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PROLOGUE

Montségur

Languedoc (Now Southwestern France)

March 16, 1244

GUILLAUME OF ANJOU KNEW IT WAS over. Thirty years of one-sided combat. They had butchered women and children at Carcassonne, marched them into waiting fires at St. Nazaire and Toulouse. At Béziers, the soldiers had asked Arnaud Almaric, the papal emissary, how to distinguish between good Catholics and Cathars. His reply had been, Kill them all. God will know his own.

     And they had, down to the newest born baby.

     Cathars. Les Parfaits or Perfects, they called themselves. They had refused the tithes levied by the pope, laughed at the excommunication that followed. Honest and so peaceful, they would not fight.

     What sort of man would not fight to prevent his woman from being raped and his son from being impaled?

     Pope Innocent III had decreed a crusade against these people who despised the priesthood, ate no meat, and refused the sacraments of infant baptism and marriage. And they insisted the souls of man, and some animals, found homes in other people.

     Guillaume smiled, thinking of Apollo, his huge black Ariegeois stallion, returning from death, perhaps as a chainmail priest.

     His helmet permitted but a narrow view of the scene, particularly since he had only the one eye remaining after an encounter with a Saracen arrow. But soldiering was all he knew. As the third son of minor nobility, he had inherited no estates and he had no real desire to become a priest. The spoils of conquest gave him the only living he knew how to make. He lifted the bucketlike helmet from his head and put it on the pommel of his saddle where his buckler already hung. There would be no need of shield or sword this day. He wished he could shed his chainmail armor as easily. It was becoming uncomfortably warm.

     This was the last Cathar stronghold, and today its inhabitants had surrendered after six months of siege of the castle perched on a mountain so steep neither man nor horse could climb it without using the narrow path the enemy had so perfectly blocked. Six months of camping in rain and snow and mud so deep the horses sank into it almost to the shoulder and tents simply disappeared.

     But now the campaign and the crusade were over. Hand in hand the last two hundred or so Cathars were making their way down that accursed path, singing in their peculiar language, Occitan, in which the word for yes had given the region its name, Langue d'oc, language of the yes.

     Guillaume wondered idly if they would continue to sing as they were marched into the bonfires that awaited them. One thing was certain: they had no fear of death. He also wondered, somewhat more sourly, what booty would await the victors in that castle. He had heard these people despised material possessions. It was certain he had never seen one who seemed to own more than the rough jerkins and leggings they wore.

     And after today? Who knew? The only thing certain was that a fighting man with his own horse and weapons would always be in demand.

     His attention went back to the procession winding down the mountainside. He had fought the infidel in the Holy Land; he had slain the innocents in a dozen rebellious regions here in France. But he had never seen the priests so vehement as they had been toward these seemingly peaceful people.

     Was it because of the heresies the Church had described?

     Or was it something else?

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CHAPTER 1

Campo de' Fiori

Rome

February 17, 1600

IT WAS UNUSUALLY MILD FOR A winter day but still too early in the year for the flower sellers to arrive. They had given the once-open field its name, long before it had been populated by the other merchants and innkeepers. Visitors to the city had left their rooms early to assure themselves a place near the center of the square. They competed for the best views with the growing crowd of the curious, as well as the shopkeepers, butchers, and fishmongers who sold their goods here along the papal route.

     But it was not the pope who was the center of attention today. Indeed, he was not even present. Instead, the mob's attention was riveted to a fifty-two-year-old former Dominican monk. Barefoot, chained by the neck and muzzled with a wooden mask, he had been led the half mile from his prison cell in the Tower of Nona to an iron pole in the center of a pile of kindling wood. Walking beside him, monks of the Order of St. John the Beheaded had offered crucifixes for him to kiss, thereby signaling repentance and a renunciation of his fearful blasphemies.

     At each, he had shaken his head.

     The audience grew restive with anticipation as the man came closer to the stake. Burning heretics had become infrequent, only twenty-five or so in the last hundred years. They were about to witness a rare spectacle indeed.

