The Devouring

by James R Benn

  “I don’t know. Let’s check the rest of the place,” I said, testing the blood with my finger. It was thick and tacky to the touch, but as I rubbed the drops, I could feel the wetness. “It hasn’t been that long, maybe an hour or so.”

  “If whoever did this took Victor away, we may have passed them on the road,” Kaz said.

  “Damn. I figured he’d be safe enough, since he didn’t even know himself that he’d be headed here. If he hadn’t stopped at Moret’s, he’d be somewhere else. So how did anyone know where to find him?” I couldn’t make any sense of it.

  “Perhaps Doctor Moret told someone he trusted,” Lasho said. “And the SVV got to them.”

  “But that doesn’t work,” Kaz said. “The Gestapo sent two men to Moret’s. We took care of them. They wouldn’t have sent others at the same time, or known Moret was going to his brother’s.”

  “Remember, Moret’s brother, Henri’s father, is a policeman,” I said.

  “Even if he did tell him, it would have been late last night,” Kaz said. “And Moret said Henri’s father wasn’t political. What motive would he have in turning Victor over to the wolves?”

  “Right,” I said. “There’s gotta be some other explanation. Let’s look around. Lasho, check the ground outside for blood. Maybe they cleaned up the tracks in the kitchen.”

  “A fastidious torturer, who cleans up after himself, except for the blood around the chair?” Kaz said. I was straining to find an answer, trying to twist any theory into a shape that fit the facts. What I needed were better facts.

  “Anything upstairs?” I asked as we went through the living room.

  “A bedroom, a small bath. Clothes in the drawers, nothing out of order.”

  “Nothing out of order? Doesn’t that strike you as odd?”

  “Of course! Why wasn’t the place searched? They’ve been turning rooms upside down looking for the cigarette case,” Kaz said.

  “Maybe that was the point of the knife work in the kitchen,” I said. “Why waste time searching when agony and suffering can do your work for you?” We got to work searching. Kaz went back upstairs, and I started with the dining room. Fancy table, nice view, and a country hutch full of crockery. I went through the piles of plates. Didn’t even find dust. Pulled out the hutch and checked the back. Crawled under the table. Clean.

  In the main room, I checked the chairs and found a couple of one franc coins and a button. Kaz came downstairs, shaking his head. No joy up there. He went through a few shelves of books, flipping the pages, scoring bookmarks and dog-eared pages. He searched a closet, coming up with a rifle. Probably Moret’s, not that it had done Victor any good.

  Except for the blood and rope in the kitchen, the place looked completely normal. So what had happened here? I sat at the desk and tried to work it out. Bad guy, or guys, sneak up on Victor. But there’s no sign of a struggle. Maybe he was outside. Going for a walk, like Kaz suggested. They drag him in and tie him down. Ask where the documents are. He clams up, they go to work on him.

  He talks. Tells them what they want to know. But they still need him for some reason, so they clean him up, apply a few bandages, and take him away.

  “No blood outside,” Lasho said, coming in the front door. “But there is a rubbish bin out back with a torn and bloody shirt and trousers.”

  “They needed Victor,” I said. “So they bandaged him up and took him along.”

  “Why?”

  “Good question,” I said. “Why would they need Victor to get the documents, assuming he told them where they were?”

  “Some place only he could get to,” Lasho said.

  “A bank. A safe deposit box,” Kaz said.

  “Or someplace simpler,” I said. “If Victor was in fear of his life the morning he left Bern, would he have taken the time to wait for the banks to open?”

  “I think not,” Kaz said, pacing back and forth, tapping his finger to his lips. “Also, how could he trust the bank staff, with Hannes and his connections?”

  “I would use the poor man’s safe deposit,” Lasho said. “The post.”

  “He mailed it to himself,” I said. “Or someone he could trust.”

  “If it was to someone else, they would not need to keep him alive, except to be certain,” Kaz said.

  “Maybe he sent it to Dulles,” I suggested.

  “Henri did not entirely trust Dulles, as you recall. Perhaps Victor felt the same, about whatever this secret is,” Kaz said. “If only he had been able to leave some clue.”

