Ann-Marie MacDonald - Way the Crow Flies

“Maman?”

Her mother looks up and smiles. “Eh, ma p’tite fille, qu’est-ce que tu as, viens à maman.” And opens her arms.

Madeleine walks to her, aware that her back is arched a bit, stomach sticking out the way it used to when she was little, twining her hair around her finger. She climbs onto her mother’s lap. Her mother has also forgotten that Madeleine is nine. She puts her arms around her and rocks her. Madeleine rests her head against her mother’s shoulder and resists the desire to suck her thumb. “Maman, are you going to have another baby?”

Mimi smiles. “Maybe, if God sends one.”

“What are you going to call it? If it’s a girl.”

“Oh, I don’t know, what do you think? We could call her Domithilde.”

“No!”

Her mother laughs. “Why not? After your Tante Domithilde, what’s wrong with that?”

“Can we call her Holly?”

“Why?”

“’Cause it’s kind of like Hayley, for Hayley Mills.”

“Holly is nice, but there’s no Saint Holly.”

“Was there a Saint Claire?”

Mimi strokes her forehead. “Hush, ma p’tite . There is a Saint Claire and she is looking after our little friend. Claire is with God now.”

Then why is everyone so upset? Madeleine pictures a trio walking away from her. Claire in between Saint Claire and God, holding their hands and looking up at them. Grown-ups in robes and a kerchief, solemnly taking her away, talking to one another over her head. Where were they when someone killed her? Watching?

“Say a little prayer now,” says Maman, folding her hands. And they pray, “‘Angel of God, my guardian dear, to whom God’s love commits me here….’”

As soon as the prayer is done, Madeleine says, “I have to ask Dad something.”

“Ask him in the morning, okay?”

Madeleine closes her eyes as her mother rocks her to sleep. She puts her thumb in her mouth and ponders God and Saint Claire. Holy grown-ups who wait to meet murdered children at the airport in Heaven.

“Simon, I’ve just been talking to Froelich — my neighbour — he’s told me about Fried, about what he did at Dora. He had people hanged, Simon, he ordered executions … Simon?”

“Go on.”

“Well, if it’s true — and I think it is — we are harbouring a war criminal. He’ll have to be deported.”

A click at the other end of the line — not electronic, the sound of a lighter. Then an intake of breath. “I’m afraid that’s out of the question, Jack. Fried’s war record is neither here nor there.”

Jack thought he was prepared for this. He isn’t. “Are you telling me that you knew?”

No reply.

“I can’t be part of this, Simon.”

“I knew he was no Boy Scout. Not unlike several of the others.”

Simon’s tone — unconcerned, the same one Jack has always admired so much — repels him now. He isn’t ready for what he feels — not anger but a sagging disappointment. It’s as though he were seeing the world transform around Simon, bodies piling up. But Simon remains the same — the same half-smile, relaxed stance — knee-deep in blood. Jack says quietly, “I’m going to tell the police that I saw the boy on the road. I’m going to tell them I was in that car and I’m going to direct their inquiries to you.”

“Do you know what Project Paperclip is?”

“Did you hear me, Simon?”

“Ever hear of Operation Matchbox?”

Jack doesn’t answer.

“They’re related programs — classified, of course. The first is American. The second, Canadian. The Brits come and go as needed. Like Donald Maclean. You were right, Jack, I do have his old job. It involves liaising with the Americans, and targeting foreign scientists for recruitment by them. Although, in Maclean’s case, he was serving the wrong master.”

“And if these scientists happen to be war criminals, you turn a blind eye.”

“It’s true, a few required a little dusting off before they came stateside”—Jack hears him take a long drag off his cigarette, then exhale—“von Braun for one.”

The night has turned cold. Jack can see his breath. “What about von Braun?”

“Well he was rarely photographed in his SS uniform, but he was a Hauptsturmführer . A captain.”

“… A lot of them were forced to join.”

“I can’t picture anyone forcing von Braun to do anything.”

“Did he commit an actual crime?”

“I’ve seen minutes of a meeting that took place at Dora, attended by senior scientific, management and SS staff, including von Braun.” Simon speaks quickly but unhurriedly, a routine briefing. “They discuss bringing in additional French civilians to use as slaves, and they note the requirement that workers wear the striped concentration-camp uniform. No one is on record objecting. And if you look at the transcripts of the Dora war crimes trial, you’ll find the general manager on trial for mass murder. He mentions that von Braun was a frequent visitor to the factory and knew all about its operations, including executions.”

“The press should get hold of this.”

“They can’t. It’s been classified.”

Jack sees condensation from his breath on the black dial face of the phone. “But von Braun didn’t order executions—” he hears a foolish, plaintive note in his voice.

“Well that’s what they all said, but in von Braun’s case no doubt it’s true. Rudolph, however, is another story.”

“Arthur Rudolph?”

“Project director of NASA’s Saturn rocket program. He was head of production at Mittelwerk—”

“Mittelwerk?”

“Mittelbau. Sometimes referred to as Nordhausen, after the nearby town.”

“What are you talking about, Simon?”

“Dora. It was called anything but. Still is. What better way to confuse the enemy than by layers of ever-shifting bureaucratic nomenclature?”

“You knew all this.”

“It’s my job to know.”

Jack watches the fog gathering outside. Dimly visible beyond the aircraft hangars, the red light of the control tower blinks at regular slow intervals.

“The purpose of Paperclip is threefold,” Simon continues. “To deprive the Soviets of scientific expertise. To provide the West — usually via America — with scientific expertise. And three: to reward individuals who have enriched Western intelligence.”

“Reward Nazis.”

“In some cases,” says Simon. “Former Nazis. A number of them got to come to Canada. Lead quiet lives. You very discreetly welcomed them at the request of Britain or the U.S.”

“War criminals.”

“The fact is, most are completely harmless now. Pruning their roses, paying taxes. And they have no sympathy for Communists.”

“It doesn’t change what they did.”

“I quite agree. In a perfect world, they’d have hanged. Or gone to prison.”

Jack says nothing, annoyed by Simon’s exercise in relativism, and conscious that this imparting of classified information is a form of flattery aimed at co-opting him.

“It’s also different from the rat line,” says Simon. “The CIA ran that operation with the Vatican, funnelled a lot of these chaps, mainly to South America — genuine bastards. People like Barbie and Mengele. Their usefulness was purely intelligence, and I have my doubts about that, but there’s a big military-industrial complex here in the U.S. with a vested interest in keeping the military on tenterhooks; jockeying among the generals for bigger slices of the budget, a lot of competition among security agencies to see who can bring in the scariest bit of intelligence, the best defector, cock-and-bull about who has the most missiles, and a lot of them believe it too, all grist for the mill, good for business. It’s called threat inflation. But they damn well know who the enemy is and they do get things done, the Yanks.”