“You’re a very interesting person, Mr. Devlin.”
“How so, Detective?”
“We’ve done a little homework on you. It’s not every day that a kid from the back roads of Nebraska gets to travel to exotic places like Lebanon.”
“Last I checked it wasn’t against the law to travel.”
“Did you hear me accuse you of anything, Mr. Devlin?”
“No, sir,” Mace whipped out his dimpled smile.
“Why Lebanon of all places?”
“Why not?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Tanzy’s tone dripped with sarcasm. “Maybe because there’s a civil war there? Maybe because it has become dangerous for Americans to travel there without getting kidnapped.”
“Maybe I like living on the edge,” Mace quipped.
“Maybe I like living on the edge,” Mace quipped.
“What were you doing there for six months?”
“Lebanon is a fascinating place, Detective Tanzy. I wanted to travel after getting my degree from MIT before settling down in a job.”
“Where did you travel besides Lebanon?”
“It appears to me that you already have that information.”
“Just answer the question, Mr. Devlin.”
“Germany. I traveled to Germany for several months and then to Lebanon.”
“What did you do in Germany?”
“Drank beer and hung with the fraulein.”
“Do you know a Gerhard Kestel?”
“No.”
“Are you sure about that?” Detective Tanzy asked with a skeptical frown that seemed to be a permanent fixture on his face.
“Yes. I’m sure.”
With a contemptuous smirk, the detective excused himself from the room. A few minutes later, he returned to the interrogation room with a man in a dark-grey suit. His forehead bore a deep-set widow’s
peak and his black-rimmed glasses hung low on the bridge of his nose, imparting an appearance of an IRS auditor. “Mr. Devlin, this is FBI Special Investigator Harris Taylor.”
Traces of his smile vanished. Mace was visibly annoyed. “Should I
be calling my lawyer?”
“Do you think you’ll need one, Mr. Devlin?” Agent Harris Taylor was expressionless as he seated himself across from Mace, placing a file on the table between them.
“Why am I being questioned by the FBI?”
The FBI agent opened his file and took out a photo, placing it on the table in front of Mace. “That person that you’re standing next to in this photo is Gerhard Kestel.This picture was taken two years ago in Lebanon, in 1982, and two years afterKestel moved his paramilitary training camp to Lebanon with PLO assistance. Mr. Kestel is a neo-Nazi leader with close ties to Yasser Arafat, the Hezbollah, and the Moslem Brotherhood…but you already knew that, Mr. Devlin, didn’t you?”
Mace stared hard at the photo, furrowing his brows in confusion. “I don’t know any Gerhard. This guy introduced himself to me as Wilhelm Hess.We met at a bar in Berlin, and I didn’t ask him about his politics. We got friendly and he invited me to a party at his apartment – so I went. I figured what could be so bad…women, beer…why not?”
The investigator coolly conveyed his disappointment. “Surely you can come up with something more creative.”
Mace eyed both Detective Tanzy and Special Investigator Harris Taylor with a condescending grin. “You’re both picking at straws here. You’ve got nothing to go on, so you’re wasting your time questioning me about some bum I hung out with at a bar in my travels. Well, let me save you some time, gentlemen. I’m a man who enjoys a good beer or two – or three,” he added, as an afterthought. “I meet plenty of questionable characters in the lairs I hang out in. It makes life interesting. But I don’t give a damn about their politics and they don’t give a damn about mine. We get drunk and we get laid. End of story.”
Taylor stared at Mace as if looking straight through him, disregarding what he considered a poor attempt at a cover-up, and then continued with his questioning as if Mace had not uttered a word.
“Before traveling to Germany, Mr. Devlin, you spent some time in Elohim City in Oklahoma.”
“Yes. My sister lives there with her husband. What of it?”
“So your sister is a neo-Nazi, too?”
“Now wait just a minute!” Mace stood up from his chair.
“Sit down, Devlin!” Detective Tanzy ordered, shoving him back into the chair, startling him.
