The Nazi's Son

by Andrew Turpin

  Finally, at the end of a hallway, Johnson found a small office. On the desk was a large monitor screen, a keyboard, and a mouse, but no computer was connected. Presumably Schwartz used them with a laptop that he had taken with him. There were two filing cabinets, a low cupboard that stood against a wall with a coffee machine and two cups resting on top, and two shelves that ran along the length of the right-hand wall containing books, stationery, and an assortment of power, USB, and other cables. A broadband router, its LED lights winking, stood on the desktop.

  Johnson felt as if he were on a fishing trip. He had no clue what he might find, although his hope was that there would be something that might give clues about Schwartz’s extracurricular activities: documents, communications gear, anything that might hint at surveillance or covert data transfers. He wasn’t holding out much hope.

  He sent another update to Jayne: Still searching.

  Ten minutes later, Johnson had been through every folder in the filing cabinets and the few papers he found in the other cupboard. There was nothing of interest.

  He sighed a little and unzipped his jacket. It was warm in the house, and he knew this could be a long search. He then began going through the other downstairs rooms, but after another quarter of an hour and three more updates to Jayne, he had still found nothing.

  Johnson slowly ascended the bare wooden stairs to the upper floor, his rubber shoes squeaking a little on the polished surface. There he found four bedrooms, but only the largest was being used. Schwartz obviously led a solitary existence.

  The master bedroom had wooden flooring with a couple of rugs, an en suite bathroom, a large fitted wardrobe, and three freestanding chests of drawers. The duvet was carelessly pushed to one side where Schwartz had clearly gotten out of bed in a hurry, but the room was otherwise spotlessly tidy.

  Johnson went through the drawers first, but there was only a selection of underwear, handkerchiefs, and socks. He slid open the doors of the fitted wardrobes, which contained suits, shirts, and ties as well as casual clothing, ranging from jeans to T-shirts and sweat tops, and checked through the cabinets in the en suite before returning to the bedroom. There was nothing.

  He sank to his haunches next to the fitted wardrobe and fingered the old wound at the top of his right ear, trying to think through his next move.

  His options in terms of searching the obvious hiding places seemed to be shrinking rapidly. He had been hoping not to have to do a more extensive search, but that was rapidly becoming the likely scenario.

  As he crouched, a floorboard beneath his feet gave a slight creak. It was scarcely audible, despite the silence in the house. He lifted his foot, and the board squeaked fractionally again as it moved. Again he put his weight down, and the board moved marginally beneath him. Upon closer examination, Johnson could see that the floorboard, about nine inches wide, ran from beneath the bed to the wall at the back of the fitted wardrobe.

  It was strange that the board was not 100 percent secure. There was a tiny gap, maybe just a millimeter or two, between it and the one next to it, whereas the other boards looked watertight. Johnson got down on his knees and traced the crack to the back of the wardrobe, illuminating it with the flashlight on his iPhone, which he propped against the baseboard at the back of the wardrobe.

  This might be worth a closer look, he thought.

  He took out a penknife and, using the smallest blade, worked it carefully into the gap between the boards. Pressing on one side for leverage, he slowly started to ease the board upward.

  Johnson was concerned that the penknife blade would snap, but moments later, he had raised the board sufficiently to get a finger underneath, creating a gap of an inch or so. He put the penknife down and shone the light into the gap.

  There, lying on a board in the cavity, was a round disc-shaped object made of brushed steel. There was a small button on one side, a red LED light, which was turned off, and a USB socket.

  Johnson was immediately certain what this was. He had seen a similar device at Vic’s house in DC only a few months earlier. The two men had discussed espionage technologies that the CIA was deploying in the field in certain sensitive territories, including Moscow, where it needed to collect data from agents in the field who were often employees of rival intelligence agencies.

  It was an SRAC device, used for short-range data transfers.

  He lifted the board enough to get his hand beneath, removed the SRAC device, and took several photographs of it from different angles with his phone. He momentarily contemplated switching it on but decided against it.

  He was about to replace the device in the cavity when he noticed there were also three identical micro SD high-speed memory cards lying in the space. He took one of them out: it was a 32 GB SanDisk card. Should he take one? Should he take all of them? He decided against it but took photographs of the cards as well.

  Was all this the gear that Schwartz had been using to communicate with Jones and pass on the information to Moscow Center? Had this been the route via which Yezhov’s identity and plans had been leaked, leading to the assassination on Friedrichstrasse? It seemed highly possible.

  The equipment itself was evidence enough of wrongdoing, in Johnson’s view. It would certainly be sufficient to warrant the German police raiding the property and holding the owner on suspicion of espionage against the state. He sent all the photographs to Jayne and Vic using a secure message with an accompanying short note.

  Interesting.

  Now it was time to get out. He replaced all the items beneath the floorboard, lowered it carefully back into place, and ensured it was fitting as snugly as when he started.

  Then Johnson retraced his steps out of the bedroom, across the landing, and down the stairs. His shoes again squeaked a little on the wooden stair boards.

  He got to the bottom and was about to head for the door to the large open-plan room and the exit when a gruff voice came from the doorway ahead of him.

