Swastika

by Michael Slade

  “Did they?” Streicher asked the Gestapo spy.

  “So I’m told.”

  “When was that?”

  “April 3.”

  The same day the general and his sons were in the Führerbunker.

  “Where did they hide it?”

  “No one knows. Our best guess would be deep in one of the abandoned mines in the Harz.”

  “How many documents are gone?”

  “It took three Opel trucks for them to cart them off,” replied the spy.

  Von Braun had compounded his treason shortly after he met with the general at the Hotel Jesus. With Streicher gone from Oberammergau, the rocketeer had been able to coax SS-Major Kummer to disperse the captive scientists into various surrounding Alpine villages, supposedly to protect them from being wiped out by Allied air raids. Not only had that saved them from annihilation by Streicher’s SS, but it had also freed von Braun to wangle his own deal.

  “Where did he go?” the general asked.

  “Oberjoch,” said the spy. “He met his brother Magnus at a resort in the Austrian Tyrol. There, they joined Huzel and Tessmann, the pair who hid the treasure trove for him.”

  “What did they do?”

  “Nothing,” said the Gestapo spy. “They lazed about on the terrace of the hotel, sunning themselves, playing cards, and gazing up at the peaks of the Allgäu. Then, yesterday, they made contact with American troops and surrendered.”

  “How was he received?”

  “Von Braun? They didn’t kick him in the teeth. I’m told they fried him some eggs.”

  Good, thought Streicher.

  That’s what he wanted to hear.

  The V-2 might be gone, but he had an ace up his sleeve.

  When it came to hardware that took a quantum leap, the Pentagon was obviously willing to fold.

  * * *

  The first thing General Patton had done when he reached the Rhine was piss in the river to demonstrate his contempt for the Reich. As he landed on the other bank, he had scooped up a fistful of German dirt to emulate William the Conqueror. Then, with his trademark ivory-handled revolvers on both hips, the most pugnacious warrior of the Allied invaders had rumbled his Third Army across the Fatherland. Reports had him gunning down Nazis at a thousand a day.

  And now, as Streicher headed for the last stop on his odyssey, he received word that Patton had disregarded agreements made with the exiled Czech government and the Soviet Union and plunged the Third Army deep into the zone designated for Soviet post-war occupation. A forward unit of Patton’s army had entered Pilsen, and the people had come out to wave and cheer. As American troops burst into the headquarters of the Nazi commandant, General Georg von Majewski had pulled a pistol from his desk and shot himself in front of his wife.

  Pilsen was famous for its pilsner beer, but that’s not what Patton was after. He had occupied the Skoda Works and was searching its interior. Had he somehow heard about the special projects group? And would he next be storming off to find die Glocke?

  Die Glocke.

  The final card in Streicher’s dead man’s hand.

  Eureka

  Vancouver

  May 27, Now

  On his way to the Tudor building at 33rd and Heather, Dane made a side trip to the forensic lab. He had already received a report confirming his suspicion that the handwriting on the paper with Zinc Chandler’s home address was the Ripper’s. The documents section in Edmonton had also matched the order and direction of the cuts in the swastikas in the foreheads of the Cyclops and Golden Fleece victims. Still outstanding were the results of DNA tests on the blood from the splinter on the handle of the stake in the Congo Man’s eye.

  “You now qualify as a regular,” said the petite East Indian woman in the lab’s case receipt unit.

  “By definition, a serial killer makes a regular out of the cop on his tail.”

  “What have you brought us this time? Another swastika?”

  “No,” said Dane. “You’ll have to wait for that. First, someone has to wrangle a nest of poisonous snakes.”

  “You’re kidding!”

  The sergeant shook his head. “Meanwhile, have your gene jockeys done that blood test yet?”

  The woman summoned Dermott Toop from the biology department. Dane knew the light-skinned African-Canadian from after-hours socializing at the detachment. Toop was dating Rachel Kidd, the sergeant from whom Dane had usurped the Golden Fleece case.

  “Hey, Dane.”

  “Hi, Derm. Whatcha got for me?”

