‘Stolen war treasures?’ Tayte said with disdain.
He got no answer. None was needed. The two wheelchairs were pushed further into the room, and when they came to a stop Tayte found himself directly beneath the portrait of Adolf Hitler. The wheelchairs were then turned in so that Tayte and Strobel were facing one another. They were so close that their knees were almost touching, and Tayte couldn’t imagine what the old man wanted him to do.
‘Now to the business at hand,’ Strobel said, his tone deathly serious. ‘Instead of me killing you, I want you to kill me.’
‘What?’ Tayte’s face was suddenly creased with disbelief.
‘You’ve caught me at a good time, Mr Tayte. I’m making you part of my exit plan. My life for yours. That’s the deal.’
Tayte shook his head, unable to comprehend what he was hearing. He stared at Strobel, wide eyed. ‘You’re crazy!’
‘Yes,’ Strobel said, almost laughing. ‘I’m sure I am. But I’m also very tired. I’m in constant pain, and I’m told by my doctors that it will only get worse before the end. In short, I’ve had enough.’
‘Well, can’t you kill yourself?’ Tayte said. ‘Or get your daughter to do it with one of her needles? Why me?’
‘A father cannot expect his own daughter to kill him, Mr Tayte, and Max here is like a son to me. I can’t ask him to do it. I’ve thought about suicide—a cyanide capsule and a bullet to my brain in the manner of my Führer—but I can’t do it, either. For now at least, my beautiful Aryan son, Rudi, knows nothing of who I really am, so I can’t ask him. Besides, the more I’ve thought about it, the more appropriate I believe it would be for Johann’s grandson to do it. I’ve never got over killing my friend. Of all the things I’ve done, his is the only face that continues to haunt me. It will be a kind of justice for him if you can do this one thing he could not.’
Strobel gave a nod, and this time Fleischer stepped beside Tayte and cut his right arm free. Then he tossed a pistol into his lap.
‘It’s the Luger that belonged to your grandfather.’
Tayte just stared at it, thinking he must still be unconscious, caught in a bizarre nightmare from which he couldn’t wake up.
‘Leave us now,’ Strobel said. To Fleischer, he added, ‘You know what to do, Max.’
Fleischer nodded and strode off towards the door.
‘You, too, Ingrid,’ Strobel said. ‘I don’t want any harm to come to you should Mr Tayte get any wild ideas of his own. Stay outside the door until you hear the shot.’ To Tayte, he added. ‘There is only one bullet in the chamber. Use it wisely.’
Tayte was surprised to see that Ingrid Keller had tears in her eyes as she leaned in and kissed her father goodbye. He imagined she believed it was for the last time. A moment later she followed Fleischer out of the room.
‘You’re not kidding, are you?’ Tayte said as soon as he and Strobel were alone. ‘How can you be so sure I’ll do it? I don’t think for a minute that Fleischer or your daughter are going to let me walk out of here afterwards.’
Strobel sighed. ‘When you leave, Max and Ingrid will both receive a tidy sum of money. Max will disappear, and Ingrid and her husband will retire early to whichever tropical paradise they choose. Tonight this building will be burned to the ground. The authorities will find my bones and blame the anti-Nazi groups that have so long campaigned to shut this place down. You will be a free man again, and as long as you keep your silence about what happens here, you will not be implicated. But try to leave this room without killing me first and it will be you who dies. That I promise you.’
‘We’re in the basement of your museum, aren’t we?’ Tayte said. ‘Your education centre?’
Strobel nodded. ‘It has been little more than a cover for my operations with the Fourth Reich. I think it fitting that my body should be cremated here beneath the image of my Führer.’
‘You really are crazy,’ Tayte said, still unconvinced that he would be allowed to walk away from this. Strobel surely understood that he would go straight to the authorities and tell them everything, regardless of the consequences he might have to face as a result. No, Tayte wasn’t buying any of it. He knew he was a dead man whether he ended Strobel’s life or not.
He gave a firm shake of his head. ‘I won’t do it.’
‘Yes, you will, Mr Tayte. My story, remember. I haven’t finished it yet. Now, where was I? Ah, yes. It was the 26th of April, 1945, and I had just killed your grandfather.’
