Ann-Marie MacDonald - Way the Crow Flies

Eventually a few cases were brought to trial, and although public opinion was divided on whether these law-abiding senior citizens should be prosecuted after all these years — whether it was justice or “Jewish vendetta,” whether it was democracy at work or playing into the hands of “Soviet propaganda”—Henry Froelich’s story began to look less far-fetched. Journalists, authors and documentary filmmakers theorized about the fate of Henry Froelich, whose body had never been found. Had he stumbled on — to use a term that had become common currency — a “covert operation”? Was he a victim of RCMP dirty tricks? Was the CIA involved?

Sporadic attempts were made to find Richard Froelich and interview him. But he had changed his name, and his whereabouts remained a mystery.

ONE MORNING, Madeleine saw their pictures in the paper. Under the headline “Supreme Court Turns Down Bid for Appeal.” She was seventeen at the time. But Ricky was still fifteen, and Claire of course was nine.

She glimpsed the pictures when her father turned the page at the breakfast table, then they disappeared when he folded the paper. He took it to work with him. She knew he hadn’t wanted to leave it lying around. She got up from the table.

“You leaving already, ma p’tite?”

“Yeah, I want to get to school early. I’m meeting Jocelyn.” Unnecessary lie, but harmless. Her first class that morning was a spare.

“Qu’est-ce que tu as , Madeleine?”

“Nothing’s the matter.”

“You’re flushed, come till I feel your forehead.”

“I’m fine.”

She left, forgetting her lunch. She needed to go outside, where it was cool and normal. She didn’t need to read the article, the headline said it all. She didn’t want to read the fine print, to see again the words child witnesses . When her Man In Society teacher, Mr. Eagan, asked the class how many of them were familiar with the Richard Froelich case, Madeleine and two other students — one from Pakistan and one from Uganda — were the only ones who didn’t raise their hands. She drew cartoons in the back of her scribbler while the class discussed the possible miscarriage of justice.

After supper she asked her father, “Dad, do you think it really was an air force man Ricky saw in the car?” They were in the family room, watching the new colour TV. A nature show. He didn’t seem surprised by the question.

“If it was, you have to ask yourself why he didn’t come forward.”

“Why do you think?”

“Well, assuming Ricky wasn’t mistaken, I’d have to say that this air force type, whoever he was, must’ve been up to something fairly confidential.”

“Like what?”

He shrugged, eyes on the screen. “Government business?”

She stared at the lurid greens and shifting blues of the television.

“Do you think there really was a war criminal?”

“I wouldn’t be surprised,” he said, getting up to adjust the colour.

“So you think Mr. Froelich was telling the truth?”

“Knowing Henry Froelich,” said Jack, “there’s no doubt in my mind.”

She started to ask another question, but they heard Mimi coming in through the garage door and Jack warned her with a look. They stopped talking and concentrated on the screen: an unspoiled tropical paradise — white sand, azure sea.

In the kitchen, Mimi began rattling around. Emptying the dishwasher, putting away groceries.

“He was in a camp,” said Madeleine quietly. On the screen, a sea turtle glided under water. “I saw his tattoo once.”

“Did you?” His profile was impassive.

“He must’ve been at Auschwitz.” She had studied the Holocaust in History. She never used the term “holocaust” at home, however, because her father objected to it: the Second World War was about a whole lot more than that . She watched the turtle sleeping on the ocean floor and heard her father say, “At first.” She looked at him, perplexed, but his gaze was on the TV and he kept it there as he spoke. “He was at a different place later.”

“Another camp?”

“This was no ordinary concentration camp.”

She waited. You mean there’s such a thing as an “ordinary” concentration camp, doc?

“Dora,” he said.

“Who?”

On the TV, hundreds of baby turtles flailed across the beach toward the sea. Birds dropped down, leisurely, picking them off one by one as the narrator, in measured manly tones, asserted that “only a handful” would make it.

“Dora. Where the rockets were built.”

“What rockets?”

“Ever hear of guided missiles? Ever hear of Apollo?”

She heard the note of grim sarcasm, the one usually reserved for politicians, the school system and — before he left home — Mike. She wondered if her father was about to get angry again, the way he had at the moon landing last summer. His anger never frightened her, however. It gave her a pang in the pit of her stomach. Something was wrong. Someone should fix it for him.

In the kitchen, Mimi turned on the Cuisinart. It sounded like a jet engine.

Jack said, “Dora is where it all started.” Eyes fixed on the South Pacific. “Henry Froelich was there.”

She pictured Mr. Froelich in his white shirt, skinny tie and thick glasses, bearded and conspicuous in a row of clean-shaven scientists and engineers hunched over their computers at Mission Control, Texas.

“It was a concentration camp,” said Jack.

In Houston? Madeleine was beginning to feel as though she were a little stoned. A mother sea turtle began the near-futile task of digging a hole in the sand with her flippers. “Where was Dora?”

“It was in a mountain cave.” His voice changed again. It took on the dreamy quality she recognized from childhood, his once-upon-a-time tone. “During the war,” a long time ago , “in what would later become East Germany,” in a country that no longer exists , “Hitler’s secret weapon,” there was a treasure , “built by slave labour” they toiled out of sight of sun or moon… .

The sea turtle excreted her eggs into the sandpit, hundreds of them. Buried them. And split.

“The V-2 rocket,” said Jack. “V for Vengeance.”

“… and the cycle of nature continues,” said the narrator. She recognized the voice. Lorne Greene. Pa from Bonanza . She turned to her father again, but he was focused on the screen, features etched in concentration, he could have been watching the President, Good evening my fellow citizens. This government, as promised, has maintained the closest surveillance of the Soviet military buildup on the island of Cuba… . The surface of the sandy nest stirred. Cut to predators wheeling above. Cut back to sand, where a tiny ancient leather face breached its shell.

Mimi called from the kitchen, “Madeleine, I need your help.”

“I don’t suppose they’ve taught you who Wernher von Braun is at that high school of yours,” said her father, his shoulder twitching.

“The NASA guy.”

“That’s right. Director of the Marshall Space Flight Center, father of the Saturn rockets that went to the moon.” Model for Donald Duck’s uncle, Professor Von Drake — but Madeleine kept mum. “Von Braun and his colleagues ran Dora during the war. Before it went underground, it was called Peenemünde.”

Pain Amunda . “Uncle Simon was there — I mean he bombed it.”

Jack looked at her. “That’s right.”

“Whatever happened to him?”

“Haven’t a clue.” He turned back to the screen. “Here’s something I don’t expect you to have learned about in school: there was a government program a few years back, in the States. The British were involved as well. So were the Canadians … to a degree. Still happening, for all we know.”