by TR Kenneth
The idea that the world could have been informed of an impending Holocaust as early as April 1942 was hard to swallow. But there it was, in his hands, and on Wikipedia.
Perhaps the idea of mechanized murder had simply been too awful. Perhaps the human mind couldn’t fathom it.
No one acted. Millions died.
With deepening dread, he turned to the third letter. It was another to Schulte.
4 May 1942
My darling betrothed, Eduard,
This is the most pressing plea of all. If you are deaf to me now, I shall be forced to do away with myself, for I tell you this: life without human love is unbearable.
We have what we need to marry in Norway. But my heart is heavy. Water, I think, is the only cure. Our long-planned honeymoon for the Katanga shall bring us home great treasures, and we shall have our glorious union at our address at Vaterhimmelstrasse 235. Because it shall unite us so much more than our time spent at Vaterhimmelstrasse 238, yes? It will be an unstoppable force!
Tell me these plans are first and foremost in your heart? I am surrounded by these cold diamonds, but every minute of every day I long for your warm touch instead. All my diamonds will go in the truck on the last trip to the Königssee. They will not be found without great effort, be assured! But you must do your part. I beg you. I beg you.
Your most despondent lover,
Isolda
His champagne glass was filled while he typed in Königssee. From the pictures, it was an exquisite lake, south of Berchtesgaden, the alpine retreat infamous for the romps of Eva Braun and Hitler.
He sat back and contemplated it. The outline of the Königssee looked like a long scraggly finger lake between mountains. He dug out the silk message and compared them. He couldn’t be sure, of course, the ink had faded and bled but the outline could be the Königssee, certainly. And the string tie at the end of the “finger” could be where the truck was. The truckful of diamonds.
He reread the third letter, unsettled by its opaqueness. Nothing was clear in this one. What the Katanga in the former Belgian Congo, Norway, and a lake in Berchtesgaden had to do with each other, he couldn’t begin to guess. The Congo origin of the Blood Eagle diamond seemed tied up in all of it too. Just to confuse matters even more.
He played with Googling the addresses. Nothing came up. There were lots of Himmelstrasses, no Vaterhimmelstrasse.
“Mr. Dedman, may I ask you to check your seat belt?”
Stag looked up. He was mired so deeply in his thoughts, he hadn’t realized they were landing. He nodded, then turned off his iPad.
The last letter was going to need some outside help. When he got to the hotel, it was time to get on his new phone and see what Jake had to say.
He checked into the Hotel Baur au Lac, charmed by the immaculately quaint streets of Zürich Old Town. There was also a little James Bond thrill of registering at a luxury hotel under an assumed name. He wasn’t sporting a tux, and his limp sure didn’t get him noticed as anything more than a pedestrian afterthought. But it didn’t matter. He was on a mission.
The bellboy brought him a Swiss SIM card for his new phone number. He scanned the letters to his iPad in the business center, and as soon as he got back to his room, he called Jake.
“I’m sending you something, Jake. Check your email, will you?”
“Christ, Stag. I bought a wreath like you asked. But everyone wants to know where the hell you are.”
“I’m in Zürich.”
“What?”
Stag smiled bitterly. “Long story. Nothing you want to be involved in. I won’t be here long.”
“You’re coming home when? Julie was worried that you weren’t around when Harry died. And she couldn’t stop asking questions about where you were when you missed the funeral. I have to say it’s mightily strange myself—”
“I really need your help, Jake.”
“What is it? I know you’re in trouble. I can feel it.” The older man’s voice grew somber.
“I’ve kind of stumbled into a story. I can’t really talk about it. There isn’t time. I’m not sure you’d believe it, even if there was.”
“What can I do?” Jake was surely getting the picture. Things were pretty bad.
“I sent you some scanned letters. I want you to read them, and tell me what you think they say.”
“Okay.” Jake was dead serious. Stag had a moment of relief wash over him. It felt good to not be completely alone, even if he couldn’t let on to Jake what was happening.
“Get back to me as soon you read them, huh?” Stag hesitated. “And don’t let on to anyone we’ve talked?”
“Are you in danger? Perhaps you should return?”
“I can’t till I’m done. One day we’re going to have a long, arm-bending drinking session in Wuttke. Maybe even laugh.”
Jake paused. “I hope so,” he said, dread in his voice.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
PORTIER LOOKED UP from his desk and took note of Sadler’s hesitant ramble toward him. He sat with Rikhardsson in the Great Room of his office in Zürich. The long walk from the door to his desk was planned by Portier personally. Hitler had Speer use the same technique in his offices in the Reich Chancellery. By the time a visitor got where he was going, he was thoroughly intimidated.
“What have you got?” Portier asked.
Sadler took the proffered seat. “North American cyber surveillance says he’s gone—nothing. Vanished. He collected an enormous amount of cash from his accounts and then—poof.”
Rikhardsson nodded. “Our satellites are reviewing footage, but he disappeared in the subway in Berlin. This will take some time. His imprint’s gone from Europe also. Either he’s holed up somewhere not using any technology whatsoever, or he’s managed to intentionally evade us.”
