“Yes, veiled ones, but I took them seriously.”
“We have heard rumors during our investigation that the general might have had some business dealings with criminal elements over the years. Can you tell us anything about that?” asked Piétri.
“I don’t know much about that except from hints I picked up from Etienne. Sometimes he had me go on vacations and deliver messages in sealed envelopes to Benedetto. I think Etienne had some dealings with the Unione Corse [Corsican crime syndicate]. A couple of times he mentioned another Italian, Enrique Lambiase, who he also referred to as ‘Big Ears’ and a man he called ‘the Greaser.’ I think his real name is something like Giovanni Vigliotti. They are from the Mafia, I’m pretty sure; but I really don’t know anything about Etienne’s business with them.”
“Anything else, Antoinette?”
“I can’t think of anything else right now. Maybe I might later. Can I give you a call?”
“That would be good. Now, two last questions before we leave—this may be a hard one, but we have to ask it anyway, Antoinette. You stand to become a very rich young woman now that the general has been killed. Where were you this morning?”
“I have been waiting for that question. I was right here, but I was not alone. I was with my girlfriend, Carol Watson. She is from America. She and I used to do some modeling together.”
“Do you have her address and telephone number?”
“While we were talking, I wrote it down—here.”
She handed Lieutenant Piétri a small piece of paper to include in his notes.
“And finally, Antoinette, did you arrange for someone to murder your lover, Gen. Malboeuf?”
“I did not. I loved him. He was very good to me.”
She said it with convincing sincerity.
“Thank you for your time and for your candor, Antoinette. You have been more than helpful. We must ask you not to leave the area. We will be back to see you again in all likelihood.”
“I am at your service.”
The policemen left and, once back in the Peugeot, Piétri summed up their situation, “This is going to be a tough investigation, Grégoire. What we have here is too much information. We have enemies from three wars, from his family, and maybe from the Unione Corse, the Mafia, and the government of France, including—let us not forget—the SDECE and our own departments. Do we have the burettes [French slang for balls] for this?”
“We’ll have to wait and see,” Detective de Vincent responded in all soberness.
“Ready for le déjeuner, Grégoire?”
The corpulent inspector gave a small laugh.
“What do you think?” Grégoire replied to the unnecessary question. “What’s your fancy?”
French Recipes
Sea Salted Caramel Halves—Serves 4–6
Ingredients
-For batter dry ingredients—1 cp all-purpose flour, ¼ tsp salt, 1 cp granulated sugar
-For batter liquid ingredients—2 eggs, ½ cp milk, ½ cp water, 2 tbsps melted butter
-For salted butter caramel—½ cp salted butter, ½ cp heavy cream, ½ cp water, 2 pinchs of sea salt
Preparation
Crepes—Mix all ingredients in a blender until the mixture is smooth. Allow the batter to rest in the refrigerator for at least 20 min. before making into crepes.
-Melt a little butter in a crepe pan or large skillet over low-medium heat.
-Add 3 tbsps batter to the pan and swirl until the bottom of the pan is covered with a thin, even batter. Cook the crepe for 1 minute, or until the crepe is slightly moist on top and golden underneath. Do not overcook. Loosen the edges of the crepe, slide the spatula under it, and then gently flip it upside down into the pan. Cook for 1 minute and transfer the cooked crepe to a plate ± into warming oven to keep warm.
Sea Salted Caramel—In a saucepan set over medium-low heat, melt butter in heavy cream. Immediately remove from the heat and set aside.
-Place the sugar in a separate saucepan set over medium heat. Sprinkle the water over the sugar and allow it to dissolve over the heat without stirring. As the sugar begins to caramelize, occasionally shake and swirl the pan to evenly distribute the color.
-When the caramel is a rich golden color, remove the pan from the heat and carefully add the hot cream and melted butter to the caramel. Take care to stand back during this process; the hot caramel will bubble up the sides of the pan.
-Return the caramel to the lowest heat setting, whisking constantly. Cook and stir the salted butter caramel for 2 minutes over the low heat.
