Brandenburg: A Thriller

by Glenn Meade

  Erica slipped a quick glance at Volkmann, who nodded almost imperceptibly; then she looked back at Lubsch. “Joe and I are working on a story. But it’s not exactly the one I told Karen about.”

  “Oh?” Lubsch said, his eyes intent and curious. “And what’s the real story?”

  “A man was murdered in Berlin ten days ago. Someone you knew at Heidelberg.”

  “Who?”

  “Dieter Winter.”

  Lubsch paused, but his face showed no reaction. “I read about it in the papers. What’s it got to do with me?”

  “We’re trying to find who killed Winter and why.”

  “And why are you so interested in Winter’s death?”

  Erica hesitated. “Because we think his death is connected to other murders.”

  “Really. And what murders might these be?”

  She told him about Rudi Hernandez and about what they had found in Paraguay.

  Lubsch inhaled on his cigarette, then shrugged. “So what’s this got to do with me?”

  “The German connection,” she answered. “The men in Paraguay are Germans. And Winter was killed in Germany. The police don’t know who killed Winter or why. They think there may be a drug connection, but they’re really in the dark. You knew Winter at Heidelberg. I hoped you could help us. That maybe with your connections you knew people we could talk with. Anyone who might know what Winter was involved in, or who his friends were.”

  Lubsch smiled. “Interesting. Do you know what these cargoes from South America were?”

  “No.”

  Lubsch stared at Volkmann. “And what part do you play in all of this?”

  “We’re working on the story together.”

  Lubsch glanced down at the table. “You carry a French driver’s license, Volkmann. But you’re not French, or German, are you? Your German is rather excellent, but your accent”—Lubsch shook his head as he looked back up—“a vowel here and there betrays you.”

  “I’m British.”

  The small blue eyes stared suspiciously. “Is there any other reason you’re both so interested in Winter, besides what you told me?”

  “Should there be?”

  “I asked the question, Volkmann. Answer it.”

  “There’s no other reason.”

  Lubsch nodded his head, the merest of gestures.

  The scar-faced man lifted a hand, and the leather truncheon swished through the air and struck the left side of Volkmann’s face. The force sent him flying backward. The man with the truncheon caught the chair and pushed it back again. Erica screamed, and a hand went over her mouth.

  Volkmann felt the cutting sting the truncheon left on his face, and when his hand went to touch his jaw, he felt a painful welt.

  Lubsch gripped Volkmann’s hair savagely and yanked his head back. “Are you sure there’s no other reason, Volkmann?”

  “I told you . . .”

  Lubsch stared into Volkmann’s eyes. “Then listen to me, Volkmann. Listen to me, both of you. Number one, I don’t help smart reporters who set me up for a meeting on the pretext of some stupid story. Number two, I take a very poor view of people wasting my time and putting me at risk meeting them. Do you understand?”

  Lubsch waited for an answer. When Volkmann didn’t reply, the terrorist roughly pulled Volkmann’s hair back again. “I asked you a question, Volkmann. Do you understand?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good.”

  Lubsch released his grip and turned to Erica as the hand covering her mouth came away.

  “And you. Don’t contact Karen again. What Volkmann got was a friendly warning. Next time, there won’t be one. For either of you. And understand something else. You’re on dangerous ground sniffing around Winter’s friends. If you want to stay alive, I’d forget about him and your story.”

  Lubsch nodded to the man with the truncheon, who turned and went out. Moments later came the sound of the Mercedes starting up.

  The man with the AK-47 slipped outside. Then came the rumble of the van door sliding open.

  Lubsch grabbed the kerosene lamp from the hook in the wooden beam and crossed to the door. He looked back at Volkmann and Erica. “Remember what I said. And be grateful you’re both still alive.”

  Lubsch extinguished the lamp, and the small cabin plunged into darkness. Footsteps crunched on the gravel outside and a door slammed shut.

  The van moved off down the track. Its engine noise faded, and then there was only silence and the squalid smells of the cabin.

