“Okay.”

“We can’t find anything prior to 1945 about Avrom Danylchenko.

Again, that doesn’t prove spit. Lots of records were lost during the war, and there’s tons of stuff from the old Soviet Union that no one has sifted through yet. Still, it is interesting that the last record we have of Ivan Marchenko is Nikolai Shelaiev’s statement that he saw him in Fiume in 1944, and the first record of Avrom Danylchenko is his visa application the following year in Rijeka.”

“How far is Rijeka from Fiume?”

“I wondered that myself — couldn’t find Fiume in my atlas at first. It turns out — get this — that Fiume and Rijeka are the same place. Fiume is the old Italian name for the city.”

“Jesus. So what happens now?”

“I’m going to show the photo to the remaining Treblinka survivors. I’m flying out to New Mexico tomorrow to see one of them, and I’m off to Israel after that.”

“Surely you could just fax the photo to the police there,” said Pierre.

“No, I want to be on hand. I want to see the witnesses at the moment they first look at the photo. We were fucked over on the Demjanjuk case because the identifications weren’t handled properly. Yoram Sheftel — that’s Demjanjuk’s Israeli lawyer — says in all his years in the business, he’s never once seen the Israeli police conduct a proper photo-spread ID. In the Demjanjuk case, they used a photo spread that had Demjanjuk’s photo mixed in with seven others. But some of the photos were bigger or clearer than the others, and most of them didn’t bear even a passing resemblance to the man the witnesses had described.

This time I’m going to supervise it all, every step of the way. There aren’t going to be any fuckups.” A pause. “Anyway, I’ve got to get going.”

“Wait — one more thing.”

“What are you, Columbo?”

Pierre was taken aback. At least it was an improvement over everyone assuming he was a salesman. “When you have somebody in custody, what kind of identification records do you keep?”

“How do you mean?” said Avi.

“I mean you must keep records, right? The whole idea behind Nazi hunting is proving identity. Surely if you have someone in custody, you must take pains to make sure you can identify the same person again years later if need be.”

“Sure. We take fingerprints, even some retinal scans—”

“Do you take tissue samples? For DNA fingerprinting?”

“That sort of routine testing is not legal.”

“That’s not a direct answer. Do you do it? It’s easy enough, after all. All you need is a few cells. Do you do it?”

“Off the record, yes.”

“Were you doing that as far back as the 1980s?”

“Yes.”

“Would you have a tissue sample from John Demjanjuk still on file?”

“I imagine so. Why?”

“Get it. Have it sent to my lab by FedEx.”

“Why?”

“Just do it. If I’m right — if I’m right, I can clear up the mystery of exactly what went wrong at the Ivan the Terrible trial in Jerusalem all those years ago.”

The phone rang again the next day. This time Pierre was down in the den, and he got it there. “Hello?”

“Pierre, it’s Avi. I’m calling you from O’Hare. I saw Zalmon Chudzik this morning; he’s one of the Treblinka survivors who now lives in the States.”

“And?”

“And the poor bastard’s got Alzheimer’s disease.”

“Merde.”

“Exactly. But, you know — this may sound cruel — but in this one case, maybe it’s a blessing.”

“Huh?”

“His daughter says he’s forgotten everything about Treblinka. For the first time in over fifty years, he’s managing to sleep through the night.”

Pierre didn’t know how to reply. After a few moments, he said, “When do you leave for Israel?”

“About three hours.”

“I hope you have better luck there.”

Avi’s voice was weary. “Me, too. There were only fifty Treblinka survivors, and over thirty-five of them have passed on in the intervening years. There are only four left who hadn’t previously misidentified Demjanjuk as Ivan — and Chudzik was one of those four.”

“What happens to our case if we don’t get a positive ID?”

“It evaporates. Look at all the evidence they had against O. J.

Simpson — made no difference to the jury. Without eyewitnesses, we’re sunk. And I do mean eyewitnesses, plural. The Israelis aren’t going to pay attention unless we get at least two independent IDs.”

“Good Christ,” said Pierre softly.

“At this stage,” said Avi, “I’d even take his help.”

Avi Meyer had spent the last few days wrangling back and forth over jurisdictional issues with Izzy Tischler, a plainclothes detective with the Nazi Crimes Investigation Division of the Israeli State Police. They were now ready to attempt their first ID. Tischler, a tall, thin, red-haired fellow of forty, wore a yarmulke; Avi was wearing a large canvas hat, trying to ward off the brutal sun. They walked down the narrow street, beside buildings of yellow brick with narrow balconies, packed one right up against the next. Two Orthodox Jewish men walked down the lane, and an Arab headed up the other way. They didn’t look at each other as they passed.

“This is it,” said Tischler, checking the number on the house against an address he had written down on a Post-it note in his hand, folded in half so that the adhesive strip was covered over. The door was set back only a meter from the road. Weeds grew out of the cracks in the stone walk, but the beauty of the ceramic mezuzah on the doorpost caught Avi’s eye. He knocked. After about half a minute, a middle-aged woman appeared.

“Shalom,” said Avi. “My name is Avi Meyer, and this is Detective Tischler, of the Israeli State Police. Is Casimir Landowski home?”

“He’s upstairs. What’s this all about?”

“May we speak to him?”

“About what?”

“We just need him to identify some photos.”

The middle-aged woman looked from one man to the other. “You’ve found Ivan Grozny,” she said flatly.

Avi cringed. “It’s important that the identification not be prejudiced. Is Casimir Landowski your father?”

“Yes. My husband and I have looked after him since his wife died.”

“Your father can’t know in advance who we’re asking him to identify. If he knows, the defense lawyers will be able to get the identification ruled ineligible. Please, don’t say a word to him.”

“He won’t be able to help you.”

“Why not?”

“Because he’s blind, that’s why not. Complications from diabetes.”

“Oh,” said Avi, his heart sinking. “I’m sorry.”

“Even if he could see,” said the woman, “I’m not sure I’d let you speak to him.”

“Why?”

“We watched the trial of John Demjanjuk on TV. What was that, ten or more years ago? He could see then — and he knew you had the wrong guy.

They’d shown him pictures of Demjanjuk, and he’d said it wasn’t Ivan.”

“I know. That’s why he’d have made a great witness this time.”

“But it tore him up, watching that trial. All that testimony about Treblinka. He’d never spoken about it — my whole life, he’d never said a word to me. But he sat there, transfixed, day in and day out, listening to the testimony. He knew some of those who were testifying. Hearing them recount the things that butcher did — murder and rape and torture. He thought if he never spoke about it, somehow he could separate it from his life, keep it isolated from everything else. To have to live through it all again, even from the comfort of his living room, almost killed him. To ask him to do that once more — such a thing I’d never do. He’s ninety-three; he’d never survive it.”

“I’m sorry,” said Avi. He looked at the woman, trying to size her up. It occurred to him that perhaps the man wasn’t really blind. Maybe she was just trying to shelter him. “I, ah, I’d like to speak to your father anyway, if I may. You know, just to shake his hand. I’ve come all the way from the United States.”