by David Wood
Huntley looked vaguely disappointed at having been denied his customary repartee, but nodded. “Yeah. I probably should do that. There should be a commo room behind the bedroom closet. It’ll be close quarters, so you’ll have to let me go first.” He nodded toward the kitchen. “There’s food in the pantry. Help yourselves.”
After he was gone, Professor let out a weary sigh. “He is one of the good guys, right?”
Bones shook his head. “If he is, then maybe it’s time for a career change.”
“Uncle Sam may sign his paychecks,” replied Willis. “But good?” He shook his head. “I don’t think even he would lay claim to that.” He stared at the closed bedroom door for several seconds, then went on. “What do you think’s really going on here? It’s gotta be more than just some old Nazi gold, right?”
“I guess it depends on how much Nazi gold we’re talking about,” said Professor. “We know that when the writing was finally on the wall, the Nazis hid a bunch of stuff in bunkers all over Germany and Austria. By some estimates, there could be as much as forty billion—with a ‘b’—dollars’ worth of treasure still hidden away. Not just gold, but works of art. Secret Nazi weapons research. The senior Nazis truly believed they were going to be able to put the pieces together again, carry on the fight. Remember the stuff we found at Lake Toplitz?”
Bones groaned. “I’m trying to forget it, actually.”
“Maybe what we’re really talking about... What this Russian, Telesh, is really after, is a map or maybe a ledger with the locations of all of the bunkers where the Nazis secreted their stolen wealth.”
“Hitler’s Little Black Book,” Willis mused.
“Man, I’m so sick of Hitler,” Bones sneered. “Treasure or not, if I ever got my hands on something like that, I’d wipe my ass with it and flush it down the toilet.”
“That’s juvenile,” called out Huntley from the bedroom doorway. “Even for you.”
Bones folded his arms across his chest. “In Mexico, they believe that everyone dies three deaths. The first death is when your heart stops beating. The second death is when your body is buried. The third death is when nobody remembers your name. I guess that makes Hitler immortal, right? Maybe the world would be a better place if we could just forget him forever.”
“I’m not sure I agree,” countered Professor. “I guess I belong to the school of thought that says, if you don’t learn from history, you’re doomed to repeat it.”
Bones shrugged, but kept his stare fixed on Huntley. “Maybe so, but I think a lot of white folks have a secret hardon for Nazis.”
“Not always secret,” murmured Willis.
Huntley, surprisingly, had no comeback for that. He uttered a sound that might have been a chuckle, and then shrugged. “Well, I doubt you’ll get your chance. I put in a request for information about Heinrich Müller. Turns out, the Agency and its predecessor—the OSS—conducted an extensive search for Müller at the end of the war. They never found him, but all the evidence suggests that the Soviets rolled him up. Turned him. Gave him a new identity.”
“That doesn’t make any sense,” Professor countered. “If the Russians knew what happened to Müller, they wouldn’t be pulling out all the stops looking for him.”
Huntley spread his hands in mock surrender. “Hey, you asked me to look into it. I did. That’s what I found. End of story.”
“Professor is correct,” called Lia, stepping out of the bathroom amidst a billowing cloud of steam. She wore a white terry cloth robe—about four sizes too big—and had her hair wrapped up turban style in a towel. “Petrov had clearance to view Kremlin archives. If Müller had been turned, he would have known. It is more likely that the Americans captured him and turned him.”
Huntley shook his head. “No, that was just something the Soviets put out to deflect suspicion. Red propaganda.”
“Just for argument’s sake,” Bones said, speaking forcefully enough to silence both of them. “Let’s say there’s a third option. He got away clean. How? And where did he go?”
Lia and Huntley regarded each other like opponents on opposite sides of a poker table. Lia eventually broke the silence. “Thousands of the Nazis escaped to South America at the end of the war using smuggling routes called ‘ratlines.’ The first, organized by the Vatican, led through Rome. The other went through Spain.”
