by David Wood
But Huntley knew.
Huntley, who had moved in and taken over their mission, kept the team cut off from the chain of command, demanded that Maddock and Leopov come in for debrief.
And just minutes after Alex and Maxie called Maddock to tell him about Villa Gessell, somebody—no, not somebody... An assassin with a government contract—tried to kill them and almost succeeded.
Huntley knew. Huntley gave the order.
But why?
Maddock took a deep, calming breath, and then carefully typed: What makes you think the Agency is behind it?
The way the investigation got shut down. If it was an outside player, the FBI would be digging deep. They’re not, and that tells me that the person who ordered the hit is connected.
For the first time since separating from the team in Russia, he felt real anxiety for Bones, Willis, and Professor. Were they even still alive?
Several seconds passed before another message from Jimmy appeared. So that’s the who. What I want to know is “why”? You got any ideas?
Maddock considered the question carefully. Jimmy was a friend and a crack researcher, but he was also a member of the press, with a moral and ethical responsibility to not only discover the truth but also to publish it. That was what Jimmy had meant by ‘patriotic duty.’ Maddock on the other hand had a responsibility to preserve the secrecy of military operations.
Is this off the record? he typed.
Dane, are you serious? There was another long interval, and then Jimmy wrote: You contacted me. That tells me you already know something. Well this time, my help comes with a bigger price than a bottle of Wild Turkey.
“So much for ‘on the house’,” Maddock murmured, but instead of pointing this out, typed in: A bottle? You never work that cheap.
Somebody in the government just tried to assassinate your boss, Dane. What do you think you’re going to do? Go full Rambo on them? You can’t beat these guys with muscle. Sunlight is the best disinfectant... Hell, it’s the only thing that seems to work in this town.
Maddock stared at the chat box. He had no idea how to respond. Jimmy was absolutely right, on every count.
A minute passed, and then a new message appeared.
You still there?
“Still here,” Maddock said aloud as he entered the text. Thinking.
Okay, look. I’m sorry if I came on kind of strong. Off the record, what can I help you with?
Maddock hesitated. No matter how vague he tried to be, Jimmy was smart enough to connect the dots. In truth, that was exactly what he wanted his friend to do. I need information about a place called Villa Gessell. It’s in Argentina.
Ha. I don’t need to look that one up. Villa Gessell is where all the escaped Nazis went after WW II. Another message followed quickly. I probably shouldn’t say that. I’ll get sued for libel. Let’s just say that there were rumors. Very persuasive rumors.
Break.
Wait, this has something to do with escaped Nazis?
Break.
You’re looking for escaped Nazis in Argentina. And someone in the CIA is trying to cover it up. Is that what’s happening?
Maddock gaped at the screen, not only astonished at the connection Jimmy had just made, but at the swiftness with which he had made that intuitive leap. I’m not quite sure, he answered, honestly.
Well, I guess I’m not surprised. This bird’s been a long time coming home to roost.
What do you mean by that?
Okay, time for a quick history lesson, Jimmy went on. Set your wayback machine for 1945. The Nazis are crushed, the horrors of the Holocaust are exposed to the world, and the engineers of that genocide are rounded up and put on trial. Do you know how many defendants there were at Nuremburg?
Maddock shook his head as he typed. Not off the top of my head.
24.
Of the 1000s of high-ranking Nazi party members who were captured at the end of the war, only 24 were put on trial. Care to guess what happened to the rest?
You mean the ones that didn’t commit suicide? They escaped to Villa Gessell, right?
Wrong. They came to work for us.
Maddock nodded slowly. I know about the scientists who were rolled up in Operation Paperclip.
