by Robert Brown
The older man who was ignoring the Purity League people stood up. As Heinrich suspected, he turned out to be the local head of National Revival. He did not look happy at having so many Purity League people around, no doubt because he and his group was getting sidelined. Obviously he didn’t suspect they had a hand in Dieter’s death or they wouldn’t be here at all.
First, he called for everyone to stand and give the national anthem. Heinrich sprang to his feet in time to check out the murderer’s feet, visible beneath the table. He wore dirty work boots. Heinrich wasn’t surprised. It didn’t take a genius to figure out that you should ditch the clothes you committed a murder in. It didn’t matter. He had photographic proof.
The National Revival leader gave a speech about how true a patriot Dieter had been, and gestured to the old man nodding off in the wheelchair, introducing him as Dieter’s grandfather. A shudder ran through Heinrich’s body. The mic was passed to the old man, who was prodded awake, and the former SS soldier croaked out a few words about how Dieter had been a good boy and a proud German. He said that he had seen many comrades fall during the war and Dieter had been as brave as all of them. He finished with a Nazi salute and a Sieg Heil.
The crowd followed suit. Heinrich forced himself to join in as sweat broke out all over his body.
He glanced at Hans, who still sat in front of him and a bit to his right, apparently unaware that he was even here. Perhaps he should leave. Get out while he could. Hans was already suspicious of him, and his showing up at this would raise those suspicions even further. He had the murderer. He could show the photos to NYPD, they could do a basic check and find that he and Hans had been in the country, and get an extradition order. He’d get his pay and he could be rid of this whole sick game. He could go home and show off the records he had bought and drink whiskey with the guys. He could take the train to Warsaw and get on an early morning flight tomorrow.
But he knew he wouldn’t. He knew he’d stay right here until this whole thing was solved because he had seen another detail when he had checked the guy’s feet.
His work boots were muddy, with a bit of a leaf stuck to the toe.
Not such a big deal, one might think. Perhaps he was a laborer.
Or perhaps he was in the woods earlier today, digging for the treasure train.
Which would explain the dirt under his fingernails too?
Heinrich wiped his brow and tried to control his shaking. He told himself he didn’t need to react this way, that he was about to nail these guys, and maybe even strike it rich. He would hit back at these motherfuckers.
But how?
He had no idea where the treasure train was.
Wait, he knew at least one thing, that it was close. It was only three in the afternoon, and the young guy at the table, obviously someone important in the Purity League if he was sitting next to Mikolaj, had had time to get here. He had even washed his hands, only the fingernails were dirty, although he hadn’t changed.
So Dieter and the rest of them had been right. The treasure train really was buried in the hills around Wałbrzych.
So how did he find out where?
Then it struck him, something Jan had said the night before. He had bragged that Mikolaj was his neighbor.
But he didn’t know where the kid lived.
Easy enough to find out, he figured. A few burgers and some praise and that kid will tell me anything. I can wait until nightfall, go to Mikolaj’s house, and beat it out of him. It’s too late for them to go back in the woods and dig today.
The meeting was breaking up. Time to slip away. Sticking around here would only mean running unnecessary risks. He got up and moved through the crowd. Some were already headed for the cars. The rest moved forward to shake hands with the organizers. A cluster of people gathered around Dieter’s grandfather. Standing by him was a middle-aged couple with their hand on the old Nazi’s shoulder, no doubt Jan’s aunt and another uncle.
As he walked away he called Jan, too impatient to wait until he was back in town.
A phone ringing in the crowd behind him made him turn.
Jan appeared in the crowd, heading for the old Nazi in the wheelchair.
Jesus Christ, great timing for a family reunion, kid.
Jan pulled his phone out of his pocket. Heinrich hung up.
He saw Jan dialing.
Heinrich put his phone in his pocket just as it lit up with the incoming call. Thank God he had put it on silent.
He strode down the hill, desperate to get as much distance between him and trouble as possible. He had it almost wrapped up. No time for any complications. He’d call Jan later, hear what Gabriela had to say tonight, and make his move.
By tomorrow he might be a millionaire.
Nerves made him take a final glance over his shoulder. Jan had disappeared into the crowd, but Hans was in full view, talking on his phone as he turned away from him.
A moment before, Heinrich knew, he had been looking in Heinrich’s direction.
Shit.
At least Heinrich was saved the long walk back to town. His friendly neighborhood Nazi taxi driver drove passed him on the road, stopped, and gave him a lift.
Just to be on the safe side, he had the guy drop him off at the same spot where he had hailed him so he wouldn’t know what hotel Heinrich was staying at.
The first thing he did when he got back to his room was text Gabriela his room number. He got a text back saying that she had left work early and would check into the hotel around seven. She had taken the train instead of driving. Only a couple of hours to wait.
His phone told him Jan had tried calling him twice. He held off on calling him back. If the kid was still with his piece of shit grandfather and his goose-stepping chums, that could get complicated.
Then he sent all the information he had to Mrs. Briggs. He waited for a response he didn’t get.
Old people. Never online.
