The Reunion (8 page)

12

It was after midnight, and Martin Dunlevy sat at his desk digesting the police report on Walter Huber's murder. Within minutes of leaving Professor Hudson's home, Dunlevy was on the cell phone, demanding every shred of paperwork on the Huber homicide. The work was sloppy. A B&E gone bad is how the report read, but nothing of real value had been taken.

The ring of his private line came as a jolt. The switchboard lines rolled over to the answering machine after the receptionist left. Only FBI personnel had that number, and no one, other than Franklin, would expect him to be there at this time of night.

He wrapped his fingers around the receiver, debating whether to pick up. “Dunlevy.”

“Sir, this is agent Dennis McGuire. I'm calling from the Oklahoma City field office. I apologize if I'm disturbing you, sir. I honestly didn't expect anyone to answer.” He cleared his throat. “I thought I'd just be getting your voice mail.”

Dunlevy smirked. He could hear the tension in the kid's voice. “Agent McGuire, is it?”

“Yes sir.”

“No, you're not disturbing me. What is it?”

“Well, sir, I have the on-call shift tonight. Our switchboard took a call from a woman insisting on talking to you. She claims it's urgent. I normally wouldn't have bothered on a Sunday night.”

The senior agent was becoming annoyed. “Son, cut to the chase. What does she want?”

“Sir, she claims to have information about the explosion ya'll are working out there.”

Dunlevy grabbed his pen. “Give me her name and number.”

“Carolyn Baker. I have her on the other line now, sir.”

“Patch her through,” he ordered.

“Hello?” said the tentative female voice.

“This is Agent Martin Dunlevy. I understand you've been trying to reach me.”

“I appreciate you taking my call. I won't hold you up long, but I've been gathering information about my father, his name was Klaus Baerwaldt. He was a member of the U-352 submarine crew.”

Dunlevy let out an audible sigh, now wondering why he bothered to pick up the phone. “Ms. Baker, I'm terribly sorry about your loss. But I'm afraid the North Carolina Medical examiner has jurisdiction over your father's remains at this point.”

Carolyn became flustered. “No, you don't understand. He died more than two years ago. He wasn't in North Carolina. I know this is going to sound a little wacky, but I've never actually met my father. My parents were never married. I didn't know who he was until recently.” She started to stammer. “He died of a heart attack.”

Dunlevy mentally added her name to the growing list of cranks as she blabbered on. “Yes, and what is it I can help you with?” he snapped, cutting her off in mid-sentence.

She sensed the terseness of his tone. “It's not that I want you to help me with anything, really. In the last few weeks I've come across some of my father's possessions. I've found something I'm curious about.”

“And what would that be?” he asked, making no attempt to hide his impatience.

“My father was the ship's doctor. Apparently he kept his medical bag from his days in the military. A nice lady who runs the town museum in Alva, Oklahoma, has it now.”

He cut her off again. “I'm sorry, I don't mean to be rude, but it doesn't sound to me that you have a situation that would involve the FBI.”

“You are investigating the murders, aren't you?” she snapped back.

Her forcefulness startled him. “Correct.”

“Then let me finish, please,” Carolyn stated flatly. “The old medical bag had about a dozen surgical instruments in it, a scalpel, several probes, all made of stainless steel. Anyway, the handles are very fat and hollow. The curator of the museum figured out that they unscrew. She found small scrolls of paper inside, about four inches wide and twelve inches long.”

Dunlevy was now mildly intrigued. “And what did these papers say?”

Carolyn hesitated. “There are blocks of typed letters in no particular order. It's not German. Some blocks have as many as five or six letters, but no vowels. I think it might be a code of some kind.”

“Handwritten?”

“No, very small type,” she replied.

“And what did you say your father's name was?” he asked, now jotting down a few notes.

“Dr. Klaus Baerwaldt.”

Dunlevy continued to scribble. “Maybe it is a code, I don't know. I'm not sure it would pertain to this investigation. But if you would, can you make copies and overnight them to me?”

“I'll do that. I've tried to research this myself, but without luck. In fact, I've got calls in to the author of that book,” she said as she picked up the text from the coffee table and flipped open the jacket to look at his face. “But apparently Dr. Derek Hudson isn't taking phone calls. I was hoping he could tell me a little more about my father too. I'm sorry I disturbed you,” she said snidely. “I guess I just felt like I needed to tell somebody about these messages in case they were of some importance.”

