The Dark Place: A historical suspense thriller set in the murky world of fugitive war criminals, vengeful Nazi hunters and spies

by Damian Vargas

  ‘You want me to let her go, even though I told you that the secret police are coming here for her?’ said Garcia, frowning.

  Weiland nodded. ‘Naturally any assistance that you can personally provide in this matter will, of course, be greatly appreciated by Her Majesty’s government.’ He sat down on the bed, crossed his legs. ‘My understanding is that you have no direct family, and that you were due to retire this week. Well, I have it in my power to make your life very comfortable.’

  ‘Really? Well, Miss Johansson must truly be a valuable asset.’

  ‘We look after our own,’ said Weiland, a glint in his eye. Self assured. Smug. ‘I’m sure you can appreciate that.’

  ‘Well, that’s the interesting thing,’ said Garcia. He lowered himself down upon the mattress opposite Weiland, mirroring the same contrived, friendly posture. ‘Miss Johansson had a hidden radio transmitter in her quarters. A sophisticated piece of apparatus, I am led to believe. Military in nature, in fact. Two of my lads are at the house right at this very moment.’ His hand reached to his jacket pocket for his cigarillos, before once again remembering that he had none. ‘I interviewed Señora Marrón a little earlier. She is Mr Blackman’s housemaid. She told me that she often overheard Mis Johansson talking in her quarters.’ Garcia chuckled. ‘The señora is quite the…how do you say it in England? Nosy Parker, no?’ He did not wait for a confirmation from Weiland. ‘The entire village knows this, but your spy, it seems, did not. The señora told me that she did not understand the language that Miss Johansson was speaking, but she did recognise one word.’ Garcia leaned forward a little more. ‘This word was Sababa.’

  Weiland’s eyebrows tightened, his eyes shifting to that place they go when a person is subconsciously digging into the depths of their stored knowledge.

  ‘Señora Marrón knew this word, Sababa. She knew it, because her grandmother was from Morocco. It is Arabic, you see? Now, I spent two years in the company of soldiers from Morocco, and I also know this word. It means something like, “cool” or “great”. But, Mr Weiland, I also know another language that uses that word. Do you know what that is?’

  ‘You have me at a loss, Inspector,’ Weiland said, his face betraying his lack of patience. ‘Please, do enlighten me.’

  ‘Hebrew.’

  Garcia watched, with no little contentment, as a million synapsis instantly re-wired inside the Englishman’s head, his face blank, eyes staring at nothing.

  The Inspector forced his weary body up and walked to the door. He opened it and looked back into the cell at the Englishman, who now had his head in his hands, his eyes wide open. ‘It turns out that she was not your agent, after all, Mr Weiland. She was working for the Israelis.’

  42

  Family history

  Police Station, La Mesita Blanca.

  All Saints’ Day, 1970.

  6:22pm.

  Inspector Garcia pushed Guy Weiland’s cell door closed, then locked it.

  ‘Inspector,’ Officer Alonso called from along the corridor as he strode towards Garcia.

  ‘Did you find it?’ Garcia asked.

  ‘Yes, sir.’ The junior officer, panting for breath, unzipped his coat and removed a large, brown envelope.

  ‘Good, thank you Miguel,’ Garcia said, noticing the beads of sweat on his younger colleague’s forehead. ‘Go get yourself cleaned up. I’ll take it from here.’ The officer nodded, turned, and headed back up the corridor while Garcia walked to the second of the cells.

  He selected the key for the door in front of him, unlocked it, and pulled the door open. Liv Johansson peered up at him from the bed, where she sat cross-legged. ‘Miss Johansson, would you come with me, please?’ Garcia gestured towards the open corridor that led to the last of the three holding cells. The Spaniard inserted the key to the door, twisted it to unlock it, then yanked the steel door open. Harry Blackman lifted his head from the horizontal and peered up at the Inspector.

  Garcia indicated that she should sit down on the empty bed opposite Blackman’s, while reaching for a wooden chair that had been left outside the cell for him. He walked in, leaving the door ajar, sat down and placed the brown envelope on the floor by his side. ‘We do not have much time. The men from the secret police will be here in…’ He pulled up his sleeve to look at his watch, ‘…less than three hours.’

