TWO SUDDEN!: A Pair of Cole Sudden C.I.A. Thrillers

by Lawrence de Maria

  Boltke had avoided visiting Zyster’s facility until now. It was the only building in the Verblinka camp complex that he did not inspect. The structure itself was a nondescript brick and mortar affair, made with cheap materials that did not completely muffle the screams that emanated from within. Boltke was not the only one who gave it a wide berth. He’d even instructed his office staff to avoid the place. The less one knew of the pervert’s “experiments” the better, the commandant believed.

  The two men walked through Zyster’s small office, with its predictable garish diplomas and pictures of Hitler on the walls, down a short corridor, past a large freezer unit. Boltke tried not to think what was inside. Finally, they reached the laboratories where Zyster conducted his experiments. On one side of the hallway was a hospital-like room that contained a bed and several machines with vacuum tubes and wires hanging down. Across the hallway was another, larger, room that housed operating tables and morgue slabs. Boltke wondered what “patients” who glimpsed the larger room must have thought.

  Two of Zyster’s lab assistants were waiting for them in the operating room. Both looked as frightened as any men Boltke had ever seen – and that was saying something in Verblinka. They had been Polish physicians before the war and owed their continued — if temporary — survival to the fact that other German doctors wouldn’t work with their crazy colleague. Now they stood stiffly off in a corner of the room as Boltke and Zyster entered.

  The room didn’t smell as badly as Boltke had expected. Of course, his sense of smell had adapted to the realities of a facility where hygiene was almost nonexistent even before the approach of the Red Army created lapses in discipline among his own soldiers. Besides, the room was cold; Zyster was allotted extra petrol for generators that ran the refrigeration units and freezer he needed for storage.

  There were two bodies on slabs in the center of the room. A naked woman was on one. Boltke casually glanced at her and suddenly stopped. Jesus Christ! It was Olga, the Russian prisoner who had progressed nicely from being his housekeeper and cook to becoming his mistress. His eyes traveled down her body. She wasn’t as emaciated as most Russian prisoners. Thin, yes. But her breasts were full, although in death they flattened out a bit to the sides. But it was her pubic area that riveted his attention, and not for any prurient reason. There was an old scar from an appendectomy obviously performed by a Stalinist surgeon of limited talents. It was longer than usual and one end had healed strangely; it pointed like an arrow. Boltke had even teased the woman that he certainly didn’t need directions when entering her, despite her lush thatch. She had actually thought that was very funny. Of course, she might have been faking, as she probably faked everything throughout their activity.

  Still, she was a good sort, a woman who, given the circumstances and their relative positions, he had grown quite fond of. And it wasn’t just the sex, at which she had become quite adept. Olga had been a concert pianist before the war and was well-educated. He could actually talk to her. He had started to make arrangements to save her from this charnel house. And now, somehow, Zyster had gotten his clutches on the woman and “put her down.” What a colossal waste!

  Olga’s eyes were wide open and seemed to stare at Boltke in reproach.

  “Is something the matter, Colonel?”

  Zyster was looking at him strangely.

  “How did you kill her?”

  The doctor barely glanced at the dead woman.

  “Syringe. Air embolism in the blood. Didn’t want to waste any drugs. We’re running short.”

  “Did she suffer?”

  “Oh, yes, I think so,” the doctor said, misinterpreting Boltke’s interest. “You would have been proud. Russian bitch.”

  I think I will kill him before the Bolsheviks do, Boltke thought to himself.

  “She’s not who I wanted you to see, Colonel. Come over here.”

  Boltke walked to the other table in a barely contained rage.

  And forgot all about Olga.

  The man’s corpse had been stripped naked and sliced open from throat to groin. The table and floor around it were awash in blood. Only it didn’t exactly look like blood. It was red but not quite the red that Boltke, who had seen his share of blood, would have expected. It had a slight bluish tinge. That was not the only thing that he noticed. He wasn’t a physician but had a pretty good grasp of anatomy — every German university student was well grounded in the biological sciences — and there was something very wrong with the position of the organs in the eviscerated body.