“Spain was technically neutral during the war,” Professor put in, “but Franco was sympathetic to the Axis cause. And there were a lot of Nazi and Fascist sympathizers in the Church before, during, and after the war. They bought into Hitler’s narrative of a restored Holy Roman Empire, and they despised Communists.”
Lia nodded. “However, I think that if Müller had used one of the ratlines, he would have left a trail. That is not a secret anyone can keep. Someone would have talked. Knowing that, Müller probably would have chosen an escape route that minimized contact with others.”
“Like a U-boat,” said Bones.
“We know for a fact that at least two U-boats made it to South America. U-977, under the command of Oberleutnant zur See Heinz Schäffer, and U-530, commanded by Oberleutnant zur See Otto Wermuth. Both vessels refused Admiral Dönitz’s orders for the German navy to stand down, and made a successful run to Argentina where they surrendered to the Argentine navy. There were no passengers, only crew, and all were thoroughly interrogated before eventually being repatriated to Germany.”
“If Müller had been hiding among them,” Professor said, “he almost certainly would have been identified and taken into custody. Any cargo or documents would have been seized.”
Bones glanced over and saw Professor’s eyes dancing excitedly. Somebody’s in love, he thought.
Lia nodded. “There are many contradictory accounts of the voyages, and we know that both vessels made stops along the way. Schäffer allowed sixteen married crewman to leave at Bergen, and then made another brief stop in the Cape Verde Islands.”
“Cape Verde,” interjected Huntley. “Where’s that?”
Professor was ready with an answer. “It’s an archipelago, about three hundred and fifty miles off the West African coast.”
“I guess they don’t teach geography in the CIA,” taunted Bones.
“I work the Eastern European desk. Sue me.”
Professor went on. “It’s an independent nation now, but back then, it was a Portuguese territory. Like Spain, they were neutral during the war, but leaned right.”
“So Müller could have gotten off there, taken an extended tropical holiday.”
Lia frowned. “It’s possible, but just as with the ratlines, I think someone would eventually have talked. Müller left no trail at all.”
“Yeah, you can never count on a Müller report,” Bones said.
Professor frowned, shook his head, then returned his attention to Huntley. “The same would be true if he somehow made it to South America.”
“There were rumors about Mengele being down there for years, even though they never managed to track him down.”
Huntley shook his head disparagingly. “If he didn’t get caught, and he didn’t escape, what’s left?”
“Easy,” Bones said. “He got killed.”
“The most plausible hypothesis has always been that he never made it out of Berlin,” agreed Lia. “But the evidence I found suggests otherwise.”
Bones shook his head. “I mean after that. We know that two U-boats made it to South America. Were there any others? Maybe one or two that got sunk along the way?”
Lia and Professor exchanged a glance. “There were over a thousand U-boats in the Kriegsmarine during World War II,” Professor said. “Even I don’t know what happened to them all, but I can tell you the records do exist. Most of the boats that weren’t lost in combat were scuttled as part of Operation Deadlight, but I know that several went missing. There was one—I can’t remember which—”
Bones let out an exaggerated gasp of surprise. Professor rolled his eyes and kept talking. “Some divers
reported finding the wreck off Cape Cod about ten years ago, but it turned out to be a mis-identification. The boat they thought they had found is still missing.”
Lia nodded her affirmation. “If Müller was aboard a vessel that subsequently sank, it might explain why he never resurfaced...” She hesitated and then smiled. “That is pun, no?”
“That is pun, yes,” Professor said.
Huntley clapped his hands to his thighs. “Well that settles it. The ocean is a big place and we don’t have a clue where to begin looking. And even if, by some miracle, you found the wreck, anything made out of paper would have turned to mush.”
“We don’t know that we’re looking for a book,” Bones countered. “And let’s not get ahead of ourselves. The first thing to do is get a list of missing U-boats. We can focus on those that went missing near the end of the war—say in the last six months.”
Huntley wagged his head. “And I suppose you want me to take point on this snipe hunt.”
“Actually, I have somebody else in mind. A naval historian we used to know.”
