Mark of the Devil (16 page)

Matt sat for a moment, his mind traveling across the various options. “December nineteen forty-four. If
launched
means at least hull construction was complete, she could have been raised and outfitted for one last mission, whatever it was.”

“Possible,” Richter agreed. “Like the one you mentioned on the telephone, the Twenty-five forty. It was sunk in a bombing raid at the end of the war and was raised in nineteen fifty-seven. Repaired and restored with certain modifications, similar to the changes you mentioned about the conning tower on the one you found.”

“The
Wilhelm Bauer,”
Matt said.

“Ja.
Given a NATO number, which I don’t recall. It was operated by the
German navy for a number of years. After your phone call, I
checked. Since nineteen eighty-four, on display in the harbor of the
Deutsches Schiffahrtsmuseum
in Bremerhaven.”

Matt strode back and forth along the length of the room. “That’s it. Everything matches. They raised the sub, got it operational, and sent it on one last voyage. The SS officer’s hat with the death’s head. Inside the hatband, the initials J.K. That guy was on there for something special. Can we look for him in the SS files like we did the U-boat COs?”

Richter nodded, putting the disc in its case and handing it to Matt for placement back in its storage box. He looked at his watch. “Only minutes before midnight. Some of the
Schutzstaffel
or SS files are classified, especially those of the
Lagerkommandant,
the concentration camp commandants. From the insignia you say he wore, I suspect that’s what he might have been. At least one of their senior officers.” He paused, looking at Matt with concern. “You are so tired, we will come back tomorrow night. That way you stay and enjoy some of Hannah’s cooking.”

“And if I can identify the guy, maybe the whole secret will unfold.”

“I hope you can, and if so, I’m certain my government will be most grateful.”

Matt laughed softly, the sound carrying a sarcastic edge. “If the bad guys don’t get to it first.”

Tuesday, 23 October 2001

With the night already stretched into the first minutes of the new day, Matt’s eyelids gradually drooped to narrow slits until nothing could have wakened him short of Richter shouting in his ear. “We’re here, Matthew. Your hotel.”

“Huh?” With a shudder that ran through his entire body, Matt rolled his head around on his neck and listened to the pops. “Yeah,” he said as the taxi pulled next to the curb in front of the hotel. “Right.” Though the underside of his eyelids felt like sandpaper, Matt tried to blink away the sleep that had settled on his brain. Between yawns, he asked the driver, “Hey, Gunther, how much would you charge for me to stay right here for the rest of the night?”

“More than you would be willing to pay, my American friend,” the taxi driver responded. “My time is up, and I am going home to a wife and a warm bed. And if she’s feeling frisky, maybe—”

The crash from behind caused Matt’s head to whip back against the padded headrest of his seat. The sudden impact catapulted the taxi forward, tore the steering wheel from Gunther’s grasp, and sent the passenger side of the car up and over the curb and into a line of tall shrubbery. “What the hell!” Fighting to remain upright, Matt swung around to the rear window and saw a black sedan, its nose buried at an angle in the trunk of the taxi.

Almost immediately, a second sedan swerved to a stop in front of the taxi, shifted into reverse, and slammed into the taxi’s front bumper, raising the front end of the taxi several inches off the pavement and effectively pinning it between the two vehicles. The same force threw Matt forward. His head ricocheted off the back of the front seat and just as rapidly, snapped back.

Shouting in German, Gunther tried to push open his jammed door. “Goddamn, Goddamn, Goddamn!” he screamed in English at two men who jumped from the car in front.
“Was ist—”
His words were cut off by a steady barrage of bullets tearing through the windshield and punching through Gunther’s head and upper chest.

Diving to the floorboard, Matt shouted, “Get down, Eddy!” But it was too late. A nearby streetlight illuminated the blood pumping like a miniature oil well from a puncture wound in Richter’s throat. The widening stain coursed steadily over the man’s collar and down the front of his jacket.

