“Aye, aye,” she said, saluting. “Better go talk to the captain, see what he’s got in mind.”
He watched her hips on long tan legs sway up the stairs to the salon. Now he opened the drawer, picked up the revolver and slid it in his jacket pocket. He took the Buck knife, went up to the pilot station, cut the receiver cord on the radio, and went back on deck.
Five
Rausch had been killed in a bizarre shooting by Colette Rizik at her mother’s residence in Bergheim, Austria. Colette, the Der Spiegel journalist, claimed self-defense. Zeller found it difficult to believe that a woman, an amateur with no combat training, had out-gunned a former soldier and firearms expert.
Arno Rausch had lived with his mother in a pre-war apartment building near the English Gardens until the old lady had a stroke and was moved to a nursing home in Hanover where she died in ’67. Herr Braun had said no one, to his knowledge, had set foot in the apartment since Rausch was killed, so whatever clues were to be found were evidently still there. The apartment was dark and stuffy, drapes closed, dim light shrouding heavy overstuffed furniture from the thirties. He opened the drapes and now it looked like someone’s grandmother lived there, not a fifty-year-old man, Zeller scanning bookshelves filled with Hummel figurines and antique plates. And a wall covered with cuckoo clocks that had all stopped working. Why on earth would Rausch have kept the apartment like this? Even the mother’s bedroom appeared untouched, clothes hanging in the closet, grey hair webbed in brushes and combs in the bathroom as if she had been grooming that very day.
The apartment, cluttered with old-world bric-a-brac, was an odd contrast to the squared-away neatness of Rausch’s room with its framed military insignias and weapons: pistols, rifles, shotgun, sub-machine gun and assorted combat knives. Rausch, it appeared, was a big German momma’s boy, who, if provoked, might be able to single-handedly take out a platoon.
Zeller had found cardboard boxes stacked in the closet. He carried them out, and set them on the floor in the salon. The boxes were filled with files on former Nazis, prominent citizens still living in Germany, police officers, politicians, judges. There were profiles and photographs in each of the folders, Zeller wondering why Rausch would have this information — until he dug a little deeper and discovered the boxes were the property of a Jewish organization known as the ZOB that helped German authorities find and prosecute war criminals.
There was a file on Ernst Hess, profiling his life, Nazi party affiliation, SS number and alleged war crimes, including several photographs of Hess in an SS uniform, posing in front of a pit filled with dead Jews. Similar pictures had been featured in the article about Hess published in Der Spiegel.
There was an audio cassette in the folder that said Cantor Interview on the label in black marker. He slid the tape in his pocket, took the ZOB file on Hess and walked out of the apartment. He went back to his car and drove to the autobahn.
Zeller listened to the tape on the way to Wiesbaden. The interview was really a conversation between Lisa Martz of the ZOB and a Holocaust survivor named Joyce Cantor. Joyce, now an American citizen, was visiting Munich for the first time since the war, and bumped into a former Nazi in broad daylight on Maximilianstrasse. The Nazi had been responsible for murdering hundreds of Jews in the forest outside Dachau concentration camp in April, 1943.
Her story was corroborated by a second survivor, Harry Levin, who had positively identified the Nazi as Ernst Hess. Although no names were mentioned, these eyewitness accounts were the basis of the article about Hess in Der Spiegel. The article appeared October 12th. But Hess had already disappeared a couple weeks earlier. He must have known he was going to be prosecuted.
Zeller arrived in Wiesbaden at 5:17 p.m. Parked and got out at Kaiser-Friedrich-Platz, saw the neo-Gothic spires of the Marktkirche and made his way through the marketplace. Vendors were starting to close up for the day, breaking down their stalls, packing their goods in vans and trucks.
He crossed the street, entered a building he hadn’t been to since his time with the Stasi, rode the elevator to the fourth floor and walked to the end of the hall. Zeller knocked on the door.
“We’re closed,” a voice said from inside.
He turned the handle, surprised it was unlocked, opened the door and went in. “That’s no way to talk to a former client.”
Leon Halip, sitting in a leather swivel chair, was studying an image on an angled drafting table, high-beam gooseneck lamp providing illumination. He looked over the top of his eyeglasses at Zeller, massaging swollen fingers, one hand rubbing the other. Next to him a dark-haired teenager was trimming the border around a photograph with an X-Acto blade. Leon Halip at sixty-two looked like an old man, blinking and squinting, trying to focus on him.
“Former client, uh? So former I do not recognize you.”
“Friedrich Benz.” It was the name on the forged documents Leon had made for him years earlier when he left the Stasi.
Leon smiled and nodded. “Ah, yes, Herr Benz. August 1963, if I’m not mistaken. Of course I remember you.”
“I heard you were no longer in the trade,” Zeller said. “But you appear hard at work, and I see you have an apprentice.”
“I still have an eye, is the hands that no longer function.” His arthritic knuckles looked like red grapes, swollen and painful. “My grandson is learning the profession.”
The kid resumed his task, running the blade along the edge of a metal ruler.
Leon Halip, with a heavy Hungarian accent, said, “You think I am out of the business, so why are you here?”
“What name did you use on Ernst Hess’ passport?”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
The grandson glanced at Leon like he wanted to correct him, but didn’t say anything.
“Interesting you can remember me from eight years ago, but not Ernst Hess from less than one month.”
“It is impossible to remember something that did not happen, Herr Benz.”
Zeller drew the Makarov from the side pocket of his leather jacket, aimed it at the kid. “Now you see I’m serious.”
“You point a gun at my grandson. You don’t think I would tell you if I knew?”
Zeller took the suppressor out of his coat pocket and screwed it on the end of the barrel.
“Gerd Klaus,” the old man said.
“You’re sure?”
Leon Halip kept his eyes on Zeller and nodded.
“When was he here?”
“Twenty-eighth of September,” he said, pulling on the end of his mustache.
“Where was he going?”
“We don’t get involved beyond the papers. You should know that.”
Zeller raised the Makarov and shot the boy first and then turned the gun on Halip and squeezed the trigger.
“Klaus flew Stuttgart-London-Detroit the twenty-ninth of September, arriving in the morning of the thirtieth,” customs agent Fuhrman said by phone. “Five days later he took a flight from Detroit to West Palm Beach, arriving the fifth of October.”
“Anything else?” Zeller said.
“From what I can see that was the last commercial flight Herr Klaus has taken.”
Zeller was now convinced that Hess leaving the country had nothing to do with the Der Spiegel article. He was going after the Holocaust survivors. Taking out the witnesses would dilute the prosecution’s case. That’s why he had not withdrawn or transferred any large sums of money. He had been planning to come back, but something had happened.
Six