I had one other thing to do before we went to Argentina—visit the one person who would know the value of the flag. He’d know what a collector would pay for it, or what a neo-Nazi might pay for it, or, maybe even more important, what they might do to get it. I had asked around. Everybody led me to the same guy. A dealer of Nazi memorabilia. An odd loner, in Gatlinburg, Tennessee. I exchanged several emails with him and made an appointment to visit him. I didn’t want to show up in a black government sedan, so I drove from D.C. to Tennessee in a borrowed pick-up. I wanted to spend some time with him, learn whatever he knew about the flag. Maybe he’d even heard some rumors about where the flag was.
I’d been to Gatlinburg once before and remembered it as a beautiful but touristy town in the Smoky Mountains. It was in a gorge through which the Gatlinburg River ran. This time, I spent the night outside Gatlinburg in a nondescript motel called Daisy’s Inn. It was one of those white painted motels where you could pull your car up right in front of your door in the gravel parking lot. I was one of five cars in the lot when I got up in the morning and prepared the horrible coffee from the package in my room. I didn’t shave, didn’t take a shower, just pulled on my well-worn Leddy’s cowboy boots and started up the Chevy 1500. I drove to Gatlinburg from the east. Even though I was focused on the visit, I couldn’t help noticing how inviting and peaceful the drive was.
I passed through Gatlinburg before the tourist spots had opened, except for the pancake houses and coffee shops. I followed my handheld GPS, which showed my destination five miles on the other side of town. I drove past gift shops and rafting companies until I finally broke out into the countryside. I slowed as I approached the points where the GPS said his house was, but saw nothing. No structures, no farm houses, no numbers, nothing. The gorge was fairly narrow, but as I rounded a turn it flattened out to the left and the steep hillside was farther away from the roadside. The GPS said I was a quarter of a mile away so I slowed almost to a crawl, straining to see anything that represented civilization off the road. I changed the scale on the GPS to eight hundred feet and waited until I was right on top of the destination. I saw a barely used dirt road to my left. I looked a little bit ahead and saw a wash bucket turned upside down with two stones holding a cardboard sign up that had his house number on it. This was it. I turned left onto the dirt road that had two tracks, one for each wheel, with grass in the middle. I followed it into what appeared to be an expanding valley. It was green and beautiful, and populated with trees that were far enough apart to allow grass to grow in between. The grass was low but not mowed; there were probably goats on the property. I followed the road around a curve and saw the house. It was set back from the road on the left and up the hill. It was a Craftsman-style house, white with olive accents, and was in perfect condition.
The only vehicle near the house was a van parked in front. I looked around for any other signs of life but saw none. I turned off the rough dirt road and drove right up to the house. I parked next to the van. I listened for a moment, then got out of the truck. I walked up the wooden steps and onto the porch. Before I knocked, I looked down across the rest of the valley. It was the only house in sight. The road continued for a little bit, but then got even less open and more overgrown. My guess was he owned this entire valley, and probably took care of it by himself. What a gorgeous spot. I could see retiring to a place like this. The air was heavy with humidity but full of the smells of trees and greenery.
As I approached the door I saw a dog lying on his bed on the porch. It was an old Australian Shepherd who was moderately interested in me, but not enough to get up. I knocked on the door and stepped back. After thirty seconds I heard someone walking inside the house. He opened the door behind the screen and then pushed the screen open. He stepped out onto the porch and extended his hand. “You must be Mr. Bradley.”
“Yes. You must be Mr. Schuller.”
“Absolutely correct. Nice to meet you. Call me Tom. And thanks for coming all the way out here.” Schuller had a smile on his face that was cordial but reserved. He was shorter than me, maybe five feet eight inches, and was light, maybe one fifty. He wore tight Levis and gray Asics running shoes. He wore a black polo shirt that was untucked and had the yellow shield with the black horse-head silhouette that represented the Army’s First Cavalry Division. He was tan and fit. He hadn’t shaved, and had his dark hair combed straight back. He was maybe fifty years old, and had very dark brown eyes.
“Thanks for taking the time to meet with me. Your collection sounds amazing. I look forward to seeing it. You get many people out here?”
“Oh, I don’t know. One a week or so. Like I said, most of my business is online these days. But every once in a while I’ll get a serious collector who wants to come out and see things for himself. Seeing pictures is one thing, but seeing an item itself is a whole other thing. And if you’re going to spend a lot of money—and some of them spend a lot of money—they want to see it. So yeah, sometimes people come here. I like meeting them. It’s fun talking about what’s rare and what’s not. What’s collectible and what’s not.”