  The lab scientist handed the homicide cop his report.

  “The blood on the splinter didn’t come from the victim.”

  “So it came from whoever killed him?”

  “Most likely,” said Toop.

  “Good. When we catch him, you can put the final nail in his coffin with his DNA.”

  “Their DNA,” the biologist corrected.

  “Huh?”

  “The test returned a mixed DNA profile.”

  “Two killers jabbed themselves with the same splinter?”

  “No, the splinter pierced just a single hand.”

  “Contamination spoiled the sample?”

  “No, the sample’s pure.”

  “I give up, Derm.”

  “Your killer’s genetic makeup is composed of two different and distinct cell lines. I found contributions from two people in his DNA.”

  “What?”

  “He’s a blood chimera. An example of the genetic phenomenon I know as chimerism.”

  “What’s a chimera?”

  “In Greek mythology, it was a fire-breathing monster with a lion’s head, a goat’s body, and a serpent’s tail. In genetics, a blood chimera is a single individual whose cells derive from two distinct embryos, and therefore, two different blood-cell populations circulate in his body. Most of us carry DNA that comes from the union of an egg from our mom and a sperm from our dad, but a blood chimera has a twin within. In other words, the DNA of two individuals is rolled into one.”

  “How does that happen?”

  “A blood chimera begins as non-identical twins who share a blood supply in the womb. Stem cells pass from one embryo and settle in the bone marrow of the other, seeding a lasting source of blood. If one twin dies in gestation and is spontaneously aborted, the other twin—born as an only child—still has the blood of his dead sibling pumping around with his own.”

  “The kid has dual identities?”

  “That’s one way of putting it. Genetically, someone with chimeric blood is two people.”

  * * *

  Dane knocked on the door to the chief’s office at Special X HQ and entered to find DeClercq and Chandler moving photos and reports around on the Strategy Wall. The sergeant had spent the early afternoon at Internal Affairs, embroiled in the paperwork and interviews needed to justify his involvement in the second death caused by a Mountie in the past four days.

  “How’d it go?” Chandler asked.

  “Piece of cake,” said Dane. “The guy was in my home and armed to the teeth. I didn’t have a weapon, so had to use his silencer-equipped gun against him. Hard to imagine a cleaner kill in self-defense than that, says IA.”

  “Whoever sent the killer won’t see it that way.”

  “Let ’em try again,” said Dane with mock bravado, his arms up in a kung fu stance.

  “Be careful what you wish for,” cautioned DeClercq. “This guy—whoever he was—was a professional hit man. You got lucky because he thought you were a piece of cake.”

  “No ID?” asked Dane.

  “Not a peep. Fingerprints and photos of our mystery man got sent to every agency that might have controlled him. So far, no one has rushed in to claim the body.”

  “It’s gotta be the Pentagon or the CIA, the way that guy was armed. Corporal Hett suspects spooks in the black world,” Dane said.

  “Odds are she’s right,” Chandler replied. “Our military says the gadgets are American-made, and their contacts in the American
intelligence community deny knowledge of some of the stuff used by the mystery man.”

  “Hett says the U.S. military is so compartmentalized that no cog has an overview of what all the other cogs are doing.”

  DeClercq’s Strategy Wall represented the opposite approach. It was designed to give the chief an overview of his squad’s most convoluted cases. To that end, the collage of the three swastika killings had been joined by a cluster of photos and forensic reports concerning the high-tech hit man. That half of the corkboard wall was labeled “Swastika Killer.” The other half, separated by a vertical line, was labeled “Stealth Killer.” Pinned to it was the drag queen’s camera-phone image of the suspicious farm truck, along with whatever was known about the young men who’d vanished from boy’s town.

  “Links?” prompted DeClercq.

  “Three murders,” Chandler offered, “signed with a Nazi swastika. A child killer, a corporate thief, an extortionist. Each murder committed to mimic a classic Greek myth.”

  “Maybe not,” said Dane. “The myths didn’t come into it until after The Vancouver Times took that angle.”

  “Why’d he pick up on the myths?”

