by TR Kenneth
Stag knew he appeared off his rocker. Maybe there was some PTSD going on inside his head with the shock of Harry’s death. Fuck, maybe he was just dreaming. He’d drive to Wuttke and find Harry behind the bar like always, talking to that horrible painting. Maybe even find Holly was looking for him back in Milwaukee. Wondering what he’d bought for her at Walmart.
“I couldn’t answer the why on Holly’s death, you know? Some questions just don’t have answers. But …” Stag took a moment to find the words. “But I think there is a why on Harry’s death. I think I can find out the why on this one, but I’m going to need some help.”
“Yes.” James stared back, his eyes cooling with wariness.
Stag’s senses came back to him. He stood abruptly. It was clear no one was going to worry about Harry’s strange death because it was only strange to Stag. And they weren’t going to believe talk about a building in Berlin and a phone call and a strange gun that fired invisible bullets.
His head began to pound. He realized he was sweating. The best thing to do would be to research it himself. No one could do it as well as he could anyway. Besides, drowning beneath the caution and pity on James’s face, he realized he was entirely on his own.
“I’ll head home now,” Stag assured the detective and held out his hand.
James stood and shook it. “You sure? You don’t look too well. I could—”
“I’m sure,” Stag answered, a half-second too quick.
He turned to look back at the detective only once. Bruce James was on the phone, dialing a number that he would bet was the Wuttke police.
CHAPTER EIGHT
THE SILK STRIP was wadded in his jeans’ pocket; the brass key, he’d thrown casually into the plastic X-ray tray alongside his wallet and iPhone. Stag stepped through the imaging machine, raising his hands like he’d just robbed a liquor store. He was in Chicago O’Hare for the flight to Berlin. He looked around, warily wondering if he’d caught a tail, wondering if some entity had already managed to track him through the new iPhone he’d just bought at the Apple kiosk.
The newspapers had said nothing about a man found dead in an apartment in Wuttke or wanting to talk to Stag, but paranoia burrowed deep. Two days at the hotel in Green Bay doing research, and now one evading the police who wanted to talk to him if just out of concern for his PTSD. After all, who calls an ambulance, then ditches their dead friend in their own apartment? Strange circumstances indeed. But he wasn’t sticking around to assuage curiosity. Harry didn’t die of a heart attack. He was murdered. He couldn’t prove it yet. But he was going to prove it. He couldn’t explain what had happened to his mother, nor Holly. But there was an explanation for Harry’s death. Someone was walking around that had all the answers to the why on Harry’s death. He was going to find that person even if it killed him.
Whoever had given Harry that card was dangerous as hell, and the entity that employed the monster was worse. And he didn’t feel like trying to convince the cops that Harry had indeed been shot by some high-tech, unseen bullet. He’d be sent home like a confused child, a ripe target for his own assassination in the parking lot.
“Sir, would you please step over there?”
He met the eye of the TSA agent. A shot of fear and paranoia surged through him. Numbly, he walked to the right where two more TSA agents were waiting for him.
He again held out his arms while they ran the wand over him. Another agent took his bag off the conveyor and stepped to a table nearby.
Were they looking for him already? The US authorities had a long reach. They’d be able to stop him pretty much anywhere. They’d ask him questions for which he would have no answers. Until he could do some research and get to that apartment in Berlin, he had nothing. Just the phantom of a man in the parking lot and Harry’s insistence that he’d been shot before he died.
Then there was that other person, the man who had said, Allo,” tersely at the end of the line. The one who’d promised Harry would die.
Stag had felt something snap inside of him after he’d left his apartment. He’d hit the wall. His oblivion of grief had been overwhelming before, but Harry, loser though he may have appeared, had been his last lifeline. Now Stag was no longer willing to accept his demise. Harry’s death put him on a mission. His talk of the SD left his journalist’s brain on fire. He was going to find the motherfuckers who had killed Harry. He was going to find out who they were and why they’d done it. And expose them all.
“Sir.”