     A glass merchant from The Most Serene Republic of Venice turned to a man in the robes of the Society of Jesus. Is this not Giordano Bruno, the man who was examined by the Venetian Inquisition and found innocent, if misguided?

     The Jesuit did not take his eyes from the unfolding events. It is. He came to the attention of Cardinal Bellarmine here in Rome seven years ago. The man has spread his vile doctrine across Europe, giving much comfort to those who deny the authority of the Holy Father. He was even briefly in the court of that devil-spawned bastard who sits on the throne of England, Elizabeth Tudor.

     The Jesuit's tone of voice almost silenced the glass merchant, but his curiosity overcame his reluctance. Pray tell, good father, did he not agree with Copernicus that the earth is not the center of the universe, an argument he put forth as a philosopher, not a monk? Was that not why the inquisitors in Venice found him not willfully evil?

     The Jesuit gave the man a glare that said the morals of Venetians clearly did not meet his Roman standards. Evil enough to relegate this world, where God sent His only son, to some celestial backwater. Today he will commence suffering the agony of hellfire for far worse. He has widely proclaimed souls are of God, that they do not journey to heaven, hell, or purgatory but pass from person to person as though some garment to be worn and worn again.

     The glass merchant watched straw being piled up to Bruno's chin and a crucifix being offered a last time. Despite the unseasonable warmth of the day, he pulled his cloak tighter about him.

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CHAPTER 2

Hemis Monastery

Ladakh, India

January 1877

HE HAD FALLEN FROM HIS HORSE and the resulting broken leg was ever more painful. He should have been more careful. After traveling through the Himalayas' narrow, icy passes, he could have anticipated his mount might slip.

     Nicolas Notovitch, journalist, political writer of international note, traveler, stuck in a Buddhist monastery hundreds of wintry miles from the nearest telegraph, unable to wire his progress to thousands of eager readers.

     At least the monks seemed to know what they were doing in treating his leg.

     The time would not be wasted.

     One of the monks spoke French, a language in which Notovitch was fluent. The Lama had produced a series of ancient scrolls in Tibetan from which the polylinguistic monk read to him each day while Notovitch took the words down in his native Russian.

     At first, he had listened and transcribed as a diversion from the pain and the boredom. Although he had converted from Judaism to the Orthodox Church years before, it had been a political move only. Jews had limited futures under the czar. He had had no passion for religion. The history and teachings of a holy man, Issa, from about AD 14 until AD 30, held little interest.

     Until the third day.

     Then Notovitch began to pay attention, very close attention. What he was hearing had worldwide implications.

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CHAPTER 3

Monowitz-Auschwitz III

Near Cracow, Poland

December 30, 1944

SOLOMON MUSTAWITZ HAD A LOT TO be thankful for. He was reminded of that every time he looked out of the window of the Arbeitseinsatz offices of the IG Farben plant at the snow-covered ground below. Groups of prisoners, wearing nothing more than the same tattered striped cotton uniforms they had been issued upon arrival, were herded from one labor detail to another, frequently leaving bloody footprints from their lack of shoes. Many, perhaps most, would not survive the winter.

     Solomon was lucky. Before the Germans had invaded Poland, he had been a mere office clerk, but he had taken a course to master the American-made IBM card-punch machines.

     Auschwitz consisted of a sprawling series of three major concentration camps, surrounded by some forty minor camps, farms, and factories. Some sort of automation of data was imperative. The need was filled by a dozen IBM punch-card machines supplied by the American company's Polish subsidiary. Four sorters and two high-speed tabulators ran twenty-four hours a day. Each prisoner had a card bearing the number tattooed on his left forearm, a card with neat, square holes that would respond to the tabulator's coded search for, say, a stonemason or carpenter.

     Happily, both the machines and their German supervisors required comfortable temperatures to operate, far warmer than the unheated barracks where Solomon returned at night. Those clapboard walls did little to stop the wind. Prisoners had only a thin, lice-infested blanket for cover. But at least Solomon was warm fourteen hours a day here in the office. And he had ample opportunity to gather up lunch scraps left by the German workers: sausage made with real meat and bread made of flour rather than sawdust. The typical prisoner ration of watery soup with a rare potato slice once a day was hardly enough to sustain life. Nor was it intended to.

