Swastika (27 page)

Links oder rechts.

Left or right.

The 70 to 90 percent directed left were killed.

The 10 to 30 percent directed right were spared.

So fast had Mengele overwhelmed the Auschwitz ovens that it soon became necessary for the doctor to have trenches dug and filled with gasoline. As trucks backed up and dumped their loads of dead and living into these monstrous pits, they were set alight. Mengele oversaw the makeshift incineration, while guards roamed the rims of hell with long poles, ready to shove back the screaming
Untermenschen
who tried to claw their way out.

And then there were “Mengele’s children.”

Test subjects for
die Glocke.

The twins, along with other “exotic specimens” like dwarfs and cripples, were kept in a special barracks known as “the Zoo.” One of each pair would serve as a control subject while the other, with the identical genetic fingerprint, was used for Mengele’s experiments. In this way, twins were the ideal double subjects for the doctor’s research into the secrets of human genetics.

Streicher had marveled at the intellectual breadth of the Auschwitz experimenter’s scientific methods. To see if eye color could be altered to more Aryan shades, he injected dye into the eyeballs of the guinea-pig twin. Once it died or went blind, he harvested the eyes and pinned them to his office wall, like a collector of bugs. To study the dangers inherent in transfusions, he injected the blood from one twin into an unrelated twin with a different blood type, and then reversed the procedure with the remaining odd two. He injected twins with infectious agents to see how they would compare with their healthy siblings. By castrating boys without anesthetic and sterilizing girls with X-ray machines, by shocking both sexes with high voltages to test their endurance, and by cutting off limbs and removing organs to see what troubles ensued, the doctor advanced Nazi science to its depraved outer limits.

Youngsters were locked away in isolation cages, then bombarded with harsh stimuli and their reactions observed. After those tests were finished, Mengele himself escorted the youngest to the gas chambers in a game that was called On the Way to the Chimney. With the older twins, he would snuff the healthy control subject with a shot of phenol, then perform double autopsies—unless science was better served by vivisection. In one stroke of brilliance that impressed the general no end, the doctor had created an artificial Siamese twin by sewing the veins of the pair together.

At Auschwitz, Mengele had whittled three thousand individual twins down to just over two hundred survivors. After he fled to Gross-Rosen, where the Angel of Death’s medical expertise was put to work by Streicher in the Wenceslas Mine, the doctor went through a lot more twins. Now, Mengele’s tests, combined with the modifications of the Bell, had reduced the electromagnetic damage done to the twins to around 3 percent, and then mainly muscle spasms, loss of memory and balance, troubled sleep, and a weird, permanent metallic taste in the mouth.

Die Glocke
was ready.

*    *    *

Streicher exited the mouth of the mine to find the truck convoy in final preparations. All sixty-two scientists from the think-tanks in Pilsen and Brno were climbing into three Opel trucks, pleased to be escaping the horrors in the oppressive chamber below, and to be getting out before the Russians could get their vengeful hands on them. In other vehicles, the crates containing the Bell were being cinched down for the bumpy exodus through the mountain passes. The evacuation involved two kinds of troops: logistics personnel to accomplish it, and armed Sonderkommandos for protection.

Still, the rain poured down.

Rat-a-tat-tat,
like a machine-gun spray.

At the far end of the valley stood a power station capable of burning a thousand tons of coal a day. The experiments with the Bell had required massive amounts of electricity, which is why Streicher had chosen this place to be the crown jewel in his high-tech kingdom.

Now, as the troops began to flood the mineshaft with pumps and hoses, the general sloshed along a prefab roadway that took him past the station and through a thicket of woods to a clearing beyond. There, like Stonehenge, rose a concrete structure about a hundred feet wide and thirty-two feet high. It, too, had thick columns and horizontal beams, and it appeared to be waiting for Druid priests and their human sacrifices.

A closer look, however, revealed a more modern purpose. A rut in the ground fed cabling to the camouflaged pagan henge. The floor within the circle had been excavated down several feet and covered with ceramic tiles like those in the mine chamber. And super-strong steel hooks, designed to restrain something with extraordinary thrust, were fused to the tops of the upright columns.

A test rig for Hitler’s ultimate wonder weapon.

A rig that Streicher would leave as it was in case the Pentagon needed convincing.

*    *    *

Not all the trucks would make it out of the mountains with their cargoes intact. Along the way, as the Opels ground their gears up and down the stormy, dark grades, the three vehicles with the sixty-two scientists in back—the only ones other than Streicher who understood the quantum mechanics behind the Bell—peeled away from the convoy and bounced off into a forest where a line of executioners were awaiting them.

