“I am alone at the door, but my men are close. Is it safe?”
The priest nodded his head.
The priests escorted Michaele into the main area of the cathedral—a simple cruciform plan with a nave of four square bays, a square crossing, a transept that projected by half a bay one each side, and an apse. There were no aisles. The building combined both Romanesque and Gothic styles which had not been altered nor improved in two centuries. There were rows of frescoes along the walls which had deteriorated from damp and decay. The floors were covered with what had once been very handsome inlaid tiles, but which had become chipped and some areas replaced with mismatching pieces. The Order had not had the funds to maintain the cathedral as it should have been, let alone to make improvements. The promise of reward from Nazi treasure was no small incentive to the Franciscans. Michaele was led to a small chapel located at right angles to one arm of the cruciform extensions. It was much better kept and had well-maintained tall Gothic windows designed and periodically cleaned and releaded by German craftsmen from the same families who made the originals. The pews were made of deep dark hardwood and polished to a waxy gleam. They were built at hard right angles to maintain the proper level of discomfort.
“Behind the altar is where we do the document preparation. Our work is masked by genuine work being done to restore medieval manuscripts. We have fourteen copies of the New Testament under way. You and your men will have to come in; so, we can make photographs for the identification cards and papers; and so we can produce papers with reasonably plausible birthdates and physical descriptions. We have only a few hours before it becomes too light to be safe; so, please fetch your companions; and we’ll get underway,” Brother Luke requested.
Michaele was led back outside and hurried to where the ODESSA men were secluded. All eight men trotted back to the cathedral which was only a silhouette in the dim light, its Romanesque bell tower and sharp turret looking like a menacing specter suggestive of the guard tower of a large POW camp. Six hours later, Michaele was satisfied with the quality of the brothers’ work, especially the details of aging and wear that indicated frequent use. There were now eight new Swiss citizens ready to cross the border.
Brother Luke nodded to four of the brothers who left the chapel and were gone for ten minutes. When they returned, they were pulling a cart laden with FN machine guns and crates of ammunition.
“Is this sufficient?” Brother Luke asked Michaele.
“Better than we could have hoped,” Michaele answered.
The friars and ODESSA men took the weaponry to the trucks and loaded them into secure but accessible locations.
“Go then in peace, my son,” Brother Luke said. “Remember us in your prayers.”
Michaele had to laugh inwardly at the possibility that a prayer of his would have efficacy, but he kept his expression strictly neutral.
“We will do better than that,” he said.
He whispered to Jacob, who went out to the lead truck and returned with four gold ingots loaded on the cart.
Brother Luke said with heartfelt enthusiasm, “We are grateful to you, my Brothers and to our God that He has made us part of this holy work. We were privileged to visit and to provide comfort to many of the victims in the heinous American and French prisons and concentration camps such as Bad Kreuznach—Lager Galgenberg und Bretzenheim PWTE and Brienne le Chateâu. It was with God’s grace that we have been able to give aid and to help some of them escape with false identity papers. Bless you, my sons. May God and the holy saints protect you as you continue your pilgrimage.”
With that blessing, the hardened Nazis left their cover in the trees and headed for Brienne le Chateâu and POW camp 63.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
UBS [Union Bank of Switzerland], Rue des Noirettes, 35 Centre des Acacias 1227 Carouge, Genève, Switzerland, September 28, 1954
Michaele and Jacob decided to take only one vehicle to POW Camp 63 in order to avoid creating interest in their activities. They moved the trucks into Heinrich Schläger’s large dairy barn and covered them with tarpaulins. All eight men loaded into a modified troop truck which now passed for on of Heinrich’s dairy delivery vehicles. With three men in the front seat, there was room for the five ODESSA men who had assisted with the retrieval of the Schlosskirche treasure and the efforts to keep the secret thus far, and for eleven more men in seats and perhaps six more standing in the truck’s rear compartment. It would be crowded—especially with the weapons and ammunition—but it would be quite possible, and they might need a fairly large fighting force if things went badly.
