Bloch said in English to all of us, “So you have some blood to have tested?”
“Yes. There is blood from a few different people, but we’re sure blood from one of the people whose skulls we have is on the flag.”
He waved his hand and said, “Come into the lab and let’s sit down at our conference table and discuss this.”
We walked through the first door and into the lab area, which was large and impressive. He took us to a conference room that had a long white table and ten leather chairs. The lighting was intense and direct from numerous small halogen lights in the ceiling. Jedediah and I sat on one side of the room while Eidhalt and his men sat on the other side, with Bloch at the end. Bloch started, “Let’s understand exactly what we’re doing.” He looked at me. “Since you have the flag, tell me what your objective is.”
“They,” I said, indicating Eidhalt, “believe their family member’s blood is on this flag, and if so, they would like to purchase it.”
Bloch nodded and looked at Eidhalt. “What is it that you are going to use to prove this?”
Eidhalt lowered the satchel gently onto the table. The skulls clicked together.
“You have a skeleton?”
“There was some question of which skeleton it was. There were four in the grave so we have all four.”
Bloch indicated the bag with his chin. “What pieces?”
“The skulls.”
Bloch nodded. “Let’s see them.”
Eidhalt opened the bag and pulled out the four skulls and set them in front of him. It looked like four people sitting under the table with their heads projecting through.
Bloch nodded again. “They are in good condition. You do understand that we will have to bore into the skulls and take out the inside of the bone to extract the DNA. It is a process.”
“We understand. That’s no problem.”
“So these are your relatives and you’re okay with us drilling holes in their heads?”
“Yes. My clients’ need to know.”
“Why?” he asked with some skepticism.
Eidhalt looked at Bloch intensely. “It’s important to the family.”
Bloch shrugged. “Let’s see the flag.”
Jedediah opened the suitcase gently and lifted out the flag. He unfolded it onto the table next to the skulls. With the intense halogen lighting you could see the dark blood stains on the still bright red background. Bloch was taken aback. No one had told him it was a Nazi flag. He looked around the room then took out what looked like a jeweler’s eye and examined the flag closely. He went to several areas that were clearly stained and looked at them closely. He picked up the flag gently. He folded the corner up and looked at the flag on the other side. He laid it back down. “I believe I can get enough material off of this flag for DNA testing. I will take samples from several different locations without cutting the flag, and prepare each of those samples separately for testing. I will then take bored sections from the skulls to extract the DNA and keep those four sections separate. You understand that will give us many different possibilities.”
I nodded, “But that means that at least thirty of those will be non-matches because we don’t expect three of them to match. Only one of them bled onto the flag.”
“Yes, but they are related. What is their relationship?”
“Father, mother, and sister.”
“Well, it is possible then that they will have some match. It won’t be as likely or as good as the gentleman himself, but you could get some matches.”
“Well, any match would confirm what we’re here to find out. Because no one else would match. Right?” I asked.
“Well, it is theoretically possible. But it’s close to a one in a billion chance that any given person will match another. So you’re right. If there are any matches in any of these sets, then that confirms that the family member died on this flag. But if all goes well, we should get one perfect match. If he bled sufficiently, and as you said most of this blood is his, we should be able to match it perfectly. It will take some time.”
All of us immediately thought of the meeting. Eidhalt asked, “How much time?”
Bloch considered, “Well, we have to culture the DNA and grow it in the lab. Then the matching testing itself shouldn’t take more than a day, so I would say that we can have an answer for you by Wednesday.”
Eidhalt immediately turned to me and said, “So you will leave the flag here until Wednesday.”
“You’ve forgotten what we just said,” I said harshly. “I’m not leaving it anywhere for any period of time. If they need to take samples, they can take as many samples as they want. From any part of the flag they want.”
I looked at the owner of the lab. “You can take the samples right now, can’t you? It can’t take that long.”
He looked at his watch. “The people that will do that are involved in another extremely important matter.”
I raised my voice, “I don’t give a shit how important their other matter is. We’re paying you a lot of money. Get them over here now and take the samples. We will all watch and then I’ll take my flag and go. Then we’ll come back and you can tell us what the results are. Get them now.”
Bloch looked a little concerned and quite peeved, and said, “Let me see.” He left the conference room and left us alone with the flag.
Eidhalt said, “I don’t think you trust me.”
I responded, “You are correct.”
“We’re on the same team. We are trying to get things together for our meeting. We are supposed to be working together.”
“You’re the one putting the meeting together. You haven’t even told me where it’s going to be or what will happen. This is all about you. Not about the movement. You’re trying to put yourself at the top of the movement. I get that. But don’t expect me to trust you because of it.”
* * *
Two men and a woman came into the conference room where the flag was spread out on the table. It was too large for the table, and was bunched at the two ends; but the black and white striping and the red color made clear what kind of flag it was. They tried not to look startled. They bent and examined the flag with a magnifying glass. We all stood around wondering whether there would be any problem.