-Remove from the heat and season the sauce with the sea salt; stir until it is dissolved completely.
Assemble crepes:
-Spoon 2 tsps caramel sauce down the center of a warm crepe and roll into a cylinder. Alternately, spoon 2 tsps of the caramel sauce onto the center of a warm crepe and then fold into quarters.
-Garnish with vanilla Chantilly cream and sautéed apples. Drizzle the crepes with additional caramel sauce, as desired.
Honeyed Fruit Salad: Serves 4–6, and Accompanies Crepes
Ingredients
-Dry—½ teaspoon lemon zest, 1 tbsp granulated sugar, 1 pint hulled strawberries, 2 ripe cored pears, 2 pitted peaches, ¾ cup pitted sweet cherries, 1 kiwifruit.
-Liquid—½ cup dry white wine, 4 tbsps honey, 2 tbsps lemon juice.
Preparation:
-Process liquid ingredients, lemon zest, and sugar in a blender until smooth. Chill 20 mins. before serving.
-Halve or quarter strawberries, cut pears and peaches into ¾ inch pieces, and cut cherries in ½. Cut the kiwifruit in ½ then cut each ½ crosswise into ¼ inch slices. Toss the prepared fruit with the desired amount of dressing and serve immediately or chill.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Ludwigshafen am Rhein, Bundesland State of Rheinland-Pfalz, Germany, August 22, 1962
Prior to World War I, Ludwigshafen was a thriving industrial city in southwestern Germany located in a picturesque pastoral setting along the Rhine River across from Mannheim. Ludwigshafen, Mannheim, and Heidelberg made up the Rhine Neckar Region. The area was prosperous owing to the efficient and industrious German people, the homogeneity of the population, and—more importantly—to the presence of chemical and oil plants in Ludwigshafen and Oppau owned by IG Farben [German full name: Interssengemeinschaft Farben. English: Association of Common Interests]. The large complex of companies and plants was the property of a consortium known by the cumbersome title of Badische Anilin and Soda Fabrik or BASF, a powerful union of German companies Bayer, Hoechst, and others. BASF produced pharmaceuticals, fuels, fertilizers, potash and salt, inks, cosmetics, and textile dyes among many other products, and provided a stable prosperous economy which encouraged education, innovation, and cooperation.
The adventurism of Kaiser Wilhelm I and the very conservative and jingoistic Junkers produced World War I and the nearly catastrophic destruction of the cities of the region and of the plants and the economy. During the war, the industrial plants played a key role in Germany’s war machine producing munitions, poison gas, Zeppelin factories, and expertise for the military. The area became a prime target of Allied attacks, including the first aerial bombardments. Following the war, Germany was hamstrung with reparations assessments, and the return of the economy to its prewar status was slow. The economic recovery encountered a major setback in the form of a huge industrial explosion that killed five hundred citizens and injured another couple of thousand. A great many of the newly rebuilt buildings were destroyed, and the area had to begin again. Foreign workers began moving in by necessity to provide the labor for reconstruction and to man the plants, adding an entering wedge of diversity and confusion.
Fortunately for Ludwigshafen and Oppau, BASF produced such robust profits that reconstruction of a much changed group of cities proceeded fairly rapidly. The result was a greatly changed city, now built on the efficient and unattractive styles of postwar European housing developed for efficiency and not for attractiveness. Unfortunately fo
r Lugwigshafen and its sister cities, another dictator brought in another round of adventurism and disaster.
In what was dubbed the Oil Campaign of World War II, Allied B-17 and B-24 bombers wreaked havoc on the IG Farben plants so that output dropped to zero, and the economy dropped to a subsistence level. Allied historical records indicated that the area was inundated with explosives for two years with an incredible 13,000 bombers engaging more than 120 separate raids, dropping over 50,000 bombs—including high explosives and nearly two and a half million magnesium incendiary bombs—which wrecked the cities and the plants and brought production to a permanent halt. In a single raid in 1945, Allied bombers laid down 1,000 high explosives and almost 10,000 incendiary bombs that killed scores, started hundreds of fires, destroyed over 350 homes, and put 1,800 people out on the streets with no means of support or protection. The cities were ruined, and the economy appeared to be destroyed beyond recovery.
