by Gregg Loomis
The second man snatched at Lang's sleeve with one hand, reaching into his jacket with the other.
Lang didn't wait to see what came out of the coat. Taking a step back to distance himself, he rammed the tip of the cane into the man's solar plexus. As the man doubled over with an expulsion of breath, Lang raised his walking stick, bringing it down on the back of the head with a gratifying whack.
The man went down on knees and hands, shaking his head. With a step, Lang was behind him. A swift kick sent the man sprawling into the jumble of hot chestnuts and even hotter coals. The infuriated vendor started beating on him as well, while the first man screamed in pain as he rolled in the snow to try to extinguish the embers that had been trousers, socks, and shoes.
By this time, a crowd had formed a semicircle around what was clearly the best entertainment on Market Square tonight.
Lang pulled the collar of his coat up and his watch cap down over his forehead and then stuck the cane under his arm. "Sorry, folks, but I think the man is closing shop for the night."
He made his way through the congregation, looked both left and right to assure himself no one was paying him any particular attention, and made his way toward his hotel. The wail of a police siren was getting closer.
CHAPTER 58
Cracow
09:20
The Next Morning
ON THE WAY OUT OF TOWN, Lang noted the number of cars with ski racks, no doubt headed to the nearby resort of Zakopane in the Beskid Niski Mountains. Lang's Mercedes was headed the opposite direction, toward a place far less pleasant.
The road snaked across flat landscape that Lang guessed was farmland. Today, under its mantle of white, it all looked the same. The traffic going in their direction was not those on holiday but mostly trucks of all sizes, from the tiny, locally manufactured vehicles with canvass siding instead of doors, to the behemoth Volvos, Peugeots, and Mercedes.
Lang was pondering the possible meaning of last evening's fracas on the square. Anyone with access to a computer could have gotten the Gulfstream's flight plan. A man on the inside or a small bribe could have gained access to the police list of passports registered by hotels across town. The how was easy. The hard part was the why.
What had those men wanted with him? Information or to make sure he didn't have the chance to . . . what? Were Wynn-Three's kidnappers part of some organization broad enough to have international connections? Someone had the wherewithal to use professional help to . . . do what?
His thoughts were interrupted by the sound of a honking horn. A mud-splattered Renault had pulled even with the Mercedes. Four men were in it, the one in the front passenger seat pointing emphatically at the Mercedes' left front.
"What does he want?" Lang asked.
"Is telling us we have flat tire," the driver replied.
"I don't feel anything like a flat."
"Is not flat. They want us to stop, pull over. They will then take the car. Is common, er, joke in Poland."
"Joke?"
"You know, fool someone to get car."
"Trick."
"Is so."
Lang gave the Renault a look of renewed interest. "Shouldn't you use your cell phone to call the police?"
The driver shook his head. "Happens so many times, police have no, what do you say? Attention. Police have no attention. Never find men or car. Is best to continue. We not stop, they go away, try joke on other."
Lang settled back into his seat. Sure enough, the Renault dropped behind them within a kilometer. Looking out of the back window, Lang saw it make a turn to head back in the direction of Cracow.
When the Mercedes turned off the road and into a parking lot, Lang sat for a moment. In front of him a length of rail track ran along a wooden platform. Beyond it was the infamous arch. It was too far away to read the words, but he knew what it said. Arbeit Macht Frei, work makes you free.
Although the camp had been the size of a medium-sized city, including other camps, most of what remained was flat open space whose very emptiness belied what had happened here. From its inception in 1940, until the camp's capture by the Russians in January 1945, thousands of Jews, homosexuals, prisoners of war, and political dissidents had walked that platform as they were disgorged from cattle cars packed so densely with humanity that those who died did so standing up.
Just beyond that arch, an SS officer had looked over each arrival, signaling that they should form a line to the right or left. One line led directly to gas chambers disguised as showers, the other to an even crueler fate of starvation, disease, and, in most cases, a prolonged death. Children were separated from their mothers, husbands from wives. The sole criterion for life or death was whether the prisoner appeared strong enough to provide enough work to be worth the meager rations he would be fed.
The quiet of the winter day was broken only by the call of distant crows and the sound of the wind across the snow. In this setting, Lang imagined it mourned for those whose graves were unmarked shallow pits of cremated remains.
"You are going in?" The driver was standing outside, holding the door open.
Lang climbed out. "You're coming?"
The driver shook his head as he looked across the sparsely populated parking lot. "No. I leave Mercedes, it be gone."
Car theft of one form or another must be the Polish national pastime.
Lang pointed to the nearest car. "No one has stolen that."
The driver's face twisted into an expression of scorn. "Old Zil, Roosian made. No one want."
Make that selective car theft.
"Also," the driver added, "I bring many people here. None stay long."
Lang glanced at the red-roofed tower that loomed beyond the arch, the low buildings that had been dormitories for the damned. He believed it.