He looked to his left where I looked for the first time. There was a door that was slightly oversized and led into a wall at the end of the porch on the opposite end from the Aussie. I had noticed when I pulled up to the house that there was a structure as big as a three-car garage to the right as you looked at the house. But what was noteworthy is that it sat on the same level as the porch, on steel supports, and was not accessible by cars. There were no windows and no garage doors. Now that we were on the porch, I could see that the door off the porch was the only thing that led into that structure. I nodded and looked at the door. “Is that where your collection is?”
“Most of it. I’ve got other pieces of it in other buildings around the property. But nothing that isn’t at least represented here.”
“This whole valley yours?”
“Yeah, a hundred and twenty acres. It was really my father’s. He went off to World War II, and then came back and said he didn’t want anything else to do with war or the army or working for somebody else. So, he moved to Tennessee, got a job as a diesel mechanic for trucks, and saved every penny he earned. In the late fifties, he bought this land, which was on sale for the first time by some family, and gave everything he had then mortgaged the rest. He built the house with his own hands. My mother died in 1990 and he passed in 1995. I got the house and the land and everything he owned, free and clear. So I quit my job and moved here. Lived here ever since. Never married, no family. I don’t need much. Just enough to pay the electrical bill and help me keep my business going. But I make pretty good money from my business too, so I’m doing fine.”
“Gorgeous place.”
“Thanks. I take a lot of pride in it. I don’t really have much else to do, except take care of my business and my property.” He said, “You want to see what I have?”
“Can’t wait.”
“Great. One thing. Can you stand right there for a second?” He took his iPhone out of his back pocket and took a picture of me. He checked it to see if it was okay, then texted it. “Won’t be a minute.”
I felt my mouth going slightly dry. If he found out I was an FBI Special Agent this was going to be a short meeting and could have very bad implications.
We stood there silently, awkwardly for one minute. Two. Three. “What’s going on?” I finally asked.
“There we go,” he said smiling again. “You’re fine.”
“Meaning?”
“Well, I have some things in here that some people, mostly the ATF, don’t think are okay. So they might send someone out here to take a look, and shut me down. Let alone put me away. And I don’t want that, so I have a friend who knows if you’re that kind of someone.”
“Inside the ATF?”
“Maybe.”
“Good source,” I said chuckling. “And I got the thumbs up.”
“Yes sir, you did. Come right over here.” He turned and walked to the end of the porch opposite the dog. Over his shoulder he said, “So, I didn’t really understand what your interest is in all of this.”
“Sort of a collector, but only recently. I don’t really know much.”
“You in it for the money?”
“Not really, no. I’ll explain in a bit.”
“Alright. ’Cause if you’re in it for the money, there’s some good money here, but it’s not walk-away kind of money. I make a good living and it’s getting better, but it’s not the kind of money you can take to Wall Street to go own something.”
He took keys out of his pocket and opened the door in front of him, which swung toward him. That surprised me until I saw the bars right behind that door. It was like a jail cell door. He took another key out and undid a bolt, and then a third key to open the lock on the jail door. The barred door swung in and he stepped into the room. As soon as he moved the barred door an alarm started its countdown. I heard him enter a long code—probably sixteen numbers—and the alarm stopped. He yelled out to me, “Come on in.”
I stepped into the room and was shocked by the size. I could tell from the outside that it was a large building or room, but what I hadn’t appreciated was the depth. It went back into the hill three times as far as it went across. The room was immense and immaculate. The other thing I noticed immediately was the lighting. I had expected fluorescent lighting, but this was more like what you’d see in an art museum or high-end retail store. Small spots had up-lighting on the walls. It gave it a very classy feel and look.
He said, “Want me to show you around?”
“Absolutely.”
He closed and locked the jail door behind us, which gave me pause. “Let’s start over here,” he said pointing to the right. There were display cases that stood on wooden legs and had glass covers like in a museum. Under the glass were numerous Nazi insignia and patches. “I think at some point or other I’ve had the insignia and patch of every German unit that ever existed, including Navy. Right now I’m kind of low on them, because people buy them so quickly. Probably because people like Nazi memorabilia but don’t want to buy the expensive stuff. These I usually sell for twenty to fifty bucks.”
I leaned down toward the display cases and looked at the patches. There were SS badges, shoulder patches, collar insignia, and even a few iron crosses. “Are those hard to find?”
“Legitimate iron crosses that were actually awarded to someone are kind of hard to find. There are a lot of fakes out there. But authentic ones are worth a lot of money. Authentic ones from World War II, that is.”
He led me down the rows and showed me helmets and boots, uniforms and canteens; all authentic, and most in pristine condition. He then said, “Come over here.”
