See How They Run
James Patterson
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
Copyright © 1979, 1997 by James Patterson
All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the US. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
This edition is published by arrangement with the author.
Originally published as The Jericho Commandment.
Cover design by Steve Snider
Cover illustration by Gabriel Molano
Vision
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ISBN: 978-0-446-40931-5
First eBook Edition: May 1997
CONTENTS
PREFACE
PROLOGUE
CHAPTER 1
BOOK I: DR. DAVID STRAUSS
PART 1
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 9
CHAPTER 10
CHAPTER 11
CHAPTER 12
PART 2
CHAPTER 13
CHAPTER 14
CHAPTER 15
CHAPTER 16
CHAPTER 17
CHAPTER 18
CHAPTER 19
CHAPTER 20
CHAPTER 21
CHAPTER 22
CHAPTER 23
CHAPTER 24
CHAPTER 25
PART III
CHAPTER 26
CHAPTER 27
CHAPTER 28
CHAPTER 29
CHAPTER 30
CHAPTER 31
CHAPTER 32
CHAPTER 33
PART IV
CHAPTER 34
CHAPTER 35
CHAPTER 36
CHAPTER 37
CHAPTER 38
CHAPTER 39
CHAPTER 40
CHAPTER 41
CHAPTER 42
CHAPTER 43
CHAPTER 44
CHAPTER 45
CHAPTER 46
CHAPTER 47
CHAPTER 48
CHAPTER 49
CHAPTER 50
CHAPTER 51
CHAPTER 52
BOOK 2: ALIX ROTHSCHILD
PART V
CHAPTER 53
CHAPTER 54
CHAPTER 55
CHAPTER 56
CHAPTER 57
CHAPTER 58
PART VI
CHAPTER 59
CHAPTER 60
CHAPTER 61
CHAPTER 62
CHAPTER 63
PART VII
CHAPTER 64
CHAPTER 65
CHAPTER 66
CHAPTER 67
CHAPTER 68
CHAPTER 69
CHAPTER 70
CHAPTER 71
CHAPTER 72
CHAPTER 73
CHAPTER 74
CHAPTER 75
CHAPTER 76
CHAPTER 77
CHAPTER 78
CHAPTER 79
CHAPTER 80
CHAPTER 81
CHAPTER 82
CHAPTER 83
CHAPTER 84
CHAPTER 85
CHAPTER 86
CHAPTER 87
EPILOGUE
RAVES FOR
SEE HOW THEY RUN
CREATOR
JAMES PATTERSON
BALTIMORE SUN:
“MR. PATTERSON IS A SKILLFUL PLOTTER.”
GRAND RAPIDS PRESS:
“ROBERT B. PARKER’S SPENSER, PATRICIA CORNWEIL’S KAY SCARPETIA, AND EVAN HUNTER’S 87TH PRECINCT DETECTIVES … IT’S TIME TO GET OUT THE PARTY HATS, WELCOME JAMES PATTERSON TO THE CLUB.”
PEOPLE:
“JAMES PATTERSON KNOWS HOW TO SELL THRILLS AND SUSPENSE IN CLEAR, UNWAVERING PROSE.”
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS:
“JAMES PATTERSON IS TO SUSPENSE WHAT DANIELLE STEEL IS TO ROMANCE.”
NASHVILLE BANNER:
“PATTERSON DEVELOPS CHARACTERS WITH BROAD STROKES AND FINE LINES. EVEN THE VILLAINS ARE MULTILAYERED AND BELIEVABLE.”
KANSAS CITY STAR:
“PATTERSON’S SKILL AT BUILDING SUSPENSE IS ENVIABLE.”
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY:
“PATTERSON KNOWS HOW TO KEEP THE POT BOILING.”
LEXINGTON HERALD-LEADER:
“PATTERSON IS AN EXCELLENT WRITER.”
AND HIS LATEST NEWYORK TIMES BESTSELLERS:
HIDE AND SEEK
COSMOPOLITAN:
“THE STORY MOVES LIKE LIGHTNING.”
