Maps of Hell mw-3

by Paul Johnston

  “He’ll come,” Clem said, stifling a yawn. “He’s told us too much. The shitheads at Woodbridge Holdings will crucify him if he goes back.”

  “That’s if he told us the truth,” his partner said.

  “It squares with what we already knew,” I said, leaning forward. “The camp, Woodbridge’s activities, the twins.”

  Pinker shook his head. “It’s all just hearsay, man. Gordy hasn’t been to the camp. He doesn’t know anything about Larry Thomson’s past. All he’s admitted to is talking the dead Iowa farmer’s kids into coming back to D.C.”

  “Let’s see what they say,” Clem said, eyeing him dubiously. “You ever have an optimistic thought, Vers?”

  “Me? No way. Your problem is you’re far too charitable, big guy.” He raised the binoculars again. “Movement. Well, I’ll be damned. Gordy’s bringing out two kids, one male and the other not.”

  We watched as the trio approached. The twins looked tired, their clothing dirty and crumpled. I wondered if Lister had told them about their father. For all we knew, the newspaperman was involved in Richard Bonhoff’s murder, though he had denied that strenuously. The same applied to Joe. I wasn’t happy about making deals with the guy who might have been behind my friend’s death.

  Versace got out and opened the back door for the twins. I could now see that they looked very alike, apart from the boy’s longer hair. They were also attractive, despite their sunken cheeks and the heavy rings round their eyes. They were obviously junkies, their skin sallow and their fingers moving incessantly.

  “There you go,” Lister said triumphantly. “So I can split now, yeah?”

  “You keep your cell on at all times,” Pinker said, his tone harsh. “If we call, you do exactly what we say, got it?”

  “Sure. I’ll be keeping my head down, anyway.”

  “Gordy?” I said, leaning across. “I haven’t forgotten Joe Greenbaum. If anything ties you to that bomb, I will seek you out.”

  He looked nervous for a moment, then bounced back. “I told you, Mr. Wells, I don’t do that kind of thing.”

  “Yeah, I believe you,” Versace said, closing the door after the twins had got in beside me.

  I watched as Lister walked swiftly into the darkness.

  “Gordy’s okay,” the young man next to me said. “He looks after us.”

  “Randy,” I said, extending a hand. “Gwen. I’m Matt Wells.”

  “Oh, we know who you are,” the girl said, squeezing my hand gently. Her palm was damp, her smile slack. “Gordy said you’re a writer. You going to write about us?”

  “Maybe. But we need to talk to you first.”

  “You guys cops?” Randy said to the men in the front seats.

  “Yup,” Clem replied.

  “Thought as much,” the young man said. “We learned how to spot you the first week we were here.”

  “Is that right?” Clem said, accelerating on to the freeway. “You want to tell us what you’ve been doing since you got here?”

  I’d thought they might be reluctant to talk, but that wasn’t the case. Gordy had told them to answer all our questions, and they did. Before we reached the house over the Maryland state line that Versace had borrowed from his absent sister, they’d given us a full rundown.

  Gwen and Randy had spent the first week in D.C. seeing the sights and being wined and dined. Then came the modeling work that Lister had arranged for them. There was nothing tasteless, just fashion shoots and the like. Then Gordy had told them about a residential course Woodbridge ran that would be useful in their future careers. The twins hadn’t given it a second thought, though they knew enough not to tell their parents. It struck me that they were as naive as five-year-olds and their permanent smiles began to grate. I wondered if they’d always been like that.

  They didn’t know where they’d been driven as the van had darkened windows. Randy thought it was up north because of the cold. From the descriptions they gave of the barbed wire and low buildings, as well as the pine forests and snow-clad mountain ridges, I reckoned that it was the camp where I’d been held. The alternative, that there were several such installations, was too depressing to consider. You’d have thought the twins might have objected to being put into uniform-gray, with badges bearing the letters NANR-and taught how to handle rifles and pistols, but apparently not. I asked if they’d been given any drugs or if their memories had been affected, but they claimed not. They were vague about the timeline of all this, though, which made me suspicious. They claimed they’d been back in Washington for a couple of months, having escaped from the camp during a power failure.