“We know what kind of place Elohim City is.” Taylor continued in a monotone voice. “You’re a Nazi, Mace Devlin – a home-grown, white Aryan supremacist, scum-of-the-earth Nazi.”
“I don’t have to take this crap! Are you arresting me, or what? Because if that’s all you’ve got, you have no right to hold me here.”
“With what kind of work were you and Dr. Harow involved at RDECOM?” Taylor asked, ignoring Mace’s outburst.
“That’s classified,” he spit out.
“But you don’t have the same security clearance as Dr. Harow did. Do you?”
“No.”
“Still, you had two years to ingratiate yourself with Dr. Harow and gain his trust. So much so, that you were often a houseguest in his home.”
“I had a tremendous amount of respect for Dr. Harow. And yes, he and his wife were very gracious to me.”
“Did they know you were a neo-Nazi?”
“I’m not a neo-Nazi.”
“Mr. Devlin, you run from one neo-Nazi stronghold to another; from here to Germany to the Middle East. You met with Gerhard Kestel in Berlin and then met up with him again in Lebanon. This picture of
you and Kestel was taken at his paramilitary base in Lebanon.”
Mace shifted uneasily in his chair, his Midwestern charm cracking under the strain. “This is all pure conjecture on your part,” he insisted. “While in Berlin, I mentioned to him that I was planning to travel to Lebanon and since he was planning to be there as well, he told me to look him up when I got there.”
“Your explanations are ridiculously flimsy. Who do you think you’re talking to?”
“I’m telling you the truth.”
“Mr. Devlin, we can place you at the headquarters of the National Socialist German Workers Party in Lincoln, Nebraska. Here’s a copy of your membership ID card.” Taylor pulled out another sheet from his
file and placed it in front of Mace.
Mace’s expression turned cocky. “That’s not illegal.”
“It is if you’re involved in the coordination of neo-Nazi and Muslim terrorist activities.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Of course not,” Taylor said dryly. “Let’s get back to you and Dr. Harow: you took the shuttle together to New York on Friday. Isn’t that correct?”
“Yes. We traveled together every Friday to New York.”
“So, he must have mentioned his weekend plans to you.”
“He may have said something about a Broadway show.”
“For that reason you didn’t expect him to come home early Saturday night.”
“What the Harows did on their weekends did not affect me one way or another.”
“What were you searching for last night in the Harows’ home?”
“I wasn’t there.”
“You were after some classified material that Dr. Harow had in his possession. Material that you didn’t have security clearance for – material that you wished to pass on to Arab terrorists.”
“That’s pretty farfetched, even for the FBI. But anyway, I told you, I was nowhere near the Harows’ home on Saturday night.”
“Where were you?”
“With a lady friend.”
“All night?”
“Pretty much. That is, until I got the call from Dara, which was about, I don’t know, maybe 4 a.m. The detective can back me up on that.” He nodded his chin toward Detective Tanzy.
“And, needless to say, your lady friend will back you up on your alibi.”
“She has no reason not to.”
“What is your interest in Dara Harow? I understand you shared a room with her at the Mayflower."
“She called me. She doesn’t have anyone else here that she can trust. And I think it’s understandable that I’d try to be a comfort to her at this time. She needed a place to stay – I wasn’t going to leave her high
and dry. The poor kid is in a state of shock.”
Detective Tanzy, until now, remained quiet while observing Taylor and Mace. He had a look of disgust on his face. “That’s touching. Quite a balancing act, Devlin – being a neo-Nazi and comforting a Jew at the
same time.” Tanzy started for the door. “I’ve heard enough.”
“I told you, I’m not a Nazi.” Mace glared at him.
“Then how is it that you are a member of a neo-Nazi organization?” Taylor broke in.
Mace rolled his eyes and sighed loudly. “I joined when I was eighteen. It was a social thing – I never took it seriously.”
Taylor showed no emotion on his face. He simply took out another photo from his file and placed it on the table. Mace’s face turned ashen, his lips twitched involuntarily.
“I think we can stop dancing around the truth now…don’t you, Mr. Devlin?”
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