The Fifth Notebook

By Herb Sachs

Adam Czerniakow heads the governing body of the Warsaw Jewish Ghetto, the Judenrat. He is frustrated by his role of implementing irrational Nazi orders, by his inability to protect a half-million sick and starving ghetto inhabitants. Now he is being forced to help Hitler in a plot to defeat Russia.

Sam Bender, a 90s businessman and family man, has his own demons. He is haunted by his past relationships with a brother serving time for murder, and a father who died years ago leaving a trail of deceit and conflict. Suddenly, his father and brother are thrust to the forefront of his life.

These two worlds, separated by half a century in time and thousands of miles, suddenly collide.

Bender inadvertently acquires a long lost diary. Through it, he begins to learn about an isolated Jews struggle against overwhelming odds to stop German aggression. At the same time, Bender and others become targets of neo-Nazis bent on taking whatever steps are necessary - burglary, assault, kidnapping, murder - to recover the diary.

* * * * *

Bender is outwardly congenial and affable, ten years into a comfortable second marriage, devoted to his and Rivas kids. But demons gnaw at his gut. He silently reviles a brother who was his childhood tormentor. And he fights a constant urge to examine the residue locked in the wall safe in his den - the legacy of his father.

On a business trip to Rome, Bender ends up with a small, tattered notebook whose contents are scribbled in a language he cant read. When he tries to return the book, he discovers its previous owner, Dominick Sorrento, has been murdered.

He asks Don Slatter, an English professor and part-time Eastern European translator, to look at the book. Slatter determines it is a Polish diary written during the World War II era, and agrees to translate it. But others want the book. Sams home is ransacked, a smoke bomb is planted in the Slatter house, and one of Rivas friends is bludgeoned to death.

Police on two continents are now actively involved in finding the murderers of Dominick Sorrento and Rivas friend. In Italy, a search gets underway for a former Sorrento employee, someone tied to the neo-Nazi German National Party. This search leads the police to a fatal stabbing at the Jewish Synagogue in Florence.

In Maryland, with Benders help, police discover the three murders are connected and are the result of the GNPs attempts to steal the notebook. In the meantime, Slatters translation reveals the book was actually a diary, written by the Chairman of the Warsaw Jewish ghetto, Adam Czerniakow, during the 1940-1941 time frame. It hints at an attempt by Hitler to use Czerniakow in a scheme to outwit the Allies, and a plan concocted by Czerniakow to outwit the Third Reich.

As Bender and Slatter begin to unravel the secrets of the notebook, Sams brother escapes from prison, Riva is assaulted, her daughter is kidnapped, and Bender is shot.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Mar 19, 2002
• ISBN: 9781469104492

Herb Sachs

HERB SACHS has two degrees in electrical engineering, and a broad and satisfying career with Sachs/Freeman Associates in communications system design. As a side job, he served five terms as a Bowie City Councilman. His extensive technical writing preceded a first novel, The Fifth Notebook. He enjoys writing, running, biking, reading, and grandchildren, not necessarily in that order. He and wife Marilyn commute between Bowie, Maryland and Boynton Beach, Florida.

Book preview

1

WARSAW

August, 1991

J osef Malek took a last drag on his cigarette before flipping it toward the shallow gutter that edged Ulica Grzybowska. The burning stub struck the pavement, bounced once in a flurry of sparks, then rolled between two of the cobblestones that covered the street surface. He paused a moment longer behind the construction barricades, narrowing his eyes at the late afternoon sun, watching ripples of heat rise from the roadway, and clouds of dust float aimlessly by. He stomped first one workboot, then the other, trying to expunge the numbing side effects of barking jackhammers that were destroying the street.

Malek raised the pickax to his shoulder and stepped from the edge of the pavement to the uneven ground where cobblestones had been removed and the roadway base was exposed. A wall of ageless, weatherbeaten gray granite buildings to his left captured the glare of the sun. On the opposite side of the street, a matching block of drab facades blended together under its own shadow. As he moved toward the shade, he caught a smear of distant color from pots of red and white geraniums hanging from an iron second-story balcony near the intersection with Ulica Ciepta. He smirked, knowing the flowers were as dusty and grimy as everything was at street level.