  Then I hit pay dirt. I had asked if they knew Larry Thomson. They said no, so I showed them the photo on my phone.

  “That’s the Fuhrer,” they said in unison, their eyes wide.

  I struggled to conceal my shock. “What?”

  “The Fuhrer,” they repeated.

  “He visited us at the camp,” Randy went on. “We were greatly honored. He’s a very busy man.”

  The combination of servility and corrupted innocence turned my stomach. What had been done to these kids?

  “He talked to me for nearly a minute,” Gwen said eagerly. “He asked me about Nazi ideology. Of course, I knew everything by heart.”

  “Nazi ideology?” Versace said, in disbelief.

  I raised a hand. “Just what are the aims of the NANR?”

  “The North American Nazi Revival is dedicated to the eradication of Jews and all other under-races from the U.S.A., whatever the cost,” they recited. “We obey the Fuhrer and his officers without question. We fight for the Greater Germany, of which the U.S.A. will become part after the global conflict is won. We are dedicated to the extermination of all existing religions, under the instruction of the Antichurch of Lucifer Triumphant.”

  The twins sat back and beamed at us. It was as if a death sentence had been read out by preschoolers.

  “I guess under-races includes blacks,” Clem said slowly.

  “Oh, yes,” Gwen replied, with a smile.

  “Well, pardon me, darling,” said Versace, “but shouldn’t you be trying to eradicate and exterminate my partner here right now?”

  Randy and Gwen exchanged anxious glances.

  “We…we aren’t…aren’t authorized to act without orders from our superiors,” the young man said, lowering his eyes.

  “Well, that is a relief,” Clem said, with a hollow laugh. “Tell me, if you liked these people so much, why did you escape from the camp?”

  Again they looked at each other, but it was impossible to tell what passed between their dead eyes.

  “Well…” Randy began.

  “It’s all right,” his sister interrupted. “I’m…I’m almost over it.” She licked her lips repeatedly. “They…some of the comrades…they took advantage-”

  “They raped her,” Randy said, his cheeks red. “Men and women. With gun barrels. They made her-”

  Gwen touched his arm. “It’s over. We’re free of them.”

  I wasn’t sure if that was really the case, given that Gordy Lister had known exactly where to find them. They’d been taken advantage of and terribly abused, but they still seemed to admire the man they called the Fuhrer. What did that say about the power he exerted?

  The atmosphere gradually lightened, but I still felt like I was sitting next to a pair of highly sensitive explosive devices. Then I thought about the Antichurch of Lucifer Triumphant. The twins may have seen human sacrifices at the camp but, given their condition, I could hardly just ask them that straight out.

  “How about the Antichurch?” I said. “Did you go to services?”

  “Rituals,” Gwen corrected. “Of course we did. We all did.” Then her expression went blank, as if a shutter had suddenly been closed.

  Randy’s gaze stayed down. Versace swore under his breath.

  “The Fuhrer,” I said, involuntarily lowering my voice. “Did he have anyone with him when he visited the camp?”

 
“Of course,” Randy said. “The professor was always with him.”

  “This prof got a name?” Versace growled.

  The twins shook their heads.

  “What did he look like?” Clem asked.

  They both smiled.

  “No,” Gwen said, “the professor is a woman. She’s tall, like the Fuhrer, and very distinguished. In her sixties, I’d say. Like him.” She gave a sudden laugh. “Of course she is like him. After all, they’re twins. They were plenty of our kind at the camp.”

  Now we were getting somewhere. Thomson-the leader of the NANR and eminence grise behind Woodbridge-had a twin sister. Nikolaus A. N. Rothmann, Mengele’s helper, had twin children, a boy and a girl, who would be in their sixties now. But did that mean they were responsible for the murders? I thought about the diagrams, the squares and rectangles that had been left on the victims. Something was stirring in my memory, something I’d seen in the camp.