Bloch said, “We will begin. I have informed Franz, our lead laboratory technician. He understands what we’re doing.” He asked Franz, “Do you have your locations selected?”
Franz answered, “Yes. We will take numerous samples because of the number of people.”
One of his colleagues handed him a small case, which he opened. It contained glass test tubes with screw-top lids. When he unscrewed one of the lids, it came out with a Q-tip-like swab attached to the lid. He dipped it in some liquid that was in a small container also in the kit, and leaned down to examine the first place in the flag he wanted to lift a blood sample from. He rolled over the same spot with the moistened swab in an area about one inch by two inches several times, like he was painting the spot with an invisible liquid. I expected the swab to turn pink with blood remains, but it didn’t. It remained pure white and moist. After fifteen or twenty seconds, he was satisfied and put that swab back into the tube and screwed the top on. He spoke in German to his colleague who wrote on the tube. He took out another test tube with the swab cap and began working on another spot. His two colleagues did likewise. Before long, they had twenty or thirty different swabs that had extracted whatever they could from the flag and they had placed them back into the tubes with markings showing the location of the sample on the flag. Why the location would matter, I didn’t understand. But, I also didn’t care. Franz was done. He placed the last vial into the box. He closed it and locked it, and nodded to the head of the laboratory. He said, “We have all the samples we need.”
I asked, “Do you think you got enough?”
“It’s impossi
ble to say at this point, but the flag is in such good condition that I am hopeful. I have pulled DNA from much rougher pieces of cloth that were much older.”
I turned to Bloch. “How long before you’ll have the results?” The clear implication of my question was that his answer the last time we asked was inadequate.
Everyone in the room looked at him in expectation. He pondered.
“We have to take the skull samples . . . we must have the DNA replicate itself, we have to put it in a machine overnight. I would say by this time tomorrow, we should have an answer.”
I nodded and took the corner of the flag into my hands. “I’ll give you my phone number.” As I began folding up the flag, I said to him, “You do understand how important it is that this be kept confidential. Right?”
He nodded. “All our work is confidential.”
“Not all your work involves something of this magnitude. The bigger the magnitude, the bigger the public interest might be, the more important it is to keep it confidential. You understand?”
He frowned. “I thought this was a simple family issue.” He paused. “But of course, nothing will be said to anyone. I will make sure.”
I took the folded flag and handed it to Jedediah who put it back into the leather suitcase and closed it. I said to everyone in the room, “Then we will be going.” I looked at Eidhalt. “Call me if you hear first so I can meet you here to get the results.”
He looked enthusiastic. “Of course. I look forward to it.”
I nodded, and Jedediah and I walked out of the room quickly.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Jedediah put the leather suitcase into the trunk of our rental car. He climbed into the passenger seat and I drove off. He asked, “Where are you headed?”
“Into the country.” I glanced at the car’s GPS for directions to the road that I’d chosen the previous night while studying a map. I wanted a road that was lightly traveled, where I could pick out someone who might be following us.
We drove through the city and onto a road that led out of town. I looked in my rearview mirror for cars that were following us but didn’t see anything. This was our point of greatest vulnerability. They had to suspect that we could switch the flag with a fake once out of their sight. But they knew we had the real one in the car as we left the lab. I drove below the speed of the traffic so everyone passed us. After we’d driven ten miles to where there was only an occasional intersection or country house, I noticed a black seven series BMW a half-mile behind us. I continued on another ten miles and all the other cars passed. But the BMW stayed back.
“They’re on us,” I said. Jedediah turned and looked back.
“The Beemer?”
“Yeah.”
My cell phone rang and I pulled it out of my pocket and looked at the number. “Yeah?”
It was Alex. “You know you’re being followed, right?”
“Yeah. Black BMW.”
“There’s a second car about a mile behind him. You want me to get our German friends to intervene?”
“Where are you?”
“In a helicopter a couple of miles behind you, with Florian.”
“If you guys jump in they’ll know we aren’t what we appear to be. Let me take care of this.”
Florian who was also on the line responded, “I don’t know if that’s so smart.”
“Hold on,” I said as I looked in my rearview mirror and saw that the BMW had accelerated. “Shit.” He was closing in on us at over a hundred miles per hour. I put the phone on the seat, still connected to Alex and Florian. I said to Jedediah, “Here they come.”
He glanced back. “What are you going to do?”
“Nothing, until they get here.” I looked ahead and there was no traffic in either direction. The terrain was perfect for an ambush. Grass and trees on both sides, no houses or buildings. No witnesses. The BMW flew up toward us and grew larger and larger in the rearview mirror. By this time, I could see two faces in the two front seats, but I couldn’t tell if there was anybody in the back. They closed on us fast, then pulled over into the other lane, to go around us. “Here they come.” I changed nothing, driving as I would if it were just another car passing us. “See if you can tell how many men are in that car.”