  I drummed my fingers on the desktop, trying to think it through. I searched the cubbyholes in the desk, finding stamps, pencils, paper, the usual debris. A pad set square in front of me. Nice thick paper. A fountain pen laid next to it. Dots of blue were scattered across the paper, where ink had leaked through. I grabbed a pencil and began rubbing the lead over the paper.

  “It’s a letter, dated today,” I said. “Victor pressed down hard to leave impressions, see?”

  “Clever man,” Lasho said as I finished the page. It was in German.

  “It’s to the concierge at 20 Alpenstrasse, Victor’s apartment,” Kaz said, tracing the reverse image. “He instructs him to turn over his mail to a friend, who will pick it up for him. Georg Hannes.”

  “He mailed it to himself?” Lasho said. “He must not have known his concierge was an informant.”

  “It seems as if Hannes didn’t know either,” I said. “Otherwise he wouldn’t have needed this letter. We did see him knock on the concierge’s door the night of the reception, but it doesn’t mean Hannes knew he was being paid by the Gestapo.”

  “He wouldn’t, necessarily,” Kaz said. “Krauch is in charge. Hannes has a very specific job in Bern, draining bank accounts. He was probably pressed into service as a lookout and would not have the full picture about every informer on the payroll.”

  “So right now, Hannes has Victor in tow, heading for Bern, ready to grab the documents,” I said.

  “But not on behalf of the Gestapo,” Lasho said, moving to the window to watch the approach from the road.

  “No, for himself,” Kaz said. “Probably to sell it back to Max Huber.”

  “Then we need to talk to Huber,” I said. “Big shot or no, he’s at the center of this.” I tore the paper from the pad, not wanting to leave a clue in case Krauch and his boys came this way. I noticed a small box of matches next to the fountain pen. Goldener Adler was printed in ornate script, over a picture of our hotel. The Golden Eagle. Where Victor went to listen to jazz, as he told us at the reception.

  Right on top was a single postage stamp.

  “Victor is in big trouble,” I said, pointing to the matchbox. “He mailed the documents to us, at the hotel. When Hannes strikes out at the apartment, there’s going to be hell to pay.”

  “Victor will be forced to reveal the truth. Which is why Hannes kept him alive, in case he was lying,” Kaz said. “Which means Hannes will either give up or come after us.”

  “I hope he comes after us. I have wanted to kill him from the first,” Lasho said. “But why would Victor leave that clue? He would have no reason to think we were coming.”

  I didn’t have an answer for that. I took the crumpled sheet and opened the wood stove to toss it in. Charred, smoky embers were all that remained from the most recent fire. Except for a blackened remnant of flimsy paper with Schweiz Telegraphen emblazoned across the top.

  “Here,” I said. “Moret must have sent a telegram this morning, telling Victor we were coming.”

  “He may have let his guard down when he heard a car pull up, or a knock at the door,” Kaz said.

  “Enough. He is waiting for us, and in grave danger,” Lasho said, grabbing the rifle and heading out the door. We followed.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  We stopped to buy petrol, and that was it. The rest of the time Lasho
kept it floored, trying to buy time for us to get to Victor’s place before Hannes realized he’d been duped. I figured he’d keep Victor alive until he got the documents in his grubby hands, but that didn’t mean he wouldn’t revisit the knife work.

  “If Victor ends up telling Hannes the truth, at least we know where we can find him,” I said. “Waiting to ambush us at the hotel.”

  “Perhaps you should call in reinforcements,” Lasho said, downshifting as he took another curve in the winding road.

  “Who?” Kaz asked, as he grabbed the hanging strap by the passenger door.

  “The Gestapo, of course. They want Hannes. We want Victor,” Lasho said. “Remember Ernst told us they gather at the Altes Keller in the old quarter? It would not be impossible to make an approach.”

  “The only problem is, we all want the documents,” I said. “I can’t see Krauch wanting to team up with us. Besides, we don’t have time; we’ve got to get to Victor’s apartment, fast.”

  Kaz leaned back, his arm across the passenger’s seat. “But if they’ve already been there, their next stop may well be the hotel, where Hannes will wait for us. The Altes Keller is only a few blocks away. The sight of his fellow Gestapo agents might send Hannes running.”

