Trusting Viktor (A Cleo Cooper Mystery)

by Mims, Lee

  Half asleep, I stumbled out and stepped to the rear to retrieve my tote from the cargo area. The dome light came on and just as I leaned over, everything went black. My head was covered by a sack as I was slammed face down on my tote. I screamed, but the sound was quickly muffled by someone’s hand snaking under the sack to cover my mouth.

  Kicking, thrashing, and grunting with all my might, I fought like a puma to free myself. Adrenalin triggered by outrage and fear pumped through my veins, and an unearthly strength came over me as my attacker tried to drag me backward. Momentarily feeling the Jeep’s bumper under one boot, I pushed off, throwing me and my abductor to the concrete in a jumble. Lots of wiggling and scrambling ensued.

  As I tried to crawl away, two hands grabbed my ankles while another hand jerked each of my arms out from under me in turn. Two against one, not real sportsmanlike. Then I heard the sound of ripping duct tape. The fingers over my mouth let up briefly as my head was pulled back sharply and my throat clutched so tightly no sound could escape. The other set of hands was now endeavoring to hold my jaw closed to tape my mouth shut. They succeeded, but not before I chomped down like a vise on a finger. Someone yanked the sack, which I’d managed to dislodge a bit, back down over my face again.

  “Goddammit! Be still!” growled a male voice.

  “Shut up! No talking, you idiot!” hissed a second one.

  Continuing to wiggle and squirm as they taped my wrists together, I managed to get my feet under me. Now, I’ve got leg muscles like a kangaroo thanks to years spent tramping about in the woods, so when I say I sprang up, I really did. Where I was springing to, I couldn’t see, but it didn’t matter. I just wanted to get shed of these two. Unfortunately, I only took two steps before I was jerked backward with a snatch of the sack over my head and my feet were kicked out from under me. What little wind was left in my lungs after this smackdown was pushed out with a knee to the sternum.

  “I’ll hold her—”

  “—I’ll get the car.” You had to admire their cooperative spirit. Then, from what I figured to be the direction of the house, I heard a voice shouting hysterically in what sounded like Russian.

  Viktor!

  “Hey!” He shouted again, this time in English. “Get away from that woman!”

  “Shit!”

  “Leave her!” one of my attackers cried.

  “No! If we mess this up—”

  “Too late, Dad’s gonna kill us. Just go!”

  The fingers that had an iron grip on my shoulders released me at the sound of the screen door banging. I heard footsteps running across the street.

  I’m sure I looked like a fish flopping on a dock—a fish with a bag over its head—when Viktor reached me. He was still shouting. Pulling me to a sitting position, he snatched the bag off my head and jerked the tape from my mouth.

  “Ow!”

  “Oh! Sorry, sorry.” An instant later, he was sprinting off.

  “Come back!” I shouted.

  “Why? They were attempting to kidnap you!” But he circled back around.

  “My hands. Undo my hands!”

  Trembling with rage, he pulled the duct tape from my wrists.

  “Were their faces covered?” I asked.

  “No. They wore watch caps pulled low and their faces were painted black. Fucking activists.”

  I sagged against him. “They weren’t activists,” I said, rubbing my wrists. “I know who they were.”

  “What? Who were they?”

  “Let’s go inside. We need to talk.”

  Viktor insisted I needed sugar after such an ordeal and so made hot sweet tea. I took a polite sip, then got a beer from the fridge and cracked it open. We sat at the kitchen table and I outlined what I knew about U-498 and how it came to be discovered by his old boss, Davy, who’d put the pieces together and was determined to make one of the most amazing finds of the twenty-first century.

  I’d expected the incredulous stare I got from Viktor, so I continued.

  “There’s more. I know it was the twins who attacked me,” I said. “I recognized their voices, the way they ping-ponged their sentences. Not to mention, at one point, they said, ‘Dad’s gonna kill us.’ It was them, I’m sure of it. Everything fits.”

