Cold Vengeance - Lincoln Child [70]
“What of it?”
“As part of the battery of tests I performed on your wife’s remains, I ran both the DNA and mtDNA through a consortium of some thirty-five linked medical databases. In addition to confirming Helen’s DNA, there was a hit in one of the… more unusual databases. Regarding her mtDNA.”
Pendergast waited.
Beaufort’s embarrassment seemed to deepen. “It was in a database maintained by the DTG.”
“The DTG?”
“Doctors’ Trial Group.”
“The Nazi-hunting organization?”
Beaufort nodded. “Correct. Founded to pursue justice against the Nazi doctors of the Third Reich who aided and abetted the Holocaust. It grew out of the so-called Doctors’ Trials at Nuremberg after the war. A lot of doctors escaped Germany after the war and went to South America, and the DTG has been hunting them ever since. Theirs is a scientifically impeccable database of genetic information on those doctors.”
When Pendergast spoke again, his voice was very quiet. “What kind of a hit did you find—exactly?”
The M.E. took another sheet from the file. “With a Dr. Wolfgang Faust. Born in Ravensbrück, Germany, in 1908.”
“And what, exactly, does this mean?”
Beaufort took a deep breath. “Faust was an SS doctor at Dachau in the last years of World War II. He disappeared after the war. In 1985, the Doctors’ Trial Group finally tracked him down. But it was too late to bring him to justice—he’d already died of natural causes in 1978. The DTG found his grave and exhumed his remains to test them. That is how Faust’s mtDNA became part of the DTG database.”
“Dachau,” Pendergast breathed. He fixed Beaufort with his gaze. “And what was the relation between this doctor and Helen?”
“Only that they are both descended from the same female ancestor. It could be one generation back, or a hundred.”
“Do you have any more information about this doctor?”
“As you might expect, the DTG is a rather secretive organization connected, so they say, to Mossad. Except for the public database, their files are sealed. The record on Faust is thin and I haven’t followed up with any research.”
“The implications?”
“Only genealogical research can determine the relationship between Helen and Dr. Faust. Such genealogical research would have to explore your wife’s ancestry in the female line—mother, maternal grandmother, maternal great-grandmother, and so forth. And the same for Faust. All this means is that this Nazi doctor and your wife shared a direct female ancestor. It could be some woman who lived in the Middle Ages, for all we know.”
Pendergast hesitated for a moment. “Would my wife have known of Faust?”
“Only she could have told you that.”
“In that case,” Pendergast said, almost to himself, “I shall have to ask her when I see her.”
There was a long silence. And then Beaufort spoke. “Helen is dead. This… quixotic belief of yours concerns me.”
Pendergast rose, his face betraying nothing. “Thank you, Beaufort, you’ve been most helpful.”
“Please consider what I just said. Think about your family history…” Beaufort’s voice trailed off.
Pendergast managed a cold smile. “Your further assistance is unnecessary. I wish you good day.”
CHAPTER 37
New York City
LAURA HAYWARD CUT INTO THE RARE, juicy meat, separated it from the bone, and placed a forkful in her mouth. She closed her eyes. “Vinnie, it’s perfection.”
“I just threw it together, but thanks.” D’Agosta waved a dismissive hand, but he turned his attention to his own dinner to hide the pleased look he knew was settling over his face.
D’Agosta had always enjoyed cooking, in a casual, nondemanding bachelor way: meat loaf and barbecue and roast chicken, with the occasional Italian specialty of his grandmother’s thrown in. But since moving in with Laura Hayward, he’d become a much more serious chef. It had started out as a kind of guilt, a way