The Hotspur Affair: A Richard & Morgana MacKenzie Mystery

by Jack Flanagan

  “That is micro, all right,” responded the deputy. “That is one small snapshot.”

  “Being small was its virtue. Microfilm could hold a great deal of information. Microfilm photography was used to save info before everything went digital.”

  “What is it a photograph of?” asked Heike.

  “Probably what all this hullabaloo is about,” I said.

  “Ah, hah,” voiced Morgana with self-satisfaction. “There is another one under the second stamp.” Again, she carefully placed a tiny translucent gray square on the napkin next to the first.

  “Do we have anything that can let us read these?” I asked, anxiously wanting to get into the photos as soon as possible.

  “None of the library devices can,” said Chester. “But let’s take these to the Martha Edy Lecture Hall—”

  “The room used by the biology department?” interjected Morgana.

  “Yes. It has magnifying equipment that is connected to a CCTV system. We can throw the image onto the demonstration monitors.”

  Within minutes, we were all in Edy Hall and bothering Dr. Alice Dodgeson. Though she was setting up for her class, she happily complied with Chester’s request. As she made things ready to send the contents of microfilm to the screens, we took our seats in the front row. With some pushing of buttons, our discovery flashed into view.

  “It’s all numbers?” disappointedly declared Kyle squirming in his seat. “What in the world are we to do with that?”

  “Sheriff,” replied Firmino, “I think that is code.”

  “It is?” Kyle answered with eyes glued to the large screens above us.

  “Joe?” I said, my eyes fixated on the overhead screen, “Do you have—”

  “I have the book with me, and I am already on it.”

  Remarkable, even after all these years, Joe could still anticipate my thoughts. If my old friend and Morgana ever teamed up in a debate against me, I would lose, hands down. I leaned forward and looked right at my old friend. With pen in hand, Joe was whipping through pages of our copy of the old tour guide book and making notes.

  “Richard,” remarked Morgana, looking up at the screen, “there must be some reason why the numbers in one of the photos are typed while the numbers in the other photo were done by hand.”

  “Yes, I found that curious too.” I turned in the direction of my friend. “Joe,” I called, “any luck?”

  “Yes . . . a bit. But it will take several hours to decipher enough to make any sense.”

  “Excuse me,” called Dr. Dodgeson from behind her workstation at the front of the lecture hall. “But I have a class coming in here in half an hour.”

  “Chester,” I asked, “I need some help here.”

  “Mr. Holland,” apologetically continued Dodgeson, “it is a little too late for me to go another room. And I am reviewing for an exam. If I print out a hard copy for you, would that help?”

  “How about it, MacKenzie, would that work?”

  “That would be very helpful, Dr. Dodgeson. Print out, let’s say, two copies for safety’s sake. That would be splendid.”

  “So be it,” said Dodgeson, and two copies were made.

  With our two paper copies in hand, we reassembled in the library’s documents room. Joe went right to work decoding the microfilm using the old guide book, several legal pads, and a handful of mechanical pencils. The rest of us settled around a table and waited for him to make headway. The downtime allowed me to fill in the gaps of information for my colleagues in this grand misadventure. I told them that I believed that the value of the Steinmetz documents must be connected to what was on the microfilm.

  Heads nodded in agreement.

  I went over each detail and gave my speculations on their significance. When I started talking about Operation Hotspur, Heike Fuerst asked about how this relates to HITF and, especially, to her cousin, Dr. Krauss. I was a little reluctant to tell her my thoughts until the microfilm was decoded. As luck would have, I didn’t have to wait long.

  “I did it!” Joe’s voice uncharacteristically boomed and echoed in the library.

  “You got a handle on translating the microfilm?” I yelled back.

  “Better than that, I have decoded the whole thing! Those years deciphering ancient Greek manuscripts of the mystery cults of the first century have paid off.”

  Everyone crowded around Joe, who by this time had buried his worktable with scads of crumpled sheets of paper from several legal pads.