  “How can that be? They are on their way to take their new boat to Port Fourchon. And besides, how would they know you know any of this … incredible … tale you just told me?”

  “Well, either Davy changed his mind or he misled you on purpose so they could follow you and find me. Which reminds me, how did you get in?”

  Viktor grimaced. “I forgot to lock up. Sorry.”

  “Where’s your car?”

  “Parked up the street. I wanted to surprise you.”

  “You did more than that, you saved me … again.”

  “Well,” Viktor said, looking sheepish. “I could have saved you faster if I’d had my clothes on. I was upstairs, waiting to surprise you. When I looked out the window and saw what was happening, I had to pull on my pants before I could get to you.” Viktor looked down at the table. Emotion trembled in his voice. “I was so scared they’d be gone with you when I finally made it to the door.”

  I reached across the table and gave his hand a pat. It was kind of sweet, really, and made me even more aware of how close I’d come to something I probably didn’t want to think about. Then I felt my chin tremble a little. Clearing my throat quickly to stop any further erosion of my dignity, I said, “As to why they think I’m on to them, Davy sent Hunter an article with a schematic of U-498 to facilitate finding the cylinder. Hunter went to print it off and left the number of copies set at three, which is where it stays most of the time with three members to a team—only he didn’t know the printer was down at the time.”

  “So Hunter was in on it, too?”

  “Yes. He had to be. For Davy, this operation started the minute he found the sub while surveying for Global. Hunter worked for him then. That’s why Davy sent him to Voyager to become a pilot. TransWorld always contracts to Voyager. After a while, he sent the twins there too. That way, he could be sure to have an ROV team on board when the time came. No doubt Davy has an in at Voyager. He knows everyone.”

  “But then that guy, Hunter … died.” Victor said, seemingly thinking aloud. “I wonder if his death was the reason I got a job so quick, or if his death had anything to do with this … wild tale?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I only know that I came along later, used his computer, found the article he hadn’t had time to delete. Then the printer ran out of paper after I ran a copy for myself. I didn’t realize it had been set to run three. So later, when it was reloaded with paper, it made two more copies. Ricky found them in the hopper, figured out they must have been made for the twins, and sent it to them. That’s how they know that I know the sub’s down there.”

  “Stop right there,” Viktor said. “You’re basing all this on the fact that Davy made the seismic map and you found an article he sent to Hunter. I don’t mean to sound skeptical, but how can you be sure the sub’s even there?”

  “Wait right here,” I said and ran upstairs to retrieve the physical proof that the sub existed.

  “What is it?”

  “It’s a wheel valve, a German wheel valve of the exact same type I’ve seen on other submerged U-boats. Note the name of the German shipbuilder stamped on the back.”

  “So? Where’d you get it?”

  “I found it caught between the rails of the ROV and its cage.”

  Viktor whistled in amazement, then fell silent studying the little wheel. I got up and tossed my empty beer can in the recycling.

  “This explains so much,” Viktor said.

  “How so?”

  “During the time I worked for Davy and lived at his house, he and the twins and I were very close. Davy even took me aside right before I left fo
r Duke to secure housing and said I’d become just like a son to him, said he needed to talk to me about something when I got back.”

  “I bet,” I said sitting back down at the table. “They’re frantic to find the cylinder before this whole thing busts wide open. It takes three people to operate the ROV. With Hunter dead, Davy desperately needs another pilot to help the twins. Your next rotation starts Monday. He’s trying to bring himself to tell you, but he’s not sure he can trust you.”

  And here’s where things got really dicy for me too. Did I trust Viktor?

  I watched Viktor as he rose from the table, went to the fridge, pulled out a beer, and offered me another. I shook my head. Still deep in concentration, he sat back down, sipped, and stared into space. I tried to imagine what was going through his head.

  Stretching his long legs under the table, Viktor tapped my toe with his. “What do you think of this idea: you and I go back out to the Magellan and retrieve the cylinder ourselves? I am a pilot, you know. We have a small window of opportunity before the twins and I are supposed to rotate back on. You have a reason to be there. I could go back with you …” Viktor said, thinking out loud.

