by David Wood
He expected a gruff, “Damn right,” but instead, Maxie’s tone was conciliatory. “I know you’re frustrated, Dane. I’m frustrated, and I’ve been taking cocked-up orders and saying ‘Yes, Sir,’ a lot longer than you have. The only answer I have for you is what I tell myself. We took an oath to follow the orders of our elected civilian leaders, and unless they are illegal or immoral, we are duty bound to carry them out.”
“The Rat is wanted for about 8,000 counts of murder,” Maddock fired back. The accusation seemed insufficient to describe the crimes that had been committed. He had visited the site of the Omarska camp, one of nearly seven hundred detention camps where thousands of Bosnians and Croats had been detained and systematically exterminated. He had seen the mass graves where hundreds of bodies had been dumped and covered over by bulldozers. “Letting him go is both illegal and immoral.”
Maxie was silent for several seconds, and when he spoke again, there was a profound sadness in his voice. “We can talk about this when you get here. If you feel so inclined.”
Something about the way he said “when you get here” told Maddock that Maxie wasn’t talking about the end of their rotation in two weeks’ time. “Maxie, are you recalling us? We can do the job. It’s not a problem.”
“It’s not that,” Maxie said, with the same grave tone. “And I’m not bringing the platoon back. Just you. Emergency leave. I’ve already cut your orders.”
“Emergency?” A cold surge of adrenaline raced through Maddock’s veins. “Maxie what’s happened?”
It was the nature of military life that one’s duty came ahead of crises on the home front. Emergency leave was a rare thing, reserved for only the direst circumstances, like a dead or dying spouse or child. Maddock had neither—a career in Special Operations took a toll on families, and while he deeply loved his girlfriend, Melissa Moore, they had not yet discussed taking their relationship to the next step.
“I’m sorry, Dane. There’s just no easy way to say this. I should have told you yesterday when it happened, but I needed you to stay focused on the op. For all the good it did.”
“Who, Maxie?” Maddock pleaded.
“It was a car accident. Your parents... I’m sorry, Dane. They’re gone.”
TWO
Moscow, Russia
“When I told you we were going to be searching for Nazi gold, I’ll bet you thought it would be a little more exciting than this.”
Lia Markova didn’t need to look back to identify the person standing right behind her and probably reading over her shoulder, but she did anyway, giving the man—her boss, Professor Oleg Petrov—a patient smile. “I am an archivist, professor. This is exactly what I expected to be doing.”
“Of course, but still...” The historian wagged his head in mock despair. “It’s so dry. These men were the monsters of the Great Patriotic War, and yet in these documents, they seem like mere apparatchiki.”
Lia suppressed a smile. Apparatchik was an old Soviet-era term used to describe low-level Communist Party officials—political functionaries so mired in procedure and bureaucracy that life for those under them became a sort of living hell. “My babushka would say the apparatchiki were monsters.”
“That is true enough.” He laughed, a little too enthusiastically, Lia thought, and then changed the subject. “Well, if you’ve had enough excitement for one day, why not join me for a drink, or perhaps two. We can discuss the banality of evil.”
And what would your wife think of that, Lia didn’t say. She really couldn’t fathom why Petrov had set his sights on her. In a country filled with glamorous women, all vying to be international supermodels or alternately, trophy wives for wealthy American millionaires, she was merely ordinary. She was too short and too thin; one cruel former lover had told her that she had the body of a small boy. Her nose was too prominent, her hair and eyes were an uninspiring dull brown, and her thick eyeglasses made her look like an old spinster librarian—which, if her mother was to be believed, was exactly what she was turning into. She could not think of a single reason why the professor would be hitting on her, aside from the fact that he was a man, and she was young, single, and—at least so far as he was concerned—available. She glanced at the wall clock, and was surprised to see that it was almost six in the evening. She had been at it for nearly ten hours. No wonder her brain felt like mush. But she didn’t dare let Petrov know.
