The Diaries - 01 (41 page)

“And?” Jean asked,
his pulse quickening.

“And Monsieur
Hartline is the clever sort.
 
He hasn’t
revealed himself at all since that time, at least not that I can find.”

“And the polizei
motorcycle?”

“Nothing.
 
It’s gone. Vanished.
 
He obviously ditched it in a way no one would
find it.”
 
Henri’s voice lowered an
octave, sounding reverent as he said, “The man is a pro worthy of our own DGSE.”

Jean deflated.

“But,” Henri said,
spinning to the computer and enlarging a grainy video, paused.
 
“I’m a pro of a different level.”
 
He poked a stubby finger at the screen.
 
“And I managed to find video concurrent with
the night he planted the bugs at the
Keisler
building
in the
Westend
.”

“Concurrent?
 
What do you mean?”
 
Jean used all his willpower to remain calm,
leaning over and squeezing Henri’s plump shoulder.

“Before we do
that, I must show you something else I learned through my tireless
efforts.”
 
He removed a stack of computer
paper that must have been forty centimeters thick.
 
“I decided to check the major search engines
for the days following Hartline’s liberating whatever it was he took.
 
It took a great deal of time, but I think I
was able to extract something that you will find meaningful.”

Jean’s heart was
racing.
 
“And?”

“Well, as you
might imagine, there were all manner of searches emanating from the state of
Hessen.
 
I began to cull through them,
using a special program to help me wash away the usual pornography and other
trite searches.”
 
He laid his hand on the
stack of paper.
 
“And this stack of paper
represents the filtered out searches from the twenty-four hours following
Hartline’s job for us.
 
I scanned through
every single one of them, numbering more than one-hundred-thousand.”

Jean closed his
eyes, using every gram of his strength not to snap at Henri.
 
“Can you please bottom-line this, Henri?”

Henri pursed his
lips, nearly smiling.
 
“Well, when I scrutinized
the searches, I did find an interesting grouping from the morning after
Hartline did the job.
 
The I.P. address
led me to an Internet café in Friedberg.
 
It was a group of Google searches.”

“Yes?”

Henri whipped the
top sheet from the stack and began to read it.
 
“Here are a few: ‘Nazi diaries, hidden Nazi diaries, Albert and
Margarete
Speer, Greta
Dreisbach
…Adolf
Hitler’.”

“Great.
 
So someone was searching for stuff on the
Nazis.
 
Powerful work, Henri.”

“You’re beginning
to be an ass again.”

Jean closed his
eyes and leaned his head back until his face was parallel with the floor and
ceiling.
 
“Just keep going.”

“In order to prove
that Hartline might have been there, I began to check the cameras that still
had memory in Friedberg.”
 
Henri began to
type rapidly, loading a file.
 

Jean opened his
eyes again, watching as the HD screen flickered.
 
“I thought you told me the cameras reset and
erase their memory after a few hours.
 
How are you still finding video?”

“Because not every
camera in this godforsaken country is a traffic camera.”
 
With a flourish, Henri played an imaginary
note with his finger before hitting the return key.
 
Three frames appeared on the screen.
 
Gage Hartline walked straight into the
camera, buttoning his pea coat and wearing the same pack as he had in the
previous videos.

“That’s
Friedberg?” Jean asked quickly.

“
Oui
.
 
Look at the
time stamp.
 
Fifteen minutes before the
Google searches began.
 
He had just
exited the train station.”

Jean was intrigued,
but still not seeing the transcendent connection Henri was selling.
 
“Are you going to stitch this all together
for me?”

“I’m getting there.
 
You said the French ‘people’ told you that
the book dealer had a chance to represent Hartline and his woman in the sale of
some rare books, correct?”

“
Oui
.”

“On the day the
book dealer died, read what I strongly presume to be
his
Internet searches.”
 
Henri handed a single sheet of paper to Jean.

Jean gripped both
edges of the paper, his hands wrinkling the sheets as his face moved back and
forth as if he were engrossed in a tennis match.

“My God!” he
yelled.
 
“Was he on track with this?”

“If those diaries contained
what he was searching, then they would certainly be a find of epic
proportion.
 
He also made phone calls to several
major publishers and, through a little pseudo field work of my own, I found
that they were all scheduled to meet at the Ritz that week.”
 
Henri stood and stretched.
 
“One editor said the book dealer mentioned
twenty million euro as the floor of their impromptu auction.
 
Twenty million, Jean.”

Jean’s long, thin
fingers rubbed at his chin as his eyes rotated to the heavens.

“As you know,
Michel-the-book-dealer never made it to the meeting.”
 
He snatched another piece of paper, handing
it to Jean.
 
“If those diaries contain
what we think, they could be worth far more than the publishing deals on this
list.”

Jean stared at the
paper.
 
12 million.
 
9 million.
 
7.5 million.
 
All dollars.
 
All advances for trite autobiographies of boring
heads of state and faded pop stars.

And none remotely
close to the jaw-dropping content the book dealer had searched for.

Jean’s knees were
weak so he pulled the chair back up, collapsing in it.
 
He grabbed a napkin from Henri’s pile and
mopped his forehead.

“That’s not the
best part,” Henri said.

His chest heaving,
bordering on hyper-ventilation, Jean’s bleary eyes focused on Henri.
 
“The only thing better would be your having
the diaries in a box under that desk.”

“Not quite that
good…but close!”
 
He twirled his
considerable mass and pointed to the screen.
 
“Remember the videos when Hartline was seen leaving the
Keisler
building?
 