Malek turned, now considering the shapeless human masses trudging along the narrow Grzybowska sidewalk. Today they didn’t disappear and reappear from behind fences of parked cars, so he could follow them without interruption. The crowd’s dull mood matched the concrete and stone surroundings, and the oppressive humidity. The pedestrians seemed in slow motion, struggling to get somewhere, but not quite making it.

Three Fiat vans and a Mercedes flatbed truck, huddled together like tents in a sandstorm, were the only vehicles on this section of Grzybowska. Their cabs, wheels, and underbodies were splattered with mud and grime from July’s rains and potholes, and from the settling dust of August. On the driver door of each vehicle were some illegible, dirt-encrusted words, and a barely visible imprint of the city seal.

Malek and the other helmeted workers were slowly enlarging the debris field of broken cobblestone pavement. Dust clouds rose from the operation, adding to the smog, and the noise of the activity masked the shuffling feet and garbled conversations of the pedestrians. The clamor, the heavy physical labor, the suffocation enveloped Malek, depressed him.

By now he was intimately familiar with most of the streets in this section of Warsaw, especially the ones that once crisscrossed the old Jewish ghetto. Like Zelazna, Aleje Szuch, Leszno, Niska, Grzybowska. He’d helped repave some of them, dug up others, filled potholes in most of the rest. The old red granite blocks were real pains to work on. All manual labor, because the uneven surface played hell with everything from streetsweeper brushes to snowplow blades. But someone up top in the bureaucracy—probably some Jew—shouted about historic preservation or Old World charm, and the cobblestones remained.

Malek grudgingly returned to work. Here it was the middle of a brutal summer, and his supervisor, Mr. Wraklow, seemed determined to roast him like a chicken on a spit. Why wasn’t he put on the recabling job under Chlodna Street? The stink of the sewer system required some getting used to, but at least it was cool down there and he wouldn’t lose a kilo a day sweating off his lunch. Or why wasn’t he assigned to the repaving of Plac Kercelego? That’s night work, with a slower pace and less ground heat.

This Grzybowska job was obviously not an emergency. It could have waited a few weeks for cooler weather. But Supervisor Wraklow gave in to this weird request to get the work done quickly. Shit! He isn’t the one that has to fry, so what does he care?

Malek followed one of the jackhammers that was pulverizing the coarse concrete holding the cobblestones of Grzybowska in place. After a few rat-tat-tat-tats around a group of stones, the hammer moved on, and Malek proceeded with pick and hands to remove the debris and extract the stones from the roadbed. Undamaged ones were stacked at one end of the truck bed, damaged ones at the other. A river of sweat rolled down his sunburned shoulders and back, and his legs were cramping from the bending and lifting involved.

The damned Jews are causing trouble again, he muttered as he carried his millionth cobblestone to the truck. If it isn’t the ones that still live here, then it’s Jews from somewhere else. They say ‘We want cobblestones from a Warsaw street’ and everyone jumps! Wariat! Well, Americans are crazy anyway. And American Jews are as pushy and demanding as any of them.

Last week, Gerta Czwerski, the department dispatcher, had told them what was happening. About 100 meters of Grzybowska are to be dug up. One lane. We’re sending the cobblestones to the United States. They’re building some kind of museum about Jews and want to show what a street in the old ghetto looked like. Make sure you do this right, because even President Walesa is watching this one. When someone had suggested stones now sitting in the city’s storage yards could be shipped to the United States to avoid having to dig up Grzybowska, she had fashioned a tight-lipped grimace and slowly moved her head from side to side.

Malek paused to take a dipper of water from the battered aluminum jug at the back of one of the vans, and looked incuriously over the scene. A stop for water usually gave him a minute to search for attractive females amid the parade of pedestrians, but the heat, dust, and lateness of the day had dulled that interest. He pushed the earplugs further into his ears to deaden the jackhammer sounds. One more hour and he should be through with this crap. He didn’t think of tomorrow, when he would be helping to install new stones to replace those that were now being removed.

