The Tenth Witness (Henri Poincare Mystery) (32 page)

“ There’s something you’ll want to see,” Alec said.

We walked to the hut, and at last I felt as though I was getting my sea legs under me. As the barge heaved on the waves, I adjusted my step without a thought. I might have stayed the night had the coming weather looked reasonable.

“The Cruxhaven U-boat archive sent their guy out yesterday,” Alec continued. “He inspected the sub and confirmed its identity. He brought a copy of its final orders, issued on April 2, 1945. The commander was to run to the North Atlantic and interrupt sea traffic. After he fired all his torpedoes, he was to ram his sub into an American troop or supply ship and sink it. It was a suicide run, Henri. Germany had lost the war by that point. What a stupid sacrifice.”

“So what were they doing here? We’re a long way from the North Atlantic.”

“That’s just it,” he said.

We walked into the galley.

“No one knows. The diver from Cuxhaven confirmed what our guys saw. Two blasts from the inside of the sub, forward and aft, sank her. U-1158 wasn’t lost to antisubmarine warfare from the sea or air. Something happened on board. She shows all the signs of being scuttled, but that makes no sense because there are bones enough to account for an entire crew.”

The divers and the equipment operators on the barge were a friendly, hard-working lot who enjoyed a good-natured joke, often at my expense because of my seasickness. But they watched in silence as I joined them at the galley table. My battered appearance must have alarmed them. Who knew, maybe they respected me for surviving a fight.

But that wasn’t it.

On the table before me was a copy of the sub’s orders. In a folder beside it was the crew roster. I opened it and scanned a list of names. In a second folder was the officer roster. A thermos and a clean mug sat on the table. I poured myself a cup and sipped, looking from face to face to pay someone a compliment for an excellent brew. They were still staring, though, and it was only on opening the second roster that I understood why.

There, smiling from the page, was the U-boat’s handsome young captain, Nils Hauer.
He looks familiar,
a few had told Alec when they first viewed the documents. Some thought he looked like the man who had visited a few weeks earlier. Indeed he did, for Oberleutnant Hauer was a younger, more handsome version of Viktor Schmidt.

Alec was shaking his head. “You go hunting for gold and there’s no telling what you’ll dredge up.”

forty-five

T
he one quiet place in a storm is its center, and that’s where I went. Liesel shouted in alarm when I entered the sitting room of Löwenherz. She rushed to my side, and when we embraced I said, “Careful, twenty different parts of me hurt.” My voice was husky but returning.

“What
happened
?”

“Car accident. The hike is on? I told you I’d make it.”

We hadn’t seen or spoken with each other for a week, and my injuries hurt less when I stood beside her. I wanted nothing in this world more than to leave with Liesel and forget everything I’d discovered.

The children hung back and stared. Anselm, looking as if he were carrying a heavy load, approached and with real concern said: “What’s this? What happened to you?”

Theresa went for a medical kit. It seemed she was always going for a medical kit when I was around.

I tried making light of the injuries. “My rental car looks worse than I do. I don’t think it’s going to pull through. A truck ran a light.”

Schmidt poured himself a drink. He snapped his fingers and released Albert and Hermann to come sniff me. He appeared as sympathetic as anyone. “Thank God you’re well,” he said, clapping a hand to my shoulder. “You’re a resilient young man, Henri. Nine lives, eh?”

All I wanted was one life, with him out of it.

“We’re still set for the hike, I hope. I promised. I’m here.”

“Really,” said Liesel. “In your condition?” She made me sit and brought me a glass of wine.

What a sorry charade it was. A heavy grief was descending on this house. Despite the children’s laughter and all the blessings wealth had bestowed, the family must have felt it. Anselm, for one, looked stricken. The news from Bangladesh and Uganda had unleashed a storm of criticism. Fresh accounts of conditions at Kraus facilities began appearing in newspapers worldwide. With his haunted eyes, Anselm could have sat for a portrait by his beloved El Greco.

“You said nothing stops the annual hike. I’m fine, Liesel. I just look awful.”

“That’s the spirit,” said Schmidt. “Low tide’s at 6:11 this evening. You’ve arrived at exactly the right time.”

Friedrich approached, pointing at the bruise on my jaw and the yellowish-purple rings at my eyes. “Can I touch?”