In the aftermath of World War II, foreign workers began to stream in along with displaced Germans, including not a few war criminals with new identities provided for them by the ODESSA. Old generational associations were disrupted, friends went permanently missing, and the newcomers assimilated easily during the chaos. When BASF rebuilt its factories, the newcomers became an integral part of the community and the economy with hardly any questioning of the past histories of the new generation of citizens.
During the 1960s, Ludwigshafen was part of the French occupation zone, a prominent city of the newly founded Bundesland (state) of Rheinland-Pfalz and the Federal Republic of Germany. Reconstruction of the devastated city and revival of the economy was supported by the Allies, predominantly by American financial aid. By 1948, American citizens pitched in. The “Pasadena Shares Committee” sent packages of blankets, clothing, food, and medicines to help the residents; serious friendships formed. In 1956, Ludwigshafen am Rhein and Pasadena, California, became sister cities.
Much of the city was completely ruined; but because BASF soon made enormous profits again, the city administration became wealthy enough to rebuild Ludwigshafen according to the architectural taste of the current era—the 1950s and 1960s. Projects included the Hochstraßen [highways on stilts], the new main station—which was the most modern station in all of Europe—several tower blocks, and a complete new suburb—the satellite quarter Pfingstweide north of Edigheim.
Largely forgotten was that the partner company of the American Rockefeller industries, Interessengemeinschaft [Association of Common Interests] Farben—IG Farben, for short—participated in the destruction, plunder, and murder of countless thousands of cities and millions of people throughout Europe. The company formed by the association was a powerful cartel of BASF, Bayer, Hoechst, and other German chemical and pharmaceutical companies. It was the single largest donor to the election campaign of Adolph Hitler. The year before Hitler seized power, IG Farben donated 400,000 marks to Hitler and his Nazi party. Accordingly, after Hitler’s seizure of power, IG Farben was the single largest profiteer of the German conquest of the world, and one of the most criminal organizations fostering the Second World War.
One hundred percent of all explosives and synthetic gasoline used in the war came from the IG Farben conglomerate factories. As the German Wehrmacht moved from country to country conquering and subjugating the population, IG Farben followed close on its heels, systematically taking over the industries of those countries. IG Farben participated in the plunder of Austria, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Norway, Holland, Belgium, France, and all other countries conquered by the Nazis. Following the war with all of its chaos and the massive incentives to facilitate the rebuilding of Germany as a bastion against the growth of Stalin’s Soviet Union, IG Farben prospered; and there was hardly a ripple on the surface of the company’s profit history.
One of the newcomers to the reawakening city complex of Lugwigshafen was a relatively young man by the name of Heinrich Rudolf Gajewski, a German IG Farben war criminal who had helped in the manufacture of sarin and tabun gas used in the execution chambers. His principal occupation during the war was the procurement of slave labor, which proved to be a full-time effort because of the unconscionably high mortality rates among the workers due to starvation, overwork, and neglected disease. His talents were also utilized in the postwar triage of returning German POWs, and he gained enormous power of life and death over the returnees. If they could not pay, they languished in the camps and often starved before final repatriation. He returned to Ludwigshafen with the help of ODESSA and assumed a new life under the innocuous name of Gunther Emil Sondregger. Because of his expertise, he was assigned to the human resources division of the BASF system. Because of his being included on the Allies’ most wanted war criminal list, his position in the company was a relatively minor one and one unlikely to attract attention to himself or to the company for harboring him.
