Mason leaned against a wall in the foyer of Winstone’s villa. To his left, the living room, and to his right, the dining room, then the library. Ahead lay the staircase and the hall leading to the parlor, kitchen, and garage. The upper floor accommodated five bedrooms and three baths. Then the sprawling basement. A brutal, weeks-long search even in healthy conditions.
Where to start? Documents could be folded or rolled and inserted anywhere. Wherever Mason chose, he had to do it fast. The guard or the nurse had surely reported his absence by now, and it was only a matter of time before a squad of MPs came here to look for him.
He had retrieved the tools from the library where Densmore and his MP team had left them, and a flashlight from the kitchen. The effort of finding a car he could steal in the bitter cold, then driving with his wounded leg, had taken its toll. And now here he was, barely able to stand upright, let alone think clearly, running through all of Winstone’s villa renovations again in his head. He reviewed the areas already searched, by himself and Abrams, then by Densmore and the team of MPs. The most logical and obvious places had been eliminated. That left the unlikely and the illogical, of which there were countless.
This is going to be impossible.
Blood had seeped from the freshly sutured wound. Both legs trembled. His whole body shivered. The cold was getting to him. It was cold enough in the villa to condense his breath. Cold and dark as a mausoleum . . .
The cold! Why hadn’t he thought of it before? Winstone had relied on only the fireplaces for heat. He had refused to use the furnace. There wasn’t even any coal in the storage bin.
Mason hobbled down to the basement and into the furnace room. Volker’s mattress still lay on the floor, along with bloodstains from Weissenegger’s beatings. Ironic to think that the documents could have been here, yards from Volker, this whole time.
He went up to the furnace and opened the feed door. The rusty hinges squealed in protest. He scanned the inside with the flashlight. Nothing but old ashes of burned coal heaped on the bottom. He shoved in his arm and searched the ashes, then felt up and around the furnace fire chamber.
Nothing. Reaching all the way in, his fingers brushed the far chamber wall. He cursed in frustration, making his headache rage. He felt weak from the effort, and the blood from his wound had soaked through his pants leg and created a stain as broad as his outstretched hand. He took a deep breath and stepped back, scanning the room for signs of fresh concrete or brick around the furnace. Every spot of wall and floor appeared untouched for years.
Out of having nothing else to inspect, he looked up to the ceiling. The dozen or more hot air ducts stretched in all directions and were tucked tight to the ceiling. Using the flashlight beam, he checked each one. The accumulated soot and dust appeared undisturbed. He traced each duct to its eventual destination, noting whether it was a specific room or area of the house. At the back of the furnace rose the main exhaust outlet, which climbed up through the ground-level flooring and vented into the library chimney.
The library, the room Winstone had renovated extensively, including the floor joists and supporting wall.
The major renovation work would have provided an ideal opportunity to create a well-concealed hiding place. That prompted him to step back and peer over the ventilation duct, where he caught sight of a short duct leading directly to the foundation wall. There was no reason to have a heating duct there. It served no purpose, as that level of the foundation wall was still below ground level.
After a frantic search, Mason found a ladder under the basement stairs. It took all his strength and willpower to bring the ladder to the furnace wall and climb the ladder’s steps. His leg threatened to seize. His body felt both hot and icy cold. When he finally reached the duct, he felt a surge of excitement: Upon the top of the duct were faint handprints in the thin layer of dust. With a tenuous balance on the ladder, he used both hands to tug on the duct. The putty fixing the duct to the wall held firm. Mason took a deep breath and yanked several times. Finally the duct came loose and fell to the floor.
Victory and defeat. He’d found the hiding place, but inside was a small, brand-new safe embedded in the fresh concrete of the foundation wall.
He laid his head against the wall to recover his strength. His legs trembled. He found it harder to think straight. He closed his eyes, but that brought on a wave of vertigo. He must have had a few brain cells still firing, because the image of Hilda’s note, Yaakov’s tattoo, came to his mind: A47235.
