As soon as my airplane touched down at Dulles, I emailed Jedediah. Unlike so many other times there was no instant response. I stared at my BlackBerry waiting for his reply. Nothing. I checked it every ten seconds as I worked my way down the aisle and into the terminal and while waiting to pass through immigration and customs.
Either he was still with me and didn’t trust me to carry the flag, or he had turned on me, and was now on his own. With the flag. And he’d brought at least two people to Argentina I hadn’t known about or approved. They had to know the arrangement and that Jedediah was working with us.
I drove straight to FBI headquarters and went to see Karl. He looked at me with surprise as I sat down on the edge of the chair in his office waiting for him to get off the phone. He could see the annoyance and frustration on my face. He said to the person he was talking to, “Let me call you back.” He hung up the phone and said, “So, how was Argentina?”
“We found the flag.”
He looked stunned. “Seriously? That’s unbelievable.”
“BKA came up with a short list. We cross checked with the Argentine Federal Police—a woman named Manuela Gabrielli—know her?”
“No. Never worked with them.”
“She knows the Germans living in Argentina. We found the two guys, and the second one said he had it. Manuela said to leave our weapons behind and just talk to these guys. So he tried to give us a fake, then pulls out a Luger and holds us at gunpoint. Then, curiously, our boy Jedediah breaks his wrist, takes the gun, puts his hand in his pocket for a second, and the next thing I know two firebombs come in through the windows. The old man panics and opens a secret panel in the wall to save the real flag. Jedediah grabbed the real flag and I haven’t seen him since.”
He shook his head and adjusted his glasses. “You’re making this up.”
“Nope. Definitely not making it up.”
“So, Jedediah took somebody with him and signaled him to firebomb the place? Pretty clever, thinking the old man might hand you a fake but he wouldn’t let the real one burn.”
“Have to admit that. Maybe I could have just looked the other way if he had called me in Buenos Aires and given me the flag. We might not have had a conversation about the coincidental firebombing. Not in our jurisdiction. But he didn’t call. Haven’t heard a thing. Now I’m wondering if he was just using us. Pisses me off.”
“And the old man?”
“He’s fine. Broken wrist, but nothing else, and he just lost his beloved fascist flag and everything else he owns.”
“Yeah, too bad.” Karl paused and waited for me to respond, but I didn’t. “So, you want to know about Jedediah. Anything else I haven’t told you.”
I nodded. “Is he with us? Or is he using us?”
He thought for a moment. “He can’t be using us to get the Blood Flag, because we had never thought of it till you came along.”
“Maybe he was using us to maneuver himself. Find out what we knew about the Volk.”
“Doesn’t work that way. You and I both know we don’t tell them what we know. Maybe he got this idea when you started talking about the Blood Flag. He saw this as his big chance.”
“That’s what I’m afraid of. He delivers this Blood Flag to his superior in the Southern Volk and they have their absolute guaranteed ticket to go to Germany. He doesn’t need us.”
“And you think that’s what happened?”
“Like I said, he’s gone silent. And the way he conducted himself in Argentina, assuming—which I think is certain—that he had somebody throw firebombs into this guy’s apartment, that was not our plan.”
He smiled ironically. “Your plan was to walk into an old man’s apartment unarmed and have him turn a Luger on you. That was your plan.”
“Who said I was unarmed?”
“I thought you said you left your weapon at the apartment.”
“No, I said that’s what Manuela told us to do. I didn’t think she’d agree to an American cowboy running around Argentina armed. That old man didn’t have a chance if he was really going to try something. But before I could do anything, Jedediah smashed his arm, firebombed the place, and took the flag.”
Karl drummed his fingers. I waited. He finally said, “I guess there is one thing I should tell you.”
I waited.
“Jedediah had a brother.”
“Had?”
“Yeah. Jonah. One of the two founders of the Southern Volk, with Brunnig. Jedediah joined them after he got out of the army.”
“And?”
“Jonah was thought to be the brains of the Thom family. Jedediah was always thought to be the muscle.”
“But you think differently?”
“I think Jonah was probably smarter, but Jedediah is underestimated by most people. He’s very smart, but more . . . clever. He sees ways through problems that others don’t see. Probably can’t do calculus, but if he wants to get something done? Look out.”
“So what about Jonah?”
“That’s the thing. Jonah Thom didn’t make it to the first anniversary of the founding of the Southern Volk.”
