by Tanja Pleva
TanjaPleva
BLOODLINE OF EVIL
PART I
Books:
Gottesopfer (In The Name of God)
Totenpech (City of the Dead)
Orchideenstaub
Bloodline of Evil Part I
The Devil´s Breath Part II
For more information about Tanja and her books visit:
www.tanjapleva.com
IMPRINT:
Copyright ©2012 by Tanja Pleva
ISBN: 978-958-46-0348-7
Translated, Edited and Proofread by the Company Globale-Kommunikation, Munich, Germany
Editor: C. Neumann
Coverphoto © by Nina Riccio
Contact: [email protected]
The moral might of the author has been asserted.
All characters and events in this publication, other than those clearly in the public domain, are fictious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
Bloodline Of Evil & The Devil´s Breath
PART I
A Nazi war criminal on the run, a woman on her deathbed, a young doctor in search of a terrible family secret and the hunt for a serial killer who knows no humanity...
Even in the middle of the fight against the ghosts of the past, Sam O'Connor Europol investigator brings back a new case in everyday life. A woman in Barcelona became a victim to a bestial crime. At first, the investigators suspect it's a single act, but as Sam has hardly begun to familiarize himself with the case, the culprit strikes again. Sam begins to suspect that behind every crime, an even bigger reason exists, because it seems that it means much more to the killer than just to cruelly disfigure his victims.
As the investigation doesn't progress, Sam is sent against his will to Colombia, South America. Here, doors open that lead him to a time of Nazi criminals and bring him closer to a secret not even the people directly involved suspect.
In the land of the stronghold of crimes, it seems that a prophecy Lina has left him behind becomes dramatically true. His death.
CONTENT:
PROLOGUE
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
1949
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.
1952
13.
14.
15.
16.
17.
18.
1953
19.
20.
21.
1955
22.
23.
24.
25.
26.
27.
28.
1956
29.
30.
31.
1963
32.
33.
34.
Quidquid agis, prudenter agas et respice finem.
Whatever you do, do it wisely,
and consider the consequences!
Gesta Romanorum 103
PROLOGUE
Five political prisoners shuffled with lowered heads across the courtyard. They all knew about the doom that lay before them, yet nobody said a word nor would show fear. They were as alone in their minds as if it was their hour of birth or death. Alone.
It was cold, floes crunched, cracking beneath their steps into cobweb patterns, like pieces of glass. Their bodies were draped in worn clothes, which were too thin for this season, but it did not matter, except for those who wore them. Freezing was an everyday matter, as were hunger and fear - of the next minute, the next hour, the next day. Who would be the next one to find salvation?
Placing one foot before the other, the short row headed straight for the grey building that had The Room inside, the focus of many a tale. Each one was more terrifying than the other. Only one thing was sure: No one so far had left The Room alive.
He was the last one in the row of five. No, the last but one, if he included the guard who followed him. Gun raised, a ferocious dog on a short leash - he would not hesitate to open fire, if anybody dared to tread one single step out of the line.
Only three days ago he had witnessed that. The guy who had tried to escape had been downed with a single shot. The rest had been for the dogs, so their food for the day was saved.
He wondered whether to choose this faster death or to proceed further into uncertainty. He went on. Hope, keeping him alive during recent months, was the last thing to die. It was the food of any human soul.
Ultimately they entered the building. The warmth inside was somewhat comforting; at once, life returned into his almost dead limbs. They swell, and an uncomfortable itch pricked his reddened skin.
The five men were brought into an anteroom of The Room; two women were sitting there on simple wooden benches.
The door opened as soon as the five had been ordered to sit down as well, and a tall, most cultivated man in a white smock gazed at the newcomers. His sharp-edged face was rent by a smile of satisfaction. He gave an unequivocal sign to one of the women, ordering her to enter. Only as she rose it was seen that she had a slightly domed belly. Most of them had bellies which were distended from hunger and bad nutrition, but this woman looked unexpectedly well-fed.
The doctor left the door open, so that everybody might watch what would happen now in The Room. Two assistants strapped the woman down on a couch, and her legs were spread. She gave no sound, suffering the degradation in silence, and when she turned her head aside, their eyes met. This desperate, forlorn expression in her gaze was hardly bearable.
He looked down on the grey concrete floor at his feet and felt dismal about his cowardice. Why did he not dare to interfere? To rise up? What was wrong with him and the others who had all lowered their eyes to avoid witnessing this undignified deed any further? Any spine of his fellow sufferers seemed broken.
A scream resounded through both small rooms. It was so blood-curdling that everyone was torn from lethargy and looked up in fright.
The doctor held a fetus of about 15-cm size headlong up. But the tiny thing made no sound. Unanimous shaking heads of the other doctors, then the small body was heedlessly thrown into the garbage can.
