Blood Flag: A Paul Madriani Novel (38 page)

The findings sparked immediate and intense controversy, with a good number of experts questioning both the methods employed and the conclusions drawn. None had any particular relevance for the Blood Flag, except for one thing—the age of the bloody shawl and the flag.

Joselyn couldn’t help but be struck by the similarity. It was obvious why Edward Pack was interested in the article. The Eddowes shawl and the crime scene from which it was taken were estimated to be 126 years old. The Blood Flag, assuming its origin dated from the attempted Beer Hall Putsch, was more than ninety years old.

The key finding in all this was the conclusion by all experts, those who agreed with the Ripper analysis and those who did not, that blood alone, without other cellular material, given current methods, would not be sufficient to establish a reliable DNA profile, not when the blood was that old and the fabric that was the medium had been subjected to variations in heat, moisture, and other degrading conditions. Paul was right.

Joselyn had argued as to three points: First, that Edward Pack as a physician would clearly have seen the potential for DNA as the best and perhaps only sure method to establish the provenance of the Blood Flag. Second, that Andreas Bauriedl, the man who was shot and whose blood was on the flag, might well have genetic descendants who could provide a DNA profile to authenticate the flag. She was right on both points. It was what Herman meant when he told Paul that “two out of three ain’t bad.”

It was the third issue that was most telling. Paul had argued that it would be almost impossible to extract DNA from the blood on the flag after all these years, and on this score he was right, because the flag was a fraud. And Herman had the evidence.

FIFTY-FIVE

T
he ride in the back of the squad car, hands cuffed behind my back, my body seat-belted in, is not intended for comfort. The two uniforms in the front seat treat me like freight, ignoring my questions. These are generally confined to why I am here and what I’m being charged with. It’s the usual guff from a furious lawyer who has been driven off the road and Shanghaied by two covert cops pretending to be monks from the universal church of white supremacy.

I stop with the interrogatories the second I realize this is no regular ride. The minute we hit the freeway the overhead lights on the squad car come on. The driver does a beeline for the fast lane, stomping on the accelerator as the g-force pushes my body into the back of the seat. My hands are crushed behind me as if somebody flipped on an afterburner. Before I know it, we’re tripping the meter at close to a hundred miles an hour, passing slower cars like pickets on a fence.

As we shoot by all the off-ramps, I realize they’re not taking me downtown. It’s strange how fast you can get somewhere when you’re doing hyperspeed and clearing traffic with your own laser light show. A few miles north of downtown he takes Highway 8 east and quickly jumps onto the 805.

When he pulls off on Miramar Mesa Boulevard, suddenly all of my questions are answered. I know who is behind this because I’ve been here before. It’s an FBI building not far from the Miramar Naval Air Station. It’s one of the West Coast haunts for Zeb Thorpe whenever the federal vampire is in town looking to sink his fangs into somebody for information. Son of a bitch! Harry was right. We had good reason to be wary of Thorpe.

Inside the building I am transferred to two agents who take me upstairs. They lead me past two interrogation rooms, one on each side of the hall, where they make sure that I get a quick glimpse through the glass. Inside Harry and Herman are seated in chairs, each being questioned separately. They want us to know that we’re all here, but they don’t want us to know what the other is saying. I am guessing, knowing Harry and Herman, that they’ve already demanded to see their lawyer—me.

Before I’m even settled into the hard metal chair in the little room, Thorpe is through the door, smiling, energetic as ever, his old self. “Hi, Paul. Good to see you. You can take the cuffs off,” he tells the agent.

The guy does it.

I bring my hands around to the front, rub my shoulders and wrists.

“It’s too bad we couldn’t have resolved this on the phone,” says Thorpe. “Would have saved both of us a lot of trouble.”

“I told you. Whatever I know is privileged.”

“I realize that,” says Thorpe. “That’s your job. This is mine. And work is work. By now you probably figured out about the two Aryans, the ones who picked you up. Part of a joint state and federal task force working on leads out of some of the prisons. We have intelligence that white supremacist gangs are on a crusade looking for the Blood Flag. We’d like to get it before they do. Besides, the thing is an embarrassment. You of all people should realize that. Why don’t we work together? Save ourselves a lot of trouble. I’ll do what I can for your client. In the event of any adverse fallout I’ll tell the court what happened. What do you say?”