PEOPLE:
“A TWISTY NARRATIVE THAT BARRELS ALONG SWIFTLY … A HAIR-RAISING RIDE.”
BOSTON GLOBE:
“A NOVEL BUILT FOR SPEED.”
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY:
“GRIPPING.”
NAPLES DAILY NEWS:
“MASTERFUL … A RIVETING PSYCHOLOGICAL THRILLER. … PATTERSON GIVES HIS ADMIRERS A ROLLER-COASTER RIDE THROUGH A VIVID, EMOTIONAL TALE THAT LEADS INEXORABLY TO A TRULY SHATTERING CLIMAX.”
KISS THE GIRLS
LOS ANGELES TIMES:
“TOUGH TO PUT DOWN. … TICKS LIKE A TIME BOMB, ALWAYS FULL OF THREAT AND TENSION.”
Larry King, USA TODAY:
“A RIPSNORTING, TERRIFIC READ.”
SAN FRANCISCO EXAMINER:
“AS GOOD AS A THRILLER CAN GET.”
HOUSTON CHRONICLE:
“BURSTING WITH SUSPENSE AND SURPRISE.”
DENVER POST:
“A WILD RIDE, FROM THE IVIED HAILS OF SOUTHERN ACADEMIA TO THE CRASHING BIG SUR SURF. ALEX CROSS IS TO THE ‘90s WHAT MIKE HAMMER WAS TO THE ‘50s.”
The novels of James Patterson
FEATURING ALEX CROSS
CrossRoses Are Red
Mary, MaryPop Goes the Weasel
London BridgesCat & Mouse
The Big Bad WolfJack & Jill
Four Blind MiceKiss the Girls
Violets Are BlueAlong Came a Spider
THE WOMEN’S MURDER CLUB
7th Heaven
The 6th Target (and Maxine Paetro)
The 5th Horseman (and Maxine Paetro)
4th of July (and Maxine Paetro)
3rd Degree (and Andrew Gross)
2nd Chance (and Andrew Gross)
1st to Die
OTHER BOOKS
The Quickie (and Michael Ledwidge)
Maximum Ride: Saving the World and Other Extreme Sports
Step on a Crack (and Michael Ledwidge)
Judge & Jury (and Andrew Gross)
Maximum Ride: School’s Out—Forever
Beach Road (and Peter de Jonge)
Lifeguard (and Andrew Gross)
Maximum Ride: The Angel Experiment
Honeymoon (and Howard Roughan)
santaKid
Sam’s Letters to Jennifer
The Lake House
The Jester (and Andrew Gross)
The Beach House (and Peter de Jonge)
Suzanne’s Diary for Nicholas
Cradle and All
Black Friday
When the Wind Blows
See How They Run
Miracle on the 17th Green (and Peter de Jonge)
Hide & Se
ek
The Midnight Club
Season of the Machete
The Thomas Berryman Number
For previews of upcoming James Patterson novels and information about the author, visit www.jamespatterson.com.
For my grandparents, Charles and Isabelle Morris
Like most of my novels, See How They Run comes right out of my worst nightmares rather than real life. Obviously, the United States boycotted the Moscow Olympics in 1980. I ask the reader to follow my alternate entry in this story.
See How They Run couldn’t have been written without the help of a former Israeli soldier now living in New York; without the vivid stories of a survivor who had made the pilgrimage to every concentration camp site in Europe—who had also made contact with the radical group known as DIN. Most of all, the book couldn’t have reached its present form without the nagging help of the son of a Brooklyn rabbi, who, more often than I would have liked, reminded me to get it down right.
J.P.
Prologue
CHAPTER 1
The King David Hotel, Jerusalem.
October, 1979.
Five months before the beginning.
A benevolent midaftemoon sun spattered golden streaks over the historic domes and needle spires, up and down the gray-yellow stones of the ancient Holy pity walls. A bottle of Schweppes Bitter Lemon, a pot of English Breakfast tea, and a cold Maccabee beer were brought to the three old friends sitting on the pretty hotel terrace.