The TSA agent handed him his bag. There’d been nothing in it but new clothes from Walmart, their tags still attached, and some toiletries hurriedly stuffed into Ziploc bags because he hadn’t wanted to take the time to search the store for a dop kit.
The agents nodded his go-ahead. He took his bag and walked down the long concourse to the flight.
By Gate 34, he was over the paranoia of the TSA search; by Gate 42, his mind was fully working on Harry’s death.
The first improbability was the SD. How could something like that still exist? The Allies were thorough in dismantling the Third Reich. But there was one enormous loophole. Corporations were largely exempt from punishment for their complicity in Germany’s war and Nazi Party. He thought of Bayer and their friendly little orange baby aspirin. They were still ubiquitous. Not so much the information that Bayer had made Zyklon B. Krupp made the guns and the steel for the Reich. ThyssenKrupp AG, still around. Bertelsmann, the giant publisher, was found not to have been shut down by the Nazis as they had claimed, but rather was entirely along for the Nazi ride, making a fortune along the way. Stag was shocked, shocked Bertelsmann hadn’t just been publishing Bibles, as they’d claimed.
But the real story was the slap on the hand when all came to light. These corporations hung their heads, made a heartfelt apology, and continued to function as before, only now complicit with their new Lord and Savior, the US. Was it possible the SD could still be around in corporate form, specializing in private security and private paramilitary? It was possible. What was more possible was the ability to maintain secrecy at which the SD was so brilliant. It became a conundrum. If the SD was so good at secrecy, how could anyone ever be certain they still existed?
He wondered about Harry’s family. Harry’s mention of his father’s files kept coming back to him. Those files probably told more truths than any of them could stomach, but they were long gone, purloined by the shadowy associates who cleaned them out after Harry’s father died. If Harry’s father was feeding the SD information on his various clients at Gerde’s, that could very well be construed as “feeding the wolf,” as Harry mentioned. If Harry had been unwilling to spy, it all seemed painfully obvious. Gerde’s had never been a moneymaker. Sure, it had been a gathering place for locals, but locals in an economy like Wuttke’s didn’t pay their tabs all that well. Harry’s father and grandfather supplemented their incomes by covertly working for a leftover from the Nazi SD. It explained Harry’s failure to make a go at Gerde’s. How could he make the same living as his father and grandfather if he was uncomfortable getting in bed with the resurrected SD? That explained Harry: honest and kind to a fault—not the sort of man to work at a concentration camp and then head home to take the kids to a movie. No, it all made sense now. Harry eschewed the added income because of his conscience, and in the end, Gerde’s folded because it wasn’t profitable as a bar alone. The thought cracked the pond ice of Stag’s emotions. Harry had been set up as a victim, but, yet, Stag was suddenly, overwhelmingly proud of his friend’s resistance. Harry, it turned out, wasn’t a loser at all.
His thoughts went back to his research on the SD. De-Nazification was thorough. Still, Stag knew there were Nazis who, after the war, had made it out of Germany on what was then known as the ratline. Their fellow SS helped secrete their wanted brethren out of Germany to South America and Switzerland. Many got out with the full knowledge and help of unlikely third parties. The priest, Alois Hudal, with the blessing of the Vatican Secretary of State, had Nazis in a c
ontinual march down the ratline. Some even took the salvation the Allies offered. There was no denying the US’s role in cherry-picking forgiveness when one had a Wernher von Braun on the hook. Was it possible that the thought process of the SD was still around? All one had to do was come upon an alt-right internet troll on Twitter to see the garbage still being fed to people.
He found his gate. They were boarding and he got in line, still deep in thought.
In what form was this other SD? Where was it? It seemed doubtful it was government sponsored—Germany had a few right-wing nutjobs and always would, but Germany’s actions, particularly with refugees, proved that the guilt associated with the war was real and still influencing policy. If this new SD was now privatized, who ran it? And what exactly did this new entity do? This was the 21st century, the age of information. There were too many crazy people spouting off on the internet to believe in hidden conspiracies, but the SD was able to keep a pretty good lid on the Holocaust until the Allies walked into their first concentration camp. It seemed entirely possible for them to keep a lid on themselves after the war.