In silence, Portier went to the Gothic expanse of glass that made up the distinctive top of the Tarnhelm Building. He looked out toward the tip of Lake Zürich as it stabbed into the city.
“Politically, we see he’s never been very active, and from his psychiatric history after his wife died, it appears he’s almost suicidal.” Sadler frowned. “I’m afraid he’s rogue.”
Rikhardsson stood and went to the window. “We have two choices. We can chase him. Or we can wait until he shows up. Because he will show up. Everybody does. Osama Bin Laden eventually showed up.”
Sadler interjected. “He wants something. He would not have gone to that apartment if he didn’t.”
“We’re linked to 12A,” Rikhardsson said, “but so far there is no spike in speculation. No electronic chatter, no talk about us on social media. He’s played it close to the chest.”
“You’re asking me for patience, are you?” Portier looked at both men.
Sadler and Rikhardsson both looked wary, unsure how to answer.
“I don’t think there’s any choice,” Rikhardsson said.
“We haven’t got infinite time.” Portier looked down at the Tourbillon Mars on his tanned wrist. “No matter how fine the timepiece.”
“Even if there is a special weapon, we don’t know for sure what it is,” Rikhardsson said.
“We have a pretty good fucking idea,” Sadler grumbled. “If that thing is what we fear it may be—if it unintentionally goes off, then Maguire can possibly link it to us. If that’s the case, the world will be watching and damn us to hell. There’ll be nowhere for us to hide.”
Rikhardsson tossed off his worries with a flick of his fine, Nordic head. “What I’m entranced with is the street value of it. Daesh would pay a fortune to have a ready-made weapon. We could even get Putin’s little man to make a very, very good deal for it. That’s what he does, doesn’t he? Very, very good deals? Fine. Let him. What do we care of their personal squabbles?”
Portier interjected, “You don’t seem to grasp the obvious, gentlemen.” He paused. “What if the thing is underfoot?”
A strange heavy pause ensued.
“Do we have any reason to believe it is?”
Sadler asked.
“Do we have any reason to believe it isn’t?” Rikhardsson retorted.
Grimly, Portier said, “I would sleep better knowing Heydrich’s SD had had the thing safely stored in the underground at Dora-Mittelbau or maybe hauled off to the Hohlgangsanlage tunnels in the Isle of Jersey. But we don’t know. And for all we do, it could be rotting in a salt mine between here and Obersaltzberg.” He looked off at the breathtakingly beautiful Alps surrounding the Canton of Zürich. The jagged peaks now looked less like a picture postcard, and a lot more ominous. Like a thunderstorm hovering in the distance, ready to blow in their direction.
“I needn’t tell you, gentlemen, the corrosion rate of aluminum is around eighty years. Add another factor to that, say, a corrosive like uranium, and we are looking at something quite precarious. Which is one reason I don’t want that flea, Maguire, dead yet.” Portier knocked on the desk in frustration. “I’ve got to get that information.”
All three men turned quiet. Below, the beautiful sprawl of Zürich lay out around them, framed by the distant snow-covered Alps. It was one of the most beautiful and livable cities in the world, and one of the most important financial districts. It was impossible to imagine it gone.
“Have we any evidence of that?” Sadler suddenly looked quite eager to get back to the relative safety of his US operations, pronto.
“We’ve been searching for this thing for decades precisely because the information about it was lost in the bombings and in Heydrich’s assassination. We don’t know where the fuck it is, nor the state it’s in.”
“Do we even know it exists, for sure? Could we be fearful of nothing?”
“If we had any doubts, Maguire’s very appearance has put them to rest. He’s not after the Blood Eagle.”
“Surely, if there is a weapon, it could be anywhere,” Rikhardsson said.
“Anywhere in Europe, that is,” Sadler, the American, added, noticeably relieved.
Portier turned to face them. “I want every resource on this. Double it again. And again. I want Maguire to be found and brought in.”
Sadler looked at Rikhardsson. Rikhardsson returned the stare. They all agreed on that at least.
Stag jumped at the ring of his cell phone. The number was Jake’s.
“Hey,” Stag said, stretching his stiffening leg on the bed.
“Sorry that took a while. I had to do some research.” Jake cleared his throat.
“What’s the verdict?”
“Well, certainly, the first letter is dealing with a shipment of silk. Silk was all but impossible to get during wartime because every last inch was used for parachutes. The white silk referred to is, doubtless, a quantity of parachute silk—sometimes used for a bridal gown during the war years—if it could be obtained in that quantity. I don’t believe it was gained in quantity to make a bridal gown. I believe the silk was used as a one-time pad.”
“Spies.”
“Yes,” Jake affirmed what Stag had already surmised. “In cryptography, there is only one encryption technique that cannot be cracked. A spy would receive his message in a Vernam cipher or an OTP, a one-time pad. After the message was deciphered, the pad was discarded. He had to be delivered a key to read further messages. It was brilliant.”
Stag rubbed his jaw. “She needed the silk to send and receive messages.”
“I believe so. But obviously these letters are sending encoded messages also. The first is acknowledging the receipt of the silk and perhaps her training in the use of it; the second—well, I guess you’ve researched Eduard Schulte and the Reigner Telegram.”
