The old man stared at the fifty euro note in front of Peggy on the table. She slid it across to him. He grabbed it and slipped it quickly into the sagging pocket of his jacket. He drained the last of the beer from his mug and set it aside, placing his hands flat on the table. The fingers were long and surprisingly small and delicate. Veins twisted across the skin like worms underneath the wrinkled flesh. The nails were broken and cracked, dark with dirt, thick and yellow.
“Old hands,” he said.
Peggy said nothing. The man continued to look mournfully down at his hands. “Old,” he repeated.
“They look like they might have played the piano once,” ventured Holliday.
“Violin,” murmured Drabeck. “I once played the violin, in Vienna, a very long time ago. The Wiener Symphoniker, the Vienna Symphony.”
“You were a violinist?” Peggy said, wondering for a moment where this was leading.
“I was a boy, very young. I was at the Universität für Musik und darstellende Kunst Wien, the music school in Vienna, yes? I had a job; I was to be with the Symphoniker, my dream since I was very small. Then came the Anschluss, and we were all Nazis whether we liked to be or not; it made no matter.”
“That would have been 1938, then,” said Holliday. Hitler’s relatively peaceful annexation of Austria.
“Ja,” said Drabeck. The waitress returned, carrying a tray. On it were an array of bottles, plates, and glasses, including an enormous glass mug of foaming beer as dark and opaque as Guinness. She set it all down in front of the old man.
His eyes gleamed. He slathered the Strammer Max sandwich with horseradish and dark mustard then took an enormous bite. Egg yolk squirted out of the sides of the sandwich and dripped into his beard. Hand shaking a little, he picked up the big glass mug and quaffed an enormous slug of the black, foaming beer to wash down the food. He sat back in his chair, sighing, his breath coming in hard little puffs as though he’d just been in a footrace.
“What happened then?” Holliday said.
Drabeck wiped the sleeve of his jacket across his mouth, taking the foam out of his drooping mustache.
“My Schwuchtl father knew the big cheese here, yes? The boss, Herr von Kellerman, the Count up in his big Schloss there by the ruins. He and my father were together in a . . .” He paused, his bushy eyebrows lowering as he frowned, looking for the right words. “Ein Geheimbund . . .”
“Secret group?” Holliday said. “Secret society?”
“Ja, that is it,” nodded Drabeck. He took another bite of the sandwich and more egg yolk dripped. He put the sandwich down and licked his fingers, then took another long swallow of beer.
“Do you remember the name of the secret society?” Peggy asked.
“Ja, sure,” said the old man. He took another bite and spoke through the mouthful of food. “Die Thule Gesellschaft. Der Germanenorden.” He swallowed and drank more beer.
“The Thule Society,” nodded Holliday. “The Teutonic Order of the Holy Grail. They were formed just after World War One.” The Germans had been looking for some groping mythology to make themselves feel more important, much like “The Star-Spangled Banner” being written as a morale booster after the British burned Washington to the ground and captured De troit. Except that the song that became the national anthem was no more than a patriotic song that bound the nation together and boosted an overtaxed country’s sense of itself a little. The urge for Germanic mysticism had given birth to the rise of Adolf Hitler, the seed of his anti-Semitic screed planted in the rise of Aryan fundamentalism, his first converts among members of groups like the Thule Society.
“Ja,” said Drabeck. “That’s it.” He unscrewed the top from the clay bottle of Steinhäger and poured himself an oily couple of ounces into the inverted cone of the glass brought by the waitress. He drank it off neat and smacked his lips. “Mein Vater, my father, thought it was a sign from the heavens, the symbol of Thule and the . . .” He paused again. “Das Wappen, das schildförmiges,” he struggled.
Holliday got it.
“The shield, the coat of arms.”
“Ja,” said Drabeck, relieved. “The, how you said, coat of arms of the Thule and the family of the Kellermans was so much the same.” He poured another glass of the clear gin and drank it off again, then reached into the breast pocket of his jacket and dug out an inch-long stub of pencil. He picked up a napkin and drew on it quickly. A simple sword in front of a slightly curving swastika. “Thule Gesellschaft,” he said, showing them. He added the sword and ribbon crest they’d seen carved in the stone above the front entrance to Schloss Kellerman. “Das Wappen auf das geschlecht Kellerman, gelt, ja?”
“The sword again,” said Peggy.
Drabeck tapped at the drawing with his pencil stub.
“Ja, der Schwert.” He nodded emphatically.
“So,” said Holliday slowly. “Your father and Herr Kellerman were in the Thule Society together . . .” He let it dangle.
Drabeck poked the last of the sandwich into his mouth and chewed reflectively.
“Kellerman was ein Obergruppenführer, a general in the Schutzstaffel, the SS. He knew people in the Party, so my father also. Little Heini—Himmler, Goebbels, and der Dicke, the Fat One, Göring, he knew all of them, so they had my father become Stellvertreter-Gauleiter . . .”
“Deputy gauleiter, district boss?” Holliday supplied.