Tip of the proverbial iceberg. In addition to guys like Werner von Braun, the OSS and later the CIA brought over hundreds, maybe even thousands of Nazi officers, and protected them. Gave them new identities, jobs, shielded them from international prosecution for war crimes. And this wasn’t just in the days after the war. It’s been ongoing. They also recruited a lot more former Nazis who stayed in Germany, to help them spy on the Russians. In 1949, a former Wehrmacht officer named Albert Schnez put together a clandestine group called the Schnez-Truppe. Their goal was to create a militia to fight back in the event of a Soviet-led invasion from East Germany. They claimed a membership of 40,000—all of them veterans. A supporting member of the organization, General Adolf Heusinger was Chief of Staff of the Wehrmacht in 1944. The West German government gave tacit support to the Schnez-Truppe because they were anti-Communist. Schnez remained in the Bundeswehr, eventually retiring with the rank of Lieutenant General. Heusinger served as Chairman to the NATO military committee.
The chat box was filling up with words faster than Maddock could read. Sometimes, in his interactions with Jimmy, he forgot that the man wrote for a living. Jimmy was just getting warmed up.
You might wonder how the politicians were able to just forgive and forget. The truth is, they didn’t forget, and they didn’t particularly see the need to forgive. They didn’t actually care about the atrocities. The Nuremburg Trials almost didn’t happen. There was a lot of pushback from American politicians and even some generals, who felt that the Nazis could be a powerful ally in a war against the Soviets. A war that they desperately wanted to fight. We like to believe a version of history where Uncle Sam stood up to Adolf and kicked his ass, but the truth is, a lot of Americans did not want to go to war with Hitler’s Germany. They actually supported him. In 1939, 20,000 people attended a Nazi rally in Madison Square Garden. Granted, there were 100,000 people protesting it on the street outside, but just ask yourself what happened to those 20,000 American Nazis? You think they changed their mind when America finally entered the war?
Jimmy went on. And that’s not all. I’m sure you know about certain high-profile Americans who supported Hitler. Henry Ford. William Randolph Hearst. Charles Lindbergh. But there’s one other who doesn’t get talked about very much. An American banker who represented the interests of a German industrialist named Fritz Thyssen. Thyssen was literally the man who bankrolled Hitler’s rise to power. Oh, the American banker? His name was Prescott Bush.
Maddock smirked. The baked beans guy?
Is Bones there with you? Because I know Dane Maddock did not just say that. Prescott Bush, was the father of George Herbert Walker Bush, who aside from being the 41st President of the USA was also a CIA officer in the 1960s, where he was involved with the Bay of Pigs fiasco, and served as Director of the CIA during the Ford administration. Now, I’m not ready to go out on a limb and say that Prescott Bush was a secret Nazi, but it’s the kind of information the CIA might not want getting out into the public sphere.
Maddock checked the clock. His hour was ticking away rapidly and he felt he was no closer to an answer. Jimmy, I need you to focus. Can you think of a reason why somebody at the Agency would want to keep me from looking into Villa Gessell? Or specifically, looking for someone who might have escaped there?
If they knew about it and didn’t want anyone to know they knew? Sure. Who’s the someone you’re talking about? What do you want to know?
A guy named Müller . He was head of the Gestapo.
Jimmy typed, I’ll have to look into that one. Gimme a sec.
A second was about all Jimmy needed. The next few messages were blocks of text that appeared to have been lifted whole from some kind of online encyclopedia. Much of the information contained therein was
already known to Maddock. The rest was too voluminous to readily distill into useful leads. Maddock kept scrolling down until he came to Jimmy’s comments.
This guy doesn’t seem like your garden variety Nazi. Wasn’t a true believer. Doesn’t sound like he much cared for Hitler or his policies. The only thing they shared was a deep hatred of communists. Relentless. Ambitious. Driven.
“And still missing,” Maddock put in.
The evidence strongly suggests that he died during the fall of Berlin, body never identified. It was a war. That kind of thing happens a lot.
“I have information that places him in northern Germany almost two weeks later.”
There was a conspicuous pause.
Interesting. Is this off the record, too?
“I’m not sure, yet. I’ll make sure you get the scoop.”
Okay. Well, if he survived Berlin, and didn’t get captured, there is a better than average chance that he managed to escape Germany. Villa Gessell would be a logical destination for him.
