“THERE’S A BUNCH of other writing on this—you’re the one with the master’s in German, so you tell me. Look—that’s definitely a street address—106 Wilhelmstrasse—apartment 12A.” Harry lifted a drunken hand to the mug of coffee Stag offered and took a deep gulp. “There’s a lot of stuff on here I can’t make out at all. Looks like it’s written in code.”
They were back at Stag’s, the painting propped on a chair while they studied it and the strange piece of silk. The cheap furnished apartment was a temporary landing spot Stag had managed to find in the miasma of his return to Wuttke. It was now official. He hadn’t written a word for over three years. He’d come limping home and plopped aimlessly into a monthly rental. The place was now filled to the ceiling with cardboard boxes—some his, some Harry’s—and piles of clothes. A Salvation Army futon groaned under the big man’s weight.
Stag looked down at the fluttery white silk strip, incongruous in Harry’s freckled paw. It had already been a long evening just getting Harry out of the bar. He was exhausted, his gimp leg pounded with pain. At least there was this small mystery to distract them.
He got his own cup of coffee. Walking to the futon, a glint of metal next to one of the painting’s stretcher bars caught his eye.
“Something’s here. Something—” Stag edged it out with a fingernail. It was the tip of a key. He could see that from the cuts on the side.
He went to the kitchen and got a knife. Slowly, so as not to damage the painting, he slid the key out from between the stretcher and canvas.
“I guess this is the key to the address.” Stag held it out in his palm. It was the brown color of worn brass. Definitely not modern.
“Fuck. I can’t believe all this time it was in there.” Harry rubbed his jaw. “I wonder what this means.”
“The note’s on parachute silk,” Stag said almost subconsciously.
“Parachute silk?”
“Back in World War II, they used this thin white silk for parachutes and spies used it for writing codes just like the one here.” Stag ran his finger down the fabric’s smooth surface. “You could slip it underneath the lining of a coat or a suitcase, and no one could detect it in a cursory search.”
“Huh. But that doesn’t answer who wrote the note and why it was stuck in the back of this guy.”
Harry smoothed the strip out against the futon and began translating the faded peacock-blue writing. “The first part is definitely some kind of code. Total gibberish. The rest of it says something about—I don’t know—something’s in a truck—the handwriting’s not too legible, but something’s in a truck—at the bottom of the lake. And there’s a shape drawn on here. A rune? A map? It looks like a long scraggly finger with a string tied on it. Maybe that’s where the truck is. It might be the outline of a lake. But what lake?” He gulped his coffee and held out for more.
Stag went to get the coffeepot, but then Harry shot out, “Fuck me! I can’t be sure but I swear the word’s diamonds. The diamonds are in a truck at the bottom of the lake.”
As if this were an everyday conversation, Stag poured the fat man another cup of coffee and replaced the pot. “I wish your dad was still around. He could tell us more about this.”
“Yeah.” Harry ran his thick finger over the writing. “I mean, he never really talked about the painting. The rumor of it coming from the Berghof was just bullshit he liked to spread around.” He shook his head. “Holy shit—do you think—I mean—is this some kind of clue to—”
“Nazi treasure?”
“Is it? Is this a fucking Nazi treasure map?”
“It’s decades old. And completely without provenance and context. If it was some kind of clue to finding hidden Nazi diamonds, trust me, they’re long gone.” Stag held up the key. “No, what we’ve got here is a historical curiosity.”
“The diamonds are in a truck at the bottom of the lake!” Harry smoothed out the silk again. “If that’s not talking about Nazi diamonds—”
“We don’t even know for sure if the word is diamonds, it’s kind of hard to make out.” Stag eyed Harry with extreme skepticism, then picked up the long strip of silk again and contemplated it. “Sure. It looks like the word diamonds. I agree this is something out of the ordinary, but again with no context … Did your dad keep any files or anything we could look through?”
Harry was sobering quickly. “Files? No, there aren’t any files. He got rid of all the files. The only thing he left was the accounting books. That’s all. Nothing more. No files.”
Okay, Stag thought. Really, really no files. “We should Google the address. It might be current—it’s a possibility—”
Harry snorted. “This note’s been in that picture for decades. I can guarantee nobody’s touched that guy since he was hung on the wall.” Tapping into his phone, Harry put the screen in Stag’s face. “It’s an address, all right. In Berlin. It’s still there.”
“We should call it. Maybe we’ll find out something that way.”
“Good idea.” Harry found a phone number for the address. It was an apartment building called the Dresdenhof. He entered it into his phone, and then promptly handed it over to Stag.
“You’re the one with the master’s in German, for Christ’s sake.”
Stag reluctantly took the phone and introduced himself. The connection seemed to falter and he said his name again. “Yes, Stag Maguire. Calling from Wisconsin. USA.” He began a dialogue with whoever was at the other end. After a lengthy back-and-forth, he then said, “Danke.”
