The Charlemagne Murders

by Douglass, Carl;

  Hugues remembered back to the late nineteen thirties when he and the French Charlemagne division volunteered to help the increasingly powerful anticommunist Nazi party in Germany. Early on, he had been treated like something of an untermenschen [subhuman] by the imperious Nazis until the division’s heroics and unflinching devotion to the Führer earned them the respect of even the most arrogant of the SS officers. He could still remember the slights and what he had had to endure to achieve status in the German ranks.

  Now, this physically frail and effeminate dwarf of an Oriental lorded it over him like an SS general over a buck private—a nothing. It grated his soul.

  He had been a student in the surimi manufactory for three days when things came to a head.

  “You, Burakumin, come while I show you how to use a knife, assuming you are even capable of using the simplest of tools like a chimpanzee.”

  Hugues bit his lip and watched with feigned interest as the master took a prerigor fresh salmon and extracted the thirty-six pinbones by hand, yielding a perfect piece of fresh meat.

  “Do that, Gaijin [a Japanese word for foreigners and non-Japanese, connoting an “outside person,” a negative and pejorative term], and you stay. Fail me again and you go back to the lowest deck and work with the other swine.”

  He said it with a denigrating sneer. Hugues was not exactly sure what the word “Gaijin” meant, but the connotation of the word was clearly written on the master’s implacable face. That night, Hugues told Antoine about his latest encounter and how much he hated the arrogance of the “yellow dwarf.”

  “Tell me what ‘Gaijin’ means, Antoine.”

  “Put up with it for a few more days, Mon Frère,” Antoine advised.

  “What does it mean?”

  The look on Hugues’ face brooked no denial; so, Antoine responded directly, “Bastard, untermenschen,” he said.

  “I will kill him,” Hugues said, and the look on his face was deadly serious.

  CHAPTER SEVENTY

  Super Seiner Factory Ship Port of Embden 220, in the South China Sea near the Spratley Islands, Six bells on the middle watch, October 18, 1963

  Antoine said sharply, “If you do, they will arrest you; and all our efforts to escape to a new life will be lost.”

  “Help me like you always have, Antoine, and we can get our revenge with no one being the wiser. I have asked but very little during the long years we have suffered together. This I ask.”

  Antoine hated the dimunitive Japanese martinet as much as Hugues did. He paused in thought for a moment.

  “All right. But we will plan this carefully. No one can even guess about you and me being involved. He must disappear. Be patient.”

  “I will try my best, Mon Frère; but I cannot endure forever.”

  Antoine nodded. He knew where the surimi master’s stateroom was located. After dark that same night, he, Hugues, and Serge reconnoitered the passageway containing the stateroom and the possible places where the man’s body could be hidden or dumped overboard without them being detected.

  Serge located a cold storage room where the off-line fish were held frozen for transportation to an onshore fertilizer plant. There were huge vats of frozen fish of all kinds except salmon which were waiting to be ground up unceremoniously as soon as the ship docked.

  Each of the men carried a fish-killing club. Serge tapped on Master Shimazaki’s stateroom door while the other two stood well off to the side. It was very late, nearing three bells of the middle watch [one-thirty].

  The master opened the door and peered groggily out into the companion way trying to make sense of what he was seeing.

  He managed to start a sentence with, “What’s the…,” but those were his last words.

  Serge brought his fish club up from where it was hanging at his side and struck the small Japanese in the middle of his skull. Shimazaki dropped like a sack of fish salt, and his eyes turned blank. The three attackers pushed him into his room and were about to take out all of their frustrations when Antoine had a moment of clarity.

  “Stop!” he hissed. “No blood. Break his neck.”

  “My turn,” Hugues said.

  He knelt down and applied the thumbs of his powerful hands and crushed the man’s neck’s hyoid bones and thyroid cartilages. It was unnecessary. The surimi master was already dead.

  Hugues fought to control his bloodlust, knowing that Antoine was right, as always.

  “You are the Burakumin and Gaijin, you little sonderbar [queer].”

  He spat on him, then moved back to get better control of himself.

  “Serge, check the companionway. Hugues and I will wrap him up in his extra bedsheets and blankets; so, no one will be able to be sure what we’re carrying if they should happen out into the companionway while we’re carting him to the off-line fish storage.”