“Thanks for the kind offer, professor, but I feel like I’m finally hitting my stride. I think I’ll keep at it a while longer.”
She had actually been on the project for the better part of a week, but most of that time had been spent organizing the materials, cataloguing them geographically. This was the first day she had spent actually reading the documents.
The goal of the project was to scour all contemporary records for clues that might lead to long-lost caches of Nazi gold bullion, secret Swiss bank accounts, or other treasures to which the Russian government might have a claim. They were desperate for hard currency. The economy, already weakened after decades of Cold War spending, had suffered a nearly fatal blow with the too-rapid shift to an unfettered free-market economy. A few oligarchs had grown obscenely wealthy, while the rest of the country starved. The Kremlin wasn’t even able to pay its army, and a discontented army was never a good thing. Petrov, working under a government contract, was hoping to find some previously untapped vein of wealth, and to that end had put together a team of archivists and historians to take a fresh look at the records from the Second World War, or as many Russians still referred to it, the Great Patriotic War.
Unfortunately, those records were as dry as dust, and unlikely to contain anything of real import, but feigning sincere interest seemed like the easiest way of avoiding Petrov’s advances without actually insulting him and putting her career in jeopardy.
He flashed a big-toothed grin and shook his finger at her. “Are you trying to make me look like a... What do the Americans call such a man? A slacker?”
Lia managed a polite laugh. “Never, professor.”
“Okay. I let it go this time, but don’t stay too late. And don’t ride the Metro. Take a taxi when you leave. I will reimburse you.”
The offer was surprisingly chivalrous and seemed to contain no obvious ulterior motive. “I promise,” she said, and this time her smile was sincere.
As he left, she returned her attention to the document displayed on the screen of the microfiche reader. Written in English, which Lia spoke fluently, it contained a report filed by a British officer who had interrogated a captured SS officer named Grothmann, one of Heinrich Himmler’s top aides, captured along with the Reichsführer as they tried to disappear into the countryside.
“They succeeded in crossing the Elba to Neuhaus in a small fishing boat fitted with an auxiliary motor. GROTHMANN states that the boat was loaned to them, and that the fisherman who provided it had no idea whom they were assisting.”
She jotted down “Elba to Neuhaus” in her research notebook. Later, she would have to consult maps of the region in order to retrace the men’s footsteps.
“From Neuhaus they proceeded on foot to the neighborhood of Meinstadt. BRANDT, MUELLER, and KIERMEIER left the party to go into the town of Bremervorde with a view to having their ‘Ausweise’ stamped by the British Town Major, but unfortunately did not return. HIMMLER wanted to go after them, since MUELLER carried something of great importance, but MACHER and GROTHMANN, believing that the others had probably been captured, insisted they continue on to Meinstadt, where they were detained by three Russian soldiers.”
“Something of great importance?” she murmured. The lack of specificity was not altogether surprising since this particular report was unclassified. A more specific description of the item, and perhaps even a full transcript of the interview, probably existed, buried and forgotten in a top-secret archive in London or Washington D.C.
It was probably another dead end, but Petrov had explicitly directed the project team to report anything of n
ote, even if it seemed insignificant. If she waited until the following morning and it turned out to be something even mildly important, her failure to follow protocol would give the professor leverage with which to pressure her into joining him for extracurricular activities.
She rose from her workstation and hurried through the archives hoping to catch Petrov, but the guard at the front desk informed her that he had already departed, so she returned to her desk and called his mobile phone number.
When the call was picked up, the first thing she heard was loud music. She thought perhaps he was in his car, listening to the radio, but then she heard voices... Petrov muttering an apology... A woman urging him to stay with her.
He certainly didn't waste any time, she thought.
Petrov's voice now sounded more forcefully in her hear. “Da?”
“Professor Petrov? It's Lia.”
“Lia. Did you change your mind?”
“No, professor. I mean, that's not why I called.” She paused a beat, hoping that her reply had not offended him. “I found something... It's probably nothing, but you said....”
