Chapter 11

New York, 1950

 

 

That story I told Lucy implied the Waffen SS was after us. Actually, I’m not as sure now as I used to be. But I just don’t know. But after the incident at the burns and now this one involving Lucy, I really don’t think they’re members of the old SS. At least those two were not. That is, I’m reasonably sure they’re not. But as I say, I’ve no reason to suspect anybody in particular.

That’s why I’m here in New York. I come here once in a while to check on a couple of investigators who work for me. You see, several governments got together some years back and formed this International Tripartite Commission I have mentioned. It has been given the task of accounting for the Merkers treasure; then they’re supposed to be giving it back to the rightful owners, whoever they might be. But this outfit is a joke, a laughingstock. They’ve been working now for almost five years, and have made absolutely no progress. That’s not quite true either. They’ve made some: they’re close to drawing up a paper about how they’re going to proceed–one they can all agree on. How do I know this? you ask. Well, I’ve a friend who works for them, a good friend who owes me a bunch of favors. And as long as I don’t get too pushy and ask him specific questions, he’s willing to keep me pretty well informed about what’s been going on. Whether he knows what I did during the War, I don’t know. But I’m pretty sure he knows about most of it, the real important things, that is, because he was there.

His name is Ralph Wahl. He comes from Salt Lake City, where they speak German at home.

Ralph was an undercover OSS agent who spent the War working under deep cover in and around Hitler’s Obersalzberg. He reported to an OSS supervisor who worked closely with our counter-intelligence group. That’s how I came to meet him. The three of us, myself and two of my sergeants, helped him out of the area. We did in fact save his life. However, that’s another story, which I’ll tell you about later. But that’s where the favors come in, and suffice it to say, he has never forgotten.

He was in the inner circle of the OSS before he hooked up with these commission people I’m talking about. That’s how come he knows about most of what we swiped. Then, too, I had to talk to somebody after Carl was killed, so I went to him for advice several times. Actually, it was not advice I was after. I just wanted to feel him out as to what the Commission was doing, so our lunches were billed as social affairs rather than what they really were.

We walked around the subject of treasure a couple of times during the next few months. Each time I saw him, he opened up a little more to me. This last time he advised me in the third person, in so many words, to keep a low profile and to keep my mouth shut. He said anybody who stole any of that loot was going to be putting his tit in a wringer if he came forward now and confessed. Even if he gave it back, it wouldn’t change anything. The reason was, he said, because they figure there’s no way anybody was going to give it all back. The Commission’s brain trust has concluded the thieves might want to return some of it as a way of getting them off their backs. Then the perpetrators would continue to live comfortably off the rest. But there’s no way the Commission is going to believe it’s all coming back intact, just as if nothing had happened.

First off, this Commission doesn’t understand how anybody could do such a dumb stunt. I mean, they figure it was really off-the-wall for anybody to believe they could just walk off with millions without getting caught. And secondly, it would be double-dumb if they tried to give it back now. The Commission never considered that keeping it might be more of a chore than it was worth. This would never occur to them, Ralph said.

 

I lost no time contacting him again when I arrived in the city. He was kind enough to have lunch after I told him I was only going to be in town a few days. He said he was glad I called, because he had something important to tell me.

He told me there were some new things afoot. He said the Commission had assumed certain additional police powers. Whether they’re constitutional, however, has been mostly ignored. At any rate, they have officially added two new branches to what they’re calling their Operations Division. People in these new branches have been given the responsibility for tracking down anyone who might be a player in a scheme to keep part of the treasure. These tracking guys are professionals, recruited from the ranks of wartime counter intelligence organizations. He said they were little more than ruthless soldiers of fortune. They’re kind of salaried bounty hunters, is the way he describes them.

I asked him how all this differed from what they had been doing for the past five years. He tells me that heretofore, these so-called trackers or enforcers or whatever have been freelance. Now they’re part of the organization. Now they have official status and the support of all government intelligence and police agencies, including Interpol. It’s going to make a lot of difference, he tells me.

While he was talking, he was looking straight into my eyes. I knew what it all meant, and I was becoming even more afraid than I had been.

He went on to tell me these teams had been furnished dossiers on more than a dozen people. They contain not only fingerprints and photographs, but everything the army knows about them, including family and friends, and friends of family, acquaintances, etc. Some of them are accused fugitives, while others have been designated persons of interest. And this is the big thing–the real big thing–he said; these trackers are going to be given huge bonuses if and when they catch somebody on their list. And they’ll be given another bonus if they take them alive and then make them reveal where they’ve hidden the stolen loot.

This was illegal as all get out. Everybody knows it, he told me, but nobody cares. There are big payoffs anticipated, so nobody cares.

Then he told me something I knew nothing about. He said there were some ex-British soldiers on this list also. He said the Commission believed they had gotten wind of the Merkers treasure through their own sources and had made a try to find it before we did. He said the two Germans, Veick and Thoms, who showed up on site the day after we got there, told them this. He said the Germans don’t suspect them of pilfering any gold, but they could have gotten off with a lot of Reichmarks, which were stacked near the elevator in the tunnel.

Something occurred to me as I was listening to him. I thought those marks were going to be almost worthless, but not so. Backed by American gold, they haven’t lost much of their value–at least not as much as I believed they would.

Ralph went on to tell me how Germany stood to be the big winners from the Commission’s reorganization. Germany was in shambles after the War and had no money to rebuild. They wanted their allotment of the Marshall Plan money, but then they wanted most of the treasure returned also. They argued that only a small part of it had been taken from conquered countries, including Jews who died in concentration camps. Things had settled down a little, and Germany was feeling her oats again. They were starting to assert themselves. They were telling the other nations the money belonged to the Reichsbank and should be used to help re-start German industry. But according to Ralph, the Commission felt Germany didn’t need any further help; she was already on her way to becoming the leading industrialist nation in Europe.

Ralph waited for me to finish my beer and then stood up to leave. I said nothing, and neither did he. I knew it was coming though, and he didn’t disappoint me. He said, as he left a tip on the table and prepared to walk out: “Red, take care of yourself. Keep your dumb ass out of drafts. You’re on their list. In fact, you and your entire squad head it up.”

 

Before I left to go back to New Orleans, and incidentally, that’s where I stay most of the time, I checked in with these two private detectives I was telling you about. They’re professionals at finding lost persons. That means they’re skip tracers, as well as specialists at finding out the intimate details of people’s lives.

If you’re wondering why I stay in New Orleans, as opposed to any other big city, it’s because there I blend in–my accent and speech patterns don’t draw attention to me. I rent a hotel room and act as though I’m down and out, maybe on the verge of welfare. Then in a couple of weeks I change rooms and hang out at some other seedy place: different bars, different restaurants, different people–that sort of thing. A lonely life to say the least, but I prefer it this way.

I hire these two detectives more or less permanently. They have been working for me overseas and have just returned with their report. I think I’ll give them a break, that is, I’ll give them something different to do; I think they might be getting stale. I’m thinking about having them find out what they can about Worthington and Joyce Wagner. I halfway expect Joyce and maybe Worthington of taking money from the Commission or somebody else–and I want all the details. If my guys turn up anything, I might go back to San Angelo and put some pressure on them both. I might even hire it done. I’m not above sweating the two of them a little; I have to get a horse up on somebody before I end up like Carl and Eric.