  No one was out and about. It was an uncomfortable night, and the ship was experiencing some of every motion the ocean could dish out: pitching, yawing, swaying, sinking, surging, and heaving. The three Gebirgsjägers were hampered in their movements to avoid banging into the bulkheads or falling. They shuffled along with very wide-based stances until they made their way into the ice-cold fish storage area. Antoine closed and locked the hatch while Serge and Hugues removed a center portion of frozen fish from one large container to make room for the sirimi master’s corpse. Their hands were nearly frozen by the time they muckled the body—which now seemed very heavy—into the pit in the center of the great mound of frozen fish. Then they all pitched in to shovel the fish over Shimazaki until his body was covered about two feet deep. They forced the lid down as tightly as they possibly could; and Serge found the metal seal placer and clamped it on the hinge, signifying that this batch was ready for transport off the ship and into Hong Kong lorries bound for the interior of the People’s Republic of China.

  Master Shimazaki was not missed for three days, and then his absence became a mystery. No one held out much hope that the man or his body would be found in the vastness of the South China Sea—which extends over an area from the Singapore and Malacca Straits to the Strait of Taiwan, a water territory over a million and a quarter square miles. The ship’s security force combed the ship from top to bottom and interrogated every man aboard who had had anything to do with the man. It was all to no avail. No one saw anything. No one knew anything. No one could even imagine anyone having ill feelings towards him such that they would commit murder and throw the man’s body overboard. Mostly no one talked; they just kept their eyes down and mumbled monosyllabic non-answers when questioned and went about their routines as if nothing had happened. To the vast majority of the men, nothing had happened. Nobody cared.

  CHAPTER SEVENTY-ONE

  Victoria Harbor Port Facilities, Hong Kong Island, Hong Kong British Crown Colony, November 2, 1963

  When the Port of Embden 220 pulled into the busy and sheltering waters of Hong Kong’s Victoria Harbor, the entire ship’s company took a very unusual break and stood on deck to see the beauty of the natural landform harbor as they sailed between Hong Kong Island and Kowloon. They glided carefully past the entrance of the Zhu Jiang [Pearl River] and cautiously approached the Kwai Chung Container Terminals in the western part of the harbor, threading the ship through the traffic of one of the world’s busiest harbors—hosting more than 200,000 ships a year. The waters of the harbor were overloaded by oceangoing and river vessels and local junks, all carrying passengers or a wide variety of goods because of its deep ocean advantages, the shelter afforded it by the surrounding hills, and its strategic location. The captain of the pilot boat had his work cut out for him as he led the huge fishing trawler into its berth in the container terminal.

  Hugues looked furtively over his shoulder and spoke quietly to Antoine and Serge. “Think security knows the miserable little nip is dead and is just waiting to spring it on us? Do you think they know it was us?”

  “I don’t know the answer to either question for sure, but I do know this: once we
walk off this rust bucket and into the great masses of anonymous humanity in the terminal area, no one could possibly locate us even if they had us cold. Our plan is to keep our heads down and eyes straight forward. No issues with anyone over anything until we are out of Hong Kong altogether, Est-ce que tu comprends [do you understand]?”

  The three men were grim-faced but kept their wits about them. They took their turns in the customs and paymaster lines without entering into the usual complaints and arguments among the men trying to get off the ship more quickly than their shipmates. They were patient while the paymaster crew totaled the base pay and share income for each man, checking and rechecking. Every man was paid in cash, in the currency of his choice. The Gebirgsjägers took just enough pay in Hong Kong dollars and British pounds sterling to tide them over until they could get established in a more anonymous and secure location.

  As soon as they cleared all procedures, they headed straight for the centrally located Shun Tak Centre in Sheung Wan, immediately west of the main business district. They bought business suits and tropical linens, white shirts, and appropriate shoes in the night market for the next stop on their odyssey to secure freedom. They had a choice of taking the cheaper Tak Sing, Dai Loy, or Fat Shan ferries, but they were feeling flush; so, they opted for the more luxurious and more expensive Macao. The trip took four hours, during which the three lowered their anxiety levels with good eighteen-year-old British Glenturret Scotch which was a far cry from the swill they had to drink aboard the Port of Emden 220 for the past nearly eight months. They slept most of the way, feeling the waves of anxiety melting away because they were now free of potential accusations from law enforcement for the murder of Junji Hirokatsu Shimazaki. Antoine was not quite so sure they had heard or seen the last of INTERPOL, the FBI, the Sûreté, or the Mossad, however.