“Da, da. Just tell me what it is.”
“It's from the report on the interrogation of Werner Grothmann, Himmler's aide de camp.” As she read the relevant section aloud, the ambient noise changed—the music giving way to a soft roar, like the wind or road noise, suggesting that Petrov had left the previous environment to find a quieter place to continue the call. When she finished, he let out a thoughtful hum.
“This man, Mueller. Is there any additional information about him?”
“Nothing. That's the only mention.”
“Hmmm. Mueller is a common German name, but assuming that he was a senior member of the SS, it might refer to Gestapo Müller.”
Lia recalled the name. There had been two senior SS men with the name Heinrich Müller, so to avoid confusion, one of them—the one who was head of the secret police—was often referred to as Gestapo Müller. “I thought he died in Berlin.”
“The last known sighting of him was in the Führerbunker a few hours before Hitler committed suicide. Müller wasn't the sort of man to kill himself, so I suspect he managed to slip out of Berlin ahead of the arrival of the Red Army. There were rumors that the Americans recruited him and gave him a new identity. And of course, they believed that we—or rather the old KGB—are the ones who turned him. I don't know if either is true, but if this report is talking about him, then it would at least add a footnote to his story. But what is this item of great importance he carried?”
“I have no idea. That is why I called you.” Lia realized too late that it had been a rhetorical question, but Petrov seemed not to have heard.
“Something that the head of the Gestapo was unwilling to entrust to anyone else... Something important enough that Himmler himself was prepared to risk being captured to recover.” He hummed again. “Keep digging. Call immediately if you discover anything else. I will make some inquiries of my own.”
Lia frowned. She was beginning to regret having given the appearance of diligent interest, but before she could reply, the background noise abruptly ceased; Petrov had already rung off.
“Forget him,” she muttered. “I’ll do it tomorrow.”
After ending the call with Lia, Oleg Petrov regarded the phone in his hand for a moment, trying to decide what to do next. He had promised Nadia, the raven-haired beauty waiting at the bar of the glitzy night club, that he would be right back as soon as he dealt with a small matter from work, and it was a promise he was eager to keep. He rarely indulged himself like this, but since Lia was proving resistant to his advances, he needed some kind of outlet for his pent-up amorous energy. He suspected the lovely Nadia was a prostitute. Ravishing women rarely took such a focused interest in him, but if she was a prostitute, then she was almost certainly a high-end prostitute, and the idea of hiring her services for a few hours had its own appeal.
But he should probably let Telesh know about Lia's discovery.
Sergei Yukovitch Telesh was one of the most powerful men in the Russian organized crime underworld—maybe the most powerful—which meant that, for all practical purposes, he was one of the most powerful men—maybe the most powerful—in all of Russia. He was said to be close friends with the new prime minister, an ambitious former-KGB officer, and whether Telesh was merely an influential advisor or the real power behind the throne, there was little question that what Telesh wanted, he got.
Even though the research project was being funded by the Ministry of Finance, Petrov was sure that it had been initiated at Telesh's urging. He couldn’t fathom why—the gangster was already obscenely wealthy. All Petrov knew for certain was that, just a few hours after receiving his appointment to head up the project, he had been invited to Telesh's Moscow apartment for an informal meeting, and there, had been given an envelope stuffed full of fifty-ruble notes.
“A gift,” Telesh had said, expansively, “For a dedicated public servant.”
Petrov of course had understood that there would be strings attached to the “gift,” but all he would have to do is report any discoveries to Telesh first, before passing the information along to the Ministry of Finance. Since Telesh already had his hooks in the project—and more to the point, since the mobster was unlikely to take “no” for an answer—there was no point to refusing the bribe, so Petrov had taken the money and enjoyed it. Up to this point, there had been nothing to report, but now he was faced with a decision. Call Telesh with this seemingly insignificant bit of trivia? Or enjoy a night of distraction with the lovely Nadia?
