Requiem for a Gypsy

by Michael Genelin

  As soon as Zdenko hung up, Bogan began to cry. “I’m sure he didn’t believe me. He’s the one who handles the paperwork, not me. He’ll know I betrayed him; he’ll know you’re here.”

  Not good. Zdenko would be coming, but now he would come prepared. Jana pulled out her gun, jacking a shell into the chamber.

  “You’ll need your gun,” she warned Masson.

  He took out his gun, cocked the weapon, and the two of them stood on opposite sides of the door, ready for Zdenko to come in. They realized they had made a terrible mistake only when the firing started.

  The first two shots hit the older Bogan, driving him back into his chair. The third shot hit Masson, the French detective going down, clutching at his leg. Jana dropped to the floor, rolling and firing back at the gunman, catching a glimpse of him as she rolled. It had to be Zdenko Bogan: he had a large chestnut birthmark on his face.

  Jana managed to take refuge behind the end of a large mirrored bureau, waiting out the next few bullets, which shattered the glass of the mirror, all the while hoping she’d get a clean shot at the man. Then there was silence.

  The hush was like a silent drum in her ears, driving her to take the next step. She began a whispered ten count just to steady herself, then rolled behind a couch, coming up almost immediately with her gun at the ready.

  Zdenko Bogan was gone.

  Jana took a zigzag path through the suite in the direction he would have had to retreat, using the shelter of the occasional piece of furniture. Then she saw the open door. It led to the other suite. Zdenko was not in the suite. He would be out of the hotel by now.

  Jana hurriedly retraced her steps, angry at herself. They had made a gross oversight. And the older Bogan had failed to correct them. The two presidential suites were connected. Zdenko had simply come in through the joining door instead of the hall entrance, surprising them all.

  Masson staggered erect, clutching his thigh, obviously in pain. Jana glanced at him, then checked Oto Bogan. He was dead. As she was checking him, Masson hobbled over.

  “I’m your partner. You’re supposed to check my health first, not some banker. Or is it because you don’t like Frenchmen?”

  “Unlike some others, I like the French,” she assured him, then rang the front desk and told them to call for an ambulance and the police, giving them as complete a description as she could of Zdenko Bogan, focusing on the chestnut-colored birthmark on his face. All the time she was on the phone, she watched Masson as he stared down at the body of Oto Bogan. The dead man had bled all over the suite’s beautiful white carpet.

  “Be grateful Zdenko shot Mr. Bogan first,” Jana advised. “His choice of Bogan as the first target gave us the extra second to react. It saved you from a better-aimed bullet.”

  Masson picked up a napkin that had been left over from the coffee set that had been removed and pressed it over his wound. “That was one hell of a bad relationship. It’s not every man who can put a few bullets in his father.”

  “Oto Bogan wasn’t Zdenko’s father. He pretended to be his father. My belief is that Zdenko hated Oto Bogan. That has to be why he shot him before trying to kill us.”

  Masson swayed slightly, catching himself before going down.

  “Lie down before you fall down,” Jana advised him.

  “Never lie down after you’ve been shot. You may never get up again. I learned that from my first partner.”

  Masson was true to his word.

  When the ambulance came, he was still on his feet, and he insisted on hobbling to it.

  Chapter 44

  Zdenko Bogan was nowhere to be found in Paris. The French police were all over the city searching for him, but he had gone to ground. All large cities are good places to hide, if you know the right places. And Paris is better than most, with the banlieues that daily give sanctuary to thousands of illegal immigrants. But Jana had a hunch that Zdenko wouldn’t be hiding in Paris for very long. She thought she might even know where he would run to.

  Jana consulted with Masson’s supervisors, giving them her conclusions about the evidence that she and Masson had gone over at Jindrich Bogan’s Paris apartment; then she put them in touch with the BKA people in Berlin, as well as her own fraud expert. She urged them all to get in touch with the authorities in the countries where the bank accounts containing the enormous hoards of money were. They needed to freeze the accounts until the sources of the caches were determined and legitimate ownership established. The operative word was legitimate, and Jana had absolutely no doubt in her mind that they would find that every cent in those accounts was illegitimate.