Lang walked toward the main building, his coat collar turned up against the cold. He tried not to think about the footsteps he was following. His cane tapped against the wood but he was too occupied to hear. Inside, a smattering of tourists clustered around a series of exhibits annotated in multiple languages. Iron stoves glowed, creating islands of warmth in a sea of frigid air. Lang wondered if the lack of central heat was intended to stir the visitor's empathy with those who had lived and died here. A woman, her steel-colored hair in a no-nonsense bun, sat in a ticket booth, a heavy wool sweater draped over her shoulders.
Lang went over and handed her a ten zloty bill. "You have a record room, I believe," he ventured in English.
She tore a ticket in half, handing him the stub and dropping the remaining part into a metal dish. "Go right, next building."
The next building looked new. Besides a number of larger-than-life-size photographs, four keyboards sat on pedestals in front of computer screens. It took a few minutes for Lang to enter an English language program, follow instructions, and call up a copy of white-on-black microfiche, something he had not seen in nearly twenty years. He was looking at writing in the old German cursive that went out of use shortly after World War II.
Taking out his wallet, he extracted one of his business cards on the back of which was written "14257," the number Wynn-Three had scratched into his arm. Scrolling down a list, he came to:
14257: Mustawitz, Solomon, Jude. 4 Okt 1942
Lang guessed the date was the day the unfortunate Mustawitz had arrived here. Unlike the numbers and names above and below, there was no date of death. In a different handwriting, though, was a cryptic notation, "Nach Oberkoenigsburg."
At least that was what Lang thought it said. He was not sufficiently familiar with the old-style handwriting to be sure.
He stepped back from the machine, frowning as he copied the notation onto the back of the same card. To Oberkoenigsburg? Was that the Ober-something-or-other on the recording?
He returned to the machine and switched to an alternate listing. This one was arranged chronologically rather than alphabetically. Several hundred names were under the heading of October 4, 1942, with a number assigned to each. It
was possible, then, to locate a prisoner either by date of arrival or number. But not by name.
Intentional dehumanization or the belief that after someone arrived here, names no longer mattered? Knowing the German penchant for efficiency, Lang would have guessed the latter, but knowing the horror of the Holocaust, Lang believed it was the former.
He stared at the computer screen for a moment, debating whether he wanted to see the rest of Auschwitz: the crematoria, the gas chambers, a restored dormitory, and the other points of interest promised by the photographs in the entrance hall. No, the sheer length of the list of names was depressing enough, and he would learn nothing more about Mustawitz from a full tour.
Lang was eager to be gone.
Perhaps too eager.
He did not notice the man who fell in behind him as he nodded to the woman in the ticket booth and stepped outside.
Before he took his second step, his iPhone beeped. The screen told him Sara, his secretary, was calling.
"Yes, Sara?"
"Good morning, Lang. At least, I think it's morning where you are. How's the weather?"
Lang was fairly certain she wasn't incurring international roaming charges for a meteorological report, but he said, "I'm freezing my—" He recalled Sara's grandmotherly distaste for vulgarity. "Freezing. What's up?"
"The federal grand jury has indicted your pal, Felony Phil, King Con."
That was hardly more surprising than the weather.
"Let me take a wild guess: he somehow has managed to come up with the cash to pay me."
"Says he has. He called from jail. They arrested him last night."
The therapeutic effect of incarceration on the pocketbooks of accused felons was axiomatic among the criminal bar.
"The bond hearing set?"
"Day after tomorrow."
"Be sure he understands he has to deliver cash or certified funds before I show up for any hearings, bond or otherwise. I . . ."
Lang had been simply staring ahead as he talked, watching his shadow glide across the snow beside the otherwise empty platform. Suddenly, his silhouette was no longer alone. Someone had joined him on the wooden planks, someone with a raised arm.
It was more reflex than thought that made Lang quickly sidestep as a large stick of wood whistled through the space occupied by his head an instant before. He spun and his feet nearly went out from under him, slipping on the icy residue that sheeted the boards. He used his cane for balance much as a circus high-wire artist uses a pole.
He was facing a big man, easily six feet six inches tall. The part of his face Lang could see had a pattern of purple blotches, the burst capillaries of a longtime heavy drinker. The collar of an overcoat was turned up, shielding the bottom of his face from both the weather and recognition. One gloved hand held a chunk of what appeared to be firewood from one of the stoves he had seen. He raised it for another attempt as he extended his other hand.
"The notes you took, give them."
An accent Lang couldn't quite place, although it was tauntingly familiar.
"And why would you want them?"
The man took a step closer, his hand still reaching. "Not matter. Give them."
Lang took another step back with a hasty glance over his shoulder. Even if the Mercedes driver happened to see what was going on, he was too far away to be of any help. Nor was anyone else in sight. Lang was going to have to handle this himself.
"I'm not handing them over unless I know why you want them."
Another step back, as the big man came forward.
Lang repeated the series of exchanging steps, like some sort of strange dance, until he was fairly certain of the time it took the other man to react.
Just as his adversary lifted a foot to move forward, Lang made one final backwards step and then lunged forward. In a blur of motion, Lang jammed the walking stick between the man's front and rear foot, using it as a lever. Aided by the sudden and unexpected pressure, the man's back foot slipped on the ice at the exact second his front foot was coming down.
