The Last Monument

by Michael C. Grumley

  27

  The elderly Bauer listened carefully to the cell phone in front of him, hands resting calmly and deliberately over both arms of his chair. His suite in La Paz, Bolivia, where he had spent the last two days waiting for Fischer’s call was spacious and opulent. Behind him, the room was furnished with white leather couches and chairs with matching white plush carpet. The picturesque oversized window behind him displayed the rest of the bustling city against a backdrop of the lightly colored Andes Mountains.

  Fischer’s voice blared loudly over the phone speaker in native German. “Gerald Reed is dead. Killed in a plane crash.”

  “Confirmed?” If old man Bauer was surprised, he didn’t show it.

  “Yes. I saw the site myself.”

  Bauer remained quiet, waiting for more.

  “However, it seems he made a copy of his letter and gave it to a female companion.”

  “Have you retrieved it?”

  “Not yet. It has since been given to Reed’s granddaughter.”

  “Do they understand what it is?”

  “I’m not sure. The letter was sent by Reed’s brother Roger Reed.” Fischer paused only slightly before adding, “He was a member of the American project known as the Monuments Men.”

  Bauer’s eyes widened. “Say that again.”

  “The sender of the letter was a Monuments Man. One who did not return home with the rest.”

  Bauer was stunned, immediately leaning in toward the phone. “Impossible!”

  “It’s true. I have verified. Reed’s companion knew much about the brother.”

  Bauer remained still in his chair. A Monuments Man! From the war. Which meant he must have found something. Perhaps one of the two missing documents. But if so, which one? Bauer had what was left of the third.

  “She confirmed he received the letter a few weeks ago. From Peru.”

  That made it consistent with Lopez’s interrogation. The government worker said the letters had been found in an old post office beneath the rotting floorboards. A concept too difficult for Bauer to believe at first. The odds of something so profound being accidentally lost seemed impossible to accept.

  But if it was true, when was it originally sent? And what had this Monuments Man found in the troves of German artifacts during the war? More importantly, had he acted alone?

  As if reading the old man’s mind, Fischer answered his question. “The woman thinks the sender, his brother, was acting alone.”

  “How do you know?”

  “There was no indication otherwise. The letter appeared to be for Gerald Reed and him alone. No one else.”

  “Tell me more about the letter.”

  “Just as Lopez described it. A short message stating for the younger brother to come quickly, with the name of the town--Alerta. On the second page was part of the British explorer Percy Fawcett’s book, copied in Deutsch.”

  So it was true! Bauer could feel his aging heart begin beating faster. The Monuments Man had found something in Germany. The pieces were finally coming together.

  ‘Where is this female companion?”

  “Gone,” replied Fischer.

  “Good. Anyone else?”

  “The mail carrier.”

  “What does he know?”

  “Nothing anymore,” said Fischer. Inside the car, he glanced absently at the passenger seat and then down at the dark floor. He studied it a moment before reaching down and plucking something from the matted carpet. A strand of hair.

  “The carrier remembered delivering the letter to Gerald Reed but didn’t know what the old man was so animated about. He did say he noticed the envelope had been opened previously and mentioned that fact to Reed.”

  “That’s all?”

  “Yes.”

  “And what of him?”

  “He’s gone too,” said Fischer. “I’m now looking for the granddaughter.”

  28

  “You’re actually going?”

  Angela nodded, still standing on the icy porch.

  Rickards blinked and ran a hand through his tousled hair before stepping back to allow her in. She quickly stepped in out of the cold and watched Rickards shut the door.

  “I thought you had trouble traveling.”

  “I do.”

  Rickards stared at her. “So, when are you going?”

  Instead of answering, she pulled a slip of paper out of her pocket and presented it to Rickards. It was an airline ticket.

  “Today?!”

  “That’s right.”

  “Wait a second,” he said, holding up a hand. “Why today?”

  “Because if I don’t go now, I’ll probably talk myself out of it.”

  “So you’re doing it before you change your mind?”

  “Yes.”

  Rickards frowned at the thought. “That’s not the best way to make decisions. Just think about this for a minute.”

  “I did. All night. And you’re right. I want to know why. I want to know why my uncle was in South America when everyone else said he was dead. I want to know why he sent that letter. And I want to know why my grandfather risked everything to get there as quickly as he could, even after all these years!”

  “Okay, okay.” Rickards nodded. “I get it. But that was sixty years ago, Angela. Sixty years! A lot happens in sixty years. In fact, no one who was around back then probably remembers anything. Hell, they may not even be alive, unless they were a child.”

  “Maybe. Maybe not.”

  “Wait.” He looked at her suspiciously. “What does that mean?”

  “Do you know the population of Alerta, Peru?”

  “No.”

  “Four hundred and seventy-five people. It’s tiny. It’s smaller than tiny. And anthropologically speaking, I’m willing to bet that most, if not all, of those residents were born there.”

  “So what?”

  “The smaller the tribe, the less it changes. Including its history,” she said. “Anthropology 101.”

  Rickards opened his mouth but said nothing.