  Jana called the number she had been given for Henrich Pechy, the man recommended to her by Milan Denka as an expert on the aftermath of World War II in Slovakia. The man answered the phone without any preliminary civility, an angry tone in his voice: “What do you want?”

  Jana introduced herself, indicating that she needed to talk to him about an investigation she was conducting in Slovakia.

  “What about?” His voice was even brusquer.

  “Have you ever heard of the Rostov Report, Professor?”

  Pechy hung up on her.

  Jana was not unhappy with the response. It made it clear that she was on the right track. It also made it imperative that she talk to Pechy.

  Jana called the airline to arrange for a change in her return ticket. She would now make an interim stop in Frankfurt, rent a car, and drive the two hundred kilometers to the town of Bad Arolsen. The next morning, Jana left Paris and six hours later was parking in the lot of the International Tracing Service in Bad Arolsen.

  The ITC was easy to find. It was in a pleasant location, a four-story main building resting among grass and trees, a walk leading to its front entrance lined with hedges, everything well trimmed, the serenity belying the contents of the main building and the four nearby smaller structures. Jana had done a little homework. The buildings housed over fifty million references and documents containing information relating to over seventeen and a half million people who had been victims of the Nazi holocaust—not only Jews, but Poles and Russians and Slovaks and gypsies and Sinti and all of the target populations that had been the casualties of what the gypsies called the Porrajmos, the Great Devouring. Its story was packed inside these buildings. If you wanted something from that black era, this was as good a place as any to do the research.

  It was also the era that Henrich Pechy was interested in.

  It didn’t take Jana long to track Pechy down. He was in the record stacks in the main building, ensconced in a stall that the ITC had assigned to him for his work. Pechy didn’t like being disturbed. He was as abrupt and angry as he had previously been to Jana when she had tried to talk to him by telephone, only agreeing to speak with her when she reminded him that she was a commander of the Slovak Police and told him she would make his life miserable if he didn’t talk to her now.

  Reluctantly, Pechy showed her to a small glass-walled meeting room that was set aside for visitors. He sat down grumpily, arms folded across his chest, and told her to be quick about what she wanted.

  “You’re here doing research, Professor Pechy.”

  “That should be obvious, Commander.”

  “I’ve been informed that you’re an expert on the end of World War Two and its immediate aftermath in Slovakia, correct?”

  “You know that already, or you wouldn’t be contacting me. So get on with it.”

  The man wasn’t just angry about being interrupted, Jana concluded: he was truly ungiving and bad-tempered. She didn’t envy his students.

  “In your research, have you ever run into the names Bogan or Zuzulova?”

  He mulled the question over. “Why do you want to know?”

  The question was a giveaway. It was now plain that he had information on the families and their history in Slovakia.

  “Are they in the Rostov Report?”

  “I would like to go back to my work,” Pechy growled.

  “This is you
r work, Professor.”

  “You’re wrong. And I can’t talk about my work, Commander.”

  “Has the government told you not to talk about your work, Professor?”

  “If I affirm or deny that fact, then I’m talking about my work; so I can’t say yes or no without, in fact, talking about it.” He had a smirk on his face. “Now may I go back to my work?”

  “I have something important to tell you, Professor.”

  “Oh, yes?” His voice was skeptical, and sarcastic. “The police are now telling me what’s important in my field? Have you had any experience or training in what I do?”

  The man had a large sense of his own importance. It did not make for an easy interaction. Jana decided to see if Pechy had any information on Jindrich, Zdenko’s grandfather.

  “What did Jindrich Bogan have to do with events in the Second World War?” Jana asked.

  He looked at her without comprehension. The man knew nothing about Jindrich. It would have been Jindrich’s father then, as the adult in Slovakia during World War II, whom he had information on.