The next few cobblestones came out easily. He dutifully stacked each on its appropriate pile. The following one stubbornly refused to move. After several more strikes with his pick, Malek finally dislodged it and bent down to pick it up.

As he rolled the stone aside, he noticed the layer underneath was not the slate-gray gravel of the roadway base, but a pale, smooth, almost translucent surface. Reaching down to examine it, he discovered he was not touching the roadbed, but an object that had been laying between the cobblestone and its gravel base. He removed his gloves, then grabbed it with a thumb and index finger and worked it out of the hole.

He held a thin rectangular package about 10 by 16 centimeters, small enough to have been hidden by the street stone. The wrapping appeared to be several layers of yellowed paper or fine cloth that had once been heavily oiled, but no longer had a slippery texture because the oil had long since worked its way out of the protective material. Maybe something for Czrenka, he mused.

This was not the first time he had discovered trinkets on the job– some interesting, most useless. The Warsaw streets turned over an amazing variety of lost and abandoned items, and he himself had found several rings (one of some value), pocket combs, cigarette lighters, coins, pens, and earrings embedded in this type of street. Once he had even uncovered a neatly arrayed string of bones that looked like the remains of someone’s index finger. Most objects were wedged between stones, or had been overlaid by repair grout. Czrenka the pawnbroker bought any worthwhile finds from him.

He wasn’t wearing a shirt right now, but his work pants had large, deep rear pockets. Taking a quick look around to be sure no one was watching, he slipped the package into a pocket. He would open it later when he got home.

2

OBERSALZBERG

November 27, 1940

H e couldn’t control the anger, but right now he didn’t care.

With an unintelligible roar, a low-pitched growl, he leaped up, pushing his bulky chair back so fiercely it almost tipped over. They are all idiots, he muttered to himself, but that Hess is the worst! He stared down at the three of them, unwilling to say anything further, then stomped to the far side of the huge room. The others would be looking straight ahead, or down at the table, or at their fingernails, their minds blank and unproductive. Shitheads!

When he reached the long mahogany table in front of the oversize window, he grabbed the table edge tightly and focused on his reflected image on the glass. It projected ghostlike against the chalk white exterior background. It didn’t mirror his face too well, but he could make out his black trousers, the field gray jacket, the red and black armband.

Stupid, stupid men, he thought as he let his gaze converge beyond his image. There were huge snowflakes, propelled by the errant winds off the Bavarian Alps, gliding and swirling across his field of vision. The drifting, spinning particles seemed to swoop down like golden eagles, or pirouette like graceful dancers; they were so dense they hid the view.

Fuck them, he said aloud, at the same time trying to pierce the sharp whiteness before him and the murkiness beyond. He knew what was really out there; it had been visible often enough. Space and more space, high peaks and deep vales, great chasms and swift rivers. And people—millions of people. His people.

How dare he question my orders! What insolence! he thought, tightening his grip on the table. That dumbkopf! He could feel the rigid set of his jaw, the quickened thumping inside his chest cavity, the wetness forming under his eyes.

At this moment, Adolph Hitler needed the view from the window. But it defied him. No matter how hard he squinted, he couldn’t see the snow-covered Watzmann, the Konigssee, the tree-lined valley, the Untersberg, Berchtesgaden, Salzburg. Only the Berghof existed.

Ach, the Berghof. He remembered the years building this place, this magnificent retreat. It was his own design, and though he wasn’t an architect, he knew what he wanted and had a good feel for how it had to be done. The precipitous road system, the elevator blasted out of solid rock, and especially this building–a massive expansion of the original house that had been on the site five years ago.

This room was his favorite. He turned to scan the dark mahogany wainscoting and ceiling, the grand piano, the paintings and tapestries, the three others seated on the other side of the room in the red upholstered chairs that ringed the glowing fireplace. It had been a hard road. A difficult one. But he alone had made this New Order happen– his ideas, his bluffs and bravados, his genius. With little help from the imbeciles he had to deal with.

