Rickards paused again, this time much longer. His eyes moved to Angela. “Are you sure?”
The last pause was almost a full minute. “Okay. Thanks. I’ll pass it on.”
He glanced down to end the call before looking back up, finding Angela impatiently waiting.
“In case you hadn’t guessed, that was Ken Stives. He said he found out something interesting.”
She shrugged as if to say, What are you waiting for?
“Ken said he tracked down the mail carrier who delivered the letter to your grandfather.”
“Really?”
“He talked to him this morning.”
“And?”
“The man remembered your grandfather. Distinctly.”
“He did?”
“Not surprisingly, your grandfather was pretty shocked to get that letter,” Rickards said, nodding at the photocopy.
“Did my grandfather say anything to him?”
“Not at first. But the carrier said your grandfather had difficulty calming down. And when he finally opened it, the carrier said he went silent on him pretty quickly.”
“Silent.”
“Uh-huh. Until…”
Angela’s eyes widened even further. “Until? Until what? What are you waiting for?”
A small grin emerged from Rickards. “What’s wrong, you don’t like suspense?”
She got the joke and scowled. “Fine. I’m sorry. Tell me!”
“Ken says that your grandfather only started talking again when the carrier mentioned he’d noticed something interesting about the envelope. The one we don’t have.”
“Something about the envelope? What?”
“This carrier told your grandfather that it looked as if the letter had already been opened. And resealed.”
24
Angela sat still, pensive, thinking about what Rickards had just said. If the letter had already been opened, what did that mean? And when had it been opened? Fifty years ago, or more recently? Either way, she was sure it would have only exacerbated her grandfather’s sense of urgency.
Across from her, Rickards broke the silence. “Are you going?”
“What?”
“I said, are you going?”
“Going where?”
“To Peru.”
“No, I’m not going to Peru!”
“Why not?”
“I—I don’t,” she stammered. “I mean…what? No! No, I’m not going to Peru. I’m just…I’m trying to understand what happened and why. Not run halfway around the world.”
Rickards shrugged with coffee cup in hand. “I disagree. I think you have long passed trying to understand what happened. You’re now firmly into why.”
“What makes you say that?”
“Because I have two eyes. And can fog a mirror.”
She did not answer.
“Anyone can see it. You want to know why. It’s what we all want eventually. Knowing what is never enough.”
“Even investigators?”
He nodded. “Especially investigators.”
With a furrowed brow, she slowly began shaking her head. “I can’t go. For one, I have a job.”
“You work for a university. I’m sure you could get some bereavement leave.”
“And two,” she continued, “is that I don’t exactly like to travel.”
“You don’t like to travel?”
“No.” She leaned back in her seat against the vinyl backrest. “I don’t do well traveling.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means I don’t do well.”
“I thought most women liked to travel.”
“Not all.”
“What happens if you travel, do you explode or something?”
“Very funny. It’s not that I can’t. It’s that,” she paused, visibly struggling. “I can’t.”
Rickards took a sip of his coffee. “Well, that clears it up.”
“I know. I know. It’s just…not…easy for me.”
“To travel?”
“No! To tell you…why.”
Rickards leaned back in his own seat against the squeaking vinyl. Angela was suddenly very uncomfortable. And he had no desire to push her.
“You don’t have to tell me anything. Everyone has their own issues and I’m not trying to get into your head. Whatever your reason is, I’m sure it’s valid.”
“It’s not you. I just—” She stopped and took a breath.
“I shouldn’t have said anything. It’s really none of my business. I just don’t know how much more you can learn about this letter from here.”
“What do you think happened?”
“To your uncle? I have no idea. But I think I believe you about him writing that letter. Why is the real question.”
Angela frowned, thoughtfully. “What would you do?”
“What would I do about what?”
“Would you go?”
Rickards shook his head. “This is not about me.”
“But if it was, would you go?”
“I don’t know. The reason for him sending it appears to be somewhere in Peru. But on the other hand, any details surrounding that letter sixty years ago are probably long gone.”
“What if there really was a secret mission?” she asked. “The Nazis had secret missions all over the place, all the way to Antarctica. What if the Monuments team found something, or even discovered that some Nazis had carted off something important with them to South America?”
Rickards considered it. “It’s a possibility.”
“What if there was a small part of the Monuments Men team who didn’t go back with the others, but continued to South America after the end of the war?”
“Also possible.”
“And my uncle somehow died in the process? But not before he got a letter off to his brother. Which, for some inexplicable reason, disappeared for half a century.”
“It’s a plausible scenario.”
She paused for a long time before taking a deep breath. “Listen, the reason I don’t travel well has to do with why I switched my focus.”
“Switched your focus?”
“From archaeology to anthropology a little over ten years ago.”
“Angela,” Rickards said, “you don’t have to explain anything.”