  Then I thought of someone else. Gavin Burdett. Not only was he in Washington, but I’d tailed him to the occult supplies shop in East London. He was a dishonest investment banker with an interest in underage girls. Could he also be responsible for the murders in Washington? If so, how much were the Rothmann twins involved?

  Pinker showed the twins into their rooms at his sister’s house-we had decided to use it in case anyone tried to find the detectives at home. Clem told Gwen and Randy that they would be put in a drug rehabilitation program as soon as possible. They seemed happy enough and showed no sign of wanting to be anywhere else, though that probably meant they didn’t need a fix yet. The house had high-security windows and doors, so they’d find it hard to break out when they did, and Versace would be playing nursemaid. Then again, they had been trained how to use weapons at the camp. I didn’t feel good about leaving the detective there on his own, but Clem and I had work to do.

  “Hey, Field Goal,” Versace said, as we headed for the door.

  I looked round.

  “You look after my partner, yeah?”

  I nodded. “And you watch yourself with the twins, Vers.”

  “Don’t panic. I’ve seen The Boys from Brazil.”

  That didn’t reassure me much. I couldn’t remember if the movie had a happy ending or not. As we left, it struck me that the twins maybe didn’t know about their father’s death yet. We would have to tell them later. Considering how dedicated they still seemed to be to their Fuhrer, I wasn’t sure they’d even remember who Richard Bonhoff was.

  New York State Trooper Reggie Swan yawned and took a slug of cold coffee. He was on his own in the station in the small town of Grantsville thirty miles from Buffalo, and he was bored rigid. He had always hated the night shift. It was all right in a city, with the hookers and pimps, the drunks and brawlers to keep you busy. In the boonies, it was about as much fun as a teetotaler’s wake.

  Then the door opened and Reggie Swan became an overnight celebrity.

  “Help you, ma’am?” he said, as the statuesque woman turned to face him.

  Her face and clothes were dirty and torn, and her breathing was heavy. “Ma’am?”

  The trooper caught her as she fell. He pulled her as gently as he could to a chair and got her some water. After she’d taken a few sips, she was suddenly much more in control of herself.

  “I’m Karen Oaten. Detective Chief Superintendent Karen Oaten of the Metropolitan Police, London.”

  Reggie Swan stared at the blonde woman and remembered a photo that showed a much cleaner face. It had been in the FBI mis-pers bulletin for weeks.

  “Are you all right, ma’am?” he asked, checking her for obvious injuries. He saw none.

  “I’ll make it,” she said, with a weary smile. “I need to make some phone calls.”

  “I should think you do. I need to make one myself.” He went back to the desk and called his sergeant. The old shithead never liked being disturbed at night, but this time he said he’d be right over. Screw him, Reggie thought. He’s not getting any of my glory. To make sure of that, he called the local TV and radio stations, as well as the Buffalo papers. Then he watched as the woman whom the whole of the FBI had been looking for made her calls from the sergeant’s desk.

  For once, the night shift had been a knockout for Trooper Reggie Swan.

  Thirty-Nine

  “You think we screwed up letting Gordy Lister go?” Clem Simmons asked as he drove toward central Washington.

  I shrugged. “Maybe. We had to make a deal with him to make him talk. And he did give us the twins. He’s not stupid. He’d have understood if we made empty promises.”

  The detective nodded. “I guess so. I’m not sure we’ll be seeing him again, though.”

  I felt the same, but I’d meant what I said to the newspaperman. If we found anything that linked him to Joe’s death, I would get to him, no matter how long it took.

  “You sure you want to do this?” Clem asked.

  “It’s our only option. You’re never going to get a warrant to search the Woodbridge building.”

  “Nope-not unless we find something that ties Thomson or his people directly to the murders.”

  He grunted. “Know what I think? Larry Thomson’s got someone in the FBI.”

  “Are you serious?”

  “Wouldn’t be the first big-ass businessman to buy his way in.”

  I thought about that. It squared with the finding of my fingerprints at the two murder scenes. The FBI had taken my prints after Karen’s disappearance. Some asshole from the Bureau could have planted them at the scenes.

  “It’s not like they’ve made much progress with the investigation, is it?” Clem said.