“Why not?”
“We’re not sure. He disappeared. No trace, no body, no nothing. Jedediah put out a missing person’s report. Said he didn’t have any idea where his brother had gone. Hadn’t seen him in days. Shortly after that, Brunnig took over as the undisputed leader. Been there ever since.”
“How long ago did this happen?”
He thought for a minute. “About two years. Maybe more.”
“And what does Jedediah think happened?”
“He thinks Brunnig made him disappear. Buried him in some swamp somewhere, or mountain ravine.”
I felt a little heat building. “Why didn’t you tell me this earlier?”
“Don’t know. Didn’t occur to me.
What bullshit. “So Jedediah has a big motivation to overthrow Brunnig. He may be using the flag for that. He may have no intention of helping us. This changes everything.” I stared at him. “How the hell could you not tell me about it?”
“Just did. I didn’t think anything would come of this. I thought you’d babysit Jedediah for a while then go on your way. I never thought you’d find that silly . . . that flag.”
I fought back my inclination to yell at him. “You think it’s silly?”
“I didn’t mean it like that.”
I stood up. I’d heard enough. “Anything else you should have told me?”
“I don’t trust Jedediah. I guess I implied I did. I do in minor respects, but in terms of whether he’s with us or not? I don’t know. You know the old saying, never trust a traitor.”
What an ass. “Yeah. I know the saying. Another saying I know is FBI special agents should share information with each other. Do you know that saying? Especially information on a case they are working on together? Do you know that one?”
He was feeling the heat. “I didn’t know what we were dealing with. I didn’t really have any idea whether Jedediah was involved in his brother’s disappearance. Almost certainly not. But the head guy probably was.”
“So that’s what you thought the motivation really was for Jedediah coming to us. Yet you never told me that. He tried to sell me on this thing about him being ‘saved.’ Is that what he told you?”
“He mentioned it. May even be some truth in it. Did he land in the U.S.?” I nodded. “And hasn’t been seen since.”
“They gonna charge him in Argentina?”
“If we want them to.”
Karl had been playing with his computer and looking at the screen intermittently while we were talking. He squinted at the screen, sat up, and said, “Well, here’s our answer. Check this out.” He turned the flat screen around so that I could see it. It was the home page of the Southern Volk’s website.
I looked at the banner. “Southern Volk appoints new president—Jedediah Thom.”
When I got back to my office, Alex was waiting for me. She was looking at the Southern Volk website. She looked up at me. “So where’s the former president?”
“Why don’t you tell me.”
“I think he’s a goner. I think our boy Jedediah . . . pushed him aside.”
“And now I know why. Karl just gave me one of those critical pieces of information I should have had weeks ago.” She waited.
“Jedediah’s brother was one of the founders of the Volk. He ‘disappeared’ a year later. Jedediah blames the current president. Well he was the president.” I contemplated the implications. “Does it say what he’s doing?”
“No.”
“Check local news sites to see if he has disappeared.” She typed his name into Google.
I went to the Southern Volk website and looked at it carefully. There was no mention of Brunnig. “It’s like he doesn’t exist. He’s not even in the article about Jedediah taking over.”
“What do you make of it?”
“I think this was Jedediah’s plan the whole time. As soon as he heard about this German thing—about the chance to be on the world stage—he decided it was time to make his move. He’s hated Brunnig ever since he took over. Jedediah thought he should be in charge, now he is. The question is, who are we dealing with? Is he still talking to us? But if he’s still talking to us, and he’s killed Brunnig, we’re done with him.”
Alex wondered what the next step was. I wondered that myself. This thing could go wrong in so many different directions. It already had. Finally, I said, “How would you like to go to Columbia? Can you crash a car?”
We flew to Columbia, South Carolina, the next morning and went straight to a shady used car dealer near Five Points. It looked like it used to be a doughnut shop. The owner had about twenty used cars, most of which had probably been stolen, submerged, or totaled at some point. We bought an iffy green Accord for a thousand dollars. It had two hundred thousand miles on it. I didn’t care though, as I only needed it to go about five more.
Alex got in the driver’s seat and we drove off the lot. It was a blistering hot day with humidity that made you want to stop breathing; unusual for October. The engine sounded fine and the car drove well. I turned on the air conditioning, which blew hot air in our faces. We drove through a couple of neighborhoods.