  “Is this some sort of fucking joke, Zyster?”

  As soon as he said it, he knew it wasn’t. The doctor was perhaps the most humorless man in the camp, quite an accomplishment in a facility which, not surprisingly, was hardly a barrel of laughs on any day.

  “Now, do you see what I mean, Colonel? Look at the heart. It’s on the wrong side. That can occur naturally, of course, but it is very rare. The lungs are too small and the stomach is segmented, like a cow.”

  “Like a cow,” Boltke repeated dully.

  Zyster reached into the cavity and lifted the organ.

  “Wrong color, as well.” He pointed into the cavity. “And notice, no small intestine. One kidney. If you can call it that.”

  Boltke reeled. It was not as if he was repelled at the sight of organs splayed all over the place. He’d walked through fields of corpses torn apart by shellfire. But this was unfathomable.

  “There has to be a rational explanation.”

  Zyster barked an order at his assistants. They reluctantly approached the table. One steadied the corpse’s head while the other grabbed a small electric hand saw.

  “You might want to step back, Colonel,” Zyster said. He looked at the man with the saw, whose lips were quivering. “Go ahead, you swine, or I’ll use that on you!”

  Five minutes later, Zyster pushed his assistant aside and lifted off the top of the skull, dropping it in a small bucket at his feet, where it made a small clanging sound. Even the Russian front has to be better than this, Boltke thought to himself, trying to hold his gorge. Zyster and his assistants looked into the skull. Both of the Poles screamed in their native language and backed away from the slab.

  “Look, Colonel,” Zyster said. “What do you make of that?”

  Boltke walked to the head of the table and peered into the skull.

  CHAPTER 1 - SMUGGLERS NOTCH

  Jeffersonville, Vermont – March 1967

  Walter Bannion could make out Jay Peak near the Canadian border, some 20 miles in the distance. He had grown to love the vista from the top of Madonna Mountain, at 3,650 feet in elevation the largest of the Green Mountains surrounding the narrow, winding valley in northern Vermont known as Smugglers Notch. He felt right at home in the thick forests along the Notch’s “Long Trail,” a smuggler’s paradise since before the American Revolution. Even today, criminals could transport contraband between Vermont and Quebec in both directions. In its heyday, the Notch’s hidden caverns provided havens and storage points for bootleggers moving Canadian whiskey into the United States during Prohibition.

  And this isolated section of Vermont also provided a much-needed refuge for Bannion, formerly Rudolph Boltke.

  The SS Colonel still cut a formidable figure, a scant 10 pounds heavier than in his Army days. He knew it would have been 20 pounds, but for his skiing. His black hair, which he let grow long in the current American style, was now flecked with gray, as were his sideburns, also now in style. The extra weight, the hair and his adoption of the latest men’s fashions all provided him with what he believed was an unbreakable cover. He had trouble recognizing himself in the mirror sometimes.

  The one-time death camp commandant had made good his escape from Verblinka just weeks before it was overrun by Soviet troops in late March 1945. Dressed in a Luftwaffe uniform and bearing false papers and medals from a fighter pilot long dead at Stalingrad (all presciently acquired months earlier from a nearby air base whose commander he paid in gold, mo
stly extracted from prisoners’ teeth), Boltke made his way through a succession of Allied checkpoints all the way to Italy. More bribes, one of which cost him his prized Samorodok cigarette case, augmented by help from a surprisingly efficient network of Nazi sympathizers in the Vatican, eventually put the newly renamed “Walter Bruschi” on a boat to South America. By 1948, he was able to send for his wife and two children. For almost 12 years he led an idyllic second life in Argentina, where he made a highly prosperous living as the engineer he had trained to be before the war.

