“God damn it, Laura, what am I going to do if you get killed?” Mason surprised himself by saying it.
That stopped Laura and she smiled halfheartedly. “Selfish, but the sentiment’s there.” Her look turned inward as if she struggled with a host of emotions. “The last time I talked to Kessler, he was afraid they were on to him. I think he was trying to redeem himself by giving me information. I used that and probably pushed him too hard. I know he was a drug dealer, but I can’t help feeling bad for him.”
She looked at Mason with moist eyes. Mason said nothing, letting her come to terms with all that had happened.
“Laura, you need protection. I’ll arrange it without your approval, but it’d work better if you go along with it.”
Laura thought a moment, then nodded her head. “All right,” she said in a weak voice.
“Go to your room and stay there. Tell the hotel guards and staff not to let anyone but me come near your room. I’ve got a couple of things I need to do, then I’ll be back.”
• • •
Mason reached the fourth floor of Munich’s U.S. military hospital, the 98th, where the slain American nurse had worked. Everyone he passed seemed on edge or on the verge of tears. Mason stopped at the nurses’ station and asked for Lieutenant MacMillan’s room.
“We’re asking visitors to stay only a few minutes,” the nurse said. “He already has two visitors. Don’t tax him too much, okay?”
“How is he?”
“He came out of surgery a couple of hours ago,” the nurse said in a bored monotone. “The surgeon thinks he’ll be fine. The bullet grazed the nerve center in his shoulder. He can’t feel or move his right arm. As soon as he’s stabilized, he’ll be transferred to the Frankfurt hospital for further treatment.”
“Will he get the use of his arm back?”
“Do I look like a neurosurgeon to you?” She let out a tired sigh, as if fed up with dealing with stupid questions.
“The room number, if that’s not asking too much?”
She gave him the room number, and Mason found it moments later. He knocked and entered. Colonel Walton stood by the bed, hat in hand, talking to MacMillan. Havers sat in a chair in the corner and avoided eye contact.
Mason stepped up to the bed opposite Colonel Walton. MacMillan slowly turned his head, looked at Mason with half-lidded eyes, and gave him a weak smile.
“I talked to the nurse,” Mason said. “She says you’re going to be fine.”
“I guess so. I can’t feel my right arm, though.”
“I bet it’s just the shock. I had a buddy who was hit in the hip, and he couldn’t feel his ass for about two weeks. You can imagine the problems he had to contend with.”
MacMillan laughed, then grimaced. “I heard you got Wertz, at least. He gave up Ramek’s address. . . .” His eyes started to close. “Hope it was worth it.”
Mason could feel Colonel Walton’s stare as he leaned in to MacMillan. “We’re going to get this guy,” Mason said. “You did good, Mac. You saved another man’s life and helped crack this case.”
He didn’t know if MacMillan heard. MacMillan’s eyes fluttered in an attempt to stay open, but finally gave up the fight.
Colonel Walton leaned in and spoke softly to MacMillan. “I’ve got to be going. Take care of yourself, son.” Then, as he moved for the door, he said to Mason, “Collins. Out here.”
Mason joined Colonel Walton in the hallway down from MacMillan’s room.
“You nearly got a man killed today, and for what? An empty house. Another miss. These investigators are good men, but they don’t have the field experience for potentially dangerous situations. I want you to remember that the next time you concoct a scheme to take down a desperate outlaw. Furthermore, there’s a story that you refused aid to a wounded suspect and subsequently tortured him. Screams were heard after the man had gone down.”
“He was in pain—”
“Bullshit. The man is a scumbag, but that doesn’t give you the right to torture him. In public, no less. How far are you willing to go, Collins? The end does not justify the means. Not in my book. So, I’m asking you, how many are you willing to put in harm’s way to get what you want? Never mind justice or the law.” He spun around and walked away without waiting for an answer.
Mason was glad Colonel Walton denied him the opportunity to respond, because he might have answered truthfully. . . . I will do whatever it takes.
FORTY
Mason walked out onto the streets again. The heavy rain had finally stopped, but the temperature had dropped to freezing, making the still damp air chill him to the bone. He stopped at his place first. Captain Shaw and his poker group were already drunk when he arrived. From his room, he collected an armful of chocolate and cans of potted meat he’d bought at the PX a few days before.
Twenty minutes later he approached the ruins where the orphans took shelter. Kurt and his younger companion Dieter squatted by the entrance smoking cigarettes. As soon as they saw Mason they pinched off the hot crowns and stuffed the remaining stubs in their pockets.
“I thought I told you not to smoke.” They both looked at the ground. “I was bringing you some things to eat, but I guess you don’t need them. You’re smoking what you could use to buy food.”
Hearing Mason’s voice, the other children piled out of the opening to see what he’d brought.
“We only smoked a couple,” Kurt said. “Besides, we have lots of cigarettes.”
“A man brought us two cartons,” Ilsa said. “We’re rich!”
“You’ve got to make them last. I can’t be bringing you food all the time, so you’ve got to save them for when winter gets real bad. . . .” He stopped. “Where’s Angela?”
“A man came and got her,” Kurt said.