They had specific time stamps on them and, I knew exactly how long he
was gone each time.”

“Yeah, yeah.”
 
Jean was still thinking about the value of
the diaries and the book dealer’s searches.
 
Twenty million?
 
Thirty million?
 
Hitler knocked up a Jewess!
 
If proven true, every history book, every
biography, every movie will have to be rewritten!

“Jean.”

He blinked,
looking to Henri.

“Each time
Hartline left the building with the loaded pack, I was able to find a corresponding
video…” Henri twisted his thick neck, his beady eyes beaming with pride, “…and
pick up Hartline as he was exiting the U-
bahn
, just a
few kilometers away.”

“
What?
” Jean yelled.

“This was from a
security camera.
 
The traffic cameras had
reset by the time I found this, but, as you will see, there is enough
information to at least get you started.”

Jean’s eyes
refocused upon hearing this; they flicked from Henri to the high-definition screens.
 
“Play it.”
 
They sat in silence as the video showed three people emerge from the
stairwell at the Frankfurt U-
bahn’s
Leipziger
Strasse
stop, the sign
clearly in focus.
 
Jean had been there
before, but was not very familiar with the area.
 
As always, Henri had done a good job of
editing the video to display each trip Gage had made.
 
Both times, he exited the stairwell, walked
straight ahead for what appeared to be half a block before turning left down a
narrow street.
 
His pack was obviously stuffed,
evidenced by the bulge and the amount of lean he had in his stride.

“What street is
that?” Jean asked, suddenly panicked with excitement.

“It’s not named,”
Henri said, expecting the question.
 
“It’s
an alley.”
 
He removed one of the
familiar envelopes that had been around far longer than Jean or Henri had even
been on the earth.
 
It was marked “eyes
only”, with Jean’s name on it and the familiar wax seal on the back.

“I’ve got
satellite imaging, the map and, the list of businesses and residences on both
sides of the alleyway.”
 
Henri winked at
him.
 
“It’s parallel to Am Weingarten.”

Jean clapped him
on his well-cushioned back and stood.
 
Just as he was about to leave, he froze.
 
“Do you have a theory on where he was going?
 
Did you scan the businesses and residences?”

“I’m a computer
geek, Jean.
 
I left that part for you.”

“Is there any more
video?”

Henri shook his
head.
 
“Not that exists.
 
If there was, I would have found it.”

Jean didn’t thank
him.
 
He bolted from the building and
jumped in his car, spinning tires, headed northwest.

***

Sorgi tapped in
the final keystroke, Ellis leaning over his shoulder.
 
The computer took a few seconds before the
eight individuals popped up.
 
They were
the sum total of every individual ever to serve in the U.S. Army having a last
name that was a variation of
Schoenfeld
.
 
There was only one with a first name that
started with an M and, after glancing at Captain Ellis, Sorgi clicked it.
 
The computer chewed on it for a moment, and
then a full and detailed record popped up.

Matthew Sloan
Schoenfeld
joined the U.S. Army in October of 1989, starting
his training at Fort Sill, in Oklahoma.
 
Ellis was reading it line by line, but Sorgi had already gone to the
end, pointing to a killed-in-action date in 1994.
 
Ellis waved him off with a frown.
 
He wanted to take it all in, digesting it as
one would a good meal.
 
Or a fine wine.

After training at
Fort Sill, where he graduated with honors,
Schoenfeld
attended Airborne School at Fort
Benning
, then on to
Germany.
 
He was stationed in Giessen,
Germany, making sergeant in only two years—fast, but not unheard-of.
 
In early 1993,
Schoenfeld
transitioned to Fort Bragg, stationed at 18
^th
Corps Artillery,
shortly afterward listed as Special Forces candidate.
 
Eighteen months later, the record showed him
as TDY, temporary duty, with the Fourth Special Forces Group, assigned to the
United Nations Peacekeeping Force in Bosnia.
 
The next line was the one Sorgi had pointed to, and displayed something
that always made Ellis sad to read, no matter who the person was:
Killed in Action, Bosnia, October 20
^th
,
1994
.
 
Artillery barrage was listed
as the cause.

Ellis pulled up a
chair and stared at the picture of
Schoenfeld
as a
young trainee.
 
The shaved head, the thin
face, the typical sleep-deprivation dark circles under the youthful eyes.
 
There was a smaller picture shown, probably taken
from his ID card when he was promoted to sergeant.
 
He had Sorgi click it as he ran back to his
office to get the file.
 
When he
returned, he held the Hartline passport picture to the screen, comparing the
two men’s faces.

Sorgi saw the
resemblance in seconds; Ellis compared everything: forehead, eyebrows, eyes,
chin, ear levels.
 
When he finished, he
straightened, making eye contact with Sorgi.
 
They both nodded.
 
Matthew Sloan
Schoenfeld
was now Gage Nils Hartline.

They went through
each tab of the file, including basic medical records and background info, with
Sorgi printing every shred of information that existed on
Schoenfeld
.
 
Ellis instructed Sorgi to pull
Schoenfeld’s
background from any other sources that might
exist, and to call every childhood friend, family member, and teacher that he
could find.
 
He also instructed him to
cross reference
Schoenfeld’s
duty stations with any
soldiers who might still be in the Army and currently stationed in Germany.

“I’m going digging
in these papers,” Ellis said, hefting each of
Schoenfeld’s
evaluation reports.
 
“And when you’re
done I’m
gonna
have a chat with some of the fellas
who served with him.”