There was conniving Bormann—Reichleiter Martin Bormann—whose gaunt and severe facial features hadn’t prevented the glimmer of a smile from escaping a minute ago, signaling agreement. He always had Bormann on his side. After all, the man couldn’t have survived if he hadn’t made him his personal secretary. He had no problem with Bormann’s power grabs, or that Bormann had developed more political clout than almost anyone else in Germany—including the two others at this meeting–so long as the loyalty continued.

Next to Bormann was teutonically handsome Rudolph Hess, who was technically Bormann’s boss, although few believed it. Hess’s face, normally solemn and studious, showed concern. It should. This conference wouldn’t have been necessary if Hess, his third in command, hadn’t made those stupid remarks last week in Berlin about the impending war with Russia. The man had limited ability to operate in this high-level political arena, and knew it. Yet he opened his big mouth too often.

The third man, fat Hermann Goering, seemed to be having mixed thoughts tonight. The Reich Marshal had tremendous energy and enthusiasm, albeit often misdirected. He was next in line to be Fuehrer, and would normally support any proposal for a military undertaking. But he had been wrong on his projection of the annihilation of the British Air Force by the Luftwaffe, so he wasn’t particularly anxious to stick his thick neck out further.

Hitler strode back to the sunken nook at the rear of the room, where the others were waiting. My decision is final! he roared in frustration. We will attack the Soviet Union next spring! This has been my plan since we defeated France, and my dealings with that crook Molotov these past two weeks only confirm my decision. His demands are preposterous! Russia must be brought to her knees as quickly as possible. I will not let any of you weak-kneed idiots talk me out of it!

Hess spoke first. Mein Fuehrer, he said carefully, tentatively. No one is suggesting you alter your schedule on Russia. I have only been pointing out that we must avoid at all costs getting involved in a two-front war. It has been the nemesis of past German rulers, and one that we should make every effort to prevent.

Brushing aside an undisciplined lock of hair, Hitler took his seat opposite Hess and next to Bormann. Hess’s words failed to reduce the tension in the room; Hitler continued to stare scornfully at his Deputy.

Goering leaned forward and slowly removed the cigar from his mouth. Even though we have not totally destroyed England, Rudolph, she is on her knees and doesn’t represent a threat to us as far as a second front is concerned. America is not prepared to do any more than provide what she calls ‘lend-lease’ to Britain. North Africa is not lost by any means, but even if it were, I don’t believe it could affect the war in Europe. He turned to Hitler. If we can move quickly with a pincer movement—one drive through the Baltics to Moscow, and another toward Kiev and the Dnieper—and with a special operation to secure the Baku oil fields—the entire campaign can be finished in five months. Certainly before next winter. Our troops would be prepared to …

Hess interrupted. But if your projections are wrong and it takes longer, Hermann, we will not only have to deal with the Russian winter, but with the increased possibility of a second front erupting—from England, or from North Africa through Italy. Both Charles XII of Sweden and Napoleon met disaster on the steppes of Russia, and I’d hate for us to end up the same way because we underestimated our enemy, or failed to take action that could have reduced our risk of failure.

You’re very pessimistic today, Rudolph, Goering replied, as he rolled his cigar between his thumb and forefinger. Mussolini is our bulwark against a North African attack. The British are finished. And, as far as the Soviet Union is concerned, when the campaign starts we will have at least 80 infantry divisions and 35 panzer and motorized divisions advancing, along with tens of thousands of Luftwaffe bombers and fighters. Thirty-six hundred tanks will be on the move and …

Hitler intervened. We don’t need a history lesson from you, Herr Hess. And as for you, Hermann, don’t be such a dreamer. Particularly in expecting any real help from the Italians. Mussolini is an incompetent lout, and he can’t be counted on to deliver anything. Bormann leaned over and whispered something in Hitler’s ear, and Der Fuehrer slowly nodded his head.

