by Layton Green
“Many.”
Her brow lifted, and she seemed to consider him with new eyes.
“Before I leave,” Viktor said, “I’d like to view the body.”
The tapping of the pen resumed. “That will be quite difficult, I’m afraid.”
“Why is that?”
“Because it disappeared from the morgue last night.”
-6-
Grey checked into the Midtown Atlanta Hyatt, a high-rise hotel close to public transport. Viktor never questioned his expenses, and Grey never gave him a reason to. Unlike his boss, Grey felt more comfortable in beach bungalows and anonymous pensions than five star hotels. Hole-in-the-wall diners rather than restaurants with maître d’s and a dress code.
After Googling the addresses of the bars with white supremacist ties he had uncovered, Grey took to the streets in the Cherokee, both to preserve his escape options and because the two-line subway barely scratched the surface of the city’s sprawl. The first two places he tried were almost deserted, and five minutes with the deadbeats at the bar told him there was no information to be gained.
The third place was boarded-up and abandoned. Growing restless, Grey dug a bit deeper and found a bar called the Peach Shack advertising a rally for that very day. It was in East Atlanta, not too far away, and Grey hurried over. He wanted to catch the loose-lipped, hard-core afternoon drinkers before the Friday work crowd arrived.
Heading east on Ponce de Leon, the urban density of Midtown morphed into a four-lane road with a hodgepodge of old brick buildings, condominiums, strip malls, repurposed antebellum mansions, gas stations, and churches. An old southern street in transition to a booming new metropolis. After turning onto Moreland, he almost missed the beat-up driveway tucked between a construction site and the Dixieland Drycleaners. The long drive spilled into a gravel parking lot filled with pickup trucks and hulking motorcycles. A shamrock-green building made of wood and stucco, the aging watering hole had blacked-out windows and a long angled roof, like a Swiss chalet.
Next to a marquee announcing the Peach Shack in bright orange letters, a trio of flags hung limply from iron poles: the thirteen stars of the confederacy, a black and white POW*MIA flag, and a frayed Bikers for Kids emblem. A wooden fence topped by baseball pennants enclosed the rear lot, and Grey heard the blare of country rock from outdoor speakers.
So much for beating the crowd.
Grey passed two older men sitting on Harleys, stubbing out cigarettes and pulling on leathers. They eyed Grey’s rental Jeep but didn’t comment.
Inside, he paused to absorb the scene. The bar stretched along the back wall, fronted by communal wooden tables. High ceiling, brown tiled floor, walls covered with old beer and cigarette signs. A digital jukebox in the corner blared a rockabilly tune that drowned the outside speakers, and the place smelled of greasy bar food.
It was standing room only. Though Grey saw a handful of young professionals sprinkled throughout the crowd, next-door neighbor types who gave him chills, most of the crowd fulfilled the Neo-Nazi cliché: prominent tattoos, clothing with racist slogans, shaved heads and goatees.
See me, world. You may have never noticed me before I started to hate, but you will now.
The sticky residue of bigotry oozed out of the walls. Grey felt soiled just stepping inside. He eyed the bar and found space next to a goateed man in his thirties with a Swastika baseball cap and a T-shirt that read The Original Boys in the Hoods.
Grey sidled up next to him and ordered a Coors. After a few minutes, the goateed man nudged his head at Grey. “New around here?”
“Yeah,” Grey said, without looking over.
“Thought so. Seen you looking around when you came in. Lots of new faces here for the rally.”
Above the bar, Grey had noticed a banner with the day’s date printed beneath the slogan.
HERITAGE RALLY: ONE WHITE NATION, UNDER GOD
The man had close-cropped hair and mushy hands. His weight sat heavy in the middle. “Who you with?” he asked. “NSM? Aryan Nation?”
“No one,” Grey said.
The man looked surprised. “You’re not here for the rally?”
“Just seeing what it’s all about.”
The man sized him up again. A nervous look entered his eyes. “Not a Zog, are you?”
Zog stood for Zionist Occupied Government. Far-right slang for a federal agent or informant.
“Do I look like one?” Grey asked.
