STAG WOKE UP in the dorm of the Hostel-Berlin more surprised than rested. The room full of bunks was completely at peace, the only disturbance, the snores of the young hippies that had bailed from their night of partying. Mein Kampf was still next to him, open on the page he’d been translating when he finally passed out.
He closed his eyes and wondered about Tarnhelm. Did they know about the writings? He couldn’t believe they’d missed them. They were, after all, a security organization. They had to know every inch of that apartment. Only they never had the key to the code.
He’d eluded them, but the translating was going slower than he’d like. And at this point there were no real answers. What in God’s name were they so afraid of that they sent someone out to kill Harry just to get his buddy to pick up the phone? It was all darkness right now.
But one thing he did know was that if the SD was still around as some kind of security service, it could be everywhere, and the implications were chilling. Pissing them off was a suicide mission. But he’d never be able to find out what they were up to by making nice and heading into the sunset. His inquiries were going to bring him attention. He would have to deal with it.
He sat up and put his legs over the edge of the bunk. Randomness was the key. It was his only advantage. Tarnhelm probably had people everywhere. He could picture someone tampering with his breakfast in the kitchen.
Nothing like a little paranoia with your morning coffee, he thought to himself with a grimace. He stood and walked a bit, his leg stiffer than usual. The pain brought back memories of Holly. Her room-brightening smile, the comforting way she liked to stroke his chest after they made love, the moment she went to tell him about the pregnancy test and then didn’t have to when she brought his hand to her belly.
Find what you love, then let it kill you. He could never figure out if that was Bukowski or Kinky Friedman who said it, but the real truth was that it didn’t kill you. Holly had left him behind. All the pain had just left him alive and still kicking. And thoroughly, radiantly pissed off.
With Harry’s death, the feeling sure as hell wasn’t getting any better.
When his leg loosened, he shrugged on his jacket. In case of rain, he placed Mein Kampf and the white silk strip in the Ziploc bag he carried his toiletries in. With both secure inside his tattered inside breast pocket, he left the hostel.
There was a cafe two blocks away. The day was already warming, and in the sun, it was downright pleasant. He set up shop at a table by a budding linden tree that smelled strangely of honeysuckle and bleach. He was careful to sit under the awning. No telling what spy satellites could be aimed at him. He ordered coffee and rolls, then pulled out the book and began reading his latest deciphering.
This story ends with death.
I am not a fortuneteller, my dearest Reinhardt; all your stories end with death, and it follows that this one shall, too. You have the power to make it so, and so it must be. Every minute of every day, I think of how this may end, and I hate you for it. The very night and fog that you create for others lifts you up onto the pink cloud of power and optimism. You show me the pictures of your beautiful little girl Silke. How is it that you may have pictures of a messy child grinning at you on a blanket in the sunshine, and not me? That you may see your angel-faced children—every evening if you wish it—while I may only imagine the cherub forever denied me? How dare God be that cruel?
Yes, how dare he. And how dare you.
You are the Hangman, and I am nothing in your wake. That is undeniable. So this story will indeed end in death. The only question is whose death shall it be? We shall have to let the play run its course. But what you don’t know is how this story began, so allow me to tell you.
My parents were German-born Poles who worked as buyers for Israel’s Department Store. I can remember as a girl going to the Schiap Shop at the Place Vendôme, and having very grown-up tea with my mother in the Ritz. There was art school in Paris, summers in Linz and along the Wannsee. When I took my first job at Israel’s, as an artist for their ad department, I was a proud young Berliner. By then, of course, you and your kind had boycotted the store. Hardship loomed, but in my youth and naiveté, I believed everyone who said it could not last. “Things will change,” Wilfred Israel would tell me, patting my cheek affectionately. “It will get better,” he proclaimed. And I believed him. I wanted to believe him like everyone else did. After all, it made no sense why the Nazis would do such a thing. Had not Israel’s been a part of Berlin since 1815? Of course, it would continue!
