Page 99 of The Little Liar

But Udo was not finished with his manipulations. His lawyers insisted upon a trial in his home country. And, difficult as it is to believe, that request was granted, after certain Greek officials, paid by unknown benefactors, agreed that a German court was better equipped to punish a former Nazi than a Greek one. The fact that Udo had privately threatened to reveal the names of his Salonika collaborators from the war years had much to do with his release. Udo kept meticulous diaries. A particular judge, whose father was among the people listed in those pages, ruled in Udo’s favor.

TheSchutzhaftlagerführerwas going home.

Sebastian and the Nazi Hunter were livid. They stormed the prosecutors’ offices and screamed, “Who’s paying you?,” but they got no answers.The Germans will handle it, they were told.

It took several weeks to extradite Graf. He was set to flyto Frankfurt, but fearful that a plane could be rerouted and taken to Israel, he requested to go by train. And again, incredibly, his request was granted.

All of this infuriated the many groups who had called for his imprisonment. Editorials were written. Complaints were lodged.

But one person, who had witnessed enough of what this man had done to others, did more than complain. Truth calls for a reckoning, whether immediate or in the distant future. In Udo’s case, it took a lifetime. But it came.

When he boarded the train, flanked by two Greek police officers, he was brimming with confidence. Returning to his beloved Deutschland meant he would be treated honorably. Of that he was sure. As the car sped through the countryside, a female attendant offered them drinks from a cart, and Udo asked the police if he could be permitted a glass of red wine. The officers shrugged. Udo privately toasted himself on his survival abilities. He was actually looking forward to his trial. He would get to speak in his native tongue. The voice of the Wolf would be heard again.Deutschland über alles!

He drank the wine, down to the last drop, and returned the glass to the attendant, never noticing the white gloves she wore, or her necklace of old red rosary beads, or the fact that two of those beads were missing, having been cracked open and dissolved in his drink.

Two miles from the German border, Udo Graf choked, coughed, slumped in his seat, and closed his eyes forever,the poison in his system denying him his longed-for homecoming.

It was exactly as Nico had said at the train station. He died a coward. He died alone. At the hands of a brave Jew.

Sometimes a lie is merely truth that is yet to happen.

... Amen

I told you at the start that Truth was cast out by God. But just as you long to see your loved ones in the hereafter, so do I dream of a heavenly return. An Almighty embrace.

Before that happens, I have a confession to make. Since the beginning of our story, I have omitted one small detail.

I was banished to earth because I was right about mankind. Humans are broken. Susceptible to sin. They were created with minds to explore, but they often choose to explore their own power. They lie. And those lies let them think they are God.

Truth is the only thing that stops them.

And yet. You cannot drown out noise with silence. Truth needs a voice. To share this story, I needed a specific voice. One that listened as Nico confessed his odyssey, one that understood Sebastian in the most personal way, one that was there for every step of Fannie’s tortured journey, one that absorbed every word of the posthumously discovered diaries of Udo Graf.

One that could tell you of the horrors the Wolf brought to this earth, from the streets of Salonika to the window of acrowded boxcar to the death camps to the gas chambers to the bloody banks of the Danube River.

One that could explain how hope survived that evil, in the kindness of a seamstress, in the courage of an actress, in the loving protection of a father and a grandfather, in the tender hearts of three children who somehow knew they would see each other again.

A voice that could warn you how a lie told once is easy to expose, but a lie told a thousand times can look like the truth.

And destroy the world.

I am that voice. And to share these words, just like the parable, I donned a colorful robe, and made sure Truth’s reckoning was delivered.

I was asked twice in my human existence to “tell the world what happened here,” and it has been my lifelong burden to do so, right up to this last moment. I have tried to be a good person, but I am old now, and near death. The others are buried. I am all that remains of the story.

Here then, with my final words, I will finish it.

My name is Fannie Nahmias Krispis.

Wife of Sebastian.

Lover of Nico.

Killer of Udo Graf.

Everything I have told you is the Truth.

And therefore, finally, blessed be the Lord, I am free.