Aaron Elkins - Fellowship Of Fear

"Read this part." He put his forefinger a third of the way down the page. "Read it out loud."

Gideon was annoyed with the game-playing. He read it silently: Name Kenneth Ito; Height 5’5" Weight 148…At that point he couldn’t keep from shouting. " Race Asian! That’s the guy!" Under circumstances that were less grim, he would have whooped with triumph.

John nodded. "It’s him," he said in an almost comically respectful tone. "Shore patrol tells me he worked nightshift and took the Dump Road home. They must have killed him, planted him in the car, and then burned it. So the police would think the driver was still in it and not bother to search for him." He shook his head. "Goddamn, Doc, that’s really something."

Gideon read further: Age 38; Handedness Left. The guesses had all been right, remarkably right. "This Distinguishing Characteristics section," he said. "They forgot to say he smoked a pipe."

John turned and called to the shore patrol. "Hey, did this guy smoke a pipe, do you know?"

One of them shouted back, "That’s right, I forgot. He always had his metal pipe, one of those air-cooled jobs, stuck in his mouth! Hey, how the hell did you know?"

John turned back to Gideon. "That is really something," he said again. "I never saw anything like it. I owe you an apology." He shook his head. "I can hardly believe it. From those little pieces of bone. Doc, how do you know he smoked? How can you tell he was left-handed?"

Gideon smiled. "You know my methods, Watson."

"No, seriously."

"Oh no," Gideon said. "I tried to explain it once before, and you gave me nothing but a hard time. I think I’ll just keep a few tricks up my sleeve."

"Hey, don’t be like that." John suddenly smiled. "Anyway, you were two pounds off on his weight."

Gideon frowned. "Hmm," he said, "that’s impossible. He pretended to scrutinize the form worriedly. "Ah, here," he said with feigned relief, "this explains it. He had thinning hair. When I said one-fifty I was assuming he had a full head of hair. No way I could tell otherwise. Allow a couple of pounds for hair and you get one-forty-eight." He handed the form to John.

John’s dumbfounded expression was the most delightful thing Gideon had seen all day. "Does hair weigh that much? Doc, are you kidding me?"

"Would I kid you?" Gideon said.

The trip to Heidelberg was smooth and easy. They left Sigonella at 11:00 a.m.; at 5:00 John was back at his office and Gideon was in the lobby of the Bachelor Officers’ Quarters, trying to reach Tom Marks by telephone. He had quite a few questions to ask him, and John had advised him to go ahead and ask, although he doubted that he’d get any answers.

Mr. Marks was not in, Frau Stetten informed him. Perhaps Dr. Oliver could come the following day? The following day was Saturday, Gideon said. Was Mr. Marks at his office on Saturdays?

"We work when we must," was the lofty Teutonic response, and across Gideon’s mind there flashed an image of the wrought-iron Arbeit macht frei that once greeted newcomers to Dachau. "We will say nine o’clock, yes?"

"Fine," Gideon said. "Thank you very much." Silently he added, "Heil Hitler."

He had hung up the telephone and was standing there frowning at himself for being subject to such groundless, stereotypical thinking when he became aware that Janet

Feller, smiling warmly and looking tall and clean and lovely, had been observing him for some time.

"Sorry, I didn’t mean to wake you up," she said. "You look like the World’s Original Absent-Minded Professor."

The words, spoken so often by Nora, made his heart turn over, and while he fumbled witlessly for something to say, he was further flustered by the soft light that suddenly suffused her face. No one had looked at him like that for a very long time. For an irrational instant it seemed that Nora was back again, that the past had somehow changed, that time had bent.

She reached a hand toward his cheek and stopped with her fingertips a few inches away.

"You’ve really been through it, haven’t you?" she said, with something in her voice that hadn’t been there at the dinner party the week before.

It finally occurred to Gideon that she was reacting to his face. He had forgotten how damaged it was. "It was nothing," he said stupidly, watching her.

Janet dropped her hand back to her side. "Nothing?" she said. "You sure look like hell."

"So people have been telling me. But it’s nowhere near as bad as it looks." His voice sounded appropriately calm in his ears, but his heart was beating rapidly. For the first few months after Nora’s death, of course, he was always seeing her in the street or on campus, or getting on a bus. But it hadn’t happened for at least a year.

"I sure hope not," she said. "I see you’re using a cane."

"Only for another day or two. Really, I’m all right." He paused and cleared his throat. Asking for a date was something that came no more easily to him at thirty-eight than it had at eighteen, and he had to lower his eyes to do it. "I don’t suppose you’re busy for dinner tonight?"

She laughed. "Thanks a lot."

Gideon was confused at first. Then he laughed, too. "I mean, I don’t suppose you’re free tonight? I thought we might have dinner."

"Sounds swell," she said.

"Fine. Where shall I get you?" He stepped back a little, afraid she could hear his heart thumping.

"Get me? I live here."

"You live in the BOQ?"

"Certainly. Why not? Cheapest place in town and a sink in every room. I’m in Twenty-one. Come by in an hour."

Heidelberg is one of the very few German cities that was never bombed during World War II. As a result it has an Old World quality more authentic and pervasive than most of Germany’s other ancient cities. In the Old Town, housed in a baroque palace, is the Kurpfalziches Museum. On his first day in Heidelberg, Gideon had gone there to see the exhibit of Homo erectus heidelbergensis, the famed 360,000-year-old jawbone that had rocked the scientific world seventy years before. He was disappointed to see that the display contained only a plaster cast of the bone, but was pleased to find an elegant restaurant tucked into one corner of the courtyard. He hadn’t eaten there then, but had marked it as a place to come another time. It was here he took Janet.

Over veal steaks with cream sauce accompanied by an excellent Beilsteiner Mosel, she listened pensively, almost tenderly, to his description of the attack in Sicily. Relishing her attention, he milked the story for as much sympathy as he could, then sighed and sat back in his chair with a suitably noble expression on his battered countenance.

"But why did they do it?" Janet asked. "What was it about?"

Gideon came close to revealing his involvement with NSD but changed his mind. The less she knew, the better for her. My God, he thought; the need-to-know principle. He was starting to think like them. "The police have no idea," he said. "They figure it was a Mafia thing, that I was mistaken for someone else."

"Do you buy that? It doesn’t sound like the Mafia."

He was suddenly alert. "What do you mean?"

She shrugged and held out her glass. He filled it. "Janet," he said, "what really happened to those other two visiting fellows?"

"You think there’s a connection?" She sipped and then delicately licked the fruity wine from her lips.

With an effort, Gideon kept his mind on the conversation. "Well," he said, "do these sorts of things happen to the regular faculty?"

"No," Janet said. "It’s odd, now that you mention it. As far as I know, no USOC prof has ever been killed here or even seriously hurt, except that other fellow and now you."

"What about the Econ fellow you and Eric were talking about last week?"