“No, no, you did the right thing. I appreciate your interest,” he said, faking as much sincerity as he could at that hour of the night. Dunlevy took down her phone number and promised to call if he needed anything further.

***

Dr. Hudson grew restless at his mother's house. It was late, almost midnight, but the walls were closing in on him. He kissed his mother goodbye, promised he'd be careful, and drove off, leaving her weeping on the screened porch. She always cried when she saw him off. Eighty-three-year-old Mrs. Hudson always assumed that every goodbye would be their last.

Hudson drove twenty miles before he was in cellular range. He picked up the receiver and dialed his home number. When his machine picked up he punched in the three-digit code.

“You have seventeen new messages,” said the familiar electronic voice.

Hudson's eyes widened. He couldn't remember ever being in that much demand. Four of the calls were from the FBI agents who had come by the house. Ten more were from various news outlets, television stations, and newspapers from across the region, and another was from the Dean of History, feigning concern. He offered round-the-clock protection from campus police. Just the thought of it made Hudson laugh. “Some help they'd be,” he said aloud.

The next message was from a publicist at Random House. He excitedly announced that
Wolves
was going into its second printing. “The unfortunate occurrence,” as he described it, would create greater demand. Call number seventeen was from a producer at CNN wanting to know if he could appear Monday night on the
Larry King Show.

13

Joey entered the hospital through a side entrance, walking directly past day surgery, the women's pavilion, and on to the burn center without notice. This was his second visit to Duke University Medical Center. Two days earlier, Joey had spent two hours in the personnel department filling out a fictitious job application for an orderly position he found posted on the Web.

A heavy and jovial black woman with an infectious smile had taken him on the nickel tour as she explained the requirements for the position. But the only two places Joey cared to see were the burn center and the orderly's dressing room.

He hit pay dirt in the first locker he broke into—a medium-sized set of scrubs with a Duke University ID still clipped to the breast pocket. Armondo Garcia Figuero was a thirty-one-year-old olive-skinned man, who, according to the description on his ID, weighed only one hundred thirty-seven pounds. Joey stared at the picture.
Guatemalan or Brazilian,
he surmised,
probably the only people they could get to take this piece of shit job.
Even though he bore no resemblance to the photograph, Joey knew nobody would look twice at the badge if he walked the walk and talked the talk.

On the fourth floor, the name
WERNER
and the corresponding room number were clearly marked in magic-marker on a large white board at the nurse's station. A lanky guard leaned back, balancing on two legs of his folding chair, as he flipped through a magazine just outside room 413. Joey pushed the linen cart slowly in his direction. Up close he looked young, and big, maybe six foot two, but slight of frame. Joey studied him for a moment. He had no gun and the words
DUKE UNIVERSITY
were embroidered on his breast pocket. He wasn't even a real cop, just a lame security guard. Joey knew he could take him out if he had to.

He approached the door and flashed a toothy grin. “Fresh sheets and towels, not that he'll be usin' them anytime soon.”

The guard didn't speak or bother to look up. He allowed him to pass with a nod of the head.

From Joey's first glimpse of the old man he instantly knew there would be no rush or sexual charge from this murder. In fact, it quickly became evident he would be doing Rolf Werner a huge favor. The unconscious patient was connected to an IV, an EKG, and an endotracheal tube that led to a ventilator. There were no bandages. His burns were open to the air, oozing and raw. His body seemed to seep some kind of clear, anti-bacterial gel.

Joey spent hours on the Internet researching which type of injectable concoction would lead to an efficient death. He even cased the hospital pharmacy, devising a strategy to break in and snatch a lethal vial. Then it struck him: what would be wrong with thirty milligrams of Clorox? Bleach would do the job quite nicely.

Joey inserted the hypodermic into the rubber plug at the base of the IV bag. He gently touched Rolf's ancient, expressionless face. “Ready to meet the man, you old Nazi bastard?” he asked in a low whisper. He pressed his lips to the patient's ear.
“If you've got a mess on your permanent press, what do you do, do, do? Use Clorox Two!”
He laughed out loud. Thousands of TV jingles rattled around in his brain, one never far from his lips.

He wrapped his fingers around the syringe, his thumb braced on the trigger. “See ya on the other side, old man,” he whispered as he slammed down on the plunger.

Rolf's peaceful facial cast never changed as the contents of the syringe spilled into his veins.