The weather conditions were favorable—light rain, heavy clouds, and fog. There were very few cars or trucks in Brienne le Chateâu and even fewer pedestrians at that time of night. Jacob parked the truck half a mile from the eastern fence of the POW camp and cautioned the ODESSA men to be silent. He and Michaele retraced their path from the truck to the camp used the night Michaele was extracted. The mud was thick and cloying and made the going difficult, but the sound of the rain and the sound insulation of the mud made the two men as quiet as rabbits. They were no more visible than the bushes along the stream bank.
Per their prearrangement with US Army Corporal Jimmie Clemmons, they each carried an ingot of pure gold. They had arranged for him to appear at the exit point in the fence every night between two and three a.m. The arrangement was built on the two prime movers of trust: the expectation of reward, and the guarantee of retribution. Clemmons knew the ODESSA operatives could destroy him in two ways: assassination or exposure to his superiors, which would be as sure an assassination as if he had been shot in the head.
It was two-fifteen, and the corporal was as good as his word.
“Treasure,” Michaele whispered from the darkness on the outside of the fence.
“The men are ready,” Corporal Clemmons responded with the established reply.
Michaele and Jacob stood up from where they had been lying on the bank of the stream and walked up to the fence. A bush artfully camouflaged the area in the chain-link fence that had been cut to let Michaele out when he had left to go to the Schlosskirche. The two men made sure the man talking to them was indeed Corporal Clemmons.
Then Michaele said, “Surprised to see me, Corporal?”
“I have to admit that I am. Surprise me again.”
He helped the two men edge their way through the opening in the fence.
“Where are our people?”
“A whistle away.”
Michaele and Jacob put their gold ingots at the corrupt corporal’s feet. He gave a whistle that sounded almost exactly like the extravagant song of the Bavarian wood lark. In a few moments, eight specters slowly moved up to where the three men were standing by the fence. Four of them were the original “Gebirgsjägers”: Antoine Duvalier, Serge Alain Rounsavall, Hugues Beauchamp, and Jérôme Christophe Mailhot. Berthold Küppers–the farmer–had earned his place by his suffering alongside the Gebirgsjägers and because the ODESSA vouched for him. There were three men who were unknown to Michaele.
“Who are these three?” Michaele asked Antoine suspiciously.
“SS. Not from the 33rd, but loyal men. I vouch for them. Meet Clause Fischer, Willibald Movius, and Gerhard Jungermann—all officers who fought to the end.”
Michaele remained dubious and uneasy, but he shook their hands.
“Jacob, go back to the truck and bring one more ingot for Corporal Clemmons. We will cross the fence as soon as you get back,” Michaele ordered.
Jacob was through the fence in half a minute and disappeared into the blackness of the soggy night. He was back in twenty minutes out of breath and stinking from the fetid canal. He handed an ingot through the fence to Clemmons, who accepted it and nodded. He turned his back on the fence and stood guard as the eight men made their escape. He had more than kept his word. He had seen to it that all of the men had received good food while Michaele was gone, and they appeared considerably healthier than previously. None of the
men looked back. Clemmons pushed the edges of the cut chain-link fence together and pulled a few branches of the bush into place to hide the opening. It took him four anxious trips to get his ingots back to his secret stash. Only then he allowed himself a stiff jolt of Jim Beam and a quiet laugh. He knew that the camp was going to be shut down in a month, and he already had a signed and dated discharge from the Army. He was officially a short-timer and soon to be a very rich civilian. His plan was to lay chilly for the next month and keep safe.
The eight filthy sopping-wet escapees joined their comrades in the back of the truck and kept silent except for a short exchange of whispers which passed for introductions and greetings. Jacob drove back to the Schläger dairy farm and rousted the drivers into action. It was four in the morning when they pulled out of Brienne le Chateâu and set their sights on Geneva. Their first goal was to get out of France, return to Bavaria, and to cross the border into Switzerland from the contested Lake Konstanz area—hopefully without ever having to stop at a border crossing between Germany and Switzerland. To do so, they kept to the back roads and traveled only under cover of darkness which extended the time of their transit by one hundred percent and their level of anxiety by nearly the same degree. They stopped only once, which was as the daylight hours appoached.