“We need to find a steel pole somewhere. Let’s go down by the stadium.”
She drove the short distance to the football stadium and into a parking lot that had light poles with cement bases. “What’s the plan?”
“Back it into a light pole. About five or ten miles an hour.”
“You back it into a light pole.”
“Fine. Get out.”
She stopped, put the car in park, and got out. I walked around, got in, and put it in reverse. I looked over the seat with my right hand on the passenger seat and backed it toward a pole. I glanced up and saw Alex standing there with her hands on her hips and her teeth clenched. I looked back and saw the pole. I was going maybe five miles per hour. So I hit the accelerator to ten. I slammed into the light pole and the impact was much harder than I expected. I felt my head go back sideways, which surprised me, but I was confident I’d inflicted enough damage.
Alex walked over and looked at the damage. “Holy shit! I’m glad I wasn’t in the car! You must have been going twenty-five miles an hour! You’re going to have a sore neck.”
I got out to look at the damage myself. It was a serious impact. More than I had intended. I was worried it wouldn’t drive. I climbed back in the driver’s seat, Alex got in, and we drove away. I could hear a strange sound coming from the rear end, but the car drove.
I drove straight toward Jedediah’s auto body shop. We stopped two blocks short and pulled up to a Starbucks. I took out my pocket notebook and tore out a sheet of paper. I put it in the center of the steering wheel as I wrote “Same place as last, 11:00 p.m.” I handed it to her. “You sure you can pull this off?”
“Just stay here.”
“I’ll be waiting.” I got out and stood on the curb as she pulled away. The Accord looked like it had been in a demolition derby. I’d overdone it a little bit. I was lucky I hadn’t punctured the gas tank.
I walked into the Starbucks and ordered a cappuccino and a Danish. I sat in the corner and pulled out my iPad. It had been a couple weeks since I had looked at the neo-Nazi websites and news stories on Nazism.
I checked out the American neo-Nazi websites to see if anyone was talking about the meeting in Germany. Or the change of command at the Southern Volk. Not much new. I started wondering how we’d prove this flag—assuming we got it from Jedediah—was the one that was bled on in the twenties and carried in the thirties and forties. We had already been shown one fake, and we now knew that the Russians had a whole trailer full of fake Hitler memorabilia.
I googled “Otto Hessler” again to see if I could find out anything about his family. We had to get DNA. The Blood Flag was called the Blood Flag because it had blood on it. Those stains were still there. But could they be used? Were they too old? And tested against what? Who?
I’d been in a lot of cases where DNA testing was used. It was now so common that it was done almost as a matter of course. It had changed forensics forever, and frankly, made it far better. DNA testing has been so much more accurate than all the other types of forensic evidence put together that it has made the odds of a wrongful conviction significantly lower. We, of course, always deny that there is any chance of a wrongful conviction. That’s what law enforcement always says. But wrongful convictions are well known. By the hundreds.
But I had never had a case where the DNA I wanted tested was from 1923. DNA testing was really about cell biology. I got on my BlackBerry and sent an email to the head of our forensics lab near Quantico. “Assume a blood stain on a cloth from 1923. How can I prove it’s a certain person (I know whose blood it is)?” I hit send.
I knew the names of all the men who had bled on the flag. Of course none of that mattered if we couldn’t persuade Eidhalt. He’d have to be involved in the testing to really believe it.
I sent an email to Florian asking him to start thinking about the best DNA lab to use in Germany. After getting sidetracked by checking sports scores and political blogs and losing track of the time, I was brought back to the present when the door flew open and Alex came in looking like she’d seen a ghost. She looked around desperately then saw me. She came over to me and dropped her purse on the small table in front of me like it contained all her burdens. She sat down and tried to catch her breath. She was nearly unable to speak. I waited. She shook her head subtly, got up, went to the counter, and ordered a cup of green tea. She returned to the table and played with the tea bag in the hot water. Finally, she looked up at me.
“Never in my life have I ever met or even seen anyone so completely . . . intimidating.”
“You’re FBI. You’re not supposed to be intimidated by anybody,” I said half joking. “He was there?”
She nodded.
“What happened?”