It was the first time he’d called her by her first name.
“No. I want to tell you this. I need to. I need to tell someone.”
“Angela. Really—”
She cut him off. “Just…let me finish. I know what you’re going to say. We’ve known each other for what, three whole days?” She sighed. “For some reason, I think it feels easier to tell someone I don’t know very well.”
Her eyes fell to the cheaply made laminated table between them, her hand reaching forward and fingering a small chip in the veneer. “Just a few years after finishing my degree, I was part of an archaeological dig in Bolivia. Just outside of Tiwanaku. I was in a small group of fifteen Americans who’d joined a Bolivian team for a three-month research excavation. Not my first, but probably my most exciting.
“I was one of seven women on our team, along with eight men. Mostly graduates like me, with a few grad students and two professors. Living conditions were not exactly the Ritz but we were used to that. Living in tents since most digs tend to be in remote areas.”
She took another deep breath. “We were there for almost two months…when we were attacked one night. Out of nowhere.”
“By who?”
“We think it was a group of men from a nearby village. They stole most of our equipment, beat up several of the men, including the Bolivian team, and raped some of the female archaeologists.”
Across the table, Angela watched as Rickards’ eyes narrowed.
“The truth is,” she said gravely, “I came very close to being raped myself. Too close. And…it changed me. A lot. And not for the better. The excitement and sense of adventure that I used to feel being out in the field died. Completely.”
Rickards frowned. “Shit.”
Angela’s eyes began to well. “It’s funny. You can spend years cultivating a dream, working toward your goals, turning it into reality. Toward the one thing you think you’re meant to do. Only to have it decimated in a single night. In mere hours. Leaving you not even wanting to think about that dream again for years.”
“I’m sorry,” Rickards said.
She feigned a smile. “Thanks. But it’s not your fault.”
“Doesn’t mean I’m not sorry it happened.”
“The worst part is that it leaves you hiding a piece of yourself. In shame, from everyone you know. Afraid, and knowing deep down that someday it may somehow seep out.”
“You haven’t told anyone?”
“I told my grandmother. And a psychiatrist.”
He nodded and turned to gaze out through the large window. “Did it help?”
“I guess. I’m functional,” she said with a grin.
“We’re all functional.”
“Probably true. For me, though, it feels as if it’s always there.”
“I can understand that.”
She gently flicked the handle of her coffee cup, turning it slightly. “So, anyway, I went back to school and switched my focus, which was also a passion of mine. It makes it a lot easier to avoid traveling, allowing me to stay here and teach in my own little bubble of safety.”
“Is that what caused the rift with your grandfather?”
“No. He knew something had happened to me in Bolivia, but that I didn’t want to talk about it. The problem he and I had was with my grandmother. She became sick about a year after I got back, at the same time I had a lot of anger swirling around inside of me.
“When I was losing my grandmother, I began to really see what kind of marriage he had given her. A life filled with his own self-absorption. Correction, self-obsession. All he ever cared about his entire life was finding out what had happened to his brother. He was always studying, always searching. Whenever they traveled, it always had something to do with a place he wanted to investigate. And she always obliged.”
“Always?”
“I’m sure she thought his obsession would eventually die out. But it never did. Just always continually about him and the preoccupation with finding out what happened to his brother. The Monuments Men and their—”
She suddenly stopped.
Rickards raised an eyebrow, waiting. When she didn’t continue, he looked behind him to see if something was happening. “You okay?”
“That’s it.”
“What?”
“The Monuments Men.”
“What about them?”
Angela blinked and stared excitedly at him. “My grandfather knew absolutely everything about the Monuments Men! He studied and researched them his entire life.”
“So…”
“So,” she said, “if they had been in South America, for any reason, he of all people would have known about it.”
25
Flakes of snow blew sideways in the icy wind, making their long winding journey to Earth before suddenly being whipped up in a frenzy of turbulence near the ground, a few landing and sticking to nearby objects instead of the wide concrete sidewalk.
Hundreds more tiny flakes still caught in the breeze whirled up and around and stuck to the soft fibers of Fischer’s heavily lined coat as he stood outside, peering at the nursing home across the street.
A car was necessary. Rented from a small agency, it allowed him to move more freely without being tracked. Car services like Uber tracked each ride through GPS, which created a digital trail that could eventually be traced, if someone were to look in the right direction, even by accident. Far better to risk a credit card connected to a third-rate rental car that was not tracked at all.
To Fischer, the building resembled a hotel more than a nursing home, complete with a covered circular driveway in front and small bus stop near the sidewalk.
Fischer was waiting on the opposite side of the street under a larger building’s short overhang, near a single-door entrance to a legal firm, the lettering on the glass indicating a small, one- or two-man operation. The office next to it appeared to be chronically empty.
Fischer was waiting outside to ensure he could see clearly. Or at least as clearly as possible through the falling snowflakes.
