negotiated the last of the front stairs. He heard the incomprehensible instructions.
“No one will be harmed if you obey orders.”
A black-gloved fist came out of nowhere.
David saw the gloved hand when it was too late to stop it. His nose smashed open.
Faded Persian carpeting came flying up at his face. Tiny Oriental birds flew toward him. Then there was nothing. Only blackness.
Heather Strauss could hear everything from Elena’s bedroom. She tried not to show her fear. She had to make a decision immediately.
“Nana, can you come with me? If I help you walk?” Heather gasped out.
“Someone wants to hurt us, Nana. Please.”
Nodding weakly, dazed and horrified, Elena Strauss let herself be pulled up from the bed. She felt Heather’s hands go around her back, up under her arms.
Elena and Heather finally made it out into the dim upstairs hallway. Heather went to turn right.
The old woman tried to scream, but no sound came
.
Heather saw the two men in the hallway. But it was too late. She started to push Elena the other way. She couldn’t believe this was happening, couldn’t understand how it could possibly be.
The Soldier fired just as Heather Strauss stepped in front of the old woman.
The young doctor crumpled down onto the hallway runner. For a second, Heather desperately wanted David to be there. Then she wanted nothing at all.
As Elena Strauss began to fall, second and third shots rang out in the bizarrely lit hallway. Three more shots were fired.
Then it was unnaturally quiet upstairs in the Strauss house.
CHAPTER 11
“Outside! … Everyone outside. Move quickly there. Move! Move, I say!”
Downstairs, the Strauss family was being marched single file out onto the dark side lawns.
The confusion was surreal. Terrible memories began to come back for some of the family members.
David Strauss was being helped to his feet. Holding his broken, bleeding nose, he was being led forward with the others.
Suddenly, the two other Nazi intruders appeared from another side of the house.
“Let’s go,”
the Soldier called out.
“This way! Now!”
The four Nazis ran north into the thickest estate woods. Dogs began to bark at all the neighboring houses. Police sirens could be heard howling in the direction of the village of Scarsdale.
Amazingly, everyone outside seemed to be unharmed. The attack appeared to be over.
The Strauss family members began to weep, to hug and kiss one another. The
wrow, wrow, wrow
of the sirens got closer. Wide-eyed neighbors were running across North Avenue in housecoats and pajamas.
Suddenly, David’s Aunt Shirley was pointing back toward the gardens.
Everything became deadly quiet. Everyone just stared.
David turned and stared, too. In front of Grandpa Sam’s pear and boxwood trees. Right in front of an old gazebo brought down from the Cherrywoods Hotel.
“Rotten, pathetic,
filthy
bastards!” David Strauss spoke in a hoarse whisper. “Oh you rotten sons of bitches.”
They had burned a five-foot-square swastika on the estate lawns.
CHAPTER 12
Later that night, a sixty-eight-year-old man, former SS Colonel Hermann Rinemann, sat in his old world décor New York City apartment. He tried, unsuccessfully, to be reasonably calm.
Colonel Rinemann watched the ABC television replays of the Academy Awards slayings, then the Scarsdale attack.
Rinemann then tried to watch a movie until the next news report at two-thirty.
At two-thirty, he watched the last news on Channel 9.
At three-thirty, he watched the final news on ABC.
At four-thirty, he walked his dog on the empty, steaming streets of upper East Side Manhattan.
When he returned from his walk, he fixed himself toast and tea with lemon—but he found he was too excited to eat once he had prepared the food.
Something called
Not For Women Only
was on TV. At 7:00 A.M ., CBS began its morning news with more clips from the previous night.
Finally at eight, New York time, Hermann Rinemann made a long-distance phone