The Einsatzgruppen—four mobile killing squads that had preyed upon Russia—had refined these exterminations to an art. The trench had already been dug to the proper size—thirty-odd feet long, six and a half feet wide, three and a half feet deep—so no time was wasted. The first thirty-one scientists were marched to the edge of the ditch and dispatched in quick succession, four seconds apart, by bullets to the back of their skulls. The second thirty-one tumbled in on top of the corpses, then the mass grave was filled to a mound a foot and a half high.

By this time next year, the decaying bodies would level the grave into flat ground.

And buried with the scientists was the secret behind the mechanics of the Bell and its follow-on weapon.

*    *    *

Hitler’s gold and Hitler’s loot and Hitler’s time machine were safely stored on board as the six-engine Junkers 390 roared along the runway and lifted off into the rainy night. The long-range transport could fly with a heavy payload for thirty-two hours. Two men sat in the austere living quarters in the rear of the plane, and they spoke through microphones in the muzzles of their oxygen masks. One passenger was Streicher. The other wore the uniform of a Waffen-SS soldier and, from the bandage covering most of his face, might have been wounded on the crumbling eastern front while heroically defending the Fatherland.

“Where are we going?” the masked fugitive asked as he eased the bogus bandage off his uninjured skin.

“Paraguay.”

“A long flight.”

“That it is,” said Streicher.

“A long way away from here is good,” said Dr. Josef Mengele.

Vancouver

May 27, Now

Stealing the Mounties’ bison head had been easy enough. Earlier this week,
The Vancouver Times
had done a feature article on the RCMP’s Wild West traditions as a prelude to Special X’s upcoming regimental dinner. Traditionally, the function was held at Minnekhada Lodge, a retreat nestled between the heights of Burke Mountain and the marsh flats of the Pitt River, a few miles up the Fraser River Valley. As always, the red brick fireplace of the lodge was to be ornamented with the huge stuffed bison head from the stairwell at Special X. Watched over by this shaggy mascot, the hearth would burnish the rustic hall with its copper glow. Filling the vaulted loft, the wail of bagpipes would herald a procession of commanding officers through the ranks of red serge to the head table.

While scanning the
Times
to select his next subhuman victim, Swastika had chanced across the photo of the bison head. A few casual phone calls purportedly on behalf of the organizers of the dinner and he knew when the movers planned to drive the mascot to the lodge. As luck would have it, those movers had stopped for coffee along the way, and that’s when Swastika heisted the moth-eaten trophy off the bed of their truck.

Now, with the bison head firmly in his lap and a box of tools open at his feet, the psycho sat on a chair in the map room of the mocked-up
Führerbunker
and used a chisel to pry off the mounting plate behind the neck. Swapping that implement for a trowel and a knife, he then scooped out the sawdust that stuffed the bison head until he had a hollow large enough to accommodate the skull and shoulders of a man.

The black walnut case holding the SS dagger still sat in the center of the map table. The silver plaque set into the lid could no longer be seen, for the box had been draped with a circular doily of tanned human skin tattooed with what seemed to be the battlements of a medieval castle. Neatly arranged along one side of the case were the clippings from
The Vancouver Times
about the three Swastika killings: the Cyclops, the Golden Fleece, and Medusa. Scrabbled together across the front surface of the table was the word
“Untermenschen.”
On the other side of the dagger case was the layout of a garden maze at UBC and a volume from the department of classical studies. This was open at the Greek myth about Theseus’s hunt for the Minotaur in the labyrinth on Crete.

The bison head was prepared.

The psycho set the hollowed-out Special X mascot face up on the floor.

The head required a victim to fill the hole.

Swastika left the bunker to venture out into the night.

*    *    *

“Jantzen.”

“Cort, it’s Dane Winter.”

“You get a copy of the story? Is the swastika okay?”

“It’s fine.”

“We’ll go to press shortly. The paper will hit the streets in the wee hours.”

“Good, but we might not need it.”

“Why?” asked the reporter, his grip tightening on his cellphone as he sensed another story.

“I’m making good on my promise. We might be taking the psycho down tonight. Meet me in the parking lot beside Special X within half an hour. Clear your schedule until noon tomorrow. I might give you the scoop of the year.”

*    *    *

From the moment he walked into the lot at Special X, the reporter knew something major was in the works. The Mounties were ramping up for an emergency response team assault, and there were enough gunmen in gear to launch a guerrilla war. The strike-team members were outfitted in black. Each wore a rolled-up cap that could be tugged down into a balaclava for camouflage. The uniform was a combat jacket over a turtleneck and combat pants with cargo pockets tucked into heavy-duty army boots. The tactical vest over top was known as “the beast.” The words “POLICE RCMP” in bold white letters were hidden behind a pull-down flap, waiting for exposure. Velcro pouches could be filled with as much firepower as tactics required, and these cops were slapping on tear gas, pepper spray, extra ammo clips, and stun grenades. Holstered on each hip was a SIG/Sauer P226 pistol; that was backup for the Heckler & Koch MP5 submachine gun with the pressure-activated bulb that would help them aim in the dark.