My parents’ permit was canceled in October of 1938. Wilfred Israel tried to get my parents out of Germany, but my paperwork lagged, and they would not leave me. The Polenaktion expelled them. Do you remember? Your Gestapo rounded them up. Then they were refused entry because Poland refused German-born Jews. They were held in the rain and the cold, with no food or anything of comfort. My mother wrote that the worst part was having to relieve herself in front of everyone in the courtyard. My gorgeous mother? Sleeping and shitting in a bare-earthen courtyard? There are no words for the horror I felt then. The disbelief. This could not be. My mother was on a first-name basis with Mademoiselle Chanel and Elsa Schiaparelli; my father had two thousand workers beneath him at Israel’s! No, this could not happen! I would save them! But I was caught myself. Israel’s Department Store was looted and burned in your November pogrom—the Kristallnacht. Or—if you insist as all of you do—the Reichskristallnacht—Even the infamy, you Nazis are so eager to tag all your own!
And so, this story truly begins with a knock on the door. The Gestapo told me when and where to report for my “treatment” because my parents had been shot trying to escape their inhumane detention. And I was the criminal Jew who had written to them to tell them to escape. So I was to report. And report I did…
Stag put down the book and made some notes on his iPad. For a long moment, he simply sat at the table, contemplating the drip marks on his coffee cup. He needed to research, to concentrate, to really read the “book” Isolda had left behind. She and that apartment were key, but whatever it was, it was not obvious to him nor all the generations that had gone before.
He pulled out the white silk with her writing on it. The diamonds are in a truck at the bottom of the lake. Which lake? And what diamonds? De Beers was known for selling both the Allies and the Axis industrial diamonds to make their weapons. An argument could be made that they alone kept the war going longer than necessary by refusing to take sides. So was he chasing something like that? A truckload of crude industrial material? Or Holocaust booty?
He flipped to the Wikipedia page on the Blood Eagle. It was a legendary red diamond from Belgian Congo. Herman Goering had been interested in acquiring it, only to be dismayed that Heydrich had beat him to it. It was another blow the younger Heydrich had dealt to his peers. By the time of Heydrich’s death, Goering was high on opiates and mismanaging the Luftwaffe. It was hard not to be dazzled by Heydrich’s rising star.
Upon further research, he found that Heydrich’s wife had, in one of the world’s greatest ironies, been granted a widow’s pension after the war. There was no sale of the Blood Eagle to fund her lifestyle. She ran her former summer home as a restaurant and inn. No fabulous jewelry showing up there.
But if Heydrich acquired the Blood Eagle, he must’ve given it to someone.
He looked down at the diary. His mistress was the place to start. He again wondered what had become of Isolda Varrick. Was it possible she was even alive today? In a home somewhere, ancient and obscure, no longer in touch with her memories? But while she was an intriguing mystery, Tarnhelm’s interest wasn’t just to acquire a piece of jewelry. There was more to this. Much more.
He perused his bookmarked photo of Luc Portier. The CEO was at a fundraiser sitting next to Bill Gates and a Rothschild heir. He was a well-dressed man in his fifties, a big man, with a full head of graying hair. Even at a dinner, Stag could see his shiny alligator briefcase next to him. He’d read Portier carried it personally, though it was rumored to be lined in lead to keep anyone from scanning the contents. Luc Portier’s nuclear football. The legendary Mars Tourbillon watch was ubiquitously strapped to his wrist.
The photo gave Stag pause. Not so much because of Portier’s slick appearance but because of Bill Gates’s expression. Gates looked at Portier with fear in his eyes.
Tarnhelm was everywhere and nowhere. The cloak of invisibility was far-reaching. It seemed there was nothing they couldn’t buy, no information out of their reach. Men like Portier didn’t bother with two men from Wuttke, Wisconsin. He was definitely protecting something. Whatever it was, it was bad fucking news. And Stag was going to find out what it was and reveal it to the world.
He looked up the address of the Bundesarchiv in Berlin. It was a repository for SS documents, at least those that survived the bombings and document destruction at the end of the war. It was as good a place to start as any. He stretched his leg and rubbed the ridge of scar tissue that ran down the length of his thigh. He was just about to reach in his pocket for a few bills to leave as a tip when he found himself staring across the boulevard.
There she stood, watching him, in her Red Riding Hood coat and pale blue gloves. The blond.
The notorious blond.