A servant announced lunch.

After we ate, Liesel took me to her apartment for what she hoped would be a quick tumble in bed. But the moment I lay down, I fell asleep. When I woke, I found her head on my chest. I ran my fingers through her hair.

She felt me stir and said, “Henri, I love you.”

F
RIEDRICH
WAS
the first one onto the mud. He squealed with delight as his feet sank to his ankles, and he promptly picked up a globful and smeared it over his legs. “Look at me!” he cried. For once he couldn’t be a Stuka. The mud wouldn’t let him move that fast or nimbly.

Liesel insisted I hike beside her. It was Anselm’s turn to guide the group this year, but he handed the honor to his sister. “Not this time,” he said, looking nothing like the buoyant, assured man I’d met that first night on Terschelling. “I’ve been making decisions every hour of every day for the past month. For once, I want to follow. You guide us, Liesel.”

She noted the time and stated for all to hear that the tide would turn at 7:10. We’d need to be headed off the flats by 6:30. Her goal, once again, was to go far enough out to lose sight of land. She took a bearing on her compass. She asked that I do the same with the one she’d given me.

We were off.

Even the dour, gray-skinned Franz Hofmann, the estimable Reinhard Vogt, made an effort to join us on the flats. But at the verge of the seabed, where the concrete landing gave way to mud, he poked his cane in and decided to wait for our safe return. “I’ll count you off when you leave and when you return,” he said.

The children wore life preservers, which protected against falling into the tidal creeks, something I’d done on my hike with Liesel. The dogs didn’t understand the mess of it all. They whined, but at Schmidt’s urging they followed him onto the seabed. The children were soon flinging mud at each other, and no one spoke a word to stop them.

“We let them run wild out here,” said Liesel, walking beside me, reaching for my hand. “You know, every other spot on earth has its rules. They must do this, they can’t do that. As long as they stay safe out here, we let them do whatever. There should be at least one spot where you’re totally free.”

Schmidt walked ahead with the dogs.

We all struggled with the mud, the dogs especially. Hermann and Albert sank to their chests at times, but they pushed on and struggled at Schmidt’s urging. Ten minutes into the hike, we were all caked with mud.

That was when I told Liesel I loved her.

She stopped. “If you’re saying so because I did, that wouldn’t be good.”

Schmidt was ahead of us; Anselm, Theresa and the children, behind.

“I’m very sure I mean it,” I said.

“And you waited until now because—”

“Because I could have died in the accident; and when I realized that, what made me saddest was the thought of losing a chance to spend time with you. I didn’t have a chance to say so. We went to your room, I fell asleep, I woke, and you beat me to it. I wished I had told you first. Does it matter?”

We kissed. I took a handful of her hair and brought it to my face. I inhaled and closed my eyes to remember her, this magnificent woman who chose the wrong father. I had come to Löwenherz to do a nasty but necessary job, and I doubted she would want me when it was over. I held her close. We lost our balance and tumbled onto the mud, a soft landing. The children pointed and laughed. Anselm and Theresa walked by, holding hands.

“Shimmering birch,” I said, looking into her eyes. “I meant it.”

She took a handful of mud and rubbed it on my swollen jaw. “It helps, you know. The fishermen swear by it.” She laughed. “Not even clay. You’re my man of mud. That’s Henri.” There we were, nothing but seabed and sky and each other, and I wondered if a man had ever been so happy and so miserable in the same moment.

I told her I needed to speak with Viktor. I walked ahead while she hung back with her brother and his family. In ten minutes I had caught up with him. I whistled, and he turned.

“I’d like a word,” I called.

He stopped and invited me to walk beside him. “I was hoping we’d get a chance to debrief, son. You know, have a meeting of the minds. I see how fond Liesel is of you. You and I should bury the hatchet. I did what I did out of a stern affection for you. I’m hoping you can understand. It’s for the best.”

“I’d like nothing better than to bury a hatchet,” I said.

We were a long stone’s throw ahead of the others. Liesel called after us to mind the clock. They were turning back early, she yelled, to make sure the children would have time if they tired out. I waved and blew her a kiss.

Schmidt’s Boerboels walked between us, their paws sinking in the mud. They lumbered on, just as Schmidt and I did, every step a struggle.

“Nils Hauer,” I said. I stared at the desolate ring of horizon before us.