It is a fact recorded in several news correspondents’ notebooks—though not as yet in their newspapers—that a sacred and very secret Jewish brotherhood had existed in Western Europe, America, and Israel since the end of World War II. The group was composed of workingmen and women; of farmers, entertainers, taxi drivers; of wealthy doctors, solicitors, merchants, rabbis; of important government leaders and elite army officers.
No matter how these men and women earned their livings, however, the sworn purpose of the cabal thrust another task on them.
They were to remember the terrible Holocaust—every last abhorrent detail. They were to protect against another unholy conflagration with their lives if need be. They were to relentlessly hunt down those responsible for the first abomination against the Jewish people and against mankind.
Two of the three friends clustered together on the hotel terrace were the secret brotherhood’s original leaders—the third was a woman, a wealthy contributor from America.
Seated as they were in view of the gates of Old City, the three made a curious and memorable portrait—a noble picture worthy of exhibition in the Jewish Museum.
Benjamin Rabinowitz.
Michael Ben-Iban.
Elena Cohen Strauss.
A combined age of 226 years.
All survivors of the Nazi death camps thirty-five years before.
The previous evening, Elena Strauss and Ben-Iban had jetted to Jerusalem after receiving an urgent message from Rabinowitz:
THE TIME HAS COME TO REMEMBER OUR SACRED PLEDGE. … THE FOURTH REICH IS ABOUT TO RISE. IT IS TIME TO CONCLUDE THE DISCUSSION STAGE OF OUR PLAN TO ONCE AND FOREVER STOP THE ENEMY.
Hector Berlioz’s Symphonie Fantastique—then a BBC news broadcast—served as civilized background for the several private conversations progressing in grunts and murmurs on the grandly elegant hotel terrace. The clean smell of almonds and oranges was everywhere in the air.
Out on the streets of Rehavia, Arab cabdrivers could be heard mischievously blaring their Mercedes taxi horns. Out there, too, Hasidim tourists trudged along in their broad hats and stiff beards, pointing at Moses Mantefiore’s windmill, acting as if the Ba’al Shem Tov himself were standing at every cross street.
In the beginning of their meeting, the three old friends merely chatted.
The most casual talk possible under the circumstances.
They sipped their drinks, and they offered opinions on a recent Black September bombing of a children’s school bus in Bayit Vegan. They spoke of a best-selling book from England, which had documented that the PLO was receiving huge sums of money from neo-Nazis living in southern France. They gave Freudian interpretations of Teddy Kollek’s grand reconstruction dreams for Jerusalem.
Eighty-two-year-old Elena Strauss managed to smile a few times.
Especially when they shared an old story—that was the best.
But when they finally began to talk about the most sinister topic, when the loathsome Reich was brought up, the wizened old woman’s hands knotted into tight fists. She could barely breathe. A single word, a single idea, was pounding on her brain.
Danger.
“No matter what good we are able to accomplish, the Nazis get wealthier and more powerful,” Benjamin Rabinowitz began. “In South America. In West Germany and Austria. Even in Chicago and New York. In the south of France …”
“They are indeed ready again, Elena,” Michael Ben-Iban elaborated. “I’ve seen it with my own eyes. Their wealth at this time is astounding.
“The opulent estates you know about, and the gold and diamond reserves. What you don’t know about are the legitimate businesses. All over the world. The so-called multinational companies run with the Reich’s, money. Automobile companies. Oil companies. Communications conglomerates. Like nothing we’ve seen before!”
Benjamin Rabinowitz now began to elaborately review his plan. His proposal to silence the Reich once and for all time. The financing of which was the chief reason for the important Jerusalem meeting.
When Rabinowitz finished, tears were pooling in the soft brown eyes of Elena Strauss. The deadweight sadness and disappointment she was feeling right then were too much for her frail, weakened body. What Elena Strauss had to do next seemed an impossible task. What she had to do seemed like a betrayal.
The wealthy American woman stared across the table at hawklike Michael Ben-Iban, perhaps the bravest Nazi-hunter next to Simon Wiesenthal and Dr. Michael Ben-Zohar. She looked at shrewd, feisty Benjamin Rabinowitz. Such old, old friends, she thought. Such a wonderful; courageous alliance they’d shared … even more so because so very few people knew of their heroics.
