by Gary Jonas
It didn’t feel right to step onto the porch, so we stood in front of it. The women watched us, while the boy laughed and shared his burrito with Princesa.
I felt like maybe we were in the wrong place. Had Gustav led us astray? It was a long walk back to the hotel. The silence draped over us, and I felt like I should say something, but I had no clue what would be appropriate. The weather was in the low fifties, though there were dark clouds on the horizon. Talking about how it might rain it didn’t seem like much of a topic for conversation.
The door opened, and a tall man in his late fifties appeared. He wore a full Nazi SS uniform, with a swastika armband and the whole nine. He came down the steps to join us in front of the porch. He wore a gun belt with a Luger in the holster.
“Do not be afraid,” he said. “You will not be harmed. You don’t need your weapon.” As he said the last, he focused on Kelly and her metal strip.
“It’s my security blanket,” Kelly said.
“I didn’t mean to imply you should get rid of it. I simply meant you won’t need it. Your safety here is guaranteed.”
“Not too shy about your allegiance,” I said, stepping to Kelly’s side, and motioning to the man’s uniform.
“This is my home,” the man said.
“I’m Jonathan. This is Kelly.”
“I know who you are. My name is Rutger, and if you’ll walk with me, I would greatly appreciate it.” He gestured toward the gate to the road.
We walked back the way we’d come.
“Adios,” said the little boy.
I waved to him.
“Finn is a good boy,” Rutger said. “His mother, Giselle, has raised him well. Her husband died two years ago. Cancer. She was devastated, but her devotion to Finn kept her going. It’s been difficult for her. There isn’t much work in town, and until she finds steady employment, she and Finn will have to live here. Not that I mind. It’s nice to have family around. My wife died ten years back, so I understand what Giselle is going through.”
“And you’re telling this to us, why?” I asked.
He smiled at me. “To remind you we’re human.”
“Excuse me?”
“We have families, Mr. Shade. The men you and your warrior woman killed in Córdoba had wives and children. There are many grieving widows, and fatherless boys and girls due to your actions.”
“Those men were trying to kill us.”
He shrugged. “Their wives will cry into their pillows regardless, and no amount of justification will change that fundamental truth. Clearly, it doesn’t matter to your friend, Ms. Chan here.”
“I won’t lose any sleep over it,” Kelly said. “I have a simple rule. If someone tries to kill me, they die.”
“Which is why my words are addressed to Mr. Shade.” He met my gaze. “Those men were loving husbands, and devoted fathers.”
“Then they shouldn’t have shot at us,” Kelly said.
“They were obeying orders.”
“They should have chosen another line of work,” Kelly said.
“It’s all right, Kelly,” I said. “Rutger is simply making a point.”
“A moot point,” Kelly said.
“I’ve got this.”
Esther circled around us, looking for danger, but each time she passed, she said, “All berries so far.”
Rutger led us out the gate to the road. He turned toward the main road, and kept walking.
“You going to walk us all the way home?” I asked.
“I’ll take you to the main road, then I will return to my family, and you won’t endanger them any more than you already have.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
Rutger aimed his hand at himself and swept down to indicate his Nazi regalia. “You see this uniform and you make judgments.”
“Damn right I do.”
“Just as I judge you for your actions.”
“Where’s Maria?”
“I’ll get to that. Your actions brought Heinrich Himmler to my home, Mr. Shade.”
“And that makes you proud, right?”
“On the contrary. My father was a Nazi. He was a true believer. But he married a local woman after coming through the ratline to Argentina. He tried to instill his beliefs in me, but my mother’s teachings were stronger. I’m not my father, Mr. Shade. I’m not a true believer. I just want a safe place for my family.”
“You’re in your Nazi best,” I said.
“When I got the call that Himmler was coming here, I knew I had to dress the part. I gave him shelter as required, but fortunately, the woman he brought told him they wouldn’t find what they were looking for here.”
“Did she break into her best Bono impression?”
He looked confused.
I sighed. “U2?”
“Me too, what?” he asked.
“Never mind.”
Esther popped in front of me. “No soldiers unless they have more underground hideouts.”
“What did Maria tell Himmler?” I asked.
Esther walked with us now, and remained quiet and invisible.
Kelly kept slapping the metal strip into her palm, looking around as if hoping she could kill someone.
Rutger walked us all the way to the main road. He pointed. “If you go that way, you’ll be close to the hotels. I’d offer you a ride, but Himmler took my car. I’ll have to get a neighbor to give me a ride to the airport.”
“I ask again,” I said. “What did Maria tell him?”
“That Adolf Hitler died in 1970 in Surabaya.”
“Sura-what?” I asked.
“It’s a city on Java in Indonesia.”
“Well, I guess I flunked my geography lesson for the day,” I said. Then I remembered that Indonesia was one of the places mentioned that Hitler might have gone. “Why would Hitler go to Indonesia?”
“Safety. He wasn’t safe here, and he didn’t trust anyone. He was a high value target.”
“So he moved to Surabaya?”
“Sumbawa Besar, actually.”
“You just said Surabaya.”