“What do you mean? What man?”
“He’s the one who brought us the cigarettes,” Dieter said.
Mason’s stomach twisted into knots. Neither war nor peace had stopped pedophiles from preying on helpless children. His heart began to race. He squatted and tried to show calm. “Tell me about this man. Did he just take her?”
“No, he said he was her father,” Kurt said.
“Did Angela say this, too?”
“The man said he’d been in the war a long time, and that Angela was a baby when he went into the army.”
Mason looked from face to face, their expressions of guilt and worry only worsening Mason’s growing dread. Stay calm and go easy on them. “That’s not what I asked. What did Angela say?”
“The man was strange,” Ilsa said. “I didn’t like him.”
“Sometimes war can make people a little strange, but they get better,” Mason said to allay Ilsa’s fear. He turned to Kurt and Dieter for a more direct answer.
“I think she was too afraid to say anything,” Kurt said. “And he didn’t even know her name.”
Fear clutched at Mason’s heart. “Exactly what happened? Tell me everything.”
“He was just standing on the other side of the street, watching us. For a long time. Then Angela came back from begging near Saint Paul’s Church.”
“That’s when the man came across the street,” Dieter said.
“What did he do then?”
“He tried to talk to Angela, but she wouldn’t say anything,” Kurt said. “Then he asked her name. When we told him, he started saying weird things we couldn’t understand.”
“Angela wanted to go inside, but the man said he was her father,” Dieter said. “He said he’d come to take her home.”
“And he said he was away in the war?” Mason asked.
They nodded.
“Angela said her father was dead,” Kurt said. “Her mother told her.”
“But he kept saying she was wrong and he wanted to take her home and take care of her,” Dieter said.
“Did he force her to go?”
“No,” Kurt said. “He just kept saying he was her father. He even started crying. I guess Angela felt bad or something and finally decided to go with him.”
“He gave us chocolate and the cigarettes,” Dieter said. “He told us not to tell anyone.”
Mason felt he would explode with panic and rage, but he had to keep his cool for the kids. “Okay, now. Think back. Picture the man in your mind, and tell me what he looked like.”
“Real tall,” Kurt said.
“He was like a giant,” Ilsa said. “He scared me.”
Mason scrambled around in his back pocket and found the piece of paper. He unfolded it with shaking hands, knelt among the children, and held up the artist’s sketch of Ramek. The question stuck in his throat.
“That’s him,” Kurt said. “He’s the one who took Angela.”
Ice-cold fear shot through Mason. Why hadn’t he connected the dots before? Ramek chose victims with limps, and Angela mirrored the victims of the very experiments Ramek had performed at Ravensbrück. Mason leapt to his feet and he ran. The direction didn’t matter. It was only to get far enough away from the kids before he yelled at the heavens.
• • •
In Mason’s experience, claims that large quantities of alcohol numbed the brain were not accurate. The mind could simply not concentrate on two things at once, so moving through space without injury, and in his case not being arrested by MPs for public drunkenness, occupied his consciousness. The rage, and with it grief, still lay in wait behind a thin veil, but for the moment inebriation relieved the crushing emotions.
He received a few disapproving or cautious looks from the guards at the entrance and the people milling around the hotel’s lobby and front bar, but none took any initiative to stop him; a drunken soldier was not an uncommon sight. Forgetting the existence of the elevators, Mason struggled up four flights of stairs. The room numbers on the doors defied readability, so he counted three doors to the left. Using the door frame for support, he knocked. The peephole darkened then Laura flung open the door.
“It’s about time. . . .” She stopped after having a better look at him.
Mason staggered past her and used a chair to steady himself. Now that he’d reached his objective safely, the sorrow welled up from his stomach.
Laura came into view. “You’ve got a lot of nerve showing up drunk out of your mind.”
Mason didn’t answer. He couldn’t. Laura’s face, her voice, broke the last barrier of control. His eyes burned. His cheeks felt wet, and Laura’s expression changed to concern.
“What happened?”
Mason still couldn’t talk. She came to his side and put her shoulder under his.
“Come on. Let’s get you into a chair before you fall down.”
She helped him sit in one of the upholstered chairs and crouched next to him. “Tell me what happened.”
“I got hammered.”
“I can see that. Why?”
“I needed a break, is all.”
“Stop being cute and tell me what happened.”
“Ramek, the murderer, he abducted the crippled orphan girl, Angela.”
Laura covered her mouth and stood. “Oh, my God.” The shock pushed her back two steps and forced her to sit on the edge of the bed.
“You can see why I had a few too many drinks.”
“How could he do that to a little girl?”
“There’s nothing I can do to stop him. I’m completely goddamned helpless.”
“Are you sure Ramek has her?”
Mason told her about going to the orphans’ makeshift shelter and what the children had told him. “I showed the kids the sketch of Ramek and they ID’d him. We raided Ramek’s house today, so I drove over there, hoping the surveillance team had spotted him. Ramek hadn’t shown up there, so I called in an additional team to keep watch. Then I went to headquarters to have a sketch of Angela done. I guess I lost it after that. Barking orders like a madman. I realized I wasn’t doing any good the way I was, so I ended up wandering the streets trying to come up with a way to find him. Something I hadn’t thought of. There has to be something I’ve overlooked.” He grabbed the arms of the chair and squeezed them.