We went around to another aisle and there were rows and rows of Mauser rifles and display cases full of Luger pistols. “These the real thing?” I asked.
“Oh yeah. And, one thing I haven’t told you, my other part-time profession is as a gunsmith. Mostly on German weapons. I know these things like the back of my hand. I’ve personally checked every one of them and they are in perfect working order. I don’t sell them unless they are shootable. I let other dealers take care of the junk and the broken ones.”
“Are these rare?”
He shrugged. “Not rare exactly, but they’re not easy to find. Especially in good condition. They command a good price. People love German weapons.”
“You ever shoot ’em?”
“Sure. All the time. I even set up a firing range on the back side of my property. I bench test every one of these and zero in the sites on the rifles. These things are ready to go. I could arm an entire company with what I’ve got stored in my warehouse. I’ve also got hundreds of boxes of ammo. I even have some boxes right here in this room. You never know when somebody is going to try and get in here and take some of this stuff. And if I’m in here, I can pick up a weapon and shoot back. Hey, check this out.”
He went to another case and opened it. He pulled out a weapon that looked like a submachine gun with an ammunition clip that extended below the face of it. “People often talk about the AK-47 as the first so-called assault rifle. Not the case. The AK-47 took its design from this right here, the Sturmgewehr. The StG 44. This was the first machine gun fielded by a single infantryman with unlimited fire and detachable clips that came in through the bottom of the stock. Absolutely revolutionary. See the basic idea of the AK-47? Even this top part here. Looks identical.”
“Completely does.”
“Yep. The first true assault rifle.”
“Does it work?”
“Of course. Maybe if we have time later, I’ll show you.”
“That’d be great. I’ve always wanted one of those.”
“You know this weapon?”
“Yeah. I’m sort of a gun nut. Especially automatic weapons. Supposed to have a permit to own one, but on my ranch I don’t really care much about permits. I just shoot whatever I want.”
He smiled. “That’s what I like.”
I looked at the next table, which was uncovered, and saw several German hand grenades. ‘Potato mashers,’ as they were usually called. “These live?”
“Oh yeah. Live as hell.”
“Think they’d still work?”
“I wondered the same thing myself. Walked to my front porch, pulled the pin and heaved it at a maple tree. Not the smartest thing I’ve ever done. Blew the tree to hell, and sent shrapnel all over the front of the house. Took me weeks to pull pieces of metal and wood out of the front of the house and the porch. Thankfully, I didn’t have to pull any out of myself.”
We walked around the rest of the displays and looked at fully intact officer uniforms, SS knee-length leather coats, knee-high SS boots, and a whole corner devoted to SS materials.
“Here, I’ve got a present for you.” He picked up a pin off a table and handed it to me. It was the death skull worn on the hat of an SS officer. Just holding it almost made me angry, and sick.
“That’s unbelievable. Is it authentic?”
“Yes. I can even tell you where it came from, if you want to know.”
“I do.”
He went to a table and opened a reference book. He looked at the back of the skull at a number that he had etched on it, and read through the pages. He finally found it. “Here. It’s from the Sturmgruppe 675 based in Poland. You know them?”
“Of course. They’re one of the death squads. The ones that went through Poland looking for Jews and gypsies.”
“Baddest of the bad.”
“Yeah, tough guys. Shooting unarmed people.”
He looked at me with a pulse of scrutiny, “I’m not about judging people in World War II, I’m about collecting memorabilia.”
“I’m about both. Nazis lost their way. Even if they believed in what they said, they didn’t have to murder people to do it. Nazism would have been a much more powerful force without that. That’s why it’s still alive and well today.”
He seemed to relax. “There you go. You want that?” he asked, indicating the pin in my hand.
“Absolutely. This is priceless.”
“It is actually a pretty high value. Hundreds of dollars. But you came all the way out here and I wanted you to have it.”
“I appreciate it.” I slipped it into my pocket.
We worked our way through the rest of the material he had displayed all the way to the back of the building, deep inside the hill. There was a bar set up with stools and belly tables and a sixty-inch high-definition television that was running Nazi war footage. “What’s the movie?”
“These are actually very rare. These are Nazi movies that I bought from a movie collector. In the actual cans. Most of this footage has never been seen since the war. There are only a couple of remaining copies, and I have most of them. I also bought a machine from California,” he indicated by nodding toward the side, “that converts the film into digital. High definition DVDs. You may not know this—most people don’t—that film is far more dense than the highest definition digital picture. So it’s actually easy to convert film to high-def. images. Sometimes the formatting has to be messed with, but the density is there, so you just stick your film in one end of this machine, rewind it at the other end, and in between it gets converted to a Blu-ray DVD. It’s unbelievable. These things have been selling like crazy, and I charge ridiculous prices for them.”