  “And they won’t know Hannes has Victor,” Lasho said. “They’ll go straight for their man, which will allow us to get Victor to safety.”

  “You guys might be onto something,” I said. “Let’s see how it plays out.” I had a lot of questions, and right now, Victor was the key to answering them. What was so valuable about the document in the cigarette case? What was Victor’s involvement, if any, with Henri’s death? And why did Maureen lie about who she’d spent the night with? Was she covering for Victor, providing him with an alibi for the night after the reception?

  I wanted Hannes held accountable for all the lives he’d ruined, and I liked the thought of him getting a taste of Nazi justice himself, so a temporary alliance with Krauch held a certain appeal. But I had to admit, the image of all those captives in the boarded-up cattle cars was burned into my mind, and the last thing I wanted was to make a deal with any Nazi bastard, no matter what the reward.

  As we left the mountains, the ground evened out into rolling meadows, farmland, and stands of greening trees. A misty rain began to fall as the sky went gunmetal gray. Deer darted across the road, scant yards ahead of us, and Lasho swerved on the soaked pavement, recovering control as the beasts leaped a stone wall, their white rumps vanishing into the forest. I envied them, even as rain began to pelt heavily against the windshield. Life was simple if you were a deer: eat, find a mate, run. All we had on them was one out of three, and it didn’t involve a dame or doughnuts.

  We drove into Bern as night fell. The way Lasho had been driving, I was happy not to be careening around country roads during the blackout. We approached Alpenstrasse, the light from our taped-over headlights barely enough to navigate through the city streets.

  We turned the corner and pulled over, not twenty yards from the entrance to the apartment. Lasho killed the engine and we scanned the street, checking for any sign of Hannes before barging in. The area was dark, with only a few pedestrians passing by. I rolled down my window for a clear view, and the smell of dinner cooking wafted in from the buildings, reminding me we hadn’t eaten since breakfast.

  The entry to Victor’s lobby opened, a sliver of light escaping before a figure slammed the door and ran down the steps. Hannes. He turned up his collar against the rain and glanced around the street as he moved away from us and got into a car a few spaces up.

  “Wait,” I said, as Lasho reached for the key. “Let him get ahead, and no lights right away.”

  Thin beams of light illuminated raindrops as Hannes pulled out in a Tatra, a Czech car that resembled a streamlined version of the Volkswagen. Bright red, which made it easier to tail, even in the drizzly gray blackout. We followed him to the Nydegg Bridge, crossing the river and heading directly into the old quarter. Hannes showed no sign he knew he had a tail, making straight for the Hotel Golden Eagle. Home sweet home.

  Hannes took a left on a side street, opposite the hotel. Lasho drove past it, slowly enough for us to spot the Tatra pulling over into a narrow lane that connected to the next street over. We parked and watched behind us, wondering what move Hannes would make.

  “I couldn’t tell if anyone else was in the car,” Kaz said. “Too dark to tell.”

  “Victor could be tied up in the backseat, or in the trunk,” Lasho said. “Or dead.”

  “Then what’s he waiting for?” I said. “Working up his nerve, or watching for us?”

  “Perhaps he is interrogating Victor,” Kaz suggested. “Should we take him now?”

  “I don’t want to spook the bastard,” I said. “If he’s got a knife at Victor’s throat, I don’t know what he’ll do if we surprise him.”

  “Hannes does not know me,” Lasho said. “I could get close.”

  “Okay,” I said. “Walk around the block and wait at the other end of that alley. If he drives out, stop him.”

  “You mean shoot him?” Lasho said, grinning as he opened the driver’s door.

  “That’s one way to do it,” I said, sitting sideways on the backseat for a better view out the rear window. The rain had lessened, the drumbeat on the roof down to a sprinkling patter.

  “How long do we wait?” Kaz asked, as Lasho turned the corner ahead.

