“Harry, tell me you don’t believe the Nazi’s back. No offense,” he said to Joyce.
“I saw him,” Joyce said.
“Keep an eye on her,” Harry said to Cordell. “I’ll be down as soon as I can.”
Thirteen
Colette kissed Harry and put her arms around him, holding on tight. “Harry, I am going to miss you so much.”
They had talked about when they were going to see each other again. Harry had been kicked out of Germany for carrying a concealed weapon. If he returned he would be arrested, prosecuted and sent to prison.
Harry had said, “Let’s see how it goes. You might be happy to get away from me for a while. You might get home and not think about me.”
And Colette had said, “You might get lonely and call Galina.”
“Don’t worry. She’s mad, not talking to me.” Harry kissed her. “When are you coming back?”
“Oh, now you want me.”
“You don’t have to worry about that,” Harry said. “I don’t know what I’m going to do without you.”
She saw the last of the passengers moving through the gate into the jet way. She heard last call for her Pan Am flight to London on the intercom.
“Harry, I have to go.” She kissed him one more time, showed her ticket to the gate agent and walked toward the plane.
Colette was in London seven hours later. Going through customs took forever. She didn’t have a lot of time. Her flight to Stuttgart was scheduled to take off in thirty minutes. Colette went down to baggage claim where the lockers were, tried to insert Hess’ key in locker number 48 but it didn’t fit. Now she had to get to the Lufthansa gate that was on the other side of the terminal. She ran most of the way and made it with only a couple minutes to spare.
In Stuttgart Colette went to baggage claim, retrieved her suitcase and went through customs. She found the lockers, but again the key didn’t fit. So now she was concerned. How did Hess travel from Munich to Stuttgart? He could have gone by train, but she doubted he would take that chance. Hess was well known and recognizable in Bavaria. And if he had booked a flight, Hess’ name or his alias, Gerd Klaus, would have been on an airline manifest. Based on that supposition, Colette believed Hess had driven to Stuttgart. And since he was flying to London the locker had to be in this terminal. Colette talked to a Lufthansa ticket agent and learned that the Lufthansa lounge on the third floor had lockers.
She checked it out, found locker 48, and tried the key. It didn’t fit. So, if not Stuttgart, where? Munich was the final possibility and she was going there anyway. First the airport and then the train station.
Franz Stigler was returning from the men’s toilet when he saw the blonde enter the locker area. Eyes glued to her perfect butt in tight jeans, the denim fabric straining to hold it in, as he walked back to the bench where he had been sitting, grabbed the folded sections of a newspaper, opened one, using it as a prop, glancing over the fold, studying the blonde. He was sure he had seen her before but who was she?
Franz had been waiting in the train station for the better part of three days. Ever since Ernst Hess had phoned and said he needed Franz’s assistance with an extremely delicate but important mission. Franz was stunned to hear his voice and afraid to get involved. Ernst Hess was a fugitive. Anyone who helped him in any way would be prosecuted. But Ernst Hess had also been instrumental, both financially and philosophically, in the rise of the neo-Nazis. He replayed the conversation in his head.
“Franz.”
“Yes, who is this please?”
“Ernst Hess.”
He had paused, not sure what to say, at first thinking one of his friends was playing a joke. “Herr Hess, is this really you?” A dumb thing to say, but it slipped out.
“No, it is the Führer. I’ve come back from the dead. Of course it is me, you idiot.” The belligerent tone confirming it. “I need your help.”
“Of course, anything.”
“I want you to go to the train station first thing in the morning.”
Franz was an electrician. He had jobs lined up the next day and all week. “For how long?”
“As long as it takes,” Hess said, voice firm. “It could be several days.”
“Several days? Herr Hess, I have responsibilities.”
“You have responsibilities to me,” Hess said, raising his voice.
Hess explained what he wanted Franz to do, but made no offer to pay him for the work he was going to lose. Franz was married with two teenage children. How was he going to explain this to his wife? Franz had been the master of ceremonies at a few Blackshirt rallies. He enjoyed the notoriety. But going out for an evening was one thing. Devoting work hours to the Cause was something else. But there was no way he could refuse Ernst Hess. Refuse, and Hess might have him killed.
The blonde was opening locker 48, removing a parcel wrapped in brown paper. She turned, their eyes met. She looked away, walked out of the room. He got up and followed her and then it hit him. This was Colette Rizik, the journalist.
He followed her out to the taxi queue, stood behind her in line, and had his taxi follow hers to Schwabing. Colette got out at Wagnerstrasse 12. The driver opened the trunk, handed her the parcel that was in the locker, put her suitcase on the sidewalk and drove off. Franz watched Colette enter the apartment building.
Colette opened her apartment door, stepped in with the suitcase, put it on the floor and locked the door. She moved through the salon to the window, glanced through a crack in the drapes, scanned the sidewalk and street, looking for the man at the train station. She saw him follow her from the lockers out to the taxi queue, then saw him behind her in line.
Could it all have been coincidence? Possibly. After all that had happened Colette was understandably jittery. A young couple walked by her building and she saw a car pass, but she didn’t see a thin dark-haired man wearing glasses with round metal frames.
Colette went in the kitchen, turned on the light over the table, and placed the package under it. She went into her darkroom and came back to the table with a razor blade and made an incision across one of the hard narrow sides of the package and pulled the paper off. It was a painting, bright colors, a man standing between two trees. It was signed ‘Vincent’. She phoned Gunter, her editor at Der Spiegel, and described the painting.
“It sounds like The Painter on the Road to Tarascon by Van Gogh. It was supposedly lost in a museum that was bombed by the Allies during the war. Where did you get it?”
“Ernst Hess left it in a locker at the train station in Munich.”
Fourteen
Hess walked to the shopping center, rented a box at the post office and phoned Ingrid at her apartment in Munich. She had picked up the money. No one, to her knowledge, had seen or followed her. Hess gave Ingrid the Pompano Beach box number and address. “Send it to Max Hoffman.”
She said he would receive the package on the 27th. Was that all right? No, but what choice did he have? Hess said he would contact her when it arrived.
He bought a Palm Beach Post and read it, sipping coffee at a restaurant on South Atlantic Boulevard. On page 3 a headline caught his eye: Murder Stuns Palm Beach Residents. There was an artist sketch of the suspect. Hess studied it, a face under a cap with a wide nose and three days of whiskers, and decided it looked nothing like him. The article went on to say that a forty-one-year-old Palm Beach woman had been strangled in her home on Seabreeze Avenue. Palm Beach police were investigating. Nothing further on the abandoned Hatteras.
Hess had an idea and went back to the shopping center and bought a bottle of Macallan’s for himself and a bottle of Canadian Club for Max. Then he went next door to the supermarket and picked up two porterhouse steaks. He would arrive bearing gifts.