     That was the cruelest part: sustaining life. Solomon's job provided just enough heat and food to allow him to think beyond the camp, to remember his wife, Rebecca, whom he had not seen in two years. Was she still alive in the women's camp or dead, her memorial being a greasy black column of smoke emitted from the ovens? The cold, the hunger, the pain inflicted by beatings for little or no reason had reduced most prisoners to an atavistic state where survival, not lost love ones, occupied every waking minute.

     Survival or willing surrender.

     Mornings began with each barracks stacking up those who had succumbed to the cold, malnutrition, or disease during the night. That, of course, was another reason Solomon's skills with the machines were sorely needed: as soon as a prisoner died, perhaps even before, a scramble ensued between his bunkmates for his clothes and blanket, ensuring the corpses piled up outside were identifiable only by the tattooed number. Removing the deceased's card from the machine was as close to a funeral as the dead got.

     Solomon knew his turn would come, but he was not yet past caring. The beatings, the unprovoked cruelty, even the dehumanizing tattoo, had failed to diminish his desire to live. Joining the stacks of dead frozen bodies one morning would be surrender, abandoning the frail spark of life to the Germans. It was the only thing he had left, and he intended to keep it.

     This morning had started like any other: shouts from the guards and kicks and blows for any prisoner who did not move fast enough to suit them. Bring out the dead, roll call while breath froze on the cheeks, and work for assignments. Solomon had duly reported to the IG Farben building as he had every morning for . . . how long? He was unsure. The days, months, and years had a way of slipping by in anonymous similarity. Was this his second winter here or his third?

     No matter. He knew today was going to be different when he entered the room where the card machines were housed. At the front was a desk usually occupied by Herr Steck, a pudgy, greasy-haired little Hessian who peered at his charges through glasses that magnified his eyes so much they appeared to make up over half of his face. Though small, Steck was given to fits of violent temper that frequently ended in a caning, some of which resulted in disability that inevitably meant a trip to the gas chambers and ovens.

     That temper had cost Solomon two teeth, but he bore no particular ill will. The incisors were already loosened by the poor diet and would have fallen out anyway, as a molar had the month before. Having them knocked out among blood and spit had saved a worse beating. Steck became nauseated at the sight of blood.

     This morning there was no sign of Steck nor his steel-tipped cane.

     Instead, a black-uniformed Sturmbannführer sat on Steck's desk, a riding crop slapping rhythmically against leather boots shiny enough to reflect the room's overhead lights. Solomon could not help but gape enviously at the fur-trimmed great coat thrown across a chair. With a coat like that, a man would never be cold.

     You are the Jew Solomon Mustawitz? he asked in German.

     The yellow Star of David sewn onto Solomon's blouse answered at least part of the question, but he nodded.

Ja, Herr Sturmbannführer.

     The German wrinkled his nose as though smelling something unpleasant. And, indeed, he might. Prisoners' personal hygiene was not a camp priority.

     You will come with me, the officer said, turning and walking out of the card machine room. Not once did he so much as look over a shoulder to make sure Solomon was following.

     At first, Solomon had to force himself to walk despite legs and feet that did not want to cooperate. When a prisoner was removed from his work post, he was taken directly to the gas chambers or a firing squad. He had worried that he might become indifferent to death like so many here. Now, faced with it, he was surprised to find he cared very much. But the others, the men hauled away to their deaths, had been taken by low-level guards, or by the kapos, other inmates who cooperated with the their captors for a few stale crusts of bread and perhaps an extra bowl of that watery soup.

     But a full SS Sturmbannführer?

     His curiosity grew even more when the German crossed the barracks yard and passed the warning wire just inside the main fence. Any prisoner who even touched the inner wire was summarily shot, the only real escape from Auschwitz and one occasionally voluntarily chosen by its inmates over the stark existence in the camp.