  “Are you sure that you have cracked it?” I asked. “Do you have any doubts or—”

  “None. Once I understood how some numbers stood for words and others stood for single letters and digits, the process became very straightforward. In fact, the coded material translates into English.”

  “Really?” sparked Firmino. “English and not German or Hungarian or even Latin.”

  “Unexpected,” I remarked, “but I am not surprised.”

  Impatient for details, Firmino asked, “But what do the microfilms say?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  “What? How do you mean you are not sure?” growled the agent.

  “Well, to start, there are, in a sense, two things going on. Though both microfilms refer to the years 1954 and 1955—”

  “The time just before Hungarian Revolt,” interjected Firmino.

  “Yes, exactly. One microfilm contains the typed coded numbers. These numbers speak of gold and banknotes, and it has, what looks like coordinates, for some kind of rendezvous.”

  “And the other film with the handwritten codes?” asked Firmino.

  “It is mostly a list of names,” said Heike, holding a discarded yellow paper. “Names of some very important people from HITF.” Morgana’s ex-student looked intently at the discarded paper. “I know many of these names. Both my uncle and grandfather are mentioned here.” The woman spoke as if she were in a daze. “What means this?” she asked, reading from the decoded sheet. “What means, ‘These people are B. Arnolds?”’

  It was uncanny how everyone in the room instantly turned and looked, not at Joe, but at me, and by their stares demanded that I be the one to answer her.

  “Benedict Arnold.” I reluctantly replied. “He was an American general during our Revolution.” I then calmly took the paper from Heike and read it myself.

  “Do you mean that these people were patriots?”

  I looked up and said, with some hesitation, “According to the author of this missive, the people mentioned on the list were traitors.”

  Heike appeared as if all the blood of her body just ran out through the bottoms of her feet. Pale and stunned, she slowly sat down. “You know, before my cousin left for home, I asked her again why she wanted to destroy the Steinmetz Papers.” Heike took a breath, tightened her bottom lip, and looked up to the ceiling. “She just said . . . she told me it was none of my business, but it was necessary for the family.”

  Morgana went to her ex-student to offer comfort. She placed a hand on Fuerst’s shoulder. The gesture was welcomely received. “I am sorry,” softly spoke Heike between muffled sobs, “to have been the cause of this trouble for you, professor, and your husband, and the school.”

  I could see the logic of her apology, but it was wrong. “No, apologies,” I amicably protested. “Things would have happened sooner or later. In fact, you may have done a great benefit by unwittingly speeding things along.”

  Though my intentions were noble, Morgana shot me a look, telling me that I wasn’t helping, and I feared that my wife’s appraisal of my comment wasn’t going to stay non-verbal. Luckily, I was saved from further reprimand by Kyle’s inability to contain what was currently pressing on his mind—a family trait, I suppose.

  “Rich,” demanded Kyle, “what things got speeded up? What do we really have with these papers, spy pictures, and information that is over a half-century old? What does it all mean?”

  “That is an excellent question. And I know one person in this room who can answer that. And s
o, I will let that person do the explaining.”

  There was silence.

  I looked straight at Firmino. “We had a deal, Agent Baldewin. We agreed if I got the information that you needed, then you would let me know what you know.”

  Firmino stood quietly a few feet away from me, and he didn’t look comfortable with everyone staring at him for a change.

  “If you want a copy of the contents of the microfilms, you’ll speak now, Agent Baldewin.”

  Finally, after seconds of hesitation, Firmino spoke. “Very well, MacKenzie, where should I begin? It is, ah, very long and technical story.”

  “Then I will help you. I’ll start, and you can fill in the blanks. Agree?”

  With a sigh of resignation, the word “agree” slipped from his lips. Firmino then sat down at a table next to Peterson and signaled for me to start.

  “ Quickly, let’s sum up how this long tangled affair got started and who was involved. Father Steinmetz and Father Robert Borgata Mason were brothers who were separated when their parents split up. Steinmetz studied in Europe and for whatever reason fell under the sway of National Socialism.”

