by Alec Peche
“I don’t think we’ll be looked upon well here if we taste then spit out the whiskey,” Marie said.
“I’ll just have bottled water,” Jo said. “I have probably met my whiskey quota for the year today. While I can distinguish the subtle flavors of the spirit, I prefer beer or wine.”
“I agree with you there, and that’s why I grow grapes and not hops in my fields.”
“Let’s meet down at the bar in say fifteen minutes?” Angela suggested.
“I think I’ll pass on your meeting,” Nathan said. “I’m not sure I can help, and I need to sketch out some ideas from what I saw today.”
Marie replied, “Sounds like a plan and we’ll call you if we need you.”
They took the elevator up to their floor and entered each of their rooms. They unpacked their purchases, hung up coats and other cold-weather gear, performed their ablutions, grabbed their purses and various computers and took the elevator down to the lobby.
They walked into the bar, and Angela froze with her friends bumping into her from behind. She stepped back, and they gave her space with a whispered ‘what!’ from one of them as they ducked behind the doorway.
Chapter 23
Angela whispered, “Our couple from last night is already in the bar. I don’t think they saw me enter and back out. What should we do?”
“Is the bar busy?” Jo asked.
“Yes, relatively so,” Angela replied.
“Then let’s go in and sit down at the opposite end of the bar and wait for them to come to us,” Jo replied. “We’ll be safe as there’s a crowd of people around and no tall building or castle wall to toss us off of.”
As no one had a better idea than that, they proceeded into the bar and spread out at a table. A waitress came over and took their drink order - a whiskey and three glasses of water, and she departed. The women continued to discuss Nick’s possessions that were sent to them. They turned on his phone which was getting low on the battery but fortunately Jo’s phone had the appropriate cable to power it, but it was pass coded. They hadn’t a clue on the password especially since his keyboard was in Dutch with different letters where the E,R,S,C, and M keys were on an English keyboard.
“Let me translate the words, perhaps it also has a finger code on it, and I recall his fingers being relatively okay from the autopsy,” Jill said.
There was silence in the bar, and she looked up to see various expressions of revulsion on her friends' faces.
“What? Do we want to solve a mystery here or what!”
When her friends’ expressions still hadn’t changed, she said, “Look I give you guys permission before I get cremated to use my fingers to unlock my phone for any photos you might want from it.”
With that Jo burst out laughing, “Only a pathologist could think that way, but personally, I have no intention of doing that. If I didn’t get any photos I wanted from you in your lifetime, then it wasn’t meant for me to have a copy.”
Marie added, “Jill we’ll let you do the honors with the phone and Nick’s fingers. I’d rather contact Henrik and see if he can suggest a less morbid way to handle this phone.”
“That’s a good idea, Marie,” Jill said. “I should have thought of that.”
Just as Marie left her barstool, to make the call to Henrik, her exit was blocked by the approaching couple.
“Hello, we would like to ask you questions,” said Nicole Becker.
She found four American women staring back at her unwilling to commit to providing her with answers, just waiting patiently for the questions.
Jill raised her eyebrows as if to say ‘go ahead’.
There was a quick rapid fire conversation between Nicole and Michael in what Jill assumed was German before the first question was produced.
Again there was a rapid-fire conversation in German, then she said, “May we join you?”
Jill had been putting away Nick's possessions into the padded envelope they were mailed in when Michael had first spoken, now she said hesitantly, “Sure, and will you tell us why two German school teachers are following us?”
The pair borrowed chairs from other tables and gathered around with Jill’s team.
Ignoring Jill’s question, Michael instead asked, “How well did you know Nick Brouwer?”
When the four women stared at him in silence unwilling to give any information to these complete strangers, he added, “We were working with Nick at the time of his death. He mentioned he was meeting some friends in Wales, but we assumed those friends were Dutch or maybe Belgian not American. Were you friends of Nick?”
“What were you working with Nick on?” Jo asked.
Good question Jill thought. They were dancing around something with this couple, but neither wanted to show their cards yet. Again there was another rapid-fire conversation in German.
“You know, you just make the four of us suspicious when you switch to another language for a conversation. It’s human nature you know,” Angela said.
“We work for Brisdale’s. Have you heard of this company?” Michael asked while nodding his head at Angela acknowledging her comment.
“Yes, you’re an auction house based in London perhaps with locations around the world,” Marie said as her friends nodded.
“Usually we verify the provenance of pieces that owners wish to sell through the auction house. We also spend about a quarter of our time searching for as yet to be recovered paintings, gold, jewelry, and sculptures from WWI and WWII. Nick had some information about the location of a fairly large example of Nazi stolen goods. We wanted to know if he shared that information with you?” Nicole said.
There was silence around the table as the women again thought back to their conversations with Nick and then Jill spoke up, “We asked ourselves earlier if Nick ever gave us any indication that he was searching for some hidden treasure including the infamous Nazi gold train and the answer was no.”