“That’s where he died. That’s where he’s buried. But he and Eva Braun took the identities of a doctor and an anthropologist and moved to the remote island of Sumbawa Besar. They lived there for years. Hitler pretended to be a doctor, and in 1970 he took a trip to Surabaya where he had a heart attack and died, though many believe he was murdered by Heinrich Himmler, or perhaps on his order.”
“Really?”
“He was an old man, and the magic didn’t take well with him. He had tremors in his hands, dragged his left foot, and was never very healthy.”
“Good,” I said. “I don’t normally wish pain and suffering on anyone, but I’ll make an exception for Hitler.”
Rutger nodded. “As would I. Hitler is buried in a graveyard in Surabaya. Do you have a smartphone?”
“Yeah.”
“Open your notes app, and hand me the phone. I’ll type in the name he’s buried under.”
I handed him my phone.
As he tapped the keys, I said, “Was Maria okay?”
“A local boy named Lars wanted to kill her, but Himmler likes her. And as Lars lives here in Bariloche, what he wants doesn’t carry much weight with Himmler. What Himmler wants is law. Here you go.”
He handed my phone back to me.
“I didn’t meet Lars.”
“We are not all like him,” Rutger said. “Do not judge us by the actions of men like him.”
I shook my head. “You strike me as a decent enough guy. The problem here, Rutger, is that you had one job. Don’t be a Nazi.” I gestured toward his Nazi regalia. “But no, you proudly wear this uniform. You should throw it on the garbage heap of history where it belongs. Set an example for your family that hatred and bigotry will not be tolerated.”
“But Himmler would not like that.”
“What’s that old adage? The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing. You want
to do some good for your family? Teach Finn that there’s no such thing as a good Nazi.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Back at the hotel, I called Richard Class.
“We’ve had some setbacks,” I said.
“I knew you would. Do you have a line on the skull?”
“I do, but evidently, it’s in Indonesia.”
“Polk,” Class said.
As that was the last name Rutger typed into my phone, I frowned. “If you knew who he was, you could have saved us a lot of time, and a number of lives.”
“I didn’t know for sure, Mr. Shade. There were doubles. Tracking them all down has taken years. Remember, the world thought Hitler died in the bunker.”
“Yeah, well, I just checked the flights from Bariloche to Surabaya, and it’s going to take two days to get there, and the tickets run more than three thousand bucks apiece. The next flight is tomorrow afternoon, and that puts us in Indonesia at eight o’clock Monday night.”
“Hmm.”
“Hmm, what?”
“I’m calculating time differences.”
“Just pay a wizard to open a damn rift. Monday at eight is too late for me to get the skull back to you, assuming it’s still there.”
“Why wouldn’t it be?”
“Because Heinrich Himmler is after the skull, too. And he has Maria.”
“Fuck a duck,” Class said.
“I’m not partial to water fowl,” I said.
“Why didn’t you lead with Himmler? That son of a bitch died back in 1945.”
“Tell that to him.”
He sighed. “So he’s the other interested party. Dammit. Does Himmler know where the skull is?”
“Were you not paying attention? He has Maria, so yes. He fucking knows.”
“All right, let me think,” Class said. “You’re an hour ahead of me.”
Keys clacked on a keyboard.
“Surabaya is eleven hours ahead of D.C.”
“Regardless, I can’t get the skull back to you by the time you need it.”
“Buren is five hours difference from Surabaya.”
“Buren?”
“Germany. That’s where Himmler will go if he gets the skull first.”
“Fat lot of good that does me.”
“Take the flight. I’ll chance it. Maria might lead him astray.”
“Seeing as how I got the information from someone who was there when she did the séance to get the info, I think it’s safe to say he’ll have it.”
“But he has enemies.”
“Grasping at straws much? I don’t think he’ll be flying commercial.”
“I’m not spending the kind of money it would take to open a rift to take two people 9078 miles.”
“Then you can kiss that skull goodbye.”
“Take the flight to Surabaya. I want you to personally check the graveyard, and call me back.”
He hung up.
I knew he was setting me up. Rituals and prophecies always got magical types in a weird state because they knew some oracle somewhere saw something. Did Class want me to fulfill the prophecy or was he trying to prevent that while keeping things as close to it as he could? There was a reason he wanted me in that graveyard. I just didn’t know why.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Flying long distances wasn’t my idea of a good time. The flight to Buenos Aires wasn’t bad—just a couple of hours, but we had nearly seven hours to kill there before heading to São Paulo. An hour layover there. Then more than fifteen hours on a plane to Doha, the capital of Qatar, where we spent two hours in the airport before another nine-hour flight to Jakarta where we had a three-hour layover before our final flight of an hour and a half to Surabaya.
Sleeping on the plane just made me more tired.
Due to a slight delay on approach, we didn’t land until 8:30 local time, and while we had only carry-on luggage, it was still almost 10:00 before we got out of the airport, got a taxi, and managed to get to the cemetery in the Ngagel Rejo district.
On the ride to the cemetery, I thought about Cole, recovering in a hospital in Córdoba. He’d trained in silat here in Indonesia. I wondered where, but I didn’t have a clue.