All I’ve suggested, said Hess, is that, concurrent with preparing for the Soviet campaign, every effort should be made to prevent a second-front. As a …

But Rudolph, interrupted Goering, every effort is being made. We’ve been bombing the hell out of England. We’ve been trying to induce the Japanese to keep British Empire troops tied down in Southeast Asia. We’ve attempted to get Franco to enter the war and drive the British out of Gibraltar. We will be sending armored and Luftwaffe units to North Africa, and General Rommel will become overall commander of German and Italian troops there. What else can we do?

There are other ways of dealing with the problem.

Like what? asked Bormann.

Like signing a peace treaty with England.

Hitler scoffed. That’s your big plan? That’s how the problem is to be solved? He pointed a threatening finger. You are out of your mind! Even though England may be pounded to a pulp, there is no indication she is ready to capitulate.

Hess would not be intimidated. Mein Fuehrer, put aside for the moment the practicality of negotiating a treaty. If one existed, it would enable us to move against Russia without the risk of being bombed, or blockaded, or attacked by the West. With Britain out of the picture, Roosevelt would be the leader of an industrial nation that has no place to ship its products. We would be free to move men and matériel from the North Sea to the Vistula, significantly increasing the size of Hermann’s invasion force.

Hitler grasped the arm of his chair. A peace treaty with the British would certainly keep everyone off our backs for a while. But you haven’t told us anything yet, Herr Hess. Do you know how to get Churchill to sign a peace agreement, assuming it’s one we can also live with?

Yes, Mein Fuehrer, replied Hess. A Jew will do it for us—one of the ghetto Jews!

The room echoed with laughter. Don’t waste my time with your nonsense, Herr Hess. Hitler waved his hand as if to erase Hess’s remark. His anger had changed to amusement.

I am serious, said Hess indignantly as the laughter died. Very serious. It may sound ironic, but a Jew can win this war for us.

Hitler suppressed a smile as he asked, Tell us how that is possible, won’t you?

And Hess did …

3

ROME

May 12, 1995

W henever Sam Bender visited Rome, he tried to stay at the Avanti at Via Sistina 43. It was a relatively small hotel, with the relaxed intimate atmosphere of a town house, a diminutive but serviceable garden terrace, and an ingratiating staff. Its terrace rooms were buffered from all but the most egregious street noises and exhaust fumes. Close to the Trinita dei Monti and the Spanish Steps, it offered a convenient focal point for business and for sightseeing Old Rome.

Best of all, the Avanti was just up the street from Piazza di Spagna and Dominick’s Bookstore. Bender discovered the store during his first trip to Rome almost two years ago, and kept coming back. Dominick Sorrento, an engaging Italian who’d lived for two decades in Philadelphia, had combined his love for good books and good pasta by collecting and consuming a voracious quantity of both. His shop was crammed with documents on almost any subject, and readers proficient in Italian, English, French, Russian, Arabic, and twenty-two other languages could find browsing opportunities here. If Dominick’s didn’t have the book you wanted, there was a good chance it hadn’t been written.

As Bender entered the bookstore, he was assaulted by tables of discounted books, and stained walls and pillars plastered with a plethora of travel posters and local announcements. Rows of bulging shelves reached like a slithering maze into the cavernous recesses of the place. Semblances of aisles, created almost as afterthoughts, interconnected through obstacles of half-filled boxes and loose piles of unfiled publications. Only the area surrounding the checkout island where Dominick was usually ensconced acknowledged the need for more than minimal space. The air inside, heavy and dank, was minimally moving due to the efforts of a few lethargic ceiling fans.

Above all the chaos, hanging from wires attached to ceiling eyebolts, was a large plastic banner with crudely printed block letters proclaiming in Italian and English:

OH THAT MY WORDS WERE NOW WRITTEN! OH THAT THEY WERE PRINTED IN A BOOK! JOB xix.23

Bender smiled as he remembered Dominick’s penchant for spouting quotations appropriate to almost any occasion. Last month’s banner had been from Samuel Johnson about books teaching us either to enjoy life or to endure it, but others had been Old and New Testament quotes, mostly Old.