Selling secrets would be a lucrative business, particularly when one no longer was constricted by an allegiance to a country or a people, but only to the bottom line of profit.
He handed the Lufthansa attendant his boarding pass. He took the stub and entered the jetway. He didn’t know what the answers might be, but he had nothing left in his life but to find out. There was no doubt what happened to Harry. He’d been murdered by that man with the strange gun in the parking lot. Stag was going to find who had sent him. And if there was any justice at all, he would see someone rot in hell for it.
He found his seat and put his bag in the overhead compartment. He looked forward to the long flight, hoping the calm would fuel clarity. Even though he’d been panicked, he’d had the forethought to buy some underwear and a new jacket and stuff them in a bag. Now he was thankful he had. There was no traveling internationally without luggage. Too much attention. The last thing he wanted now. He’d ditched his phone also. If these people knew his number, they sure as hell might have the ability to track him with it. He was unused to paranoia, unused to watching his back to see if he’d caught a tail. But the world was different now. Sure, a lunatic could come up and blow you and yours to kingdom come. There was no preventing that. But these people were out to get him. He would have to think ahead. Always.
He sat back in his seat and briefly closed his eyes. In that strip of silk, he had information no one else had, something they were willing to kill to get their hands on. He was going to try to dodge their bullets and dig deeper. He’d made it this far. He was safe on the plane and he would have time to think about his next move. He was traveling to Germany with a new phone, a bag of new clothes—none of which might even fit—and not sure where to begin. But he’d work all that out before he got to Berlin.
He’d figure out a lot of things during the flight.
Where to stay. Whom to trust. Whom to question.
He had eight hours and thirty-five minutes, and he would need every minute of it.
A long stone-paved lane wound through the skeletal elms that sentineled the drive. Zug was quiet this time of year. Eisschloss particularly with his wife in Gstaad and the mistress in Rio for Carnivale. Luc Portier wished he could have joined Maria in Rio. After his prostate surgery, he had nothing left but wealth and treachery with which to get his sexual thrills, but she was still a hot piece of ass and he enjoyed looking at her.
But there was no jetting down to South America now. With the latest news, he couldn’t do more than sit in his Louis XIV tapestried armchair and stare out the window at the frozen lake. Who was this Maguire? Why had he appeared now? What did he want?
By all intelligence, Maguire was a peon who should have been swatted like a fly. A trifling journalist from that mecca of world information, Wuttke, Wisconsin. But Maguire’s interest in 12A made him loom like an Amazon. He knew about it, therefore, he had to have information about its secrets, information even Luc Portier did not possess. And that made Maguire dangerous.
12A. The very idea of someone inquiring …
The place had been cleaned, researched, catalogued, and maintained for decades. It had never revealed its secrets. That had allowed Portier to lie back on a silken bed of false security. The silence seemed to prove that the rumors were untrue. That the danger was only a myth. The wispy stuff of legends.
But tickling at the back of Portier’s mind was the real worry that Maguire would turn out to be trouble. If the man was asking about 12A, then he knew something. But what? Despite all their efforts to conceal and solve the riddle of 12A themselves, this American had found something out—something intrinsic to the hallowed ground of 12A. Something they had missed. Now they had to get that information before all else. If they didn’t find out what he knew and neutralize the danger immediately, Maguire might instead prove to be a long parasitic worm that ate them all from the inside out.
Luc Portier placed his well-manicured hands on the arms of the chair and serenely allowed the long white fingers to drape over each side. It wasn’t that he was better than others. On the contrary, there were others much more gifted than he. With more handsome faces, more brilliantly educated, certainly bigger—and more workable—manhoods. He’d come up the ranks of the organization, but like fate or destiny or simply the triumph of the will, he’d endured and flourished at a job that was made for him. He’d taken the organization from floundering to ubiquitous in less than a decade. It was all running to plan, on schedule, like clockwork. His life’s work. His life’s apotheosis. He did not need any wrinkles.
