A Room Full of Night

by TR Kenneth

  Jake went to his phone and brought up a picture.

  “This is what they were talking about. It was slang used to refer to the SD, the Sicherheitsdienst. Heydrich’s security service. The SD’s uniform patch was the initials SD framed in a diamond.”

  Stag looked down at the photo. There it was, a distinct black diamond as the background with the embroidered letters SD in white. A patch identifying the wearer as one of Heydrich’s goons. Worn on the left sleeve of the uniform. So obvious that, even in the portrait they had of Heydrich, the SD lozenge patch was up front and center.

  “The diamonds in the lake was an oblique reference to the SD men tapped to secure the transport of this bomb. It was her code way of saying they were taken out by the crash,” Jake said. “All the diamonds she referred to in the diary are SD men. She was surrounded by them. Watching them, reporting on them. The goddamned bomb and Heydrich were surrounded by them!”

  Stag took another long moment to absorb what Jake had told him.

  “We’ve got to reassess that diary now,” Jake continued. “I suspect the bomb went into a cliff somewhere. It’s probably still there. The transporting was probably so secret that when the truck had an accident, no one knew about it but perhaps Heydrich. Then he was assassinated before he could do anything. The diamonds have all been a red herring.” Jake sat down, facing him. Ready for his conclusions.

  “Not all of them,” Stag said. He stuck his fingers in his coat pocket and gingerly placed the Blood Eagle on the table like it was radioactive.

  CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

  STAG FOUND HIMSELF driving another rented Porsche to Königssee in the afternoon. Jake had acquired it to keep the trail off of Stag, just in case. To be completely sure they weren’t leaving a trail, they bought new clothes, luggage, and phones. Now they sped south, a seven-hour drive that would put them in around nine.

  He couldn’t get his mind off what he’d found in 12A. He’d washed his hands a thousand times, yet the sensation of the clinging hairs was still there.

  Heydrich had proven to be strangely sentimental. When he’d found out he was harboring his own U-boat, he’d buried her like one. He’d had her encased in soundproofing, never to be found at the bottom of his own private sea. Then he’d demanded everything be kept intact, perhaps, because he’d had plans to visit with her there. Sit beside her grave, as it were, to work out whatever grief actually could touch that ice-cold heart. Perhaps he’d even morbidly thought to relive his times with her in the exactitude of the surroundings. Stag had no doubt that Heydrich vengefully would have had the entire apartment building removed had he lived long enough. But instead, he’d sunk his little U-boat, encased her in secrecy, and made the rest of the world go insane chasing his red herring. His wishes had posthumously developed into the trust that Tarnhelm received after the war. That had become their mandate: the apartment was never to be changed. Nothing was to be moved. Walls were not knocked on because they were looking for his secret weapon and convinced that the clues lay in the positioning of things. Because why else leave everything so precisely the same? The SD dealt in secrets. They were good at keeping quiet. Tarnhelm was driven to find the secret in the apartment to the point of madness. To the point of even fooling themselves. What they didn’t know was that the bomb was the incidental enigma wrapped in the riddle of the apartment.

  “Have you given thought to Herr Professor Hoening? What we should ask him?” Jake broke into his thoughts, referring to the historian he’d spoken to earlier who lived in the area.

  His voice kicked Stag back into the here and now. “What’s your idea?” he asked, shifting gears on an incline. “Is it even in the mountains around the Königssee? It might be somewhere else entirely.”

  “I think showing the drawing of the lake to Herr Hoening will prove useful. Asking around for Nazi diamonds is very different from asking around for a military truck that crashed down a mountainside.”

  “We’ve got to find someone who knows those mountains.” Stag shifted up.

  “Hoening’s the place to start. We can see him first thing in the morning.” Jake smiled. “He’s just like me, an old guy with plenty of time for questions, not to mention for nutjobs that crawl out of the woodwork.”

  Stag chewed on the inside of his mouth. “I’m glad you have had time for it. I don’t want to do this all alone. Diamonds were one thing, this is completely another now.”

