaganda campaign kicks in.”
Bernstein shifted in his chair, but knew enough not to unfold his hands. “Mr. Heller, if this were true, it would be classified material, top-secret information, and a wise man would walk away-right now. I might be willing to forget this intrusion … even including you threatening me with a gun.”
“Well, that crashed aircraft does represent a threat of exposure of top-secret technology, all right; but that wasn’t the big worry. The upper echelons of our great democracy-for example, an advisory panel called Majestic Twelve, including one James Vincent Forrestal-shrewedly deduced that the public’s reaction to the government collaborating with both Nazis and Japs would have been a public relations disaster. Nazi scientists retooling V-2s, Japs test-piloting U.S. experimental aircraft-this stuff doesn’t go over big with families that haven’t gotten over, yet, losing sons and fathers at Bataan and the Bulge.”
His lips pursed in a smile as he pretended to be amused. “So now, Mr. Heller, you’re suggesting the federal government concocted the ‘flying saucer’ hysteria themselves, to cover up testing of experimental aircraft?”
“That I don’t know. The saucer hysteria may have been a natural by-product of a nation exiting a catastrophic world war, and needing something new to be afraid of. Maybe the government fueled that hysteria for its own purposes; I just don’t know. But I do know, with so much talk of flying saucers in the air-so to speak-it provided the perfect cover-up for the Roswell crash.”
An invisible eyebrow arched. “Paranoid schizophrenics, Mr. Heller, see conspiracies everywhere they look. Tell me, have you been hearing voices?”
“Actually, I have: yours. But I don’t want to get ahead of myself, Doc. You see, the brilliance of this cover-up is that it substitutes a fake cover-up for a real one … leading people to believe that what the government is trying to hide is evidence of flying saucers and outer-space men. You feed, and feed off, the rumors that a flying saucer crashed in the desert; this plays into the witnesses who didn’t see much, or didn’t see anything, and probably a handful-perhaps Kaufmann-who misidentified the Japs as Martians or whatever. Still others, who saw the Japanese pilots and knew damn well what they were seeing, were warned and threatened into silence. Some of those who saw too much-Sheriff Wilcox, Mac Brazel, again maybe Kaufmann-were taken to the Walker base ‘guesthouse,’ and this is where you come in, Doc-and you, Maria.”
The mention of her name made Maria visibly uncomfortable.
Bernstein’s expression took on an air of patronizing disgust. “I’ve never been in Roswell in my life.”
“You were there last month, Doc,” I said. “But we’ll get to that. You, or somebody like you, managed that guesthouse, where-using a combination of drugs, hypnosis and what-have-you-you manipulated real memories into false ones. You worked your mind-control magic on them, Doc, the flying-saucer scenario being similar enough to their real memories to take hold. A few players like Maria, here, are meanwhile injected into the mix, disseminating disinformation, and lending credence and richness to those false memories various witnesses are ‘remembering.’”
Bernstein nodded toward Maria, curtly. “If Nurse Selff was an active player in this ridiculous ‘disinformation scenario’ of yours, what was she doing still working as a nurse at the Walker base, almost two years later?”
Maria smiled a little, her expression challenging me to get it right.
I shrugged. “Maintenance. Keeping an eye on the witnesses. Making sure your experimental methods had taken root and held, Doc, and keeping an eye out for anyone-like me-who might come snooping around. That’s my guess, anyway. Or maybe she’s just a nurse who occasionally gets pulled in on intelligence jobs. Care to enlighten me, Maria?”
Her expression suddenly rather sullen, Maria shook her head.
“Hey, well I’m doing pretty well on my own, wouldn’t you say, Doc?”
“I’d say you’re delusional; almost certainly a paranoid schizophrenic.”
“Sorry to hear that-that’s what Forrestal had, and look how he ended up.”
“You might want to keep that in mind.”
I gave him the most awful grin I had in me as I kept the gun trained on him. “Good for you, Doc. Getting cute like that’s the first step, in coming out from behind your mask. Where was I? Ah-the other brilliant thing about the saucer cover-up is that the witnesses-and their tampered-with memories-will fall into the lunatic fringe, and any reporters who cover the story-like Pearson-will look like saps. I mean, I’ve figured out what’s going on, but I still can’t be sure who’s a disinformation disseminator, and who’s a mind-controlled witness. Can’t tell the players without a scorecard, but then, of course, in the end it doesn’t matter.”
Bernstein’s voice was both soothing and condescending as he said, “A symptom of your illness, Mr. Heller, is the inability to differentiate between speculative fantasy and hard reality. In short, fascinating as this may be, it is as preposterous as, well, flying saucers … and there’s nothing here you can prove, and if there were, who would you prove it to?”
