Brandenburg: A Thriller

by Glenn Meade

  “What about Rauscher’s background? Did the news articles say?”

  “Just that he was a businessman, that’s all.”

  Volkmann sighed and thought for a moment. “Did you have any luck with the politician, Massow?”

  Erica brushed a strand of blond hair from her face. “He’s still very much alive. He’s got an office in Berlin’s Kreuzberg district, a place where mostly poor immigrants live. I phoned his secretary and she penciled you in for an appointment in two days’ time. Ten o’clock in Massow’s office.”

  He wondered whether to mention the man at the Zurich airport, but decided not to. He smiled. “Good. Now, how about some more wine?”

  • • •

  She opened another bottle after dinner, and he spent a half hour reading through the file again. When he finished he crossed to the window and looked down. Erica said, “What do you think?”

  “There’s a detective I know with the Berlin homicide unit who might be able to help me look into Rauscher’s murder. I’ll call him tomorrow. Good work on the file.”

  “Thanks.”

  Volkmann looked down at the parking lot and the street opposite, but he saw nothing suspicious; if he was being watched, whoever was doing the watching was good.

  He went to sit beside Erica on the couch, saw the soft nape of her neck as she leaned forward to refill their glasses. He thought she looked very beautiful. When she sat back, she noticed him staring at her.

  “What are you looking at, Joe?”

  “You.”

  She didn’t blush, but turned away. When she looked back, Volkmann said, “You cared very much for Rudi, didn’t you?”

  There was a look like pain on her face and she closed her eyes, then opened them again before she answered the question.

  “It was more than that. There were times in my life when Rudi was the only person I could turn to. There were certain things I had to face up to, unpleasant things, and he was always there when I needed to talk. Even if only on the telephone. He had a way of lightening everything, of making me laugh.”

  “What were the times you turned to him?”

  “There was a time when I felt ashamed. Ashamed of certain things in my family’s past.”

  “You mean about your father?”

  The blue eyes turned to him again, but this time he saw the startled look on her face.

  “How did you know?”

  “Erica, the German police keep files on most of your country’s citizens; you must know that.”

  “You mean especially on the children of war criminals? Tell me what you know.”

  He didn’t repeat all the details in the file, but there was no need to. “Your father served in the Leibstandarte SS Division. The same division as Heinrich Reimer.”

  “What else?”

  “At the end of the war, as a young man, he escaped to South America. The war-crimes people eventually tracked him down to Buenos Aires, but he died before he could be extradited.”

  Erica said nothing for several moments. Then finally she said, “The first day I met you, did you know about my father?”

  “Yes.” He looked at her as she spoke.

  “That first time we met, I sensed that you found it difficult being near me. It was in your manner, in the way you looked at me. That maybe you hated me a little. Did you hate me a little, Joe?”

  He shook his head. “No, I didn’t hate you, Erica. Hate’s too strong a word.”

  “But you disliked me, because I was the daughter of an SS officer? Because of what happened to your parents? And now you must distrust me even more because my father was in the same SS division as this man Reimer.”

  He didn’t speak and she looked at his face. “Is that the reason you’ve been hesitant with me, Joe? Because of who my father was?”

  “Yes.”

  She shook her head. “You know, it’s a terrible thing that hate or distrust can be carried from one generation to another. That it can be passed from father to son. Because if that’s so, there’s no hope for any of us, not ever. Don’t you see? You’re blaming me for my father’s sins.”

  “I’m not blaming you for anything, Erica.”

  “Oh, but you are, Joe. I’ll tell you something. When I was a little girl, my father was everything to me. But I didn’t know what he had done. Killed people in cold blood. Men, women, children. I didn’t know that the hands I had held had inflicted so much suffering and death. I trusted him. And when he died, I felt I had lost someone that I had looked up to. I was sixteen when I first heard the rumors. And it was a year later before my mother finally told me the truth. From that moment on, he was no longer the papa I had loved, but a beast. He had let me love him and trust him when he didn’t deserve my trust or love. But no, your files will never tell you that. They will never tell you of the pain and suffering and the humiliation of the families and children of these people who shamed Germany so. Do you think every child of every Nazi is proud of his parents’ past? Do you, Joe? Some, maybe, but they are sick people. Decent people, ordinary people, they suffered because of what their parents did. I carry a scar around as much as you.”

  “Tell me.”

  The blue eyes looked at him intently. “We are both victims. You a victim of your father’s past, I of mine. But you cannot see that, Joe. You think all Germans are untrustworthy and barbarians.”

  “I never said that.”

  “You don’t have to. It’s in your eyes. Just like now. You still don’t trust me, do you, Joe?”

  Volkmann said nothing. Finally he looked at her. “I’ll be gone tomorrow for a day or two at most.” She didn’t ask him where, and then he added, “I was followed in Zurich today.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Two men in a green Citroën followed me.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “Apart from my office, you were the only one who knew I’d be in Zurich.”

  He saw Erica’s face turn red, and her eyes blazed back at him. “You think I told someone?” When Volkmann didn’t reply, she said, “Who could I have told, Joe?”

  “I don’t know, Erica.”

