Eva stayed far enough behind Julian Schmid and his passenger not to be seen, and Mitch watched intently.
“Do you know this area?” he asked her.
“Sure,” she said, skillfully tracking the car in front. After a while she glanced at him. “Are you missing your team?”
Mitch looked briefly at Eva and back to the road. “I hadn’t thought about it to be honest. Is that bad?”
Eva laughed. “No. But it’s early days. I bet you will miss them soon. It’s nice to have a team around you. I’m always on projects with different groups, but that suits me. I like to work alone.”
“Yeah, I suspect Adam does too but he seems to be coping,” Mitch said. “He was my translator until he upped and left!”
“See, you did need me after all,” she said, smiling.
They followed Schmid’s car for another few blocks before he indicated and went down a residential street. Eva pulled over and they watched the vehicle. Halfway down the street, it turned into a driveway. Eva followed, stopping at a safe distance. The two men alighted and walked into a large residential village. Eva waited until they were out of sight and parked nearby.
“What does it say?” Mitch asked about the small sign out the front of the building, next to the letterbox.
“Meadepark Aged Care Community,” Eva read. “Three levels—independent retirees, supported and dementia care.”
Mitch’s phone rang. “John?” he answered. They spoke for a few minutes while Eva watched the building.
Mitch hung up. “We can’t move in.”
“Why?” she asked, surprised.
“John’s just confirmed that Julian Schmid has an active role in the convention, the one that is in his diary. We need him to go there, I don’t know why exactly but orders from above.” Mitch sighed.
“So if they come out together?” Eva asked.
“We continue to follow them. Somehow I doubt they’ll come out together.”
“He can’t kill Benjamin here, surely,” Eva said.
“No, but if he has what he wants, he can leave him here. Clearly Benjamin’s not looking to call the police on Julian,” Mitch said, rubbing the lump on the back of his head.
They waited. Thirty minutes later, Julian came out alone.
“We’ll wait until he leaves and then go in and find Benjamin. No point following Julian, we know he’s likely to be at the convention tomorrow and we can take our next step then,” Mitch said.
Eva nodded.
As soon as Julian Schmid drove out of sight, the two agents left the car and entered the aged care center. At the main desk, Eva showed her badge and introduced Mitch. He nodded, not understanding a word she said but recognizing the introduction.
The middle-aged German nurse spoke to Eva for a minute, looked at a file, then pointed to a room down the hall. Eva thanked her and beckoned Mitch outside. She moved to an area in the garden where they could not be seen.
“They’re here to see Mrs. Marion Kaminsky, she’s sixty-five years of age, in good health and living in the independent retirees’ section of the facility.”
“What did you ask her to look up?” Mitch asked.
“Her maiden name. It’s Hoefer. I think the real Eli Hoefer, Benjamin Hoefer’s father, had another child or maybe more after the war and this is one of his daughters.”
“So she’ll have a claim on his will. But why would the real Eli give up his son to Hans Schmid and then carry on his life here and have more children?”
“I don’t know, but maybe Mrs. Kaminsky will.”
“Let’s go hear their story. We can probably drop the assault charges on Benjamin,” Mitch said.
“That’s nice of you Mitchell, especially as your head is still sore,” Eva said.
Mitch grunted and walked beside Eva as they entered the hallway and searched for Mrs. Kaminsky’s room. Eva knocked on the door that was slightly ajar. The neat, thin, gray-haired woman looked up and smiled. Beside her sat Benjamin Hoefer. There was some family resemblance. Mitch appeared beside Eva and Benjamin Hoefer jumped up from his seat.
“Mr. Parker, I am sorry, so sorry, I had no choice, you must believe me, I’ve never harmed anyone in my life, ever, but this is my half-sister and if I hadn’t struck you…he told me my real father was still alive and dying and he would take me to him but—” he ranted.
Mitch entered the room and held his hands up in a surrender. “It’s okay, I understand, please sit down.”
Benjamin took a deep breath, looked to his half-sister and lowered himself into his seat. He spoke to her in German. Eva translated to Mitch that he was explaining who Mitch was and what had happened.
Mrs. Kaminsky invited them to sit and rose to get chairs. Again Mitch and Eva organized the room. Eventually they all sat. Mrs. Kaminsky dabbed her eyes with her handkerchief and said something in German.
“It’s been a shock,” Eva translated.
Mitch focused on Benjamin. “Your father, biological father?”