“Ja, as you say, boss of the district, the town here.”
“And you?” Peggy asked.
“I played the violin.” Drabeck shrugged, pouring another glass of Steinhäger. He drank, then wiped his lips with the back of his thumb. “What could I do? My eyesight was poor, I could not shoot, or kill, or anything like that, so Kellerman made me his Putzer.”
“Putzer?” Peggy said.
“Der Hausdiener,” said the old man, struggling.
“Orderly, I think,” said Holliday. “An aide-de-camp.”
“Ja,” said Drabeck. “His servant. I polished his boots and ran his bath, just so, ja? I went with him everywhere, polishing his verdammte Stiefel. Russia, Stalin grad, Italy, Normandy, always polishing the boots.”
“The Berghof?” Holliday asked. Was that the connection with the sword?
“Ja, sure, there, too, a few times. There I am having the privilege to pick up the Hundkacke of Blondi, Hitler’s dog, from the rugs and fetch die Nutte Eva’s little cakes from the town. And polish the boots.”
“And then?” Peggy said.
Drabeck poured more Steinhäger.
“You know Dachau?” Drabeck asked.
“The concentration camp?” Holliday said.
“Ja, das Konzentrationslager,” nodded the old man. “They had a camp here for the workers at Dornier and Maybach. Making Raketen, ja?”
“V2 rockets,” supplied Holliday.
“Vergeltungswaffe Zwei, ja,” nodded Drabeck. “They had to have people to work. Italians and Poles mostly. Juden, of course. Jews. My father took women from the camp and . . . used them.” The old man paused, looking down into his empty glass. His hand was on the clay bottle, but he made no move to pour from it. He looked up and stared Holliday in the eye. “When the war was over and the Americans released the prisoners, some came to the town looking for my father. He was hiding at Schloss Kellerman. You know it?”
“We were there this morning,” said Holliday.
“They found him in the old ruins. They brought him back here to the town square and hung him from a lamppost with dem Kabel, the electrical wire. He kicked and jerked for five minutes, and his face turned black. His tongue was like a fat sausage sticking from his mouth. I was his son. They made me watch.”
“Holy crap,” whispered Peggy.
“Ja,” agreed Drabeck. “It was unpleasant for me.”
“By then Lutz Kellerman had disappeared?” Holliday asked.
“Natürlich,” grunted the old man. “No more boots for Rudy.” He poured himself another glass of Steinhäger. His forehead and cheeks were shiny w
ith sweat. He belched quietly, and a hiss of gin fumes laced with horseradish and hot mustard spread across the table.
“And Axel?” Holliday said.
“Switzerland,” said Drabeck. “A refugee, with his mother and his older sister. He was young, three, four maybe.”
“When did they come back?”
“Nineteen forty-six. Things were bad here then. No work for anyone. Everyone was Geld brauchen, penniless; the Kellermans were in Geld schwimmen: they had money. Lots of it. They went into business. Die Zugmaschinen. Tractors. People loved the Kellermans again.” He drank more Steinhäger. “Dem Geld verfallen sein,” he said philosophically and sighed.
“And you?”
The old man laughed and belched again. Behind the bar the waitress looked up at the sound.
“Frau Kellerman hired me to polish her boots,” said Drabeck. “Forty years I work for the family and then one day, phhft! Rudy is no good any more. Too old. Too much drink. Forty years, no pension. Nothing; der Kotzbrocken.”
“When we were there today we saw no evidence that Lutz Kellerman had ever existed. There was no mention of him at the museum, no pictures, nothing.”
Drabeck laughed again.
“Keineswegs!” he snorted. “Of course not! Hitler was a bad dream for Germany, a nightmare they would sooner forget; a nightmare I would forget if it was possible.” Drabeck poured more Steinhäger and drank it.
His nose was running now, and he wiped it on the sleeve of his jacket. His eyes were wet and filled with tears.
“Friedrichshafen made the Hindenburg only. Zeppelins, not death Raketen. Boys who yodel and play the alpenhorn. Girls who make Apfelstrudel and fat babies. It is a different world now; there is no room in history for Konzentrationslager or men like Obergruppenführer Lutz Kellerman.”
“Surely the son has not forgotten his father,” said Holliday.
“No,” Drabeck said. “He remembers him well enough. He hides it.”
“Hides what?” Peggy said.
“His father’s things, Gegenstände mit Nostalgiewert—I don’t know the word in English for this.”
Nostalgiewert. Nostalgia?
“Memorabilia?”
Drabeck shrugged.
“Egal welche,” he grunted. Whatever.
“Medals, uniforms, that kind of thing,” prompted Holliday.
“Ja, sure,” answered Drabeck. His eyes were shifting, and he was beginning to look uncomfortable. Talking about himself and the past was fine; talking about the master’s secrets was something else.
“So he has a shrine to his father somewhere?” Peggy said, pushing. Drabeck looked down into his empty glass, his lips pursing.
“Ja,” he said slowly.