“Like how much?”
“I only sell them in a ten-DVD set. They are training videos, combat footage, some German units’ inspections and parades, random assortment of things. But very high quality, and very well done. So I sell the ten-DVD set for a thousand dollars.”
“Who buys it?”
“Beats me, all over the place.”
“Germany?”
“I think people are a little hesitant to own it in Germany, but I do mail these to German addresses. They just insist that I do it in plain brown wrappings and call it ‘movie classics.’”
“That’s just unbelievable. I have to get copies of those.”
“Sure, of course. It’s amazing. Old movies. There is a market for everything Nazi. It never goes away. Part of it is because the Swastika is the most intriguing symbol ever used by anybody. It’s just captivating. The other is a lot of people secretly agree with Nazism and some of its pieces.”
I nodded. “Well, I told you I had something I wanted to talk to you about.”
He nodded and turned to the bar. “Did you want to buy anything?”
I hadn’t expected the hard sell. “Absolutely. Several things. I’d love one of those Sturmgewehrs, if you are willing to sell one. How much would you let one go for? Assuming it works and you have some ammo for it.”
“It’s illegal to own in the U.S., you know. Well you can, but you have to get a permit, which are pretty much impossible.”
“How much?”
“Can I get you a beer? German, of course. You can have Paulaner or Spaten? Both on draft. Where else can you find that?”
“Spaten.”
He went around behind the bar, drew two glasses of beer out of the Spaten tab, walked back around the bar, and set them on the bar table where we had been sitting.
“So how much?”
“These things are in great demand. And unless you got it through the ’68 amnesty with BATF, you’re in the shit for owning one. But let’s talk about the . . . not quite public market for this. I can get forty grand for it from the right collector. If it’s a beater it can be as low as fifteen grand. If it’s not in working condition or has been smashed and reassembled, maybe five grand. But this one, the one I showed you, is in good shape. It’s worth probably twenty grand. But for you, today, I’ll let you have it for ten.”
“That’s pretty generous. Let me give that some thought.”
“Sure. But after today, it goes back to twenty grand.”
“Okay. I may very well do that.”
He chuckled. “Definitely don’t put it in your carry-on luggage accidentally.” He drank deeply from his beer. “But on the phone you said you had a question you wanted to ask.”
“Yeah, thanks. I have a lead on something. I don’t have it yet, but let’s assume my lead is good, and that I’ll actually get it. What I’d like to know from you is how valuable it would be and how sought after it would be and if you can put a price tag on it. And then if all that comes to fruition, whether you could sell it. I don’t know if I want to sell it, but if I did, you seem like the right guy to do it. For a piece of it, of course.”
His eyes grew bigger. “What is it?”
“I’ll say it in German. Do you speak German?”
“Little.”
“Die Blutfahne.”
His mouth opened slightly. He said, “The Blood Flag?”
I nodded.
He sat back, his mind racing, “Seriously?”
“Seriously.”
“That thing has been missing since late ’44.”
“Exactly.”
“How did you get a lead on it? How legit is it?”
“Well, I hope it’s real legit. I think it’s the real thing, but I won’t know till I go get it.”
“Where is it?”
I shook my head.
“Okay, let’s assume it’s the real thing. Wait, how can you prove it’s the real thing?”
“Don’t worry about that. Let’s assume it’s the real thing and that I have irrefutable proof it’s real.”
“I don’t know how you would do that.”
“DNA.”
“Alright. So you’ve got the real Blood Flag. First of all, don’t let anybody near it. That’s the most coveted and sought-after Nazi item ever. That was Hitler’s magic flag. It’s just hard to describe how significant that is in Nazi lore.”
“I know. That’s why I want it.”
He paused. “If you’re this big a collector, how come I’ve never heard of you before?”
“I’ve been in the background. But now, here I am. So what’s the answer?”
He breathed quickly. “So, the value. There are some wealthy collectors who might pay a huge amount of money for something like that. Huge. But how much? The most expensive piece of Nazi memorabilia I remember was fairly recent. Hitler’s Mercedes sold a couple of months ago to a Russian billionaire for eight million dollars.”
“There have been a few other things in the millions. Some of this stuff is sort of like dealing with stolen art. You don’t want it publicized. Not that it’s illegal, it’s just thought to be in bad taste. You familiar with Hitler’s original paintings?”
I nodded.