Schmidt stopped: “What’s that, you say?”

“I called you by your name. Nils Hauer. That’s your name, isn’t it?”

Albert and Hermann looked at him, waiting for a command or a treat. The flats extended away from us in all directions, no trees or grass, nothing but mud and sky. I could see Liesel and the others receding in the distance. Aside from them, Schmidt and I were as alone in each other’s company as two men can be.

“My late brother, who died in the war,” he said. “A submarine commander.”

“I’m afraid not, Nils. I had a lawyer check the birth records in Salzgitter. Otto Kraus had one cousin. That was you. Nils was born to Hedda and Tomas Hauer in 1914. No other children. You are Nils Hauer.”

“And if I am?” said Schmidt. “Many of us changed our names after the war.”

“To escape the authorities, I know. The men of the Edelweiss Society, for instance. Franz Hofmann, too.”

“You’ve been busy, I see.”

“That was not my intention, at first.”

“No authorities were after me. I was in the navy. I committed no crimes that were not acts of war.”

“Would that include scuttling your submarine with your entire crew aboard? You’re listed as presumed dead, Nils, along with your crew—in the North Atlantic. The archivists at Cuxhaven were amazed to find U-1158 just off Terschelling. Do you know what most amazed them? That two explosions from the inside of the sub breached the hull and drowned those men, all thirty-one of them. They counted the femurs. Sixty-two. But thirty-two men went out on patrol. The naval authorities want to talk with you about that, about how you survived when they didn’t. I spoke with the people at Cuxhaven before I came to Terschelling, you know. I’m not really up on navy protocol, but I thought a captain was supposed to go down with his ship.”

Schmidt reached into a pocket for a plastic bag. He leaned over and held out meat for his dogs. He was looking at them, not me, when he said: “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Whatever you say, Nils. I watched you watching the crew on the
Lutine
barge hauling up pieces of your boat. You didn’t expect that, did you? Our dive on the
Lutine
was really the worst luck you could have had. The divers were bored silly because they couldn’t find any gold. They swam wider and wider circles, looking for anything of interest off the
Lutine,
until they discovered a U-boat. With bones aboard. You murdered your own sailors.”

“You lie!”

The dogs perked their ears.

“The navy will determine that. And I should tell you that Lloyd’s of London has gotten very interested. I called them, too. You know why? My guess is that you salvaged about seventy million in gold bullion and coins that belonged to them, and you used it to bankroll cousin Otto’s steel mill after the war.”

Schmidt began walking, putting distance between us.

“You disobeyed your orders, Nils. You never went to the North Atlantic. You and Otto both knew the war was lost, and Otto knew about the wreck—he had since he was a boy. You made a pact, didn’t you? If you could find the gold, you’d both be set. Isn’t that right?”

I heard him whistling. His dogs begin to whine.

“Lloyd’s is sending an attorney to Munich next week to investigate how Kraus Steel was capitalized in 1947. Liesel said you were the money man. But how could you have been? You grew up in Salzgitter with Kraus, both of you poor. You ransacked the
Lutine,
using your crew and your sub. I bet you promised the men they’d share in the spoils. Was that how you got them to cooperate?”

“They were dead anyway,” Schmidt snarled. “It was a suicide run. The admirals sent us out to die!”

“Then you should have died with them. Lloyd’s is going to want its money back. Kraus Steel is large, but Lloyd’s is larger, and they’re old as dirt. They won’t quit, Nils. They’re going to make their case and squeeze seventy million out of the company. Anselm will settle when he sees the evidence. It won’t ruin him, but it’s going to hurt. What’s going to hurt worse is the murder investigation.”

He emptied the plastic bag into his hand and let both dogs eat.

“Tell me something,” I said. “Look at me.”

Schmidt raised his face.

“Did Anselm or Liesel know about the murders—about the attempted blackmail and what you paid Nagel to do? Did they know?”

The question moved him. I had crossed some kind of line, and the muscles in Schmidt’s neck quivered. He strained towards me but held himself back, as if he were chained. “Do you think I’m mad?” he growled.

I paused to confirm the earth was still spinning beneath my feet. For that, I realized, was the worst of it. Viktor Schmidt was not mad. Everything he had done,
everything,
was done with a cool, rational head.