by Robert Brown
That could be useful. Damn useful.
Heinrich didn’t want to ask about the gold train directly, so he asked in a roundabout way if there was anything interesting in town.
“The castle is cool. Don’t worry, tourist, I show you everything.”
“I’d love to meet some of the Purity League.”
“I do that too.”
Heinrich figured that after his performance against the Commies, his reputation was made. The kid could vouch for him. He just hoped the guys he beat up in the parking garage didn’t live in Wałbrzych. If that came up, he could simply say he thought they were common criminals, and anyway they shouldn’t try to befoul a good Aryan woman. Yeah, that should go down all right. Maybe.
“Anything else worth seeing?” he asked.
“Nah, Wałbrzych boring. Oh hey, we can go to the tunnels!”
“Tunnels?”
“Yeah, Nazis build them during war. You can take tour. Some they don’t know where they are. One has Nazi gold buried inside. You hear of Nazi gold?”
“I don’t think so,” Heinrich said, pretending to wrack his memory.
Jan gave him an enthusiastic and somewhat garbled account of the Nazi gold train. Like everyone else in Wałbrzych, he had been raised on those stories, but didn’t have any clue where the train might be. Apparently there were a few local oddballs who dedicated their life to trying to find it but Heinrich figured those people were the least likely to actually come across it. That was what had finally turned Heinrich off from treasure hunts as he grew up. The treasure hunters never seemed to find any treasure. They made their money, if they made any at all, by writing about treasure hunting or selling fake maps.
As Jan nattered on, Heinrich checked his phone every few minutes. After the fourth or fifth time, Jan noticed.
“You wait for Communist bitch to phone?”
“Shut up, Jan.”
“You want pussy. She no call. It is Internet porn for you this night.”
“You’re the expert,” Heinrich muttered. Why the hell isn’t she calling?
Jan only laughed and imitated staring at a screen and masturbating.
Heinrich ignored him by searching for any Polish filmmaker named Gabriela. After a lot of searching and checking an online Polish-English dictionary, he found her.
From what he could puzzle out from the Polish websites, she was a human rights campaigner fighting for immigrant, Jewish, and Gypsy rights. She’d been interviewed on several progressive websites about the rise of the far right. He couldn’t find any information about the documentary she had mentioned. Maybe that was a new project.
He also found a photo of her from some newspaper article and stared at it for a while. Damn, she was gorgeous. But there was something more than that. It was her expression. The conviction, the bravery. Even when she was being attacked by those thugs, her screams had been more a cry for help than a wail of fear.
They pulled into the train station late at night to a steady, cold drizzle. As they stepped onto the platform, Jan took Heinrich’s overcoat off.
“I give back. If my parents see, they hit me for stealing.”
“You’re going to walk home without a coat in this weather?”
Jan gave a resigned shrug. “I live close.”
“Where shall I meet you tomorrow?”
“City Hall. Everyone know. See you at ten.”
“All right.”
Jan looked at him hopefully. He was already hunched over from the cold. “You teach me to box?”
“Sure.”
“Cool! See you tomorrow.”
Heinrich watched as the kid disappeared into the dark and the rain. After he was gone, Heinrich turned up the collar on his overcoat and asked directions to the city center.
He ended up in a soulless chain hotel—overpriced, new, centrally located, and utterly lacking in character. Perfect for being anonymous, or as anonymous as he could be in a town like this. He hadn’t seen much walking into the town center, but he got the impression of a small, sleepy backwater. He suspected no one outside the region would have ever heard of Wałbrzych if it hadn’t been for that gold train. It had “provincial” written all over it.
Not so provincial he couldn’t be reached. When he checked his phone in his room, he found he had a text message from a Polish number. All it said was “Call me. Gabriela.”
He called her.
When he said hello, she didn’t even say hello back.
“What are you doing here?” That was her opening line. Very friendly.
Heinrich had expected this, and had thought about his answer for the entire five-and-a-half-hour train ride, at least when the skinhead brat wasn’t being so noisy that he couldn’t hear himself think.
He had decided blunt honesty would be the best course forward. Anything less and she wouldn’t trust him, and if she didn’t trust him, she would be of no help. He was in a distant country with no friends trying to solve two murders with virtually no clues. He needed all the help he could get, and she seemed like she knew a lot about the radical right.
“I’m a private detective investigating the Purity League. They murdered a man in the States and I’m trying to find out who in the group did it and why. My client is sure it was one of them. I infiltrated the march in order to get close. I’m not a Nazi.”
“Then why did you help that skinhead boy?”
“Because I’m a fucking human being, why do you think? You didn’t complain when I helped you.”
“That was different.”
“To a point, yes.”
“What do you want from me?”
“Your help. I know no one here and you know a lot about these people.”
There was a pause. “Give me your full name.”
“What?”
“I need to know who I’m working with.”
“I’m here incognito.”
“Not to me you aren’t, not if you want my help. Do you have something to hide?”
Plenty.
“No, of course not. It’s just that I need to be careful too.”