As he weaved through the “mount-up” in the tree-lined parking lot, Cort deduced, from the pair he saw calling the shots, that this was no urban takedown. Only a country that still has an untamed frontier could spawn these hunters.

A full-blooded Plains Cree from Duck Lake, Saskatchewan, Inspector Bob “Ghost Keeper” George had as a boy ventured out alone on a spirit quest to survive by his wits in the threatening northern woods, and there he had found the supernatural soul that would guide him through life and beyond.

The son of a Yukon trapper who had grown up in the North, Sergeant Ed “Mad Dog” Rabidowski could take the eye out of a squirrel with a .22 at a hundred yards before he was six.

Those who followed the exploits of Special X understood from the standoff at Totem Lake and the storming of Ebbtide Island that these two enemies turned unlikely friends were locked in a modern contest of frontier one-upmanship. That both had been called in to mount up for whatever was going down tonight boded well for another Jantzen scoop in
The Vancouver Times.

“What’s up?” Cort asked as soon as he located Dane and Jackie by their car.

“I’ll tell you on the way.”

*    *    *

“Off the record,” Dane said, “until we have proof.”

“Off the record,” Cort confirmed.

With Jackie at the wheel, they were speeding south along Cambie Street en route to the airport.

“I suspect that we’re going after a killer who was sexually abused as a boy, in circumstances somehow linked to Nazism. Because of that abuse, the boy split off an evil Nazi identity from his consciousness to form a secret repository for all the shame, guilt, anger, and homicidal impulses generated by the sexual trauma. That Nazi Mr. Hyde is the Stealth Killer who’s preying on runaway teens in boy’s town. He kills them in a revenge fantasy that parallels the abuse. The murders take place at a ranch in the Cariboo that has a pigpen with swastika brands along the inside of its fencing.”

“That’s where we’re going?” Cort asked, excitement in his voice.

“Yes,” said Jackie.

“The Stealth Killer,” Dane continued, “has been at work since the early 1990s. Judging by his choice of victims and the fact that the bodies are never found, we can assume he doesn’t want notoriety or attention from the police. Instead, he gets a thrill from something he believes we don’t know about.”

“But we do?”

“I can hazard a guess. I think he’s a Cariboo rancher who feeds his victims to hogs. Except for the guts, which he trucks down to Vancouver and drops off at a local rendering plant to have reduced into human soap.”

“Holy shit! Why?”

“Because it’s a very Nazi thing to do. In multiple personality—or dissociative identity—disorder, the psycho creates a
new
identity for his Mr. Hyde, and he can give it whatever background seems to fit. In the case of our Stealth Killer, I’ll bet he cooked up a family history linked to the Third Reich.”

“The truck,” said Jackie, “is how we located the ranch. A witness saw it snare a runaway youth near boy’s town. Earlier today, it dropped off a load of guts at the rendering plant.”

“Human guts?”

“No way to tell. To control obnoxious smells, the drop-off zone is hermetically sealed. Whatever got dumped went into a hopper system that hides it from sight.”

“You got the license?”

“Uh-huh.”

“And traced the registration to the ranch?”

“Where we hope the killer is heading now,” said Dane. “We have an alert out for the farm truck, but he might be using other wheels.”

“It’s possible he
wants
to be caught,” Jackie said. “He went out of his way at the rendering plant to reveal who he is. Perhaps his dissociation is reintegrating.”

“You mean Hyde is becoming Jekyll?”

“Not exactly,” said Dane. “I think the evil Nazi is psychologically bleeding into the good Nazi.”

“The
good
Nazi?” Cort queried. “Isn’t that an oxymoron? What sort of fucked-up mind spawned that?”

“You did,” Dane replied.

*    *    *

Just as Henry Jekyll’s house had front and back entrances—a front door so the respectable doctor could come and go as a productive member of polite society and a back door so his alter ego, the depraved Edward Hyde, could sneak in and out for debauchery and brutal murder—Fritz Streicher’s Point Grey home was a genteel mansion with Hitler’s bunker recreated in its cellar.

On his release from a Nazi prisoner-of-war camp run by the U.S. Army after the fall of the Third Reich, Fritz Streicher—who’d had no ID on him when he was captured in the woods north of Dora-Mittelbau—had made his way back to where he and Hans had stashed their civilian clothes and false papers. At the time of his capture, Fritz was dressed in the winter uniform of the Hitler Youth.