The man hit the wooden planks with a jarring thump.
Careful that his own feet did not betray him on the slippery surface, Lang used the toe of a shoe to nudge the chunk of firewood out of reach before he stood over his former assailant. With the same shoe, he rolled him over.
He placed the tip of the cane on the man's throat. "Okay, now it's my turn: who the hell are you and who sent you?"
The man glared up at him, saying nothing.
Lang gave him a kick in the torso, hard enough to bruise, if not break, a rib. There was a grunt of pain.
"We can do this the hard way if you like. I've got all day and you have lots of ribs. Who are you and who sent you?"
The man moved faster than Lang would have thought his bulk would permit. With one meaty hand he grabbed the cane's tip. With the other, he produced a switchblade from somewhere in his clothing. The blade snicked into place.
The instant Lang felt the hand on his walking stick, he pressed a tiny button in the handle. With a step backwards, the man climbing to his feet was holding an empty wooden cylinder. Lang was now holding about forty inches of double-edged steel with a very sharp point inches from the man's throat.
"I can skewer you faster than you can reach me with that pig sticker," Lang observed coolly. "I'd suggest you drop it before I demonstrate."
His opponent needed no further convincing. He dropped the switchblade, which Lang kicked out of reach. "Smart move. Now, for the last time, who sent you?"
Instead of an answer, the man turned and ran back toward the main building as fast as the icy surface would allow.
Lang watched him go, squelching the urge to give chase. There was the possibility the man had pals waiting to back him up. If not, dashing into the museum with a blade in his hand was certain to attract the attention of the guards or police. Lang stooped over to retrieve the sword-cane's sheath and clicked it into place.
Before standing erect, he heard a voice. He looked around the empty space before he realized Sara was still on the iPhone he had dropped. He picked that up, too.
"Sara, excuse the interruption."
Distance did nothing to diminish the concern in her voice. "Lang, what happened?"
"Oh, I was just asking some questions of one of the people here."
CHAPTER 59
The Vatican
At the Same Time
THE PAPAL LIBRARY WAS CLOSED TO the public for repairs, but there was one section just off the Vatican's Campo Santa Teutonico that had never been open to the public, or, for that matter, accessible to ninety-nine percent of the population of Vatican City. It was referred to, if at all, as the Secret Archives. In recent years, "qualified scholars," that is, those deemed loyal to the Church, had permission to access a portion of these archives, but the area Father Steinmann was approaching was as secret as ever.
It contained documents of incredible historic value, such as letters to Anne Boleyn from Henry VIII of England. They were stolen by a papal spy to prove the monarch's adulterous conduct as grounds for denying the divorce from Catherine of Aragon he so desperately wanted. There were also letters from several previous and subsequent popes to their mistresses, admissions of papal fathering of innumerable bastards, as well as Vatican complicity in less-than-saintly diplomatic maneuvers, including Pius XII's almost adulatory correspondence with one Joseph Ribbentrop, foreign minister for the Third Reich. Most of these super-secret archives, though, consisted of papal decrees, ecumenical rulings, encyclicals, edicts, and the like. Part of the archives had resided in Avignon, France, during the so-called Babylonian Captivity. Centuries later, Napoleon had hauled off what had existed at the time to Paris to be eventually returned. During all this time, there had been repeated efforts to index the more than thirty miles' worth of files, but none had been completed.
Father Steinmann used a special key to unlock a rather ordinary door and enter a long hallway. At the end, an arch dating back to the rebuilding of the
Vatican in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries was filled with clear polycarbonate material that the priest knew was bulletproof, fireproof, and probably impervious to anything short of a nuclear blast. Although he couldn't see them, he knew several video cameras were recording him as he stepped up to a retina recognition device. A door in the arch's plastic, previously near invisible, hissed open, hinting at the equipment that kept pressure, temperature, and humidity constant. Modern technology notwithstanding, an elderly priest sat behind a table, maintaining a log to record the visitors and the time and date.
Steinmann scribbled his name, knowing he would have to repeat the process upon his departure as well as open the briefcase he carried. With cameras recording his every move, these precautions seemed redundant, but change was a breeze that rarely blew through the Vatican.
As always, he was impressed by a line of cabinets so long it seemed to come to a point in the distance. Several years ago, he had been looking through some manuscripts describing the punishment of priests celebrating black masses, and had come across descriptions of the Cathar heresies. Although most people believed the Holy Inquisition (and Father Steinmann's present office) had originated in Spain, the first such tribunal had convened in southwestern France in the early thirteenth century to combat these apostates, whose beliefs were closer to Eastern religion than to Catholicism.
At the time, he had noted the Cathar material's location, for without an index, finding things here was difficult. Now he needed to refresh his memory.
He pulled a heavy leather volume down from a shelf and stood back as the eruption of dust settled to the floor. Sitting cross-legged on the marble floor, he began to turn the vellum pages carefully. The ink had long ago faded into a reddish brown, but the Latin was still quite legible.