The Stolen

by T. S. Learner

Timo shook his head. ‘Zellweger’s reputation is pristine – no other arms manufacturer has given so much to charity, donated to museums, art galleries, conducted political campaigns for fair pay, equality and all the rest of the arse-licking propaganda. If he goes down, half the canton goes down with him.’

  ‘Which is why I have to get my facts right.’

  A duck landed nearby, indifferent to the two men in the boat.

  ‘I’m sorry about your father.’ Timo held Matthias’s gaze and Matthias wasn’t sure whether he was referring to Christoph, but to his relief the detective continued, ‘He may have been a bad man but no one deserved to die that way.’

  ‘He died of a heart condition.’

  ‘No. Your father died because he’d been terrified to death. I got access to the police report and the assistant had had his throat cut – but only after he’d been tortured. And yet your father’s statement was notably devoid of any real information. It was as if he were hiding something.’

  ‘I think he was protecting me; in his own way he loved us.’

  Matthias looked away. The duck was fishing tail up, head down; its mate, a drab female, followed behind it. Sitting beside him Timo studied the physicist for a moment, wondering about the emotional complexities behind his seemingly calm façade. ‘You understand I have a family. I’m one of the little men. I’m not like Klauser; I’m no crusader,’ the detective concluded, his voice tinged with chagrin.

  ‘Switzerland is full of little men defending the little turf they have. There is no such thing as morally ambiguous times, not now, not during the war, nor the next dictatorship. We, the Swiss, can be a little too pragmatic.’ Matthias tried to sound understanding but failed.

  ‘I should go. I have to be back by three otherwise my absence will be noticed.’ Timo started to pack the fishing tackle away.

  ‘One last thing: Zellweger Enterprises had changed their logo by March 1963.’

  ‘You think that was significant?’

  ‘Yes, I do. The brand and the company were already internationally renowned; it would have been extraordinarily expensive to have changed the logo on a whim. Besides, I don’t think Janus Zellweger does anything on a whim.’

  ‘If Klauser was here he’d tell you to separate the two facts – the logo change and the date it was changed. Both have meaning; what you have to work out is how the two meanings are linked. Klauser was working on a connection to the murder in 1963 of an Eberhard Neumann, who was linked to several artefacts named as Nazi plunder. It was his gallery’s name that was on the book of clocks that once belonged to Christoph von Holindt.’

  ‘I know. The question is, is there any inciting event that might link these two facts?’

  ‘In December 1962, pressured by the world Jewish lobby, the Swiss bankers’ association asked its banks to investigate any accounts that might have belonged to holocaust victims. This was really the first time the amount of stolen gold, money and art lodged by the Nazis at Swiss banks and art galleries came to public light. If Janus was involved he would have been nervous. If it were discovered he was involved with Nazi plunder he would stand to lose everything.’

  Matthias sat back, the exhilarating sense of being close to solving the meaning behind the ornate symbol flooding through him. He was so close…

  ‘You are taking on the whole world, Herr von Holindt; more pertinently you are taking on your whole world. Klauser said you were a good man but I still don’t get it. With Christoph von Holindt dead, you will presumably inherit the whole estate. You have your science, your own international reputation, so why this battle? It’s one you might well die fighting.’

  ‘If I told you, you would never believe me,’ Matthias replied, smiling for the first time since he stepped into the boat.

  Timo studied him thoughtfully. ‘I can’t openly help you, but if you need any information I might be able to oblige. After all, it just takes a few little men to bring down the great.’

  The steaming thick black liquid was poured into glasses like Turkish coffee. Without asking Keja spooned two large teaspoons of sugar into each cup then placed one before Matthias and the other in front of Latcos, who was huddled beside the wood stove.

  After meeting with Timo, Matthias had driven directly out to the gypsy camp, wanting to share his discoveries. As he’d pulled away from the foreshore he’d noticed a silver BMW pulling out behind him and recognised it as being the same car he’d seen Janus in at Christoph’s funeral. The BMW had stayed with him until Matthias managed to lose it by pulling into a side road and tracking back for a kilometre or so. It hadn’t been easy – he was sure the burly man behind the wheel was Janus’s so-called dog-walker. Was it possible the arms manufacturer would make good his threat? Now, in the anonymity of the caravan it was comforting to be back in a world that felt a hundred years from Zürich.

  ‘Dej, you should be in bed,’ Latcos said.

  ‘There is time for me to die yet. Until then I move when I can. Besides, to have my two sons here – I take this moment.’

  Exasperated, Latcos turned to Matthias. ‘You see what I’ve had to put up with all my life? My own mother does not know the place for women; as for my wife!’ He threw up his hands in frustration.

  ‘Your wife is a saint; a saint with balls, but a saint nevertheless,’ Keja retorted and turned to Matthias. ‘The women in our family are all strong. My granddaughter Liliane is the same, I know it; she’s told me.’

  ‘But you haven’t met her yet.’

  ‘We have met in our dreaming. She has the eye, the only one of my grandchildren who has my gift. She is my blood.’