     The winter wind cut through Solomon's tattered cotton uniform like a knife. His joints ached. The snow seeped through the soles of his paper slippers, numbing his feet to a dull, pulsing pain. He thought of the prisoners he had seen with toes black as coal dust from frostbite. The brave cut off those toes with whatever sharp edge they could find, even their own teeth. The timid ones watched the blackness spread until their entire leg became gangrenous and they found final relief in the gas chambers.

     For a moment, his discomfort was replaced by recurring curiosity. If he was not being taken to his death, then where? And for what purpose?

     At the main gate, the guard, an elderly Volkssturm replacement for the younger men who had been siphoned off to staunch the hemorrhaging Eastern Front, drew himself up in an approximation of attention. Whatever was said was lost in the wind, but Solomon and the officer passed through onto ground Solomon never expected to feel under his feet again.

     The Sturmbannführer stopped in front of a row of wooden huts, guards' quarters, looked at Solomon, and motioned him forward. Kommen Sie.

     They entered the first building in the row. Inside, Solomon could not help but savor the lingering odors of food, burned wood, and tobacco, the latter something he had almost forgotten. Bunks were arranged against the walls much like the prisoners' barracks except these had Federbetten, feather-stuffed comforters. A porcelain stove stood in the corner surrounded by firewood. Before the war Solomon would have regarded these quarters as Spartan indeed. Today they were the height of luxury.

     The German pointed toward the far end of the single room. There is a shower there. When you have cleansed yourself, put these on.

     He indicated a pile of clothing on one of the bunks.

     Solomon stared. The only clean clothes he had seen were prisoners' uniforms on the rare occasions in the summer when they were given an opportunity to wash them. And these clothes not only did not have the stripes of a prisoner or the Star of David; most important, he could see no lice.

     He had not had a hot bath since . . . he could not remember, a very long time. He enjoyed every moment of it, lathering up time after time as the delightfully hot water pounded his skin into a pinkish hue. He tried not to even guess at the reason for his being here. Perhaps someone had made a mistake, allowing a prisoner, a Jewish prisoner, to spend a few minutes living like a human being.

     But then, Germans did not make such mistakes.

     Reluctantly, he left the shower and got dressed.

     The Sturmbannführer tossed him a standard Wehrmacht greatcoat. It smelled of sweat and rancid food but it was welcome. Odor or not, no other prisoner had such a garment. Without speaking the German turned and motioned Solomon to follow him outside. Four other prisoners shivered in cotton uniforms as they stood in the snow under the gaze of a guard with a rifle. Two had red badges sewn onto their uniforms along with the letters SU under the numbers printed on their blouses. Russian prisoners. A third, a short, dark-skinned man, displayed a Z for Zigeuner, Gypsy. The fourth wore the same faded yellow Star of David as Solomon had.

     The Sturmbannführer waved to move on.

     A short march brought them to the railway tracks where a locomotive with a single car waited. Not a cattle car, like those that arrived almost daily with new inmates, but a third-class passenger coach, one with rows of hard bench seats and a stove glowing with heat at one end. At the other was a partition that concealed a rough wooden seat above an open hole onto the tracks, a toilet. It had the first toilet paper Solomon had seen in years.

     Certainly an improvement over his last train ride, Solomon thought. Before the war, before he and most of Warsaw's Jews had been deported, Solomon had never ridden on anything more mechanized than his bicycle or, on occasion, the city's trams. His first trip on a railroad had been to the camp. Hours standing shoulder to shoulder in a suffocating cattle car with other deportees, his nostrils filled with the stench of human excreta and, worse, terror. He had tried to comfort Rebecca, telling her what the Germans had said, that the Jews were only being transported to waiting villages and farms where they would lead lives away from the city. She would have none of it, weeping the whole trip. Two old men had died, remaining standing because there was no room to fall down. He doubted he would ever ride a train again without being reminded. In fact, he had doubted he would ever ride again, period.

     The engine groaned to life and picked up speed, the first train Solomon had seen leaving Auschwitz with living cargo. The train went a few miles before reaching a forest, an endless stand of snow-draped conifers so thick the ground was in perpetual twilight. There it stopped until real darkness fell before moving on. Solomon had learned that asking questions produced more beatings than answers, but his curiosity was partially satisfied when one of the Russians whispered an explanation. The airplanes. They destroy everything that moves by day.