“Those can fetch a pretty good penny. They go for several hundred thousand each. There aren’t many of them, and they are pretty easy to authenticate. I’ve got pictures of all of them. I’ve bought and sold many of them. But the flag . . . shit. I don’t know. I’d have to think about it. This kind of a setting where there is no market that’s been previously identified, where it’s never been on the market before, it’s almost like you have to have an auction and let the rich guys bid against each other. That’s the only way you’ll find the market. But I would guess it would sell for somewhere between ten and twenty million.”
“That’s about what I thought, actually.”
“Let me warn you, though. With the flag, trust me, it’s not about the money. It’s about what it stands for. Every neo-Nazi, pseudo-Nazi, proto-Nazi, former Nazi, and maybe-Nazi will come out of the woodwork to get it. And,” he hesitated. “I’d bet some would even kill for it.” He thought about that, then got up quickly. “Come on. Let’s go shoot that Sturmgewehr. Maybe I can even convince you to buy it!”
“Maybe I will.”
“I’ve even got extra magazines and boxes of ammo. You know Hitler gave it its name? Sturmgewehr? It means the ‘storm rifle.’ There were over four hundred fifty thousand of them made. Used mostly in the eastern front. Shoots a 7.92 by 33 millimeter round. Very effective.”
“Let’s go shoot.”
“By the way, if you’re from Montana, how did you drive your pick-up all the way to my house?”
“I am from Montana. But I have a ranch in Virginia too. Not too far from Roanoke. And my own airplane to go back and forth, and to my other ranches in Texas and the Central Valley of California. That’s why I don’t have to worry about putting my new Sturmgewehr in my roll-aboard. I own the airplane.”
“Nice!”
“Let’s try it. Where’s your shooting range?”
“It’s a couple of miles back into the valley. But if you just want to test it out, let’s just go out on the porch!”
We walked out of the room and he closed the door and gate behind us. He took out a metal ammo can, opened it, and put the bullets in the Sturmgewehr magazine. “Here,” he said. “You take it. Put the magazine in there . . . put a round in . . . good, just right. Now make sure to aim over your truck, and fire away into the woods.”
I pulled the trigger and the Sturmgewehr kicked into my shoulder in automatic fire. I fought the slight tendency to climb and found it to be very accurate. I could hold the fire onto a tree fifty yards away. I finished the ammo and pulled the barrel up. A slow curl of smoke climbed out of the barrel as it cooled. “Very sweet,” I said, smiling. “I’ll take it, if you take American Express. I want the points.”
“No problem!”
I tossed my umbrella into my roll-aboard and looked at Michelle, who was sitting on the bed frowning. “What’s the matter?”
“So you were where?”
“Tennessee.”
“Why?”
“To visit a collector, to see how much the Blood Flag might be worth.”
“And?”
“And what?”
“What did he say?”
“He said ten to twenty million probably. But since it’s never been on the market it’s hard to say. But some would do almost anything to get it.”
She pulled her foot up across the bed and leaned forward, alerted. “Like what?”
“He said it’s hard to predict, but they might try very hard to get it, even by violence.”
She looked at the ceiling, trying to decide whether to say what she was thinking. “So if you have this flag you’d be the one they’d be violent against.”
“That’s not going to happen. No one would know.”
“But if they did, or suspected, you’d be the target.”
“There is some risk, I suppose,” I said as I put my fleece into the suitcase. “Could you stop packing for a minute and talk to me?”
I put down the shirt I was folding and sat at the end of the bed.
She continued, “I think you ought to really re-think this. Argentina? Really? Why? This has become an obsession with you. You’ve put your FBI career at risk, you’ve offended people above you, you’ve been blamed for that mess in Atlanta, and now you’re going to run off to Argentina with German FBI and a nutcase neo-Nazi you don’t know very well? For what? Why is this your fight?”
“These are bad people, Michelle. They need to be stopped.”
“By you? There are a lot of bad people out there. That’s why the FBI has people who focus on certain things. Your focus is international terrorism and finance, last I checked. I think you’re obsessed because of your father. You are doing this to honor him, or to echo him or be like him. I don’t know. But you’re putting our family in danger, Kyle. It scares me. Taking on all of neo-Nazism at once around the world, and now off to Argentina, and then if everything goes well to Germany? For what?”
“I don’t expect people to under—”
“People? What about me? I’m not just people. Make me understand.”
“This is really important, Michelle. It can be stopped and should be stopped. I think I can do it if what we’re planning works.”
“And if it doesn’t?”
“Then we won’t succeed and that will be that.”
“Or someone will kill you for that stupid flag.”
“Not going to happen.”
She had heard enough. She fought back tears, got off the bed, and walked out of the bedroom.