“He died many years ago, my half-sister tells me. Telling me he was alive was a trap to get me here,” Benjamin said.
“What did you give Julian Schmid, what did it cost you?” Mitch asked
Benjamin looked to his half-sister. “It’s a long story.”
“I will translate for your sister,” Eva said.
Benjamin nodded and began. “My father was always very, very private about his past and he went to great length to avoid talking about it, staying in touch with anyone from the old country or joining any support networks. I on the other hand, being a teacher, was curious and wanted to write his story. He wouldn’t speak of it. It was only when I started to do research that he agreed to tell me.”
“So you could hear his version and not find out the truth,” Mitch said.
“So it would seem,” Benjamin said. He sat back in the chair and Mitch noted he looked aged.
“He made me promise not to release his story while he was alive; he said he couldn’t bear to relive it. I understood this. His tale was very sad and typical—taken with his wife on a truck, the young son smuggled to the neighbors who raised me until his return and never seeing his wife again. He spoke of doing what was required to stay alive, starving, being cold and never taking for granted anything ever again.
“He said he was ashamed when he was finally liberated to show himself to the people I was with—Gynther and Antje Bäcker. My father said they had all been friends, young and ambitious and now he was broken emotionally and physically with no wife and no life plans. He came by, took me and left, never to return.” Benjamin Hoefer stopped and waited for Eva to finish translating his sentence to his half-sister.
Eva nodded and Benjamin continued. “When he died, I worked with the Holocaust Memorial Museum to release his story. They organized the launch night and exhibition. That was when I was first threatened to stop the tour and pull the book from circulation. I couldn’t understand why and I assumed it was anti-Jewish feeling. Then Julian Schmid arrived and threatened me. He told me my father was a Nazi and if I didn’t pull out of the tour they would expose me. Well I couldn’t pull out, I was committed and I had to make a certain number of book sales to meet the publishing costs. I also did not believe him.” He shook his head with resignation.
“And that’s when they started trying to scare you by writing the Nazi messages at your book launches and desecrating the film and banners,” Mitch said.
Benjamin nodded. Mrs. Kaminsky reached for his hand and the two elderly people consoled one another. Eva asked would they like tea and they agreed. They waited while Eva organized it and returned.
Benjamin continued. “I was frightened and when you started investigating I couldn’t tell you what I knew Mr. Parker—”
“Mitch,” Mitch interrupted him.
“Mitch, because he threatened that he would not only expose my father as a Nazi but that he would never tell me who my real father or siblings were. I didn’t know if any of it was true and if it was, if my real father went by some other name.”
“What did he want?” Eva asked.
“My father was a very wealthy man and he left it all to me. He wanted that money,” Benjamin said. “And he wanted the book closed down, as they didn’t want publicity.”
The tea arrived and Mrs. Kaminsky and Eva took the tray from the staff member and served.
“So you know that the man who claimed to be your father was actually Hans Schmid, a German Auschwitz concentration camp guard, and his real son is still alive and living here in Berlin—Franz Schmid?”
“Yes,” Benjamin said, “Julian told me, he’s in his late seventies.”
“That’s right,” Mitch agreed. “Hans Schmid abandoned Franz after the war to take safe passage to the US, masquerading as your father and avoiding any sentence he might have incurred. He also has two grandsons, Dirk and Thorsten, who live in the States and are in their forties.”
“Plus Julian is a nephew,” Benjamin said. “Hans, my father, had a brother.”
“Correct,” Mitch said.
“But did Eli—the man pretending to be your father—amass that wealth or was it Jewish wealth from the war that belonged to the real Eli?” Eva asked.
“Both,” Benjamin Hoefer answered. “But I happily signed it away to them for a chance to know who my real father was and to meet my siblings.” He squeezed Mrs. Kaminsky’s hand.
“Don’t worry, we’ll get back what is yours in due course, but now we have to play it carefully just for a little bit longer. Has he released you?” Mitch asked.
“Yes, I’ve signed it over, so we both got what we wanted.”
Mrs. Kaminsky clapped her hands together, remembering something. “But I have something for you,” she said to Benjamin. “Our father left a letter in his will marked ‘To Benjamin’. We were directed not to open it and told that a long-lost soul from the war might one day make contact. He never said you were his son. It was only to be opened if a man by the name of Benjamin sought him out. There was no last name and no one has opened it,” she said. “I will call the solicitor and get it for you.”