“Shit!”

Matt grabbed Richter to pull him forward and down before the bullets smashing through the rear window could do any more damage. But one look at Richter’s eyes told Matt his friend was dead. “Oh, God, not—” His plea was interrupted by the revving of engines as both sedans pulled away. The front vehicle ripped off the taxi’s front bumper as it surged forward, allowing the left side of the taxi to settle back to the roadway with a gut-wrenching jolt.

Suddenly, more gunshots. Someone shouted,
“Der Reifen! Schiessen Sie ihn!
”
This was followed by the near simultaneous explosion
of one tire, then a second, and the loud hiss of compressed air escaping from the driver’s side of the car. Matt could hear and feel the effects of bullets slamming into both the trunk and engine, and it dawned on him,
They’re gonna disintegrate the goddamn thing…with me in it!

The shrubs next to the passenger side! Gotta get out. Praying the
interior light wouldn’t come on when he opened the door, he jerked the handle back and pushed. Another push. With the grinding of metal against metal, Matt forced the door halfway open. Thank God: no light.
Must’ve hit the battery,
he thought. The opening was just large enough. Matt slithered his way through the doorway and onto the ground beneath the bushes, crawling as fast as he could until, suddenly, the gunfire stopped.

Behind him, Matt heard feet pounding against the pavement. This was immediately followed by a beam of light searching the inside of the taxi. The beam finally settled on the open rear door through which he’d crawled. A gruff voice called,
“Nur zwei. Der Amerikaner. Er ist gegangen!
“

Der Amerikaner!
The American! Hearing those words, Matt knew without a doubt they wanted him—and they wanted him dead.

He had to move, but where? If true to European security standards, the hotel door would be locked, and nobody in their right mind would open it for a blood-spattered man being chased by people with guns.
Where, damn it, where?
His brain raced at lightning speed. And where were the cops, for chrissake? Didn’t the sound of cars crashing and guns firing get somebody excited enough to call the police?

The street sign read
KONRAD ADENAUER UFER
and showed an arrow pointing toward
Deutsches Eck
—German Corner.
Adenauer Ufer
he recognized as the street he’d driven on to get to the hotel, but
Deutsches Eck?
The historical marker he’d seen on the way to the restaurant. Was it a park? A memorial? Somewhere to hide? Prompted by the sound of voices moving from the opposite direction, he was about to find out. He scuttled on all fours behind the line of bushes and into the deep shadow of much taller trees lining the street.

To his right,
Adenauer Ufer,
a two-lane layer of asphalt lit by a row of street lamps. Past the street lay the Rhine and a line of empty concrete piers, all bathed in the light of a moon almost directly overhead. No matter what, he sure as hell didn’t want to go for a swim in a fast moving river. He remembered another near escape. London, and the muddy waters of the River Thames that had almost dragged him under. “Gotta be another way,” he breathed.

To his left was the rounded turret and two spires of what looked like a church. A sign pointed to
Basilika St. Kastor
and another multilevel, typical Teutonic structure
Museum Ludwig.
The murmur of anxious voices, moving in his direction along a walkway between the two buildings, suddenly reached his ears.
Goddamn!
he cursed at the reality of what was happening. They were flushing him out like a rogue animal, pushing him forward, but to where? And to what?

Headlights! A spotlight! Matt spotted two men in a Volvo sedan, its rear end badly dented, moving slowly along
Adenauer Ufer.
The driver directed a side-mounted spot, raking the area with its beam. And then the light was extinguished as the Volvo sped up, turned the corner, and, within seconds, screeched to a halt. Car doors opened and slammed shut.

Other than the river, there was only one way left—
Deutsches Eck.
“Okay, German Corner, here I come.”

Matt made a mad dash across the moonlit street and into the trees. Behind him voices shouted, footsteps pounded, gunshots echoed in the night. One shot, two, three! He knew he wasn’t dead because he could still count the shots. Sucking in quick slugs of air, he ran past the historical marker—but where the hell was he running? And then he saw it, through an opening in the trees.