  Jake grew solemn. “Yes. This is quite another. Quite another.”

  “I think it’s the Königssee,” Hoening said, looking down at the photocopy of the silk key. “What does this say? Some is in German, and some in Martian.”

  Herr Professor Hoening was a big, smiley bear of a man with a white beard like Santa Claus. He was a retired professor like Jake from the University of Munich, one of Germany’s oldest. Behind the man’s impressive girth was a gothic bookcase overflowing with tomes on European history of the 20th century. They couldn’t have found a better man to ask.

  “Are you on the hunt for Nazi treasure, ja?” he asked, a twinkle in his eye.

  “We’re really more interested in finding the truck, if you really want to know. The truck might have museum value.”

  Stag was impressed with Jake’s save. He was beginning to lie as well as Stag.

  “I know the US military cleared this area very thoroughly. Looking for the Alpenfestung—the Alpine Redoubt—you see?” Hoening went to the bookcase and searched for a moment. He found what he was looking for: a US military manual of Nazi areas around Berchtesgaden that were either cleaned out or destroyed.

  “Here it is.” Hoening placed the book on his desk and pointed to a section. “The US policy of ordnance reduction requires all military personnel to take possession of any and all enemy weapons and hardware, where feasible.”

  “What if it wasn’t feasible—what if the truck had gone in the lake or was found on some inaccessible site like a cliff face or something?” Stag asked.

  “Then it may have been abandoned. After the war, when things were very difficult, if it had been left behind by the US as not salvage-worthy, the locals would have taken it for scrap.”

  “Even if it was inaccessible?”

  “Very little here is inaccessible to our climbers. They’re the best in the world.” He smiled. “But, of course, an entire truck might be difficult, if not impossible, to get completely off the mountain.”

  “Do you know any good climbers? One that really knows the area?” Jake asked.

  “Ah, there’s a fine fellow just down the street quite expert in the mountains here. He’s an American, but his grandfather was a climber from here and he decided to come back.”

  “Would it be too much to ask for his name?”

  “Certainly, I shall give it to you.” The Herr Professor got out an elaborately old-fashioned fountain pen and wrote it down.

  CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

  THE MESSAGES CAME in tandem. Updates. Portier unfolded them, studied them, and burned them. His patience was strung as taut as piano wire. He had his two best agents on it: one whom he trusted, one whom he did not.

  Wincing, he endured the needle-stick of morphine as his nurse injected him. He’d fought the use of it as long as he could, but some days it was too much. Between the pain and the exhausting, eternal urge to urinate, he was in hell, and the only antidote, this.

  Now he embraced the surge in his veins. The sweet relief. Elusive no more.

  “Mr. Sadler, sir,” his secretary said as she watched the nurse depart. “On line four.”

  Portier picked up the phone. They spoke in abstracts, but the meaning was clear.

  “The client is getting anxious. I’d like to give them encouraging news,” Sadler said.

  Portier’s normal annoyance was now chilled by the blessings of the poppy. “Tell them to be patient. They, of all people, know we must do this right.”

  “Of course. But they are concerned by the lack of information.”

  “Information? They dare as
k for information?” Portier smiled, the first time in a while. “Tell them I’ve got information for them: Russia has 1600 missiles capable of reaching DC. Shall we please the client? Or shall we fuck this up and topple empires?”

  “I understand. I’ll do what I can to appease them.”

  “You do that,” said Portier, slamming down the phone.

  With his heart rate up, the morphine blossomed. And it was pleasant, really, these thoughts of his: One colossally stupid, paying client; one target; one domino; one Armageddon. And it was all under his control. Once the bomb was found, he could do as he wished. And let the world be as damned as he was.

  “See? It’s there. Can you see now?” Mac Killburn stabbed his stone-battered finger in the direction below them.

  Stag, Jake, and Mac were parked at an overlook, where the mountain seemed to fall away just beyond the car rail straight into the clear waters of the Königssee.