“I’ve proved it to myself,” I said. “To my own satisfaction. The certainty is in my head and my gut. I have no doubt that you worked your sick magic on me. I left Roswell, having heard ridiculous stories about spacemen from all sorts of people, Maria included, yet came away with a strong conviction that what I’d heard was true! After my stay at the guesthouse, I believed in flying saucers, all right; I even had a sort of vision of a pale, benign spaceman, in my dreams, soothing me with his suction-cup fingertips. But then it finally occurred to me, Doc … I admit to being a little slow on the uptake, here … but outer space creatures don’t usually have German accents.”
Bernstein didn’t have anything to say to that-no perfect clipped English response at all.
Now Maria was looking Bernstein’s way, as she said, “Mr. Heller says that Forrestal was murdered.”
“That’s his most ludicrous statement yet,” Bernstein snorted. “Why would the upper echelons of the United States government murder a celebrated former Secretary of Defense?”
I said, “The government didn’t kill Forrestal-you did, Doc … or rather, we did, you and I.”
He laughed, once. “Did you help me, or did I help you?”
“James Forrestal was a threat because he was feeling guilty about sanctioning our government’s collaboration with Nazis; further, he was genuinely mentally ill, and capable of either disintegrating in public, or going public with what he knew, neither of which was particularly desirable. Jim Forrestal was one of your classic men who knew too much, a nightmare of a security risk. Various steps were taken, including leaking forged Majestic Twelve files to Drew Pearson to throw the press off the trail of the real Majestic Twelve, which apparently had to do with saucer experimentation via Nazi collaboration, not unidentified objects from outer space. But however you cut it, Forrestal had to go-not in the government’s opinion, though I’m sure there will be as much relief in private as there is mourning in public. No, this was your call, Doc, protecting your own Aryan ass. Exposure of the extent of our government’s Nazi collaboration could lead to a second series of Nuremberg-like trials; your cushy new life, your Caddy, your house, your prestigious position, it would all go up like so much smoke out an Auschwitz chimney.”
“Nurse Selff,” Bernstein said, his tone temperate, the gaze he gave her radiating reasonableness, “please know these are the ramblings, the ravings, of a very diseased mind.”
“Like me, Maria,” I said, “you were this bastard’s unwitting accomplice. You were still working the Roswell disinformation project, not realizing the good doctor was putting the Forrestal kill in motion.”
Bernstein snapped, “I was nowhere near that hospital when Mr. Forrestal took his life!”
Gun steady on him, I said, “Neither was I, Doc, but we killed him together, just the same.”
Confused, Maria asked, “How is that possible, Nathan?”
“The doc here was well aware that I was a veteran of hypnosis therapy, that my battle-fatigue amnesia had been cured by hypnotherapy, in fact. So he knew I’d make a good subject, easily controlled, by a combination of, well … sex-that’s, uh, your role, Maria … and of course a visit to the base guesthouse. Either before or just after my guesthouse stay, back at Bethesda the doc prepped Forrestal to be receptive to posthypnotic suggestion; how exactly the doc achieved that, narcosis, hypnosis … well, he’s the magician, not me.”
Maria asked, in a hushed voice, “What do you think happened to you in the guesthouse?”
“Well for one thing-and this much you do know, Maria-I was a guest at the base longer than I’d been led to believe … don’t play dumb, baby, that doesn’t become you, either. You told me, when I fell asleep at your bungalow, that I’d slept straight through, losing a day … but really I’d only slept through that one night. Right?”
Chagrined, she nodded.
“You even gave me a posthypnotic suggestion yourself, didn’t you, Maria? Per the doc’s instructions, when you said, ‘You must be very tired, very tired, very tired.’”
“That is true,” she admitted, sending an accusing glare Bernstein’s way.
“That had nothing to do with Forrestal,” he told her emphatically.
I shook my head. “It had everything to do with him, Doc. You had, what, a day, a day and a half to work your magic on me, in that guesthouse? Including giving me the posthypnotic suggestion to buy that book of poetry for Forrestal. I vividly remember, Doc, you repeating the phrase on the phone, twice: ‘A book of poetry would be comforting.’ As if that wasn’t enough, you advised me to tell Forrestal that I, his trusted associate, had been secretly working for his nemesis, Drew Pearson, making a damn good case for that being a good idea, while in reality anticipating that my disclosure would help create in Forrestal the right suicidal mind-set.”
Now some desperation had found its way into Bernstein’s voice and his demeanor, as he turned to the nurse. “Maria, do you realize how preposterous all of this is? Do you see now that Mr. Heller is suffering from a complete mental breakdown?”