  ‘My mother is the best at drabarni in the Rom nacija – she knows when she’s in danger. The two women are linked through spirit and mind,’ Latcos explained.

  ‘That isn’t possible.’

  ‘Maybe not in the gadjé world, but in ours it is.’

  Matthias studied the two gypsies; they truly believed there was a psychic connection between his daughter and her grandmother. The empiricist in him protested, but then who was he to pass judgement? It was indisputable that Liliane was plagued by her visions.

  ‘It’s true she has seen “things”… Could you help her? Stop her seeing them?’

  ‘When she has heard properly, the spirit will stop asking,’ Keja said, then, in a brusque tone, ‘When do I meet her?’

  Matthias looked away. His instinct had been to protect Liliane from too much sudden and possibly disturbing information.

  ‘I’m waiting for the right time, when all of this is over and she’s a little more settled…’

  ‘Don’t wait too long; I won’t see summer.’

  ‘Dej! Stop!’ Latcos laid his hand on her stick-thin arm.

  ‘Stop what? Now we lie to each other?’ Keja snapped back.

  Latcos grinned. ‘It’s good to see your temper is back. It shows that you are fighting.’

  Then to Matthias’s further confusion, Keja leaned over to kiss Latcos’s forehead as though he were still a little boy. ‘May God bless you, you’re a dreamer, just like your father.’

  ‘Dreaming solves puzzles – you taught me that.’ Latcos turned to Matthias and the three metal symbols laid out on a piece of paper on top of the small card table in front of him. ‘So, how do you think these… trinkets will lead to my family’s heirlooms?’ Latcos was beginning to tire of the freezing northern winter. He glanced at Matthias, with his expensive gadjo suit on and that city face that made him wonder whether there weren’t in fact two men called Matthias, the man his brother had become in Zürich and the man Latcos saw on the road in Germany – someone both freed and openly troubled, able to show his emotions. Here Matthias wore a mask.

  In lieu of an answer Matthias held up one of the triangular shapes. ‘This belonged to Christoph von Holindt and symbolises Air. The hourglass symbol and the Water triangle both belonged to Ulrich Vosshoffner. All of the metal pieces have been machined to perfection, and the hourglass symbol was the logo for Janus Zellweger’
s arms manufacturing company that he set up in 1950. He changed the logo in March 1963, just after there was real international pressure to investigate the Nazis’ gold. I suspect Janus got nervous about any possible association. The extraordinary thing is that these guys have been so confident that the theft of both the Romane and Jewish gold and heirlooms will never be discovered they had been flaunting the fact until then. I guess they thought no one would care.’

  ‘No one does,’ Latcos said grimly.

  ‘I do, you do and we will expose Janus and the whole conspiracy, I promise you that. What you have to understand is that these are not mere trinkets.’ He clicked the symbols together.

  ‘They fit!’ Latcos exclaimed.

  ‘They are designed to. Beautiful, eh?’

  ‘Witchcraft,’ Latcos murmured and crossed himself for good measure.

  ‘Ulrich would question me for hours about the amulets and curses my grandmother taught me,’ Keja suddenly said from her chair. ‘I never betrayed our people. Sometimes I would even make up things. This has his mark all over it. The arrogance – to give himself his own cross.’

  ‘Don’t worry, he is in hell now, Mother.’

  ‘Not hell, his spirit is wandering and it will wander for ever, never finding peace. It was my armaja, placed on him the moment he killed my father.’

  ‘May he rest in peace,’ Latcos added then turned back to Matthias, who pulled the pieces apart again. ‘These symbols are like a code, an emblem that I suspect links the four men. Three Swiss and the German man who fathered you.’

  Matthias pulled a pen from his pocket and drew in the two other missing symbols – Fire and Earth – around the three fitted metal ones. ‘The whole piece is actually made up of the four elements, with the hourglass representing Time placed in the centre. This left triangle is Fire, the one at the top is Earth, the right one is Water and the bottom one is Air.’

  ‘So you need the two other pieces to make up the key?’ Latcos said. ‘A key that might open the vault where the valuables are hidden?’

  ‘Yes – and that’s the trouble. I’m pretty sure Zellweger has one piece, and it’s impossible to get near him. He has serious security, an ex-member of the Vory.’

  Latcos whistled. ‘I don’t go near those guys. And you don’t know who might have the other piece?’

  ‘He would be ex-Nazi, around Christoph’s age, associated with Earth. So you see the dilemma: there’s got to be at least a thousand men in Zürich that fit that description.’

  ‘You have the exact dimensions?’

  ‘I could calculate them.’

  Latcos grinned widely. ‘So what’s the problem?’

  Delighted, Keja clapped her hands then kissed Latcos on both cheeks as Matthias looked on perplexed.

  ‘I don’t understand…’

  ‘My son, he’s the best metalworker I know,’ Keja said triumphantly.

  ‘I will have them ready in a day.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Sure. They won’t be perfect, but I can fix the edges so that they will fit and they will have the correct weight if this pretty little thing is actually a key.’

  ‘Excellent. But I have a gut feeling about the meaning of the whole symbol; I don’t believe it’s just a key – there’s some other meaning here, a map, or some kind of message that indicates where the statuette might be. But I’ve been staring at it for a day now, and I can’t solve it.’