He tried that as the combination, making the A into a 1: 14-72-35. The safe’s lever refused to budge. He tried varying the combination, leaving off the A, or using a different number for it. Nothing worked.
He stopped. It didn’t make sense. Why use Yaakov’s tattoo number? Anyone who happened to make the connection would have assumed the same as Mason.
He quickly exchanged the letters in Yaakov’s name for numbers: 25-1-1-11-15-22. Too many numbers. He tried putting the two 1s together as 11. Still nothing. His frustration grew, and threatened to cloud what reasoning power he had left. He took deep breaths and tried to concentrate.
Perhaps it was a combination of the tattoo number and the numbers represented in Yaakov’s name to get the three-number combination. But how many possible combinations could that yield? How long before his mind shut down completely? Assuming A equaled 1, he began to add sequentially the tattoo numbers, then Yaakov’s name. Each successive attempt yielded nothing. He lost track of the ones he’d tried. He repeated himself. It became harder and harder to add simple numbers in his head.
He pounded the wall. “Come on!”
There had to be a methodical approach. With his mind closing down, the only way for him to perform this simple task was to speak out loud and use his fingers. In a final desperate attempt, he added all the tattoo numbers together plus the first letter of Yaakov’s name—46. Then the next three letters of his name—13. And finally the last two letters—37. He tried the combination, moving the dial slowly, making sure he counted the correct number of rotations for each: 46-13-37. He slammed down on the latch. The safe opened.
The absolute relief nearly caused him to tumble off the ladder. He laid his head against the wall to catch his breath, then he removed a series of folders bundled together and a cloth sack from the safe. He tucked everything under his arm and slowly descended the ladder. The relief had also brought on absolute exhaustion, which caused his sight to fade as if a heavy shadow enclosed him in darkness. . . .
You’ve got to get out of here, Mason.
Now that he had the prize, he didn’t know if he could stand the utter frustration if the MPs came calling and clapped him in irons. No telling what would happen to the documents if they were taken back to headquarters. He had to put one foot in front of the other, climb the stairs, and go out into the cold—assuming he could even drive.
Someplace safe. Someplace where he could have time to read the documents and recuperate some of his strength.
* * *
Mason sat at the kitchen table. He had a blanket draped over his shoulders, and he nursed a second cup of coffee. One of the twelve file folders lay before him.
Laura came up to the table and slid a plate with a sandwich and potato chips in front of him. Mason started to open the folder, but Laura said, “Eat first. You need to get your strength up.”
Mason let the folder cover drop closed and picked up the sandwich.
Two of the younger children in Yaakov’s extended family ran into the kitchen, laughing and screaming as they played tag. Berko came out from the back of the house and scolded them and told them to go back to the bedroom. He smiled and nodded at Mason in a silent thank-you and another good-bye, then he left Mason and Laura.
It wasn’t until Mason had reached Laura’s house and recovered his senses that he’d finally looked into the cloth sack from Winstone’s hidden safe. Inside was a bundled stack of bills amounting to fifty-five thousand dollars. A fortune by Mason’s standards, but that amount was only a fraction of the profits from Winstone’s schemes. From a meticulous ledger Winstone had included with the files, Mason learned that Winstone had managed to smuggle over a million dollars of ill-gotten gains into a bank in Switzerland. The fifty-five grand was his and Hilda’s traveling money, probably a majority of it meant for bribes.
Mason had decided to give Berko fifty thousand of it to allow him and his family to pay—bribe—their way to Palestine. He’d offered the remaining portion to Laura for her troubles, but she’d declined, saying that Mason would most definitely need the five thousand for what he had planned.
Laura watched as he ate. “You’re like a man born in the wrong century.”
“How do you mean?”
“You should be wearing a suit of armor and declaring the Crusades an honorable cause. You’d have believed it was all about faith and divine grace, and not a land grab for power.”
“I can’t tell if that was an insult or a compliment.”
