Brandenburg: A Thriller

by Glenn Meade

  “For sure. Thanks, Werner.”

  As Bargel turned to go, he touched Volkmann’s arm, and the sharp eyes looked at him. “And don’t forget, Joe, if anything comes up that concerns me, let me know.”

  • • •

  He read the reports in his hotel room at the Schweizerhof.

  There was nothing much new in Winter’s file except that he had been brought up in a Catholic orphanage near Baden-Baden. Judging from his institutional background, Winter was a classic joiner: a loner who needed to identify with a cause.

  Kesser’s file contained very little: a head-and-shoulders photograph of a handsome young man with thinning fair hair and high cheekbones. Graduating from Munich University the same year as Winter, he once worked as a programmer for a military research establishment on a two-year contract before moving to a commercial bank in Nuremberg.

  No mention of his ever having been a member of any right-wing party, and his address was given in Munich’s Schwabing district. Volkmann guessed the file had been deliberately kept brief because of Kesser’s involvement in military research and that the file was probably classified.

  When he finished reading he poured himself a scotch from the minibar. He stood by the cold balcony, wondering what Erica was doing at that moment.

  As darkness fell he could see the Brandenburg Gate, and the winged statue on the gilded Victory Column, lit up so clearly they could be seen for miles.

  He remembered the news pictures that flashed across the world that night the Wall came down in 1989, and the happy crowds waving the German flag; the young men climbing on top of the Wall in a rush of fervent nationalism, the looks of joy and energy on their faces as they sang “Deutschland über Alles.”

  As he closed the window, he took one last look at the illuminated Brandenburg Gate and the Reichstag building, then he locked the window and went to bed.

  33

  MUNICH. MONDAY, DECEMBER 19

  Munich was bitterly cold, and it was almost 10:00 a.m. when the Landesamt man delegated to meet him at the airport pulled up outside Winter’s address. It was a modest apartment building, and Winter’s rooms were on the second floor.

  When the man unlocked the door and stepped inside, he handed Volkmann the key. “I’ll wait for you outside. Take all the time you want. Can I drop you someplace afterward?”

  “The Penta Hotel. Your people searched the apartment?”

  The driver nodded as he went to go. “Sure. But it looked as though someone beat us to it. Most of the belongings appeared to have been taken. It looked like a professional job. The police didn’t find anything of interest, either.”

  Volkmann wandered through the studio apartment. It smelled musty, and a colony of spiders dangled on silken threads from webs in the ceiling fixture. In the tiny kitchen, in a filthy cupboard under the sink, were three empty Bushmills whiskey bottles and a couple of unopened cans of Dutch beer.

  Bookshelves ran along the bedroom wall. The mattress had been tossed and he guessed the police had searched the place thoroughly. Among the books he noticed a tattered copy of Mein Kampf, which was standard reading for German history students like Winter. The rest were paperback thrillers. No photographs on the shelves and no inscriptions in any of the books.

  He spent half an hour looking through the apartment before closing the door and stepping down into the cold street to join the driver.

  At the Penta, Volkmann checked in and telephoned Ivan Molke. He got no answer and he left a message. He showered, unpacked his overnight case, and called the local Hertz office to hire a car.

  The address off the Leopoldstrasse in Schwabing turned out to be a fairly prosperous-looking block, and Volkmann found Kesser’s name on the intercom outside.

  He found an office-supplies store in a mall around the corner and bought a plastic clipboard and large notepad. When he walked back to the apartment block, he wrote down the names of all the residents on the intercom on his pad and then pressed all the intercom buttons except Kesser’s. During the barrage of questions that followed, the door lock buzzed and sprang open. Someone expecting someone.

  As he stepped inside, an elderly woman appeared and looked at him quizzically, her eyes going to the clipboard.

  Volkmann smiled and said, “Block management. A problem with the plumbing.”

  The woman nodded and went back into her apartment.

  He climbed the stairs to the second floor and knocked on Kesser’s door. When there was no reply the second time, he removed the locksmith’s set from his pocket and probed the lock. He stepped into Kesser’s apartment and closed the door after him.

