by TR Kenneth
“It’s in German.”
Harry took the strip of silk, holding it up in one hammy fist.
Stag watched his reaction go from curiosity to creeping horror. Unexpectedly the hair raised on the back of his own neck.
“What’s it say?”
Harry didn’t answer. He looked as if he were working something out in his head.
“What’s it say?” Stag grabbed at the white strip. The German words crept into his bloodstream.
Harry’s voice was stone cold sober. “It says, ‘Help me.’”
CHAPTER TWO
“THERE’S A BUNCH of other writing on this—you’re the one with the master’s in German, so you tell me. Look—that’s definitely a street address—106 Wilhelmstrasse—apartment 12A.” Harry lifted a drunken hand to the mug of coffee Stag offered and took a deep gulp. “There’s a lot of stuff on here I can’t make out at all. Looks like it’s written in code.”
They were back at Stag’s, the painting propped on a chair while they studied it and the strange piece of silk. The cheap furnished apartment was a temporary landing spot Stag had managed to find in the miasma of his return to Wuttke. It was now official. He hadn’t written a word for over three years. He’d come limping home and plopped aimlessly into a monthly rental. The place was now filled to the ceiling with cardboard boxes—some his, some Harry’s—and piles of clothes. A Salvation Army futon groaned under the big man’s weight.
Stag looked down at the fluttery white silk strip, incongruous in Harry’s freckled paw. It had already been a long evening just getting Harry out of the bar. He was exhausted, his gimp leg pounded with pain. At least there was this small mystery to distract them.
He got his own cup of coffee. Walking to the futon, a glint of metal next to one of the painting’s stretcher bars caught his eye.
“What you got?” asked Harry.
“Something’s here. Something—” Stag edged it out with a fingernail. It was the tip of a key. He could see that from the cuts on the side.
He went to the kitchen and got a knife. Slowly, so as not to damage the painting, he slid the key out from between the stretcher and canvas.
“I guess this is the key to the address.” Stag held it out in his palm. It was the brown color of worn brass. Definitely not modern.
“Fuck. I can’t believe all this time it was in there.” Harry rubbed his jaw. “I wonder what this means.”
“The note’s on parachute silk,” Stag said almost subconsciously.
“Parachute silk?”
“Back in World War II, they used this thin white silk for parachutes and spies used it for writing codes just like the one here.” Stag ran his finger down the fabric’s smooth surface. “You could slip it underneath the lining of a coat or a suitcase, and no one could detect it in a cursory search.”
“Huh. But that doesn’t answer who wrote the note and why it was stuck in the back of this guy.”
Harry smoothed the strip out against the futon and began translating the faded peacock-blue writing. “The first part is definitely some kind of code. Total gibberish. The rest of it says something about—I don’t know—something’s in a truck—the handwriting’s not too legible, but something’s in a truck—at the bottom of the lake. And there’s a shape drawn on here. A rune? A map? It looks like a long scraggly finger with a string tied on it. Maybe that’s where the truck is. It might be the outline of a lake. But what lake?” He gulped his coffee and held out for more.
Stag went to get the coffeepot, but then Harry shot out, “Fuck me! I can’t be sure but I swear the word’s diamonds. The diamonds are in a truck at the bottom of the lake.”
As if this were an everyday conversation, Stag poured the fat man another cup of coffee and replaced the pot. “I wish your dad was still around. He could tell us more about this.”
“Yeah.” Harry ran his thick finger over the writing. “I mean, he never really talked about the painting. The rumor of it coming from the Berghof was just bullshit he liked to spread around.” He shook his head. “Holy shit—do you think—I mean—is this some kind of clue to—”
“Nazi treasure?”
“Is it? Is this a fucking Nazi treasure map?”
“It’s decades old. And completely without provenance and context. If it was some kind of clue to finding hidden Nazi diamonds, trust me, they’re long gone.” Stag held up the key. “No, what we’ve got here is a historical curiosity.”