Ironically, the skills that teenager had acquired in the Hitler Youth had helped him survive the austerity of Allied occupation, when the Fatherland had sunk into a dismal and impoverished state. Then one day, out of the blue, Ernst Streicher’s elder son had been accosted on the street of a Bavarian town by a man from Zurich who said he’d been sent to find Fritz by the phoenix of the Fourth Reich.

“How do you know who I am?”

“I know the name on the papers your father gave you the last time you saw him.”

“Is my father alive?”

“Yes,” replied the stranger.

“Where is he?”

“Far away in a foreign country. One day, he’ll send for you. In the meantime, come with me.”

Years of schooling had followed in neutral Switzerland, where the young man had majored in modern German history. Once he’d graduated and was securely established in his new Swiss identity, Fritz—not the name he used—had flown to Vancouver, then a little-known city lost in the forests of nowhere, to get a Ph.D. from the department of history at UBC.

“I have some bad news,” said the next stranger, who had met him at the airport.

“My father?”

The man nodded. “I regret to inform you that he died several years ago in the cause of the Fourth Reich. It was the general’s hope that one day you would carry on the struggle.”

“Mein Kampf,”
Fritz said absently, still absorbing the shock.

The Nazi gripped his shoulder. “The torch passes to you.”

From the airport, Fritz was chauffeured to what was then a brand-new house. Here, he resumed his Swiss identity in a style suitable for the son of a rich Zurich lawyer. As far as authorities knew—and the curtain still held today—this estate on the slope of University Hill, looking over the whitecaps of English Bay and across to the snowy peaks of the North Shore Mountains, was part of the real-estate portfolio of a Swiss corporate law firm. Bought back when land was as plentiful as the trees on the West Coast, the Fourth Reich’s underground railroad station was now worth ten million bucks.

And so it was that young Fritz Streicher had gained in reputation, accepting an academic position at UBC and working his way up through the department of history until he was a full professor and
the
authority on modern Germany. In and out of the front door of this mansion on the bluff, Fritz had maintained his Jekyll face, and all the while he’d lived a secret life down in Hitler’s bunker, where post-war Nazi fugitives had gathered periodically to plot a return to the glory days and pick up some gold.

The location was ideal.

This was about as distant as Hitler’s henchmen could get from the post-war Nazi hunters.

And Fritz was the perfect stationmaster.

Too young to have taken part in the Nazi atrocities, he was below suspicion.

The back entrance into the mansion was through this coach house halfway up the drive. Just as Hyde had come and gone unseen by those who used the front entrance to Jekyll’s house, so had the fugitives of the Third Reich come and gone from Fritz’s mansion. The coach house hid a tunnel that had been burrowed into the slope. Wheel a limo with darkened windows up the drive and into the coach house’s garage, and you would end up in the Fourth Reich’s bunker.

Tonight, it wasn’t a limo that wheeled up the drive. It was a dusty farm truck with a broken tail light, the rear bed laden with branches cut from pruned trees. The sky had clouded over and it was beginning to rain, a light drizzle that splattered the windshield that masked the Aryan’s face. As the truck approached the garage under the upper-floor living quarters of the coach house, the psycho punched the button of the remote control to open the mouth that swallowed him like Jonah into the whale.

Seconds later, the door closed behind the truck.

*    *    *

The same Swiss corporate law firm that owned this mansion also owned the Phantom Valley Ranch in the Cariboo. That purchase, however, had predated this one. Title to the ranch went back to 1945, and since then, it had been held by a string of dummy companies scattered around Europe. There was no way to link the two properties together, and in all the years that Fritz Streicher had lived here on University Hill, he had rarely journeyed up to the Cariboo.

Better safe than sorry.

But of Fritz Streicher’s two Swiss-held estates—this city mansion and that Cariboo ranch—the latter better suited the Aryan’s psychology, because he’d grown up on an East German pig farm. So for more than a decade, ever since he’d come to B.C. after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the reunification of the Fatherland, the psycho had spent most of his time at the old Phantom Valley ranch house, guarding the entrance to the mine.

To amuse himself, and because German was his mother tongue, he had begun experimenting with the Streicherstab blueprints that he had recovered from Castle Werewolf in the Sudeten Mountains. What the Aryan had discovered about himself as he tinkered around in the Phantom Valley mine was that, like Nikola Tesla, he was blessed with an intuitive grasp of electromagnetic quantum mechanics. Only when he had learned to tap into the zero-point energy in the Skunk Mountain lab did he comprehend the full space-age potential of the Streicherstab treasure trove.