She took a sip from her tea. She was holding her cup with two hands, probably so her hand wouldn’t shake. Finally, she spoke. “I found the shop, and pulled in. I haven’t been to a body shop in a long time. It feels strange, especially for a woman. This isn’t one of those fancy shiny body shops that your insurance company sends you to if you get hit. This is one of those dirty, greasy, body shops where sketchy men hang out and probably chop stolen cars and fix cars involved in hit and runs. The kind that never wants any insurance company to pay them for anything, because they don’t want the scrutiny. Once I pulled in it was much bigger on the inside than it looked from the outside. The door is kind of small to drive through, but once you get through, it’s like you’re in a warehouse.”
“Go on.”
“I got out of the car and stood there waiting for somebody to approach me. I was looking for Jedediah the whole time, but didn’t see him. You know those offices that have a glass window and they can see the whole shop floor? They have one. And a guy was staring at me from there and not moving. I stood looking around with some of the men working on cars glancing at me now and then, but nobody moved. It was damn awkward. Finally, the guy in the office gets up and comes out. Looks like he’s doing me a huge favor just by getting his ass out of his chair.”
“What did he look like?”
“Skinny guy, tall, maybe six two, not muscular. Wearing jeans and a white T-shirt. Blonde hair. Spiked. He had earrings in each ear, sort of pointed earrings where they go through and then they’re open at the bottom but they point down to the floor. He came up to me. ‘What can I do for you?’ “I was trying hard to look sheepish. Not something I’m good at. Anyway, I said ‘I backed into a pole. I need you to fix it.’ I led him around to the back of the Accord and pointed to the damage. He looked at it, put his hands on his hips, and said, ‘Shit lady. What were you doing? You musta been going backwards at thirty miles an hour. Not that easy to do.’”
She looked at me intensely. “I told you you overdid it. Anyway, I assured him that I was not, and that I was simply backing out of a parking space and hit a pole. He just looked at me and shook his head. He didn’t believe me. But it didn’t matter. He probably deals with liars all the time, and I was just the latest. ‘You want an estimate?’ he asked. I told him I didn’t want the insurance company involved. I’d submitted two claims already this year and if they got a third one, they’d cancel me. I told him I’d pay cash.”
“Go on,” I said.
She nodded, relaxing slightly. “So I told him, yeah, I need an estimate. He went into his office, brought out a clipboard with a blank piece of paper—I kid you not—a blank piece of paper. He looked at the damage, crawled under the back of the car, tried to open the trunk—which wouldn’t open—and wrote a number on the piece of paper. Twelve hundred sixty-four dollars. I told him that was ridiculous. I told him, ‘You’re out of your mind. This should be about six hundred dollars.’ And he looked at me with complete apathy. He clearly didn’t care if I had my car fixed there or not. So he said, ‘Have you done a lot of estimates?’ I, of course, had to say no and he said, ‘You need a new bumper, a new trunk lid, there’s damage underneath, a lot of work.’ I said, ‘Well can you do any better than that number?’ He shook his head. ‘Nope.’ So I began my little charade. He just shook his head. He didn’t even bother to respond. So, I asked him, ‘Are you the owner?’ He said, ‘Nope.’ So, I told him I wanted to see the owner. He simply told me I didn’t need to see the owner, that he was the estimator, and that was the number. I told him I insisted on seeing the owner. He insisted I didn’t need to. I then told him, I wasn’t leaving until I saw the owner and he started to look at me a little funny, evaluating me. He asked me, ‘Where do you live?’ I said, ‘What do you mean, where do I live?’ ‘Where do you live in Columbia?’ I was a little bit taken aback. I said that I lived near Lake Murray. He looked at me again, and then started checking me out. Not like sexually, but evaluating my clothes. I think he was starting to suspect something. He then asked to see my driver’s license. I didn’t know what to do. I panicked. Why would they need to see my driver’s license? We hadn’t talked about that at all.”
“We should have anticipated that. We should have gotten you a fake ID.”
“It didn’t matter. I told him it had been revoked and I didn’t have one.”
“You told him your driver’s license had been revoked?”
“What else was I going to tell him? I was going to show him what, my Virginia driver’s license? My FBI ID? What the hell would you have had me show him?”
“So what happened?”