     That, of course, did little to tell Solomon why he had been chosen or where he was going. He only knew it had to be better than where he had been.

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CHAPTER 4

Three Days Later

Early Morning

SOLOMON AWOKE AND STRETCHED. THE wooden bench of the railcar was no harder than the bare slats of his bunk at the camp, and the greatcoat had kept him reasonably warm. The smell of coffee made his mouth water as did the thought of the boiled eggs and ham that had been his breakfast the previous two mornings. The Jewish prohibition against pork never entered his mind. Meat was food, whatever its source. A warm place to sleep, food. Wherever this train was taking him, he hoped the trip would never end.

     As though the gods were mocking him, the train's brakes squealed and it began to slow. Another stop in the woods to hide during the day? For the first time since leaving the camp, the train was moving in light. Outside the window, Solomon could see a landscape far different from that they had left. Instead of Poland's flat marshes and rolling hills there were mountains, some so high their snowcapped crests were swallowed by the morning mist. The trees shrunk as the locomotive groaned its way around one uphill curve then another. Soon, there were no trees at all, only jagged outcroppings of gray rock peeking out from under snowbanks.

     Solomon had only an idea where he was; somewhere in the Alps and west of Poland. Certainly not Italy; they had surrendered to the Allies over a year ago, according to camp gossip. Switzerland was unlikely unless the Sturmbannführer had planned on internment for the duration, in which case bringing five prisoners with him made no sense. The French Alps were in the southern part of that country, perhaps too far to reach only traveling at night in such a short time. That left Bavaria or Austria.

     Solomon knew it really didn't matter where he was: he was a Jew under guard by Germans. In another sense, it mattered very much. Knowing his location on the globe gave him a sense of being something more than an insect to be crushed at will under a German boot. A man who knew his whereabouts at least was free from his masters' will to keep it a secret.

     The train was definitely slowing now, coming to a stop on the first bit of level ground Solomon had seen in the last half hour. On the other side of the window, the steeple and onion dome of a church reached for the sky. Several little houses stood in small clusters as though seeking warmth from each other. Then, a wooden building, a train station, blocked his view. But not before he caught a glimpse of a faded black sign painted on a white background that proclaimed OBERKOENIGSBURG.

     A blast of frigid air rushed through the car as someone opened the door from outside. The all-too-familiar commands in German followed and the other four prisoners leapt from the train. Solomon would have followed had not the Sturmbannführer grasped his arm, shaking his head.

     Wait, he said.

     In a few minutes, a black Mercedes pulled alongside the single railcar and Solomon was led from the train into it. As the car moved slowly away, he could see black dirt, and mud covered a great deal of the snow. To his right, up a steep incline, he could see a cog railway, tracks that were a series of holes where a spoked or cogged wheel would fit in much the same way watch gears turn each other. At the top of the peak, the tracks disappeared into a large opening, some sort of mine, Solomon guessed. Right below the mouth of the mine was a lone tree on the slope: some sort of pine that had grown out in double trunks like a giant V. A V, Solomon thought, like Churchill's two fingers extended in a victory sign. Perhaps the mountain was telling him he would ultimately prevail.

     At the bottom of the slope, around where the train had stopped, twenty or thirty heavy trucks were parked, their beds covered with canvas. Fifty or so men, mere skeletons in striped uniforms, sat numbly in the snow or moved back and forth swinging arms in a vain effort to keep warm while half a dozen guards watched listlessly.

     Prisoners.

     Why would the Germans bring him and the other four men from Auschwitz when they already had prisoners here?

     His question was partially answered when he was hustled out of the Mercedes and into what had been the train station. Instead of benches for waiting passengers, machines hummed, IBM punch-card machines identical to those Solomon had left behind.

     The Sturmbannführer was smiling, the first hint of levity Solomon had seen on his face. "Is like home, nicht whar?"

     Solomon nodded, still unsure he was really seeing what his eyes told him he was.

     Another man, this one in civilian clothes, came over and whispered to the German before addressing Solomon in unaccented Polish. I am Sabanski.