  He checked the bedroom first. In one of the drawers he found several parcels of new baby clothes still in their cellophane wrappers. He checked in the kitchen and bathroom, searching the living room last.

  On the windowsill was a photograph of Kesser and a pretty young blond woman.

  A couple of dozen books lined the shelves, computer-programming titles mostly, including a Bundeswehr signal-operations codebook marked Geheim—Secret—and some books on Ada, the military programming language. An album on one of the shelves contained photographs from Kesser’s university days, and in one of them Volkmann saw a picture of Kesser and Winter together, taken in a beer hall, the two young men smiling at the camera.

  He leafed back toward the front of the album, and saw a photograph of an older man who resembled Kesser. But it was a snapshot taken long ago in black-and-white, and the man was in the uniform of a Leibstandarte SS colonel, posed beside a burned-out Russian tank. He looked young for a colonel, and there was a written inscription at the bottom of the photograph: “To Hildegard with love. Manfred. October 1943.”

  Volkmann saw another picture of the same man, this time in color, and the man much older, a young boy on his knee, and he guessed from the resemblance that the boy was Lothar Kesser as a child, the features unmistakably similar.

  He heard the faint sound of a car pulling up in the parking lot below. Volkmann closed the album and replaced it on the shelf. He crossed to the window. A man stepped out of a gray Volkswagen, and as he locked the door, a blond woman, attractive and obviously pregnant, stepped out of the passenger side, her stomach bulging under a floral maternity smock.

  Volkmann recognized Kesser and her from the album photographs.

  He took a note of the telephone number and then stepped out into the hallway and closed the door. He passed Kesser and the woman on the first-floor landing, the couple ignoring him as they juggled flimsy plastic bags of groceries. He noticed that neither wore a wedding ring.

  In the parking lot, he took the Volkswagen’s registration number and drove back to the Penta. He poured himself a scotch from the minibar and thought about the photograph in Kesser’s apartment of the man in uniform. The Leibstandarte SS colonel was surely Kesser’s father—the family resemblance was unmistakable.

  • • •

  The beer cellar was in the Markets area.

  When he stepped down into the warm bar, he heard a group of young people singing in the corner. He had almost forgotten it was less than a week until Christmas, and then he saw Ivan Molke sitting alone at the end of the bar, hunched over a beer.

  He looked older, his hair graying at the temples, and he wore a gray business suit. He smiled as he recognized Volkmann and beckoned to him.

  “Hey, it’s good to see you, Joe.” Molke shook his hand firmly. “There’s a room in the back where we can talk.”

  He ordered a beer for Volkmann, and when it came, he led the way into the small room. They sat facing each other across a trestle table.

  “I heard about your father, Joe. I was sorry to learn of his death.” Molke paused. “I presumed when you rang me that this wasn’t going to be a social call. So maybe you better tell me what it’s about.”

  “I need your help, Ivan. You’re still in the business?”

  Molke half smiled. “You know what they say: once in, never out. I quit officially two years ago and came
south. But then, you would have heard.” He paused to sip his drink. “I’m in partnership in an agency in the city. Countering industrial espionage.” He smiled. “Not as exciting as the old days in Berlin, but it pays the bills.”

  “But you’re still in?”

  “The Interior Ministry uses me on a consultancy basis maybe once or twice a year.” Molke paused. “So what’s this about, Joe?”

  Volkmann filled him in, and when he showed the copy of the black-and-white photograph taken of the woman in the Chaco, Molke stared at it before frowning.

  “Interesting. But what’s the connection between the past and the present? Between South America and Germany?”

  “That’s what I need to find out, Ivan.”

  “Can you discover who the young woman in the photograph might be?”

  Volkmann shook his head. “I haven’t had any luck. It was such a long time ago. Besides, she may have been no one important, not even related to Schmeltz. But the man in the photograph may be a clue.”

