THE FLIGHT TO Zürich was pleasant. First class was certainly the way to travel. Not knowing how much time one had, had its advantages. There was no reason to cut corners now.
“More champagne, Mr. Dedman?” the svelte airline attendant asked.
He waved it away, still ticking down his list. Nacht und Nebel. He was now invisible to a cyber search for Stag Maguire. He’d left everything he had in his room at the Adlon in case Tarnhelm had placed a GPS on his belongings. He had a new iPhone, iPad, debit card, and bank account, all untraceable to him. From now on there would be no passport movement, no IP addresses from his old devices, no debits from his accounts, no receipts. He was off the grid. As scrubbed as a felon with new DNA and fingerprints.
He pulled out the Ziploc bag holding his book and letters. He began with the first letter.
23 February 1942
Dearest Eduard,
I thank you for the beautiful silk! My dream has been answered! I have it packed carefully away until the day comes to send myself to you. I shall arrive as a bride and my dress shall be white with many secret layers. Your gift is a lifesaver in these days of want. I would like you to know I have listened to your every instruction. I will pay attention to every detail. I will make no errors. I will not waste an inch of my precious, precious bridal silk.
I hope you received my first letter, which was sent through our friends. I confessed all in it, all my secret longings. I shall write as often as I can!
Your blushing bride-to-be,
Isolda
He leaned back and thought about the cryptic writing. Isolda Varrick was no blushing bride. The wedding silk was the spy technology of using it as a code pad for secret messages. What those messages were that she sent, penned onto white silk and tucked behind the lining of a garment, could now only be guessed at. They were long gone, either in a sable coat later purloined by the neighborhood German “citizen” or, perhaps, sorted and shipped with the stories-high piles of garments that left the death camps during the Holocaust.
What remained now were these letters, long held and forgotten in the Byzantine network of the old Soviet Union. She’d been taking a risk to write in her name to this Eduard Schulte. But it must have been she’d had no choice. It had been the only way to get the letters through.
He pulled out the second letter by date. It made less sense than the first.
7 April 1942
My dearest Eduard,
I urge you to hear my pleas! I cannot be silent any longer, nor should you! I want the world to know (that you are mine, of course!) and I have given you the messages that proclaim ALL. Your family in Geneva will listen to our cries (and see us married, forthwith!)
Today I received my honeymoon suit. It is made of a beautiful shade of Berlin blue. Everything they say about it is true! If you aren’t familiar with the color, it will soon be all the RAGE for thousands. Hundreds of thousands perhaps!
To marry, we must, my darling. I cannot bear to go on like this and I demand you tell all now, so that we and those who love like us may plan our salvation from this hell.
Your very loving,
Isolda
It was an awkward letter, but there seemed nothing to it. Just a dull, little obscure missive of unrequited love. Stag could almost see the Nazi censors falling asleep over the pheromonal pleas of a fiancée to speed along the nuptials. One thing that did stand out, however, was her urging the recipient to look up Berlin blue.
He typed in Berlin blue. The definition came up as follows:
Prussian blue, also known as Berlin blue, is a dark blue color that is artificially made. It is one of the first pigments made synthetically. It was accidentally found in 1704 by two chemists in Berlin. The dark blue uniforms of the Prussian army were dyed this color. It is produced by oxidation of ferrous ferrocyanide salts.
Ferrocyanide.
Which made Prussic acid.
Known by its more infamous name, Zyklon B.
It didn’t take him long to find photographs online of the interior of a gas chamber. At Madjanek, the walls were stained with the distinctive intense blue. Beautiful Berlin blue.
He took the research further. He began with the name Eduard Schulte. The name wasn’t unusual, particularly in Germany. He expected there to be thousands, and certainly there were. But the first search astounded him.
Eduard Schulte (4 January 1891 in Düsseldorf–6 January 1966 in Zürich) was a prominent German industrialist. He was one of the first to warn the Allies and tell the world of the Holocaust and systematic exterminations of Jews in Nazi Germany occupied Europe. In August 1942, the Reigner Telegram notified the Allies through the World Jewish Congress in Geneva, that 3.5 to 4 million Jews were to be exterminated by the planned use of hydrogen cyanide. The Allies largely ignored Schulte’s information as not believable.
He next Googled the Reigner Telegram and read what Reigner wrote:
Received alarming report stating that, in the Führer’s Headquarters, a plan has been discussed, and is under consideration, according to which all Jews in countries occupied or controlled by Germany number 3 1/2 to 4 million should, after deportation and concentration in the East, be at one blow exterminated, in order to resolve, once and for all the Jewish question in Europe. Action is reported to be planned for the autumn. Ways of execution are still being discussed including the use of prussic acid. We transmit this information with all the necessary reservation, as exactitude cannot be confirmed by us. Our informant is reported to have close connexions with the highest German authorities, and his reports are generally reliable. Please inform and consult New York.
Stag’s blood began to boil. August 1942. So much for the excuse of, “We didn’t know till after the war.” He found it sickening how much could have been done with that knowledge. There were none higher than Heydrich when it came to implementing the Final Solution. Goering, too fat and addicted to run even the Luftwaffe properly, had passed the baton of Hitler’s Mein Kampf vision to Heydrich, who’d dutifully streamlined it at the Wannsee conference. If Isolde had tried to warn the world of Heydrich’s plans, it was beyond credible. It was from the source itself.