  Then, in 1960, the Israelis caught up to Adolph Eichmann in Buenos Aires and spirited him out of the country. Eichmann, the mastermind behind Hitler’s “final solution of the Jewish question,” was a much bigger fish than Boltke. But the fact that Mossad agents plucked the Nazi SS officer off the streets in broad daylight was frightening. He lived in San Fernando, the same Buenos Aires suburb where Boltke resided! Every neighbor and shopkeeper’s glance now had a double meaning. Boltke’s wife became frantic. His children, though grown and out of the house, began asking questions about barely suppressed memories. It was only a matter of time before someone slipped up. Boltke decided to flee. He contacted the underground SS network and hatched an escape plan.

  Gerda refused to go with him. Her relationship with Boltke, whose money and good looks attracted a string of Argentinean mistresses, had been deteriorating for years. In any event, she wanted to remain near their children, both of whom had married. There were grandchildren on the horizon. But she, too, helped him escape. That’s what a good German wife does.

  On the pretext of a romantic getaway for their 25th wedding anniversary, Boltke and Gerda booked a weekend at a secluded beachfront hotel in Mar del Plata, Argentina’s premier seaside resort. They made sure they were noticed, and Boltke, in particular, made certain he always had a drink in his hand. He loudly left one poolside party near dusk one night, telling everyone, tipsily, that he wanted a late dip in the ocean. His wife made a show of trying to talk him out of it, and then went to bed. When he failed to return to his room by the next morning, his “distraught” wife (given her state of mind, she had no problem with the necessary histrionics) notified the management, who in turned called the Policía Federal Argentina. When Señor Brauchi’s towels, sandals and watch were found on the beach, the authorities drew the obvious conclusion. One policeman even suggested that a “tiburón” might have been responsible before a tourist-conscious superior told him to shut his mouth about sharks.

  Because Brauchi/Boltke’s body was never found, it would be years before suspicious insurance companies paid off several large policies. That delay also had the advantage of insuring his wife’s silence. But she had plenty of money to tide her over until then. Her very much alive husband left for the United States the next day, carrying forged identity papers and just under $250,000 in diamonds and rare stamps – the last of his “confiscated” lucre from Konzentraionslager Verblinka. It was more than enough for Boltke to establish himself in his new country by early 1962. He was sure he made the right decision, especially later that year when the Israelis hanged Eichmann, burned his body and spread his ashes over the Red Sea. Boltke had actually met Eichmann once, during some conference on the Eastern Front before things began to fall apart for the Wehrmacht. He thought the vain little bureaucrat was a pompous toad who probably deserved what he got, but certainly didn’t want to share his fate.

  Smugglers Notch wasn’t Gstaad or Berchtesgarden, but with an average snowfall of almost 300 inches per year, it wasn’t the Sahara either. And hiding in plain sight had its ironies, as well as its advantages. Boltke had been pretty certain that Mossad wouldn’t dream of looking for a concentration camp commandant in Vermont. He had a healthy respect for Mossad, indeed for the entire Israeli military establishment. He believed Germany probably would have won the war if Hitler hadn’t been such a fanatical anti-Semite and delivered the best atom bomb scientists, mostly Jews, to the Allies on a plate.

  Out of lingering filial guilt, Boltke had continued to send Gerda money for his children and grandchildren. He was, of course, very careful. No checks or money orders. Just a Christmas card every year, and certainly not from him! He practiced a feminine script until his signature and short holiday greeting looked as if they could have been written by the fictitious “Mathilda Kleeman,” ostensibly one of Gerda’s oldest friends. Each card envelope had several small-denomination stamps. Under one of the regular stamps was another stamp, an 1840 Penny Black from England that, with careful removal of the top stamp, would be pristine. Boltke knew Gerda would be very careful. The Penny Blacks were worth anywhere from $500 to $2,000 each. His stamp-collecting had turned out to be not only relaxing, but also highly lucrative.