  Mac continued, “Right there on the ledge with the scrawny evergreen in front of it—”

  Stag took a sharp intake of breath. He suddenly made out the shape of the truck that blended into the stone face. It was unnaturally hunkered down, like a bird settled in a nest, an outline of rust and flaking paint. It had suffered a terrific fall from the road. Anyone inside would have been killed on impact.

  “You sure you want to go down there?” Mac asked, eyeing the harnesses and ropes still slung around his shoulders. “I mean, with your leg and all …”

  “I want to go.” Stag turned to Jake. “You fine up here?”

  Jake looked a bit unsure. “You know, maybe I’m not so old, after all. Perhaps, you should let me give it a try instead. I could—”

  “I’m going,” Stag said, not letting him finish.

  Mac encouraged. “I’ll belay. It’s really not a bad climb, just looks—”

  “Bad,” Stag finished, slinging his metal-scarred leg over the car rail and fastening himself into the harness.

  “Just take it slow. You’ve got time. I do this with kids all the time.” Mac gave him a smile.

  Stag looked down at the cliff, then back at Jake’s grim face. Then he planted his ass in the harness and began the descent.

  Interpol was quiet when Troost arrived. The few agents still there on a late Sunday evening were absorbed in work in their cubicles, eager to get their paperwork filed and be gone.

  He closed the door to his office and settled down at his desk, the flashing screen on his laptop signaling new email. But he had nothing to give right now.

  Where was Angelika Aradi, and why was she so hard to find? He had one job. And for the life of him, he couldn’t figure out what her next move would be.

  The frustration built inside him. Scanning messages, scanning email, he wanted to put his fist through the computer screen.

  And no Maguire. He was on his own again, roaming around, doing God-knows what for God-knows who, and he’d lost track of him in Bali. Now Aradi was back in Berlin, and just as he’d begun his tracking, she’d disappeared, as if in a puff of smoke.

  It was all getting on his nerves.

  He looked up at the cheap tropical isle poster and thought of everything he wanted to do, instead of sitting in the beige little world of public service. And failing his last assignment was not the way to go about it, he fumed, picking up the phone.

  “Troost here. Interpol,” he said into the phone. “I need to step up the information on Maguire. Have you gotten the latest report from the US?”

  He listened.

  “So they did get the FISA warrant on Aradi?” He suddenly relaxed. Now it was going to get a little easier. The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act allowed the US to monitor agents of foreign powers if the court deemed them worthy of a warrant. Should US citizens be tangentially caught up in conversations with monitored foreigners, it was permissable to surveille them, too. Now they could get everything on Aradi. And perhaps on Maguire.

  “Send me everything you have? Great. Thank you. Thank you,” he repeated, almost unwilling to hang up. He wanted to savor the news.

  Stag was gritting his teeth by the time his feet were on level ground again. His leg, torqued and twisted from balancing on the rock-face, throbbed like an SOB. Just above him, Mac was lowering himself on a solo device. Up top, Jake peered down, his white hair blending into the gray, overcast sky.

  “You did fine!” Mac exclaimed, unclipping his carabineer.

  “Yeah. Except going up’s the hard part.” Stag released his harness from the ropes. Then he walked to the end of the ledge where the truck had humped down after falling from the road decades ago.

  “It’s an old one, all right. Before ’44 is what they say.” Mac followed him. “Not all here. The bumpers and the passenger door were taken for scrap. After the war, I imagine. Nobody would bother unless they were desperate.” He nodded to the climb back to the road.

  “Have you ever heard what it was carrying?” Stag asked, touching the rusty side, then staring at his hand and wishing they’d thought to bring a Geiger counter.

  “Naw. No stories I’ve ever heard. It did have a gun up top at one time though. It’s long gone.”

  Stag stared through the rear doors, cracked open on wonky, rusted hinges. The truck bed was busted out as if eaten from underneath.

  “Must’ve had something there at one time,” he said.

  “Yeah. Never seen a gas tank like that.”

  “Gas tank?” Stag asked.