When we reached the cemetery, I wasn’t sure how we’d find the grave, but it turned out to be simple. We went to an older section, and Kelly spotted the name of the doctor Hitler had replaced within twenty minutes. The problem was that no one had disturbed the grave. If Himmler had come here, it would have been recently dug up.
At the risk of being anticlimactic, we set down our carry-on bags and did our due diligence, finding a shovel in a nearby shed, then digging down to the coffin.
I’m not sure what I expected, but when we finally got down to the oak casket, we opened it up to reveal a skeleton in a dusty old suit, and sure enough, his skull was missing.
“If I’m haunted by Headless Hitler, I’m blaming Class,” I said.
“The cheap bastard should have paid for a rift,” Kelly said.
“We’d have known it was a wild skull chase a few days sooner,” I said.
“And how,” Esther said. “Heads up. Coppers are coming.”
Kelly gave me a hand to get out of the grave. We grabbed our bags and disappeared among the shadowed tombstones.
Behind us, I heard two policemen complaining, and while I couldn’t understand what they were saying, I suspect it was something like, “Allah dammit, I hate graveyards.”
We worked our way to an elementary school across the street from the cemetery, and hid around back where I placed my next call to Richard Class.
“Four decades late, thousands of dollars short,” I said when he answered.
“I beg your pardon.”
Esther kept watch for me, and Kelly was ready for action should anything go wrong.
“The grave was a red herring.”
“The body wasn’t there?”
“Oh it’s there. What’s left of it.”
“And?”
“And what? The skull is gone.”
“Were the bones glowing yellow?”
“No. What kind of question is that?”
“So the magic wears off. Another question. Were there grooves on the inside of the coffin where he tried to claw his way out?”
“I didn’t look for that, but if there had been, I think we would have noticed.”
“So he was truly dead. Sadly, you didn’t accomplish your mission.”
“Don’t think you’ll get away without paying the rest of the fee, Class. That’s a quarter of a million dollars, m’man.”
“I should be president.”
“Good luck with that, but you’d better pay us what you owe us.”
“You didn’t get the skull.”
“Maybe I would have gotten it if you hadn’t been such a cheapskate. We’d have known a few days ago that the skull wasn’t here. We’d still have time to continue the search.”
“What time is it where you are?” he asked.
“Around eleven. Why?”
“So it’s around six in Germany. That gives us six hours.”
“I can’t get to Germany that fast.”
“What’s your location?”
I told him.
“All right, I’m going to try to call in a favor with a local wizard to open a rift. We’ll come get you. It may be an hour or two. Is there a safe place for you to go where we can find you?”
“We don’t speak Indonesian, and if not for the taxi driver speaking English, we wouldn’t have found the damn cemetery to begin with.”
“There has to be someplace.”
“There’s an auto parts store, which is closed. There’s a noodle bar, and it looks like it’s closed. And of all things, there’s a KFC in sight, but it’s bound to be closed now, too.”
“I don’t know what to tell you, Mr. Shade.”
“We’ll just stay here at the damn school.”
Kelly, Esther, and I broke into the school. We went to the main office where
there were regular-sized desks and chairs because I wasn’t about to try to wait in a classroom at a little kid desk.
Class called me back at one in the morning to say his wizard was going to be a little late.
I called him at 2:30, and he said to be patient.
When he finally stepped through a rift in his Armani suit, he was followed by a scrawny old woman in pink camouflage pants, combat boots, and a black turtleneck sweater. Her silver hair was done up in pig tails, and if I had a dime for every wrinkle on her face, I’d have been a rich man.
It was 4:40.
“You’re on the clock, Class,” she said in a harpy voice.
“Thank you, Beatrice,” Class said. He looked around. “This is my first visit to Indonesia, and I can’t see a damn thing except a school office.”
I grinned. “If we go outside, I can show you a cemetery, and a few closed restaurants.”
Beatrice shook her head. “We’re not here for sightseeing. This rift ain’t gonna get any cheaper, and I’m charging extra for the damn ghost.”
“I’m not paying for a ghost,” Class said, looking at Esther.
“Then we’re not going anywhere,” I said.
“That’s right,” Kelly said. “Esther is with us.”
Class sighed. “We have less than twenty minutes to stop Himmler.”
“How do you figure?” I asked.
“He has Maria, and she must have led him to the skull.”
“If Himmler killed Hitler, he should already have the skull, so he wouldn’t need Maria.”
Class sighed. “I didn’t tell you everything.”
“Clients never do. Spill.”
He shrugged. “Himmler had agents after Maria because she stole the skull. She’s the one who killed Hitler on Himmler’s orders. She never gave him the skull, and she disappeared. When she reappeared, he sent agents after her. I got interested because the prophecy changed a few years back. Your name suddenly appeared in it. And when I asked a wizard friend about you, he said you were involved in some layered time shift I still don’t understand. But with your name prominent in the prophecy and Maria surfacing, I knew I needed to get you two together. And now we’re here.”
“Then you’d best pony up the cash,” Beatrice said.
He opened his mouth to argue, but grimaced and said, “Fine.”