Brandenburg (48 page)

“Now, would you care to tell me what this is about, or is it still classified?”

“I still need to do some checking but as soon as I know for certain myself, I’ll let you know. Happy Christmas, Mr. Maxwell . . .”

Volkmann cradled the receiver, looked down at his notebook, and started to make the phone calls.

•   •   •

It took him less than a half hour to get the information he needed, and when he finished making the calls, he could feel the sweat running down the back of his shirt.

He was aware of his heart pounding in his chest as he drove to the apartment. Erica had left a note to say she had gone for a walk in the park. He found her walking by the lake, and they went to sit on one of the benches.

He saw the look of surprise when he told her about Busch and the monastery shooting.

“There’s something else that’s strange,” he told her.

“What?”

“I had a feeling about the place. As if I’d been there before. Not there exactly, but somewhere like it.”

“What do you mean, Joe?”

“Like a feeling of déjà vu.”

Her hand touched his face. “Tell me you’ll be careful. It frightens me. What happened to Ivan Molke’s men, you think the two incidents are connected? That it’s the same people?”

“Maybe.” He explained about Hanah Richter. “I’m flying to Berlin this evening. She may be able to help identify the woman in the photograph, or know someone who can.”

“Was Busch certain about Erhard Schmeltz . . . and that Schmeltz’s sister wasn’t the boy’s mother?”

“Adamant. The question is, who did the boy belong to if he wasn’t theirs?”

“And the Brandenburg Testament. How can you be so certain that’s still significant?”

“Because I checked with the Berlin Document Center. Let’s take Manfred Kesser first. The records say he was a Leibstandarte SS colonel. He was stationed in Berlin at the time this Testament was pledged. I asked for seven names to be checked.”

“What names?”

“The ones in Kesser’s notebook. Trautman, Klee. And the others Lubsch was asked to kill. Massow, Hedda Pohl, and Rauscher. There was a word on the tape. Lubsch used the same word when he spoke of Kesser.
Pedigree
. That was what made it click into place. That and the Nazi armband in the Chaco photograph.” Volkmann paused. “It was the only connection I could think of, apart from the victims’ age group. But the Document Center connects all of the names.”

“What connection? None of those murdered were Nazis, Joe. They were too young.”

“But each of their fathers was a Leibstandarte SS officer, stationed in Berlin at the time the Testament was signed.”

“But can you know that for certain?”

“The three people Kesser wanted killed: Massow, Rauscher, and Pohl. There were three officers on file with those names, Erica. The same applies to Trautman and Klee. There were two officers with those names, each with the rank of major or above. And they were all stationed in or near Berlin. My guess is that they could have been signatories to the Testament. And the people who were killed were the children of those officers.”

“But how can you know that these people are the same children?”

“Because every SS officer’s file recorded the names and dates of birth of their children, if they were married. All the names and ages match with their fathers’ files. I telephoned our politician friend Walter Massow in Berlin, to be certain. His father was prosecuted and imprisoned for war crimes. Maybe that’s why he’s doing the work he’s doing, trying to do penance for his father’s sins.”

“And Herbert Rauscher?”

“His father was a Leibstandarte major captured by the Russians in the battle for Berlin in April of 1945. He was sent to a German prisoner-of-war camp in Siberia and died there.”

Volkmann let the information sink in, saw her hesitate before she looked at him.

“But Kesser’s a neo-Nazi. Why would he want to kill the children of former SS?”

Volkmann shook his head. “I’m only certain of one thing. We’re not just talking about the deaths of Rudi and the others. This is something that goes much deeper and goes back a long time. To the last months of the war in Berlin, when these people swore their allegiance to Hitler. There’s got to be a reason why these people were killed. Maybe there’s a secret someone still wants to hide. And there were other names in Kesser’s notebook. Maybe that’s what the voice on the tape was talking about when it said the names on the list would all be killed. The question is, why? What do the children of these officers know that makes Kesser want them dead?”

“Massow wasn’t killed. Did you ask him what he knew?”

Volkmann nodded. “He was baffled by the whole thing. His father died in prison many years ago.”

“Are you going to talk with Ferguson about all this?”

“Not until I find out why these people were killed. To do that I’m going to have to pull Kesser in and have a talk with him.”

Erica looked at him. “You said there were seven names you checked besides Lothar Kesser’s. You mentioned only six. What was the other name?”

He had been waiting for the question and he searched her eyes. “Your father’s. He was stationed in Berlin at the same time as all the others, was posted there in January of 1945.”

Erica looked away, toward the park, then back again.

He saw the expression on her face and heard the defensiveness in her voice. “Why did you check on my father?”

“Because if he was one of those who swore his allegiance, you might know something more than you’re telling. And that something may even put you in danger.”

“That’s not the truth completely, is it, Joe? It was because you didn’t trust me, and you wanted to see my reaction when you told me. And you still don’t trust me, do you? Even though you’re telling me all this. You look into my eyes, and I know you’re searching for answers. You’re searching to see if I’m telling the truth or lying.”

“I want to believe you, Erica.”

She said nothing for a long time, then she looked at him. “I’ve hidden no secrets from you, Joe. And I know none of my father’s. If I was one of Kesser’s people, why would I have come to you in the first place? Why would I have wanted you to investigate Rudi’s death? Why, Joe? Why would I have done these things?”

He had no answer and he knew it.

“Joe, I hardly knew my father. I never believed in his ideals. You must believe this. The fact that my father was in Berlin at that time—I never knew of this until you told me.”

He looked at the blue eyes watching his and remembered the warm body and the hands touching him in the darkness and how close he had felt to her. Looking at her now, he wondered how he could doubt her.