“The diamonds are in a truck at the bottom of the lake!” Harry smoothed out the silk again. “If that’s not talking about Nazi diamonds—”
“We don’t even know for sure if the word is diamonds, it’s kind of hard to make out.” Stag eyed Harry with extreme skepticism, then picked up the long strip of silk again and contemplated it. “Sure. It looks like the word diamonds. I agree this is something out of the ordinary, but again with no context … Did your dad keep any files or anything we could look through?”
Harry was sobering quickly. “Files? No, there aren’t any files. He got rid of all the files. The only thing he left was the accounting books. That’s all. Nothing more. No files.”
Okay, Stag thought. Really, really no files. “We should Google the address. It might be current—it’s a possibility—”
Harry snorted. “This note’s been in that picture for decades. I can guarantee nobody’s touched that guy since he was hung on the wall.” Tapping into his phone, Harry put the screen in Stag’s face. “It’s an address, all right. In Berlin. It’s still there.”
“We should call it. Maybe we’ll find out something that way.”
“Good idea.” Harry found a phone number for the address. It was an apartment building called the Dresdenhof. He entered it into his phone, and then promptly handed it over to Stag.
“You’re the one with the master’s in German, for Christ’s sake.”
Stag reluctantly took the phone and introduced himself. The connection seemed to falter and he said his name again. “Yes, Stag Maguire. Calling from Wisconsin. USA.” He began a dialogue with whoever was at the other end. After a lengthy back-and-forth, he then said, “Danke.”
Stag shrugged, handing Harry his phone back. He was unsure what the conversation meant. “Apparently it’s a high security building for diplomats. No one needs help in 12A, they said. The apartment’s been unoccupied since 1942. And they said even if someone did need help, there would be no point in calling the police because the Dresdenhof is out of their jurisdiction and has been since the war.”
“For how long?”
“That’s what the guy said.”
“What the fuck does that mean?”
“That’s what I wondered. Something about diplomatic immunity, the Swedish embassy.” Stag turned his attention to the window. Dawn was just seeping in. Propped up against a chair, the painting stared back as if daring him to blink.
“You know, in this light, the paint looks …” Stag gazed at the painting. The first sunbeam had just lain across it.
He walked over to it, and scratched at a peeling flake of paint on the portrait’s beard. He took off another, then another, flake of alligatored paint. “Look at this. I think it’s been painted over. That’s why the guy looks funny.”
“Nothing is funny about that bastard. Seriously. Not even a mother could love that evil-eyed turd.”
“This has been over-painted.” Stag tilted the painting to better catch the sunlight, and with it, the outline of paint beneath the surface. “I think he’s wearing a uniform. Maybe we should see if we can scrape this top layer off. Get me a pen knife. If he’s wearing a uniform, maybe we can find out who the guy is.”
Harry suddenly looked like the kid ready to barf on the Tilt-A-Whirl. “Shit, if he’s wearing a uniform then he’s probably a—” His expression turned dark and unsettled.
Stag gave him an unsure glance. “They did that, you know. Painted over uniforms to make the figure more politically correct. But that doesn’t mean anyone in your family knew th
ere was anything underneath this guy. I mean, how could they? The bar was dark and they hardly paid it any attention.”
Harry still looked reluctant.
“Look, get me something to scrape with. It’s the only way.”
“If he’s in a uniform, then that means, fuck, we’ve had a Nazi hanging in the bar for my entire life.”
Stag put the painting back on the chair. Both men stared at it.
“You know, maybe I’ve always known. Fuck!” Harry wearily palmed his face. “Fuck this. And fuck me!”
“I’ll get a knife,” Stag said.
Forty minutes later, an entirely new portrait was propped back on the chair. The beard was gone, and the Bavarian peasant garb. After making a drift of paint chips, Stag stepped back, strangely repulsed by his accomplishment. There was no mistaking the German field gray uniform. Nor the Death’s Head on his cap. Furthermore, he had a pretty good idea who it was, but he didn’t want to freak Harry out even more.
“This is bullshit. What the hell were they doing hanging a Nazi on the wall?” Harry muttered to himself.