Perched high above a stone monument, its base like the superstructure of a ship with darkened windows and archways, stood a gigantic bronze statue of Kaiser Wilhelm. Silhouetted against the night sky, at least a hundred feet high, the long-dead Kaiser, portrayed as a helmeted warrior, sat astride a prancing steed. At the horse’s side stood the winged female figure portraying Victory.

On ground level past the monument lay a vast open, triangular plain of concrete, aglow under the light of the near full moon. Two rows of flags, fluttering in the light breeze, seemed to march from each side of the monument to a final flag at the triangle’s apex. And then nothing.

“Aw, Christ!” He pictured the map of the city. Beyond the last flag, beyond what appeared on the map like the bow of a ship, was the meeting of the Rhine and Mosel Rivers. They’d boxed him into what looked and felt like the end of the world. The pinnacle of an ever decreasing triangle. Nowhere to run. Nowhere to hide.

Although scrunched down and temporarily hidden in the underbrush at the edge of the trees, Matt could hear their voices calling from different locations, and he knew. They were in a search pattern, and it wouldn’t end until they had him in their sights. With eyes on fire from lack of sleep, he turned from the sound and squinted at the base of the monument. A wooden door. It was a good twenty yards across open space and through moonlight that seemed at that moment to be bright as day. But the question was, where would the door lead? Up into the monument? Or was it a dead end? As the voices grew louder and the crunch of footsteps on dead leaves became audible, he knew the men were close and he had no choice. He had to move.

Taking a deep breath, Matt sprinted from the cover of the trees across open ground, grabbed the door’s wooden knob, and pushed. It gave, but barely. “C’mon, goddamn it!” Again, more movement. The bottom of the door dragged on concrete flooring inside the base of the monument. A shout.
“Das Denkmal! Dorthin!
“ Words he understood. “The monument! Over there!” They’d seen him!

For only a moment, he looked back. Five men ran in his direction. There was something familiar about one of them, squarely built like a block of granite, but everything was moving too fast for Matt to think.

Kapow!
“Damn!” A bullet thudded into the door as Matt dove through the opening and slammed it shut. Two more bullets, one into and through the door, the other chinking against stone. Almost immediately, he rammed into something and went sprawling. “Jesus Christ!” he cried, biting his lip to counteract the pain in his shin. He reached out and felt handles
leading to what?
A wheelbarrow! Matt pulled himself to his feet, grabbed both handles and, in the dark, wedged the barrow against the door.

“Light, gotta be a light,” Matt muttered to himself as, from outside, a voice in broken German, angry yet controlled, rattled off instructions. He found it. A switch next to the door. With a flick, a dull yellow light filled the room from a bulb on a cord hanging from the ceiling.

With the sound of fists and shoulders pounding against the door, he pivoted around, looking, searching. The room was filled with gardening tools: gasoline-powered blowers and weed trimmers, shovels, hedge clippers. There were large bags labeled
Kunstdünger
which, from the graphics on the side, he knew had to be fertilizer; plastic containers labeled
Insektenpulver
—insect powder; and a shelf lined with bottles of
Unkrautvertilgungsmittel
—weed killer. Thank God for pictures. At the rear of the room was an undersized archway and another door. He grabbed the door’s handle, pulled, and found himself at the entrance to a tunnel, literally a black hole, leading deeper into the bowels of the monument.
Another way out?
But he desperately needed a weapon, something to fight with, whether in the darkness of the room and tunnel, or outside if he could find the way.