  • • •

  They followed the track through the forest, and it took them half an hour to reach the village. The road sign said KIEDRICH. It was pitch dark, and when Volkmann and Erica stepped into the first inn they saw open, the half-dozen customers inside looked at them warily.

  Erica was pale and her lips trembled. Their clothes were covered in mud after the walk through the woods, and they tried to ignore the stares.

  Volkmann dabbed his jaw. “Not a pretty sight, are we? Order us a couple of drinks while I see to this, will you?”

  He went into the men’s room, threw cold water on his face, and dabbed it with some bathroom tissue. The welt had swollen painfully and it hurt when he touched his skin, but the flesh hadn’t been cut.

  When he came out, Erica had ordered two brandies, and he asked the innkeeper for some ice. He put a couple of ice cubes in a handkerchief and pressed it to his face.

  The innkeeper inquired, “Is everything all right?”

  “Wonderful. Our car broke down and I bumped into a tree in the darkness. I know we’re in Kiedrich, but where exactly is that?”

  “Twenty miles from Rüdesheim. There’s a breakdown service in the next town, if you need to get your car.”

  “A taxi would be better. Can you call us one?”

  “Of course. Enjoy your drinks.”

  When the taxi came it took half an hour to reach Rüdesheim. The Ford was still parked near the station, and they drove back to Erica’s apartment, arriving just after ten.

  Erica looked at his swollen face and came back from the kitchen with some ice cubes wrapped in a cloth and a bottle of schnapps. She poured two large measures and handed one to Volkmann.

  He dabbed his face, tried to smile, but winced in pain. “Now that’s what I call an entertaining evening, even if I didn’t exactly enjoy the experience.”

  “Are you okay, Joe?”

  “I’ve felt better. You?”

  Erica’s hands were trembling as she sipped her drink. “I really thought Lubsch was going to kill us. Do you think he meant what he said?”

  “You better believe it. He’s a nut case. Worse, he’s a nut case with a cause, which makes him even more dangerous.”

  “Do you think Lubsch knows something?”

  He put down the cool cloth. “You can bet on it. Otherwise he wouldn’t have warned us about Dieter Winter and his friends.”

  “Why do you think he wanted to warn us off?”

  “I don’t know, Erica. Only he can tell us that. But I’d like to know why he asked if we were interested in Winter for any other reason besides the one you gave him.”

  “You’re not going to try to contact him again, are you?”

  He shook his head. “People like Lubsch don’t give second warnings. If I did that, he’d kill me.”

  She seemed genuinely afraid. “So what now?”

  Volkmann thought. “I want you to drive down to my place in the morning and wait for me there. I’ll give you a key. I think it’s better after what’s happened that you stay out of Frankfurt for now.” He looked at her. “You’ve got a car?”

  “Yes, it’s down in the parking lot. You’re sure? About me staying in your place?”

  “It’s for your own safety, Erica. If Lubsch is in contact with Winter’s friends, they may come looking for us both.”

  He crossed to the window and cautiously pulled back the curtain. It was a clear, calm night, the Rhine barges moving slowly back and forth on the water.
Across the street by the river he saw a group of youths with shaved heads drinking from cans of beer as they strolled toward the Eisener Steg, their harsh, guttural voices carrying in the darkness.

  When he turned back, Erica asked, “Do you want me to get some more ice for your jaw?”

  Volkmann tried to smile. “No, but another drink wouldn’t go amiss.”

  • • •

  She made dinner for them and afterward they sat on the couch. “I’m still trembling after meeting Lubsch. Doesn’t anything frighten you, Joe?”

  “The same things as most people.”

  “Tell me about yourself.”

  “What do you want to know?”

  “Anything. Everything.” Erica hesitated and smiled. “You’re a stranger to me.”

  “There isn’t much to tell.”

  “Are you married, Joe?”

  “Divorced.”

  “You had children?”

  “No, no kids. Maybe my one regret.”

  “Tell me about your family. In your apartment there was a photograph. Of you as a small boy, I think. The couple were your parents?”