The prisoners in the anteroom now watched in blank terror, eyes widened in disbelief, mouths open for muted screams. For the first time since they had entered the anteroom they looked at each other. Nobody dared to speak; no one wanted to attract attention. No one wanted to be the next one.
This white-clad demon wiped the bloodstained hands on his smock and slowly turned around. Lifted the finger pointed straight at him.
The others cast their embarrassed looks to the ground, and he could feel how glad they were that it was not yet their turn. It left a tiny speck of hope to them.
His heart was pounding, his blood shot through the arteries in overpressure and his head hammered. Shaking, he tried to get up, but his legs refused service, they hardly supported him. When he stood at last, he had to lean for a moment at the wall. Finally, he lifted up his head, breathed deeply, and entered The Room, pursued by the stiffened gaze of the dead woman.
1.
HAMBURG The Weird Sisters, as they jokingly referred to themselves, sat in a small breakfast café in Eppendorf, a suburb of Hamburg, celebrating a birthday by cheerfully dr
inking champagne.
Jasmin, who was the birthday girl, sang aloud, 'Happy Birthday to meeeee' and emptied her glass in a gulp. Then she leaned slightly over the table and whispered to her two friends and that attracted the attention of any guest who for the last two hours had grown accustomed to the rather rude noise level of the ladies. Especially one man, sitting with his back turned to the Weird Sisters and reading a newspaper, was pricking his ears.
'I'm going to tell you something, but it shall be kept among us. Not a word to anybody got that?!'
'Yes, come hell or high water', said her friends, Nicki and Sandra in unison; and the latter, a black-haired beauty even added, 'I swear on the life of our plastic surgeon.'
This established to all three of them that their mouths would stay shut, no matter what might happen.
Jasmin took another gulp of sparkling drink and watched her two friends across the edge of her glass.
'Now will you go on! Relieve us!' Nicki shuffled impatiently on her chair.
Jasmin, enjoying the dedicated attention to the last bit, quietly told them what mysterious deeds she had committed within the last two months.
The man who was sitting two tables further away could now only pick up snippets anymore. He believed to hear her calling him a real bargain. What a boost to his dented confidence! He wondered whether he should reveal himself, but his smile froze only a minute later, because the subsequent description of his appearance drove red color into his face: an ugly ET's head, the look of a watery idiot, receding hairline, Count Orlok style…
He sat stiff. The newspaper in his hands slightly quivered, so that he had to fold it up and lay it on the table for a moment.
Why, oh, why had he sent her this photograph? Simply because he had assumed that they would meet soon, and he did not want to come along as a rotten Kinder Egg.
Suddenly all three of them heartily laughed. Did they perhaps laugh about him? Sweat was dripping from his brow. How humiliating, how embarrassing!
He picked up his newspaper again and looked at the window. The reflection in the glass revealed to him those three women sitting there at their table. Now Jasmin was lifting her glass and drinking again with a single gulp. 'On a successful weekend at the Arts Hotel', she cried aloud.
'Barcelona is a shopping paradise you will absolutely have to go to, Burberry…' Sandra started to tell about her own latest trip to Spain.
The three women left the café ten minutes later. The guest with the newspaper was still staring blindly at the letters without recognizing a single line. Yet he remained seated for a while, looking after the blonde one with the bob haircut as she got into her black Mercedes and drove away.
Her photograph had attracted him at once. Blue eyes, a perfectly shaped little nose, full lips - well, she had cheated a little bit about her proportions, and she was quite a little stronger than she had described herself. But this could be tolerated. Women were like that.
His face was still glowing. Of course he knew already that she was married and a mother of two children. Once she had even mentioned that she was living in Klein Borstel, and she had also sent him a photo that showed her standing beside her Cabriolet. It had been easy to find her, though the district was not as klein, small, as its name might suggest.
On the one hand he felt deeply hurt and injured, wild fury was rising in him on the other hand. She had attacked him ad hominem, had made him look like a fool before her friends. He could not take that. But this had not been the final word about this subject. He would contrive something very special.
2.
Barcelona The fellow followed the woman whom was calling herself Sunshine on the Web and whom he already had fallen in love with after the second day. Of course that was only a virtual world, he had been aware of this from the very beginning. She, though, had not wanted to listen to that, and she had flirted with him like mad, giving him hope.
After his divorce he had been veritably devoured from inside out by a period of loneliness and frustration. He had not been able to paint anymore, he had had no ideas, and nothing that he would begin would end successfully.
