by Gary Jonas
“It is his time,” Charlotte said.
“Color me lost again,” I said.
“It isn’t my place to educate you. I will allow my grandfather to explain things.”
“You’re both calling him Grandfather.”
“He’s my great-grandfather,” Stefan said. “We just leave off the great when we talk about him.”
“What’s his name?” I asked.
“He wasn’t famous. His name is Gustav.”
“He says you have Theodor’s ring,” Otto said as he returned.
“How could he know that?” I asked.
“Is it true?”
“Yes.”
“Then we should say our final goodbyes to Grandfather,” Stefan said.
Otto glared at me.
“Why the evil eye?” I asked.
“Because you’re going to kill my great-grandfather.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Gustav sat in an old wheelchair. One of the footrests was broken, so he had one foot on the ground, and the other on the metal peg. His gnarled fingers gripped the wheels and he rolled over, walking with one foot to help move himself along.
“Welcome, welcome,” he said, his voice scratchy, and creaky like a cross between Joe Cocker and the Wicked Witch of the West.
Otto entered first.
“How are you feeling today, Grandfather?”
“We’re all speaking English today?” Gustav asked.
Otto nodded. “Mom’s rules.”
“Very well. Tell Charlotte I want bratwurst for dinner.”
“I’ll do that.”
“And go back to the house. I want to speak to my guests alone.”
“As you wish,” Otto said. He turned to me. “Come back to the house before you leave.”
“We will,” I said. “We’ll need a ride, after all.”
“Then you’ll have to wait until Helmut gets back.”
“Is he with that prostitute again?” Gustav asked.
“Amelie is not a prostitute, Grandfather. She’s a dancer.”
“Mmm.”
Otto shook his head. “You’re on your own,” he said to me, and left us there.
The house smelled like mothballs and urine. I wrinkled my nose and tried to determine whether or not I should breathe through my mouth. Smell it or taste it? Neither was a good option. There was another odor lingering beneath the others, and while it didn’t overpower them the way it should have, it was impossible to mistake. Death.
“Who died in here?” Kelly asked, not having my tact.
“I did,” Gustav said. “My wife, too, but that was ten years ago.”
Esther had already checked the place, but at the mention of death, she darted through the rooms again, and returned. She shook her head. There was no danger lurking elsewhere, and no bodies out in the open.
“My name is Jonathan,” I said.
“I know who you are,” Gustav said. “Jonathan Shade, the balanced one. So many prophecies about you.”
“I don’t believe in prophecies,” I said.
The house was jam-packed with books, papers, blankets, pillows, clothing, statuettes of Egyptian gods, a replica of the Rosetta stone, old glasses, and a brass tray on a TV stand with the remnants of breakfast.
“Clear off a chair if you want to sit down,” he said.
The chair he nodded toward was buried in junk, and I suspected there was a nest of rodents hiding in there.
“I think I’ll stand,” I said.
“Me too,” Kelly said.
“Suit yourself,” he said. “And you should believe the prophecies. There is much truth in them. Oh, yes.”
“You have something you want to tell us?” I asked.
“He can tell you,” Kelly said, waving a hand in front of her face. “I’ll be outside if you need me.”
“Gee, thanks.”
Kelly slipped out the door, and Esther went with her.
“Sit down, Jonathan Shade.”
“No, really, I’m good.”
“You’re older than I am. You should sit. If you don’t want to use the chair, there should be a barstool in the restroom.”
He pointed down a hallway, so I maneuvered through stacks of books and newspapers, most of which were in German, though some were in Spanish.
An old dusty barstool stood in front of a rust-stained sink. I shouldn’t have glanced at the toilet. If I needed to use the restroom, I’d want to go to the main house. The stains running down the outside of the bowl seeped into the floor, which had deep grooves from the wheelchair’s many trips in and out. Metal rails were installed on the sides of the toilet and in front of the bathtub.
The shower curtain was thankfully closed. I didn’t want to see the condition of the tub.
I grabbed a hand towel from a rack on the wall, and wiped the stool down.
Gustav sat patiently, flipping through an old book when I returned with the stool.
I placed it close enough to not seem rude, but far away enough to cut down on smelling Gustav’s body odor. I half-sat, half-leaned on the stool.
“I’m on a bit of a tight schedule, Gustav,” I said. “You can finish your chapter later.”
He laughed, which set him into a coughing fit. “Sorry. No, I want to show this to you.”
He handed the book to me, and pointed to a black-and-white photograph.
I accepted the book. I couldn’t read German, but the picture told me all I needed to know. The photo was of me as an old man staring at me as a young man taken back in the 1920s. Kelly stood in the background.
“Both of those are you, correct?”
There was no point denying the obvious.
I checked the front of the book, but the title was in German, and I couldn’t read it because the words were flaked off. The book flopped back open to the page with my picture on it. The only way someone could have taken that shot was to have been outside the window of Henry Winslow’s office building in New York City.
“You are wondering how the picture was taken.”
“I am,” I said.
“Magic,” he said. “That book, roughly translated as Magic in the Modern Age was published in 1930, and was in the library of the Ahnenerbe. I first read it in 1938. You fulfilled a prophecy in the twenties.”
“Says you,” I said, channeling Esther.
