The Stolen

by T. S. Learner

  ‘For some. What about the stolen gold you received from the SS during the war?’

  ‘I paid good money for that gold – it was a legal transaction.’

  ‘But you must have known where it came from.’

  ‘No one asked, and no one cared! It was war, business was business.’

  ‘What about the other objects you laundered for Ulrich?’

  ‘I don’t have to tolerate this interrogation. If you don’t want to see me, fine. But at least give me a chance to explain myself to my granddaughter.’

  Instead of answering, Matthias walked over to the desk and pulled out the book on clocks Detective Helmut Klauser had given him.

  ‘This is yours, apparently.’ He held it out.

  ‘Where did you get this?’ The old man was unable to hide his dismay.

  ‘It was found hidden in the bedroom of a priest who committed suicide, theoretically.’

  ‘It’s that detective, that Helmut Klauser – he’s got you involved in all of this, hasn’t he?’

  ‘Two days earlier the priest had taken confession from the gypsy murdered outside our – your – showroom. A Kalderash who still bore the numbers of a concentration camp on his wrist. That man was my blood uncle. Did you have him murdered? And there’s still gold and other plunder hidden in vaults in this city, isn’t there?’

  Christoph’s face crumpled. ‘You don’t know who you’re dealing with, Matthias. This is not some equation you can just unravel. And I cannot protect you if you try.’

  ‘Who else is involved?’

  Christoph began wheeling himself towards the front door. ‘Bertholt! Bertholt!’ he shouted.

  Matthias blocked his path.

  ‘You think you are a free agent, that all of this’ – Christoph, furious, gestured round the room, taking in the expensive furniture, the extraordinary views – ‘all of this wasn’t carefully choreographed? They will kill you and then they will kill me. Pandora’s box – you will let all hell out and destroy this pretty Swiss paradise, your own sanctuary.’

  Matthias held out the book. ‘You forgot your book, Father.’

  Christoph stared at him then seemed to make a decision.

  ‘Keep it. Chapter three, paragraph six, lines ten to twenty. But remember – I was the one who made you who you are.’

  Matthias waited until the sound of Christoph’s limousine faded away, then pulled out the recorder and rewound the tape. Christoph’s voice was clear and loud on the recording. Satisfied, he opened the book and turned the hand-made pages carefully over until he reached chapter three, on the hand-made clocks of the town of Chemnitz. He ran his finger down to paragraph six:

  The most famous clock-maker in Chemnitz was Herr Pieter Schmidt (1690–1750). He was a master of both clocks of the sun (sun-dials) and the rare water clocks. It was said you could predict the exact times of both the sunrise and sunset from his devices. He was a master of the elements and was heralded in his own time as a virtuoso craftsman who made clocks for both royalty and the mercantile class. He was also the head of the Watchmakers’ Guild of Saxony and contributed to the invention of a clock that was capable of several movements.

  Underneath there was an illustration of the merchants’ guild shield for the Saxony Watchmakers – in the centre was an hourglass.

  Matthias stared at the name. Was this the first concrete evidence his father still lived? Had the book itself been a way of letting his cousin Christoph know that he was still alive after the end of the war? He went over to a shelf where he kept his atlas. He flicked through to a map of pre-Soviet eastern Germany and found Chemnitz. Next to it he laid a contemporary map of East Germany with all the Soviet renamed towns; in seconds he’d found it – Karl Marx Stadt.

  Klauser belched, his fingers still clutching the half-unwrapped chocolate – it would have been his third in half an hour but now the tell-tale burn of stomach acid forced him to put it back down on top of the console. It was chilly in the Toyota and for a moment he regretted not taking one of the unit’s Mercedes. The sound of a car approaching made him pick up the binoculars. A silver BMW arrived at the gate, and a powerfully built man with a shaven head stepped out from the driver’s seat to open the back door. Two dachshunds jumped out, followed by Janus Zellweger in a badly fitting tracksuit. He handed the dog leads to the bodyguard then made his way into his house. The bodyguard lingered as he waited for the dogs to relieve themselves on the rose bushes. Klauser studied him for a few seconds, racking his brains as to where he’d seen him before – suddenly he remembered. The guard had been in the room with Christoph von Holindt at the birthday celebrations for the watchmaker. Klauser lifted up a camera to take a few photographs.

  Matthias stepped out of the small office that represented the German Democratic Republic in Zürich. He’d waited for over four hours in a cramped waiting room along with an elderly well-dressed couple who looked as if they might have once been white Russian émigrés, a young American who was reading Life magazine in English, and a bespectacled, rotund African man, in order to cross the Iron Curtain to go to Karl Marx Stadt and search out Ulrich Vosshoffner. Despite the fact that the official behind the desk recognised his name and his file had been prioritised, he’d watched with a sinking heart the processing clerk behind a glass window read the file then make a phone call. Five minutes later Matthias had been flatly refused the permit to enter East Germany, with no explanation given. He had the distinct impression that someone had pulled some strings.

  Now he stared back up at the office block the very architecture of which seemed to suggest the bleak totalitarianism of the Soviet Union. What now?