Now all he could think of was the waste of Isolda’s effort to get the word out. Even if her other missives had reached Schulte—she was writing him in April 1942, before the mechanization of death had really gotten under way—these letters had either been waylaid or ignored, like the Reigner Telegram itself.
And the rest, as they say, was history.
Holding down his fury and nausea, Stag reread the second letter. What had seemed mundane at first glance now sent ice through his veins.
Hear my pleas! Your family in Geneva will listen to our cries! Berlin blue… All the RAGE for thousands. Hundreds of thousands perhaps!
Schulte could have gotten some of his information through Isolda, and she obviously got hers directly from the pillow talk with Heydrich. Now Isolda’s early demise seemed more and more likely. She’d been playing a dangerous game, writing Shulte as his fiancée while playing mistress to Heydrich. Had that gotten her killed—not being discovered as a spy, but out of a lover’s jealousy? The letters were found in Auschwitz after the liberation, and Schulte didn’t die in the Holocaust. It must’ve been a courier who’d had them. The courier had handed the information down the line, but had been unable to unload the three letters until he or she was deported to Poland. Perhaps Isolda herself had been instrumental in giving the information in the Reigner Telegram, but all he knew for sure was that these three letters had reached a dead end in Auschwitz.
The idea that the world could have been informed of an impending Holocaust as early as April 1942 was hard to swallow. But there it was, in his hands, and on Wikipedia.
Perhaps the idea of mechanized murder had simply been too awful. Perhaps the human mind couldn’t fathom it.
No one acted. Millions died.
With deepening dread, he turned to the third letter. It was another to Schulte.
4 May 1942
My darling betrothed, Eduard,
This is the most pressing plea of all. If you are deaf to me now, I shall be forced to do away with myself, for I tell you this: life without human love is unbearable.
We have what we need to marry in Norway. But my heart is heavy. Water, I think, is the only cure. Our long-planned honeymoon for the Katanga shall bring us home great treasures, and we shall have our glorious union at our address at Vaterhimmelstrasse 235. Because it shall unite us so much more than our time spent at Vaterhimmelstrasse 238, yes? It will be an unstoppable force!
Tell me these plans are first and foremost in your heart? I am surrounded by these cold diamonds, but every minute of every day I long for your warm touch instead. All my diamonds will go in the truck on the last trip to the Königssee. They will not be found without great effort, be assured! But you must do your part. I beg you. I beg you.
Your most despondent lover,
Isolda
His champagne glass was filled while he typed in Königssee. From the pictures, it was an exquisite lake, south of Berchtesgaden, the alpine retreat infamous for the romps of Eva Braun and Hitler.
He sat back and contemplated it. The outline of the Königssee looked like a long scraggly finger lake between mountains. He dug out the silk message and compared them. He couldn’t be sure, of course, the ink had faded and bled but the outline could be the Königssee, certainly. And the string tie at the end of the “finger” could be where the truck was. The truckful of diamonds.
He reread the third letter, unsettled by its opaqueness. Nothing was clear in this one. What the Katanga in the former Belgian Congo, Norway, and a lake in Berchtesgaden had to do with each other, he couldn’t begin to guess. The Congo origin of the Blood Eagle diamond seemed tied up in all of it too. Just to confuse matters even more.
He played with Googling the addresses. Nothing came up. There were lots of Himmelstrasses, no Vaterhimmelstrasse.
“Mr. Dedman, may I ask you to check your seat belt?”
Stag looked up. He was mired so deeply in his thoughts, he hadn’t realized they were landing. He nodded, then turned off his iPad.
The last letter was going to need some outside help. When he got to the hotel, it was time to get on his new phone and see what Jake had to say.
He checked into the Hotel Baur au Lac, charmed by the immaculately quaint streets of Zürich Old Town. There was also a little James Bond thrill of registering at a luxury hotel under an assumed name. He wasn’t sporting a tux, and his limp sure didn’t get him noticed as anything more than a pedestrian afterthought. But it didn’t matter. He was on a mission.
The bellboy brought him a Swiss SIM card for his new phone number. He scanned the letters to his iPad in the business center, and as soon as he got back to his room, he called Jake.
“I’m sending you something, Jake. Check your email, will you?”
“Christ, Stag. I bought a wreath like you asked. But everyone wants to know where the hell you are.”
“I’m in Zürich.”
“What?”
Stag smiled bitterly. “Long story. Nothing you want to be involved in. I won’t be here long.”
“You’re coming home when? Julie was worried that you weren’t around when Harry died. And she couldn’t stop asking questions about where you were when you missed the funeral. I have to say it’s mightily strange myself—”
“I really need your help, Jake.”
“What is it? I know you’re in trouble. I can feel it.” The older man’s voice grew somber.
“I’ve kind of stumbled into a story. I can’t really talk about it. There isn’t time. I’m not sure you’d believe it, even if there was.”
“What can I do?” Jake was surely getting the picture. Things were pretty bad.
“I sent you some scanned letters. I want you to read them, and tell me what you think they say.”
“Okay.” Jake was dead serious. Stag had a moment of relief wash over him. It felt good to not be completely alone, even if he couldn’t let on to Jake what was happening.
“Get back to me as soon you read them, huh?” Stag hesitated. “And don’t let on to anyone we’ve talked?”
“Are you in danger? Perhaps you should return?”
“I can’t till I’m done. One day we’re going to have a long, arm-bending drinking session in Wuttke. Maybe even laugh.”
Jake paused. “I hope so,” he said, dread in his voice.