  §§§§§§

  Le Bureau Central National (BCN) d’INTERPOL pour la France [The International Criminal Police Organization, or INTERPOL], Office of Senior Detective Chief Superintendent Eugène Léon Dentremont, 200 Quai Charles de Gaulle, 69006 Lyon, France, November 28, 1963

  The law enforcement officers gathered in the office of Senior Detective Chief Superintendent Dentremont’s office were glum. They all realized the inevitability of what Eugène’s decision was going to be.

  He skipped preliminary chit-chat, the usual small French treats, and the introductions as he began to speak to the senior officers of his own INTERPOL service, the FBI, French national police, and a representative from the Mishteret Yisra’el [National Police of Israel]. No one raised an eyebrow at the absence of Levi Appleman ben Cohen [“C”] or anyone else from the Institute in Tel Aviv.

  “Our Detective Vinciguerra will sum up what we know about the manhunt for the fugitives—the alleged killers of the senior military officers.”

  He turned to Vinciguerra.

  “Thank you, Chief Superintendent. There is not a great deal to tell; so, I will keep it simple. For the past several weeks, it has been my task—along with Forensic Specialist Marianne de la Reynie—to monitor every detail from every agency and department around the world involved in the manhunt for the SS fugitives. This has included American CIA, FBI, Alaska and Texas state police, and US Army military police; Israeli National Police and the Mossad; French Paris police and the Sûreté; British New Scotland Yard; Argentine provincial police of Córdoba, Buenos Aires, and Ushuaia, the national police, and more than a few Argentine government officials known to be flagrant Nazi sympathizers; Chilean police in Santiago, Valparaiso, and Puerto Montt and their national police, the coast guards of Argentina, Chile, and Peru, and civilian Nazi sympathizers like the Club Aleman; Soviet KGB’s Fifth Directorate and Moscow militisya detectives; German state Kriminalpolitzei detectives, forensic sciences officers, and detectives in several west and east German cities.

  There is not an airport, railway station, or seaport that we have not investigated and monitored. We have been a thorn in the side of organized crime throughout the world—the Sicilian mafia, the russkaya mafiya, the Unione Corse, the yakusa, Chinese triads, and all of their known associates. We have pressured everyone we know of in the ODESSA and Spider organizations and their Swiss and Vatican sympathizers. So far as we can determine—and to the limit of our resources—we have turned over every possible stone.”

  “And found nothing,” DCS Dentremont said morosely.

  “That’s about it, sir. We have followed leads that suggested that they escaped by securing a private airplane to take them to Peru, or that they boarded some sort of fishing boat or other cargo ship out of a Chilean port, or that they joined one of the legions of tourist trekkers headed north overland through Chile or Argentina. None of the leads panned out. All I can say for certain is that the last time any of the fugitives was seen for certain was on September the twenty-eighth of this year in the vicinity of the Bariloche, Argentina, train and bus terminals. Even that information came from a classified source. There are no official law enforcement records even of that small piece of information.”

  “So, where are we now, Chief Superintendent?” asked FBI Special Agent Xavier Gonzales-Soto.

  “At an impasse. We will—of necessity—scale back our hunt until we have credible evidence of a location for these criminals. We know they are part of the worldwide criminal organizations and that they have huge resources at their disposal. We will have to be patient—we have no other choice. We will get them—mark my words—but it will take time. And, at the risk of repeating myself, we will have to be patient.”

  Recipe for Marinated Macaw

  Tropical Marinated Macaw

  Ingredients

  -2 young adult macaws (fresh), pineapple, lemon, pomegranate, and chicozapote juice from fully ripened fruit, 1 cp each of Bacardi rum, Mezcal liquor, acachú liquor, aguardiente brandy, caxtila Veracruz rum, taberna palm liquor—about 1 pt. each.