The men and their trucks were hidden on a farm run by two brothers with ODESSA ties. At the farm in the outskirts of Konstanz, Baden-Wurttemberg—near where they had obtained their forged documents two days previously—they were all able to clean up, put on fresh clothing—standard south German farm wear—and to eat two hearty rural German meals. At dark, they left with full bellies and high hopes that their ordeals were almost over.
Master Sergeant Nathan Lee Howard, USA sat in his jeep smoking a Camel and relaxing into a long night of watching the web of back ways into and out of Switzerland used by smugglers and Nazis wanting to avoid the official border crossing station outside of Konstanz. His unit consisted of fourteen men–including himself–and all of them considered the assignment a barely necessary nuisance during the waning months of the Allied occupation of Germany. It was boring, and that was a good thing. He had spent nearly ten years off and on in the American occupation forces of Germany and Austria with sporadic periods of violence from escaped POWs, ODESSA militia, and smugglers. Things were quiet now; and all he had to do was last out one more month; and he would go home to Iowa and full retirement. He considered himself lucky not to have been called up during the Korean conflict and to have been posted to that godforsaken backwater. Retirement could not come a day too soon.
There were three vehicles in the unit—his jeep, an FV 106 Saladin light armored car, and a 1952 Alvis FV603 Saracen, a heavily armored car (sixteen inches of RHA—Rolled Homogenous Armor). The Saladin and the Saracen were both holdovers from the Brits, and a comfort to his men because they were reliable and formidable. The men were distributed with four in the Jeep, four in the Saladin, and eight in the Saracen. They were separated two miles apart on three potential alternate roads used by the illegals.
Despite the lack of recent action in the area and the absence of violent encounters, the unit was almost comically over-armed with two AAT-52 [Arme Automatique Transformable Modele 1952] general purpose machine guns, eight Enfield wartime .303 Bren Guns, eight Remington M870 combat shotguns, M-1 Garand service rifles—one for each man with six spares, Smith & Wesson SW Model 29 [.44 Magnum] handguns—one for each man with six spares, and six crates of M-26 and M-61 fragmentation hand grenades. Every spare square foot was packed with ammunition for the weapons. The men called their arsenal being “loaded for bear.” Master Sergeant Howard thought they had enough to start World War Three.
The six ODESSA converted army trucks laden and slowed down by the heavy burden of treasure they carried lumbered along the rutted and rocky gravel road four miles away from what they calculated would be the Swiss border. François Caussidière—their Swiss contact and fixer—had arranged for a map of the area and general instructions for the farmer to give the ODESSA men and promised a unit of Swiss Defense Forces to be at the crossing—which did not have a formal customs post—in case of a challenge by Americans, Germans, or French occupation forces on the lookout for escaping Nazis. That was helpful; but the closer they got to the putative border line, the more heightened their expectation of danger was.
Antoine—ever the pessimist and always overcautious—ordered a halt at a crossroads three miles from the border. Caussidière’s map showed the roads all leading to the same point; so, Antoine decided to send the trucks on three separate approaches. If one truck was intercepted, the others would get through.
Michaele touched Antoine’s arm and whispered, “I think we need to send out scouts—one for each route.”
“I agree. Let’s send two men down each road for two miles and then return and report. If the Americans are closer than two miles from the border, we can make an all-out run for it. Tell them to stay in the tree lines and be as quiet as bunnies.”
The six men moved silently into the fringes of trees along the roads and were out of sight within minutes. Antoine and Michaele remained behind with the rest of the men to guard the precious cargoes in the four trucks. The wait was agonizing. Every minute they expected to hear the rattle of gunfire which would signal a potentially lethal end to their quest.
The first four men returned in half an hour to report that they had seen nothing. Everything was clear. After another nail-biting thirty minutes, the last pair returned out of breath.
“An armored vehicle and about eight or nine Amis parked in the middle of our road. When we watched for a few minutes, another one showed up. The two teams talked for a couple of minutes, then split up. We don’t know where the larger of the two armored cars went exactly, except it was to the north,” reported Clause Fischer.
