Tayte shook his head. He didn’t want to hear about his mother. He could feel his cheek bones throbbing painfully as he fought to hold back the tears welling inside him.
‘Now as I was saying, when I finally caught up with your mother she was in Mexico. I’d followed her along a dusty track in the middle of nowhere and I ran her jeep off the road. Then I walked calmly up to her as she lay tangled in the wreckage, and I slit her throat.’
A sigh trembled from Tayte’s lips, as if the life had just drained from his own body. He pictured the photograph he had of his mother and the first tear broke and fell onto his cheek. He could hold them back no longer. His lips were still trembling as he extended the gun closer to Strobel, and with the muzzle now no more than two inches from Strobel’s face, Tayte watched the old man bow his head towards it, as though he knew he had done enough to make Tayte pull the trigger.
Chapter Forty-Six
Tayte had suddenly lost all concept of where he was and why he was there. Through a thick veil of hatred and tears, all he could see was the gun shaking in his hand and the man who had destroyed generations of his family: his parents, Sarah and Karl, his paternal grandparents, Johann and Ava, and his great-grandparents, Adelina and Gerhard Bauer. And he was responsible for the murder of his uncle, Geoffrey Johnston. Tayte had never felt so much loathing towards anyone in his life, and he’d encountered a few candidates in his time. All of them combined didn’t come close to how he felt about Volker Strobel.
Tayte tried to tell himself that Strobel deserved to die, and that he would be doing the world a favour, but he reminded himself then that his family were not Strobel’s only victims—far from it. The Demon of Dachau had been responsible for the murders of thousands upon thousands of people. He thought about Elijah and Tobias Kaufmann, and their life-long quest to bring Strobel to justice, to face trial for his crimes against humanity, and it was then that the idea of pulling that trigger seemed entirely selfish to Tayte. He withdrew the gun, and a moment later he tossed it away, removing any last temptation he might have had to pull the trigger.
At hearing it clatter to the floor, Strobel looked up again, disappointment written all over his face. ‘So you can’t do it, either,’ he said. ‘Just as your grandfather couldn’t do it when he came after me that night at Dachau.’ Strobel sighed. ‘But I must thank you for the thrill you’ve given me. I haven’t felt that much exhilaration in a long time.’ His expression became suddenly quizzical. ‘But what is it that makes us so different?’ he asked. ‘I would have shot you to save my own life, and without a moment’s hesitation or remorse. But you . . . Why should you place such value in the life of someone you have every reason to hate? I really can’t understand it.’
‘I think you just answered your own question,’ Tayte said, choking back his emotions. ‘If you understood, you wouldn’t have done the terrible things you’ve done.’
‘Perhaps I would have been more like Johann, eh? You know, you shouldn’t think ill of your grandfather because of who he was or what he represented. I knew him. He was a kind and considerate man. If you had been a young boy growing up in Germany in Johann’s place, don’t think for a moment that you wouldn’t also have been a member of the Hitler Youth. You, too, would have been so proud of your country, and by the time your education and training was complete, you would have gladly fought alongside your Kameraden for the things you had come to believe in.’ Strobel paused and smiled to himself. ‘I, on the other hand, am quite Johann’s opposite. But they say opposites attract, don’t they?’
Tayte wiped his eyes. He really didn’t want to get into a conversation about Strobel’s psyche and the things that made him tick. ‘So what happens now? I suppose you get to shoot me instead, right?’
‘My education centre must still burn tonight,’ Strobel said. ‘By now Max will have seen to it that the place goes up in flames at the slightest spark.’ The prospect seemed to excite Strobel. ‘Perhaps I’ll give the order and we’ll both sit here like this, beneath the image of my beloved Führer, until the flames come for us.’ He laughed. ‘Then we will both be fighting over that bullet, won’t we?’
Tayte was about to answer, but just as he went to speak, his attention was drawn to the door. He heard a thud, followed by a gunshot that reverberated around the corridor outside the room. When the door opened a few seconds later, he expected to see Keller or Fleischer walk in, one perhaps having betrayed the other for reasons he could not yet fathom, but instead it was Rudi Langner who entered, and Tayte now saw him as though for the first time. There stood his own flesh and blood.
‘Ist das wahr?’ he called. Is it true?