Partially hidden by the bags of fertilizer was a rake, its long wooden handle leading to a row of twelve 2-inch teeth about 12 to 15 inches wide. Next to the rake, hanging from a hook on the wall, was a short-handled scythe. Looking quickly over his shoulder, Matt could see the door and wheelbarrow give a little each time someone shoved a shoulder against it. Only a few more seconds and…

Memorizing the lay of the room and the way to the tunnel opening, Matt grabbed the rake and scythe and pocketed a bottle of weed killer. Why the weed killer, he didn’t really know, unless it was to throw at one of the hunters. With his body facing the entrance to the tunnel, he swung the rake, smashing the light bulb, and moved forward to the steady sound of men cursing and shoving against the door. Inch-by-inch, the edge of the wheelbarrow scraped against the concrete as it gradually yielded to the unrelenting pressure.

With the scythe and rake in his left hand, he ran along the tunnel, the fingers of his right hand constantly seeking and touching the wall for both support and guidance through the darkness. After what seemed forever, the tunnel ended at a T-shaped intersection.
Which way?
Not knowing if the tunnel extended to his left, he followed his right hand around the corner, coming to an abrupt stop as he heard the door give and men rush into the storage room.

The sudden glow of flashlights coming on behind him seemed to crawl down the tunnel in his direction. It was, however, enough light for him to see a flight of rusty iron steps leading up to an equally rusty metal trapdoor, its two sides bolted on the underside by only a slender metal rod running through two metal horseshoe clamps.

“Thank you, God,” he murmured as he climbed, two steps at a time, to the top, jerked the rod from the clamps, and pushed open one side of the door. Chilled night air struck him in the face. He was at the base of the main monument that held up the statues. Behind him, he could hear orders shouted and men running through the tunnel. He knew he had to move.

Throwing the rake and scythe ahead of him and ignoring the clamor their metal made against stone, he pushed up from the steps. With one knee on the stone surface he was ready to stand, when a hand suddenly grabbed his ankle and yanked backwards. He kicked out, but the hand refused to let go. Then two hands. A man’s voice shouted in German, and he knew exactly what the words meant: “I’ve got him!”

Still kicking, Matt twisted his body until his backside was against the cold stone of the monument. Jerking the bottle of weed killer from his pocket, he ripped away the cap and shouted, “Not yet, asshole,” and sloshed the liquid in the man’s face.

The man grabbed for his eyes, crying,
“Meine Augen! Meine Augen!”
At the same time, Matt kicked with both feet, hitting the
man’s hands and face with the heel of his shoe and sending him crashing backwards down the stairs.

“One down, four to go,” Matt said automatically as he threw the bottle of weed killer down the stairs and slammed the metal door shut as hard as he could. Grabbing the rake and scythe, he surged up a flight of steps and through a large, rectangular opening into the base of the monument. Some 30 feet above stood the bronze Kaiser Wilhelm, his horse, and the winged lady, but Matt had no intention of joining them. This is where he would make his stand, however it might end.

Moving quickly to the center of the room, its ceiling at least 12 feet above his head, Matt surveyed his surroundings. The space was over 30 feet in length and approximately 25 feet wide. Behind him were three rectangular openings, 10 feet high by at least 25 feet wide, through which he could see the tops of trees and the lights of Koblenz’ central city. To his left were four more huge openings. Through those, he could see the Mosel River and intermittent car lights crossing the river’s two bridges to and from the northern part of the city. Dead ahead was the junction of the Mosel and Rhine. The far bank gave way to a campground, its streetlights reflecting off rows of trailers and recreational vehicles. Finally, to his right were four entranceways, the moonlit Rhine, and the floodlit walls of the
Ehrenbreitstein Fortress
stretching along the far hills.

He wondered,
If four hunters remain, which way will they come? Will I hear them?
Possibly; possibly not, considering the sound of traffic still moving along the city’s main arteries and an occasional siren in the distance. As far as anyone coming to his rescue, he knew he could forget it. He was on his own.

Bending low so as not to create a silhouetted target of opportunity against city lights, he ran as rapidly as he could between stone walls separating the five-foot-wide openings, quickly noting steps leading up on only the two sides facing the rivers. Which side would they take? The Mosel or the Rhine? Or both at the same time? He had to decide which to defend first. The side with the deepest shadows would provide him the best cover. Wanting to hear his own voice, he looked to his right and said, “The Rhine.”