“If you know I know a lot about these people, it’s because you researched me. I tried to research you too but I know nothing about you and couldn’t find information online. Give me your full name and where you’re from, and I’ll see if you’re worth working with.”
Heinrich discovered he was shaking. His mouth had gone dry.
“Well?” she asked.
He forced himself to speak. “You got to understand that you can’t blame a person for what their family does.”
“What do you mean?”
He took a deep breath. “My name is Heinrich Müller and I’m from New York City. Look me up. Think about what I said and call me if you feel like it.”
He hung up, figuring he’d never hear from her again.
The next two hours Heinrich spent alone in the hotel bar. He needed a whole lot of vodka if he would get any sleep this night.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
The morning dawned gray and cold, and Heinrich found that his first thought on stepping out of the hotel was wondering if Jan had a spare coat. The little shit was supposed to meet him this morning on the promise of a boxing lesson and free meals, but he was an hour late. Perhaps the cold spring morning had kept him away. Heinrich had texted the kid but hadn’t gotten a reply.
So Heinrich paced in front of Wałbrzych’s ornate Gothic city hall with its red gabled roof, stone walls, and faux medieval towers. In the garden in front, a fountain burbled merrily. He’d gotten a good look at the town this morning and found it well preserved. Unlike a lot of cities and towns in central Europe, it hadn’t gotten flattened during the war. He saw several fine buildings from the nineteenth and early twentieth century. Atop a high hill in the far distance stood an imposing stone palace with an older castle attached. A tourist brochure picked up in his hotel lobby told him that this was Schloss Fürstenstein, a 13th century castle that was later expanded into a luxury residence for the l
ocal nobility.
Heinrich had already heard of this place. It had a network of bunkers and tunnels beneath it built as part of Operation Riese. Some historians theorized that if completed, it would have served as a bunker for Hitler. Certainly a lot more luxurious than the cramped concrete shelter where he capped himself during the siege of Berlin.
Heinrich felt a tingle go down his spine. While he still wasn’t convinced the treasure train was real, there was something odd about this place. Just as many of the passersby spoke German to each other as they did Polish. He’d seen a lot of neo-Nazi stickers and tags on the walls in the back streets, and no Communist ones at all. And in clear view of the town stood an old palace where Hitler had thought of making a final stand.
If the old bag back in New York was right, if there really was a treasure train, it would be close, hidden somewhere in the thickly forested hills ringing the town. He could sense it.
At last he saw Jan’s lean form moving through the crowd. He had lost his usual swagger and walked with his shoulders hunched, wearing jeans and an old winter coat. The only trace of his combat gear from the day before was his boots.
The kid spotted him and gave a dispirited little wave. As he approached, Heinrich noticed he sported a fresh black eye. It went well with the big red welt the Communist had given him with that stick.
Heinrich almost blurted out the obvious question, but remembered his own childhood and bit his tongue.
Instead he put on a smile and clapped Jan on the shoulder.
“Good to see, you buddy.”
That had no effect.
“Hey,” was the only response.
“Almost time for lunch. Is there a Burger King in this hick town?”
“No.”
Pause.
“So what are you going to show me first?”
“Dunno.”
Well, at least that was two syllables.
OK, so there was no avoiding this.
“How does the other guy look?” Heinrich asked.
“Huh?”
“The Commie you beat up,” Heinrich said, pointing to the kid’s black eye. “He must look way worse than you.”
Jan took the bait. “Yeah, three Communist kids. I beat them all. I look at what you do and do same.”
Jan got into a poor imitation of a boxing stance and threw a few punches in the air.
“Good job. You’re a good kid, Jan.”
Heinrich hadn’t really meant that, but the look of unabashed, childlike joy that suffused Jan’s face showed him it was what the kid needed to hear.
“Teach me something!” he said, suddenly all enthusiasm again.
Oh great, I guess there’s no getting out of this one, is there?
Heinrich pointed a finger at him. “OK, but no sniffing glue and no attacking women.”
“No worry. I no fuck your Communist bitch. She all yours. Dirty Communist pussy give you sick.”
Maybe I should make this a full contact lesson.
“And no glue,” Heinrich repeated in Polish. He had looked up the word the previous night. “That’s for losers and you’re not a loser.”
Again that happy look. This kid has starved for validation. Jan nodded. “OK, never again.”
Heinrich wondered if he meant that and decided that maybe he did. At least until the next time his degenerate friends offered him some, or the next time his dad smacked him around for leaving town without permission.
They moved off to a grassy area of the park in front of the city hall and Heinrich showed him a few moves, ignoring the stares of the locals. Once a cop hovered close. After a minute he came over and asked Jan a few questions. Heinrich couldn’t really follow his answer but it was something about him being his boxing instructor and that he got the black eye in the ring. The cop shrugged his shoulders and moved on. Heinrich bet if he was a respectable middle class kid there would have been a lot more questions.
The kid was a slow learner, mainly because in typical teenage fashion he assumed he already knew everything. At least he was enthusiastic.
After about twenty minutes, Jan looked like he was in a lot better mood.