  “The kids were fooling around on the truck, and with the bed rusted out so bad, the tank fell out right beneath them.”

  Stag felt a strange electric current begin to hum through him. “What happened to it? It must’ve been a helluva tank, judging from the hole in the bed.”

  “Shit yeah. A big one. Went right over the edge there.” Mac pointed to the edge of the cliff next to the truck.

  Stag went to the edge, unsteady and reluctant. He didn’t know what he would find, but instincts raged.

  “Yep, went right over the edge. I figured it’d bounce right down into the lake, but it jammed itself into a crevice. See it? Right down there.”

  Both men peered over the steep edge.

  There it was. A great big aluminum “tank,” powdered with white rust, nestled in the crevice like a fallen chick from the nest.

  A perfect ampoule of horror.

  PART SIX

  “I can pursue my enemies even from the tomb,”

  —REINHARD HEYDRICH TO HANS GISEVIUS,

  German Military Intelligence Officer

  CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

  “IT DIDN’T HAVE a tail kit assembly. No fins. I didn’t see any wires, but …” The words dwindled. Stag didn’t have to see the wires to know. It was Trinity, Hiroshima, Nagasaki. Ready, aim, fire.

  “Good God,” Jake murmured, shaking his head. They sat in a heated outdoor cafe overlooking the Königssee. Tourists mingled beneath the torchieres, laughing.

  “It must’ve been too far to get a crane in to remove it. If the ‘tank’ wasn’t recognizable as ordnance, the military just left it to rot. “

  “Thinking all along it was useless.”

  Stag rubbed his eyes.

  “How’s your leg?” Jake looked at him sympathetically.

  Stag snorted. No more needed to be said on that. He’d been lucky to get his ass up from the mountain.

  “You know Mac’s going to wonder about what we were looking for. We’ve got to call the authorities,” Jake said.

  “I know. I just don’t know who. We can’t just walk in off the street with this. They’ll think we’re crazy and have us hauled off. But something has to be done quickly. No telling what Tarnhelm knows.” He looked around, paranoid.

  “I could call up some old colleagues—”

  “Take too long.”

  “Dare we trust the man on the card Aradi gave you?”

  Stag quelled that idea with just a look.

  “Interpol. That’s where to begin.” Troost had left a slew of messages asking
him to call him, but he hadn’t gotten them till he had returned to Berlin and was able to safely turn the Maguirephone on and place the old SIM card into it.

  But now, in a new location, he would use a fresh GoFone. With the tracking on iCloud, he wasn’t taking any chances.

  “Should we take a stroll then?” Jake asked meaningfully. There was no thinking about this kind of phone call anywhere near people or buildings. Just in case.

  “Yeah. Let’s take a stroll.”

  Troost saw the strange number come up on his phone. Immediately he answered it. “Troost here.”

  “I need to talk.”

  “Mr. Maguire? Yes. Of course. Of course.”

  “Not on the phone. In private.”

  “All right. Shall I meet you or do you want to come in?”

  “Meet me tomorrow. First thing. At Kehlsteinhaus.”

  “Kehlsteinhaus?” Troost wondered if he’d heard correctly.

  “Yes. Do you know it?”

  Troost barely knew what to say. It was such an absurd question. “There’s no private road going there, Mr. Maguire. It’s a two-hour hike from the town of Berchtesgaden.”

  “You can take a bus from the Document Center.”

  “Yes, yes, I know that, but may I ask, why there? Are you in Berlin? Surely there are better—”

  “I’m traveling, but I can be there at ten tomorrow morning.”

  “I see.”

  “It’s been opened for the spring. I don’t expect it will be crowded.”

  “I suppose I shall meet you there, then.”

  Maguire ended the call.

  Slowly, Troost put down his phone.

  Kehlsteinhaus. Kehlsteinhaus. That was crazy. If Maguire wanted Interpol to meet him in such a strange place, there must be news. Shrugging off his surprise, he picked up his phone. It was time to inform the higher-ups that there was movement.