  Then he stopped, looked for my reaction.

  “Go on,” I said.

  “I haven’t completely worked out a plan to get access without involving Ray and his team. What I’m thinking requires a bit of, well, lying on our parts. But if you help me with the distraction, which shouldn’t be hard, I’ll do all the lying. It may be, well … distasteful for you.”

  Ah, the innocence of youth.

  Viktor stared at me for a moment, then continued. “I’m quite sure that together we can deceive them long enough for me to find the cylinder.”

  Now this was more like it! Lying. Deception. Distraction. A small list of my personal favorites, and proof enough for me as to whom Viktor’s loyalties lay with. The trouble was, I needed help. Right now I was the only person on the planet who had all the pieces to the Amber Room puzzle, but if I could come up with them and piece them together, so could Davy and the boys. It was only a matter of time.

  Most of all, there had to be a connection between Hunter’s death and this enormous treasure. I just hadn’t figured out what it was yet. But the only way to do that was to move forward and in the process clear Bud and myself of any hint of involvement in a murder we had nothing to do with. Right? Nothing whatsoever.

  In for a penny, in for a pound. “Viktor,” I said. “What if I told you the cylinder isn’t on the sub anymore?”

  Twenty-Two

  Tuesday morning—as we hustled through the doors of Capital Oaks and after I’d brought Viktor up to speed on what I knew of the cylinder’s whereabouts and how I knew it—he summed up the task ahead.

  “So we’re going to get this old Nazi, who also happens to be in the advanced stages of dementia, to tell us the location of the map to the Amber Room, right?

  “That’s what the Cherry Garcia’s for,” I said as we passed the now-empty reception station and headed for the professor’s room.

  “Of course,” Viktor said dryly, then added, “it makes perfect sense. By the way, I speak a little conversational French if you think it’ll help.”

  “Great idea,” I said. “Remember, though, I don’t want to upset him.” Borrowing my entry technique from Goggles, I tapped lightly, entered, and called out. I didn’t expect him to answer, and he didn’t. Everything was much the same as it had been yesterday and just as I’d done then, I now checked the professor’s reaction to my raising the window shade.

  He was sitting upright, a limp pillow behind him pushing his neck into an uncomfortable-looking angle. Though he was in pajamas, his hair was neatly combed and his hands folded in his lap like he was waiting for a visitor. On the opposite side of the bed, his breakfast sat untouched on a wheeled tray.

  “Hello again, Professor Dubois,” I said. “I’ve brought a friend with me today. I thought you might enjoy speaking a little French.”

  Viktor stepped up, “Bonjour, Professeur Dubois,” he said and continued for a few sentences, none of which elicited a reply in any language. After a few more attempts, he gave me a shrug and settled himself in one of the comfy blue plastic and chrome folding chairs in the corner.

  Time for a different tactic. Hiking my skirt so I could sit on the edge of Dubois’s bed, I braced one heel on the side rail and crossed my legs. I scootched my butt lightly against Dubois’s boney little knees. Slowly, I lifted one leg, admiring the ankle-ties on my peep-toe hemp wedge, and hummed a little tune. In the corner, Viktor’s eyes grew large while Dubois’s eyes moved ever so slightly in my direction. Then I went for the heavy-duty ammunition.

  I took the pint of ice cream and plastic spoon from my tote. After helping myself to a spoonful, I gave it an exaggerated lick, then said, “May I offer you some Cherry Garcia, Professor Coester?”

  The old German’s jaw dropped open, and I took the opportunity to place a little of the soft ice cream gently on his tongue. He closed his lips around the sweet, icy treat. His eyes rolled back in his head. For a moment I thought he’d fainted, but then he blinked and, like a baby bird, opened his mouth for more.

  “Good, huh?” I said, taking another spoonful for myself. “Was this always your favorite, or was it Wolfgang’s?”