“So if somebody in the government, or maybe in the CIA, knew about it, covered it up, maybe so they could turn him, use him as an asset... That might be something they’d want to keep a secret. Kill to protect.”
Your words not mine, Jimmy replied.
Maddock checked the clock again. Only a few minutes left now. “They tried to kill Maxie after he told me about Villa Gessell. Could Müller still be there?”
Maybe buried there. I doubt he’s still alive. He’d be almost a hundred years old.
“So I should start looking in cemeteries?”
I doubt you’d find a headstone with his name on it. But there’s bound to be something there... Some clue that would put you on his trail. Something they couldn’t cover up or destroy.
Like a blood-stained Nazi flag, Maddock thought but didn’t type. He knew that wasn’t the sort of thing Jimmy was alluding to. “Maybe the U-boat that brought him to Argentina.”
Or the place where it unloaded. I found some interesting trivia. Stuff that might not be in the local tourist’s guide.
“Make it quick,” Maddock warned.
Okay, VG was built on sand dunes. Sand moves around a lot, covers stuff up. In the 60s, a real estate developer uncovered a railway track leading from the sea through a big shed alongside the house of Carlos Gessell—the German who... duh... created VG. The track ended at the garden of a German mechanic who specialized in diesels. They also found a bunker full of fuel drums, pieces of a radio mast, and mechanical parts that might have been used to repair submarines.
“Is that bunker still there?”
No idea. You’d probably have to check it out for yourself. A couple other places worth checking. About five miles south of the Querandi lighthouse, there’s a small concrete structure that nobody can explain. Might have been used to signal U-boats off shore. Five miles further down, there are two flat areas that appear to be paved with non-native stone. Again, nobody can explain where they came from, but it’s been suggested that they might have been a platform for loading or unloading cargo. Maybe there’s other stuff there, hidden under the dunes. Stuff they don’t want you looking for.
Maddock doubted that he would find anything remotely incriminatory at the abandoned sites, but inasmuch as Alex’s mention of Villa Gessell had apparently triggered the assassination attempt, he could not afford to dismiss anything out of hand. That was why he and Leopov, after a quick shopping trip, had made the four-hour drive to Villa Gessell in a rented Toyota Land Cruiser.
After so many days of solo travel, it was a little disconcerting to have Leopov with him again, especially without Petrov as a third wheel. He couldn’t help but think of the long cold night they had shared in the woods near Telesh’s villa, how she had offered herself to him, and how hard it had been to refuse. The subject never came up again—in fact, Leopov seemed to avoid any discussions that might have even led them to it—but it was never completely out of Maddock’s thoughts. The drive seemed to take forever.
From Villa Gessell, they continued south on Provincial Route 11 for several more miles before stopping to let some air out of the tires in order to traverse the dunes toward the Querandi lighthouse.
It was still daylight when they arrived, and despite the remote location, the area was bustling with activity, mostly in the form of young adventure-seeking visitors zipping around the dunes on quad bikes. Rather than draw attention to themselves by venturing down the beach to the sites Jimmy had suggested, they idled away the remainder of the day at the lighthouse which, in addition to functioning as a navigational marker doubled as a small maritime museum. Built in 1922, the lighthouse had been the first building constructed in what had come to be known as the Villa Gessell district, though Carlos Gessell, the German expatriate who had founded the eponymous resort town, would not appear on the scene for another decade. Unsurprisingly, the interpretive displays made no mention of German U-boats sheltering along the coast.
With dusk darkening the sky, they pitched a tent—one of the items acquired before leaving Buenos Aires—and built a small fire to complete the illusion that they were nothing more than a couple on holiday, but once the cover of darkness was absolute, they stole from their camp and returned to the lighthouse carrying another of their recent purchases: a Minelab metal detector.