  Blackman and Johansson exchanged cold stares.

  ‘I do not care about your wartime past, Mr Blackman. Or your life as a double agent, Miss Johansson. If, indeed, that is your real name.’ He peered at her for a moment as his revelation registered on her face. ‘Neither do I much care for the older German members of our local community.’ He fixed his stare on Blackman. ‘At this point, I care only about one thing. The boy. He is an innocent in all of this.’

  The Englishman’s eyes remained fixed on the Norwegian.

  Garcia lifted his black notebook from his pocket, opened it to a fresh page and with a pen hovered over the paper, said, ‘Now, I have just been told that Señor Navarro will be here shortly, as you demanded, Mr Blackman.’

  The Englishman pushed himself back against the cold wall, his arms crossed. ‘You’ll get nothing more from me until that bastard is here, sitting in a room facing me.’

  Garcia peered over the top of his glasses for a moment, then switched his attention to the Norwegian. ‘Bad things have happened here, Miss Johansson. My own government and, it would now seem, at least one other, have protected war criminals here, in my town. It is my country’s shame.’ His gaze dropped to his notepad. ‘And it is my shame.’ He cleared his throat, looked at her once more. ‘Please, tell me what I need to know, and I will do everything in my power to help you.’

  Johansson’s shoulders lowered, her eyes lost in thought. She was picking at one of her fingernails.

  Garcia shuffled in his seat, turning to face her. ‘Liv, I believe that the secret police have been sent here because powerful people in Madrid want to know what happened to Walther Krügel. I really couldn’t give a shit about this man. But I do care about the boy, Conrad Navarro. And once the people from La Secreta arrive here, in all probability, I will lose any control over this matter. And I do not think that their concern will be for young Conrad.’ He reached for her hands, cupping them in his. ‘It should not fall on the children, to pay for the sins of their fathers.’

  ‘I don’t know what happened to Conrad,’ she answered, her eyes reddening. She pulled her hands away, swallowed, then wiped a tear from her eye.

  Garcia thought for a moment, then reached for the envelope. He opened it, glanced inside, then pulled out the photo that his colleagues had retrieved from the covert radio room in Johansson’s bedsit. He stared at the image for a few seconds, a young man and a young woman standing atop a hill overlooking an icy fjord, wrapped in winter walking attire, waving at the photographer. He stared at the girl in the photo. She was, he guessed, in her mid-twenties then. She looked happy. The young man grinning, his dark, curly hair protruding from under a woollen hat.

  He turned the photo towards Johansson.

  The colour drained from her face, her hand raised to her mouth and her eyes welling up.

  ‘Who was David Rosenbaum?’ he asked. ‘And why are you really here in Spain?’ Garcia placed the image of her and the dead journalist on the cell bed next to her.

  Her lips trembling, she reached to her side. Her fingertips brushed at the photograph. ‘I told you, I’m…a travel writer.’ Her hand retracted, wiping at her eyes and nose.

  ‘Perhaps you are indeed a writer,’ said Garcia. ‘But this photo, and the radio, the code book, and the surveillance logs that you kept on Mr Blackman. They tell me you are also something entirely different.’ He leaned forward and collected the photo. ‘And you should know, it was Mr Blackman that found this photo. And everything else in your hidden radio room.’

  Johansson’s gaze flicked for a moment towards the Englishman on the other bed, her head shaking. ‘I’m so sorry, Harry. I had no choice.’
/>
  Blackman glared at her. ‘Those men…the ones who tied me up, and beat me…I thought they must have broken into my house. But they didn’t break in. You let them in, didn’t you? You were there with them. I heard your voice.’

  ‘I didn’t know…I didn’t know they were coming.’

  Garcia lifted the image once again, held it in front of her. ‘Who was David Rosenbaum?’

  Johansson rubbed her eyes once more, sniffed and glanced at the Inspector. ‘He was my brother.’

  Garcia nodded. ‘I see. And why did he come to La Mesita Blanca two years ago?’