“I want to see my lawyer.”

“Don’t tell me. Let me guess,” says Thorpe. “Harry Hinds. You know, Harry’s an incredible guy. Man’s got one hell of a temper.”

“You don’t know the worst of it,” I tell him.

“You’d think he’d be doing the same as you, calling for his lawyer. But he’s not. Instead he keeps telling me I’m gonna rue the day, blabbering on about somebody named Gwyn. I didn’t know Harry was married.”

“He’s not. But if I were you I’d get a quick return ticket to D.C., take one of those two-seat fighters out of Miramar, and get out of Dodge before Judge Riggins finds you.”

“Who’s Judge Riggins?”

“You’ll know when you see her,” I tell him. “Touch a hair on Harry’s head, she’ll give you a lifetime term for contempt and make arrangements with her counterpart in Tijuana so you can do your time down there.”

“I wouldn’t hurt Harry. You know me better than that. Still, it sounds like love. When this is over we’ll have to meet the lady. I’ll send a wedding gift,” he says. “But right now we’ve got some things to discuss. So why don’t we get down to it. I’m dealing with some loose ends,” says Thorpe. “Let’s see if you can tie them up for me. Local authorities found a body in Las Vegas. Because of some federal issues, the Bureau took possession of the remains, but we had difficulty identifying the man.”

“Why is that?”

“His head was crushed. The victim got caught in an industrial press of some kind. Trust me, you don’t want to see the pictures,” says Thorpe.

When he tells me the date and the approximate time that this all happened, there is no question. It’s Tony Pack. It’s the reason Tony never showed up at the restaurant, why I couldn’t reach him on the phone, and why he hasn’t called Lillian or the kids. He was murdered before we could meet up.

Thorpe tells me about a man named James Pepper. It’s one of the names he mentioned on the phone, the fact that the FBI had been looking for him, that they believed his identity had been stolen, and that Pepper was probably already dead.

“The problem is we found Pepper’s ID in Las Vegas near the body of the unidentified man. But the victim is not Pepper. We know that because we have Pepper’s prints on file. We suspect that either the killer or the unidentified victim is the one who stole Pepper’s identity and was using it.

“Now here’s the part that should interest you,” says Thorpe. “The man who was killed in Vegas fought off his assailant at least long enough to give us a clue. Under his fingernails we took some scrapings, found tissue, and did a DNA profile. We were unable to match it to any known individual in the database. But we did get a hit, an unsolved case out here on the coast. It was the murder of your assistant, Sadie Leon.”

“Sofia?”

He nods. “It was a tissue match to the DNA taken from under her fingernails. Whoever killed the man in Las Vegas also killed her. We were hoping that you might be able to help us. That you might have a clue as to who the other man was, because we finally discovered the identity of the headless victim,” says Thorpe. “His name was Nino Toselli.”

FIFTY-SIX

I
t wasn’t the first time that a Hitler relic had been faked. Some time in the 1970s a German named Konrad Kujau, a man who had some minor experience forging counterfeit deutsche marks, turned his limited talents to a more ambitious task.

Kujau tried to create sixty volumes, journals that he later passed off as the handwritten diaries of Adolf Hitler, the dictator’s personal memoirs of the World War II years. When news of the long-lost journals broke, the discovery was considered one of the major finds of the latter half of the twentieth century. Publishers lined up to purchase the rights, offering vast amounts, knowing that the diaries would be the subject of worldwide publicity followed by mammoth sales.

Joselyn was aware of the story. She remembered reading about it in school now that she sat there this evening in her study browsing the subject on the computer. It refreshed her recollection.

The Hitler Diaries was a stunning scandal. The German magazine
Stern
had paid almost $4 million, an even more significant sum at that time, for exclusive serial rights to the journals.