Somehow, all three of them had survived the German death camps: Dachau, Auschwitz, Treblinka.
They had all been members of She’erit Hapleetch, the “Surviving Remnant,” formed when no countries other than the Jewish community in Palestine had been willing to accept large groups of survivors from the death camps.
Instead of planning for the Jewish state, however, they had been among those who planned revenge and retribution. They had been among those who planned for the future defense of the Jewish people.
Together with forty-four other survivors, they had drawn up the radical brotherhood’s priority list for the first Nazihunting year of 1946. That first year they had patiently tracked down and killed SS Brigadier General Ernst Grawitz; SS Major Otto Steiner, supervisor of the Belsen gas chambers; SS Colonel Albert Hohlfelder, who had viciously sterilized thousands of Jewish children by mass X-ray exposure.
Throughout the fifties and sixties, they had diligently hunted dangerous members of Die Spinne and ODESSA.
They had relentlessly watched for the dreaded Nazi renaissance.
They had remembered the terrible Holocaust—every last abhorrent detail.
“Benjamin, I have listened carefully to your plan, your fears about a new Reich.” Elena was finally able to speak again. “I have lived and slept with your arguments, your dark conclusions. I have considered them as carefully as anything in my life … You say you need a great deal of money from me. Seven or eight hundred thousand dollars. I spoke at length with my oldest grandson before I came to Jerusalem. We talked about the Nazis, about the present condition of the Reich.”
“They have never been more dangerous than right now,” Benjamin Rabinowitz said.
Elena Strauss shook her head. “We think you’re terribly wrong,” she sighed. “But more important than that, the actions of our group have always been accomplished with gr
eat honor, with justice in all our minds. No matter how strong our enemies become, Benjamin, Michael, we must never go down to their Hun, barbarian level. This is the secret strength of the Jewish people, I believe. This is one reason we have survived. I don’t believe we should act against our enemies now. Not in this hateful manner.”
The thin voice of Rabinowitz suddenly rose above the clatter of the King David terrace. It was like the voice of a stern and knowing rabbi rebuking his shortsighted congregation.
“You’ve lived as a wealthy American for too long, Elena,” the old man railed. “You don’t understand the terrifying world we live in today. You couldn’t possibly, and still talk as you do. The Fourth Reich’s money is everywhere, Elena. The Nazi cancer is everywhere. In the Middle East. In America. In Germany, where the Spider’s cells are springing up everywhere. Where little blond-haired children are marching again.”
Elena Strauss reached into her purse.
“I have a small check. I want you to continue the search for Bormann, Mengele, Muller. You must! Please! As for the rest, I say no. My grandson wants to go to the other contributing families. To the American FBI. If necessary, we would break our vows to stop a dangerous confrontation at this time … You are taking away the last possibility of justice ever being accomplished for the six million! I will not allow this to happen! No! No!” The American woman’s face was drawn tight. Her eyes were filled with rage.
Neither Benjamin Rabinowitz nor Michael Ben-Iban could believe that Elena Strauss would even speak of breaking their blood oath. For a moment, they were numb. Benjamin Rabinowitz’s mouth was filled with bile. He thought he was going to be sick on the hotel terrace.
Elena Strauss was turning them down at the worst possible time.
The elderly woman suddenly stood up from their table. She was trembling, blinking her eyes very rapidly.
“I have been feeling bad this fall. Sick. Old—which I am. I should go back to my room now. This is a hard day for me, too.”
Mrs. Elena Strauss bent and gave each of the old men a quick hug. They each hugged her back. The sadness was overwhelming in its intensity. Thirty-five years … now, threats! The breaking of oaths! There were tears in all of their eyes as they embraced. It was like the hollow, numb, empty feeling that comes on first hearing of a friend’s death.
“Benjamin … Michael … shalom.”
“She is a very, very old woman. A good woman,” Michael Ben-Iban whispered, after Elena had disappeared back into the hotel “Perhaps in a little time she’ll come to understand … Benjamin? Are you all right, Benjamin?”