  “The killer sees himself as a hero. He’s proud of the swastika. To him, he’s killing subhumans. Adding those Greek myths into the mix plays to his Aryan psychology.”

  “The swastika,” said DeClercq. “Let’s focus on that. We agree that the hit man can’t be the Swastika Killer? He was dead on Dane’s floor when the Snake Pit stripper was still onstage.”

  Chandler and Winter nodded.

  “Most likely, he was after the file in Dane’s home, and was alerted to it by your VICAP query about U.S. cases with the same signature.”

  “Had to be,” agreed Winter. “Nothing else I’m working on would pull in black world spooks.”

  “So why did this case?”

  “Hett says the Pentagon’s black world came into being to take advantage of the weapons expertise of Nazi scientists like Wernher von Braun.”

  “Those Second World War vets are octogenarians now. I can’t see one of them as our Swastika Killer.”

  “The psycho must know something.”

  “What? A Nazi secret?”

  “Could be, Chief.”

  “Why would the Pentagon suspect that from our Swastika Killer’s MO? There was nothing in the query to VICAP except the swastika signature and the fact that the murder took place in B.C.”

  “A swastika link to B.C. must mean something. If the black world won’t tell us, we’ll have to ask the killer.”

  “How?”

  “Smoke him out.”

  Dane approached the Strategy Wall and flicked the latest message Cort Jantzen had received:

  Subhumans deserve to die

  You’ll find Medusa here

  My signature is the Swastika

  Display it in your story

  “I have an idea that might kill two birds with one stone. Swastika wants his signature displayed in the paper. Refuse and he might blow his top. Accept and we might spawn a copycat. So why don’t we give him a swastika that will make him wonder. We might buy precious time as he straightens us out.”

  “Elaborate,” said DeClercq.

  “The guy’s a Nazi. He wants the world to see his mythic symbol. He wants this,” said Dane, leap-frogging his finger—one, two, three—from each gouged forehead to the next:

  “Instead, let’s give him this.”

  Holding up a blank page in his notebook, the sergeant used a pen to draw a swastika:

  “Well?” pressed Dane.

  “It’s a calculated risk,” replied DeClercq.

  “The other options are to ignore him or meet his demand. Those pose greater risks. But displaying the wrong swastika will make the killer wonder what went wrong. Was the photo mistakenly reversed? Does someone have dyslexia? Is it poor research? The image won’t be what he actually carved into these foreheads, and he’ll wonder why. Many a slip ’tween cup and lip can occur in the newspaper biz. Instead of going berserk, hopefully he’ll contact us again.”

  The chief nodded.

  “Arrange it,” he said.

  * * *

  “Corporal Hett,” said Jackie, cradling the receiver between shoulder and ear as she went on keyboarding at her desk in the main-floor squad room.

  “It’s Horton Grubb,” the caller said. “From Pacific Rim Rendering.”

  The foreman, Jackie thought. “Yes, Mr. Grubb?”

  “That farm truck you were looking for? It dropped off a bucket of product at noon today.”

  “Get a license plate?”

  “It’s not the plate in the photo. But it’s the truck. Dented fender at the rear. Cracked tail light.”

  Jackie scribbled down the number on the new plate.

  “Describe the driver.”

  “He’s the blondest guy you ever did see. Around thirty. Looks like that space robot in Blade Runner.”

  “Rutger Hauer?”

  “That his name? Him, only younger. Guy sure as hell don’t look like no rancher to me.”

  “Get a name?”

  “Dirk.”

  “Dirk what?”

  “Straker. Strafer. Something like that. Thick German accent. Hard to tell.”

  “Know his ranch?”

  “That I got. Phantom Valley. In the Cariboo. Up near Barkerville. You think he’s running from the law? Seemed to go out of his way to let me know who he was.”

  * * *

  “Eureka!” Jackie announced. “I found it, Chief.”

  DeClercq, Chandler, and Winter turned from the Strategy Wall and faced Hett, framed in the doorway.

  “Found what, Corporal?”

  “A Cariboo gold mine, sir. We struck it rich.”