World War II was one of the watershed periods of modern history. Hitler was perhaps its most enigmatic figure. It was his mesmerizing power over the German people and his charisma in front of huge crowds that paved the road to war. When he died, the man who had capitalized the
D
in
Demagogue
and voiced full-throated, rash, and often vile judgments on every subject was gone. When he disappeared into his bunker and took his own life, the sudden silence left the world with an unquenchable hunger for answers.

More than fifty million people lost their lives in the war. Nations were destroyed, their names wiped from the map. The world had been catapulted into the nuclear age. The Cold War divided the planet in two, with all of humanity now living under the threat of radiation from the feared cloud, and no one knew why. It was difficult to comprehend how all of this could have occurred as the result of the intemperate and often illogical rants of a failed itinerant artist, vagabond, and political malcontent.

It was only natural that the world might want to look for the answer in Hitler’s own words. It was the reason why the poorly crafted fraud took so long to expose. The journals’ forged handwriting bore almost no similarity to Hitler’s own except for a feeble attempt to mimic the slant. The sixty volumes were so miserably generated that the journal covers themselves displayed the initials “FH” instead of “AH.” The forger had difficulty discerning the arcane lettering of the Old English font and picked the wrong letter.

None of this slowed the bidders or their insatiable quest for the diaries. When questions were raised as to authenticity, some of them doubled down. People wanted to believe the journals were real. Publishers wanted to make money. And the world wanted answers. When the scandal finally hit the fan there was plenty of egg to go around. Everyone seemed to wear at least some. Much of the money paid by
Stern
disappeared. A few executives involved in negotiations for publishing rights lost their jobs. The three principal perpetrators ended up doing a brief stretch in prison. As for Kujau, he returned to his old trade, selling forged artworks of famous artists signed in his own name. His last brush with the law came shortly before his death when he was arrested and charged with forging driver’s licenses. The judge levied a modest fine. Kujau paid it and disappeared into history.

Joselyn was intrigued by something she saw in one of the articles. Included among his many activities over the years, Kujau was active in forging letters and artworks presumably written and painted by Hitler. He made a steady income off this and maintained a collection of what he claimed to be “Nazi memorabilia,” which he sold to collectors from time to time. According to the articles it was believed that virtually all of the items in Kujau’s collection were counterfeit, including a pistol claimed to have been used by Hitler to commit suicide, and “a flag identified as the Blutfahne (‘Blood Flag’), carried in Hitler’s failed Munich Beer Hall Putsch of 1923, and stained by the blood of Nazis shot by police.”

There was a footnote as to the source. Joselyn checked it. The information came from the noted author Robert Harris, one of her favorite writers, the man who had written historical novels about ancient Rome as well as about Hitler. When it came to research, Harris did his homework. He had authored what was believed to be the seminal nonfiction work on the Hitler Diaries.

She wondered if Edward Pack might have seen the article online or whether he had read the Harris book. Perhaps it was this that was the inspiration for his plan. No one would ever know for sure.

It was Herman and his investigators who rooted it out when they found the aspiring rock artist, the man whose genetic code linked him to the Bavarian hatmaker Andreas Bauriedl. Ed Pack had paid the man five hundred dollars to swab his mouth for DNA. But according to Bauriedl’s heir, the doctor also took two pints of blood.

Dr. Pack wouldn’t have needed blood if he was merely taking a DNA sample to do a match against the profile of the blood already on the flag. He would need blood only if he was creating his own flag. He no doubt already had his eye on another of Bauriedl’s descendants for use later to show a match with the flag that he had fabricated. In that way the two profiles would not be a 100 percent match. Such a finding would reveal the fraud. Ninety-nine and some fraction more was all that would be required.

Joselyn and Paul had theorized that Pack probably had an old Nazi flag, perhaps a war trophy; either that or he had purchased one. No doubt he would have taken care to ensure that the design and materials conformed to the period, the early twenties. He would have applied the blood to the fabric and then probably tried to age it without destroying the available DNA, whatever was deposited from the white blood cells. When it was finished, they assumed, he stored it away in the safe-deposit box. Joselyn and Paul had no idea how long it might have been there waiting for Pack to spring it on the world.