Antoine took less than half a minute to decide.
“First three trucks go south; and Michaele, Clause, and I will go up the middle. Try not to get into a shooting match until the very last minute if you can.”
“You want us to move slow or fast, Gruppenführer?” asked Willibald Movius, who was to drive the lead truck of the group of three.
“Good question, Sergeant. Let’s move out slowly at first and keep the noise and dust down to a minimum, then go as fast these crates will go if an attack comes.”
“Ja wohl, Mein Führer.”
Willibald was a dyed in the wool Nazi who considered the loss of the Third Reich to be ony a temporary setback. He had his sights set on the upcoming Fourth Reich, and considered Antoine and the Gebirgsjägers to be the last best hope for realizing that ambition. He knew that this small group of dedicated Nazis would be the nucleus of the new Germany and for worldwide domination—Hitler’s prophetic dreams would be accomplished by these pioneers. He was none too bright, which made him an excellent choice for a follower. That he was entirely amoral was another plus.
He had the look of a Bavarian farmer—inexpressionate facies, vapid eyes covered by Coke bottle bottom-thick spectacles, nondescript nose and lips, and a small round symmetrical head. He was overweight and had a prominent neck wattle to go along with his belly which protruded over his belt line. His arms and fingers were short and pudgy. He had bow legs from childhood rickets. He tended to wear the same set of clothes—a peasant tunic over baggy pants and ankle-high surplus Wehrmacht boots—almost every day. Antoine presumed that he had several interchangeable outfits. The idea that he wore the same single set of clothes all the time was more than his Prussian sensibilities was prepared to accept.
Clause Fischer was shorter and squatter than Willibald. Although he was actually brighter than his old friend, he had little to say; so, he was usually considered to be even less intelligent than Willibald. He had much the same bodily habitus in general, one that did not inspire confidence in the idea that he was strong, or quick, or soldierly. That would be to underestimate the man. Claude could move with alacrity and with surprising endurance when it was requ
ired of him, and he had remarkable strength when he put his mind to a task. He was as much of a killer as any of his SS comrades and had a record of killing which made him a good friend and a bad enemy. His face was duller, fuller, and more vacuous in appearance than Willibald’s; and he was every bit as much of a follower. His only claim to being better than Willibald was that his clothes were of a better quality, variety, and fit. He usually wore olive drab Bavarian hunting clothing which was durable and as attractive as clothes could be on a man with a physique as unremarkable as his.
Gerhard Jungermann was a tall fit man who wore either farmer’s clothes, or—like many former German soldiers—wore his old uniform without any rank designation or insigniae. He was efficient and relatively intelligent, which made him an asset to the Gebirgsjägers. Despite his height of six feet four inches, he had the build of a muscular shorter man. He had the telltale pockmarks of childhood small pox, and his right leg was somewhat smaller than his left as a sequelae of his having had polio as an adolescent. His face was deeply lined with natural furrows in his cheeks, a deeply dimpled, nearly cleft chin, and forehead lines earned from hatless years in the sun. His only nod to fashion was that he had a series of colorful tee-shirts he had purchased from a displaced Indian merchant who had had to flee from Berlin to Ellingen, Bavaria, as the Soviets closed in on the city at the end of the war. Gerhard wore a different, rather gaudy, shirt under his open uniform shirt every day.
Jacob Bunnemann was the least likely of the men to be considered a fighter. He had been a baker for the SS and still retained his rotund baker’s figure. His apparent obesity was real, and did not hide large muscles. His benefit to his fellow conspirators was that he was bright and resourceful. He was very good at maths, subjects in which he had excelled in school. He had been held in a favored status in his SS unit because he could always come up with a decent meal for them, even when they were on the move. He had established a small bakery business on the side, but like his friends had subsisted on what his meager farm could produce. His shirt strained to cover his bulk; his pants had to be held up by suspenders; and his shoes were slip-ons because he could not reach down far enough to lace up boots. He did not cut a dashing figure, and he did not care.
The Charlemagne Murders Page 26