“I told him it had been revoked because I’d had too many points. So he frowns and tells me I must be a really shitty driver because I’ve had two insurance claims and enough points to get my license revoked and backed into a light pole at sixty miles an hour. I got pissy and told him he didn’t need to worry about it, he just needed to fix my damned car for less than twelve hundred sixty-four dollars and that I wanted to see the owner if he wasn’t willing to lower it. He told me he absolutely wasn’t willing to lower it, that was the price, and I didn’t need to see the owner. I told him I needed to deal with the person who had the authority, as he was clearly a lackey and I needed to talk to the person in charge. Well that got his back up, he got pissed. If I didn’t like his estimate, I could go elsewhere. I told him I might very well do that, but first wanted to see the owner. I crossed my arms and stood there making it clear to him that I wasn’t going anywhere until he got the owner. And I had left my car just inside the entrance so that nobody was going in or out until my car was moved. The keys were in my purse so they couldn’t just move the car easily. So he goes into his little office, throws his clipboard onto the desk and picks up the phone and was gesturing—but I couldn’t hear what he was saying—and then put the phone down. He sat down at his desk and then didn’t say another word. I stood there waiting, looked around the shop at the activity and nobody was making any move toward me. It got awkward. I started looking at the ceiling and the walls and then realized for the first time there were security cameras everywhere. He was probably studying me on the camera. I just waited, and still nothing happened. I walked over to the lackey’s office and talked to him from outside his doorway. I asked him if the owner was coming and he didn’t even respond. He didn’t look up; he didn’t say anything.
“Then, from no more than twelve inches behind me, ‘You looking for me?’ It’s bad enough to get surprised. But when the surprise is so close you can almost feel his breath and then it’s a gruff voice and then you whip around and the person looks like a serial killer? I swear I thought I was going to wet my pants. Literally. You just don’t even understand. I’m not afraid of many people. I’ve taken Kung Fu, I can defend myself reasonably. Well probably not, but I think I can, which is good enough, and, if I feel like I’m really in danger, I’ll just get out my weapon, and if some man is truly going to attack me, I’ll shoot him. Deader than a doornail. With a clear conscience. But when you’re face to face with somebody who could clearly pinch your head off, and might in fact do that? Whole different deal. And close enough to do it faster than you could even object. It’s just something about the intimidating presence of a guy this big and this strong. Not that he’s that tall . . . he’s just massive. I could literally hit him as hard as I could with just about anything and it wouldn’t even phase him. I haven’t felt that exposed and vulnerable in a long time. Well, ever. I really wanted to know why I had left my handgun with you and why you weren’t a quarter of a block away, and why I wasn’t wearing a wire so you could come rescue me. It made me realize how stupidly we had gone about this. Those were the thoughts that went through my mind in the first tenth of a second. In the second tenth of a second, I tried to gather myself and face him squarely. Even though he was twelve inches away and he was way inside my personal space and the only option I had was to step into Mr. Lackey’s office, I had to push back. I told him that his estimator’s number was ridiculous; it was on a blank piece of paper, he didn’t seem to know what he was doing, and that I wanted him to give me a discount from that estimate.
“He stared at me with these cold eyes and told me that he wouldn’t change anything. This guy was the best estimator in the city. So I looked right back at him and asked him if he would take a look at the car himself. He looked over my shoulder at his estimator, then back at me. Then he said, ‘Sure. Why not.’ He sort of pushed me aside as he went into the office and picked up the guy’s clipboard with the estimate on it. He walked out to the Accord, went around to the back of it, did nothing but glance at it, circled the estimate on the clipboard, and put a big check mark by it. He handed the clipboard to me. ‘That’s our estimate.’ So, I asked him if that was it. If that was the best they could possibly do. He stared right back at me, again getting too close, maybe a foot. I could smell the sweat on his body. ‘No, it’s not the best we can possibly do. But it’s the best we’re going to do.’ So I told him I didn’t think that was very helpful. He stares at me, then he looks me up and down. He asked me what I did. I told him that I was a secretary at the University and worked in the Department of Education. And he asked me why there wasn’t a USC parking sticker anywhere on my car. I told him I lost my parking privileges when I lost my license. He didn’t buy it. ‘So you went out and scraped off your sticker? Where’s the residue? Where’s the outline of where it was? I think you’re a cop. I don’t know why you’re here, but I think you probably oughta get going.’ I laughed. ‘A cop. That’s a good one.’ But he was right. I needed to get out of there. So I put out my hand, where I’d hidden the piece of paper between two fingers. He paused, then shook my hand and felt the paper. He curled his hand into a fist and put it into his pocket. He turned his back to me, and walked back in the direction he’d come from. I shook my head, got in the car, backed out, and drove straight here.”