Stag shrugged, handing Harry his phone back. He was unsure what the conversation meant. “Apparently it’s a high security building for diplomats. No one needs help in 12A, they said. The apartment’s been unoccupied since 1942. And they said even if someone did need help, there would be no point in calling the police because the Dresdenhof is out of their jurisdiction and has been since the war.”
“For how long?”
“That’s what the guy said.”
“What the fuck does that mean?”
“That’s what I wondered. Something about diplomatic immunity, the Swedish embassy.” Stag turned his attention to the window. Dawn was just seeping in. Propped up against a chair, the painting stared back as if daring him to blink.
“You know, in this light, the paint looks …” Stag gazed at the painting. The first sunbeam had just lain across it.
He walked over to it, and scratched at a peeling flake of paint on the portrait’s beard. He took off another, then another, flake of alligatored paint. “Look at this. I think it’s been painted over. That’s why the guy looks funny.”
“Nothing is funny about that bastard. Seriously. Not even a mother could love that evil-eyed turd.”
“This has been over-painted.” Stag tilted the painting to better catch the sunlight, and with it, the outline of paint beneath the surface. “I think he’s wearing a uniform. Maybe we should see if we can scrape this top layer off. Get me a pen knife. If he’s wearing a uniform, maybe we can find out who the guy is.”
Harry suddenly looked like the kid ready to barf on the Tilt-A-Whirl. “Shit, if he’s wearing a uniform then he’s probably a—” His expression turned dark and unsettled.
Stag gave him an unsure glance. “They did that, you know. Painted over uniforms to make the figure more politically correct. But that doesn’t mean anyone in your family knew there was anything underneath this guy. I mean, how could they? The bar was dark and they hardly paid it any attention.”
Harry still looked reluctant.
“Look, get me something to scrape with. It’s the only way.”
“If he’s in a uniform, then that means, fuck, we’ve had a Nazi hanging in the bar for my entire life.”
Stag put the painting back on the chair. Both men stared at it.
“You know, maybe I’ve always known. Fuck!” Harry wearily palmed his face. “Fuck this. And fuck me!”
“I’ll get a knife,” Stag said.
Forty minutes later, an entirely new portrait was propped back on the chair. The beard was gone, and the Bavarian peasant garb. After making a drift of paint chips, Stag stepped back, strangely repulsed by his accomplishment. There was no mistaking the German field gray uniform. Nor the Death’s Head on his cap. Furthermore, he had a pretty good idea who it was, but he didn’t want to freak Harry out even more.
“This is bullshit. What the hell were they doing hanging a Nazi on the wall?” Harry muttered to himself.
“Maybe they didn’t know who he was.”
“Sure,” Harry answered miserably. “That’s why they called him ‘our Reini.’ Our! Reini!”
“I’ll take it to Jake this afternoon.” Stag wiped a few chips of paint stuck to his cheek. “Maybe he can identify him.”
“No,” Harry said. “I don’t want you to take it to Jake. I want the motherfucker gone. Let’s burn it.”
“But the note—”
“Seriously, it’s my painting. I don’t care about it. I want it gone. Burn it!”
“What about the diamonds?”
Harry rubbed his bleary eyes. “Fuck! I don’t like this! Nor this guy!” He began to come down from his rage. “But maybe if there are diamonds, I could get Julie and the kids—”
“Let’s take it to Jake. We’ll find out what this is all about.” Someone had to remain sane, and it sure as hell wasn’t going to be Harry. “It’s highly unlikely this is about diamonds, nor that they’re still around after all this time,” Stag said.
“Look at this bastard’s fancy-ass medals on his uniform. Sure, there are diamonds. Maybe a whole truck full of them. In the lake,” Harry said, miserably.
“First we need to stick to finding out who this guy is and maybe who wrote that note before we go—”
“I could get Julie back.”
Stag gave Harry a worried look. There was no yearning in the world like wanting to turn back the clock and get back all you’d lost. Knowing him as well as Stag did, he could see the insane path of Harry’s thoughts. Sure, it all sounded good. Harry could win Julie back, and he himself could become the famous journalist who found the lost Nazi diamonds in the lake. All would be righted and ennobled almost by the hand of divine providence.
And unicorns would fart rainbows.
“First things first. Let’s get a bead on this guy.” Stag forced Harry’s attention back to the portrait. There the lizard eyes stared back at them, and Stag felt a queasy sink in his stomach.
It was crazy. Far-fetched in the extreme, and he had a duty to get Harry’s grief-stricken thinking back down to earth. It didn’t help Harry’s current emotional state to be trying to win Julie back with the lottery of spurious Nazi treasure. Whatever had been written on the strip of silk was decades old. What the hell were they going to do with that information in Wisconsin, at this date and time? Not much, was the answer.
And there was only one thing he was sure of even if there were diamonds.
A whole truckful of them.
In a lake somewhere.
The cocksucker in front of him probably stole them.
And there was no need to speculate from whom.