Free Boys from Brazil by Ira Levin Page B

away. Fighting a smile, Traunsteiner swerved the car back full onto pavement, barely missing a white-on-blue intersection warning. Braking, and braking more, he swung the car screechingly left into a wider road posted Esbjerg—14 Km .
    â€œMainly by contributions,” Liebermann said, “from Jews and other concerned people all over the world. And also by my income from writing and from engagements such as this.” He pointed to a hand in the back row. A young woman stood up, pink-faced and plump; she began asking what he saw was going to be the Frieda Maloney question.
    â€œI can see,” the young woman said, “that it’s important to get the key people put on trial, the ones who held high positions. But aren’t you still motivated by vengeance in a case like Frieda Maloney, a rank-and-file guard who gets dragged back here after being an American citizen for so many years? Whatever she did during the war, hasn’t she made up for it by what she’s done since? She was a very useful citizen there. Teaching and so on.” The young woman sat down.
    He nodded and stayed silent for a moment, smoothing his mustache down thoughtfully—as if he had never been asked the question before. Then he said, “I gather from your question that you’re aware that a woman who has been a nursery-school teacher, and a finder of homes for homeless babies, and a good housewife, kind to stray dogs, can also have been—the self-same woman!—a ‘rank-and-file’ concentration-camp guard, guilty, perhaps—her trial, when it finally takes place, will tell us—of mass murder. I ask you now: would you be aware of this somewhat surprising possibility if Frieda Altschul Maloney hadn’t been found and extradited? I don’t think so, and I don’t think it’s an unimportant possibility for you to be aware of. Neither does your government.”
    He looked around—at hands springing up, including the hand of the Barry-like young man. He looked away from him (not now, Barry, I’m busy) and pointed at a shrewd-looking blond young man at dead center. (“There are ninety-four of them ,” Barry’s telephone voice insisted, “and they’re all sixty-five-year-old civil servants . How do you like them apples?”)
    A new question was coming at him. “But Frieda Maloney hasn’t even been indicted yet,” the blond young man was saying. “Is our government really so interested in pursuing Nazi criminals? Is any government in the world today, even the Israeli? Hasn’t there been a decline of interest, and isn’t that one of the reasons why you haven’t been able to reopen your Information Center?”
    So who tells you to pick the shrewd-looking ones? “First of all,” he said, “the Center is temporarily in smaller quarters, but it’s still open. People are working; letters come in, advisories go out. As I said before, we’re funded by private individuals and in no way dependent on any government. Secondly, though it’s true that both German and Austrian prosecutors are no longer as…responsive as they once were, and Israel has other more pressing problems, the cause of justice hasn’t yet been deserted. I have it on good authority that Frieda Maloney will be indicted sometime in January or February, and brought to trial soon after. The witnesses have been found, a difficult and time-consuming job in which the Center played a part.” He looked at raised hands again, bright young faces—and suddenly realized exactly what he was looking at. A gold mine, for God’s sake! Right in front of him!
    Here in this luminous oyster shell were nearly five hundred of the smartest young people in Germany, the cream of their generation, and he was trying to figure the thing out alone, one old fool with one tired brain. Dear God!
    Ask them? Crazy!
    He must have pointed at someone; the neo-Nazism