  “Is their agent in charge trustworthy?”

  The detective raised his shoulders. “Peter Sebastian? They call him Dick, as in Dickhead. I’m not sure. He is the deputy head of Violent Crime, so he should know what he’s doing.”

  “That’s not what I meant.”

  He grinned. “I know that. Look, I’ve no idea, man. He’s a conceited bastard, but most of those guys are, even the straight ones.”

  We fell silent as we approached the center, the illuminated dome of the Capitol shining like a huge beacon. My heart began to hammer. What we were about to do was as unconstitutional as it got.

  Clem parked the car on the street about five minutes’ walk from the Woodbridge building. It was after ten, so there weren’t many people around. I took the bag I’d filled at Versace’s sister’s house and joined the detective on the pavement.

  “I could do with a weapon,” I said, still regretting that I’d left all of mine at the hotel.

  “You’re not getting my piece.” I was pretty sure he wouldn’t have gone ahead with the scam if I’d been armed with anything more than a handful of screwdrivers. After all, I was still officially under suspicion of murder. “I’ll do the talking,” he said, as we approached the steps outside the building.

  “Okay,” I said, smiling nervously. “I’ll just sneak.”

  The glass doors were locked. Clem showed his badge to the security guard inside, while I loitered by a pillar. When the door was opened, I kept behind the detective.

  “You’ve got a breach in your system,” Clem said.

  The guard, an earnest-looking young man, whose jacket almost obscured his heavy biceps, frowned. He went over to his desk and checked the console. “There’s nothing showing here.”

  “Well, you’ve got an even bigger problem than I thought,” the detective said. “Downtown, we’re showing an entry at the rear of the building.”

  The security man looked as if he’d been asked to solve a complicated piece of algebra. “I didn’t even know you guys were connected to our system.”

  “Of course we are,” Clem said impatiently. “You’re a few minutes from Congress. There’s nothing we don’t know.” He stood with his arms akimbo. “Are we going to check the rear with your help or on our own?”

  The guard’s hand was hovering over a phone. Clem’s tone convinced him to play ba
ll. “All right,” he said. “This way.”

  I followed them as far as the elevators and then hung back as they went down to the lower mezzanine. As soon as they were out of sight, I slipped through the door leading to the stairwell-I wasn’t going to risk meeting someone in the confined space of an elevator. I checked the dimly lit stairs and started to climb. There were helpful signs on each landing. The first four were marked “Star Reporter” and the next five were different departments of the holding company-Accounts, Property, Personnel and so on. Things got interesting on the tenth floor. It was marked “Group Management,” as were the next three. I was heading for the very top. There was no reason Woodbridge Holdings would be different from every other hierarchical business building-the bosses would be in the penthouse suite. Except that, when I got there, I discovered that there was no sign at all. It seemed the Fuhrer wasn’t ready to make himself obvious, even in his own headquarters.

  There was a Plexiglass window in the door. Through it I could see a wide passageway, with artwork on the wall. I shrank back as a man with biceps even larger than the main guard’s walked past with a menacing gait. That was both good and bad news: there was someone worth guarding up here, but I had to figure out a way of getting at them. I took a long screwdriver and a chisel with a narrow point from my bag and waited for the gorilla to pass again. He did so two minutes and fifteen seconds later. Assuming he was regular in his actions-something you would guess a boss who called himself the Fuhrer might demand-I had that long to get in and hide myself; assuming there was only one guard. I decided to go for it.

  I knew more than most people about breaking locks thanks to my friend Andy, who learned at the sharp end on the streets of New Jersey. My on-off memory also obliged by coming up with the main points. One-ensure any alarm system is disabled: I was relying on Clem to have done that during his time with the guard downstairs. Two-ensure no obvious damage is left. I jimmied the door with the screwdriver, trying not to leave any scratch marks-I didn’t want to land Clem in trouble if everything went to hell. The only problem was, the door was resolutely not opening. That was when I saw the pressure pad between the jamb and the top edge. Shit. It was electrically controlled from the other side. I had no choice.