He shrugged and pointed his bottle at Grey. “You ain’t with no one, you don’t got no tats.”
Grey gave the man a flat stare, did a half-turn on the stool, and lifted his shirt. The man chortled when he saw the mixture of scars and cigarette burns covering Grey’s back. Relics from combat and street fights, plus his father’s handiwork.
“Prison?” the man guessed. “Or you been fighting the mud people in the desert?”
Grey concealed his revulsion with a snort, implying he couldn’t or wouldn’t talk about it.
The man stuck out his hand. “Walter Briggs. League of Dixie. Though that don’t matter no more, does it? We’re all coming together now. We live in embattled times, my brother.”
“You got that right,” Grey murmured.
“Hell, I don’t need to tell you, do I?” Walter said, almost shyly now. He ordered another round for them both. “You ask me, the New White Order can’t come soon enough. Our country won’t last like this much longer. The coons ain’t even the biggest problem any more. We got the berry pickers crossing the border in droves and breeding like minks, the rice niggers taking over our schools, the Jesus Killers richer than ever. Say, you know how many Jews can fit in a VW?”
Grey took a swallow of beer.
“Depends on the size of the ashtray.” Walter slapped the bar, then clinked glasses with a woman in a tight-fitting white shirt sitting next to him.
“I need the john,” Grey mumbled, and stepped away. If he heard any more, he was going to slam the guy’s head onto the bar, and that wouldn’t help his cause.
Or maybe it would, he mused. He could ingratiate himself with the crowd by telling them Walter was the Zog, after knocking him senseless. He gave the idea close consideration and then discarded it as too risky. People at the bar knew Walter, and Grey was an outsider.
That said, he really wanted to slam Walter’s head onto the bar.
Grey stepped into a hallway, ignored the restroom, and continued to a set of double doors leading outside. He pushed through and found himself in a sprawling biergarten filled with people and surrounded by a fence covered in scraggly vegetation.
A blond bartender in a biker’s jacket was slinging drinks out of a Tiki bar set up on the right side of courtyard, between a horseshoe pit and a whole pig roasting on a smoker. Another banner announcing the rally, printed on a black background and depicting a grinning skull with two crossed rifles, hung from the rear portion of the fence. Beneath the banner was a temporary stage with a podium.
Grey tried not to look obvious as he ambled through the crowd. Nothing caught his eye until he saw a beast of a man looming above a group of hard-eyed types. A mass of curly red hair spilled past the larger man’s shoulders. His full beard and metal jewelry added to the Viking look, but what really caught Grey’s eye was the distinctive tattoo stretching along his left forearm.
The Odin rune.
Is this the guy the old woman saw?
With a rally this size, Grey was not surprised someone involved in the local white supremacist scene was in attendance. Yet the giant’s stylish attire—designer jeans and a green V-neck shirt—didn’t fit with the crowd. He was deep in conversation with a dapper blond man who had a suntanned and hawkish face, late-twenties, wearing an orange silk Polo shirt and a watch that looked as if it cost more than Grey’s yearly salary.
He moved closer. He wanted an ear on this conversation. After grabbing one of the Styrofoam plates of smoked pork, he made his way towards the podium, exchanging nods as he went. Eyes slid right pas
t Grey’s motorcycle jacket, black boots, and unkempt appearance.
Twenty feet from the redhead and his companion, the crowd of men around them, mostly skinheads and bikers riddled with prison tats, began to eye Grey. Despite the fall weather, some of the men were shirtless, flaunting engorged muscles and body art.
The group hovering around the two men were not just part of the crowd, Grey realized.
They were a bodyguard unit.
Grey decided he didn’t care. It was the middle of the day in a public space. He moved closer. Ten feet from the Viking, one of the men stepped in front of Grey, cutting off his path. He was a lean skinhead with a nose ring, the number 88 tattooed on his chest, and a dog collar wrapped around his neck. “Where you headed, buddy?”
“The podium,” Grey said.
“What for?”
Grey needed one good look at the big redhead. His eyes, his hands, the brand of his shoes. Details that might matter. “It’s a free country, last time I checked.”