“She was clearly sending Schulte messages in these letters.”
“Schulte was an industrialist and secretly anti-Nazi. He was in the unique position of traveling through the Reich, through Poland, and to Switzerland whereby he came into contact with the Allies. She seems to be alluding quite clearly to Aktion Reinhard. After Heydrich’s death, they used his first name to refer to the death camps’ gassing of Jews.”
“She took a great risk.”
“Yes. Indeed, a brave woman. Who was she? I could find nothing on her.”
“She’s been lost to history. For now,” Stag added.
“Well, she was certainly in the thick of things. That last letter—” Jake abruptly stopped. Stag could hear him take a deep breath.
“Yes?” Stag said.
“I wasn’t sure about it. Something niggled at the back of my brain so I asked an expert.” He paused again. “I hope you’re sitting down, Stag. I think I have some very unsettling information.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
ANGELIKA ARADI WALKED through the passenger terminal of Zürich Airport, heading toward the cabstand. There was a private plane available to her at all hours through the corporation, but when she went deep, she sometimes found it more useful to travel commercial. That way it was harder for Tarnhelm to track her. Not impossible, of course, but they had no reason to keep an eye on her when they thought she was still in Berlin, studiously pursuing her quarry from there.
She grabbed her wheelie and stepped to the front of the cabstand.
“Hotel Baur au Lac,” she said to the cab driver as she got into the back seat. They drove to Old Town, and in her mind’s eye, she pictured all the maneuvers Maguire had used to evade the Tarnhelm men rather artfully in the subway. Of course, he was an amateur. But he was one helluva amateur. And now he was nowhere they could find.
Except for her.
They pulled up to the columned front of the old hotel. She paid the driver and immediately a distinctive Baur au Lac white cap-and-coat bellman lifted her luggage to the curb.
“Welcome,” he said politely.
She got out of the cab and looked up at the old hotel, its striped awnings giving it a bandbox freshness one didn’t see except in Switzerland.
“Will you be staying long with us?”
She smiled at the bellman. “We’ll see.”
Chief Aldernay Troost logged notes onto his computer. Maguire still hadn’t called, nor had he returned to the Adlon. It seemed he may have disappeared, and on Troost’s watch. He didn’t like it. He could feel the frustration mount as he typed in the details.
The American had no idea how much trouble he was in. Not just with Interpol and its potential to issue a Red Notice, but with the little spook. The blond. She was full of bad tidings, indeed. For Maguire. For him. Perhaps everybody.
He slammed the laptop closed and stared across his desk to Special Agent Jones who stared back.
“I want to know the minute he calls.”
Jones nodded.
“Has anybody got an explanation for these letters our men got from the Bundesarchiv? What’s Maguire’s interest there?”
“We don’t know yet. The letters seem pretty clear cut, but no one knows where Vaterhimmelstrasse is. That’s what’s taking so long.”
Troost stood and rubbed the stubble on his jaw. “The minute they know anything, I want a report. Anything, okay?”
“You think they’ve got him?” Jones asked.
“No.”
“Which worries you more?”
Aldernay Troost gave him the truth. “I don’t know.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
“THREE THINGS CONCERNED me in this letter,” Jake said over the phone to Stag. “The first was the street address of 235 and 238. Then the name of the street: Father Sky Street. I could find no Vaterhimmelstrasse. It doesn’t exist as a street anywhere that I could find. Of course, with the war, street names in Germany have changed many, many times. But Father Sky Street bothered me.”
Jake took another deep breath. “But the real worry were these two sentences: My heart is heavy. Water, I think, is the only cure.”
There was a thick pause before Jake asked, “Do you know the term ‘heavy water’?”
Maguire felt his muscles seize. “I’m not sure. Wasn’t there a plant up in Norway somewhere …” He frowned, trying to remember what he knew.
“Yes, the Nordsk Hydro plant. It was sabotaged by the Norwegians during the war to deprive Germany of its heavy water.”
“And heavy water used for …”
“I’m no rocket scientist,” Jake said, modestly, “but I have to tell you, Stag, I’m quite disturbed by this letter. Especially by the date of it.”
“What do you mean?”
Jake’s voice seemed to get older with every word. “Well, to be sure, I asked a colleague for the etymology of the word Vaterhimmelstrasse. It’s Father Sky Street. Father Sky is an old term for the planet Uranus. And Uranus is … well, it’s the reference used when we named uranium.”
Stag said nothing. The hair was beginning to prickle at the back of his neck.
Jake continued. “This is certainly not my expertise, but I’ve done a bit of further research and found that uranium comes in two natural forms: U-238 and the much rarer form of U-235. It’s U-235 that is necessary to cause chain reactions. To get it, we take the abundant U-238—or what we would call naturally forming uranium—and then it must be centrifuged in a quite complicated process using heavy water to create U-235. It’s a very costly and difficult procedure.” He added as an aside, “Which is lucky for us, because that means not just anyone or any country can come up with enough U-235 to build a bomb. Turns out we have more control over the proliferation of nuclear bombs than we thought. They just don’t happen. They are difficult to create. Things must be precise.”