I sat back and considered what she had said. “Do you think he knows who you are?”
She shook her head. “Probably. He knows something’s up, that my story wasn’t holding together, but I don’t think he really cared what the real story was. He just knew he didn’t want anything to do with me. Do you trust him?”
I took the lid off my Starbucks cup and scraped the remaining foam from inside with the stirring stick and ate it. “I’m not sure. As of right now? No.”
“So you set up a meeting with him for you and me in the middle of nowhere in the middle of the night.”
“Yes, tonight.”
She finished her tea. “You’ve been such a comfort to me, thank you so much.”
We drove to the dead end at Lake Murray at ten o’clock. We turned at the same bent road sign and drove to the end of the road, right by the water. I stopped in the same place I had stopped before, turned out the lights and shut off the engine. We were an hour early. I wanted to see where Jedediah came from this time. No surprises. If Jedediah Thom had in fact gone out on his own and had killed the head of the Southern Volk, he might feel free to do whatever he thinks will make him more secure in his position. “Let’s check the area and wait outside the car in the woods. I want our eyes to adjust to the dark before he gets here.”
We opened our doors at the same time and just as I was closing mine, I saw a rush of motion on the other side of the car. I heard a shocked cry from Alex and a rustle of activity, which then went silent. I unholstered my Glock and ran around the car. Jedediah was standing at the edge of the trees holding Alex with his forearm around her neck. He was barely visible in black jeans, a black turtleneck, and black rubber gloves. His other hand was over her mouth. I could hear her panic, but he had obviously threatened her as she was not fighting his grip. I raised my gun and pointed it at his head, twenty feet away. “Let her go.”
Jedediah began moving slightly in unpredictable ways. I could and absolutely would shoot him in the head from twenty feet away with Alex right next to him. I could hit a head-sized target from twenty feet away ten out of ten times, swaying or not. He said softly, “Put your gun down.”
“Not a chance. Let her go.”
“You have to answer a question for me first.”
“Here’s one answer. If you kill her I’ll either shoot you right now, or I’ll make it my life’s mission to get you a special injection that will put you to sleep forever.”
He shook his head. “You here to arrest me?”
“No.”
He said to Alex, “How dare you come to my shop with that bullshit story. Everyone in the shop wanted to know why the cops were after me. Worst thing you could have done.”
I said, “You steal the flag, come to the U.S., and then go silent! What the hell was I supposed to do? I thought you’d turned on us!”
He twisted Alex’s head sideways until she was wincing in pain while he looked at me. “Give me your word you won’t arrest me. That you’re here to have a civil conversation and I’ll let her go.”
“Of course I give you my word! Get your hands off of her!”
He released her and pushed her away slightly. She turned around, looked at him in the face, and said, “You asshole!” She balled her hand into a fist and slugged him in the gut as hard as she could.
It had no effect on him at all. She ran over to where I was as I re-holstered my handgun. I said, “Shit, Jed. What the hell was that?”
“What the hell was that? What the hell was it when you sent her into my shop? Right into my freaking shop! She backs into a pole going sixty miles an hour and then makes up some bullshit story about a parking lot. Everybody there knew it was a lie. Everybody there knew she was a cop. They could smell it. They didn’t know why, but they knew she was a cop. Do you think we usually do estimates on a blank piece of paper where we just write a number? Then she gets into a huff, where the estimate he gives her is about seventy percent of what it ought to be, and she demands a lower number? She may as well have worn a sign on her chest that said, ‘FBI agent with an agenda.’”
“You weren’t returning my emails. I needed to talk to you after that stunt in Argentina. Why the hell did you go cold on me?” I tried to read his face. I wasn’t getting good feelings.
“Too much going on. The whole Russian thing, then the Southern Volk president disappears while we’re in Argentina—”
“By you?”
“Hell no. I have no idea where he is. All I know is that I’m in charge and I’m hyper sensitive. I’m not talking to anybody about anything except going to Germany.”
“So you’re still planning on going?”
“Of course I am. I’ve got the Blood Flag.”
“Yeah, you do, and I’m supposed to. Where is it?”
“You’re not supposed to have it. I am. I’m the one taking it to Germany. I’m the one selling this story.”
“I need to know right out, Jedediah, are you still with me or not? You and I still on the same page?”