Despite his large frame and clearly overweight body, Dominick moved quickly to greet Sam. "Signore Bender! What a pleasant surprise! Come sta?" His right arm thrust forward.

Sam avoided the arm and grasped the man’s shoulders. His fingers sank into the incongruous green wool sweater that always clung to Dominick, winter or summer. "Buon giorno, Dominick. Good to see you. This is the first chance I’ve had to come by." He finished with a soft left jab to the ribs.

First chance? asked Dominick, feinting a counterpunch in the general direction of Sam’s Armani tie.

"Yeah. I’ve been in town five days now, but your Polizia have been keeping me hopping. It’s not a vacation, you know."

Dominic glanced toward the entranceway. I gather your wife didn’t come with you. I’m sure she would have stopped in to say hello if she had. She is well?

She’s back in Maryland. This trip came up unexpectedly and she decided she couldn’t get organized fast enough—rearranging her work schedule, in particular—so she’s taking a rain check.

"Will you be in town long? Maybe we can meet for dinner one night while you’re here. A new trattoria opened on Via Frattina that I think you might enjoy. I was there last week and had …"

There’s not enough time left. I’m catching a flight back this evening. As a matter of fact, I can’t stay here very long. I have to run by the hotel and pick up my stuff, grab a cab, and be at the airport within three hours.

I hope your trip was successful.

Pretty much so. We put a major part of the new computer software through its paces this week, and everything came out looking good. There are a few problems with some of the dispatching and criminal records search packages that we’ll have to correct, but adding more efficient sorting programs should do the trick. He could see he was already over Dominick’s head. The bottom line is I’m happy with the way the system is working and, more importantly, so are the Rome Police.

He’d forced himself to maintain this rosy exterior. Neither the Rome Police Department nor Dominick had to hear about the struggle, frustration, and huge reprogramming effort that had been necessary for that demonstration. His staff at Advanced Technologies, Incorporated, spent four days and nights last week redesigning screen formats, rewriting code, and straightening out annoying glitches in time for his flight deadline. The fingers on both of his hands had been crossed when he boarded the plane with the new disks and, during the demonstration, when he put the disks in the drives and executed the first commands.

Your days are swifter than a weaver’s shuttle, intoned Dominick, almost to himself. Sam stopped short until he remembered Dominick’s penchant for interjecting loosely relevant quotations into conversations. That had taken some getting used to.

Ignoring Dominick’s remark, Sam waved an all-encompassing arm.

I see things haven’t changed around here. The store is as confusing and dirty and hot as the last time I stopped in. He knew this wasn’t quite true. To someone unfamiliar with the shop, it looked like a library that had been in the path of a tornado. But Sam had long since recognized this was organized disarray, with logical rules for why some books were on shelves and others were on the floor, or why some books were setting vertically on shelves while others were horizontal. The pervasive dust and heat were other matters.

"That will be fixed soon. I hired an Assistant Manager two weeks ago. An Austrian who has just come to Rome. He is interested in books and library work, and reads Italian, German, and English, and a few eastern European languages as well. Rolf is learning fast and I’m sure he’ll soon be very useful to me. I know I need another hand here; it has sometimes even been difficult to find time to use la toiletta."

You’re showing your age when you admit you need help.

Let us see if I’m showing my age! What is your quote this time? There was a glint in Dominick’s eyes, and a smirk at the edges of his mouth. For the past several visits they had exchanged literary quotations in a game of identifying authors.

Ready? Sam asked, as he pulled a slip of paper from his shirt pocket. Dominick nodded. Who said ‘The Flower that once has blown for ever dies?’

"You’re slipping, Signore Bender, no offense intended. That one’s easy. It is Omar Khayyam; Edward Fitzgerald:

Oh threats of Hell and Hopes of Paradise!

One thing at least is certain—This life flies;

One thing is certain and the rest is Lies;

The Flower that once has blown for ever dies.

Now it’s my turn. Since it’s life and death you’re after, try this one:

To every thing there is a season,

and a time to every purpose under the heaven:

A time to be born, and a time to die."