  “I’m not sure. I’m tempted to go into the hotel and claim our mail. But I don’t want Hannes to spot us going in.” I waited, watching people on the street, entering and leaving restaurants and shops, unfurling umbrellas, pulling down hat brims. All oblivious to the suffering going on in their country, in the prison camps, and in the railcars traveling north to Germany. I hoped whatever was in the damn cigarette case would shake them out of their complacency.

  “There!” Kaz said, spotting Victor being pushed across the road by Hannes, who had one hand on Victor’s shoulder and the other in his coat pocket. They stopped, waiting for a car to pass, then walked toward the hotel entrance, Hannes a half-step behind, the bulge in his raincoat pocket in the small of Victor’s back.

  “Wait a second, then we’ll follow,” I said. “We’ll grab him inside.” I laid my hand on the door handle, ready to go.

  Victor had other ideas. He twisted away from Hannes and sent a right hook smashing into his captor’s jaw. Hannes went down and rolled, scrambling to get back up and in control. Victor kicked at Hannes’s arm, trying to keep him from drawing his pistol.

  “Go!” I shouted, sprinting from the rear seat. I saw Hannes skitter back on his hands and knees as Victor jumped clear of a car madly tooting its horn. I pulled my revolver as another car nearly sideswiped me, and I danced backward, working to keep my balance.

  I looked up. Hannes was on his feet, running. Victor was nowhere in sight, but I could tell by Hannes’s gait that he was tracking him. He ran fast, gun down by his side, his eyes fixed on the target as he darted between vehicles and under the covered archways spanning the sidewalk. The road curved, and Hannes picked up his pace, not wanting to lose sight of Victor somewhere in the crowd ahead.

  I heard someone running behind me and hoped it was Kaz. I holstered my pistol, which made running easier, but was a distinct disadvantage if I got close enough for Hannes to realize I was after him and closing in. A slug to the chest disadvantage.

  The old quarter of Bern sits on a spit of land jutting into the River Aare, so it wasn’t long before the paving stones led close to the water. The weather wasn’t made for strolling along the promenade, so as we left the shops, bars, and restaurants behind, we had the streets to ourselves. Hannes crossed in front of a church, skidding to a stop for a moment to check a side street. I slowed, catching a glimpse of Kaz and signaling him to go around the church, hoping to cut Hannes off. I slumped against the corner of a building, catching my breat
h and watching Hannes, praying he didn’t feel my eyes on his back.

  I heard the smack of leather on stone, and so did Hannes. He bolted toward the river, this time with his pistol held up, ready to fire. I ran after him, but not before I saw a woman with her face pressed up against a window in the building opposite, the room lit by a faint light. She drew the curtain quickly, and I wondered at the chances of her calling the police. Gunmen racing through her quaint streets were probably a rarity.

  I followed Hannes down a set of steep stone steps, leading to a broad parklike walkway along the river. I caught a glimpse of his face as he turned, and knew he spotted me. I darted to the cover of a tree, expecting a shot, but he kept going, probably thinking I was Gestapo. If he knew that the addressee of the letter he was after was behind him, he might’ve tried to get the drop on me.

  I kept pumping my arms, trying to keep up with Hannes and not think about the fact he might turn around at any moment and shoot. That he’d shortly be disappointed at the loss of his meal ticket was of no comfort.

  I kept my eye on Hannes’s flapping raincoat, the fabric billowing as he ran. In the distance, I thought I spotted Victor, hustling up another set of stairs, making for the warren of streets again. My lungs were heaving and my legs felt like lead, but I kept pace with Hannes, even after he went up the steps, taking them two at a time.

  I did the same, pain shooting through my thighs. I had to stop at the top to listen for footsteps and catch my breath. Ahead of me were two darkened alleyways. The tread of feet echoed down the alley on the left. I went right. The left alley was a hard turn, but this one led straight from the stairs, and I figured Victor wouldn’t have slowed down but gone headlong ahead.

  More echoing footsteps, but they sounded like they were coming my way. I skidded to a halt, the wet cobblestones slick beneath my feet. All around me were closed doors and shuttered windows, rainspouts gurgling water and trash cans stuck in narrow gaps between buildings. Water dripped from my forehead, and I rubbed my eyes with my sleeve, trying to focus on what was ahead.