Leopov kept a lookout while Maddock quickly swept the area around the lighthouse, out to a hundred yards. He found the sort of detritus common to a heavily trafficked beach—coins, empty aluminum cans—but nothing that couldn’t be dated to within ten years. Maddock had not really expected to find anything, but the search did give him a chance to test his equipment and fine tune its settings. After completing a survey of the area, they headed south toward the first location Jimmy had suggested. They moved on foot rather than driving, with Maddock sweeping the metal detector back and forth as they went along. If the rails were still there, reburied by the shifting sand dunes, the device would find them.
When they saw the explosion, Maddock switched off the metal detector, slung it over his shoulder, and then took out the only weapon he currently possessed—the entrenching tool he’d been using to excavate their discoveries.
On any other covert mission, acquiring weapons—real weapons—would have been a priority, and both he and Leopov had plenty of real-world experience doing just that. The situation this time was different, though. Because they could not trust anyone with ties to the American intelligence community, the usual means for procuring unregistered guns—safe house caches and black-market contacts—were out. Other less reputable means, such as taking their chances with the local criminal element, were similarly proscribed for much the same reason. Which meant that, if they were obliged to defend themselves, they would have to do so with field-expedient weapons. The collapsible military shovel was designed with such a use in mind—it could be used like a battle-axe if needed. While there was no tangible reason to assume that the offshore explosion had anything to do with their mission, or that they were now in danger, Maddock saw no downside to being ready, just in case.
They remained there for several minutes, motionless, not speaking, watching and waiting. At one point, Maddock thought he heard a shout, or the echo of a shout. A few minutes after that, the distant but familiar noise of a two-stroke engine—possibly more than one—was audible. Maddock quickly oriented himself toward the sound, which seemed to be coming from further down the beach. He turned toward it just in time to see a pair of moving lights disappearing behind the crest of a dune a few hundred yards away.
Unlike the offshore explosion, the presence of an ATV on the beach, even at such a late hour, was not particularly mysterious. Even the shout they had heard, if it was a shout, might have been easily enough explained away.
“We should check that out,” Leopov whispered. “Just in case.”
Maddock nodded in the darkness. “Yeah.”
Hefting the entrenching tool, he started forward, moving at a brisk jog, fast enough to cover the d
istance to the spot where he judged the ATV had started from, but slow enough to keep his senses fully engaged. The rush of waves soon blanketed the noise of the retreating quad bike, but his nose caught the unmistakable whiff of exhaust smoke.
Several more small pinpoints of light became visible, moving across the beach toward the surf. Flashlights, Maddock guessed, and in their diffuse glow, he could make out the silhouettes of the men who held them. The flashlights had almost certainly spoiled the men’s night vision capabilities, but Maddock and Leopov nevertheless stayed low to avoid silhouetting themselves against the sky as they drew closer. The men had advanced to the water’s edge where they gathered around a small inflatable boat which had been intentionally grounded, where two of them heaved a large shapeless mass over the gunwale and into the boat’s interior. Their burden deposited, the men began shoving the craft toward the sea.
“Was that a body?” Leopov whispered.
That was exactly what Maddock had thought it looked like. The only question was whether it was a dead body or a living one. “We need to get over there,” he said.
Before he could take another step however, he sensed movement in the darkness right beside him. Leopov started to hiss a warning but was suddenly muffled by a hand that emerged from out of the night and clamped over her mouth. Maddock immediately pivoted, raising the entrenching tool above his head in preparation to strike at the barely perceived threat, but before he could swing, a second dark figure sprang up, rising to loom over him. A long arm shot out and seized the folding shovel just below the blade, completely arresting Maddock’s swing.
A familiar voice hissed in his ears. “Maddock. Damn. You’re the last person I expected to see here.”
“Bones?”
TWENTY
It had been clear to Bones, even before Huntley left with Professor and Lia, that the spook had no plan to rendezvous with Maddock. Why Huntley was keeping them in the dark and trying to divide their forces, he couldn’t begin to guess but he knew it wasn’t a good one. He was only certain about one thing. Maddock was not in Argentina. He probably wasn’t even in the same hemisphere.