And then Sunshine had entered his life and the brush-strokes were gliding again on their own across the canvas. He felt like a different person. Several times he had tried to meet her, but she had always made an excuse. Of course he had subconsciously feared as well that she might not find him attractive. Admittedly, that last photo which he had sent her had been a very bad one. But then, was appearance so important? What about the inner values of the heart? He was quite sure that she would like him, if he managed at last to talk to her in person. Not for nothing had they been discussing whatever topics for almost two months, chatting well into the early morning hours.
He spent three hours trailing her from shop to shop through Barcelona's center, marveling at her perseverance in going shopping. Now he was standing behind her at some shop for the third time, and still she was not aware of him. Her eyes were just hooked on all those pretty things, which were on display in the shop, things that, reasonably, he could never buy her. He was only a poor artist.
Inhaling her fresh scent, he pondered three hairs, which were loosely dangling on her black cashmere coat. He reached out for them with his fingertips and stowed all three of them in his pocket. A souvenir. As soon as she would allow herself a break, he would put together all his courage and address her.
He did not need to wait for more than ten minutes to see her turning with six shopping bags to a table in front of a café and, exhausted, sitting down on one of the chairs. All the other seats were empty, and so, he simply could sit down just next to her.
'Uno cappuccino, per favor', she said somewhat awkwardly to the waiter, blending Italian and Spanish. She pushed her sunglasses up, closed her eyes and exposed her face to the sun, which for the first time on this day came successfully squeezing through the thick cloud-cover. Yes, she was very pretty, and he enjoyed observing her from such close-up in reality at last.
There was delicate blond fuzz hair on her arms. How he would have enjoyed passing his lips there and advance, kissing, to her fingertips. She had full breasts, at least cup size C, he guessed, and her skin was as white as porcelain. His heart pounded from excitement, as he finally summoned all his courage to say, 'Hello, Sunshine.'
She whirled around so rapidly that her sunglasses almost fell off her head. She produced a few incomprehensible sounds, until she seemed to realize who was sitting there in front of her. 'Winni?'
She knew him only by his nickname. 'Yeah, that's me', he said cheerfully, almost ecstatically. 'Can't believe that I met you here. I flew down here just to visit an art opening, wanted to see the city center a little and there I think … heck, I know her!' He smiled, trying not to show too much of his yellowish teeth, which looked rather unappetizing in contrast to her beaming white set.
'Indeed … well … I don't know what to say', she stuttered. 'That's really funny.' But she didn't seem to find this quite so funny at all, because she looked completely distressed.
'There you are living in the same city, and by chance we run into each other in Barcelona', he smiled. 'Maybe together we could…'
The waiter brought the cappuccino and looked from one to the other, expecting to receive another order.
'Sorry, but not now', she said gruffly. 'I must confess that two weeks ago I returned to my husband. My former husband', she corrected her lie. 'Moreover…'
'… I don't meet your taste, do I?!' He interrupted with an irritated voice and gave the waiter a sign to get lost.
'How can you think like that? That's nonsense.'
'I heard…' he paused, he would have almost revealed himself.
'What did you hear?' Sunshine blinked and looked at him quizzically. Then the light went on. 'You weren't following me, were you? You knew that I was going to Barcelona…!' She wondered, how, when, where and to whom she might have mentioned this short trip. Nicki and Sandra were the only ones who came to Jasmin's mind.
&
nbsp; 'I'm going to report you if you should ever get near me again!' She placed five Euros on the table and reached for her bags.
'And that's all you are going to tell me after two months?' he asked.
'Now don't bother me, will you? There was nothing going on, and there will be nothing going on.'
And so, she left him sitting there like a complete fool.
She hurried off to the street, called a taxi and left, without looking back even once.
He had been nothing but a short pastime for her. And that delved deeply into his wound, which he had maintained for more than a year, and which had just ripped open again.
3.
Munich 'How did you feel when you heard that your sister had killed herself?'
Sam cleared his throat and squeezed the aching back of his neck. He was sitting on a light blue couch and his other hand was striking patterns into the soft alcantara.
The room was painted ochre; a bouquet of wild meadow flowers and some green herbs decorated the table in front of him. Even the displayed pictures forced cheerfulness. Everything in this room was in striking contrast to the sinister thoughts of the patients who came and left each hour. Including the relaxed face of the therapist.
Dr. Jäger had been recommended to him, or indeed rather pressingly suggested, so that he might unload his soul to someone. And for that reason he was sitting now for the third time within two weeks in this practice and tried his best to be honest to himself.
Indeed, what did he feel at all when he had been told that Lily had strangled herself with her own nightdress? Apart from the fact that he had been furious against the whole staff of the psychiatric institution, he had asked himself that many times, and each time he had evaded the answer.
'Well, at first I was shocked. Yes, of course I was.' He confirmed his own doubts. 'But later I felt a certain relief. Which does not mean, of course, that I wouldn't miss her limitlessly.'