So he canceled the drop-in to his private compound in Gstaad; cancelled his jet’s flight plan to Rio after that. And now he sat. Waiting personally for the news that the wrinkle had at last been flattened beneath a hot iron.
CHAPTER NINE
STAG YEARNED FOR sleep. He stared at the luxuriously made bed in his room at the Hotel Adlon but knew it would have to wait. He was in a hurry. Much to his anxiety, he’d had to register in his own name because the Adlon required ID. He didn’t know how much time he would have before someone got a bead on him. Now, curiosity and rage demanded he go right away to scout out the Dresdenhof. Harry was dead. Someone had murdered him. He wanted to know what was waiting there.
All the impotent fury with his wife’s killing, his frustration over the three years of senseless bullshit over the Settlement—the depositions of who was at fault when Clarence the Nut Job at Starbucks went postal, shot him, Holly, five others, and then ultimately himself; and then the endless back-and-forth over the monetary worth of his entire world—it all now bubbled over with Harry’s killing. He’d crawled back, wounded, to Wuttke to be with the only family he’d had left in the world: Harry. The kid who’d insisted his parents foster his friend when the juvenile authorities were getting ready to take him away. With Harry murdered, he had no one. No one. So he was willing to shove aside his weariness and fear. Unlike Holly and the bad choices of his parents, there was a target this time. Harry’s death couldn’t be shrugged off as fate, or the sad case of an undiagnosed mental disorder. Now, for the first time in what was forever, he had a focus, a purpose. The enemy would be a ghost no longer. He would find out about the circumstances that got Harry murdered, if it took his final breath. He was an unreasonable man with absolutely nothing to lose.
He adjusted the Polish P-83 handgun into the dip at the small of his back. It wasn’t the best, but he was lucky to have gotten it at all. The cabdriver at the airport directed him to the Marzahn neighborhood, where his journalistic skills paid off in the discovery of an underground network of Turkish document makers and gun dealers. A pile of euros and not a question asked. He had no doubt the serial number had been filed away probably as early as 1984. The piece was a product of the Cold War, and now on the open market, a product of creeping democracy. Still, he was pretty sure it would fire. His knowledge of guns went that far.
&
nbsp; Stealth was not in his nature. He had to force himself to think and proceed with caution. He paid in cash for a new iPad and several disposable GoFones for future use. He didn’t want to be traced even if he was another continent away. If he had to keep ditching numbers and phones, he would. The one thing that was crystal clear was the fact that whoever was in control of that apartment had the money and organization to find him unless he was careful.
His research during the flight showed the Dresdenhof had been taken over by the Swedish government for its diplomatic corps in the 1920s. That was what was behind the building’s long-held notion of foreign jurisdiction. But the public records in 1946 showed the building went to an international security corporation named Tarnhelm. Further research showed Tarnhelm to be a private corporation that seemed a mix of Blackwater meets janitorial services. All their work was under the umbrella of “security services.” If this Tarnhelm was the link to Heydrich’s SD, it had grown and metastasized over the decades to be something ferocious in its own right. It was a security operation that had subsidiaries all around the world. It boasted its own private military that even the US government used in several Middle East operations. Going against Tarnhelm was insane. But then again, clearly, sanity was no longer his strong point.
He left his room and went downstairs, where the concierge had his new SIM card ready for his phone. Walking by the Victorian grotesque black elephant fountain in the lobby, he made a promise to himself to enjoy a glass of champagne right there if he survived this clusterfuck.
Outside, the Pariserplatz was empty. Nothing blighted the pavement but a stray paper napkin that blew toward the Tiergarten, surreal in its loneliness. In the park in the distance, patches of snow could be seen here and there among the budding linden trees, along with the rare early-morning stroller.
He made his way toward the Brandenburg Tor. Spring was tipping in the warmth of the sun on his forehead, but an icy wind cut through his new jacket. He hardly noticed either. He was driven. By fear and curiosity. Holly’s death had been the Big Unanswerable, but Harry’s death had a reason. Now adrenaline and caffeine propelled him—and, perhaps, too, if he was truthful, a bit of his own illogical madness.