[b]LONDON

OCTOBER 1956[/b]

“The first thing anyone noticed was the damned smell, before we even came to the place,” the man said as he expertly mixed a Scotch and soda in a delicate crystal lowball glass. Taking a sip, he nodded in satisfaction, before placing in the center of the conference table the silver tray with glasses, cracked ice, club soda, and a bottle of Auchentoshan. “Perhaps a little like rotting meat. The Yanks I was with, the Seventh Army, would not be quiet about the smell. 'The hell is that goddamn stench?'” The man's Lowlands accent wasn't quite disguised by the Texan drawl he had tried to imitate. He smoothed down his Intelligence Corps tie, took another sip of his drink, looked over his collections of guests. With the exception of the quiet bearded man in the dark suit over in the corner, they were gathered around the sitting room table in the speaker's fashionable Kentish Town flat. The night was cold and foggy. 

“At any rate,” he continued after a moment, “we soon found it. Ste. Christina, six or seven white buildings in the hills. It used to be one of the premier sanitariums in all of France. The insane of Marseilles and Toulon weren't just shut up there, they actually left well in mind after a year or two. Then the Jerries moved in in 1942, and they ruined the whole place.” The Scot looked nervously over at the man in the corner. “I could get in quite a lot of trouble for telling them this. The Official Secrets Act. . .”

“Go on,” said the man in the dark suit. In the dim light of the sitting room, a yarmulke was just visible on his head.

The Scot shook his head, took another sip of his drink. “We had been told the Germans kept a garrison up at the hospital when we took Toulon. The Americans sent a company up, and asked me to come as a translator. Operation Dragoon, all the fighting in southern France, it was a confused affair. We were always lending chaps to the Americans and the Canadians and the Free French. I thought nothing of it. But we could smell it on the way up there, when we were still half a mile away. We found them in the courtyard, that was where the smell had come from. None of the Germans were left, we had missed them by a day or two. Their handiwork remained behind.” The Scot shuddered at the memory, drained nearly half his drink. “We had to count them, of course. Someone had to. It ended up being three hundred and fifty-six. Three hundred and fifty-six people, including ninety-one children. All of them mowed down with machine guns and mangled by grenades before the Germans fled. Of course, in their Teutonic efficiency, they neatly stacked up all the bodies in the courtyard, like firewood. They just left the poor blighters piled up in the August sun, to dry out and bloat.”

“Now, please, picture that in your mind and think what it means when I tell you that massive pile of corpses was the least horrible thing I saw that day.”

“We got inside the buildings, and found that the Germans had all pulled out. Most of their documents had been burned, but we found enough to piece together an idea of what happened at Ste. Christina. We captured a few low-ranking staff from the place over the next few weeks, and that completed the picture for us.” He sighed wearily, smoothed down his tie. “It was like something from the Spanish Inquisition, or maybe that American chap, HH Holmes. The Jerries always thought they were on the cutting edge of medical science, you see. And with all their new 'science' about race, well, of course they had to incorporate that.”

The Scotsman finished his drink, reached for the tray on the table to refresh it. The memories were obviously painful to him. “They would take Jews, Gypsies, Slavs, even blacks from Africa. Then they would run tests, compared against their Aryan prisoners, who were usually captured Resistance chaps from Marseilles. Then it was women compared against men, children compared against adults. They had a special pressurized chamber, where they would gradually increase the atmospheric pressure, then suddenly decrease it. Research for submarine crews, apparently. If the subject's head didn't explode, they'd die from the bends. Others were deliberately infected with malaria, anthrax, cholera, even leprosy. Not to treat them, mind, just to see if non-Aryans suffered more. There was all that business with blood transfusions, draining all the blood from 'subhumans' and pumping it into their pureblood Aryans to see if there was any ill effects. All ideas from the head researcher, a fiend named Krebs. Do I really need to go on? You get the idea,” he said, nervously smoothing his Intelligence Corps tie once more.

“Show them the photographs, Captain Farquharson,” the man sitting in the corner commanded, his voice deep and rich with the accent of Central Europe.

“I had hoped never to have to get these out again,” the Scot complained as he pulled out a leather portfolio and set it down on the table like he was letting go of some kind of disgusting reptile. “Pictures we took at Ste. Christina. All the torture devices, the wee little rooms they stuffed ten people into, the stacks of corpses. Look if you must.”

Farquharson sighed. “In the next couple weeks, we found a few low-ranking troops who had been at Ste. Christina as guards and such. They told us what went on there, who the brass had been, plenty of details. It seems the commandant, an SS man called Saxler, had arranged escape routes for many of his juniors. I suppose the chap was cleverer than anyone realized; he knew before Goering or Frank or any of those chaps that the Nazis were on their way out. Didn't stop him from dying in the retreat to the Vosges, though. Seems he helped many of the soldiers and researchers at Ste. Christina get out of the country. Like Mengele and Brunner and Eichmann, they're all out there somewhere in this great big world of ours. It isn't right. They've escaped justice.”

“Perhaps they have escaped earthly justice,” the man in the corner interjected. “In our tradition, there is an angel called Raguel. And Raguel is responsible for vengeance upon the mortals who have wronged beyond all forgiveness.” He shot a look at the people around the table, looked thirstily on the bottle of Scotch placed tantalizingly on the table. “I am a rabbi, a leader to my people. How can I lead when abominations such as this walk freely?” 

“That's just it,” Farquharson said quickly. “These people don't deserve to live. We have a list of escapees, the most guilty from Ste. Christina. Eleven men and one woman. What we are asking may be unorthodox, even illegal.”

“We wish you to hunt them down and kill them,” the Rabbi said bluntly. 

“Essentially, yes,” Farquharson acquiesced, no longer able to dance around the subject. “Wherever in the wide world they may hide, these monsters need to face some kind of justice. My old friends in Intelligence have heard of you lot, they recommended you chaps for the job.”

“Divine justice,” supplied the Rabbi. “They are to meet Raguel.”

“Yes,” said the Scot, once again reaching for the Auchentoshan. “We will finance you, of course. Ten thousand pounds per head. Far more than most make in three years. This gentleman will also cover all of your expenses. Weapons, papers, equipment, anything within reason you may need, simply contact us and you will have it.”

“There are conditions,” the Rabbi interjected from the comfortable chair in the dark corner. “One, each target is to bear a minimum of suffering. You are to be assassins, not torturers. Two, plausible deniability will be maintained at all times. You do not know us, you have never met us. If you are apprehended by the police in the course of these missions, we will disavow all knowledge of your existence. You will be on your own. If you are killed, we will pay no benefits to your next of kin. No one will help you, no one will save you. Three, you make no inquiries into who I am, what temple I represent, my history, or my name. This is to protect you as well as me. If you are content with these conditions, then we have an accord.” 

“So there you have it,” said Farquharson, in the midst of preparing a third drink for himself. “If you want out, now is the time to say. Otherwise, you are in for a long haul. Finding twelve people who do not wish to be found will take some time- years, possibly. I doubt you will find better work in the interim.”

The Scot once again looked over his audience, drawn from all over the world and seated here around his sitting room table. “So, what will it be? In or out?”