“Yeah. We’re still on the same page. But you need to give me a lot of room. I don’t want to have any more phony collisions brought into my shop.”
“You have to communicate with me. If you’re working with me, you’ve got to communicate. And if you made Brunnig ‘disappear,’ we’re done. I need to know you didn’t do that.”
“I didn’t do anything.”
“So you’re still planning on taking the Blood Flag to Germany? We’re down to twenty days.”
“I know. I’ve already told Eidhalt I’ve got the biggest surprise ever. And I’m going to be one of his people coming to Germany.”
“How does it work? I thought he had to pre-filter it—determine the value of what people had done—and then he would invite them.”
“He insisted on knowing, but I said I wasn’t going to tell him. He demanded to know.”
“So now what?” I asked.
“I told him I’m coming to Germany to show him. So I’m going to Germany. He finally gave me a secret phone number.”
I looked at the stars through the trees overhead. I looked back at Jedediah. “You’ve got one problem.”
“Really? What’s that?”
“Authentication. You’ve seen how good the Russian fakes were. What do you think is going to make him believe that your flag—our flag—isn’t a fake?”
I could see the shock on Jedediah’s face. “What are you going to do when he tells you you have to prove this was the original Blood Flag? How you going to prove it?”
“It is the original. We got it from the Nazi in Argentina. He tried to unload a fake on us, but we got the real one.”
“How do you know that? He might have a whole pile of fakes for just this kind of thing. He may have the original in a safe deposit box somewhere.”
He hadn’t thought of that possibility. “So now what?”
“I think I know what needs to be done, but what I don’t know is whether I should tell you. I’m not sure I trust you anymore. I thought we had an understanding in Argentina. But you took it upon yourself to fire bomb an apartment—that I’m standing in—and take off with the Blood Flag. You could have gotten somebody killed.”
“I didn’t care about some old Nazi getting killed. Hell with him.”
“You could have gotten Florian or Patrick killed. Or me. Or you. It was stupid. If you had something like that in mind, you should have told us. And the fact that you didn’t makes me wonder what else you have in mind. I just don’t know if I trust you.”
“I’ve got nothing else in mind. You can walk away if you want. But if you do, I’m gonna keep going. And you can’t stop me.”
“If you keep going without us, and you don’t authenticate that flag, you don’t have anything. It’s just a matter of time until he figures it out and calls you before the meeting.”
“So what do you suggest?”
I looked at Alex and back again. “We’ve got to get the DNA out of the flag and match it with one of the people who died. We know all the names.”
“Can you do that?”
“I’m asking the people at the FBI forensics lab. But what I think we’re going to have to do is go to Germany and dig up some graves.”
“And then the meeting.”
“Right.”
“So you’re coming with me?”
“Right.”
“What’s our story? Who are you?”
“I’m probably your financier. I’ve already put myself out as a rancher when I was in Tennessee. Probably need to stick with that.”
He thought for a moment. “We don’t know who is connected to who. You need to come to one of our meetings.”
“In person?”
“Yes.”
“Will Brunnig be there?”
“Probably not.”
Alex said, “Yeah, because he’s dead.”
Jedediah looked at her. “What makes you say that?”
“Because he’s gone and now you’re in charge. Where is he if he’s not dead?”
“No idea. He just vanished. Guess he had something to run from.”
“Like your brother?” she asked.
Uh oh, I thought. Jedediah turned to face her. “What the hell do you know about my brother?”
“Did Brunnig kill him? Make him disappear? You returning the favor?”
He breathed heavily. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
I intervened. “I’ve seen how these meetings go. It’s a lions’ den.”
“It’ll be fine. I’ll be running it.”
“Yeah, but some of your people are crazy.”
“Most of them.”
“So I’m supposed to walk in there and be the great financier and you’ll introduce me and all will be well?”
“You want to come to Germany? We need to really nail your background. You need to be part of us.”
“I don’t know.” The mental images I had of the meeting I’d watched were vivid.
Jedediah continued to stare at Alex. After an awkward interval he said to me, “Wednesday. Be there. The Traveller. And let’s make sure your story on the Internet is even better. Fully developed, so anyone who reads it will believe it.”
I held up my hand. “So before now you wouldn’t even return my calls, and now you want to introduce me to the Volk.”
“Brunnig and his suspicion are gone. It’s my organization now. They’ll do what I say.”