He tried to slip around the skinhead, but a thick-necked man wearing overalls and combat boots stepped forward and jabbed Grey in the chest. “Nothing free in this world except love and hate. Now get your ass outta here, boy. This corner of the bar ain’t for you.”
“I thought this rally was supposed to bring us all together?”
The skinhead snorted, exchanged a glance with the other man, and stepped toe-to-toe with Grey. The smell of cheap beer leaked from his pores. “What are you, some kinda retard?”
“Just a paying customer.”
The man gritted his teeth. “Listen. I know you ain’t a Zog, cuz they ain’t that dumb. There’s generals in every war, and that’s one of ’em right behind me. He needs his space. Now get.”
The word general brought a surge of tightness to Grey’s chest. An image of Nya perched on the edge of a precipice filled his vision, held tight in the grasp of the kind of man who gave orders and took what he wanted from life.
The General. An ex-CIA agent turned international crime lord who had taken Nya as insurance once Viktor and Grey started closing in on his jungle hideout in Peru. At the end, instead of admitting defeat, the General had stepped backwards off a cliff, sending himself and the love of Grey’s life to their deaths. Grey had watched it happen, lunging a second too late.
Rage filled his vision, both for the past and for the animal blocking his way. Grey dropped his plate of pork and shoved the skinhead’s chest at the same time he wrapped a leg behind his ankle, taking away his balance and tipping him backwards.
The man’s beer bottle shattered as he fell. Grey stomped on his face and kept walking. Guns and knives flashed. A bevy of men swarmed Grey, but not before the redheaded man spun with raised hands, revealing a glimpse of a flat-faced ring that snapped Grey back to the present.
The man in overalls grabbed Grey by the neck at the same time a booted foot slammed into his gut. Grey doubled over as blows rained from all sides. He tried to crawl away, but there were too many men and he couldn’t get free. The only choice was to curl into a ball and take the beating.
“Enough!” a voice called out, in an odd accent.
Grey lifted his head and saw the redhead staring right at him, a cunning intelligence glittering behind pale blue eyes. Beside him, the man in the polo shirt looked down his nose as if Grey were a piece of hair stuck in his food.
Two men stood Grey up by the arms. They looked at the Viking for orders.
“Let’s not ruin the festivities with petty squabbles,” he said. “It’s a great day to be alive.” A charming, wolfish smile split his red beard. “Greater than most of you realize.”
He nudged his head towards the parking lot. The two men holding Grey dragged him across the biergarten. Grey saw the gleam of a handgun sticking out of a waistband, inches away. Sloppy. An escape plan sprang into his mind: a quick manipulation of his wrists to free his hands, a grab for the gun as he twisted away, a shot to the kneecaps and then holding one of the men in a chokehold as he backed through the bar.
Grey let them drag him. Too many tempers and weapons were involved. A fight would get him shot, force him to take out a dozen people, or both. Even if he escaped, a man with Grey’s training did not have a green light to take out civilians in a bar fight, no matter what kind of scum they were.
Walter’s eyes popped as they hustled Grey through the bar. “I knew you was a rat! Filthy Zog!”
“That hat and shirt make you feel like a big man?” Grey said. “Get some empathy training, you bigot.”
Walter flew off his seat, full of courage now that Grey was subdued, but someone held him back. The two men tossed Grey in the street and kicked him in the ribs for good measure.
Grey staggered to his feet and wiped blood off his mouth, feeling to see if anything was broken. Just bruises and a few cuts. He knew he would have to keep his temper under control if he wanted to stay on the case, then wondered if he cared enough to try.
He also wondered what a bunch of racists from Georgia had to do with a trio of strange murders on three different continents. Most of all, he wondered about the enormous ring he had glimpsed on the redheaded Viking’s right hand, a sapphire blue stone carved with a double helix and an unalome in the shape of a T piercing a circle.
-7-
The morning after Viktor’s arrival, dressed in his customary bespoke black suit with tie and cufflinks, the professor joined Sergeant Linde outside the Bonniecombe police station. They were meeting to interview the parents of Akhona Mzotho.