  ‘Because of what they did to our parents.’ Johansson lifted her gaze to the ceiling for a moment, as if seeking permission for what she was about to reveal. ‘I was nine when the German soldiers came looking for us. David was just six. Our family had been hidden by family friends in their holiday cabin in the hills. We had a few animals. We caught rabbits. We fished.’ Johansson sighed, looked at Blackman. ‘There weren’t many Jews in Norway in 1940 when the Germans invaded. There were almost none of us left by 1944, when they found our parents. David and I were out in the forest, checking on our animal snares. We heard gun shots.’ Her right hand tightened, jaw trembling. She closed her eyes for a moment, took a deep breath. ‘We waited in the snow for twelve hours, before we risked going back. Pappa had drilled it into us, to hide if something like that happened. When we eventually returned, the Germans had gone. They’d killed all our animals. Our mother and father were gone. We never saw them again.’

  Garcia sighed. Uncomfortable, black memories from three decades earlier flashing before his eyes. ‘I am truly sorry.’

  It was Blackman who broke the resultant silence. ‘Do you know what happened to them?’

  Johansson, her eyes still glued to the floor, her mind somewhere else entirely, nodded. ‘We were able to find out many years later, from a survivors’ organisation. There were people who had known them. Our parents were taken to Oslo, where they were put onto a ship to Germany. When they arrived, they were taken by train to Auschwitz. They were young and strong, so the Germans used them in the slave factory at Monowitz, making synthetic rubber. They were the lucky ones. The children and the elderly went to the gas chambers as soon as they arrived.’

  ‘But they didn’t survive the war?’ Garcia asked.

  She shook her head, wiped a tear from her cheek. ‘Father became ill. Dysentery, most likely. And starvation. He collapsed on the factory floor. A German soldier ordered him to get up, but he couldn’t, he had nothing left. So the German shot him.’ Johansson looked at Garcia, her light blue eyes radiating an intense sadness. ‘After the war people talked about Germany having been led astray by “a few bad apples”, as if what happened was the act of a few criminals. But the German who killed my father didn’t wear the uniform of the SS. He wasn’t Gestapo. He was just some private in the Wehrmacht, a normal soldier. And the woman that murdered my mother…who cut her open with a butcher’s knife…she was a nurse.’

  ‘How did you and your brother come to know about the Germans who were living here in this pueblo?’ Garcia asked.

  She let out a slow breath. ‘I wanted to put the past behind me. I went to university to study English, I moved to London. I was married, to a lovely man. He was French. He sold furniture. It didn’t last. But I did try to live a normal life.’ She sighed. ‘David…he could never rest. He trained as a journalist. First in Oslo, then in Paris. He was good at it, but he spent every spare moment trying to track down the people who had killed our parents. He was obsessed and got himself involved with some groups. It was those survivors’ organisations at first, but then with other people who weren’t content with simply exposing the past, they wanted to correct it.’

  ‘So, that’s how he got involved with Mossad,’ said the Inspector, who was now scribbling in his notepad. ‘And how did they find out about our German neighbours?’

  Johansson nodded. ‘An Israeli tourist, a survivor from Buchenwald, recognised a former camp guard in a bar in Fuengirola. The Israeli intelligence services got to hear about it and put the German under surveillance. He often travelled to this village.’

  ‘And your brother was part of this surveillance team?’ said Blackman.

  She nodded again. ‘He didn’t tell me anything, but others did, after he disappeared. David had called me to say he was working on a story in Spain and that he’d probably be away for several weeks.’ She glanced at the photo once again. ‘I never spoke to him again.’ She let out a long breath, straightened up, and looked at Garcia. ‘You found him, didn’t you?’

  The Inspector and Blackman exchanged uncomfortable looks.

  ‘Actually,’ said Blackman. ‘I did.’

  ‘What? But how?’

  ‘I went to observe the old compound. I had Oscar with me. He started digging at something—’

  Johansson cupped her mouth with her hand, her eyes welling up once more.

  ‘Mr Blackman says that he found a body. I have had two of my men go there to verify this. Unfortunately, if there had been a body there, then someone has removed it recently, but…’

  Garcia reached into his pocket, retrieved a small, sealed plastic bag, and held it up for Johansson to see. The piece of torn material inside was discoloured and dirty, for it had been buried for many months. But the red chequered pattern remained visible. He glanced at Blackman, then back to the Norwegian, whose eyes were locked upon the contents of the bag.