"What do you mean a large example of Nazi stolen goods?" Angela asked. "Is that based on the quantity or quality of a particular item or is that reference to the physical size?"
Michael Schmidt sighed then said, “Nick was involved in a group that he couldn’t tell us about other than to say he thought it was about to dissolve and he thought one or two of the members were about to close in on a big collection of stolen goods from World War II and he somehow had the impression that the group members wouldn't be handing it over to the rightful members.”
The women looked at each other debating whether to say something, then Jill said, “Would you mind stepping away from our table? We need to have a private discussion and to verify your story. Give us twenty minutes.”
Nicole Becker looked as though she wanted to argue with them, but Michael grabbed her elbow and pulled her away saying over his shoulder, “Come get us when you’re ready to talk.”
Marie had gone to work the moment they said they were employed by the auction house proving the provenance of artworks. Why had their other search identified them as school teachers?
Around her, Jill, Angela, and Jo were discussing their impressions of the couple. After following several more threads, she looked up and said, “Here’s their story. Their passport application clearly hasn’t been updated to reflect their current jobs which I did verify from other sources. Their degrees are in fine art, and they taught at the High School level. Their Master’s thesis was about the effects of war on stolen art. Five years after becoming teachers, they changed jobs and went to work at Brisdale’s.”
“Are they married?” asked Angela.
“I don’t believe so, let me check,” Marie replied.
A few clicks later, she said, “No, just co-workers.”
“Is there a downside to letting them into our investigation?” Jo asked.
“Only if they’re not who they say they are and are instead related to Girard LeRoux. Then they might be after something we know or an item among Nick’s possessions,” Jill replied.
“If that were the c
ase, why not just kill or kidnap us until we hand over the goods?” Angela said. “I think they had the opportunity to do that over the past couple of days. Marie, do you see anything in their profile that would lead us to think they were dangerous? Or if you put your HR hat on, is there anything there that would stop you from hiring them?”
“Good questions, Angela, let me think.”
Her other three friends sat there looking at her waiting for her to come to a conclusion. She was very good at detecting lies and judging people; far better than her three friends. She thought back to what she’d read about this couple and decided, in the end, there wasn’t anything suspicious about them.
“I would hire them. I think we can trust them.”
Jill looked up as Nathan entered the bar walking toward their table. She’d sent him a text when they first sat down after noticing the couple advising him to finish whatever he was doing. She knew from experience that when he was in the creative zone, it was best to leave him there unless there was an emergency. She’d assured him they were perfectly safe and to join them if and when he felt like it.
“What’s going on? Have they made a move toward you guys?”
“Yeah, they came over and asked us if we were friends of Nick,” Angela said
“Really? I bet you had such choice words about that question. What are you doing now?”
“We researched them again, this time a little more in depth,” Marie replied. “We just decided that we would welcome a conversation with them since they asked us some questions about Nick.”
“This could be an interesting night,” he noted and got nods of agreement from the four women.
Angela stood up and said, “Should I go get them now or do we have anything more to discuss amongst ourselves?”
“We’ll just wing the conversation,” Jo said. “I’m getting tired of the games we have to play with your spies and otherwise bad people. We’re safe here in this public bar, so nothing too terrible can happen.”
Jill filed away Jo’s concern for the future trying to avoid using her services on the general parts of the case and instead direct her to accounting questions. There, Jo was in her element searching for evidence of fraudulent accounting practices, and the tension of a new case didn’t seem to reach her through the zone she was in while studying numbers and balance sheets.
Angela nodded agreement to her friends’ head nods and verbal comments and stood up to retrieve the couple.
Chapter 24
Giovanni Floris was sitting in a tiny hotel room in Scotland. He felt like his world had been heaved up in the air by a dog with big teeth that soon proceeded to shake him. Operation Gladio had voted to dissolve, a shocking occurrence to him. He didn’t want it to end. He’d been involved for fifteen years after he completed his military service in Italy and his father had served before him. He liked his fellow members and appreciated they were from all over Europe. When Girard had voted against dissolving the group, he’d thrown his vote with him as he thought others would raise their hands, but he was wrong. Now he wasn’t sure what to do next or whether the police were looking for him. Thinking back to his actions, he wasn’t in the United Kingdom when Girard killed Nick Brouwer, but while he had an idea that Girard was going to kill that woman, he'd done nothing.
He wasn’t a leader; instead, he’d always followed someone else in Operation Gladio or had been directed by Jean-Louis. With Girard dead should he return to his real job in Sardinia? Consider the Operation at an end? Find the women and kill them, then go home? He knew he could not turn around and kill his fellow order members even if they no longer wanted to be a stay-behind army. He was at a loss.
What was the treasure that Girard hinted at knowing? He planned to give the details of what he knew the evening before his death, but he’d been so busy trying to tail the four women that Girard never had the chance to resume that conversation. Had any other members known about this hidden treasure? Had Nick been killed because he wanted to end the Operation or over an argument about the treasure?