  “Jindrich’s father then. As a researcher, what did he do to make you interested in him?” Jana remembered the Hlinka Guard tattoo on Jindrich’s arm. “There was a Bogan in the Hlinka Guard, wasn’t there?”

  Professor Pechy’s eyes widened. “There may have been.” His voice was uneasy. “Why do you ask?”

  “I got on to this topic by investigating a murder case, Professor. Now I’m investigating a multiple murder case. One of the victims was Klara Boganova, born Zuzulova. Her husband has also been killed. And a few months ago, Jindrich Bogan. Jindrich had a Hlinka Guard tattoo on his arm.”

  There was a dawning awareness on Pechy’s face.

  “Professor, who was the head of the Hlinka Guard?”

  “A man named Alexander Mach. A butcher, a fascist, and a thief. Long dead.”

  The name had not come up in the investigation.

  “Who was the number two man in the Guard, Professor?” Jana asked.

  “Bogan.” The name came out reluctantly. “Tomas Bogan.”

  “Thank you, Professor. Do you know if he had a son, and if the son’s name was Jindrich Bogan?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Easy enough for me to find out later, Professor Pechy.” There was probably no reason for Pechy to even consider focusing on Jindrich in his research. She would research the records in Slovakia herself. Jana was sure the records would reveal that Jindrich’s father was Tomas Bogan. “And the grandfather of Klara Zuzulova? In the Hlinka Guard as well?”

  “Yes. Bogan’s chief aide.”

  Jana had the connection she was looking for. Zuzulova and Bogan had married to maintain the tie between their families. But why was it so important?

  “The Rostov Report, Professor,” Jana said. “It’s the reason I’m here to talk to you. What’s the subject of the report?”

  “I can’t say. The government has tied my hands.”

  “It’s amazing how governments do these things. I think, under the circumstances, that’s an improper order by the government. Sometimes good men see that they have to band together, agree to disagree with the government, and risk its wrath by doing the right thing. We have to disobey when we know that to obey them is wrong.”

  Pechy’s face told Jana that he was still set against giving her the information. She would have to bait a hook and dangle it in front of his face.

  “I have information that any academic in the world who was in your position would give half of his teeth to get. I think it will give your research an impact like nothing else anyone could offer you. That’s your reward if you talk to me.”

  Pechy looked interested.

  “I guarantee you won’t be disappointed, Professor. You have had a good career so far. The information I give you will make it a great career.”

  A flash of avarice on his face. “How do I know you’re not just on a fishing expedition and have absolutely no information that would be of interest?” he asked.

  Jana showed the bait.

  “Bank contents, Professor. Accounts dating back to the end of the Second World War.”

  The professor’s breathing accelerated. He wanted what Jana had.

  “And now, Professor: the Rostov Report.”

  “I’m uncomfortable with disobeying the government.” The man’s voice had softened, his distemper completely gone.

  “This stays between us, Professor.”

  That last assurance worked. The professor started slowly; then his narrative began to speed up.

  “When Communism fell in Russia, the Soviet National Archives were opened up for research. There were some limitations, but they were minor in most areas. Unfortunately, the National Archives were vast; they included documents from the entire Soviet empire, and they were badly indexed. So it has taken years for items to surface. One very long document, a study, surfaced five months ago.”

  “The Rostov Report?”

  “Yes. Rostov was a colonel in the USSR. He had been ordered to make an assessment of the paramilitary organizations that had sprung up under the fascist regimes.”

  “The Hlinka Guard?”

  “One of them. All of the pro-fascist regimes developed them. The Ustashi in Croatia, the Arrow Cross in Hungary, Chetniks in Serbia, and on and on. They were violent, brutish fanatics who assisted in the death roundups, confiscating property, lining their own pockets, and lusting after more. But what could they do with what they stole? They needed an approach. Common interests drove them into developing a liaison between the different organizations. And your Bogan was the designated agent who went from country to country, establishing and strengthening the ties between them all. Tomas Bogan had been a banker before he became a member of the Hlinka Guard, so he knew money. And the strongest mutual tie between these organizations was money.