“Maybe they didn’t know who he was.”
“Sure,” Harry answered miserably. “That’s why they called him ‘our Reini.’ Our! Reini!”
“I’ll take it to Jake this afternoon.” Stag wiped a few chips of paint stuck to his cheek. “Maybe he can identify him.”
“No,” Harry said. “I don’t want you to take it to Jake. I want the motherfucker gone. Let’s burn it.”
“But the note—”
“Seriously, it’s my painting. I don’t care about it. I want it gone. Burn it!”
“What about the diamonds?”
Harry rubbed his bleary eyes. “Fuck! I don’t like this! Nor this guy!” He began to come down from his rage. “But maybe if there are diamonds, I could get Julie and the kids—”
“Let’s take it to Jake. We’ll find out what this is all about.” Someone had to remain sane, and it sure as hell wasn’t going to be Harry. “It’s highly unlikely this is about diamonds, nor that they’re still around after all this time,” Stag said.
“Look at this bastard’s fancy-ass medals on his uniform. Sure, there are diamonds. Maybe a whole truck full of them. In the lake,” Harry said, miserably.
“First we need to stick to finding out who this guy is and maybe who wrote that note before we go—”
“I could get Julie back.”
Stag gave Harry a worried look. There was no yearning in the world like wanting to turn back the clock and get back all you’d lost. Knowing him as well as Stag did, he could see the insane path of Harry’s thoughts. Sure, it all sounded good. Harry could win Julie back, and he himself could become the famous journalist who found the lost Nazi diamonds in the lake. All would be righted and ennobled almost by the hand of divine providence.
And unicorns would fart rainbows.
“First things first. Let’s get a bead on this guy.” Stag forced Harry’s attention back to the portrait. There the lizard eyes stared back at them, and Stag felt a queasy sink in his stomach.
It was crazy. Far-fetched in the extreme, and he had a duty to get Harry’s grief-stricken thinking back down to earth. It didn’t help Harry’s current emotional state to be trying to win Julie back with the lottery of spurious Nazi treasure. Whatever had been written on the strip of silk was decades old. What the hell were they going to do with that information in Wisconsin, at this date and time? Not much, was the answer.
And there was only one thing he was sure of even if there were diamonds.
A whole truckful of them.
In a lake somewhere.
The cocksucker in front of him probably stole them.
And there was no need to speculate from whom.
CHAPTER THREE
EINHAR KRONBAUER SLOWLY replaced the phone and stared at it for a long time. His tea was growing cold in its Meissen cup, and outside it had begun to snow on the Wilhelmstrasse, but he didn’t notice either of these events.
A watershed moment had just occurred. He found himself paralyzed. He’d been concierge at the Dresdenhof for forty years; his father had run the building before that, his grandfather before that. There had never been a call about apartment 12A. Not one time. Not on anybody’s watch. In that time, bombing rubble had been cleared away, a wall had been erected bisecting the city and finally torn down, diplomats had come and gone, but 12A remained intact. A time capsule. They might have even made jokes about it being the Nazi equivalent of King Tut’s tomb, if his grandfather hadn’t taught them that speaking of 12A was absolutely verboten.
Now someone had called about it.
His stare bore a hole into the ivory-colored phone receiver.
He would have to make his own phone call now. Report the inquiry.
He picked up his pad and tapped into his contacts. The number was in there in case of emergency. His father had handed it down to him like a scepter. There were only three things to remember about 12A, he’d told him: Have it cleaned once a week by the maintenance company that had been managing the building since the Weimar Republic, and call the special number if anyone else showed up connected to it. The third thing was don’t worry about calling the special number because no one was going to show up.
Now someone had made an inquiry.