He ignored another call from Jan and read more of the treasure train book. It offered no new information, just a lot of speculation and some photos of local obsessives excavating bunkers. After so many decades, the forest had reclaimed the fortifications and many had disappeared under dirt and undergrowth. The photos showed several bunkers of various sizes, some looking like they were deep in the woods. One was captioned, “major fortification with double bunker and artillery emplacements.”
What seemed to excite the treasure hunters was that that particular bunker and several others were well away from any major road or river and seemed to be guarding nothing. The author was convinced that the treasure train was buried somewhere nearby, and the bunkers acted as its outer defense.
But the more these yokels searched, the more bunkers they found, only widening the circle of investigation. Plus, they had found no train tracks.
That was the real stickler. The Nazis would have tried to cover up the tracks or, given time, removed them entirely, but wouldn’t there be a nice visible line of younger trees through the woods? Even seventy years on that would be visible. Heinrich recalled trips he had made to Westchester County and other areas up the Hudson River Valley. The whole area had been farmland until about a hundred years ago when the agricultural industry shifted to larger farms out west and the small private farms became unprofitable. The land had reverted to forest, but that forest had thin trees, not the thick old growth all around Wałbrzych. In Westchester County, you could even see the old dry stone walls running through the forest marking out each plot of land, plus the occasional old oak tree, five times as thick as all the other trees, remnants of the old growth the farmers had left to shade the house or the water trough.
Sure, you could hide the treasure train in some underground bunker, but how did you hide the route of the track?
Was this all bullshit after all? Were the neo-Nazis killing one another over a pipe dream?
A knock on his door popped him out of 1945 and back to the present.
He checked the clock on the bedside table. Seven-
fifteen.
Looks like you don’t need Nazis to get the trains to run on time.
He hurried to the bathroom, made sure his hair looked good, and went to the hotel room door.
Instinctive caution made him look through the peephole.
He saw Gabriela’s face, looking as stressed as the last time he had seen her.
Lighten up, babe.
He opened the door.
Gabriela fell into his arms, but not the way he wanted her to.
Man Mountain shoving her into the room and aiming a pistol at his head had not been a part of his fantasy.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Guns always look so much bigger when they are pointed at your face, Heinrich mused. Almost as big as Man Mountain here.
Well, not quite.
Man Mountain moved into the room and locked the door behind him.
“You know, we’ve never been properly introduced,” Heinrich said. “What’s your—”
Man Mountain gave him a left hook. Training kicked in and Heinrich managed to roll with it, but it still left him on the floor.
“Ugh. Man Mountain it is, then.”
Heinrich tried to rise, but the gun told him not to. Man Mountain and Gabriela had a rapid fire conversation in Polish that Heinrich’s singing head kept him from properly understanding. He did catch that those thugs from the parking garage had finally gotten in touch. No doubt Hans had been doing detective work of his own.
“Give me the pepper spray,” Man Mountain told Gabriela.
Heinrich was proud that he remembered the term for pepper spray. He would use it on Gabriela, calling her “the lovely lady with the pepper spray.” This lunk had stolen his line.
Gabriela opened her purse. Man Mountain kept the pistol trained on Heinrich, but watched Gabriela.
Carefully, she showed the inside of her purse and said, “I have money.”
“You’re both coming with me, but I’ll take your money too,” Man Mountain said and laughed. “Pepper spray first.”
She handed over the bottle, which Man Mountain pocketed. Then she opened her wallet, took out of a wad of bills…
✽ ✽ ✽
and threw them in Man Mountain’s face.
For a moment he was blinded. She grabbed the wrist of his gun hand and pushed it up to point at the ceiling.
Then Man Mountain made a fatal mistake. He should have fired. The sound would have made Gabriela back off and then he could have plugged the both of them.
But he didn’t fire. Perhaps he thought he could bludgeon them into submission. Perhaps he was afraid a gunshot would make someone call the police.
Whatever the reason, he left himself open to a sucker punch in the crotch.
Heinrich never liked hitting below the belt. It was against regulations. He couldn’t argue with its efficacy though.
Man Mountain doubled over with a sickly cough and dropped the gun. Heinrich grabbed it.
Only to get a smack on the back of the head that made him do a face plant onto the carpet.
For a moment he thought Gabriela had hit him, but then he was picked up and tossed to the side, landing half on and a half off the bed, only to fall off it in a heap.
The gun remained on the floor.
Gabriela kicked it under the bureau.
That got her a backhand smack that sent her crashing into the nightstand.
Heinrich managed to get on his feet just in time to duck a wild swing. Man Mountain was still a bit wobbly and fought in an unmanly hunched over stance. Heinrich had to give him his due. After the punch Heinrich had given, it was a miracle the guy was still standing.
He was still standing after a left hook and a right uppercut too.
Heinrich brought up his hands just in time to block a right hook.
Sort of.
Boxing had taught him you have to hold your arms up with your fist touching your face. Newbies held their arms a little out, thinking they could stop the blow before it touched them, but any strong punch only ended up smashing the defender’s fist into their own face, the second best thing to making a direct hit with the bonus of being humiliating.