The BMW was on top of us. He swung into the oncoming lane to pass. Jedediah called out, “Four men in the car.” Just as he said that, the BMW braked hard and swerved over to hit us. I anticipated his move and slammed on my brakes and swerved to the right. The BMW kept slowing and cutting me off, which forced me over onto the shoulder. Before I knew it, I was across the shoulder and on the grass. The BMW kept coming, driving me completely off the road. The brakes pulsed as the anti-lock brakes fought our speed in the slippery grass. But it wasn’t enough and it wasn’t quick enough. I steered hard left to avoid one tree, but smashed into another head on. Our airbags fired out and punched us in the face as our car came to an immediate stop. As the airbag deflated, I asked Jedediah, “You okay?”
“Yeah. You?”
I reached for the door handle and my handgun. “Get your weapon and get out! You see one guy with a gun, you start firing. Go right at them! Don’t let them out of their car. They won’t expect it. No hesitation! Go!”
We jumped out of the car, put our guns up and ran at the BMW. They had just come to a stop as they had much more speed than we did and didn’t have a tree to help. They were a good thirty yards ahead of us. We ran up from behind them as they got out of their doors. The first man I saw got out of the rear door on the right side. He was carrying a handgun in his right hand. That was enough for me. I aimed and fired and hit him in the head. He dropped straight down onto the ground. The others had now heard the gunshot and hurried to get out and turn toward us in a firing position. But we had the advantage. The man in the right passenger door jumped out in a crouch and tried to run away from the car so he could turn toward us. Jedediah saw him and fired three shots. The man went down in a heap. We ran to the left side of the BMW and the third man got out of the left rear door. He had a submachine gun and aimed it toward us to fire. Jedediah and I fired at the same time, both hitting him in the chest. He was knocked back, but not harmed. He was wearing a vest.
“Vest. Close on him! Aim for his legs!” We continued to fire, hitting him in the groin and legs. He cried out in pain as Jedediah shot him in the head from fifteen feet away. The only one left was the driver. He got out with his arms up. Jedediah shot him in the chest and the man collapsed next to the car.
I said, “Get their weapons, clear out our trunk, and put them in it.” Jedediah went to the driver, checked to see if he was alive. He was.
Jedediah shot him again. He took his weapon out of his hand, and pressed the lever to release the trunk. The trunk popped open. As he collected the weapons and checked the BMW I retrieved the flag and my cell phone from our rental. I put the suitcase in the rear seat of the BMW and looked at their weapons. “They had a lot of ammo. It’s all over the trunk. They were loaded for bear.”
“Anything else in the car?”
“No, we got the keys.”
Just then, I looked over Jedediah’s shoulder as a black Mercedes S class slowed and looked at us. I looked back at the car, unable to see who was in it. They could see us standing there with guns in our hands, and bodies around us. They sped away. Jedediah dragged the four dead men to our car and threw two of them into the trunk, and the other two into the back seat. My phone rang. They must have hung up and called me to make it ring.
“Yeah.”
“Shit, Kyle! What are you doing? Are you okay?” Alex sounded frantic. “Yeah. We were driving along here through the grass and noticed a car in front of us that was stopped. I quit paying attention unfortunately, and I hit a tree. When we got up there, it looks like there are four guys that have been shot by somebody. We’re going to have to go, so you might want to send some peop
le out here to clean this up.”
Florian interrupted. “You shot four of them?”
“Somebody did.”
“We’ll have to talk about this. This is not how this was supposed to go.”
“Whenever you like. But we’ve got to get out of here. That other car may be coming back.”
I hung up my phone, and said to Jedediah, “Let’s go. You drive.”
“Where to?” He said as he raced around and climbed into the driver’s seat of the BMW 750i.
“The airport.”
* * *
Jedediah floored the BMW. The wheels spun as we went from the grass back to the pavement and back toward the city on the two-lane highway. There was no sign of the Mercedes, but a couple of other cars went by. Before long we were a good distance away from the scene and Jedediah slowed down to normal highway speeds. After a few minutes, Jedediah asked, “Why the airport?”
“I’m going to rent another car. I don’t think I’ll tell Hertz that their car is piled against a tree for a while yet. I think I’ll go to Avis or whatever else is out there. Then we’ll drive around to this car and transfer their weapons—now ours—to my trunk, and take the BMW key with us. It will be all nicely locked and left in long-term parking like somebody’s gone on a flight. Then I’ll drive you around and you can rent another car. That way we’ll have two. We need to keep making random decisions so nobody knows where we are.”
Jedediah nodded. “Except the BKA knew where we were. They were following us with a helicopter.”
I looked at him driving, and thought about what had just happened. “I may need to ditch my phone . . . You handled yourself well back there. You know how to shoot.”
“I wasn’t in the army for nothing.”
“There are a lot of army guys who don’t know how to shoot.”
The Blood Flag Page 26