  Molke thought for a moment. “Many years ago, when Willy Brandt got tough on our institutions in Germany responsible for hunting down wanted Nazis, they used several experts to verify identities from photographs. Mostly academics who specialized in the Nazi period, and some ex-Nazis themselves. I can ask around if you like. If the woman in the photograph was somebody important, they may be able to help identify her.”

  “Thanks, Ivan.”

  “This guy Kesser whose apartment you checked. What do you intend doing?”

  “I’d like to tag him for a few days. Maybe it’ll turn up something. I’ll see you get paid your going rate.”

  Molke smiled and waved dismissively. “When do you want to start?”

  “Tonight, if that suits you?”

  “No sweat, Joe. You want to use two cars or one?”

  “Two.”

  “I’ll bring along a couple of talkies in case we need them. They’re long-range. The latest stuff.”

  • • •

  It was eight-thirty when they pulled up in their cars around the corner from Kesser’s apartment. The light was on in Kesser’s living room, the Volkswagen parked in the lot out front.

  They drove Molke’s green BMW back around and pulled in across the street by the park, from where they could see the apartment block. Molke gave Volkmann one of the two-way radios, and Volkmann showed him the head-and-shoulders photograph of Kesser.

  They sat in the BMW until well after midnight, when the lights in Kesser’s apartment went out. A little after one, they decided to call it a night and arranged to meet back at the park at five-thirty.

  34

  MUNICH. MONDAY, DECEMBER 19

  Volkmann slept until five, then showered and shaved.

  As he pulled up outside the park half an hour later, it was still pitch dark, but Molke’s BMW was already there. The light was on in Kesser’s living room, and Volkmann could see a shadow move back and forth behind the drawn shades.

  He climbed in beside Molke, who said, “The light went on ten minutes ago, just after I got here. Looks like he’s getting ready to move. You want to do first tag?”

  “Sure.”

  “Don’t forget to keep the radio on. We can change tag every ten minutes. The traffic’s going to be pretty thin while he’s driving.”

  “Okay, Ivan.”

  As Volkmann climbed out of the BMW, Molke grinned and said, “Let’s hope Kesser’s not just taking an early morning jog in the park. I’d hate to have got up this early for nothing.”

  • • •

  Kesser came out of the apartment half an hour later wearing a blue rainproof anorak and carrying a briefcase.

  It started to rain heavily, and when Kesser’s Volkswagen pulled out of the parking lot, Volkmann gave him a fifty-yard start before following, seeing Molke’s lights behind him.

  Fifteen minutes later, the Volkswagen pulled up at a filling-station restaurant on the Munich ring road, and Kesser took half an hour over breakfast and read a newspaper before filling his tank and taking the road south.

  The traffic was already busy by seven-thirty, and it was more than an hour later when Kesser turned off from the Tergen See road and the Volkswagen began to climb into the mountains. The traffic was light, and several times both Molke and Volkmann had to drop back until they saw the gray Volkswagen turn off to the right and climb up a steep, narrow mountain track.

  Volkmann halted the Opel a hundred yards farther on. The narrow mountain road Kesser took wasn’t signposted, but a notice said that the property beyond that point was private.

  Molke pulled up, climbed out of the BMW, and moments later slid in beside Volkmann. He rubbed the fogged window. A thick forest of pines rose up to the top of the mountain, smothered in a halo of low rain cloud, the woods patchy with snow.

  “What do you think, Joe? You want to risk going up after him?”

  Volkmann hesitated. “You know what that mountain is called?”

  “I saw a sign a mile back that said the Kaalberg was this way.” Molke smiled. “There’s got to be something up that mountain for Kesser to drive all this way. You want to risk playing lost tourist? The last town we passed through had a hunting shop. I could go and get us a couple of walking canes and waterproofs. A little exercise might do us both good.”

  “Sure, why not?”

  Molke smiled as he climbed out of the Opel into the drizzle. “If Kesser appears again, give me a buzz on the radio. I’ll be as quick as I can.”

  Volkmann moved the Opel just off the road’s shoulder. Below lay a deep, wooded valley, the quaint wooden houses of a Tyrolean village barely visible in the rain.