***

Dunlevy had already made three phone calls to the campus that morning, the first just after eight o'clock. Professor Hudson's voice mail picked up each time. He glanced at his watch before attempting another. It was after ten on a Monday morning, late even by academia standards.

“History department, Hudson.”

Dunlevy was startled to hear a human voice. “Dr. Hudson, this is Martin Dunlevy. I've got a question for you.”

“Shoot.”

Dunlevy looked down at his notes. “Who is Dr. Klaus Baerwaldt?”

Hudson didn't even have to think. “You've been reading my book. The ship's doctor. U-352 was one of only a handful of U-boats that actually went to sea with a physician onboard. Why are you asking?”

The agent smirked into the phone. “Actually, I haven't read your book. I got a call from his daughter last night.”

There was silence for a moment. “He didn't have a daughter. I interviewed him for the book about a year before he died. He was a lifelong bachelor.”

“The woman said she never met her father. She claims she was illegitimate, that she didn't even know he was her father until two years after his death.”

Hudson shook his head. “I think she's probably a crank. The whole thing sounds too strange to be true.”

Dunlevy laughed. “Brace yourself. She says she's trying to track you down.”

“Oh great. Just what I need, another lunatic.”

“She claims that she's been researching her father's past and came across his old medical bag in a museum in some dustbowl Oklahoma town.”

Hudson's ears perked up. “Now, that's the first thing you've said that actually rings true. Baerwaldt was in a prisoner of war camp in Alva, Oklahoma. When the war ended, he stayed. He was the town's only full-time physician.”

Dunlevy rustled through several pages from his yellow legal pad. “She says some lady that runs the town museum had his medical bag from the war. Apparently there were some surgical instruments in it and the handles were hollow. She claims they unscrewed the handles and found scrolls of paper inside. She thinks there are coded messages on the scrolls.”

Hudson was astonished. “You're not serious?”

“Crazy, huh?” Dunlevy offered, now feeling a little embarrassed for calling.

“No, it's not crazy. And she's probably right. If she did find scrolls of paper, it most likely is a code. The Germans were big into ciphering messages. I just can't imagine the U.S. military allowing a prisoner of war to hold onto his medical bag with sharp instruments inside, though,” he said, thinking out loud. “But I guess they could have confiscated it and returned it to him after the war, never knowing there was anything in the handles.”

Dunlevy doodled on his legal pad. “Do you think the messages could be important?”

Hudson laughed. “They probably were sixty years ago, but they're not much good to anybody now. I don't think there are any secrets left, at least as far as U-352's mission was concerned.”

Dunlevy thought about that a moment. “There must be at least one, otherwise those men wouldn't be dead, would they?”

Hudson paused, wondering if he should feel insulted. “Point well taken,” he stated. “Okay, codes, codes.” He cradled the phone to his ear, scanning the wall of books behind him. “Here it is.
The Codemasters,
by Dr. David Johnson, the bible of amateur cryptologists everywhere. I've heard him lecture a few times.”

He flipped through the pages, reciting some passages and offering what he knew from memory. “The Germans equipped all their class-seven submarines with a special typewriter-like device called the Enigma machine. I teach college, so if I start to ramble, you let me know, okay?” he warned.

Dunlevy chuckled. “No, go ahead. I'm the one that called you, remember?”

“The machine had eight rotors—letter wheels really—but Enigma only used three at a time. We'd have to know the month the message was sent to find out which combination of rotors and, of course, the correct key, in order to decipher the messages.”

“So, could you break this code?”

“Me?” he laughed. “No, in fact I don't know if anybody could at this point. It took the Navy almost two years to break the Enigma code, and the rotors were switched every third day. I guess there's probably a warehouse somewhere with all the code keys and rotor dates on file from World War II, but I sure don't know where it is.”

“What about the guy who wrote that book you were talking about?”

Hudson looked at Johnson's picture on the back flap of the book. He was close to seventy when the text was published fifteen years earlier. “I'm not even sure if he's alive.”

Dunlevy shrugged. “Well, history is your department. This woman is supposed to overnight me copies of these scrolls. I'll have Franklin drive them over to you. See what you can do with them, okay?”

Hudson let out a groan. “I'll make a few calls, but I'm not promising anything.”

“And another thing.”

“Yeah, what?”

“If this woman calls, talk to her.”

Hudson paused. “I'll see what I can do.”