“Oh, I almost forgot! Let me tell you in German since your Polish sucks.” He switched to that language, and once again Heinrich was impressed with his ability. “The Purity League is having a meeting tonight to talk about the fight in Warsaw. I can get you in as my guest.”
“You sure about that?”
“No problem. They know you now. Everyone saw how you fought.”
“You fought well too,” Heinrich said, eliciting a grin. “But what if they hear about the fight in the parking garage?”
“We didn’t know they were with the march. And they shouldn’t have tried to fuck your Communist girlfriend. That’s wrong.”
Damn, am I actually influencing this kid?
The meeting wasn’t until seven that evening, so they had the entire day. While Heinrich itched to get on with the investigation, there wasn’t anything he could do at the moment. Biniam hadn’t emailed him any more intelligence and Gabriela hadn’t called back. No doubt she had found his name in the papers, alongside Grandpa Otto’s. Hell, there was even a Wikipedia page on the case. Heinrich had gone on there and edited out his name a couple of times, but it kept reappearing and so he had eventually given up. Once Gabriela dug up all that dirt, there was no way she’d help.
So he had to play tourist with a teenaged Nazi skinhead all day. They wandered around the historic center which unlike Warsaw was actually genuine. The war had mostly passed this town by. After a couple of hours of sightseeing, which was all you really needed for such a small place, Jan showed off his disgusting table manners at the local burger joint before they got on a bus to the castle.
The bus passed through thick forest along a country lane before climbing up a steep hill, one among many that surrounded the town. At the top stood the castle, even more impressive up close. The bus was filled with tourists, mostly German and Czech, who gave sidelong glances at the lone American and his beaten-up teenaged companion.
The tour took them all around the castle and attached palace, showing them the old parapets that gave a sweeping view of the landscape, the grand Renaissance ballrooms and living quarters, and the manicured garden that looked like a miniature version of the one at Versailles. Much of it was of no interest to Heinrich, who wasn’t in the mood for sightseeing as he kept checking his phone for a message he knew he’d never get, but a few details stood out. The guide told them that the castle had been taken over by the SS in 1944. The Nazis had immediately burrowed into the hill atop which the castle stood, creating a network of galleries and rooms. The labor was done by prisoners from the nearby Gross-Rosen concentration camp and an unknown number had died from the harsh conditions of their forced labor. Jan got evil looks from the other tourists when he snickered at this bit.
Then they got to the important part of the tour—the underground complex. They descended a narrow concrete staircase in the basement of the castle and came into a series of concrete tunnels. Old signs in German marked the guardroom and generator room. New lights had been fitted but the old electrical wires and switches had been left intact.
Heinrich found it eerie. These halls had once echoed with the tramp of jackbooted feet and the groans of concentration camp inmates. History seemed to emanate from the walls. Jan felt it too. The little shit had become unusually silent and looked around at the grim setting with wide eyes.
The network of rooms and tunnels had never been finished. The work had started too late in the war, the guide said, and the Nazis had run out of resources and time as the Red Army moved like an unstoppable tide through Eastern Europe. As the tour group continued through the echoing corridors, they came to stretches of bare rock, the scars of the picks still visible on the walls. Heinrich wondered about the poor starving souls who had made those marks. Had any survived?
The tour guide told them the tales of the gold train, of course, but it was all the sam
e local legends, related in a mocking tone. The guy was a local historian and undoubtedly thought the whole thing was just a myth. Heinrich wasn’t so sure anymore. He still did not understand how he would track down the murderers, let alone a train that had been supposedly buried for the past seventy years.
At last they headed back to town. Heinrich fed Jan more junk food and then they went to where the meeting was supposed to be—in a German-style beer hall at the edge of town, well away from the small tourist district.
The beer hall stood on at the end of a quiet little lane of shops with apartments above. As they approached, Heinrich balled his hands into fists to stop them from shaking, only to discover they weren’t. This whole trip had sent him into a panic, bringing up too many bad memories, but now he found he had gotten used to it. The idea of joining a neo-Nazi meeting no longer struck him with fear, only a wariness and a determination to get on with the case.
The wariness grew as they opened the front door of the timber-frame building. Inside stood Man Mountain, the beady-eyed hulk who had accosted him at the march. His usual suspicious scowl turned into a snaggle-toothed grin.
“Brother!” he shouted, giving Heinrich a slap on the back that almost bowled him over.
“Good to see you again,” Heinrich said once he righted himself.
Man Mountain said something in Polish that Heinrich didn’t quite catch, something about beating up Communists but a bit too colorful for Heinrich’s limited language to completely follow. Something like, “Pulling their tongues out and making them lick their own backsides.” An almost Shakespearean level of prose coming from such a Neanderthal.
“This meeting is members only,” Man Mountain went on. “But we’ll let you in. You did good yesterday.”
He turned to Jan, who produced his membership card. The bouncer nodded and let them pass.
As they stepped into the beer hall, a high-ceilinged room with oaken rafters and several long tables half filled with angry-eyed men, Heinrich got his second unpleasant surprise of the evening.
Hans walked through the crowd toward them, his hand extended, his mouth spread in a grin, his eyes as calculating as ever.