Tayte had heard enough of Strobel’s story. All he wanted to do was to get out of there, find Jean, and board the plane back to London. But how was he going to do that? He had a gun in his lap with a single bullet in the chamber, no knife with which to free himself from the wheelchair he was bound to, and even if he could reach the door, Keller and Fleischer were beyond it, armed and most certainly dangerous. One bullet would not be enough. On top of that, no one had any idea where he was. He realised then that he had no way of knowing how long he’d been unconscious, either. He had no idea whether it was day or night, or even if it was the same day. The flight back to London might already have left for all he knew. He concluded that for now, as before, he had no choice but to play along with Strobel’s bizarre game and listen as the old man continued his story.
‘Within seconds of shooting Johann,’ Strobel said, ‘the guards patrolling the street were at my door, and naturally, after hearing the shots, they were full of concern for me. I dismissed them easily enough. I was, after all, their Lagerführer.’
‘They didn’t question the state of your face?’
‘They never saw my face. It was dark and I barely opened the door, They were soon gone and I was glad to be alone again. I had to think, and think I did. By morning I had it all worked out, but I had to make sure Johann’s body was never found.’
‘Don’t tell me,’ Tayte said. ‘You buried him in one of your lime pits.’
Langner gave Tayte a sharp smile. ‘You’re on the right track, but I had to be very sure. So while it was still dark, I went out and removed the striped uniform from a dead Jew. I put it on Johann, and in the morning I had his body collected and taken to the incinerators. No one cared who he was, and I was accustomed to my orders being obeyed without question. Johann appeared as just one more Jew for the pile.’
‘You’re despicable.’
‘Yes,’ Strobel said, eyeing the gun. ‘Perhaps I’m the kind of man you’d like to rid the world of, eh?’
Tayte didn’t answer. He closed his eyes instead, unable to look at Strobel a moment longer.
‘With Johann gone and the Allies close to Dachau,’ Strobel continued, ‘all that remained for me to do was to dress myself in my friend’s uniform and take off with his papers. Johann was very strong, and he beat me so hard. I should have gone to a hospital to have my jaw and my eye treated, and my eye might have been saved if I had, but that would have been too risky. Instead, I bandaged myself up as a wounded soldier and I endured the pain as I went into hiding. My wounds left me disfigured, as you see, but that, too served its purpose. By the time I was picked up, some months later, I looked enough like Johann and was virtually unrecognisable as the man I truly was. Not that anyone came forward to verify that I was Johann. Most, if not all, of Johann’s close companions in the Leibstandarte had been killed at one time or another, particularly during their retreat from Falaise on the Western Front, and later, when Vienna fell to the Soviets.’
Strobel paused and Tayte opened his eyes again to see the old man smiling to himself, as though gratified at how well everything had worked out for him.
‘You know the really clever thing about it?’ Strobel added.
‘No, do tell,’ Tayte said with more than a hint of sarcasm, knowing that Strobel was about to tell him anyway.
‘The clever thing was that I didn’t try to hide behind the papers of a simple soldier from the Wehrmacht, as many other SS officers did, or as a former concentration camp prisoner, as I later came to learn that Max Koegel did whe
n the camp at Flossenbürg was taken. No, I hid behind the papers of another SS officer. Who in their right mind would have done that?’
‘Yeah,’ Tayte scoffed. ‘You’d have to be mad, right?’
‘Yes, it was madness, and it was a gamble, but it saved my life. As you know, I faced trial for Johann’s alleged war crimes. I knew there was a chance I might still have been executed, but as Volker Strobel the death sentence was guaranteed. As it was, I served my time and later recovered the treasures I had stored for my future. I’ve avoided detection all these years because of one simple rule, Mr Tayte—eliminate all threats.’
Tayte was getting tired of this. ‘Look, Strobel. Talk all you want. I’m still not going to shoot you.’
Amusement danced across Strobel’s lips. ‘I would have been disappointed if you had pulled the trigger so soon,’ he said. ‘I have so much more to tell you, such as the time I hunted your father across the Karwendel Mountains.’
Chapter Forty-Five
‘You’d like me to tell you about your father, wouldn’t you?’ Strobel said.