  Klauser studied the printed sheet of information pinned neatly to a mugshot dated 1970, the Cyrillic letters running beneath. The grainy black-and-white photograph was of a younger version of the muscular bodyguard he’d photographed at the Zellwegers’ property, only here he was wearing the standard prison issue of the Perm Gulag. Staring out, he looked about nineteen, and entirely psychotic.

  There was a page of translation taped to the official Soviet description of Prisoner 450978.

  Comrade Popov was originally arrested in 1966 aged seventeen for murder; he is a member of the Vory and is considered beyond reform. He was incarcerated in Perm Gulag due to father’s record of anti-Communist activities and, as well as his criminal activities, is also considered to be a political prisoner. No parole, no due release date.

  FAMILY BACKGROUND:

  Father executed for treason in the Norilsk camp in 1959.

  Mother – deceased – committed suicide in 1962.

  ‘Nice guy. So how did he end up in Switzerland?’ Klauser asked Detective Gaupp, a colleague with the Zürich branch of Interpol, a small brunette with a mannish haircut and clipped manner to match.

  ‘That’s where it gets interesting. The theory is Olek Popov was languishing in the Perm Gulag when a certain Swiss arms manufacturer made a deal to supply state-of-the-art ground-to-air missiles to the Soviets for their little Afghani skirmish.’

  ‘Let me guess, Zellweger Industries?’

  ‘Exactly, but there was a broker, a middle guy involved. All our operative could find out is that he was German, based in DDR. Well-connected with links to both the Vory and the far right. Anyhow, the Soviets struck a deal and Zellweger got Mr Popov a Swiss passport under the guise of being a political refugee.’

  ‘You have to be kidding.’

  ‘’Fraid not. The issue is that Popov was imprisoned for both murder and for political activity. The Vory link is impossible to prove without the Soviets supplying the evidence, and they’re not saying anything.’

  ‘A nifty supply of state-of-the-art missiles must have made them lose their voice.’

  ‘It gets worse. According to the tax department, Zellweger is filing Popov’s wages as his dog-walker. And yes, one of his duties is to walk Herr Zellweger’s dachshunds: Brunnhilde and Sieglinde.’

  ‘Cute. That must be a come-down after solitary in the Gulag.’


  ‘Apparently Zellweger claims it is all part of his rehabilitation programme for political refugee Popov and working with animals is good therapy.’

  ‘Sounds like Popov already had a lot of experience working with animals.’

  ‘Exactly. From what we could glean from our own Russian sources, Popov was considered one of the Vory top assassins, a crack shot, but, like them all, he had a signature.’

  Klauser looked up from the file. The splayed body of the murdered gypsy flashed into his mind. ‘He always left a black feather on his victim, between the forefinger and middle finger of the left hand?’

  ‘Boy, you are good. It’s an occult thing, apparently. Devil worship is big in the Gulags: a raven wing takes the murdered straight down to hell. White feathers – to heaven.’

  ‘The only place Olek is going to is hell when I’ve finished with him.’

  ‘Without prints – and the bullet was generic – you have nothing. The feather won’t wash in court or anywhere else.’ Detective Gaupp leaned over and gently pulled the file out of Klauser’s hand.

  ‘So, I’m afraid citizen Popov is currently a legitimately employed dog-walker.’ She closed the file. ‘Sorry, Klauser.’

  Keja woke with an overpowering sense of unease. The girl had been there, in her dreams – her granddaughter; this newfound blood. Clutching the amulet she had pinned to her nightshirt, she pulled herself up and stared out of the caravan window – it was still afternoon, a winter twilight. The moon was already in the sky. Half-obscured by a cloud, it seemed to laugh down at her. It was not a good omen.

  ‘Latcos! Latcos!’ Her voice was so broken she could barely recognise it herself, but there was no one else in the caravan. She turned to the window, peering through the gathering mist, and saw that he was at the far edge of the clearing talking to a couple of the older Sinti. Lifting her walking stick she rapped it sharply against the glass. Latcos turned at the noise then began striding back towards the caravan. As soon as he entered Keja grabbed his arm. ‘She’s in danger. Latcos, you must go into the city. You must look for her, watch her, keep her safe.’

  ‘She has her father,’ he said, not wanting to go back into the claustrophobia of those tamed wealthy suburbs, the stunted trees, reluctant to experience the sense of utter alienation again.

  ‘He is not able to help, but you can. In this way you are my son,’ she told him, reaching out to grasp his hand. The meaning was implicit. Latcos had her gift and he knew that the pas Rom did not – he could see this in the clipped, dismissive manner Matthias dealt with people, his way of compartmentalising everything, including the emotional. Even more disturbing to Latcos, Matthias lacked the sixth sense of trusting one’s own instincts, the ability to hear the whispering of people’s souls. Keja had the gift, he had it and he suspected Matthias’s daughter, with her haunted face, had it also.

  ‘She needs you.’ The warmth of his mother’s hand made him a child again.

  ‘I’ll go tonight.’

  ‘No, now.’ Keja’s face was grim as a sudden wind blew up, rattling against the door. She pulled her bedclothes closer.