According to his sources, the nursing home was the current address of the person to whom the envelope had originally been addressed. A Gerald Reed. Ninety-one years old. A retired war vet who had apparently been killed in a plane crash a few days before.
He glanced at his watch when the person he was waiting for finally emerged from the front entrance of the home, barely ten minutes after speaking to Fischer on the phone and just seconds before her taxi turned and rounded the small driveway. She walked briskly to the car, bundled in a thick black coat and matching headscarf.
The woman’s name was Lillian Porter.
A friend of the old man’s, the nursing home had referred him to her when he called, posing as an investigative agent. Though the way she spoke of Gerald Reed suggested the two had been more than friends.
His first call had been to get the name of the NTSB agent involved in the airplane crash. A woman named Gutierrez, who during his conversation with her revealed she was one of two investigators originally assigned to the accident. An older agent had apparently left the case for unexplained reasons.
Neither was it difficult to find out who the mail carrier was who had delivered the letter to the old man in the first place. That required only a quick call to the station manager at the post office, posing as a new resident and asking the name of their carrier, leaving no sense of suspicion on the other end of the phone. After all, whoever targeted the messenger?
Now, however, Fischer lingered in the bitter cold, waiting patiently for one simple reason--to see what Lillian Porter looked like.
She was not at all surprised on the phone when he gave her an alias as a reporter working on the case. Her reaction told Fischer she had already spoken with the police or NTSB. Perhaps even the older agent from the case named Rickards. Something he would need to ask her.
“Lord knows the residents have been through enough,” were the words he’d used. “Better to avoid yet another anxiety-ridden visit from the press.”
Fischer stepped back into the law building’s entryway as the taxi rounded the remainder of the nursing home’s driveway and turned right onto the main street, headed downtown.
When they were out of sight, he stepped out again and quietly walked the thirty or so yards around the corner to where he’d left his rental car.
Choosing what he thought would be the least frequented coffee shop in the area may have been risky. The Porter woman sounded slightly cautious. But this was to make things easier.
For him.
This wouldn’t take long.
26
Angela lowered the first of three cardboard boxes onto her dining room table with a thump. Her grandfather’s most important documents, given to her by Lillian Porter before she’d rushed out for something. Which was fine for Angela, given how cool the woman was still acting toward her.
Angela was now alone and able to relax as she sat down and pulled the cover off the first box, sifting one at a time through dozens of old manila folders.
Her grandfather’s records were meticulous, spanning his brother’s early childhood, friends, schools and education. Then college, his first job at the university, and finally his acceptance letter to be part of the Monuments team in September of 1942. She was unsurprised to see notes from the postcards she’d found in her grandmother’s things, and even a few more from her great-uncle from Kassel, Germany, and then later from Innsbruck, Austria.
After an hour and a half of reading, she reached her grandfather’s Monuments files, taking up the last third of the first box and some of the second. Thick folders were filled with articles, letters, stories, and, surprisingly, notes from discu
ssions he had received directly from what appeared to be other members of the Monuments team years after their return from the war.
Angela leaned back and stared at the boxes for a long time.
What was she doing? More importantly, what was she prepared to do? Was she really willing to get on a plane? Rickards was right. Anything having to do with this letter was probably long gone. Sixty years was a long time. Hell, almost seventy. Which had to mean her great-uncle was already dead. Maybe long dead. Was whatever he knew really that critical? To anything anymore?
She could feel her blood pressure rising at just the thought of getting on an airplane. Especially going back to Bolivia. She’d spent years trying to forget that horrible event. Trying to put it behind her and focus on a life ahead. Peace. Happiness. Only instead to find that she’d grown more spiteful over her own past, and now her grandfather’s.
This whole thing was just so bizarre. So surreal. And now she’d managed to tangle Joe Rickards up in it. Yes, he could make his own decisions, but it was she who’d shown up on his doorstep, almost forcing her way in. Forced a man who was already deeply wounded from God knows what. What kind of person was she to get him tangled up in her mess? Just because he had been interested didn’t mean he wanted to be part of it—whatever it was. Part of something she wasn’t even sure she wanted to be part of. But in the end, he was right. Knowing what had happened was not enough. Ultimately, she had to know why.
At eight a.m. the following morning, she did it again. With eyes red from lack of sleep, Angela knocked on the door and waited. After getting no response, she knocked louder and stepped back, crossing her arms in front of her.
It took several minutes for Rickards to answer. He opened the door with a drawn, tired expression, dressed haphazardly in sweatpants and a wrinkled T-shirt.
Angela didn’t wait for him to speak. “There was no mission in South America during the war. I’m sure of it. And no Monuments Men reported ever seen outside of Europe. None.”
He raised his eyebrows and nodded.
“And yes. I’m going!”
The Last Monument Page 8