The sense of amusement continued to hang on his face as he waited for Tayte to answer, but Tayte wasn’t so sure he wanted to hear what was coming next. He gave no reply. Instead, he knotted his hands together and clenched them tight to keep him from picking up the gun in his lap. He just stared at Strobel, noting the obvious satisfaction the man felt at seeing him fight his growing desire to end this. A moment later Strobel continued, as Tayte knew he would.
‘Like you, your father was equally determined to find out who he was,’ Strobel said, ‘and that, as you know, led him and your mother to me. They posed little threat at first. When they came to ask whether I was Karl’s biological father, I simply turned them away, saying I had no children, but it seems that turning Karl away only made him more determined to prove it. He kept digging, and people digging into my background worry me, Mr Tayte. Especially people related to Johann Langner. I knew it would only be a matter of time before he found something.’
Strobel gave a long sigh. ‘Thankfully, Johann’s parents were already dead, and I knew of no other friends or family who had survived the war, or who were close enough to take any interest in Johann afterwards. I did, however, become quite paranoid about Ava Bauer’s uncle, Heinz Schröder, for a time. He knew Johann. What if he came forward to denounce me? As it turned out, I suspect that if he even knew of my trial then he chose to distance himself from it, and from Johann. I had thought myself in the clear, and I was, until your father learned that he’d been adopted, and of course in doing so he became a threat.’
‘So you eliminated him,’ Tayte said. ‘You eliminated the threat. I think I’ve already worked that part out.’
‘Doesn’t it matter to you that Karl was your father?’
It did matter, but Tayte wasn’t about to break down in front of this man if he could help it. He knew it was just what Strobel wanted, and all the while Tayte had the strength to keep his emotions in check, he would do so to spite him.
‘I had been keeping a close eye on your father since the first time he visited me,’ Strobel continued. ‘Much as I’ve been keeping an eye on you since your arrival in Munich. Some years later it became clear to me that Karl was close to discovering the very thing that could expose me.’
Strobel raised his left arm and tapped the area close to his armpit. ‘Blood type,’ he said. ‘It has been my greatest concern. For quick identification the majority of SS personnel had our blood type tattooed in black ink beneath our left armpits in case we fell in battle. I’ve long since had my tattoo removed, but of course our blood type was also recorded in our military records, which is where I imagine Karl made his first discovery. It was when I learned that he’d taken an interest in my blood type that I knew I had to act, but I couldn’t very well do so as the reputable Johann Langner. No, I had to call on Volker Strobel for that. I lured your father to a meeting place with the promise of some useful information.’
‘That sounds familiar,’ Tayte said, recalling how he had been lured in much the same manner when he was set up for murder.
Strobel laughed to himself. ‘Yes, and like you, your father came so willingly. But I’m afraid he came to his own slaughter.’
‘You said you hunted him.’
‘In a manner of speaking, yes, and he gave good sport. I mentioned the Karwendel Mountains earlier—they’re not far from Munich to the south. It was there that I made my first home when I was released from prison. You see, I feared discovery for many years, so I initially sought solitude in the mountains. It was there that I took your father, but while I was deciding what to do with him, he escaped, high into the mountains. I sent men after him with dogs, and for a time he led them a merry dance. But I knew the area well. Given the direction in which your father had fled, I knew where he would go. There was a mountain hut, easy to see by anyone traversing the higher passes. So, I drove to it via a mountain track and waited for him, having lit a fire to keep out the cold, and to help draw him in. I waited with my shotgun in my lap, and inevitably your father walked in.’
‘And you shot him,’ Tayte said, finishing the story, or so he thought.
Strobel laughed again. ‘No, I didn’t shoot him. I didn’t want to have to deal with his body afterwards. As with Johann, I thought it best that no body should be found—at least not that could be easily identified.’
Tayte felt his jaw begin to tighten. ‘What did you do?’
‘I bound your father to a chair,’ Strobel said, speaking slowly now as he gazed at the gun in Tayte’s lap. ‘Then I left the hut and secured the door. I had already nailed the windows shut. There was no way for your father to escape this time.’ He paused. ‘I wonder if you can guess what happened next?’