  I saw Peterson looking a bit confused and timidly raising his hand.

  “That is to say, Father Steinmetz embraced Nazi ideology.”

  The deputy’s elevated hand swiftly went down.

  “I believe that Steinmetz, maybe alone, but probably with a team of like-minded fellow Nazi intellectuals, forged the Adamus Bremensis Map. The discovery of the map was staged and made world news. But oddly, outside verification of the map was never done. World War Two conveniently squelched any attempts on that front.”

  “Why is this important, ” asked Kyle as he was about to lean back in his chair.

  I looked squarely at him with my eyes opening wide. Luckily, he got the hint and landed all four of his chair legs on the rug before Morgana noticed.

  “It is important because the map and Steinmetz’s notes became the vehicles in which to hide the microfilms.”

  “Please, explain, dear,” said Morgana, who intermittently cast a wary eye in Kyle’s direction, “how the microfilm photos got mixed up with . . . The Stoner Papers.”

  “I think events happened something like this. Steinmetz was in Hungary at the end of the war. He somehow escaped the Soviet reprisals that were meted out to captured Nazis and their sympathizers. It may have been because he was a priest and a world-known scholar that he was left alone; who knows. But being a believer in the Nazi cause, I suspect that Father Steinmetz never shed his anti-communist, anti-Soviet Union opinions. And I suspect that he linked up with other disgruntled Hungarians and ex-nazis who had as much hatred for the Russians as he did.”

  I paused and asked Firmino if he had anything to add to my narrative.

  “Only one curious fact,” he casually replied. “Steinmetz joined the Nazi Party in the late 1930s. To my knowledge, he was not an early supporter of the cause. In fact, up to that time, he had no political associations that I know of.”

  “Why would you call the timing of his membership in the Nazi Party curious?” asked Chester.

  “It may be nothing. But then again, Steinmetz’s association with the Nazi may have been out of necessity rather than choice. Just a feeling of mine. Please, continue.”

  Taking Firmino’s remarks at face value, I continued. “So, when the mid-50s come around, Steinmetz being an anti-communist, along with others, formed a resistance cell. Theirs was one of many at that time that wanted to throw the Russians out of Hungary.”

  “The Hungarian Revolt!” piped up Kyle—speaking probably to show me that he was listening and not sleeping as he was inclined to do during meetings.

  “Right. Well, the people in this cell were not the run-of-the-mill anti-communists. They were engineers, businessmen, university professors. They were special.”

  “Richard,” asked Morgana, “how do you know that?”

  “Let’s say an old friend told me.”

  “Bo Boswell, probably,” blurted Kyle.

  Ignoring Kyle’s guess for secrecy’s sake, I continued. “Some were even old black-marketeers who learned their trade in the recent war. It was probably this group, through their personal connections, which made contact with American intelligence and hatched Operation Hotspur. The correspondence between the Americans and this clandestine group was done in code—a code based on the red tour guide book.”

  “That makes sense,” nodded Kyle. “It was a convenient publication at the time for all the parties to get their hands on.”

  “But something went terribly wrong, didn’t it,” reflected Morgana.

  “It seems so, on so many levels.”

  “How so?” asked Kyle.

  “The Western powers could not give any open support to the freedom fighters in Hungary because it would violate post World War II agreements made with the Soviets. In short, Eastern Europe was to be left under the Soviet Union’s sphere of influence. Fearing what the Soviet Union would do if it found the Western Powers interfering in its business, so to speak, the West wouldn’t officially offer any formal aid to the resistance. Any help given by the free world had to be done in secret.”

  “Sadly,” said Firmino, “any assistance that was given was either too little or late.”

  “The result was that the newly installed democratic Hungarian government faced the Russian Bear all alone. It inevitably collapsed when the Soviet army invaded the country to reinstall a Hungarian communist regime. The participants in the revolt were speedily hunted down, jailed, and executed—many without trial.”

  I paused. I saw that Firmino had his eyes fixed on me.