“Alex Vaccaro?” asked Professor.
Huntley stiffened. “You can’t bring civilians into this.”
“Alex isn’t a civilian,” Bones said. “She’s FBI... Or at least she was last time we crossed paths. She also holds the rank of Lieutenant Commander in the Navy, and I’m sure she still has her security clearance.”
“FBI? That’s even worse.” He sighed. “I’ll let you consult with him... Or her. Whatever. But limit the conversation to missing U-boats. Deal only in generalities. Under no circumstances are you to mention the name Müller, or anything else we’ve speculated about here.” He paused a beat. “We’ll set the meeting up once we get stateside.”
“Stateside?”
Huntley nodded. “First thing tomorrow. We’ll deadhead on an Air Force tanker plane. No paper trail that way.”
“Sorry, but we’re not going anywhere until we know Maddock is safe.”
“Orders are orders, Big Chief.”
“I’m sorry,” Willis said, his deep voice dripping with sarcasm, “but since when did we start taking orders from you?”
“Since I pulled your asses out of Russia,” Huntley replied, matching his tone. “And let you crash at an Agency safehouse.”
“I don’t remember asking for your help.” Willis glanced at Bones and Professor. “Do you remember that?”
“All right, I tried appealing to your sense of gratitude, but now your gonna make me get out my tape measure.”
“Ha. Then prepare to be embarrassed, white bread.”
Professor stood up. “This macho posturing isn’t helping—”
“It’s working for me,” countered Bones.
Huntley jumped to his feet as well, “This is my operation now, and you’ve been seconded to me. That means it’s my way, or the highway, and the highway isn’t an option.”
Bones raised his hands. “Fine.”
It wasn’t fine, and the first chance he got, he was going to talk to Maxie about the parameters of their working relationship with Captain Midnight, but bickering about it wasn’t going to get them anywhere. “We’ll do it your way.”
And then, in a murmur meant only for his teammates’ ears, he added, “For now.”
ELEVEN
Near Gelendzhik, Russia
As predicted, the temperature dropped by degrees as the night deepened. None of the three escapees from Telesh’s dacha had warm weather clothes and walking briskly could only do so much to keep the chill at bay, so after about an hour of shivering and listening to Petrov complain about the cold, Maddock suggested they move into the woods and warm up with a fire.
“Won’t someone see?” Petrov protested.
Maddock sighed. There’s just no pleasing this guy, he thought. “I don’t think we’ll need to worry about it,” he said. “This place isn’t exactly hopping.”
Although they had been walking along the roadside, not a single car had passed them. Telesh’s men were either still searching for them further down the road, or had returned by some other route.
“It will be a small fire,” he went on, “and we’ll put up a lean-to to help keep the heat in. That should block lines of sight. But if you’d rather freeze...”
“No! A fire would be very nice.”
There was just enough moonlight filtering through the forest canopy for them to gather deadwood and dry moss to use as tinder. While the others fashioned a crude shelter of evergreen boughs, Maddock used his borrowed tire iron to chisel a groove down the center of a more or less flat piece of bone-dry wood. He then split off a stake about eighteen inches long, and chipped a point into its end.
As he knelt over the plank, rapidly dragging the point of the stake up and down the length of the groove, Petrov whispered. “Just like Tom Hanks in movie. Does really work?”
Maddock had no idea what the Russian was talking about, and didn’t want to waste a breath asking. The fire-plow method was one of the most strenuous ways of starting a fire but without any other tools or means of ignition, it was all he had, and if he was going to make it work, it would require complete focus and total effort.
After only a few seconds, he could smell woodsmoke, but he did not relent until, after what felt like nearly five minutes of pistoning the fire-plow back and forth, he spied a faint red gleam at its tip. Working quickly, he dropped in some of the wood shavings and moss, and then leaned close and began blowing on the ember until it caught fire with an audible whoosh. He laid on more tinder and small pieces of wood, blowing on it to increase the amount of oxygen in the fire triangle, and in only about a minute, had stoked a modest blaze.