  His “hobby” had been jump started from the confiscated collection of a noted Jewish philatelist in Budapest. The man had died in Verblinka. Stamps were even easier to transport than diamonds. Boltke had only two of the stamps from the original treasure trove left. He had used the others to finance his escape from Europe and subsequent lifestyle in Argentina, and to help him gain credibility in the American stamp market. Most of the stamps now in his collection, including the 18 Penny Blacks he had left, were accumulated over years in trips to Boston and New York. He kept the Penny Blacks and almost a hundred other stamps, from all over the world, in three albums at home and was happy to show them to his occasional dinner guests. The two remaining from the Budapest collection were an 1845 Basel Dove, the first and only stamp issued by the Swiss canton of Basel, worth at least $18,000 at current prices and an 1848 Perot Provisional. The Perot was Boltke’s pride and joy. Issued by Bermudians to inaugurate their capital, Hamilton, there were only 11 in existence, including one in the possession of the British Royal family. Boltke knew his was worth at least $100,000. Both the Perot and the Basel Dove were in a safe deposit box in the Lamoille County Community Bank in nearby Cambridge, nestled among his remaining stash of diamonds.

  As the years passed, Boltke grew more comfortable with his new “Bannion” identity. He never really let his guard down, but as he read about the German scientists who were being lionized by the Americans, he began to think that his chances of discovery were dwindling. He knew for a fact that some of the men now piling up awards from the U.S. Government had been responsible for the deaths of at least as many Jews, slave laborers and prisoners of wars as he had. And he also knew that their disclaimers about being in the dark about Nazi atrocities were hogwash. In Buenos Aires he’d spoken to other refugees from the Third Reich who, plainly jealous, told him about some of the killer scientists prospering in America during the Cold War against the Soviet Union.

  But that was all in the past. Now, Boltke, as Bannion, occasionally socialized with the von Trapps, for God’s sake, at their famous lodge at Stowe! He even cultivated some Jewish friends among the stamp collectors he met in Boston and New York. Finding them honest to a fault in all his dealings with them, he began to wonder if he had ever really hated the Jews.

  Boltke/Bannion had originally thought of settling near Jay, the northernmost of Vermont’s ski areas – one can never be too close to a border – but the charm of the Notch had captivated him from the start. It was close enough to Interstate 89 to still offer a quick escape to Canada. And now that Tom Watson, the IBM chairman and ski enthusiast, had decided to turn the three-mountain complex near the small village of Cambridge into a world-class destination resort modeled after an Alpine village, Smugglers felt more like home every day. The fact that the area’s booming tourist trade was good for Bannion’s thriving maple syrup packaging business didn’t hurt, either. Bannion’s Grade A Amber Maple Syrup was gaining shelf space in supermarkets throughout the northeastern United States.

  Because of his advancing age — he had just turned 67 — Bannion preferred skiing Madonna, which, despite its larger vertical drop, had Double Diamond expert trails more manageable than those on the slightly smaller Sterling Mountain, where he came close to breaking his neck on occasio
n. He, of course, avoided Morse Mountain, which catered to beginners and was overrun with children. Besides, from the top of Madonna he could schuss across the valley to nearby Stowe to hobnob with the swells when he got too fed up with the family groups that made up the bulk of Smugglers’ clientele. The cuisine was better, too. In the winter, schussing was the only practical way to get to Stowe from Cambridge. Route 108, with its sharp turns and steep inclines cuts through Mount Mansfield and is treacherous any time of the year. In the winter, after the first snowfall, it can’t be plowed and is closed to vehicular traffic.

  Bannion wondered how long he would be able to even handle Madonna. His body kept telling him he should spend more time on his stamp collecting, a hobby he found much easier on the knees.

  He took off his ski cap and goggles, and unzipped his parka. There was a temperature inversion in northern Vermont. It was warmer at the top of the mountain than at the bottom. While he could see all the way to Canada, the bottom of the mountain and base lodge were invisible. A cloud layer halfway down covered the entire valley. He knew the inversion – and the January thaw that caused it – wouldn’t last. An arctic blast was predicted for the weekend, with temperatures falling to 20 below. Then they’d have to put thermal blankets around skiers going all the way to the top, in case the ancient lifts broke down (as they often did). The mountain didn’t advertise the fact that without the blankets stranded skiers swinging in the high winds would freeze to death before the rangers could get them down by rope.