Maria said nothing.
I said, “Funny thing is, Doc, after I looked the crime scene over? I figured somebody had sneaked in and murdered Forrestal … and I was right: I did. I was the murderer who sneaked into Bethesda to kill Forrestal-I just didn’t know it. I didn’t know that that book I handed him was as lethal as poison gas.”
Bernstein said, flatly, “Forrestal threw himself out a window. Nothing changes that.”
“Yeah, I gave Jim Forrestal my thoughtful gift, that book of poetry, and I must’ve also passed along a posthypnotic suggestion to him-when was that, Doc, when I said, ‘I thought you’d find a book of poetry comforting,’ something like that? Anyway, thanks to the doc’s manipulation of my meager subconscious, I passed on the posthypnotic suggestion that made Forrestal get out of bed in the middle of the night, read that uplifting suicide poem you’d programmed him to read, Doc-and when Forrestal hit the crucial, guilt-inducing word-nightingale-he followed doctor’s orders and got some fresh air, trying to hang himself but succeeding instead in just throwing himself out the pantry window.”
Maria frowned, the big dark blue eyes tensed with curiosity. “Why ‘nightingale’?”
“Well,” I said, “in the original German, it’s Nachtigall, right, Doc? A guy named Teddy Kollek told me about it-you ought to get together with him, Doc, with your mutual interest in Palestine. Anyway, Operation Nightingale was a particularly ugly act of collaboration that Forrestal approved, subsidizing Ukrainian anti-Communist guerrillas who during the war were a Nazi execution squad, responsible for the mass slaughter of thousands of Jews. Not a bad guilt trigger for a man who felt he’d betrayed his country through such associations.”
He sat erect; chin up. “My name is Dr. Joseph Bernstein. As a Jew, I deeply resent these implications and accusations.”
“You know, Doc, as a guy who fought in the trenches on Guadalcanal, as a half-assed Jew myself, I find you just about the lowest-life piece of shit it’s ever been my misfortune to encounter. But what I really resent, Doc, what really annoys me, what really puts me in a bad place right now, is being used as your murder weapon. Jim Forrestal hired me to find out if somebody was trying to kill him; and, like everybody, I told him he was crazy. Then I wind up helping the guy who wanted him dead make that happen. Funny, huh? Ironic, even.”
I lifted my arm from the table and leveled the nine-millimeter at Bernstein’s head.
“Probably a tactical error on your part, Doc,” I said, “making a murderer out of me.”
Maria reached over and touched my shoulder, gently. “Nathan-don’t do it.”
“Don’t tell me I’ve convinced you that the doc, here, has been a bad boy….”
“Yes you have. I believe he’s been a very bad boy indeed. If you leave this to me, Nathan, I’ll handle it. The government will handle it, clean up their mistake-discreetly, but decisively.”
I shook my head. “Can’t do that, baby-but here’s what I will do. I’ll take the doc into custody right now-citizen’s arrest, if you will, of a war criminal.”
“All right,” she said guardedly. “But what then?”
“Then you and I, Maria, will hand his ass over to Chief Baughman of the Secret Service. I’ll tell Baughman my story and you’ll corroborate it. What do you say, baby?”
But she didn’t answer; she didn’t have a chance to.
Bernstein lurched across the table with a savage suddenness and in less than an instant his hands latched onto my fist, which clutched the nine-millimeter, swinging the gun’s muzzle away from himself, one of his hands tightening around the trigger and trigger guard and the gun went off, in Maria’s direction.
The bullet caught her in the forehead and I saw the terrible immediate emptiness in the dark blue eyes as the back of her head emptied in a horrible spray of red and gray and white, and I screamed in horror and reflexively loosened my grip on the gun, for a fraction of an instant, and then she had gone backward in the chair, sprawled onto the floor, vacant eyes staring up at the ceiling, red spreading in an awful pool on the linoleum, and the nine-millimeter wasn’t in my hand, anymore.
Bernstein was seated across me, and now the nine-millimeter was in his hand, and leveled at me…. Only he didn’t shoot.
“Sit down, Mr. Heller. Relax.”
Slowly, I sat back down.
“There are advantages to knowing the ways of the human mind,” he told me calmly. “If I had struggled with you for this weapon, I might be dead now. But by helping you squeeze the trigger on the lovely … late … Nurse Selff, I created the only circumstance that would cause you to loosen your grip on that gun, however momentarily.”
I said nothing, wondering why I was still alive.