  Klauser was just closing up his office for the night when the old-fashioned Bakelite telephone rang on his desk.

  ‘It’s Dieter…’ The journalist sounded tense, almost panicked.

  ‘What do you have?’ The detective kept his voice low – almost a whisper.

  ‘Live dynamite, a stick in each hand and the fuses are burning. Listen and listen hard. I made some enquiries, dangerous questions to dangerous people – but I got the truth. Your two friends, they are linked. Rolf Henne targeted and recruited them around 1933 – but there are three, the third I think was Otto Kuven, but my source hasn’t been able to confirm it…’

  Klauser recalled the seated man in von Holindt’s study. Now the circle is getting tighter, he thought with some satisfaction.

  ‘All three were deliberately chosen for obvious reasons: upper echelons of society, right of right. There’s a fourth man involved but I can’t seem to get a lead on him. All I can tell you is that he is, most likely —’

  ‘A German – someone who ended up on the wrong side of the Berlin Wall in sixty-one…’ Another piece of the puzzle fell into the jigsaw picture Klauser had begun to compose in his mind.

  ‘You know more than you’re letting on, but yes, my guy was definitely a German – a paid-up member of the Nazi Party at the time and he was probably associated with water, perhaps the navy. It’s a crazy theory – but it kind of makes sense: to have got him on board would have made the four a full deck.’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘The three Swiss were recruited in the middle of their military service: von Holindt was air force, Kuven was in the infantry and Janus Zellweger —’

  ‘Artillery. Air, earth, fire and water.’

  ‘Fascist organisations always love symbols. The three Swiss men were further radicalised by the assassination of the German Nazi representative Wilhelm Gustloff in Davos in 1936. And by then they were all members of the nationalsozialistische Bund Treuer Eidgenossen Weltanschauung. It gets better: during the war, as you know, the Bank of International Settlements helped launder the state gold of Poland, Czechoslovakia and Holland, as well as everything else they plundered, including the gold ripped from corpses’ teeth in the camps, through certain Swiss banks. Kuven’s father served on the boards of at least two of them… and the money from the gold was used to purchase artillery and weapons for the Nazis’ war effort from —’

  ‘Let me guess – Zellweger Industries?’

  ‘To be shipped over to North Africa and other Axis fronts by a shipping company based in Bilbao – neutral Spain, but on closer inspection it looks like a front for a German company.’

  ‘A very profitable little product line, Dieter. And what about Christoph von Holindt? Where does he fit?’

  ‘All I know about him is that he had commercial dealings with the head of Nazi espionage overseas, Brigadeführer Walter Schellenberg, who apparently commissioned a gold watch from the company for the Führer’s fifty-third birthday via von Holindt’s cousin, an extremely enthusiastic SS officer and antiquities collector. Ironically, the brother of this cousin went down with the German cruise ship named for Wilhelm Gustloff, which was sunk by the Allies in January 1945 while evacuating German civilians and military personnel from Poland.’

  ‘That must have pissed him off. Still, it’s always useful to have a Swiss cousin if you want to send a few art objects this side of the border. ’

  ‘It gets worse. Engels…’

  ‘My boss, Johann Engels?’

  ‘No, the father, Hans Engels – supposedly actively anti-German like the rest of the political police during the war…’

  ‘You’re kidding…’

  ‘There was always rumour of a rat inside the organisation. My informant swears it was Hans playing off both sides, receiving payment from your four friends to protect their little racket inside Switzerland while feeding the Americans false information. No wonder you’re off the son’s Christmas card list. Klauser, are you still there?’

  ‘Yeah…’

  ‘What do you want me to do with the dynamite? From where I’m sitting it’s only a question of time before it blows and, personally, I’d like to keep my head on my shoulders. Klauser, I have to go – there’s someone in the building —’ The line cut out and Klauser reluctantly put down the receiver and sat there, stunned. With those kind of players involved, whatever he did would have to be tightly planned and extremely strategic, otherwise it wouldn’t be retirement he would face in the future. He needed to talk out a plan, and there was only one person he trusted.

  Liliane was waiting for the public bus. She’d missed the private-school bus because she’d been held back for detention – a punishment for drawing a portrait of Joey Ramone on the inside of one of the school’s bibles. Now it was dark and past six. Turning from the wind blowing across the lake, she lit up a cigarette. She glared back at
the high metal gates behind which the austere nineteenth-century building sat – a bastion of monotony and alienation. A Latin motto was embedded in the iron trellis –– rara avis in caelo non volat – some metaphor on ambition, she guessed. She hated the institute, not just for the values they tried to impose but also for the sheer tedium it produced in her. She couldn’t wait to break free, to be taken seriously as an adult. She stared at her flat, ugly school shoes – sexless, infantile. Taking them off, she slipped on a pair of patent black leather platform shoes from her school bag. Just then the sweep of car headlights made her look up. She recognised the E-type immediately. It pulled up sharply and the door swung open. She threw her cigarette away and climbed in as Destin smiled across from the driver’s seat.

  ‘Nice surprise, but how did you know I went to St Antoinette?’ she asked.