Kronbauer adjusted his yellow Hermès tie, his shirt collar constricting strangely on its own. There had always been something ominous about apartment 12A, just as there’d been something ominous about his grandfather’s uniform in the war. He suspected it was that trifle of embroidery on the left sleeve. The diamond outline embedded with the letters SD. His grandfather didn’t tell, and Einhar, even as his grandson, knew better than to ask. So the family stuffed the uniform full of mothballs and cedar, stuck it in the trunk with the old photos, and went on with life. After all, it was a very long time ago, and people had had to do what they’d had to do during the war to get by. Berlin was whole again. Germany was thriving. The past was in the past.
But some things just wouldn’t stay buried.
He looked out the window all the way down to the corner of Neiderkirchnerstrasse, where the ruins had been discovered. The notorious address used to be 8 Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse. The Gestapo. The city had been bombed to kingdom come and then rebuilt in modern international style, and yet there were those who insisted the ruins be dug up all over again and put on display—insisted there be yet another awful reminder made of Germany’s past.
He watched the snow start to stick to the steel arcade that protected the ruins. The bricks no doubt echoed like conch shells with the screams of the tortured and dying. That the old foundation was still there surprised everyone. It had been uncovered when a postwar building was torn down. Now no new building could be erected because the infamous Gestapo basement ruins had to be preserved for posterity. To show again and again how very horrible the Germans were, ad nauseum.
Taking a deep breath, he punched in the number on the phone. He was shocked at the mundane-sounding ring on the other end. In his imagination he’d always thought the number would ring up someplace unearthly—patched through a satellite circling Mars to an overlord of the ice planet Hoth. Normalcy or not, he was still not sure how to approach the strange subject of an inquiry on an apartment that hadn’t had a visitor since 1942.
“Herr Kronbauer calling,” he said in German to the harsh “allo,” murmured through the receiver.
He explained the inquiry and gave the name of the man who called. Stag Maguire. Yes, that was correct. Stag Maguire.
Then it was over. The voice on the other end thanked him and hung up.
No more to do now. The instructions had been followed. The weekly cleaning of 12A would continue, the illustrious and diplomatically immune tenants would continue to need him to hold open their Mercedes’ doors, and he would remain on call should reservations be needed for the restaurant Borchardt. His duties were exacting and methodical, and he performed them just the way he’d been taught to by
his father.
He took a sip of cold tea and grimaced. His routine was going to fall back into place again, just like before. But he couldn’t shake the idea that his phone call had been like a tiny fissure in the bottom of the ocean, one that would give birth to a devouring tsunami once it was felt onshore.
CHAPTER FOUR
STAG WOKE WITH a lurch. Through the stickiness of sleep, he knew he’d been shouting. He was having the nightmares again. Not only did they mess up his sleep, they’d managed to scare every potential girlfriend into a one-night-stand for the past year. He’d taken all the prescribed cures: Xanax, psychoanalysis, EMDR—Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing—but the night terrors still hung on as tenacious as a starving tick.
He rolled onto his back and stared at the ceiling. In the other room, Harry snored on the futon, deaf to the shouting. Stag rubbed his leg. It ached as it always did, a dull thumping pain that left him exhausted. When he walked, the thrum moved from the titanium rods in his ankle, pounding its way up to his hip. At thirty-five, he was already an old man, weak and limping. Every day it was just another drop of water that comprised his own personal ocean of fury.
PTSD was a bitch. He was thankful he’d only had one blackout. He’d come out of it in the middle of Walmart. As if waking from a dream, he’d looked down and saw he had a cartful of items he would only buy for Holly: popsicles and animal crackers, tampons and champagne. It had scared the piss out of him. There was no rational motive for what he’d done, no context, no why. He stood staring at the items in the cart for such a long time that a little tattooed Goth queen asked him if he was all right. He’d looked up at her blankly, wanted to knee-jerk the words he was fine, but he wasn’t fine. He was terrified. There was no answer for him being at Walmart with a cart full of inexplicables. He was lost again without the why. He looked at the black-clad girl, and then he fled as fast as his lame leg would take him.
Rubbing his face, he sat up in bed and made up his mind. He couldn’t save Harry from the flood that had washed away his marriage; nor could he save himself from the landslide that was burying him little by little every day. The only thing they could do was get out of the way of the reminders.