  “One day, after the war, the Russians caught up with him. They beat him to death. The question remained: what had Tomas Bogan done when he acted as liaison between the other groups involved in the same crimes the Hlinka Guard was involved with? That was what the Rostov Report explored.”

  Pechy spent an hour briefing Jana on what was in the Rostov Report.

  When he was through, Jana filled him in on what she had learned in Paris. He was ecstatic. He even became polite.

  Jana didn’t stay long after that. She drove back to Frankfurt and caught a flight to Vienna’s Schwechat Airport. Once she had found the letter on the floor of the dead Jindrich Bogan’s apartment in Paris, everything else had fallen into place.

  Chapter 45

  On the plane to Austria, Jana reviewed Zdenko’s letter. “Grandfather, it’s time for a reckoning on the accounts. Immediately. I will not tolerate the status quo. The banks are also in the mix. It’s over. Now! This has to be at once. Anything less is unacceptable. The present situation is finished. Zdenko.”

  There was no doubting the urgency in the communication. Or the implied threat. Considering that Zdenko had killed Oto Bogan at the hotel, the threat was a real one. The old man had to have known he was in danger, and he had taken the only precautions he could: he had built himself a small fortress and had armed himself as best he could.

  It had not been enough.

  “… a reckoning on the accounts.” “The banks are also in the mix.” “The present situation is finished.” It was all there, if you knew the events surrounding the assertions in the letter.

  The only accounts Zdenko could have been talking about were the accounts found in the apartment, the bank accounts with the incredibly large sums of money in them. Jindrich had controlled the accounts. He had been the keeper. And now Zdenko wanted an accounting. And that was not all the grandson was asking for. He surely wanted money, perhaps all of it. The banks were part of the demand. Family quarrels over money and the family business were always the worst of all quarrels. They generally became wars.

  Without knowing it, Jana had stumbled into the middle of a battle. M
other dead, putative father dead, putative grandfather dead, all probably by Zdenko’s hand or at his order. Klara had, as described by her lawyer, been absolutely ruthless. Like mother, like son. Zdenko had learned at her knee. The empire awaited him. All he had to do was take it. He had not given up trying.

  Unfortunately for Zdenko, he needed the accounts’ identification credential from his grandfather to get to the sums in the accounts. The question paramount in Jana’s mind was: did Zdenko now have the credential in his possession? Jana’s instincts told her that he didn’t. Its location and the identity of the person in possession of it were probably the keys to the ongoing series of murders.

  There was a secondary question: why was Makine involved in this? Surely because of some type of interest in the money. Money was one of the things that drove men like Makine. And, like Zdenko, part of his quest for control had to be over the banks themselves. Yunis had been Makine’s ally, and Yunis had run the bank in Berlin. Makine had tried to warn him, as he had tried to warn Bogan on the night of the first attempt to kill him. Which meant Bogan was also Makine’s ally, and Yunis’s ally. The common thread was the bank.

  Which brought Jana to her last question: why had Mrs. Bogan tried to set up the killing of Oto Bogan that evening? For the same reason that Makine had tried to warn him. She was on the other side, perhaps leading the charge. Jana thought of the dead Turk in Bratislava, killed with an ice pick. That was done after Makine learned of the upcoming assassination attempt on Bogan. Makine had killed him in retribution. It was all a mass of murder porridge that was still simmering on the stove.

  When Jana landed in Vienna, she immediately went to meet with the Austrian police. The meeting lasted just long enough for her to brief them. The basic plan they developed was quickly agreed on, and everything needed to carry it out was in place slightly less than two hours after that. Surveillance was instituted on the IEB, the bank the Bogans owned, and on the Gumpendorfer address where Radomir Kralik lived. The Gumpendorfer address was supposedly unoccupied, but on the second night one of the surveillance officers saw a light pop on in the window, then pop off again a minute later.