Telesh would demand that he drop everything and immediately begin chasing down the lead. It was probably nothing. The “something of great importance” was probably something to do with the Nazi officers' escape plan, maybe a map or a list of sympathizers who might provide safe harbor. And whatever it had been, it was almost certainly gone now, captured by the Allies or lost to the ages.
But without the largess of Sergei Yukovitch Telesh, he would not even be able to afford a woman like Nadia. And Telesh was not the kind of person he wanted to cross.
With a sigh, he dug out the card with Telesh's private number and dialed. Telesh picked up on the second ring. “Hello?”
His voice was silky smooth, almost seductive, and completely at odds with his physical appearance—Telesh was a large man, and not in a good way. His mostly balding head was round and piggish, with multiple chins, and sat atop a squat blob of a body. Yet, despite his rather ogre-like exterior, he was considered by many to be extremely virile. That probably had something to do with his money and power, and the aura of danger that seemed to cling to organized crime figures. His smooth voice and friendly manner easily won over anyone who might be of use to him, while simultaneously fooling his enemies into thinking him ignorant of their designs. Petrov had easily—and quite knowingly—allowed himself to fall under Telesh's spell; better to be with a man like Telesh than against him.
“Sergei Yukovitch,” Petrov began. “It is Oleg Ivanovitch Petrov. I am head of the historical research team. We spoke—”
“Yes, of course I remember you, Oleg Ivanovitch. And I told you to call immediately if you discovered anything. I take it this means you have something to tell me?”
“Yes. I mean, I have something, but I don't know if it will be of significance.”
“Why don't you just tell me and let me decide?” Telesh's tone was sublimely cheerful, almost paternalistic.
“Of course. It was in a document relating to the capture of Reichsführer Heinrich Himmler. One of his aides, when questioned, mentioned a man named Müller—I think it must be Gestapo Müller—who took something of great importance to Himmler.”
He expected some kind of reaction, but instead there was only a long silence. Petrov thought perhaps the call had dropped. “Hello?”
“I am still here,” Telesh said, and this time his tone was different. There was an eagerness in his voice, a hunger. “It is good that you called
me. I wish to discuss this in person. I will have my driver bring you here.”
Petrov swallowed down his disappointment. So much for an evening of delight with Nadia. “I am at the club on Znanenka Ulitsa and—”
“I know where you are,” Telesh cut him off. “I will speak with you when you get here.”
“How do you—” The call terminated before he could complete the question. Nonplussed, he stuffed the phone into his pocket and headed down the alley to the front entrance of the night club. He let his gaze rove up and down the street, wondering which of the cars was coming for him. Telesh’s apartment was only a few blocks away, on Butikovsky Pereulok, in the prestigious Khamovniki neighborhood near the Moskva River. He wouldn’t have to wait long, even with city traffic.
But how had Telesh known where to find him?
“Oleg?”
Petrov turned toward the sound of the familiar voice and spotted Nadia, waving as she walked toward him. Her strides were long and confident, her face utterly blank, like a model on the runway. Petrov sighed heavily and went to meet her. “Nadia, my dear. I am so very sorry, but I must leave. Something has come up at work.”
Her expression did not change. “I know.”
As she reached him, she sidestepped and pivoted around one-hundred-eighty degrees. She hooked his right arm with her left, and then pulled him along toward the street, just as a boxy, black Lada sedan pulled up at the curb.
Petrov felt faintly ill. “You work for him.” It wasn’t a question, but an answer. This was how Telesh had known where he was. How many other spies had been sent to watch him, follow him, day in and day out?
“Of course,” she said, tersely. “He is very interested in your work.” She opened the rear door. “Get in.”
He slid into the back seat and she got in after him, scooting close. The press of her body against his felt oppressive, intimidating. He had liked the idea of Nadia being a high-priced call girl, but this... He couldn’t wrap his head around it.
The car did not take him to Telesh’s apartment, but instead took him back to the university. The building occupied by the Faculty of History was dark and deserted, but there was a light burning in one window. His office.