With the scythe’s blade slipped beneath his belt, he grasped the rake and edged behind one of the stone walls separating the two central entranceways on the Rhine River side and waited. He counted the seconds: “one Mississippi, two Mississippi, three Mississippi…” To his surprise, he heard whispers on the steps below. He watched, waiting for shadows to appear, stretched long by lights from across the river. One, then two shadows moved up the steps.

One shadow disappeared, apparently moving around to the next entrance. The other shadow grew larger, stretching across the floor of the room as it moved to the edge of the first opening.

As that shadow reached the top step, Matt jumped forward and swung the rake at head-height. The impact of metal tines against flesh and bone created a wet thunking sound like hitting a ripe cantaloupe. Ignoring the man’s cries and knowing the second man would be attacking from the rear, Matt jerked the rake backwards, pulling the man headfirst into the room. With the rake’s teeth embedded in the left side of the man’s face and throat, the teeth ripped free, opening a raw swath of bone, flesh, and blood.

Matt immediately threw the rake aside, whipped the scythe from his belt, and spun on his heel as the second man’s arm and pistol came around the corner of the second entrance. Before the man could fire, the scythe’s curved blade sliced down through the wrist, sending hand and pistol flying through the air and landing in the middle of the floor. The man looked at his wrist, stunned at first, then screamed. Holding his arm, he staggered halfway down the steps before stumbling and falling headfirst to the monument’s lower level.

Refusing to allow himself the luxury of rest, Matt darted toward the pistol, scooped it up, and pried the hand and fingers from the handle and trigger; then he rolled along the floor. At the same time, he squeezed off four rapid shots at the silhouette rising up through one of the openings on the Mosel side of the monument. Except for the shots, there was no sound, no cry of pain, no gasp for breath. Just a silhouette as it folded forward and dropped to the floor.

As Matt lay panting on the stone floor, the pistol still pointed at the opening, a voice from farther down the steps called, “A most impressive display, Mr. Berkeley. It appears we’ve underestimated your abilities.”

“Fuck off, sonofabitch!”

Soft laughter rose from somewhere outside. “You win this time, Mr. Berkeley, but we will meet again, I promise. Until then,
Auf Wiedersehen.”
The man’s words drifted away on the breeze rising from the rivers below.

Matt got to his feet and stood for a moment, legs shaking with fatigue, body shuddering as he realized how close to death he had come. It was the voice, however, that froze him in place. The words had been English; the accent, American. He’d heard it before, but where?

And then he remembered. The turnout near Wiesbaden on the Autobahn. The man in the black Volvo. “I’ll be damned!”

The sound of sirens grew louder and nearer. It died just beyond the trees and buildings he’d passed on his way in search of safety. Someone had finally alerted the police about the taxi, but would they come as far as the
Deutsches Eck?
He had to hurry.

After scrubbing the pistol, rake, and scythe handles with dirt at the rear of the monument to destroy fingerprints, Matt threw everything as far out into the Rhine as he could. Knowing there was no evading his responsibility to Richter, and with story prepared, he made his way toward the already frenzied scene in front of the hotel. Breaking into a field of car lights illuminating the area, he saw the bullet-riddled taxi had been pulled back from the line of crushed shrubs and now rested against the curb. With an exaggerated stagger, he moved forward as though in a daze. Almost to the taxi and its badly crushed hood and grillwork, he called out, “Eddy. Where’s Eddy?”

With his eyes on two policemen who turned and started in his direction with their weapons drawn, Matt misjudged the height of the curb. Suddenly he was falling. He reached for support, but there was only the blur of something metallic before his forehead smashed into the taxi’s crumpled front fender. With an instant flash of pain, his world turned blood-red, then black.