  “Was zur Hölle machen Sie hier?” What the hell are you doing here?

  Johnson jumped as if he had been electrocuted, his guts flipping over inside him, as he looked up to find a middle-aged man with a dark crew cut pointing a pistol straight at him.

  Chapter Twelve

  Monday, March 31, 2014

  Berlin

  “Hold on,” Johnson said in German, raising his hands slowly above his head. “I can explain—”

  “Don’t explain,” Schwartz interrupted. “I can see that gun in your belt under your jacket. Just very slowly nudge it out so it falls on the floor, then kick it over to me. Don’t pull it out by the grip. If you try anything, you will get a bullet through the head.”

  Johnson paused for a second, then complied with the instruction, using his fingers to ease his Beretta out from beneath the belt. It eventually fell onto the floorboards with a heavy clunk. Johnson pushed it with his foot so it slid across the boards toward Schwartz.

  How the hell had Schwartz gotten back into the house without Jayne, outside in the van, seeing him?

  Shit.

  Had he shot her?

  He must have—she had a clear view right up and down the street in both directions from her monitor screens in the van. What else would have prevented her from alerting Johnson? Schwartz’s pistol had a long suppressor attached, which would explain why Johnson had heard nothing.

  Shit, shit, shit.

  The German slowly crouched, his eyes still fixed on Johnson and his pistol pointing, and picked up the Beretta with his left hand. He placed the weapon in his left jacket pocket and stood.

  “I think I can also see the shape of a wallet in your front trouser pocket,” Schwartz said. “Throw it on the floor, and your phone, and kick them here also.”

  Johnson slowly repeated the exercise with the wallet and phone, which Schwartz picked up.

  “How did you know I was here, anyway?” Johnson asked.

  “Underfloor movement sensor, you fool. It’s linked to my phone. Now shut up. Keep you
r hands up high. Just move that way,” Schwartz said, gesturing with his gun along the hallway toward the doorway to the TV room.

  Johnson moved slowly along the corridor and into the TV room. Schwartz instructed him to sit on a wooden chair that stood against the wall, which he did, his mind now moving fast.

  There had to be a way out of this.

  Schwartz stood facing Johnson, his back to the door, the gun, which Johnson could see was a Heckler & Koch, still pointing at his head. He opened the wallet with his other hand and glanced at the credit cards and Johnson’s driver’s license inside.

  “Joe Johnson. You are American,” Schwartz said, switching to English as he closed the wallet. “Who the hell are you, and what are you doing here? Explain.”

  Johnson decided his best approach was to lay his cards on the table.

  “I am a private investigator specializing in war crimes, but I also look at other situations as well, and here I’m working alongside the CIA and the British Secret Intelligence Service. The reason I’m here is because I’m investigating espionage activity against various countries, including Germany, the United States, and the United Kingdom. We have reason to believe that—”

  “So you think it’s okay to just break into someone’s house? No search warrant, I am sure.”

  Johnson shook his head and paused for a moment. “No. I mean, we could call in the police if you prefer, but I don’t think you would like us to go down that route.”

  “You are completely wrong. I have no connection to any espionage activity. You are mad. I have a senior job at the Ministry of Defense, and you have no right to be here.”

  Johnson decided to take a chance. “It seems odd that a senior Ministry of Defense employee has been developing contacts with intelligence agency officers, holding covert meetings with them in hotel rooms, and transferring data using short-range high-speed comms equipment.”

  Now feeling a little calmer, Johnson continued. “Perhaps you would like to tell me a little more about your career in the Stasi and your long-standing links to the SVR as well as to Western intelligence agencies. Why exactly would you have those connections on both sides?”

  He surveyed Schwartz’s face closely. He had been almost entirely inscrutable, but Johnson was sure he saw a flicker, a slight twitch, across the German’s face when he mentioned the SVR.

  “You are talking Scheiße. Absolute shit. There’s no proof of anything,” Schwartz said. “I never worked for the Stasi, and I have never had any links to intelligence officers or the SVR. Where the hell did that all come from?”

  “We already have plenty of proof. And it would be easy enough to get more and then take action that would put you inside Stammheim for life,” Johnson said, referring to one of Germany’s most famous high-security prisons, situated on a sprawling site near Stuttgart.

  “I could shoot you dead right now and end this crap.”

  “Go ahead. But it wouldn’t end this crap, as you put it. The evidence is already with intelligence agencies. They have proof that you’ve been using illegal comms gear, keeping it in this house together with files saved on memory cards. You’ve been stealing secrets from the highest level of government, then passing them to the Russians for whom you’ve been working since the 1980s, haven’t you? So killing me won’t change a thing. Except then you’d be facing murder charges as well as espionage.”

  Johnson had no idea whether the bit about stealing secrets and the SVR was actually true, but he felt he had to take a gamble to pave the way for his next move, which had just come to him.

  “But if you cooperate with me, I might find a way to cooperate with you,” Johnson said.

  Schwartz rolled his eyes. “I find this unbelievable. You are bullshitting me.”

  “No, we are not bullshitting you,” came a woman’s voice in German from the hallway. “Drop that gun now; otherwise I’ll blow off the back of your head. Now! Drop it!”