  “A small town like this would be our best chance of finding someone who still remembers.”

  “Wait a minute. Our best chance?”

  Angela froze. “Did I say our?”

  “Yes.”

  “I meant my. My best chance.”

  “Is that right?”

  “Yes?” Her tone sounded more like a question than an answer.

  “Just to clarify,” Rickards said, “you are in no way expecting me to go with you.”

  “Um.”

  “You cannot be serious.”

  She held up both hands and stepped forward. “Okay, listen. I know we’ve only known each other a few days. I get that. Believe me. I get it. But you are the only person I’ve talked to about this. And something tells me I probably shouldn’t be telling anyone else at this point. You’re the only person I’ve confided in.”

  “I don’t care. I’m not flying to Peru, Angela. And I’m sure as hell not doing it tonight.”

  “Wait, wait. Just hear me out,” she stammered. “Let me explain my reasoning.”

  When Rickards fell silent, she realized she hadn’t practiced this part in advance. “Well…why not?”

  “That’s your pitch?! Why not?”

  Angela shrugged. “Kind of?”

  Rickards rolled his eyes and shook his head at the same time. “Lady, you don’t know anything about me. Christ, I could be anyone. I could be some kind of maniac for all you know!”

  “Don’t you go through a lot of testing for the NTSB?”

  “Yes.”

  “And a background check?”

  He sighed. “Yes.”

  “Some kind of character assessment?”

  “Yes,” he replied through gritted teeth.

  “You’re right. I don’t know you, Joe. But I don’t think you’re a maniac. I see it in your eyes. In your body language. You have some issues, that’s obvious, but you’re not a maniac.”

  “You don’t know any
thing about me.”

  “It’s true, I don’t. All I know is that you’ve helped me. Selflessly. And that underneath it all, I think you want to know why, too. You said it yourself--all investigators do. And also,” she said, looking around his living room, “you keep an oddly clean house. But more than that, I think you’re an ethical person.”

  “You don’t know me,” he repeated.

  “I don’t,” she acknowledged. “But for some reason, I do trust you.”

  “Angela, listen to me—”

  “Please.”

  Her plea stopped him in mid-sentence.

  “Please,” she said again. “I know you don’t think it’s a good idea, or even worthwhile. But I told you about my problem. I told you why I’ve never gone back to South America. Or anywhere, for that matter. I told you how hard this is for me, but in spite of all that, I’m still willing to do it anyway. I’m willing to try. Doesn’t that say something? Not just for me, but for my grandfather. And even for my grandmother.”

  Rickards continued staring at her, his unshaven jawline tense. “What do you mean, for your grandmother?”

  Angela looked around before turning and walking to the couch. She sat, poised, looking back at him. “I told you I stopped talking to my grandfather out of anger for the life my grandmother was forced to endure because of him. The woman who was essentially my mother, wasting all those years over my grandfather’s fixation.”

  “You did.”

  “Well, what if it wasn’t all wasted after all? If this whole thing is true, or even part of it, then what she put up with all those years would just be wasted if I don’t go.”

  For a long time, Rickards stared at her skeptically. Finally, he lowered his shoulders with a sigh. “I cannot believe this.”

  29

  Bauer was now having trouble calming himself, unable to stop the faint trembling in his fingers when he stood and moved to the expansive window.

  It is real. It is all real.

  He peered out with both hands on the glass, taking in the city. Over 3,500 meters above sea level and the highest capital city in the world, it rested upon the famed Andes Altiplano Plateau, the most extreme section of the mountain range and home to pre-Columbian cultures such as the Chiripa, Tiwanaku and the Incan Empire.

  He continued staring until with a sudden impulse he turned around. Leaving the window, he walked back to the other side of the room, where he moved a painting to reveal a large digital wall safe—owned by the hotel but secure enough to satisfy his needs for the time being.

  He punched in a six-digit code, followed by a thumbprint, upon a small screen of illuminated glass, until he heard a loud clunk behind the door.

  Bauer twisted the heavy handle downward to pull the door open and reached in to withdraw several large, thick pieces of acrylic plastic, which he carefully laid on the table behind him.

  Five pieces in all, with dimensions just larger than a standard typewritten page. Protected between thick, sealed panes, each was a single sheet of paper, or rather, remnants of one.

  Each of the sheets appeared to have been badly burned and sported large dark, burnt holes with crinkling borders. Between the holes remained line after line of handwritten text, written in German and once covering the entirety of each page.

  But unlike the first three, the final two of the five pages, also permanently sealed under glass, had been almost entirely destroyed. Of those two, what few pieces remained also had small patches of German writing, but not enough to provide any meaning.

  Bauer stood, staring at them. They’d been immortalized under the clear panes since he was a young man. First under glass, then later under plastic. He’d carried them with him most of his adult life and had read them thousands of times. Perhaps tens of thousands.

  They were the only remaining pieces of the third set of documents.

  He still couldn’t believe the letter to tie them all together had come from an American. The town of Alerta he already knew of from Lopez, information given to him shortly before the young man’s death. But a Monuments Man was something Bauer had never expected.