  The green BMW returned half an hour later. Ivan Molke climbed out carrying two sturdy mountain walking sticks and olive-green waterproof capes. He removed a pair of powerful Zeiss binoculars from the trunk before joining Volkmann.

  They decided to keep off the dirt track Kesser took and instead climbed up through the thick pines. The rain softened to a light drizzle and in the forest, Molke tapped Volkmann’s arm and pointed through the trees.

  With the powerful Zeiss, Volkmann could make out a wooden sentry hut and two guards standing in front of a metal security barrier. Both wore civilian clothes and had Heckler & Kochs draped across their chests, one of the men smoking a cigarette.

  Past the barrier, they saw the sloped, high roof of a large traditional berghaus. It had a jutting balcony and the mountain that rose behind was covered in low cloud. Nearby was a drab-looking concrete building, maybe twenty yards square.

  Fifteen minutes later, they had moved back down through the forest and were sitting in Ivan Molke’s BMW.

  “What do you make of it, Joe?”

  Volkmann shook his head. “Has the government got any top-secret research establishments in this part of Germany?”

  “Why do you ask?”

  “Kesser worked for a government research unit a couple of years back. And those guys at the sentry box wore no uniforms, but they carried machine pistols.”

  “There’re a couple of hush-hush places in Bavaria, sure. But where, I couldn’t say. You want me to check it out for you?”

  “Discreetly, Ivan. I don’t want anyone coming down on Ferguson for playing off-pitch.”

  “Okay. If it gets too hairy, I’ll back off quietly. You want to call it a day?”

  Volkmann nodded. “But I’d like to have Kesser watched for the next couple of days. A record of his movements kept. Who he talks to, who he visits.”

  Molke said, “I’ll use a couple of the men from my agency; it shouldn’t be a problem.” He paused. “What about a bug on Kesser’s phone?”

  “You think you could do that?”

  Molke smiled. “If his girlfriend stays out of the way long enough, sure.”

  “Okay, but warn your people to be careful, in case Kesser is armed.”

  “I’ll start the watch tonight.”

  • • •

  Volkmann checked out of the hotel and r
eturned the rental car. Molke drove him to the airport and as they passed the signpost for Dachau, a white-and-green tour bus was turning off toward the concentration camp road.

  The old camp at Dachau had been preserved after the war and lay a couple of miles to the north, a place the tourists and the curious came to see and one of the few remaining legacies of the Third Reich preserved for posterity. He had visited it after his last term at Cambridge, and stood on the infamous Appellplatz, where his father would have stood on cold winter mornings waiting for the five o’clock roll call, the barbed-wire perimeter and the watchtowers and the gas chamber and the ovens all grim reminders of his father’s nightmare.

  Beyond the rain-streaked glass of the tour bus he saw the faces of the passengers. Young faces pressing somberly against the damp glass. Several of them wore skull caps, and a sign against the glass proclaimed that they were a student tour group from Tel Aviv University.

  As they overtook the bus, Volkmann noted the grim look on Ivan Molke’s face, but neither man spoke.

  • • •

  It was after seven when he arrived back in Strasbourg and checked his desk. He had no messages, and neither Peters nor Ferguson was in his office. Two Italian officers were still on duty, and they stood by the coffeemaker talking with Jan de Vries. Volkmann lingered with them for ten minutes before he telephoned Erica and drove over to the apartment.

  She seemed glad to see him, and he realized he had missed her in the past forty-eight hours. He booked a restaurant in Petite France, and over dinner she asked him what he had been doing in the last two days. He didn’t go into detail and he didn’t tell her what had happened with Kesser, just that he had got more information on him and Winter but that for now, it was classified. She didn’t question him, and she didn’t ask him what the information was, although he could see the curiosity in her eyes.

  After dinner, they walked back through Petite France. The old town with its pretty period houses and its narrow, cobbled streets and babbling river was deserted, and at one of the weirs Volkmann stopped to look down at the water. He was aware of her looking at him, and when he turned to look back, he saw the blue eyes linger on his face.