"You already knew that?"

"I figured the only other person to talk to was you."

"Okay," Miller said wearily. "Give it to me all at once. Worst case.

Bottom line."

"Your father's name is Frank Miller. The theory is, he's really Franz

Muller, a German officer in World War Two. He's supposed to have been an

Obersturmbannfrihrer." Sloane spoke the German haltingly. "In English, that means lieutenant-colonel. During World War Two, Franz Muller commanded a unit in an SS formation known as Einsatzgruppen. They were a special military task force that followed regular Nazi soldiers into newly invaded German territory--Czechoslovakia, Poland, and Russia, for example--where they executed every Jew they could find, shot them where they stood or herded them into pits to make it easy to bury them after the firing squad was finished. Their body count in Russia alone was a half million."

"And you're telling me the Justice Department suspects my father was part of that insanity? A Nazi mass murderer?"

"They more than suspect. They're convinced of it. They claim they've got proof. And they think your father disappeared because he'd been warned about their investigation. As far as they're concerned, your father ran from them. Are you all right? You just turned pale."

"My whole fucking world's falling apart, and you ask me if I'm all right? Jesus, I... Look, somebody has to stop this craziness. Just because my father's name is similar to Franz Muller..."

"No, there's more than that. The Justice Department wouldn't base an investigation on something that tenuous. Your father emigrated here from

Germany. You knew that?"

"Sure. After the war. A lot of Germans did. There wasn't anything illegal about it."

"But did you also know he changed his name?" A muscle twitched in

Miller's cheek. "My God, you did know," Sloane realized. "Let me explain. I knew. But not the specifics. All he told me was he'd

Americanized his name to avoid anti-German feelings here after the war."

"Did he tell you he'd been a German soldier?"

"I don't have to listen to this crap." Miller stood. Sloane reached out, careful not to touch him. 'Tor sure you'll have to listen when an investigator from the Justice Department comes around. If I were you,

I'd think of this as a dress rehearsal, and while I was at it, I'd think about this. It would do your family a lot of good to be treated sympathetically by the press." Miller hesitated. "Sympathetically?"

"The past comes back to haunt a family that didn't even know about the past. I can build an effective human interest story out of that A story in your favour. Assuming, of course, that you're telling the troth about your father."

"I meant what I said." Miller sat down. "I can't believe anybody would accuse my father of--"

"Accusing him's one thing. Whether you knew anything about his past is another. You truly believe he's innocent?"

"Damn it, yes!"

"Then answer my questions. Did he tell you he'd been a German soldier?"

Miller thought about it

"Sometimes, as he got older, he talked about the war. He said, toward the end every male he knew, even kids, had been conscripted. Despite his inexperience, he was made a sergeant and ordered to defend a bridge. When the Allies invaded, he hid till the worst was over and then surrendered."

"You didn't think it strange that a German soldier was allowed to come to America? That was hardly standard procedure."

"He explained about that too. German soldiers were placed in POW camps.

The Allies didn't exactly take kindly to them, and none of the German soldiers knew how long the imprisonment would last So the trick was, before the Allies picked you up, you had to find a civilian corpse and exchange domes and identity papers with it. My father managed to get himself placed in a refugee camp, not a POW camp. He lived there for more than a year before some administrator paid attention to his repeated applications and allowed him to emigrate to America. If what you've told me is true, it sounds like it was my father's bad luck that the dead civilian whose papers he exchanged with his own was named Franz

Muller. I mean, Franz Muller's a common German name. There must have been hundreds, maybe thousands of Franz Mullers. But only one of them was this SS hit-squad leader." Sloane drew his finger through a circle of moisture his glass had made. "The Justice Department has photographs of the SS officer we're talking about. It also has a photograph from your father's immigration file. The face is the same.

Why did he disappear?"

"I don't know! Christ, he's seventy-three years old. Where would he run? The Justice Department's absolutely wrong about him!"

"Good. You stick with that attitude, and when the Justice Department decides to go public, you can count on a story that makes you look sympathetic. Even if the Justice Department proves its case, you'll still be presented as an innocent bystander, a loving but misinformed son. On the other hand--I warn you--if you've held back, if you're lying, I'll turn the story around. You and your family will be part of the conspiracy."

"I haven't lied."

"Keep it that way. This isn't just another story to me. I'm supposed to be objective. What I am is furious. Nazi war criminals are all over this fucking country. I could give you dozens of names and addresses right now. There's no mystery about them. The Justice Department knows about them. Most are in their late sixties or early seventies. They keep their lawns mowed.

They tip the paperboy. They have the neighbors over for barbecues. I could accuse them in front of their friends. It wouldn't matter. No one would care. Because they don't make trouble. How could that nice man down the street have done all those terrible things? And anyway all of that was a long time ago. Why dredge up unpleasant memories?"

"You're exaggerating."

"If anything, the reverse." Sloane pulled a sheet of paper from his jacket pocket. "Here's a list from my contacts in the Justice

Department. Twenty mass murderers. Jack the Ripper, Son of Sam, and

John Wayne Gacy are bush-league compared to this bunch."

"And every one of them's a war criminal?"

"There are plenty of others. This is just the top of the slime heap."

"But if the Justice Department knows who these Nazis are... ?"

"Why haven't they been prosecuted? Because after the war American intelligence made a bargain with them. Help us take over your Nazi spy networks and use them against the Russians, In exchange, we'll give you immunity. Or if you don't have a bargain of immunity, we still won't prosecute because your crimes were committed in Europe. To save a lot of diplomatic hassle, we'd just as soon deport you. On the other hand, if we revoke your citizenship, no other country will accept you, so we're stuck with you.

Let's forget the whole mess. These Nazis will die soon anyhow. At least that was the theory until a few years ago. A group of idealistic lawyers in the Justice Department decided to do something about the government's lassitude. In 1979, the Office of Special Investigations was formed."

"Then something is being done about the men on that list."

"Yes, but not enough. There's no way to be certain about the numbers, but an educated guess is that as many as ten thousand Nazi war criminals came to this country. So far the Justice Department has prosecuted/ wry of them. Punishment takes the form of de naturalization and deportation."

"Against mass murderers?"

"The murders didn't take place in the United States, In effect, the only crime they're charged with is lying about their true identity on their immigration forms."

"If the public knew, they'd be outraged."