Holliday caught Peggy’s eye. He made a little gesture with his thumb and forefinger, rubbing them back and forth. She nodded and dug into her bag. She pulled out a pale green hundred euro note.
She folded it in half and slid it across the table, nudging Drabeck’s glass. There was a second of hesitation, and then the old man’s fingers delicately pulled the bill toward the edge of the table and it disappeared into his pocket.
“Where?” Holliday said flatly.
There was another second’s hesitation. Drabeck licked his lips, and then he spoke.
“He has a place . . .” the old man began.
14
“We should have brought a gun,” said Peggy. They were lying on the edge of the bluff that stood over Schloss Kellerman on the broad, sweeping meadow below. It was dusk, and the first security lights were coming on around the complex of buildings. Through his newly purchased binoculars Holliday could see the distinctive pink glow of high pressure mercury vapor lamps; in full dark the Schloss would be lit up as brightly as a Hollywood premiere.
“Guns are stupid,” said Holliday, putting down the binoculars. “You wind up getting shot.”
“Funny sentiment coming from an old soldier.”
“Old soldiers don’t get to be old by overestimating the value of firepower,” answered Holliday. “Don’t carry a gun unless you’re willing to kill someone with it, which I am not willing to do at the moment.”
Peggy frowned.
“I’m not one of your first-year students at the Point, Doc. I don’t need a lecture. I just thought it might be nice to have some backup if this guy Kellerman was responsible for murdering Professor Carr-Harris and burning down Grandpa’s house.”
“We don’t know that for sure,” said Holliday.
“It’s a pretty good assumption. We wouldn’t be here otherwise.”
“Assumptions without evidence are the kind of things that start wars,” said Holliday. “I repeat, guns are stupid.”
“You’re lecturing again, Doc.”
“Comes with the territory.”
He scanned the grounds of the Schloss again. Nothing was moving. An hour ago a van had pulled up with the evening shift of guards. Eight armed, uniformed men, all tall, fit, young, and definitely Aryan. Axel Kellerman was clearly not an equal opportunity employer. The van had picked up the eight men from the earlier shift and driven off.
Twenty minutes later a tall, dark-haired man in an expensive suit, wearing a green Tyrolean hat complete with boar’s brush decoration, had climbed into a big, black Mercedes sedan and driven off toward Friedrichshafen. It could have been Axel Kellerman, but it was hard to tell for sure. The parking lot of the Schloss was empty.
Holliday swung the glasses to the left. At the far end of the bluff, two hundred yards away and partially screened by a stand of pine trees, the ruins of the old castle rose in the gathering darkness like an ancient megalith. The promontory was barred by the original curtain wall, or what was left of it: a twelve-foot-high mound of crumbling stone and rubble.
Behind the wall, standing like an immense broken tooth, were the remains of the keep, the stone fortress that had once stood in the center of the castle, protected by a moat and drawbridge, the last line of defense for the old Count Kellerman-Pinzgau.
Peggy took a shiny camera the size of a cigarette pack out of her bag and took a few quick exposures of the ruins.
“What are you doing?” Holliday asked.
“Taking establishing shots.”
“We’re snooping, not making a documentary.”
“Snooping, documentary, what do I care? I’m taking pictures, that’s what I do, Doc.”
She aimed the camera at Holliday and clicked off a shot.
“No flash,” he said. “Nothing will come out,” he said.
“Don’t be silly,” answered Peggy. “This thing will take pictures by starlight. Welcome to the digital age, old man.”
Holliday picked up the binoculars again and turned them toward the Schloss. Still no movement. The only sound was the light, warm wind sifting through the surrounding trees.
“All right,” he said quietly. “It’s all clear. Keep low so your silhouette doesn’t break the horizon; we wouldn’t want some guard on a smoke break seeing you. Head for the barbican.”
“The what?”
“The gatehouse in the wall, that big square thing.”
“Gotcha.”
“Go.”
She went. Thirty seconds later he followed, running hard, crouching low.
They reached the old gatehouse in the wall, then paused. The courtyard beyond was dark and empty. Nothing moved. In the far distance Holliday could hear the moaning rumble of a passing train.
“Maybe Drabeck was feeding us a load of bull,” said Peggy. “Maybe this is all a waste of time.”
“Nervous?” Holliday asked.
“I’m feeling just a wee bit criminal.”
“Barely that,” said Holliday. “Trespassing maybe.”
“So far.”
“So far.”
They waited for a moment more, catching their breath.
“Now what?” Peggy asked, bent low, panting, hands on knees.
“More running,” said Holliday. “The second barbican in front of the moa
t. From there we cross the bridge into the keep.”
“You first this time,” said Peggy. “Age before beauty.”
“You wish,” said Holliday. He eased himself forward for a few feet and looked out into the courtyard. A few yards away he could see a regular outline of stonework that was all that remained of the original Great Hall, the lord of the manor’s residence in peacetime. A little beyond that was a circular pile of stones that had probably once been the castle well, and beyond that, thirty feet on a side and rising eighty feet or more into the night sky, was the keep.
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