     He bowed slightly as he handed Solomon a business card. Watson Business Machines, 24 Murnerstrasee, Krakow.

     Solomon vaguely remembered from before the war that Thomas J. Watson was the president of IBM's Polish subsidiary. He shoved the card into his pocket, wondering if the American company had any idea of how their marvelous machines were being used.

     More darkly, did they care?

     Sabanski continued. I'm here to help the Germans set up an inventory and catalog the goods being delivered for storage. I am told you understand the use and maintenance of the equipment.

     I've worked with it, Solomon said tersely.

     Sabanski took him by the shoulder. Good, good. For all their efficiency, I'm having no luck teaching the Germans here how to use the machines. That's why I asked for you.

     Solomon stopped and faced the Pole. Asked for me?

     Sabanski smiled and shook his head. Not by name. I asked if they had anyone who understood the system enough to help explain it to, to . . . He looked around making sure no one was listening. These blockheads. They are all well and fine when doing something they understand or obeying precise orders. But learning something new . . . well, I'd as soon try to teach a dog to dance.

     But, but, you're helping the German war effort, Solomon spluttered.

     War effort? Sabanski shrugged. What war? It is over for Poland. Better the Germans than the Russians. There is nothing to do now but make a living.

     Solomon shook his head. But if the Germans lose?

     Sabanski put his hand back on Solomon's shoulder. Best not to speak of such things. Better to work with the Germans than face the alternative like the stupid Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto, eh? But then, the Jews are always causing one problem or another. Poland is better free of them, eh?

     For the first time, Solomon was self-conscious about not having the Star of David on his blouse. Now he understood why he had been allowed a shower, a change of clothes. To make him inoffensive to some Polish bigot. Not that anti-Semitism was rare in Poland; it was not. However, most Poles usually made an effort to keep quiet about it.

     Now, Sabanski said, leading Solomon to a desk, here are the codes we will be using . . .

     Half an hour later, Solomon at least somewhat understood what was going on. The Germans were categorizing and storing four types of inventory, simply coded with an A, B, C, or D. Each specific item bore a number, say, A-16. Once so coded, another code was added denoting location. Each individual unit was to have a card with the information punched into it so that the machine could locate number C-124/zg instantly.

     Exactly what he was making an inventory of was not explained nor did it need to be. Solomon only punched the cards according to the lists he was furnished.

     That night he learned what he was actually doing.

     Solomon, the Gypsy, Rastum, and the other Jew, a Berliner named Rosenblum, shared a small upstairs room in what had been the station-master's cottage. There was no sign of the two Russians. The single large bed was comfortable, actually had a mattress. Though there was no stove, heat from downstairs wafted up along with the smell of the roasted pork that had been supper for them and their German guards. Solomon had no qualms about eating the flesh of pigs; meat was to be consumed on whatever rare occasion it became available, no matter what its source. Rats, for example, had become almost extinct at Auschwitz regardless of the Jewish dietary laws.

     Surely God had more important things to worry about these days.

     Rosenblum's scruples were more inflexible. He had made a meal of the potatoes and cabbage, leaving his portion of the roast untouched until the Gypsy had helped himself.

     Had the three held any illusions about supper and the comfortable quarters, about any inherent Gemütlichkeit, the sound of the lock turning as they entered the room and the footsteps of the pacing guard outside dispelled them. Solomon started to complain of the filthy, ragged, and unwashed state of his bedmates. Then, with revulsion, he realized they were no dirtier nor more lice ridden than he had been only a few days ago.

     He was drifting off to sleep when the man next to him, the Gypsy, asked, What did you do today?

     The man had turned so that the cheap wooden cross he always wore around his neck was poking Solomon's shoulder. A mere trinket not worth the Germans' policy of confiscating personal items, he never took it off.

     Solomon was not interested in conversation. Besides, the question was so banal as to not be worth answering.

     I sorted and appraised jewels, silver and gold, Rastum persisted. Loose jewels as well as rings, bracelets, necklaces, silver dishes, and eating utensils. Much of the gold was wedding rings; some was gold teeth.