  “Which leads us to Operation Hotspur.” I continued while hoping my conjecture was close to the truth. “Hotspur was a secret plan to funnel monetary support from American intelligence to the so-called freedom fighting cell that Steinmetz belonged to. Now, we know that the money was sent to the cell by special courier. But the poor fellow, upon entering Hungary, dropped out of sight—disappeared along with the money. It was thought that the Soviets captured the courier, killed him, and kept the money for themselves.”

  “And the Americans couldn’t protest to the Hungarian government or to the Soviets,” commented Firmino, “because the United States agreed to stay out of Russia’s business.

  “But that didn’t happen, ” said Morgana. “The Soviets didn’t capture and kill the courier.”

  “Correct, Dr. MacKenzie,” said Firmino. “After the Berlin Wall came down, there was a search of the old Hungarian government records and Soviet archives. The results were that there was nothing found on the missing courier or about the money.”

  “So, a logical conclusion is that the Steinmetz’s cell killed the courier and took the money,” said Morgana with some uneasiness.

  “Rich,” asked Kyle, leaning forward with both his elbows on the table, “are you saying that this entire affair is about some great money heist pulled off in Hungary, more than a half-century ago by a bunch of ex-Nazis?”

  “It appears that is the case. Our Father Steinmetz must have found out about the betrayal of his comrades to the anti-communist cause. He gathered the proof and hurriedly put it into a code that the Americans knew at the time. Maybe he was the original code expert for the cell—very possible. I also believe he was the author of the handwritten number list which was . . . the names of the culprits and the details of their treachery.”

  “But the bad guys,” said Kyle, connecting the dots, “must have found out that Steinmetz knew of their treachery and that he was going to tell the Americans.”

  “Steinmetz made a break for the border with proof of his fellows’ treachery. He hid his evidence amid his research materials,” said Morgana. “But didn’t he know that the borders were closed off by the Soviets and communist loyalists?”

  “I am sure that he did. And he may have even known that his ex-friends were also after him.”

  “Then he would have needed help to get himself safe
ly across the border and into Austria,” concluded Morgana.

  “He did,” piped up Joe, “and he got it.”

  Now all eyes were on my bespectacled friend sitting by himself at a table next to the copy machine.

  “The assistance,” Joe continued, “came from a person with whom he had complete trust in, a fellow priest—”

  “Father Robert Mason,” I said, “Steinmetz’s brother.”

  #

  CHAPTER 40

  “Yes,” remarked Joe, “but things didn’t go as planned.”

  “No, they didn’t,” I agreed. “Steinmetz’s planned escape was found out. The rendezvous spot, where the two brother priests were to meet, was somehow tipped off to Steinmetz’s colleagues.

  “Are you saying,” said Morgana, “that the people who stole the money were the same guys who ambushed Steinmetz and Mason at the border?”

  “Most likely.”

  “Who would betray Steinmetz?” asked Kyle.

  “Good question, I don’t think that we will ever know,” I said with an unintended smirk. “It could have been anyone . . . a loyal communist or even someone connected to the Vatican.”

  “The Vatican?” said Kyle.

  “Someone or some group in the Vatican, maybe. Though, I very much doubt that anyone linked to the Vatican wanted Steinmetz physically harmed. Yet, some people were very, very interested in Steinmetz. Wouldn’t you say so, Agent Baldewin?”

  My question startled Firmino for a moment. “You are asking me?”

  “Your uncle was involved in this affair, was he not?”.

  “My Uncle,” snapped Firmino, “had nothing to do with stealing money.”

  “I agree. I don’t believe your uncle got himself to the Austria-Hungarian border because of the money. I doubt that he even knew about the money. Your uncle was there for the Nazi map and the accompanying documents and to make sure that they never saw the light of public scrutiny.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “It would have been terrible in those dark, post-war days if the world found out that a renowned scholar such as Father Steinmetz had collaborated with the Third Reich by forging an ancient document that would bolster Nazi ideology and promote German supremacy.”