  He nodded. “The photograph was taken by the sea in Cornwall, in the southwest of England. It’s where we spent our summers when I was a child.”

  “What did your father do?”

  “He was a college lecturer.”

  “Do you see him often?”

  “He died six months ago.”

  “I’m sorry.” She was silent for a moment. “You didn’t want to be like him and teach?”

  “I guess it wasn’t for me. I joined the army as an officer cadet. Later, the intelligence service.”

  “Was your father proud of you?”

  “My father hated uniforms, Erica. But I had my mind made up.”

  “Tell me more about your family, Joe. I’d like to hear.”

  “My mother used to be a concert pianist, but she doesn’t play professionally anymore.”

  “Of course, I know of her.” She colored a little. “I never made the connection. She was pretty famous. Who are you more like, your mother or father?”

  Volkmann smiled and his jaw hurt. “My father, probably. Though I guess he’d never have thought it.”

  “He didn’t look like an Englishman.”

  “And how are Englishmen supposed to look?”

  “I meant that he looked more middle European. Tall and dark.”

  “He was a refugee, Erica, he and my mother both. They went to England after the war. My mother was from Hungary; my father’s family came from the Sudetenland.”

  “With a name like Volkmann, they must have been Germans.”

  “Yes, they were Sudeten Germans. Jews. Volkmann isn’t exclusively a Jewish name, but that’s what they were.” He saw a look of surprise on Erica’s face, and she blushed. “That’s how I learned my German. For a long time it was the only language my father spoke. He always spoke English badly.”

  She said quietly, “And your mother’s family? They were Jewish also?”

  “Hungarian and Catholic. So I guess that makes me half Jewish.”

  “Do you go to the synagogue?”

  “No. Because my mother isn’t Jewish, I’m not. And my father’s family were Jews in name only. When I was a child, my father took me only once to the synagogue, just to satisfy my curiosity.”

  Erica was silent; then she said, “The war must have been terrible for your father.”

  “He was in a camp, if that’s what you mean. That’s where he first met my mother. They were both just kids. They used to meet at the wire separating the men’s compound from the women’s. When the camp was liberated, they lost each other. They met again in London many years later and married.”

  “I don’t understand. Why was your mother there? She wasn’t Jewish.”

  “Not only Jews were sent to the camps. Intellectuals, homosexuals, vagrants, Gypsies. Even respectable, middle-class, ordinary people like my mother’s family. Anyone the Nazis considered a threat to the Reich, however feeble the reasons. Surely you knew that?”

  He saw the look on her face then, and she said, “It was a terrible time . . . for Jews, for Germany, for everyone. You must hate Germans.”

  Volkmann said, “Not hate, but distrust. And not individuals. No people are more intellectual than the Germans; they’re rational and philosophical. And yet no people became as brutal as they did during the Nazi period. I simply can’t understand it—how your countrymen could let it all happen. I worked in Berlin for three years. I used to wake nights, thinking of what had happened here in this country of yours. To my parents and people like them.”

  She was silent for several moments. “Does that mean you don’t trust me, Joe? Because I’m German.”

  “To be honest, it makes it difficult.”

  She nodded. “Then I’ll have to work on that problem, won’t I?”

  He didn’t answer her.

  “You said your father hated uniforms. But you chose to wear one. Why?”

  “Because maybe I always wanted to protect him.”

  “From what?”

  “From anyone who might try to hurt him again.”

  “I’m sorry, forgive me, Joe. I shouldn’t have been so inquisitive.”

  “How in heaven’s name did we get into that?” Volkmann stood. “How about some coffee?”

  He was standing over the sink rinsing a cup when she came to him moments later.

  “Joe?”

  He turned. She looked into his eyes. “When you came to my apartment at first, I thought you were distant. Maybe even rude and arrogant. And that you didn’t like me. Maybe that feeling was even mutual. But in Asunción when I cried, I felt that you cared. I felt that you knew what pain was.” The blue eyes looked into his face. “Something bad once happened to your father, didn’t it, Joe?”