“I think you know.”
Mason looked at her while he bit into the sandwich. He didn’t know, but figured it was a little bit of both. They sat in silence, him eating and her preparing her camera.
Laura finally said, “I’ve known you for a little over six months, and in that time you’ve been to the hospital three times.”
“I’m going to have to learn to be quicker on my feet.”
“You use your head once in a while, and you might cut your trips to the hospital in half.”
“Then I wouldn’t have an excuse to see you.”
Laura shook her head, even as she smiled. “What am I going to do with you?”
“Ditch Ricky and fall back in love with me.”
“It’s Richard.”
“Where is Richard, by the way?”
“He’s in Nuremberg for the Nazi trials. Göring is on the stand. Richard has an interview with Göring; he’s doing a whole piece on him, from his rise to power, up to the trial.”
“Everyone wants to do stories about the Nazis.”
“Evil gets bigger headlines.”
“Why aren’t you with him?”
“My work.” Laura leaned on her elbows. “Maybe I should do a piece about your rise and fall.”
“I’ll rise and fall, and rise and fall again. But if some of the army brass get their way, I’ll stand trial for something I didn’t do.”
Laura laid one of the files in front of her. “Then let’s see what we can find to make sure that doesn’t happen.”
Mason pushed the empty plate aside. He opened a folder and began to read. Laura would finish reading a page, then photograph it and make notes.
Some of the files were divided by individuals: Herr Giessen, Bachmann, Plöbsch, Eddie Kantos, Volker as Herr Z, Schaeffer and Kessel, Udahl a.k.a. Abbott. Others were collections of wiretap transcripts, photographs, sighted meetings, or informant testimony—mainly Yaakov and Hilda Schmidt. Taken in chronological order, the files unfolded a lucid account of not only the growing power and complexity of Udahl and Schaeffer’s organization, not only the rise and fall of Herr Giessen and Bachmann, but also Winstone’s journey from determined yet naive investigator to an operative falling to seduction and corruption. Winstone’s own rise and fall.
That revelation did not come in Winstone’s own words, but Mason could read between the lines: Winstone had spent six months on the investigation, the progress slow at first, then the details poured in, with his best investigative work coming from his own involvement in intrigue.
Winstone began to profit from the very web of crime that he was investigating—until near the end. That was when he uncovered the bigger players. The ones with enormous power. By then it had gotten out of hand, and he’d decided to flee with Hilda to Switzerland. But Mason doubted he would have found a truly safe haven. The men he’d uncovered had a very long reach.
Perhaps now that Mason knew more than Winstone, he, too, would no longer find sanctuary. He would always be looking over his shoulder, spending all his life on the run. There was a momentary sense of loneliness and sadness at that notion. Then he brushed those thoughts to the side.
Much of what the documents revealed Mason had discovered in the last number of days. Eddie Kantos appeared to be the pivot around which all revolved: his relation with Giessen and Bachmann, his meeting Schaeffer and Udahl, using Willy Laufs as his go-between with the Italian crime families. He coordinated the smuggling routes using a contingent of Polish ex-POWs and Polish army brass and regulars, taking truckloads of luxury goods Germans had traded on the black market for food and medicine: gold watches, furs, diamonds, works of art, and the morphine and cocaine left by the collapsing German army. In exchange, petrol, heroin, household goods, and wine came up from Italy. Kantos had provided both groups’ leaders rich contacts with German royalty and industrialists, and subsequently he’d provided, along with Otto, the same service to Winstone.
The documents told of Schaeffer and Udahl building their network through those alliances, and a loose partnership with Giessen and Bachmann. How they had helped Volker and ex-SS members slip Nazi war criminals out of Germany and into Italy and beyond, thereby accumulating favors from the German network, including informants and the locations of huge stashes of antibiotics, narcotics, hospital supplies, precious metals, SS coffers of diamonds and gold, and uranium left by the retreating German army. All the detritus of the crumbling Nazi war machine.