“I’m impressed,” Leopov said, clapping softly. “I guess you really were Boy Scout.”
In the firelight, her face seemed to glow, and her smile was dazzling. Maddock, who was actually feeling a little lightheaded from his exertions, managed a wan grin.
She settled down next to him, pressing her body against his. It was an oddly forward thing for her to do. Maddock could not recall her showing anything that might be interpreted as romantic interest, but then again, as Bones was fond of pointing out, he could be pretty clueless in matters of the heart. Regardless of what signals she had sent or he had missed, he was definitely receiving now.
Then an accusatory voice sounded in his head. What are you thinking? You’ve got Melissa.
Melissa.
The thought of her brought a pang of guilt, and not just at his momentary indulgence.
What the hell am I even doing here? How many times did I almost die today? How many more times will I have to cheat death to make it home to Melissa? And what if I don’t make it back? I could die, just like....
Just like Mom and Dad.
He had almost forgotten, but now the pent-up grief and guilt descended on him like an avalanche. He blinked back tears, unconsciously pulling away from Leopov.
“Don’t get excited, Boy Scout,” she said, misreading his intentions... Or maybe reading them a little too well. “Just trying to stay warm.”
“Sure,” he muttered.
Leopov regarded him silently for a moment, then looked across the fire to where Petrov was huddled. “Why is Telesh going after Lia? What does he think she knows?”
Petrov’s eyes drew together in a frown. “What did she tell you?”
“Not a lot. There wasn’t a lot of time. She mentioned that you had her searching through old archives looking for missing Nazi loot.”
Petrov offered a thoughtful hum. “Yes, that is what we were told. I have since learned what Sergei Yukovitch Telesh is really looking for.”
“Not Nazi loot?” Maddock asked, trying to pull himself back from the black hole of despair.
“Not exactly.” Petrov hesitated as if unsure how to proceed, then asked, “Do you know story of Priam’s Treasure?”
The name rang a bell, but Maddock was in no mood to fish for the memory. He shook his head.
“You mean Priam
, king of Troy during the Trojan war,” Leopov supplied.
Maddock could almost hear Bones’ voice in his head, cracking a terrible joke... Probably something about a war fought over condoms. The thought brought a smile to his lips. “You’re talking about the Iliad, right?”
“The Iliad is story. May be true story, maybe not. But Priam’s Treasure is real. Was discovered in 1873 by archaeologist named Heinrich Schliemann.”
Maddock nodded slowly as the memory finally surfaced. “Right. I remember this. Schliemann claimed he found the ruins of the city described in the Iliad. He excavated it and found some relics which he believed belonged to King Priam. From what I’ve heard, most modern scholars doubt the authenticity of that claim, not to mention the historicity of Priam and the other people mentioned in the Iliad.”
“Schliemann smuggled the treasure out of Ottoman Empire. Most of collection ended up in Germany, where it stayed until the end of Great Patriotic War.”
“When it was taken as war booty by the Red Army,” Leopov finished. “They hid it away—in the Pushkin Museum, if I’m not mistaken.”
Petrov scowled. “You are Russian. You know what the Nazi filth did to us. What they took from the Motherland. Is only fair that we take treasure in return.”
“If the Red Army took it,” interjected Maddock, “what does Telesh think he’s going to find chasing down some old Nazi war criminal?”
“He seeks one specific item from the collection that was not found with the rest.”
“One item?” Maddock held up a single finger to emphasize the point. “I know the Kremlin is hard up for cash, but this seems like an awful lot of trouble to go to just for one artifact. What is it?”
“Sergei Yukovitch calls it ‘Helen’s Charm.’”
“Helen as in Helen of Troy? The face that launched a thousand ships?”
Petrov nodded. “He believes it has... power.”
“Power,” Leopov repeated, incredulous. “You mean like magic power? Something supernatural?”
Maddock glanced back at her, shrugged. Fireside in a gloomy Russian forest, it didn’t really sound so unbelievable.