  He didn’t reply but stood looking into her face.

  She said, “Would it sound terrible if I asked to kiss you, Joe?”

  She was standing close to him. Her fingers gently touched his face, her lips meeting his mouth softly at first, then more fiercely as they kissed.

  When they finally drew apart, she looked up at him and said, “I think maybe I’ve wanted to do that since Asunción.”

  • • •

  The long-ago nightmare came to Volkmann that night as he slept . . . He could see the sweat on Felder’s fleshy face and almost smell the man’s fear as they stood in the woods. Spring was in the cold dawn air, and Volkmann remembered how absurd it was: the trees budding into life and Felder about to die.

  The big East German had his hands tied behind his back, and he was shaking as his eyes flicked nervously from Ivan Molke to Volkmann. They both trained the silenced Berettas on Felder, and he was trembling as soon as they emerged from the car.

  Molke said quietly, “Turn around and look away, Felder. It’ll be easier.”

  Suddenly Felder seemed to break, anger taking over. “Anything I did was on orders, I swear it.”

  Ivan Molke shook his head. “You want to know something, Felder? Your people in East Berlin will think we’ve done them a favor.”

  Sweat beaded Felder’s brow. “Yes, I killed two of your people. But I did it on orders. I swear.”

  “That’s not what your people are saying. You acted alone.”

  “It’s a lie!”

  A sudden noise came from behind. A pigeon flew out of the low branches, its wings beating furiously in the silence of the forest.

  Felder saw his opportunity and made a run for the trees.

  Volkmann raised the Beretta and fired.

  The first shot hit Felder in the back of the head. When it did, his body punched forward; the second hit him in the shoulder as he stumbled. The big man groaned, and rolled over on his back, just as Molke ran forward and pumped another shot into Felder’s barrel chest. He lay on the ground, blood pumping from his wounds, a gurgling sound coming from his lips.

  Molke looked at Volkmann and said hoarsely, “G
et the shovels from the car. Joe. We haven’t got all bloody day. We’ll bury him here.”

  Volkmann had killed and seen men killed before, but never so close that he could hear their dying breath. He was aware of the cold sweat on his forehead and the nausea in the pit of his stomach as he hurried back toward the car.

  As he removed the shovels from the trunk, he heard the faint crack of Molke’s Beretta.

  He came back, and Molke said, “Are you okay?”

  “Sure.” Volkmann looked down at the body. There was a trickle of blood at Felder’s right temple where Molke had given him the coup de grâce.

  Molke said, “Even his Stasi and KGB friends were shocked by what he did to our two men. There are unwritten rules, Joe, and Felder broke them. No one’s going to grieve for him, not even his own people.”

  Volkmann started to dig. The earth was soft and moist, the sweet humus of the forest rising up to their nostrils. He felt a sharp crack as the shovel hit something hard, and Ivan Molke suddenly stopped digging and stared down at the soil, a look of horror on his face.

  “What the devil!”

  Volkmann saw the top of the muddied skull in the fresh soil. As Molke’s shovel turned it over, there was another skull revealed beneath.

  Molke paled as he knelt down, took out his gloves, and pulled one on. He picked up the skull, placed it beside him, then the other, before he clawed at the earth with his gloved fingers. In the raw soil was a tangle of bones, and it looked to Volkmann as if they had been there for a long time. Neat holes drilled the back of each skull. Molke turned away and vomited.

  “Cover it up again.”

  “But . . .”

  Molke wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “Just do it. Cover it up. We’ll bury Felder someplace else.”

  Molke’s face was drenched in sweat, and Volkmann thought it absurd that Molke could be so calm at seeing Felder’s bloodied corpse while the skeletal remains deeply affected him.

  They drove back toward the city and Molke pulled up outside a café off the autobahn. “Let’s have a drink. I need one after that.”

  His hands were shaking, and Volkmann followed him inside; they found a quiet table away from the groups of noisy truck drivers. Molke ordered them each a double schnapps and swallowed his own drink in one gulp.