Sam rubbed the back of his neck. I know it’s Old Testament. But I’m not sure of chapter and verse. All I can think of is Pete Seeger and ‘Turn, Turn, Turn.’ Proverbs?

Sorry, Signore Bender. Ecclesiastes.

It’s time I took that book off the shelf and read it, if for no other reason than I’d be better competition for you. He checked his watch, afraid he might run out of time.

A few minutes later, Sam had maneuvered through the jungle trail leading to shelves marked European History, 1920-1945. He scanned the book titles, at the same time wondering as he often did at his fascination of the Second World War period in general and the slaughter of the Jews of Europe in particular. At Dominick’s, Borders, or Barnes and Noble, this shelf or its equivalent was always his first stop.

He could still see Mrs. Chambers standing in front of his seventh grade history class, explaining what Nazis, Fascists, Communists, and Holocaust victims were all about. He’d dashed home that day to find out if any members of the family had been slaughtered by Hitler. They hadn’t been; his mother was third-generation American, and his father’s fluent French and passable English came from a Canadian upbringing.

On balance, he considered himself a casual Jew. Particularly when it had to do with attending synagogue, complying with the dietary laws, observing the Sabbath. God, on the rare occasions he dealt with Him, was benign, fuzzy, internal.

So if this interest in the Holocaust era isn’t a religious fascination, is it an ethnic-associated one, a moral one, what? He obviously had more than a little concern for those individuals who had been brutalized and degraded and murdered over a half century ago. But beyond a strong feeling of sympathy and justice for them, he wasn’t able to explain his fascination.

When he left European History, 1920-1945, he had several books under his left arm. One was the memoirs of Adolph Hitler’s architect, Albert Speer, a book that he had read a decade ago, but wanted a copy for his library. Christopher Browning’s Ordinary Men, and Read and Fisher’s Kristtallnacht were on his reading list. Two other books were written during the Holocaust by Polish Jews. One chronicled the history of the Lodz ghetto. The other was Adam Czerniakow’s Warsaw diary.

Sam propelled himself in the general direction of the checkout counter, but couldn’t resist a faded sign above a section of shelving labeled American Civil War. That stop netted him two more books. Then he detoured to the Science and Mathematics section, which was close to the Sports, S to Z stacks. He was now near the rear of the store where the overhead lighting was poor, the air was stifling, and the accumulated dust on books and shelves was particularly thick. There was vacant space on one of the shelves, so he blew away some of the surface dirt and set down the books he’d collected and proceeded to the Egyptology section.

When he next glanced at his watch, twenty minutes had passed. He had accumulated almost two feet of reading material, and as he again headed for the checkout register he struggled to balance the volumes against his chest. Dominick was still behind the counter.

It looks like you’re all alone here, said Sam, as he stacked his books on the counter and flicked at the dust motes that had attached themselves to his blue pinstriped business suit. Where is the new man?

I’m leaving at six o’clock. Rolf will be here by then to handle the evening crowd. Dominick restacked the books as he entered prices into an ancient cash register. You are welcome any time, but when you buy so much, you are especially welcome. Your bill is 117,400 lira, Signore Bender. Do you want to put it on a credit card?

Sam handed him his Visa card. Per Favore. If possible, I’d like you to pack them so I can take them with me. Don’t forget to stick the receipt on the outside for Customs.

Can do. Or I can ship them to you like last time.

No, it takes too long that way. I’ll try carrying them this trip. If I make it, I’ll change my name from Sam to Samson! They both laughed.

MARYLAND

May 13-15, 1995

There was fifteen minutes to kill at Leonardo da Vinci Airport before his flight was called. He should have taken Dominick’s advice and shipped the books. It hadn’t been easy getting his junk–a suitcase, a briefcase, a laptop, and the box of books–in and out of a cab and up to the ticket counter, and he already dreaded the problems he would face after he landed.

The American Bar in the terminal was a welcome sight. Except for a noncommunicative bartender, it was empty. He ordered a whiskey on the rocks, explained about ice cubes, then leaned on the edge of the counter and inhaled deeply. This past week had been particularly hectic, certainly more so than