The story still fueled local news, fanning flames of witchcraft and superstition, though the national media had moved on after blaming gangs and drugs and, more subtly, the parents. Viktor supposed the angle was one to consider.
The morning mist smelled of sod and fresh roses. Sergeant Linde had added a pair of silver-framed sunglasses to her uniform. A tall woman, just above six feet, Viktor had watched the sergeant’s shoulders drop a fraction when she greeted him, as if relieved not to be the larger person.
“You met with the parents?” Viktor asked.
“I did.”
“What do you know about them?”
“They’re both qualified as teachers and worked at the same secondary school in Cape Town. They lost their jobs during budget cuts. The wife tutors when she can, and the husband works part-time as a maintenance man.”
“Criminal record?”
“Before their marriage, the wife was arrested for disorderly conduct in a public place. A political rally.”
“Any substance abuse?” Viktor asked.
“They live in a poverty-stricken township, and their son just died. I’d imagine they abuse a substance of some sort.”
In the patrol car, Viktor glanced over at her tight mouth and stern jawline, wondering at the sergeant’s stance on racial matters.
In a community this small, where de facto segregation was woven into the fabric of society, there was bound to be tension. Choices. The night before, a guest at the bed and breakfast had warned Viktor not to walk at night, because “the blicks take over after dark.”
All those pretty churches, Viktor thought, and they couldn’t follow the one Golden Rule.
“But nothing,” he said, “that would lead you to believe they might have helped disguise the body of their own son?”
She was looking straight ahead. “One can never tell.”
The mountains glowered overhead as Sergeant Linde drove through the center of town, awash with quaint-looking shops and cafés and pubs. After passing a string of period homes with wrought iron railings, rotunda porches, and lawns like putting greens, she took a local highway due west.
“The body disappeared from the morgue two nights ago,” Viktor said. “Why didn’t you contact Interpol?”
“I wanted to ensure it wasn’t a mistake on our part,” she said. “Before we cry wolf.”
Viktor frowned. “Corpses do not tend to get lost in the bureaucratic shuffle.”
“This is South Africa, hey?”
She gave him a wry look. “A precinct delivered the wrong body to a funeral home in Jo’burg last year, and no one caught it until the viewing. Talk about a shock at the end.”
She chuckled, but Viktor wasn’t convinced. Bonniecombe was too small a jurisdiction to misplace a body. Even if it wasn’t, Sergeant Linde didn’t seem the type to let it happen.
As with her shifty answer to his question about the medical facility, Viktor got the sense that Sergeant Linde knew something about the disappearing body, too.
Was he dealing with a corrupt cop? If so, how did it relate to the case at large?
After a brief glimpse of wine country, a parfait layered with vineyards and orchards and olive groves, groups of workers in blue overalls bent like triangles in the sun, the patrol car rolled into the outskirts of a slum sprawled across a dusty, weed-filled plain. Sergeant Linde parked beside a dirt soccer field.
“By the way,” she said, “I did report the missing body this morning. Just before you arrived.”
Viktor paused with his hand on the door handle, then afforded her a curt nod.
He would check and see.
The air in Khayalanga Township reeked of dung and burning ash. Sergeant Linde kept her hand on her gun as she led Viktor through a maze of claustrophobic dirt paths lined with shacks cobbled together out of wooden planks, cardboard, and corrugated iron. The slum reminded Viktor of a collection of crumbling children’s forts.
As sobering as the poverty was, he kept his focus on his profession, on the signs of Christianity dotting the settlement. Crosses nailed onto doorways, statuettes of angels and saints perched on windowsills.
He looked closer. Saw the fetishes of indigenous religion, tokens of charm and protection. Colored glass beads and dried plants and leather braids that shouted far louder than Viktor had expected in a township in the industrialized Western Cape.
Far more, in fact, than he had seen in many years, even in villages hidden deep within the bushveld.
Emaciated dogs slunk between the houses, wary Xhosa faces watched from sheeted windows and cracked doorways. “The amount of religious iconography,” Viktor said in a low voice. “Is it common here?”