  “If history serves me correctly, you’re about a century and a half too late.”

  “That farm truck,” Jackie said, pointing to the photo on the Strategy Wall, “belongs to the Phantom Valley Ranch, up in the Cariboo. I phoned the commanding officer at the local detachment. It seems that the ranch is an old gold mine. The rancher currently living there is German, a loner and a recluse. Scads of No Trespassing signs on his road. Some kids snuck in a few months back and told their parents they’d seen a pigpen near the mine. The logs around the wallow were branded on the inside with swastikas.”

  As Jackie finished her report, Dane studied the Strategy Wall. The vertical line separating the Swastika Killer Case from the Stealth Killer Case had vanished in his mind the instant Hett linked the word “swastikas” to the boy’s town investigation.

  Chimerism?

  Doing the switch? wondered Dane.

  * * *

  On hearing that his grandson planned to follow family tradition and join the Mounted Police, Papa had suggested that Dane arm himself for his chosen career by studying abnormal psychology and criminal law at UBC. “If you aim to rise quickly in the force,” said Keith, “you’ll need a talent that allows you to shine in the eyes of the brass. For me, it was my flying experience. You say you want to be a homicide crackerjack. Okay, then learn the inner workings of crazy criminal minds, and find out how to build a case that lawyers can’t take apart.”

  To date, the sergeant had had only one case of separate identities. It was a brutal attack in which the suspect had literally torn his victim apart, pulling out organs with his bare hands. A casual laborer, he’d sworn he had no recollection whatsoever of the homicide. He’d thought his hands were sore from doing odd chores.

  At trial, his lawyer had tried to get the jury to buy dissociative identity disorder—what used to be called multiple personality disorder, before it was relabeled in the DSM-IV, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders—as his client’s defense. The attorney had used the usual background evidence to establish the split. His client was the only child of a “hard father” who drank to excess and beat up both his wife and his son. The timid boy was terrified of his old man, a towering bully who wielded the threat of death ove
r him. Caught in a mind-trap of never-ending risk, the boy had a fight-or-flight mechanism that never shut off, leaving him only one psychological escape: to identify with the aggressive personality of his dad. He would feel safe only if he became a bully himself. According to his lawyer, that set up the split in his personality. The boy both despised and admired his abuser. The good part of him hated his father. The bad part of him yearned to be a thug like him.

  The kicker, however, was supplied by his mother.

  She, too, was terrified of her husband, but she coped by sexualizing other relationships. Mom’s the nurturer, so sexual abuse by Mom breaks the greatest trust bond of all. The confused lad’s only psychological escape from that Freudian trauma was to hide away the “bad part” of himself as a separate dissociated identity that he no longer knew existed.

  And that, his lawyer told the jury, was how the Trog spawned.

  Exactly what the Trog was, Dane had little idea. But according to the lawyer, it was the Trog who tore the victim apart with his bare hands. His defense was that the Trog was insane, and because that split-off identity was not recognized by his client, who was legally sane, his client should be acquitted.

  The lawyer made it sound as if dissociated identities are separate people, instead of distinct personality states that periodically seize control of the consciousness and behavior of a person with a fractured mind. Arguments like that are largely why the concept of multiple personality disorder is now obsolete.

  Dane never did find out whether that jury had bought the “Trog-dunit” defense. Before the verdict could be delivered, the accused had smashed his skull against the wall of his cell and died from a brain hemorrhage.

  The classic case of dissociative identity disorder, of course, was Robert Louis Stevenson’s Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. The split between good and evil was what dissociated the doctor from the psycho in Stevenson’s novel. A similar psychological rift causes most genuine cases of dual personality. A traumatized child copes with overwhelming abuse by not experiencing it. His brain uses the mental mechanism of dissociation to seal off fearful parts of his personality. That evil identity gets locked away from his consciousness like a sleeper cell within his fractured mind. Eliminated and forgotten, the Hyde-like demon lurks unknown for years, or even decades, until some sort of stress forces the dissociated identity to seize control of the imperiled consciousness.