  It was a mistake which vexed him greatly, although in hindsight, it would not have made a difference. Not to him anyway, or his search. Because the documents were clearly not where they were supposed to have been.

  Bauer had been told that the first two sets of documents had been delivered to the top two leaders of the Nazi party--Adolf Hitler and Heinrich Himmler--and had been intended for their eyes only.

  But clearly, at least one of those documents had not been delivered. Meaning either Himmler or the Führer himself had likely not been made aware of what had been found near the end of the war. Something they had been desperately searching for. Something of extraordinary importance. And the reason most surviving senior Nazi officers were given instructions to avoid capture and flee to South America immediately.

  But if the Americans had gained possession of one of the cases, or aktentasche, it meant either Hitler or Himmler had not. Because even while mad, both men would have been smart enough, or paranoid enough, to destroy them before letting them fall into American or Russian hands.

  It was a puzzle Bauer may never solve. Not now, all these years later. Nor how the secret had ended up with the Americans. But one thing he did know was that it was not the fault of the messenger.

  That man had done everything humanly possible to get the information to both leaders in time. He had personally delivered the packages to both aides-de-camp--Martin Bormann and Werner Grothmann, with urgent instructions to present them to Hitler and Himmler.

  Whatever the ultimate fate of the documents, it was not the messenger’s fault. Because the messenger had been his own father.

  Bauer already had a man in Alerta who was looking for information, but with great difficulty, lacking the name of the sender on the original letter. They had only initials and did not know who R.R. was.

  But now they did. Roger Reed. Older brother of Gerald Reed and missing Monuments Man.

  Now Bauer needed to find out what Roger Reed had discovered and what he’d been trying to convey to his brother. Was it just the documents--or had he actually used them? Had he used them to find what Hitler and Himmler’s men were supposed to? And what the explorer Percy Fawcett had also been scouring South America for in the 1920s?

  Perhaps he might still learn how the documents delivered by his father had been lost before the war was over. It was a burning question whose elusive answer now appealed greatly to Bauer. Because his father had made the last and final copy for himself, using the very best Jewish counterfeiter he could commandeer from the Nazi Party’s Operation Bernhard.

  Flawless copies with no errors, no unreadable words or markings, not even an accidental pen stroke, ensuring absolutely nothing from Percy Fawcett’s secret letter was lost.

  Three perfect copies. The last had been destroyed in a fire that claimed the life of Bauer’s father, leaving only remnants of the secret pages he could never reconstruct, until now.

  Of course, Bauer was not the real name of the now old man staring out over the city of La Paz. Nor had it been his father’s name. Their actual name was recognizable to anyone familiar with the artifacts for which the Germans were really searching during the war. Both the old man and his father were known by the name of Ottman.

  30

  Ottman.

  A name only one other person knew to be Bauer’s real name. At least the only one still living. That man was sitting quietly in a small, nondescript rental car, waiting.

  Fischer sat motionless, parked just a block and a half from the main opening to the apartment complex, his eyes glued to the front entrance. He occasionally glanced at the rearview mirror when someone passed.

  It was always surprising to Fischer how few people ever scrutinized a parked car with someone sitting in it. Notice? Yes. But actually take a good look inside? Rarely. And for the extreme few who did, all it took was Fischer to raise his phone and appear to be talkin
g to keep them moving.

  Like being good drivers, most people thought they were attentive, but they weren’t. Even watching people enter or exit the apartment building over the last two hours had resulted in only one person so much as glancing at Fischer or his car. And even then without the slightest look of suspicion. A world filled with sheep happily satiated in their bubble of false security.

  His gaze remained trained on the entrance, as well as the driveway next door leading down and into the underground garage, while he thought about Ottman. He wondered what the old man would do with the information he had provided him.

  Even as emotionless as he was, Fischer could not help but feel a slight hint of satisfaction for Ottman. With everything he had done, after waiting this long, he almost deserved it--if one excluded the murders.

  But to Fischer, it still meant nothing. It was merely a job. All Fischer cared about at the moment was finding who he was waiting for.

  Forty-five minutes later, Fischer’s phone rang. He immediately recognized the number even without a name associated with it. Another of those in Ottman’s employ.

  “Yes.”

  “I have something,” a voice said in German.

  “What is it?”

  “A hit on her credit card. Three hours ago.”

  “Where?”

  “The Denver International Airport. Seventeen hundred and twelve dollars.”

  Fischer leaned forward in his seat. “Are you sure?”

  It was a rhetorical question. The person on the other end was rarely wrong.

  “Yes.”

  “Where is she going?”

  “I don’t know yet.”

  Fischer blinked twice. “Where is she now--her cell phone?”

  “I’m working on that. But it takes time. Those are private systems.”

  “I don’t care. I need to know right now.”

  “You’ll have it as soon as I do.”

  Fischer ended the call, eyes still on Angela Reed’s apartment building. Joe Rickards. Gerald Reed’s girlfriend said Joe Rickards was with Angela when she came to see her.