"Would they? In the cases that have gone to trial, the friends and neighbours of the men who were charged wanted to leave the past alone."

"Is that the point of your story?"

"I want to help the Justice Department. If I can rouse the public, maybe the Office of Special Investigations will get more government funding. These bastards--I don't care how old they are--should all be made to feel the same terror their victims felt"

"Including my father?"

"If he's guilty," Sloane said, "yes." Miller matched Sloane's angry gaze. "I've trusted and respected my father all my life. If impossibly the Justice Department is right about him... If he's what this so-called proof says he is..."

"You agree he ought to be punished?"

"Even my father..." Miller felt sick. "Provided he's guilty, even my father can't be absolved."

Despite the five o'clock traffic. Miller managed to reduce a twenty-minute drive to slightly more than ten. The elevator to the fifth floor seemed to take forever. When he opened the door to muller and associates, architects, he saw mat his secretary had not yet gone home. "How was your meeting, Mr. Miller? Did you get the assignment?

"It's too soon to tell. I want to make some notes. Marge. If anybody calls, I'm not here. No interruptions."

"Will you be needing me for dictation?"

"No, thanks. Go home when you finish what you're typing."

"Whatever you say." He went into his office, shut the door, and leaned against it. How is it possible to know if someone you love is a monster?

Sweat trickled past his eyes. An eternal five minutes later, the tapping on the keyboard mercifully stopped. He heard the click of switches on the computer, the indistinct rustle of a dust cloth being positioned over the monitor. "Good night, Mr. Miller."

"Good night,"

he said through the door. The tap of high-heeled footsteps. The click of a latch. The snap of the outside door. Silence. Miller exhaled, relieving the pressure in his lungs, and stared at the combination safe in the corner to his right, where he stored his plans-in-progress. Two days ago, when he'd received the hideous photographs of corpses and ashes, he'd wanted to destroy them. But an intuition had warned him to move cautiously. The photographs were obviously not just a prank. If he destroyed them, he might lose information he'd need later, clues about why he'd been sent the photographs at all. Now he wished he hadn't saved them--for fear of the truth he might find. He knelt, dialed the combination on the safe, and removed the packet of-photographs. One by one, he studied the black-and-white sheets.

Death. Terrible death. He'd lied to Sloane, but only in response to one question--and only a part of that response had been a lie. But the lie, even partial, had been out of proportion to all the rest of the truth.

Yes, he'd answered honestly, I knew that my father came from Germany. I knew he'd changed his name. I knew he'd been a German soldier. Yes, a soldier. But Miller was aware that his father hadn't been an innocent participant in the war, an inexperienced young draftee promoted absurdly to the rank of sergeant Not at all. His father had been a colonel in the SS. As Miller's father had aged, he'd been drawn increasingly back to the past- On a handful of days that had unexplained personal significance for him--January 30, April 20, November 8--he'd become more and more sentimental. On those occasions, his father had made and received mysterious phone calls. Then late one night, his father had confessed to his son what he did in the war.

"Yes, I was SS. I followed the Puhrer's orders. I believed in the master race. And yes, I believed in lebensraum, the space we needed to expand and flourish. But I didn't believe in racial extermination.

Since we were superior, why couldn't we exist in tolerant harmony with inferior races? Why couldn't we allow them to serve us? I wasn't

Death's Head. I wasn't one of the exterminators. Instead I was

Waffenss, the legitimate military branch of the Schutzstaffiel I was a decent soldier. I served my country with dignity. That country lost.

So be it. History decides morality. Now I live in America. Its citizens call it the greatest nation in the world. So be it. My conscience is clear, and if I had to, I would fight to defend America with the same determination I gave to Germany." Miller had been convinced. War by its nature blurred judgements and clouded values. Yet surely some values remained constant, he hoped. His father and other

Waffen-SS commanders had managed to escape the aftermath of Germany's defeat. They'd exchanged identity papers with dead civilians and fled to Goliva, Mexico, America, Canada, England, Sweden. But they'd remained in touch, phoning each other to remember their heritage, to assure themselves that no matter how severely history had proved them wrong, they were still a part of their country's elite.

Just as the sons of the elite had kept in contact. Miller had eventually been drawn into his father's circle of former friends. He and the sons of those other fathers had pledged to help one another in case their fathers came under attack. On the first of each year, there'd been dues to be paid, twenty thousand dollars per family, a bribe to the one outsider who knew their secret, an insurance premium of sorts, blackmail that guaranteed his silence. Now those bribes had proved useless. The pledge among the sons--to stand as one and defend the group--had turned out to be ineffectual. Despite precautions, their fathers had been attacked. They themselves, the sons of the fathers, were also under attack. Insanity. Let the past rest. Miller thought.

The present and the future are what matter. Our fathers aren't what you think they were. Bring them back. Leave us alone. You've made a mistake. The Night and Fog has to end. Yet the handsome young SS officer who gazed proudly from a photograph that Miller couldn't set down reminded him uncannily of his father. No! My father wouldn't have lied to me! But would he have dared reveal this sanity-threatening truth? I have to be wrong. Miller thought I looked at this same SS officer two days ago. It never occurred to me he might be my father. Or maybe I didn't want the thought to occur to me. But the thought insisted now.

Miller's vision focused more narrowly onto the photograph, more intensely toward the SS officer's forehead, just below the peak of the ornate military cap. He tried to believe that what he saw on that forehead was an imperfection in the photograph itself, a scratch on the negative, but he couldn't convince himself. The scar was identical to the one on his father's forehead, the consequence of a near fatal car accident when he'd been ten. How is it possible to love a monster? But how is it possible to know if someone you love is a monster? Before he realized what he was doing. Miller had picked up the phone.

"The U. S. Justice Department? Who told you this?" Halloway pressed the phone harder against his ear. "An Associated Press reporter."

"Jesus Christ"

"He said my father was a Nazi war criminal," Miller said. "The commander of a god damned SS extermination team."

"But that's absurd!"

"Is it? I'm beginning to wonder. Some of the things he told me--"

"You mean you actually believe him? He's a reporter! He'll tell you anything!"

"But I took another look at those photographs and--"

"You were supposed to destroy the damned things!"

"One shows my father in a Death's Head SS uniform! In front of civilian corpses!"

"A photograph from World War Two? How do you know what your father even looked like back then? That photograph proves nothing!"

"My father had a scar on the top right corner of his forehead! So does this SS officer!"

"Coincidence!"

"That's not a good enough explanation!" Miller's voice rose. "I have to know! Was my father in charge of a Nazi extermination squad? What about all the other fathers! Were they mass murderers too?"

"If you're suggesting my father... ? That's ridiculous! It's insulting! I don't have to listen to--!"

"Stop evading the question, Halloway! Answer it!"

"I won't dignify--!"

"Were they Nazi war criminals?"

"Of course not! They were SS, yes! Waffen-SS! Legitimate soldiers! Not the Death's Head-SS who killed the Jews! But outsiders don't understand that distinction! Civilians think all SS were war criminals. So our fathers had to lie. The Night and Fog made the same mistake we feared the immigration authorities would make, the same mistake the U. S.

Justice Department and the Associated Press reporter are making."

"You're trying to tell me the Justice Department can't tell the difference between Waffen-SS and Death's Head-SS? Bullshit!"

"Then how did they make this mistake!"

"My father, your father, and the other members of the group used to phone each other on days that were special to them. April twentieth.

November eighth. January thirtieth. Do those dates mean anything to you?"

"Of course," Halloway said. "They were birthdays for some of the members of the group."