Laura came over and crouched in front of him. “Stop punishing yourself. You’re doing the best you can—”
“Don’t patronize me.”
“Well, what do you want to hear? You’re worthless and incompetent? It’s all your fault that these people died? You’re in over your head, and a really good CID investigator would have solved it by now? There. You feel better?” She paused. “I don’t believe this is because it all got to you. There’s something else, isn’t there? Something you’re not telling me.”
Mason looked at her, but he couldn’t hold her gaze.
“Is it because Ramek took a child? It’s the worst thing I can imagine, but for you to be so distraught, almost unhinged . . . You’re acting just like a father who’s lost his daughter.”
The first time Mason had seen Angela she had struck him like no other orphan girl had since the end of the war. She looked so much like the other one. . . .
“What is it about her?” Laura stood and shoved his shoulders. “Answer me.”
Mason leaned his head back and looked at the ceiling. He’d resolved never to speak about it to anyone and tried to bury it deep within, but it had only festered there, in a dark corner of his mind. Maybe tonight, and with Laura, he could face it down. As he conjured up the memories that he’d worked so hard to suppress, he relived the biting cold, the raging fever, fire and ice torturing his emaciated body, the delirium from the starvation and disease, the constant fear of collapsing onto the snow-covered ground to freeze to death or be dragged off into the woods and shot in the back of the head.
That’s why I did it, right?
“You’ve heard about the death marches from the POW and concentration camps?”
“Yes. I interviewed a couple of soldiers who’d been forced on a march.”
“I’ve never told anyone, but I was on one of those marches.”
“You? I thought you were liberated at a POW camp at Moosburg.”
“That’s where I was liberated. We first spent two weeks at Buchenwald’s main camp but then a Wehrmacht colonel took exception to the way we were treated. He arranged for us to be transferred to a stalag near the Polish-Czech border. We were already half-starved and weak when we got there, but not ten days later the guards broke us into groups of three hundred and forced us all to march out of the camp before the Russian army could liberate us.”
“The Russians were already that close?”
Mason nodded. “We could hear their artillery in the distance. I don’t know how many hundreds of kilometers we walked in the snow and blizzards, and by all accounts, that was one of the coldest winters in a century. Plus, our group was led by a real nasty son of a bitch. The prisoners who couldn’t go on were left by the side of the road. If a man collapsed or refused to go on, many times the guards would beat him or drag him into the woods and shoot him. Mile after horrible mile, stepping over the frozen bodies of other soldiers, I kept waiting for my turn. Then, about four days into the march, a couple of Russian fighter planes thought we were retreating German soldiers and strafed our column. A group of us took advantage of the attack and ran off into a thick pine forest.”
“You escaped? Did you honestly think you could survive in the countryside in the middle of winter without food or shelter?”
Mason shrugged his shoulders. “We knew we didn’t have much of a chance, but we all thought that escape was better than dying on that road like an animal. I don’t know what happened to the others. We got separated. Then I heard gunfire, and I ran like a crazed man. I ran until I couldn’t run anymore. I finally collapsed against a tree and waited. I waited for death. I’d given
up.”
Laura put her hands on his and looked at him with such intensity that it urged Mason to continue.
“I don’t know how long I lay against the tree. I was delirious and already feeling that calm they say you experience when you’re freezing to death. But at some point I became aware of a little girl of about ten kneeling next to me and hugging me. She was dressed in rags and more emaciated than I was. At first, I was so delirious that I thought she was an angel coming to save me or take me away. The funny thing is, she was looking to me to save her. She clung to me like I was her protector. She was so scared and sick and helpless that it brought me out of my stupor. Suddenly I had a responsibility to take care of this kid. It gave me the strength to keep going, to get us out of that hell and live.”
“Where did the girl come from?”
“She was a Pole from one of the concentration camps, a subcamp of Auschwitz, I think.”
“But what was she doing in the middle of those woods? She escaped a death march like you did?”
Mason nodded. “There was a road that ran parallel about a mile from the one I had been marching on. The inmates of the camp, mostly Polish Jews, were being marched west like we were. The girl—Hana was her name—took me to a spot where hundreds of corpses lay in the road. It was horrible. From where I stood on a straight length of road, corpses stretched to the horizon. Women and children, mothers still clinging to dead infants; all frozen, either dead where they fell or shot in the head. This girl’s mom was among them.”
Laura covered her mouth. “How did Hana escape?”
“She played dead. And for some reason the Germans didn’t make sure by shooting her. I got that much out of her, because she spoke a little German. I decided to head east and try to intercept the Russians. We went on for days, sticking to the woods. I had no idea where we were. I have no idea how I kept going—nothing to eat, frozen to the bone. But trying to save her had saved me, and she became everything to me. . . .”
Mason stopped, unsure he could continue. Laura said nothing, letting him tell it in his own time. He reached for his pack of cigarettes but found it empty. He crumpled it and threw it into the fireplace.
Ruins of War Page 29