  She shook her head. “You can’t trust anyone, can you? I won’t even dignify your question by telling you what I think of it.”

  He saw the wet eyes and the struggle to keep back tears, and he wondered if she was genuine. “I’m tired. Good night, Joe.”

  Not knowing what to say, or whether to believe her, he watched her leave the room.

  • • •

  He slept fitfully, and awakened at two. He crossed to the hallway and opened the door to Erica’s room. The bedside lamp was still on, but she was asleep. He could see her bare tanned shoulders, and her blond hair lay strewn about the pillow.

  A car hooted in the distance and distracted him. He looked at Erica’s sleeping face one last time before he flicked off the lamp and crossed over to the window and pulled back the curtain. The window looked out toward Strasbourg, and the lights of the city peppered the darkness. He thought briefly of the voice-analysis report. Three voices. Three men. A little more substance to go with the shadow, but still things were moving too slowly.

  Sie werden alle umgebracht. They’ll all be killed.

  He went through the taped conversation again in his mind, trying to unravel what he had learned in the last few days, trying to find threads that connected. There were two separate but perhaps parallel lines: what was happening now and what had happened in the past. The people from the Chaco house and what they were doing now. And Tsarkin, and Schmeltz and his past, and the photograph of the young woman taken in 1931, and how they related to the present.

  How and why did they connect?

  What was the link?

  He heard the soft rustle of sheets and turned around, saw her sit up and look at him sleepily in the light washing through the window.

  “Joe?”

  “It’s me. Go back to sleep.”

  “Some of the things I said . . . I’m sorry,
Joe. Can you forgive me?”

  Her voice was husky with tiredness, and he could smell the scent of her body as he went to sit on the edge of the bed.

  “Maybe it was my fault. Maybe you were right.”

  She said quietly, “I don’t know why I like you, but I do. I think maybe you like me, too. And that maybe the reasons go even deeper than both of us can understand. Rudi told me how the Indians in his country say that God always tries to find a way to take away the stone in our heart, to heal our hurt.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “We’re opposites when it comes to our pasts, but really we’re two sides of the same coin. My father did terrible wrongs. He and those like him destroyed so many lives, and brought such grief to people like your parents. I’d never met a victim of my father’s evil. But now that I know you, I feel I want to help mend that pain. To prove that good can overcome evil, that sins can be redeemed. Does that make sense?”

  “I think so.”

  “Then will you do something for me?”

  “What?”

  “Try to trust me, Joe.”

  He placed a hand on her face. She pushed her cheek into his open palm and then kissed his fingers. It seemed to happen so naturally, and as she pulled him toward her, he found her mouth and kissed her. For a long time afterward they lay there, her head on his chest.

  Her voice came to him out of the darkness. “Tell me about your father, Joe. Tell me what happened to him.”

  “Why do you want to know?”

  “Because I want to know everything about you.”

  He looked away, toward darkness, toward nothingness. “When the Germans came to the Sudetenland, my father’s family moved to Poland, to a village near Cracow. He and his parents and his young sister. Then the war came and the Einsatzgrüppen were moving through the villages, rounding up and killing Jews. They were the special groups of mobile killing squads the Nazis used before they organized the extermination camps. One day my father’s parents went out to get some food. He never saw them again.

  “My father was thirteen. His sister was six. On the fifth day when his parents didn’t come back, he learned they’d been rounded up and killed. He decided to try to reach Budapest, where his mother had relatives. He got some food and wrapped up his little sister in warm clothes, and they set off.

  “On the third day, near the border, one of the killing squads caught up with them. They took them into a forest clearing with a group of other Jews and made them stand in front of a shallow pit. My father knew what was going to happen. His sister was trembling and crying, and so was he. When she reached out to her brother for comfort, an SS guard tore her hand away, and told her not to move. But she was just a child, confused and distraught with fear, and when she reached out again, this time the SS man shot her in cold blood.

  “After that, they made my father kneel down in front of the pit. The guards were drunk. The one who shot my father in the face wounded him but didn’t kill him. My father lay in the pit with his sister’s body, pretending to be dead.

  “When the killers covered all the bodies with clay and left, my father lay there, bleeding, too shocked to move, barely able to breathe. When it was dark, he managed to free himself from the pit and the tangle of corpses. He buried his sister in a shallow grave and wandered the mountains for days with a bullet in his face. This time he made it to Budapest and his relatives.

  “Then the Germans came again. His relatives were taken away. My father was caught in a roundup, and they sent him to Dachau, then to Belsen. The others were sent to the ovens. My father survived, but he could never forget what had happened to his parents and sister.”

  He lay silent in the darkness, and he could hear Erica breathing. He couldn’t tell if she was crying, and he didn’t speak or make a sound. It was such a long-ago pain that he couldn’t cry, and all he could do was think of his father.

  It seemed the silence went on forever in the darkness, and it was a long time before her hand came to touch his face. But Erica said nothing. There was nothing to say.

  27

  ASUNCIÓN. SUNDAY, DECEMBER 18, 2:45 P.M.

  Thick, juicy steaks and fat sausages sizzled on the charcoal barbecue, and sunlight washed the garden.