  -2 thin cedar planks, lengths of stout twine.

  Preparation

  Note: Because macaw is very tough, it is essential to follow the preparation instructions to the letter.

  -Very carefully pluck the bird, leaving no roots of feathers in the skin.

  -Cut bird open and attach to plank with twine, breast up (in crucifix posture). Immerse in ice-cold mix of all juices and refrigerate for 1 day. Remove, then heat bird in its marinade to low boil and leave at boil for 1 hr. Bring heat down to simmer and maintain at that temperature for 6 hrs.

  -Remove bird from hot juice, discard juice, allow to cool in refrigerator for 6 hrs. Be sure bird is completely cold.

  -Place bird on its plank into a mix of the rums and palm liquor, heat to low boil, then turn down to simmer for 4–6 hrs. Test tenderness with a fork.

  -When fairly tender, remove from hot liquid and discard liquid.

  -Refrigerate until cool~2–3 hrs, then place bird on its plank into a mixture of the Mezcal, brandy, and acachú so that it is completely immersed and repeat cooling process for another~2–3 hrs.

  -Then place bird on its plank and cold liquid into a 360° F oven for 4 hrs. Lower heat to 225° for ~2 hrs. so that it is nice and warm for serving.

  -Note that the dish is considered to taste somewhere between spotted owl and bald eagle.

  To Serve

  -Discard liquid.

  -Discard bird.

  -Eat the board.

  CHAPTER SEVENTY-TWO

  Continental Hotel, 132 Đnen Khởi, Bến Nghé, Quận 1, Saigon, December 12, 1963

  The three remaining Gebirgsjägers arrived in war-torn Vietnam on December the eighth and were met at Tan Son Nhat International Airport by a holdover French planter called Jean-Yves Sarrazin—which was not his birth name. Sarrazin was a former French Foreign Legion colonel who had escaped capture after the debacle and chaos of the defeat of the French army at Dien Bien Phu in May 1954, which ended the first Indochina War. He changed his name, disavowed his military past, and became a harmless employee of a French plantation outside Saigon. He gradually accumulated en
ough capital to buy his own large rubber plantation and to become assimilated into the new society of the country. He was chronically short of money because of his proclivity for beautiful women, fast horses, gambling, and poor business decisions. When former comrades in the Legion told him that three old and very rich army men were in need of a safe haven, he enthusiastically volunteered.

  Sarrazin was in his mid-sixties, tall with short cropped white hair, a Frankish nose which led him and the other Frenchmen to be known as the “big-noses” by the Vietnamese in their private conversations. His once lean, fit physique was softer now with a noticeable ponch which was beginning to lap over his belt. He wore the uniform of the French colonial planters—white linen suit, light pink silk shirt and tie decorated with a dragon figure imported from China, a wide belt from which an evil dagger hung in an embroidered leather scabbard, and heavy leather sandals with no stockings—a protection against fungal foot infections in the cloying wet tropical climate.

  “General Duvalier, I presume,” Jean-Yves said and extended his hand to Antoine.

  “I prefer Pierre Deneuve, Monsieur Sarrazin,” Antoine answered warily.

  “Please, we should be on first name basis. I am Jean-Yves.”

  Antoine nodded in agreement.

  He and the other Gebirgsjägers were more than uncomfortable in the crowded airport where Vietnamese and American military personnel teemed among the civilians and Canh Sat [government of South Vietnam’s national police, the “white mice” as they were known, because of their uniform white helmets and gloves] were in abundance.

  “I understand your discomfort … Pierre. Let us adjourn to more inviting surroundings.”

  He snapped his fingers, and two peasant porters rushed to his side and gathered up the few suitcases belonging to the Gebirgsjägers. They pushed their way onto Quang Trung Street and joined the cacophony and chaos of morning traffic in one of the most densely populated cities in the world. They made the mandatory stops at the three checkpoints—American and South Vietnamese—and finally arrived at their first destination, the venerable old Grand Hôtel Continental in the heart of the city. The driver opened the doors for Jean-Yves and the Gebirgsjägers, then sat patiently in the shade of a café umbrella to await the pleasure of his employer and the guests.