  Without a moment’s hesitation—and in an unwavering voice heavy with French accent and minus any guttural inflection whatsoever—the man I’d originally come to think of as Gerhard Coester said, “It was mine. Wolfgang loved plain old peach. Always did, God rest him.”

  No Sergeant Schultz here then; this man sounded more like Maurice Chevalier. I’d had a feeling the captain of U-498 would be gone. The professor had an aura of loneliness about him that went beyond the isolation of old age. Relying on the mental image I’d conjured up that day Lucy described the two men in the yard planting the crepe myrtle tree and they way he said Wolfgang’s name, I went way out on a limb: “He was the love of your life.”

  “Yes,” Coester said, nodding in confirmation, a small smile played across his lip. “But in all these years that we loved each other, no one ever knew. Wolfgang moved two doors down, and we made sure we were never seen together at night unless we were out of state. How did you know?”

  Giving him a gentle pat on the knee, I said, “I suspect more people than you thought were aware of your relationship, but it was a different time back then. Those things weren’t spoken of, especially if the people in question were held in high regard.”

  “But how do you know my name? Wolfgang’s name?” he asked incredulously.

  I told him all about Lucy, how I met her looking for information on U-498, about the article that had put it all together for me, and how I’d come to acquire it from Hunter’s computer.

  “I remember Lucy well,” he said, “though I had no idea she—or anyone—saw us that night. It’s amazing, the turn of events in time. Wolfgang and I were sent out to secure the map to the hiding place of one of this greatest of all art treasures, and on the way, a young girl sees us. If anyone would have believed her, the Amber Room would be back in its rightful place, but no one did and so the mystery continues …”

  “To this day,” said Viktor. “Which brings us to why we’re here. It’s time now to end the mystery.”

  “I believe you’re right, my boy,” Coester said, gently folding his hands in his lap.

  Viktor and I waited, but he didn’t say anything else. I looked at Viktor, and he looked back at me. Then we both looked at Coester, who had suddenly gone vacant. Had he withdrawn to the private world he retreated to when convincing the likes of Goggles of his senility? Viktor gave me a horrified look.

  Frantically, I scraped the bottom of the pint of ice cream. We were out! Close to panic, I tried to think of something to do short of shaking the old gent when I considered that he could have fallen silent simply because he didn’t w
ant our visit to end. I motioned for Viktor to pull up his chair, and I grabbed one and did the same.

  We sat by his bed like children waiting for a story. Eventually I asked casually, as if we’d never stopped conversing, “So about that night, you mentioned rowing in, but you didn’t say why. Were you put to sea according to a plan, or was the sub attacked?”

  “Attacked! And sinking!” he said, snapping back as if he’d never been mentally absent. “And fast too. I had always been prepared to leave. Wolfgang was supposed to put me over off the coast of New York. We went through the drill of releasing the lifeboat from the sub many times. I had American dollars, a French passport, and all the paperwork I needed to rent a safe deposit box at the Bank of New York to safeguard the cylinder until the war was over.”

  “New York?” Viktor said. “You missed New York by a long shot.”

  “Yes,” Coester nodded sagely. “But you see, by the time we got that far, Wolfgang and I were in love. And you have to realize, neither Wolfgang nor I were members of the Nazi party. We were just two German men swept up in a course of events that even a blind man could see would be the destruction of us all. I was trying to escape the purge of the university that had been going on since 1933, and Wolfgang never wanted to be in Hitler’s Kriegesmarine. For us to have said no, however, would have meant death by firing squad …” Coester’s words drifted off and he paused again.

  As we waited patiently, not wanting to hurry him, it occurred to me that he was hardly senile. In fact, his withdrawal, in such a place as this, might have been more accurately diagnosed as self-defense—maybe even survival. After a few minutes, I decided a prompt might be necessary after all.

  “Did anyone else on the boat know about your mission?”

  “No,” he stated clearly. “We were the only ones, and we decided to keep it that way. Our plan was to tell the crew our destination was Uruguay. We intended to abandon the sub and the crew once there and hide in the mountains until the war was over.”