Even trained fighters ended up hitting themselves in a defense if they didn’t get their fists into position quick enough.
That’s what happened to Heinrich.
The force of Man Mountain’s punch to Heinrich’s fist nearly made the detective knock himself out. It did put him back on the floor.
Heinrich shook his head, trying to focus. Man Mountain’s booted foot raised above his face, ready to smash down and grind him into the floor. Heinrich brought his hands up.
A crash, and the boot never came down.
Instead all of Man Mountain came down, right on top of him.
Along with several fragments of the lamp from the bedside table.
“Are you all right?” Gabriela asked, tossing aside the remains of the lamp.
“I’ve been better,” Heinrich gasped, trying to extricate himself from beneath three hundred pounds of unconscious flesh.
“Could you get my pepper spray?” Gabriela asked. “I don’t want to put my hand in his pocket.”
“You think I do?” Heinrich grunted as he finally shoved Man Mountain off him. “Isn’t it enough that I save you?”
“Excuse me?”
“I mean… oh never mind.”
Heinrich retrieved the pepper spray, handed it to Gabriela, and dove back into the man’s pockets to take his phone. Then he reached under the bureau and got the pistol, a decent 9mm automatic with an eleven-round magazine.
“What do we do with him?” Gabriela asked.
“Knock him around a bit? That’s what I feel like doing. He’s ruined our evening.”
Gabriela cocked her head. “What? Did you think we would sleep together?”
“At this point I’d settle for a hand job and a kind word.”
Smack!
“Ow!” Heinrich groaned as he cradled his head. “If you’re going to slap me, could you do it on the side of my face Man Mountain didn’t hit?”
“How about you explain what’s going on?”
Someone knocked on the door.
“Fuck,” Heinrich whispered. “Help me with him.”
They dragged the still-unconscious Man Mountain into the bathroom. The knocking grew more persistent. Someone called out in Polish. Had that been the word for “manager?”
“Let me handle this,” Gabriela whispered. “Just smile.”
She opened the door a crack. A concerned, officious-looking man in a jacket and tie stood on the other side. Heinrich recognized him from the front desk.
Gabriela smiled and whispered something while Heinrich stood back and tried to look nonchalant. He swore he caught the phrase “rough sex.”
Judging from the hotel manager’s deep blush and quick retreat, that was exactly what she had said.
“Rough sex? That’s the best you could come up with?” Heinrich asked when she closed the door.
“Don’t get your hopes up. Now tell me what’s going on. What are you involved in that I get kidnapped ten minutes after I check into my hotel room?”
Heinrich sighed, picked up the electrical cord from the broken lamp, and trussed up Man Mountain like a Thanksgiving turkey. As he did, he explained everything—the murder of Aaron Briggs, the treasure train, Dieter’s murder, everything.
To his surprise, Gabriela started to giggle. Heinrich didn’t feel his tale of death and betrayal was really giggle-worthy, but she had a cute giggle.
“What’s so funny?”
“These idiots are killing each other over a myth! We should just leave them to it.”
“Tempting, but it ain’t no myth,” Heinrich said, making the final knot and admiring his handiwork. Man Mountain was arched painfully backward with his hands and feet tied together. He stripped off a pillowcase and shoved it into the guy’s mouth.
“Of course it’s a myth. A Nazi train full of gold and jewels? Come on, only children believe in such fai
ry tales.”
Heinrich gestured to Man Mountain. “This child nearly killed the both of us.”
Suddenly Gabriela’s eyes went wide.
“Did you say the code was kept in the Moscow archives?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“I’m part of a group that monitors the movements of far right figures. Mikolaj Symaski visited Moscow last month. We thought he was there to meet with members of Russian neo-fascist parties.”
“Looks like he did more than that,” Heinrich said as he pulled out his phone.
“What are you doing?”
“What I was planning on doing in the first place.”
Jan picked up on the first ring.
“Where you been?” the teen asked. “I call you five time.”
“Sorry, kid. Busy. Look, I need your help. This is very important. You said Mikolaj Symaski was your neighbor. Could you give me his address?”
Jan’s answer was cut off by the sound of a man and a woman shouting at each other. Heinrich couldn’t follow it since they were both shouting at the same time. All he caught we a bunch of swear words. Jan shouted something. A door slammed, and the shouting faded to background noise.
“What was that?” Heinrich asked.
“I’m at home,” Jan mumbled.
Heinrich paused. “None of that is your fault.”
“Thanks,” Jan said so softly Heinrich almost didn’t hear him.
“Could you tell me the address? It’s important but I can’t tell you why. It’s, um, party business. You know his street number and everything?”
“Yeah. He has youth meetings there sometimes. Gives us beer. He lives in a house at 35 Brzezina Street.”
“OK, thanks kid. Take care.”
“We box tomorrow?”
“Yeah, sure. See you tomorrow,” he said as he hung up.
If I make it to tomorrow.
“Who was that?” Gabriela asked.
“Jan.”
“Who?”
“That skinhead kid. He gave me a tour of the city in exchange for some boxing lessons.”
“Do you think teaching that little thug how to box is a good idea?”