Wunderkammer Graf Antiquitäten, Theatinerhof, Munich, Germany
September 19, 2009
8:50 p.m.
Sarron watched Dirk Schneider cross the courtyard talking animatedly into his cell phone. Only when certain he was gone did the Frenchman silently emerge from the shadow of the church and follow the arched walls of the square to approach the shop entrance.
Gesturing Oleg Vishnevsky to stay back, he clenched his fist around the door’s handle, determined to open it as gently as possible. He must have moved it only a centimeter, but instantly an old-fashioned but very loud bell began to clang like crazy.
The Frenchman could only freeze in the doorway as Vishnevsky slipped back into the shadows of the courtyard.
“Come in, Monsieur. I have been expecting you,” a voice said from inside the shop.
As Sarron warily moved in through the door, Graf stepped forward, pointing his Luger pistol straight at him.
“Hände hoch, as they say in all the best war films.”
Raising his hands half in the air, palms forward to show they were empty, Sarron edged forward into the shop’s unholy menagerie until Graf pointed the short barrel of the weapon to the side, saying, “Take a seat in one of those chairs. From what I have heard, they could have been made especially for you. Would you like a schnapps or do you prefer pastis? We should be civilized, after all. You are, I assume, Jean-Philippe Sarron?”
Sarron didn’t reply. He just stared back at Graf as he slowly stepped toward the first of the chairs. He eased down onto it, noticing that the arm holding the pistol over him was beginning to waver slightly in its aim.
It won’t be long.
Sarron regulated his breathing and waited in silence.
“Nothing to drink or say? Oh well, so be it,” Graf said as he stared at Sarron. “I must say that my first impression of you is rather disappointing. I had a clear premonition while I took a walk around Dachau this afternoon that you were going to be my nemesis, but perhaps it is not to—”
A tapping on the glass of the shop door interrupted Graf, who instinctively turned to the source of the noise.
There was a moment’s silence before the door exploded open in a blast of glass fragments, its old bell flying deep into the shop.
Instantly, Sarron lunged for the distracted man, slapping the pistol from his weak grip and jumping onto him.
Locked together, they crashed back against a tall glass display case. It shattered under their combined impact, a long shard of glass skewering Graf’s upper arm before they both fell back to the floor. The collector passed out from the shock, blood pooling under him.
Sarron quickly pulled himself free as Oleg Vishnevsky stood above, pointing the Serbians’ AKM down at the unconscious man. “Put the gun away, Oleg. We won’t need it now,” Sarron ordered, checking Graf’s neck for a pulse. “Turn off the main lights and find something to tie him with. We’ll take him into the back of the shop and put a tourniquet on his arm. I need him alive.”
The Russian went to work cutting some lengths of electrical flex with a long ceremonial SS dagger that had fallen from the broken display case, while Sarron pulled one of the two heavy metal chairs to the very rear of the store with a screech of its bare metal feet.
Holding the knife and the lengths of cable in one hand, Vishnevsky then dragged the still-unconscious, bleeding Graf along the floor after Sarron. After lifting him up into the metal chair, he bound Graf’s hands to it and twisted another length of flex high around his upper arm in an attempt to slow the bleeding from the wound.
With the collector where he wanted him, Oleg ripped a moth-eaten battle flag from the wall and, bunching its fabric in his hand, took hold of the shard of protruding glass and pulled it from Graf’s arm as fast as he could. Dropping the fragment, he forced the flag’s red, white, and black material into the wound instead before binding it with more flex.
The searing pain of the glass blade’s removal shocked Graf back to consciousness. He groggily angled his gaze up at Oleg Vishnevsky, whose cell phone began to ring.
Vishnevsky answered it, conversing rapidly in Russian.
“Russisch. Of course,” Graf said faintly to himself, as Oleg passed the phone to Sarron, saying, “Quinn is on the move.”
Sarron listened intently and shouted, “Well fucking well follow them! There’s nothing we can do now, we’re busy.”
Passing the phone back and seeing the collector was conscious again, Sarron stepped forward to put his face close to Graf’s ear.
“Listen to me, Graf. I don’t want to kill you. You’re not worth the trouble. I just want you to tell me about the ice axe. I know it has value. Tell me why.”
The collector, missing his spectacles and with a thin dribble of blood running from the corner of his mouth, turned his head to stare back at Sarron and said, “The biggest wound you inflict on me is that you deem me not worth the trouble.”
“What? Look, old man, you need to be smart about this. You are going to tell me whether you want to or not and if you make me extract the information, I warn you, it will not be pleasant.”
Graf looked again at the Russian. “This beauty undoubtedly has the capability to make me tell you what you need to know, but I should warn you: I have the capability—the need, in fact—to necessitate that you kill me in the process.”
“Shut up with your nonsense, Graf. You’re wasting my fucking time!” Sarron screamed, slapping the collector so hard across his face that it twisted to hit the metal back of the chair. The old firing mechanism of a rifle dug into Graf’s cheek, lifting a flap of skin that quickly released a stream of crimson down the collector’s face.
“It is not in my nature to shut up with my nonsense,” Graf weakly slurred, straightening his head back to look again at Sarron.
Spitting blood from his mouth, Graf appeared to savor its taste before speaking again, this time with a greater strength.
“By dwelling within the macabre, surrounding myself with it, embracing its artifacts, its twisted people, its inherent evil, I often wondered if all along I wasn’t really just courting a gruesome fate. Perhaps simply seeking to put myself on an equal footing with the rest of my family for when I meet them in the next world. It would save the embarrassed silences and inevitable recriminations as we caught up on what I had been doing for the last sixty-five years, don’t you think?”
“I don’t think anything, you fool. Just tell me about the ice axe.”
Oleg Vishnevsky pushed past Sarron to grab Graf by the throat, pushing the point of the SS dagger against his chest.
“You will tell us everything, old man, or I will cut out your heart.”
“Then you should treasure it, Ivan, because, to my immense inconvenience, it’s always been a good one.”