Winstone had written pages of reports about his investigation being stifled every step of the way. The same obstructions Mason had experienced: blown wiretaps, records missing or diverted, witnesses disappearing or reversing testimony. He recounted waking up one night and finding someone in his room and rifling through his desk. How he had hired Polish DPs as house guards, but that even they seemed to be working for Schaeffer.
Toward the end, possibly for his own survival, Winstone had stepped up the investigation and hired informants: Hilda, from inside the Casa Carioca, and Yaakov, who had black market contacts. Yaakov had done invaluable work, following and questioning people, gaining confidence—the perfect mole—and, at times, playing as a double agent. Yaakov would have made an incredible intelligence agent.
In the end, Winstone had obtained a damning set of documents. As he had said to Mason: “enough to shake the army to its core.” Schaeffer and Udahl were only the tip of the iceberg, though, surprisingly, Gamin was only a pawn, his malady exploited by evil men.
As Mason stared at one last photograph, he had to sit back in his chair. Not from his weakened state, but from what the photograph revealed. It made absolute sense, but was devastating all the same.
He looked up at Laura, who was furiously writing in her notebook. “Don’t say I never gave you a valuable gift.”
Laura stopped writing, picked up her camera, and snapped a picture of him. “Memories can be priceless. You gave me those.”
They looked at each other for a moment, then Laura went back to photographing several pictures from Winstone’s files.
“You publish whatever you want from all this,” Mason said. “I only ask that you do it in a way that doesn’t make the army out to be the bad guy. With sixty Russian divisions licking their chops at the rest of Europe, the army shouldn’t be hit with a massive scandal.”
“I told you before, I don’t do that kind of journalism. That’s like blaming the parents for their adult son’s crime spree.”
“I’m only willing to share these documents with you to shut down the guilty. I don’t want the innocent caught in the line of fire. There are too many good men and women out there doing their best.”
“Mason, I won’t let this devolve into a raving diatribe. But what people read between the lines I can’t control. You want to use me and the power of the press to bring the bad guys to justice, then let me do my job.”
“I want to ask another favor. Don’t put this out there for another twenty-four hours. I need that much time to slip out before it all blows up.”
“Where will you go?”
Mason sat back in his chair. “That’s an excellent question, Miss McKinnon.”
“I don’t know how you’re going to get very far with that leg of yours.”
“You patched me up pretty good. It should get me as far as I need. Where did you learn how to field dress a wound?”
“From spending time on the front lines in the Vosges Mountains.”
“How about you come away with me?”
“So I can dress your many wounds?”
“Heal my broken heart.”
Laura suddenly had a hard time holding Mason’s gaze. “Why don’t you spend the night and regain some of your strength?”
“Oh, no. That can’t work. I may look tough, but I’m a squishy mass of sentiment on the inside. My heart couldn’t take it.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
Mason placed his hand on his heart as if suffering from pain. “You see? Even that could do me in.”
“You can look over what I’ve written in the morning.”
Mason smiled and looked into Laura’s eyes. “I’ll miss you, too. More than you can imagine.”
They looked at each other for what to Mason seemed like a long time. Laura’s eyes were moist but there were no tears.
Laura finally said, “I’d ask you to write me from time to time, and let me know where you are, but wherever you go, headlines are sure to follow.”
They fell into silence for a moment.
Finally Mason said, “I should go. Did you have enough time for taking notes and pictures?”
Laura nodded. “Yes, and if I let you stay much longer, I might say or do something I’ll regret later.”
Mason stood. “I don’t want to be responsible for that.” He gathered up the files, then tossed a few of the more damning photographs next to Laura’s notes. “Keep those. Just in case . . .”
Laura stood and walked over to Mason. She stopped inches from his face. “Forget what I said. Write me. Okay? I need to know you’re all right.”
They kissed for a long moment. Then Mason put on a coat from Ricky’s closet, tucked the files under his arm, and left Laura watching him from the open front door.