Tayte was fast losing his battle to control the anger rising inside him. He had a good idea what happened next, but he didn’t answer. Instead, he continued to grind his teeth, knowing he was about to find out.
‘I took a jerry-can from the back of my vehicle and I doused the hut with fuel,’ Strobel said. He leaned forward, grinning at Tayte now as though excited by the images replaying through his mind. ‘Pick up the gun, Mr Tayte. If my story is proving too painful, you can end it right now.’
A part of Tayte wanted to, but he didn’t. Then he wished he had.
‘I cremated your father while he was still alive!’
At hearing those words Tayte’s free hand began to drift towards the gun.
‘That’s it! Just do it!’ Strobel said. ‘Don’t think about it.’ He grinned again, and as if to give Tayte further encouragement, he added, ‘You know, I can still hear your father’s screams as he burned. I found it intoxicating!’
Tayte’s hand found the gun, cold metal against his hot and clammy skin. ‘You evil bastard. You really are a demon!’
‘Then shoot me! Put an end to my life, or must I tell you about your mother, too?’
Tayte’s breath caught in his chest. He shook his head. ‘Don’t you say a word about my mother.’
‘I’m afraid I must, if you’ll let me. You see, your mother was a loose end, and I couldn’t have that. She was pregnant when I sent my associates to kill her.’
Tayte lifted the gun and Strobel’s one good eye widened with anticipation.
‘I had no idea what your mother knew,’ he continued, ‘but I had to assume she knew as much as your father. Karl was missing by now, and although I’d made sure his disappearance couldn’t be tied to me, she had become a threat nonetheless. I already knew she was staying with her brother in a rented apartment here in Munich.’
‘Her brother?’ Tayte cut in, recalling his and Jean’s earlier visit to the apartment where his parents had been staying with British diplomat, Geoffrey Johnston. Now he knew the motive for Johnston’s murder. He had simply been in the way and was drowned in the Eisbach to make his death seem accidental.
‘Yes, her brother,’ Strobel said. ‘Which of course means he was your uncle. But apart fr
om having to deal with him, there were other complications.’
‘I’m glad to hear it,’ Tayte said, scowling at the idea that Strobel was responsible for the murder of yet another member of his family.
‘Don’t get your hopes up, Mr Tayte,’ Strobel said. ‘Your mother got away from me that time, but I made sure she knew it was Volker Strobel, the Demon of Dachau, who had killed her husband and was now after her. It served to remove suspicion from the respectable Johann Langner, and of course, your mother already knew that Karl had been interested in Strobel. She must have wondered what he’d found, but what could she do? Indeed, what could the authorities have done when she went to them with her story? Volker Strobel was a ghost. So your mother fled the country in fear of her life, and the lives of her as then unborn children.’
‘Children?’ Tayte felt an icy chill run through him.
Strobel gave Tayte a wry smile. ‘You didn’t know, did you? But how could you?’ The revelation seemed to amuse him. ‘You were not your mother’s only child.’
‘I have a twin?’ Tayte said. It was a possibility he’d never considered before.
‘Yes, and your mother was right to fear for your lives as well as her own. I’d learned my lesson with your father, you see. I let Johann’s child live and that mistake came back to haunt me. I wasn’t about to make the same mistake twice.’
The gun began to shake in Tayte’s hand.
‘It took several months to find your mother again,’ Strobel said. ‘She was first traced to England, and then to Atlanta, Georgia. She was doing so well, but how could I let her go? What if she did know something? What if she returned to Germany someday, drawn by vengeance and the need to understand what had happened to her husband? No, I had to eliminate all threats. So when your mother was found again I took care of the matter personally, and let me tell you, it gave me great pleasure.’
Tayte’s grip on the gun tightened. Then as if he had no control over his forefinger, it slowly found the trigger.
‘She was no longer pregnant when I finally caught up with her,’ Strobel continued. ‘You and your sibling had emerged into the world, and it was my aim to kill all three of you—to remove the threat once and for all—but your mother had sense enough to separate you.’ Strobel paused then and smiled at Tayte before adding, ‘You were already out of my reach, but your brother, as I discovered, was still with her.’
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