“You’re wondering why you’re still alive, aren’t you, Mr. Heller? Maybe I’d like a few moments to gloat. You certainly subjected me to enough humiliation.”
“Gloating can be dangerous.”
The dazzling white smile flashed in his pale handsome face. “Yes. Look where it led you. Now you’ve helped me kill two people. We make quite a team. Or I should say, ‘made.’”
“Better kill me with the first shot.”
The scorched odor of cordite was mingling with the smell of blood. I didn’t dare look at her, afraid of what the rage might make me risk; I needed just the right opportunity….
“I appreciate the friendly advice, Mr. Heller. I must admit, you displayed a remarkable ability to gather disparate information and form an unlikely, albeit largely accurate, whole. There are tiny aspects you’ve misunderstood, or gotten incorrect-but yours is an extraordinary, if limited, intellectual capacity.”
“Fuck you, you sick bastard.”
“You were right before-I’m not a Nazi. I was a party member only because it was a political necessity; all of us, von Braun and the rest, were ushered into the SS only as a formality … I wore the uniform a mere handful of times, at official functions.”
“Too bad. I bet you looked spiffy as hell. What else did you do as a political necessity? Suck off Adolf?”
The psychiatrist shook his head. “What a sad, pathetic man you are. Do you really think it was my choice to see Jew and Russian prisoners treated as subhumans? But once these creatures were marked for death, their destinies decided by those above me, why not use them for research, for the furtherance of science, and medicine? Why not give these pitiful martyrs some purpose for having lived and died, some meaning to otherwise meaningless existences? The things we discovered, because of having disposable specimens, will make life better for all the rest of us, and our children, and their children.”
“You should be getting that Nobel Prize in the mail any day now.” I grinned at him, and it unsettled him, I could see. “You’re trying to figure it out, aren’t you?”
“Figure what out, Mr. Heller?”
“How to stage this. How to kill me. It’s got to look right to your superiors. If they think you murdered Maria and me to cover something up, you’ll have some fancy explaining to do. I mean, there’ll be suspicions about Forrestal’s convenient exit, already. How do you explain two corpses in your kitchen?”
His mouth formed something that was half smile, half sneer. “Maybe the bodies won’t be in my kitchen. Maybe you’ll drag Nurse Selff out to my garage and put her in the trunk of my car.”
I nodded at the wisdom of this. “Yeah, then you could shoot me, push me in there, dump us both somewhere. Maybe make it look like a murder/suicide … lover’s quarrel. Not bad for a beginner, Doc.”
Bernstein stood. Gestured at me with the gun. I came around the table, on the side where Maria wasn’t, and he stood facing me, leveling the gun at my chest, maybe eight inches separating us.
“You know, Doc, you may know a lot about the human mind, but you don’t know jack shit about guns.”
“I know how to squeeze a trigger.”
“Not with a broken finger you don’t.”
And I grabbed the muzzle of the nine-millimeter and twisted it, hard; his howl of pain as his trigger finger broke, jamming against the metal trigger guard, was music to my ears. But he hadn’t let go of the weapon, so I jammed the slide back.
Then his hand loosened and I snatched the gun away as he fell to his knees, clutching his hand, the finger bent at an impossible angle.
“You see, the Browning nine-millimeter is a recoil-operated weapon, Doc. Everything has to be locked together for it to fire, everything has to be lined up perfectly-kind of like the human brain.”
By grabbing the nine-millimeter’s slide and pushing it back, I’d made a jammed weapon out of it. So I slapped its magazine, racked the slide and the weapon was good as new again. Ready to fire. But I had a better idea.
Bernstein sat on the floor, grasping his hand, whimpering, tears streaming down his face.
Kneeling at an angle that kept the fallen, sniveling psychiatrist in view, I took the opportunity to spend a moment beside my beautiful Maria. The vulnerable girl, the hard-as-nails woman, nurse, spy, lovely even in death, even with the black-and-red dime-size pucker in her forehead; I closed her eyes, kissed her cheek and whispered, “Forgive me.”
Then, rubbing the tears out of my eyes, I stood. “Jeez, Doc, we’re both crying. Real couple of he-men, huh?”
Bernstein, cheeks flushed-funny, his face finally had some color in it-looked up at me, the icy eyes red and blinking. “What … what now?”
Keeping the weapon trained on him, I moved to the stove, dropped open the door.
“Now, Doc?” I shrugged, walking back to where he sat, shivering with pain. “Now I’m going to embrace my Jewish side.”
The barrel of the nine-millimeter caught him across the forehead, knocking him out, and I dragged his unconscious form over like a bag of grain and shoved the top half of him into the oven.
Then I turned on the gas.