  Vellares Sanchez gazed down with no appetite at one of the slabs of meat as he speared it with a fork, turned it over to reveal the pink and bloodied rare underneath. Many things were bothering him. Many things, but all connected to one thing.

  The face of Rudi Hernandez flashed before his eyes. Lying on the morgue slab, white sheet pulled back, wounds uncovered.

  Sanchez grimaced and looked away from the unappetizing meat toward the sunlit garden. Clusters of neighbors, friends, and relatives stood chatting, drinks in hand. A special day. Maria, his youngest daughter, had made her Communion.

  Innocent girls in white Communion frocks and boys in ill-fitting suits sipped lemonade and ate chocolate cake and traipsed about the lawn, bored now that the ceremony was over. He saw Maria wave at him and smile. Sanchez waved and smiled back.

  The girl was very pretty, a tribute to her mother’s good looks. One day the boys would be falling over themselves to catch her eye. But not yet. Innocence was to be savored.

  The girl came up to him, flouncing her white frock. “Is the food ready yet, Papa? I’m hungry.”

  Sanchez patted her head of dark, curly hair. “Not yet, my sweet.” He saw his wife, Rosario, coming toward him from the patio. She had a frown on her face.

  He tapped his daughter’s shoulder. “Do Papa a favor, precious. Go see if everyone is okay for drinks.”

  The girl nodded and skipped away.

  Rosario came up beside him, still frowning. “I thought this was your day off.”

  “It is.”

  “Is everything okay?”

  He nodded. “The food’s almost ready.”

  “I didn’t mean the food. Detective Cavales is inside. I asked him to join us, but he said no. He’d rather speak to you in private.”

  “Then I had better see him. Do me a favor. Take care of the steaks.”

  His wife knit her brow. “And I thought you were going to be free today.”

  “So did I.” He kissed her cheek. “A policeman’s lot is not a happy one.”

  “Nor his wife’s. But you should have told me that before you asked me to marry you.”

  “And risk losing such a beautiful woman?”

  She smiled back at him, picked up two cans of beer from the buffet table, and handed them to her husband.

  “Take one in to Cavales. He looks as though he could do with a drink.”

  He took the beers, crossed to the patio, and stepped inside. The house was cool after the heat of the garden. He crossed to where the detective stood and handed him the beer.

  “Compliments of Rosario. She said you looked like you needed one.”

  Cavales nodded. “It’s hot.” He looked toward the lawn. “Nice day for a barbecue.”

  “Maria’s Communion,” Sanchez explained. Cavales was single. No ties. No responsibilities. But a good cop. Ambitious, in a quiet way. And thorough.

  “So,” Sanchez said finally, “what brings you to this neck of the woods on my one day off? It’s not a social call.”

  Cavales shook his head. He appeared tired. Like Sanchez, he had been working hard. Days and late evenings working on the case.

  “I’ve been over at Tsarkin’s house again.”

  Sanchez sipped the cold beer. “Go on.”

  “I know we searched it three, maybe four times and found nothing.”

  Sanchez smiled. “But you wanted to pick over the bones?”

  Cavales nodded. “Something like that.”

  “So what did you find that the rest of us couldn’t?”

  “What makes you think I found something?”

  “You see enough of my face at the office. And I’m not such an attractive man.”

  Cavales smiled. “You’re right.”

  “So, tell me
.”

  “I went through all the rooms again. Top to bottom. Just in case we missed something.” Cavales paused. “We did.”

  “And what did we miss?”

  “Photographs.”

  Sanchez blinked. “Explain.”

  “Photographs. Everybody keeps them. Albums. Of friends. Acquaintances. Relatives.”

  Sanchez shook his head. “There were none. I remember. Except one. A photograph of Tsarkin himself. On a dressing table in his bedroom.”

  “That’s what I mean. There were no other photographs besides the one in the bedroom,” Cavales said quietly. “Old people. They always got photographs.”

  Sanchez smiled. The man had a perceptive mind. “Go on.”

  “I spoke to Tsarkin’s butler about it. He was very uncomfortable when I mentioned the photographs. Like he had something to hide.”

  “And did he?”

  “You bet.” Cavales put down his beer and lit a cigarette, offered one to Sanchez, who accepted. “I told him if there was anything he hadn’t told us, he could be in big trouble. I told him I’d take him down to the station. He got upset. Said he’d done nothing wrong.”

  “But what had he done?”

  “He said the day after Tsarkin committed suicide, and before we thoroughly searched the property, a man came to the house. An acquaintance of Tsarkin’s, a businessman. He asked what the police had done and wanted to know if there were any papers left behind by Tsarkin. When the butler said no, he said he wanted to look just in case. The butler protested, but the man persuaded him it might be better if he cooperated.”

  “This man threatened him?”

  Cavales shrugged. “Implied, rather than outright.”

  “Continue.”

  “He searched the house, then took away some photograph albums Tsarkin kept.”

  “And?”

  “That’s it. He also ordered the butler to tell no one what he’d done.”

  Sanchez sighed, sat on the edge of the chair by the window. “Did you get a name?”

  Cavales smiled and nodded. “After a little friendly persuasion.”

  “The name?”