The English Assassin

layer of flab hung over the waistband of his briefs. He was painfully cold.
    They had permitted him to retain his watch, but the crystal was smashed and it no longer kept time. He studied the light leaking through his window and decided it was the light of sunset. He worked out the time, though even this simple problem caused his head to pound. They had taken him shortly before midnight. He guessed it was now five or six in the afternoon of the following day. Eighteen hours. Had he been unconscious for eighteen hours? That would explain his thirst and the unbearable stiffness in his back and joints.
    He wondered where they had taken him. The quality of light and air was no longer Swiss. For a moment he feared they had spirited him to Israel. No, he’d be in a proper cell in Israel, not a cellar. He was still close to Switzerland. France, maybe. Perhaps Italy. The Jews liked the south of Europe. They blended in well.
    There was another scent that took him a few moments to place: incense and sandalwood, a woman’s fragrance. And then he remembered: outside the elevator in Zurich; the hand of the woman who had sedated him. But why was her scent on him? He looked down at the skin covering his rib cage and saw four red lines: scratches. His underwear was stained, and there was a cracking stickiness at his crotch. What had they done to him? Eighteen hours, powerful drugs . . .
    Peterson fell sideways and his cheek struck the cold terra-cotta floor. He retched. Nothing came up, but his nausea was intense. He was sickened by his own weakness. He felt suddenly like a rich man who gets into trouble in a poor neighborhood. All his money, all his culture and superiority—his Swissness —meant nothing now. He was beyond the protective walls of his Alpine Redoubt. He was in the hands of people who played the game by very different rules.
    He heard footsteps on the staircase. A man entered, small and dark, with a quickness that suggested hidden strength. He seemed annoyed that Peterson had regained consciousness. In his hand was a silver pail. He lifted it with both hands and showered Peterson with ice-cold water.
    The pain was intense, and Peterson screamed in spite of himself. The little man knelt beside him and rammed a hypodermic needle into Peterson’s thigh, so deep it seemed to strike bone, and once more Peterson slid benevolently below the surface of his lake.
     
    WHENGerhardt Peterson was a boy, he had heard a story about some Jews who had come to his family’s village during the war. Now, in his drug-induced coma, he dreamed of the Jews again. According to the story, a family of Jews, two adults and three children, had crossed into Switzerland from unoccupied France. A farmer took pity on them and gave them shelter in a tiny outbuilding on his property. An officer from the cantonal police learned there were Jews hiding in the village but agreed to keep their presence a secret. But someone in the village contacted the federal police, who descended on the farm the next day and took the Jews into custody. It was the policy of the government to expel illegal immigrants back into the country from which they had made their unlawful border crossing. These Jews had crossed into Switzerland from the unoccupied south of France, but they were taken to the border of occupied France and driven into the waiting arms of a German patrol. The Jews were arrested, placed on a train to Auschwitz, and gassed.
    At first, Gerhardt Peterson had refused to believe the story. In school he had been taught that Switzerland, a neutral country during the war, had opened its borders to refugees and to wounded soldiers—that it been Europe’s Sister of Mercy, a motherly bosom in the heart of a continent in turmoil. He went to his father and asked him whether the story about the Jews was true. At first his father refused to discuss it. But when young Gerhardt persisted, his father relented. Yes, he said, the story was true.
    “Why does no one talk about it?”
    “Why should we talk about it? It’s in the past. Nothing can be done to change it.”
    “But they were killed. They died because of someone in this village.”
    “They were here illegally. They came without permission. And besides, Gerhardt, we didn’t kill them. It was the Nazis who murdered them. Not us!”
    “But Papa—”
    “Enough, Gerhardt! You asked me if it was true, and I gave you an answer. You are never to discuss it again.”
    “Why, Papa?”
    His father did not