Her hand came up to his face, touched his cheek, and her voice was soft, almost pleading. “Prove that you trust me, Joe. Please.”

“How?”

“Just believe me. And take me with you to Berlin. After what happened to you and Ivan Molke’s men, I’d feel safer. Will you take me, Joe?”

He hesitated, aware of the blue eyes looking into his face.

He didn’t notice the two men sitting in the parked car in the distance, observing them through the bare winter trees.

43

KAALBERG MOUNTAIN, BAVARIA, THURSDAY, DECEMBER 22, 11:58 P.M.

Meyer saw the lights of the small Tyrolean villages in the valley below as the Mercedes growled up the steep mountain road.

A sprinkling of snow dusted the thickly forested slopes, and as he came around the bend the headlights swept over the closed metal barrier gate. A sign was attached, the words
EINTRITT VERBOTEN!
in bold red lettering.

Meyer halted the car and switched off the motor. He flashed the headlights three times before dousing them completely, then pressed the button to roll down the electric window.

The scent of pine gum wafted into the car on the crisp, cold air, and he saw one of the guards come out from the wooden guard hut that was hidden behind the trees.

The man had a Heckler & Koch machine pistol draped across his chest. He shone a flashlight inside the Mercedes, before he nodded for Meyer to proceed.

Another guard appeared and unlocked the barrier gate. Meyer started the Mercedes, and the car slowly moved forward.

•   •   •

Kesser and Meyer crossed the gravel driveway together to the flat concrete building. Kesser opened the double dead bolts on the gray-painted steel door with a key from the bunch in his pocket. Once inside, he flicked the switch, and the room was flooded with light.

The interior of the building was ice-cold, but the contrast with the bland, functional exterior was stunning.

A wedge-shaped steel gantry stood in the center of the room. A metal launchpad cradled in the gantry held the gray-painted warhead at a 45-degree angle. Below the gantry was a concrete pit
measuring three yards by three yards, the bottom and sides of the concrete lined with matted asbestos sheeting, and Meyer knew it was to damp the launch burn-off.

Two metal sliding doors were set in the flat roof, and the building walls were painted military gray. To the right of the gantry stood the IBM mainframe, its chassis a yard wide and a yard deep. A console screen and a standard keyboard stood on top, two swivel chairs set in front. A galvanized-alloy conduit ran to the bottom of the gantry, carrying the cables that would control the missile launch.

A gray telephone sat on top of a wooden desk beside the mainframe, and Kesser’s briefcase was open, next to it a computer printout.

Kesser led the way past the gantry to the computer and sat in one of the chairs. He tapped the keyboard and the screen flickered and turned blue, lights flashing on the panels.

Kesser said, “I ran the program. It’s fine. No bugs.”

“Is it safe?”

“Of course.”

Meyer looked alarmed, but Kesser shook his head.

“The warhead hasn’t been activated.” He pointed to the computer. “The program’s simply loading up. It takes about a minute.”

Meyer saw the computer screen go blank, then become blue again as a series of unintelligible figures began scrolling rapidly across it. Finally the scrolling stopped, and a white cursor blinked on the top left corner.

“Now the program’s loaded,” said Kesser. He pointed to the screen. “Watch.”

He tapped in a series of commands, and the screen blanked again, then showed a graphic, white against blue. Meyer saw the grid map of Germany, gray lines crisscrossing the blue screen.

Kesser hit another key, and Meyer heard a sound like thunder overhead. The metal doors set in the concrete roof began to roll open on their steel runners. An icy blast of air gusted into the
building; Meyer shivered as the cold night sky came into view, stars glittering.

When Kesser tapped the keyboard once more, the electric whirr of the stepping motor filled the room. Meyer saw the gray-painted missile twitch in the gantry until it assumed its programmed angle, and then the whirr of the stepping motor died and there was silence again.

Kesser said, “Now look at the center of the screen.”

Meyer saw a white image in the shape of a tiny circle appear.

Kesser said, “Locked on target. The middle of the circle is the epicenter. I can expand the scale if you want to see the exact point in Berlin, but you know how it works. Right now the target center is between the Brandenburg Gate and the southern side of the Reichstag building.”

Meyer took a deep breath. The air in the dark concrete building had become incredibly chilled; the metal doors above were still wide open. He pulled up his coat collar, felt a shiver run through him again. Cold or fear? He couldn’t tell which.

Kesser said, “Of course it will never come to a confrontation. They will all back off—the Americans, the British, the others—once we tell them of our intentions, won’t they?”

Meyer didn’t reply. Suddenly the telephone by the console buzzed, the shrill noise echoing throughout the building. Kesser leaned across and lifted the receiver, listened, spoke briefly, then turned to Meyer.

“There’s a call for you. Priority.”

•   •   •

They took a taxi from Berlin’s Tegel airport. Volkmann told the driver to wait while they checked into the small hotel off the Kurfürstendamm, then half an hour later they pulled up outside the lakeshore house.

It was one of the old, prewar properties that ring the Nikolassee shore, painted brown and white, the clapboarded windows shut to keep out the freezing blasts of Baltic wind that race across the lake in winter.

It was bitterly cold as they stepped from the taxi, dark clouds drifting across the moonlit water. Volkmann again asked the driver to wait.

A porch light came on, and an elderly woman appeared behind the glass door. She rubbed her hands to combat the cold, and waited until they came up the path before sliding open the door.

“It’s kind of you to see us so late, Frau Richter.”

The woman smiled at them both. “Please, come in.”

The house was warm and she led them into a study that faced the lake. The walls were lined with shelves of books, and Volkmann noticed that most of them were on the subject of the Third Reich.

He introduced Erica, and the woman shook their hands and told them to sit down.