Gajewski/Sondregger settled down in the obscure Ludwigshafen suburb of Hemshof in the older original North district of Nördliche Innenstadt located between the main station and main cemetery. Hemshof and the North District were known for their high proportion of foreign inhabitants, making them culturally diverse. He never married, never had children, joined no church or political organization, or even the union at his work. He had a few acquaintances, but no friends or confidants—especially no confidants. He avoided veterans’ groups and did not attend memorial services. He was approached by the Deutsche Reichspartei—the postwar far-right political party—but politely rebuffed them saying he wanted to be left alone. So far as he knew, he was not on any foreign or domestic war criminal list such as Operation Paperclip, nor had he come to the attention of the Verfassungsschutz [Federal German Intelligence Organization]. He considered himself lucky not to have fallen into the hands of the occupiers in the French zone because he was well aware of the many thousands of Germans who were beaten, robbed, raped, and murdered. It would be a mastery of understatement to say that Gunther Emil Sondregger kept to himself. In fact, if one were to make an effort, Sondregger would be found not to have existed prior to 1952 when he joined the influx of workers and foreigners who poured into the city.
Sondregger situated himself in a corner of the large business office and avoided communicating with his fellow workers unless it became absolutely necessary. His manner was stiff and correct, polite, but neither cordial nor forthcoming. From his SS days he had adopted the habit of sitting squarely upright in a sturdy right angle high back chair. This was in part habit, and in part the uncomfortable chair assisted him to maintain his attention on his mind-numbing work and on any other workers or visitors who might pay attention to him. He was assiduously careful about that. Even with the end of military occupation in 1955, Sondregger did not let down his guard. He even dressed to be so ordinary and innocuous as to approach invisibility. He wore a gray suit—he had five of them—a white shirt, and one of three quietly patterned gray and black neckties. His shoes were post-occupation production black lace-ups, and he kept them neat and clean and occasionally polished, but nothing extravagant. He combed his hair straight back; it was neither very short nor very long. He carefully avoided having any facial hair. His eyeglasses were cheap; there were tens of thousands of those discount frames throughout Germany. He made sure he did not call attention to himself by gaining or losing weight. He had weighed 182 pounds since he turned thirty.
On August 16, 1962, Sondregger was seated at his desk checking the accounting sheets of hours worked against pay received during the past month by two thousand workers. The work was deadly dull; but he never forgot the importance of maintaining a low profile; and he was glad to have a job in a difficult economy. The truth was he was very happy to be alive and not rotting in a postwar prison or worse. He was unaware of a person behind him dressed in ordinary factory workers’ garb. He was unaware that the individual was wearing a cummerbund with two heavy 100 Franc coins sewn into folds in the center of the cloth. Before he could react, the assassin behind his chair back-whipped the cummerbund o
ver Sondregger’s head and expertly situated the lump of coins in the exact center of his neck. Powerful hands and arms applied killing pressure for five minutes, fracturing Sondregger’s hyoid bone and cutting off all blood and oxygen supply to his brain. His death was swift, silent, and unseen.
Owing to his reclusive nature, no one paid attention to the accountant slumped over his small desk until quitting time, and only then because he appeared to refuse to leave the building in response to repeated demands. One of the human resources division secretaries happened to say good evening to the obscure accountant; and when he failed to respond in any manner, she looked more closely. She suspected something was very wrong; so, following protocol, she informed the workroom foreman before he could exit the building for the night.
The workroom foreman called security, who recognized that the accountant was dead, and in fact that his neck was encircled by a heavy strangulating cloth. The security officer rushed to close off all exits; but it was an act of futility because most of the workers had already left the building; and no one who worked anywhere near Gunther Sondregger remained in the room.
“Call the Landespolizei [Bundeslandt State Police],” the senior security officer ordered. “Call the Kripo office directly.”
“Kriminalpolitzei, Detective Branch,” the dispatcher answered crisply. “How may I direct your call?”
“Get me Kriminalkommissar [Detective Lieutenant] Horst Schäfer, please. This is an emergency.”
“Whom shall I say is calling, sir?”
“Joachim Becker at Farben Administration. I am the security officer.”
“I will ring his office. Hold the line for a moment, please, sir.”
After a two-minute pause, Schäfer responded, “What can I do for you, Joachim?”
“Solve a murder, catch a murderer—your specialty, Cousin.”
“At Farbens?”
“Yes—a garroting in the administration building. The body has not been disturbed.”
The Charlemagne Murders Page 11