He could stay in Scotland a few more days and watch the Americans. Surely, they would go home soon. He thought Girard was following them because he believed that Nick Brouwer told them something about the treasure. It was why Girard lost his mind and attempted to push the woman over the castle wall. Maybe he should stay close so he could hear what they were saying. Then again if they knew where the treasure was, why were they in Scotland? Were they searching for it in Edinburgh?
He knew that over the years the Operation had found and secretly returned some spoils of war and when they couldn’t find the rightful owner, they’d sold the items to pay for their ongoing operation. NATO had stopped their funding thirty years ago, and they had kept going on minimal funds from two countries that still supported the stay-behind army. Their financing was deeply buried as a military expenditure, and it paid for the upkeep of their apartment in Le Havre and ammunition since they all practiced shooting. As none of them were receiving a salary for their work for the Operation, they all had day jobs which significantly reduced their effectiveness as an Operation.
Then Giovanni got a bright idea. Would Jean-Louis reactivate Operation Gladio if he could find the potential treasure that Girard mentioned? If the treasure was worth a lot of money, then he bet Jean-Louis and the others would vote to keep the Operation going. They enjoyed each other’s company and staying prepared for covert action. Maybe he could re-invigorate the whole group with enough money. So he needed to think about his conversation with Girard and where he knew him and possibly Nick to have traveled over the last several months. He would also concentrate on a word for word replay of what exactly Girard said. He was due back at his own job in a few days. If he couldn’t figure out what the treasure was and its location, he’d have to work on it later when he had time off work.
Giovanni sat with pen and paper and tried to recall every conversation he had with Girard over the past week. An hour later, he had two full sheets of notes. He reviewed them and compared them to a calendar in his head and considered whether he documented every conversation. When he thought he'd got them all, he reread his notes and thought about clues in Girard's words. There was something there that he couldn't put together related to the Nazis. What was it?
Like other Italian schoolchildren, he had learned about World War II in his history classes. He didn't remember any discussion about the Nazis looting people and cities, but wasn't that always a part of war? He thought about the concentration camps he remembered learning about were related to Hitler and the Jewish people. Sardinia had lost its Jewish population to concentration camps elsewhere in Europe, but his history lessons were primarily about Mussolini. So he began searching the internet to refresh his memory about the war.
Whose treasure was it? Something hidden by a Jewish family before they were sent to a camp or perhaps something of the Germans or maybe Hitler in particular? Girard was from France and Nick was from the Netherlands, and both of those countries fell to the Germans in WWII, but for some reason, he ruled both countries out as well as his native Italy. He didn't think the treasure was in his native Italy as the flow of the war would probably preclude that region. He felt that Girard's mention of Northern Europe was likely the hiding place, but he was scratching his head trying to remember if he said Northern Europe or the Northern UK.
What was the treasure? Was it art or money or gold? Was he looking for something small like jewelry, something medium-sized like art or something substantial like stacks of cash and or gold? He was a simple plumber, not someone up on the politics of a war that ended nearly eighty years ago. Giovanni went to work on investigating treasures from the war. He hoped he was right about it being WWII, but again it was the only war that he associated with concentration camps. Had Girard said concentration camps or just camp like he attended as a kid?
He also thought about the word quarry, or was it quail? The words were similar sounding in Guernésiais. He was aware of the marble mined in Carrara in
the northern tip of Italy, but he was back to there being no concentration camps in that area, but there were kid camps everywhere, so that didn't limit his search. In fact, he looked for concentration camps specifically in Italy, and none were near the famous marble quarry. Giovanni thought he would waste a lot of time looking at concentration camps as they were all over Europe at one point in the war. There were quail all over Europe and here in Scotland. Instead, he looked for the northernmost cities that the Germans occupied as they would have had to conquer a city before setting up a concentration camp. Was northern Europe Germany or Poland? Or was it Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia? He would have to study more cities of Europe to answer his own question and what if it was the northern UK? Where had the Germans been in Scotland or had they been anywhere in this region? Did the actual battlefield extend this far west?
Chapter 25
Angela approached the couple and invited them back to their table. The friends waited while the two Germans settled at their table.
"Ask away," Jill said forgetting where they had ended their conversation with the two Germans.
"Did Nick ever mention a hidden treasure, or otherwise comment on art or gold?" Nicole asked.
"No, he never seemed like he was searching for something. How did you meet him?" Angela asked.
"I met him perhaps two or three years ago at an auction in Amsterdam. He was providing security, and the story of stolen artwork was an issue raised during the auction. We spent some time talking about it," Michael replied.
"So how did you run into him again and what exactly did he say about a treasure?" Jill asked. She was puzzled over this entire situation.
"We ran into Nick about a few weeks ago by chance at the Stuttgart train station. He appeared to have a lot on his mind and asked us some questions about our work. In particular, he seemed to have questions about where we found stolen art or other artifacts that came into the possession of Brisdale's."