  ‘So, there is no doubt,’ she whispered. She took in a long, cleansing breath of air, held it for a moment, then released it.

  Garcia saw something in her eyes. Relief, maybe? Or something else? He and Blackman exchanged a furtive glance. He forced the thought aside. David Rosenbaum was already dead. Finding the boy was all that mattered to him now.

  Blackman leaned forward on the edge of his bed. ‘Liv, I’m sorry about your brother. And I’m sorry that you and I could not have been more open with each other.’

  Garcia lifted his pen, ready to continue his notes. ‘I appreciate this is difficult for you, Miss Johansson, but we do not have much time. Can you explain to me how you came to be working for the British and for the Israelis at the same time?’

  The Norwegian cleared her throat, straightened up. ‘Someone came to tell me that David was missing. A man. He told me he was from the Israeli embassy. He told me what David had been doing here and asked me if I would be willing to help. I agreed. I didn’t think twice. They found me a house in Coín and gave me credentials of a travel writer, working for an American magazine. I was to wait for when they needed me.’ She glanced at Garcia. ‘For a while, I actually thought I was a writer. I managed to put the past behind me. I learned the language, completed the assignments the magazine gave me. I think I was happy.’

  ‘But then?’

  ‘I got a call from a British man I’d met at some function in Malaga a few months earlier. He had a wife in England, but he was keen on me. I figured he might prove useful.’ Her eyes flicked towards Blackman for a moment. ‘He has a holiday villa near Mijas.’

  Garcia thumbed back through his notes. ‘This was Mr Geoffrey Sykes?’

  ‘Yes. He works in the British Foreign Office. Or so he claimed. He said that a friend of his was buying a property in the area and needed someone who could speak Spanish to help manage the purchase and renovation. He asked if I’d be interested. I was going to tell him I was too busy, but then he told me where it was…La Mesita Blanca. I couldn’t believe it. I told Sykes I was interested, then as fast as I could I sent a message to my handler.’

  ‘At Mossad?’ Garcia said.

  ‘Yes.’

  Blackman snorted. ‘Bloody hell, your Israeli friends must have had to pinch themselves. It was a goddamned gift, the perfect cover for you.’

  Garcia, twiddling his pen between his thumb and forefinger, said, ‘And when did our friend Mr Weiland emerge onto the scene?’

  ‘That was the morning after I had met Harry in London. I was c
hecking in at the airport when two plainclothes policemen approached me and asked me to come with them. Weiland was waiting in a room for me.’ She looked at Blackman. ‘He told me that he worked at Scotland Yard and that the British police suspected that you were involved in some kind of criminal activity. They wanted me to keep tabs on you.’

  ‘Did Mossad know he was MI6?’ said Garcia.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And what did the Israelis think MI6’s real intentions were?’ said Blackman.

  ‘We knew what you did at the end of the war - that you hunted Nazis. The working theory was that you had been recruited by the British, but that they didn’t entirely trust you.’

  ‘So you agreed to do it?’ Garcia said.

  ‘Mossad had an agent watching me at the airport. He saw me being taken away. I had no choice but to tell them about Weiland.’

  Garcia, still making notes, asked, ‘So the Israeli’s told you to accept the MI6 offer?’

  ‘Yes. It was too good an opportunity for them.’ Johansson paused, took another breath, then whispered, ‘I felt so alone. So trapped. I wanted to die.’ Tears trickled down her cheeks, and Garcia fumbled in his pocket for a handkerchief, then offered it to her. ‘But I kept hearing David’s voice,’ she continued. ‘It was as if he was willing me to be persistent. That our day would come, if I believed it enough. If I was strong.’ She glanced at Garcia with the barest hint of a smile. ‘My brother wouldn’t let me give up on seeking justice for our parents, even if he was gone.’

  ‘Justice?’ said Garcia. ‘Or vengeance?’

  ‘In my book,’ said Blackman, interrupting before Johansson could answer, ‘…they are but one and the same.’

  The bleakness in the Englishman’s eyes sent a chill down the Inspector’s spine. He looked back at Johansson. She was staring at Blackman. ‘Please, you were saying?’ he said.