  Johnson craned his neck and caught a glimpse of Jayne, standing behind Schwartz wearing her pink Deutsche Telekom helmet and black jacket and pointing her Walther at him.

  Schwartz rotated his head—he could presumably see Jayne out of the corner of his eye. For a few seconds he said and did nothing, visibly calculating his options.

  There came a deafening gunshot that echoed round the room, and a large chunk of plaster fell from the ceiling above Schwartz’s head, narrowly missing him and causing a cloud of dust to spurt outward from where Jayne’s round had blasted a hole in the white-painted surface.

  “Drop it,” Jayne repeated.

  Schwartz let the H&K fall to the floor.

  “Thank you. Now put your hands above your head, and kick that gun to me.”

  Schwartz paused for a second, but when Jayne wiggled the barrel of her gun, he raised his hands and kicked the gun to her. Johnson then walked to Schwartz and retrieved his Beretta, phone, and wallet from his pockets. As he did so, Schwartz spat in his face.

  Johnson stood back and eyed the German, then wiped the spittle from his cheeks and nose. “You might just regret doing that,” he said, lowering his tone a fraction.

  Schwartz was staring at Jayne. “I remember you, you bitch,” he said eventually. “Nineteen eighty-six, wasn’t it?”

  “Eighty-nine, I think. Good to know your memory remains almost intact,” Jayne said in a level tone. “Maybe you’ll be more helpful to us now than you were then.”

  In response, Schwartz spat again, this time in Jayne’s direction, but the blob of spittle missed her.

  Ten minutes later, while Jayne pointed her Walther at Schwartz’s head, Johnson had lashed the German to the same wooden chair on which he had made Johnson sit, using some thin cord taken from a cupboard in the utility room.

  It turned out that Jayne, in line with their preplanning, had acted after Johnson failed to give his five-minute update twice. She told Johnson that she had seen no one enter the property but assumed that something had to be wrong. So she had made her way to the rear door, which Johnson had left unlocked. Once inside, she heard Schwartz and Johnson talking and realized what had happened. Schwartz had apparently entered the property via the double doors that led off the large open-plan room to the wooden decking—one of the doors was still slightly ajar. He must have returned to the house via a neighbor’s back garden, Jayne surmised. He had most likely not seen the telecoms van standing in the road or had not realized its significance.

  Johnson went to the utility room, shut the door, and made a call to Vic to outline what had happened and what he was thinking of doing.

  There was a short silence at the other end of the line as Vic digested Johnson’s suggestion.

  “Obviously, if our friends at the BND find out about this, all hell will break loose,” Vic said. “They are our biggest allies in Europe, apart from Six.”

  “I know. But do we just let him go, then? Or would you like me to inform the BND and get them to take over seeing as it’s on their territory? That should really speed things up for us.”

  “No, we both know we can’t let him go. I’m just pointing out what you doubtless already know. There’s a risk.”

  “I’ll take that as a yes, then,” Johnson said. “Will keep you updated. In the meantime, I need someone to come pronto and collect three flash drives and what I assume is an SRAC device for analysis and to extract whatever’s on them. I as a private investigator don’t happen to have the necessary skills or equipment to do that, unfortunately.”

  Johnson took the snort from Vic as confirmation that his request was going to be granted. They agreed that the SRAC and flash drives should be collected by Neal, who was still in Berlin.

  Johnson’s next call was to Nicklin-Donovan in London. His reaction was guarded but also amounted to a tacit go-ahead. He made clear it was up to Johnson to get on with the job the best way he could.

  “I just need to be able to say it’s not my operation,” Nicklin-Donovan said.

  “I know,” Johnson said. “But let’s keep this
real. You’re up to your neck in it. It’s your Berlin head of station’s activities we’re trying to get to the bottom of.”

  There was a long pause at the other end of the line. “Yes, yes,” Nicklin-Donovan said eventually. “But just remember that if things go sideways, you’re both out of there, and the investigation is finished, as far as I’m concerned. I’ll help wherever I can—beneath the counter.”

  Johnson then returned to the TV room and stood in front of Schwartz. “Now it’s your turn to talk. I’ll give you two options. The first is we call your Ministry of Defense and inform them about the comms equipment I found in your bedroom and the flash drives and your covert meetings and turn you over to German criminal investigators. Or you could help us, in which case we might find a window of time during which you can clear up your affairs here in Germany and disappear off to wherever you want to go. It must be obvious that either way, your career at the ministry is finished. If you want to keep some sort of freedom, help us.”

  Johnson felt something gnawing at the inside of his stomach as he spoke. It went utterly against the grain for him to allow someone who appeared to have committed treason to have an option to walk away, but he felt the chances of getting the information he needed were otherwise minimal.

  And he needed that information.

  The alternative was to involve getting the German police and prosecutors involved, and that would almost certainly become a massively drawn-out, complex legal and judicial process during which Schwartz would inevitably say little of help.

  In that scenario, the chances were almost zero of finding out immediately whether Jones really was the mole at the heart of Western intelligence. And even if there was a possibility of getting the information further down the line, it might take so long that more critical secrets might be leaked in the meantime, causing all kinds of other damage.