  ‘Dej?’ Latcos turned to Keja. ‘You try.’ He looked back at Matthias. ‘She’s a phuri dej, a wise woman. Sometimes they come from as far as Turkey seeking her advice.’

  Keja lifted up the three pieces firmly fixed as one. ‘Two words make a sentence – two sides one whole. Fire, Earth, Water and Air, you say – with Time placed on top – the time before and the time after creation rolling into the blackness for ever…’ She shut her eyes as she held up the piece before the candlelight, then her eyelids snapped open. ‘It is describing a place.’ She pointed to the top triangle of the square. ‘Earth sits above Air. This is unnatural, except when Air is underground, as in a cave, or catacomb or any underground space.’ She pointed to the left triangle. ‘There is Fire to the left of this cave, and Water to the right.’

  Matthias stared down and Ulrich’s words came back into his head again.

  ‘“What rolls on regardless of everything else?”’ he said out loud. The others looked up at him, puzzled. ‘It was one of the last things Ulrich said, and I told him Time. So what holds up Time?’

  Latcos shouted: ‘A clock tower! Matthias, a clock tower holds up Time for all to see!’

  ‘It’s so simple it makes sense.’

  ‘But Zürich is full of them,’ Latcos said, a little defeated.

  ‘Except for one thing: this location is the heart of the map. Find this location and you will find the plunder, but the elements in the actual design – Fire, Water, Air and Earth – are also symbolic. I believe they might represent businesses linked to the cartel behind the plunder,’ Matthias pointed out.

  ‘The Swiss men involved?’

  ‘The clock book Klauser gave me that once belonged to Christoph – it has the descriptions of his most prized clocks. Each timepiece was made to represent an element and they have the same symbols for Fire, Water, Earth and Air etched into their bases. The final clue to the exact location of the plunder lies with them, I know it.’

  ‘So where are they now?’

  ‘Still in Christoph’s house.’

  ‘I’ll have the two pieces made by tomorrow night; I have friends here with a workshop I can use.’

  ‘Tomorrow night it is.’

  TWENTY-ONE

  The villa was a citadel of shadow and moonlight – silent and resentful behind its high walls. The two men stood outside the large iron gate as Matthias tapped in the security code painfully aware of the camera staring down. It was hard not to feel like an intruder; his father’s absence was almost as oppressive as his presence had been when he was living, and although Matthias knew the camera was blind and that there was no one staring through it he still felt as if his every move were being observed.

  ‘Christoph’s soul, peskiri dii; it would be able to find its way back from the family tomb,’ Latcos murmured, staring up at the name of the villa worked into the ironwork.

  ‘Trust me, Christoph’s ghost is the least of our worries.’

  ‘How do you know? How do you know he knows he is even dead?’ Latcos persisted, a growing anxiety in his voice. ‘You said he died with regrets.’

  ‘Latcos, there is no ghost.’ But the young Rom was already over by a tree pulling a large leaf-covered branch off. He carried it back to the gate then, after climbing up, wove the branch through so that the name of the villa was concealed.

  ‘Now his spirit will be confused; he will not know the door of his own house.’

  A second later there was a click and the gate swung open. Matthias stepped into the front garden, the frost-crisp grass crunching under his boots. Latcos, his breath misting in the chilly air, suddenly halted. He stared up at the large building. ‘This is where you grew up?’ he murmured. In his eyes it looked as unfriendly as a prison.

  ‘For the first eight years until they sent me to boarding school. Impressed?’ Matthias joked.

  ‘No,’ Latcos said, then spat on the ground. ‘It has no colour and you would need a family of twenty or thirty people to fill it, yet you tell me it was just you and two others. Such a place has no heart.’

  ‘You’re wrong. Christoph was a good father, even if he wasn’t a good man.’ They reached the front door and he began fumbling for the right key, the search becoming a journey through memories: the Christmas when Christoph created a treasure hunt in the garden, the clues he’d laid an intelligence test for the ten-year-old Matthias. Matthias had revelled in the problem-solving and Christoph had been delighted at the speed at which the boy found his first gift – a chemistry set. The snow-laden fir trees that edged the large garden brought back that evening,
the complex metaphors Christoph had composed containing symbols of the elements mixed in with small metaphoric drawings. Making puzzles – Christoph was always making puzzles, Matthias thought to himself. Did he want me to solve the puzzle of the symbols? Perhaps even the puzzle of my own origins?

  ‘Did you always know I would find this trail, Christoph?’ he completed the thought out loud.

  Latcos looked at him, shivering in the cold. ‘I hope he can’t hear you.’

  ‘So do I.’ He finally managed to turn the key and they entered.

  ‘Where are the clocks? I don’t want to stay in this place for long,’ Latcos hissed, smelling something fearful in the stale air. Matthias nodded towards the study, always his favourite room of the house. He closed the door, shutting out the heavier atmosphere of the reception hall. Latcos’s eyes widened in wonder as he went over to the fireplace and picked up a Fabergé egg sitting on a mount.