He smiled. “I know. You do not put much stock in prophecies. And while it’s true that many of them never come to pass, in your case, several have.”
I leaned over and set the book on the table.
“There is a prophecy about you and Heinrich Himmler. The prophecy states that he drinks your blood from a skull on the black sun in the center of the world.”
“Sounds exciting.”
“The black sun,” he said, and opened another book. He tapped an illustration of a twelve-spoked sun wheel.
I nodded. “Occult symbol, right?”
“Yes.”
“Good to know. I’ll avoid it. Thanks.”
“Are you going to Germany?”
“Hadn’t planned on it.”
“You would do well to steer clear.”
“Thanks for the heads up,” I said.
“You would do well to heed my warning, Jonathan Shade.”
“I heard you. And I’m serious. I have no plans to go to Germany.”
“There are several other prophecies about you and Himmler facing off in Germany, but all end with you dead and Himmler as an immortal.”
“Thanks, Nostradamus. And see? That’s why I hate prophecies. Someone tells you some shit that if you hadn’t known about, you might have done differently, but you go out of your way to avoid things because someone said something, and next thing you know, you zig when you would have zagged and make the damn prophecy come true. Far better not to know.”
He shrugged. “I have issued my warning. You will pay me now.”
“Pay you?”
“You have Theodor Morell’s ring.”
“Right. Somehow, I thin
k it’s worth more than some bullshit prophecy about black suns and the center of the world. I’m not living in a Jules Verne novel.”
“My great-nephew, Otto, was named for Otto Lidenbrock.”
It took me a minute, but I realized he meant the professor from Journey to the Center of the Earth.
“Well, there you go,” I said.
“The world has many connections, Jonathan Shade. As large as it is, the connections make it seem very small indeed. Be careful which threads you pull. The tangled skein you unravel may be your life.”
“Been there, done that, got the T-shirt,” I said.
“Leave the ring with me.”
“That ring is worth a small fortune.”
“It’s also a beacon to Heinrich Himmler. If you have it with you, he will always be able to find you. If you leave it here, to his eyes, your trail will end here.”
“So?”
“Give me the ring, and I’ll give you the address of the Nazi family where Himmler stays when he comes to Bariloche.”
I grinned. “Now that might be worth the trade. Is Maria there?”
He closed his eyes, hummed, then opened his eyes.
“Are you magically tracking her?”
“Of course not. I’m an old man who never gets out. But if he took her anywhere, that is most likely the place. Be aware, though. There’s also a prophecy about her.”
“Of course there is.”
“She wants to bring back the Men of the Black Stone. Her fiancé was a member, but he was murdered in 1945, along with Maria’s medium friend, Sigrun.”
“That doesn’t sound like a prophecy, Gustav.”
He smiled. “It’s not. If I don’t tell you, she may be dead or she may be alive. If I tell you, she will certainly be dead.”
“She’s not a cat, and you’re not Schrödinger.”
“Perhaps not, but my middle name is Erwin. Now, give me the ring.”
I dug the ring out of my pocket and handed it to him.
He handed me a slip of paper with an address scrawled in blue ink.
Gustav wheeled his way over to a wooden trunk, lifted the lid, and dropped the ring inside. There were at least a hundred more death’s head rings in the trunk.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Charlotte walked with me and Kelly to the villa entrance. The temperature felt like it was in the fifties. Helmut wasn’t going to be back for a while, so she called a friend to give us a ride to the address Gustav provided.
“There are some people who think Hitler died here in Bariloche in 1961,” Charlotte said.
“I’ve heard that,” I said.
“He didn’t.” She held up a hand. “Hitler had doubles.”
“I know.”
“The man who died in Bariloche was one of his doubles.”
“If you say so.”
“I do.” She looked down the road as a car approached. “Not her,” she said, and turned her attention back to me. “There are a lot of Nazis and Nazi supporters here in Bariloche. But not all of us are sympathizers. I just want you to know that.”
I nodded.
The car passed without slowing down.
Otto opened the front door of the house and called to us. “Grandfather is dead.”
“What?” I asked.
But Charlotte merely nodded. “He delivered his message. It was his time.” She turned to face Otto. “Thank you, Otto. You know what to do.”
“I’ll call it in,” he said. He threw a look my way, and I knew he blamed me.
“There’s something you should know about my friend, who is coming to give you a ride,” Charlotte said. “She is a bitter woman.”
She watched another car approaching, and was silent until the car went by.
“Oh, that’s her.”
Another Mercedes SUV, this one silver, cruised toward us.
Kelly had her metal strip in her hand. She hid it alongside her leg, out of sight of the approaching car.
Charlotte took a deep breath. “You will think I’m mad, or just a foolish old woman, but I must tell you this. A neighborhood boy named Lars shot Himmler in the head. Himmler died, but he did not remain dead long. When Himmler rose, he tracked young Lars down.”
“And killed him,” I said as the silver Mercedes turned into the drive and screeched to a halt, a silver haired woman with a stern expression at the wheel.
“Oh no, he recruited him. Lars is one of Himmler’s favorite brutes now. He used to play with my boys in the front yard here. Now he murders people.”
“And you want me to try to save him.”
Charlotte shook her head. “Mein Gott, no. I want you to put him down. Permanently.”
“Are you coming?” Zoey asked, leaning out the window. “Sometime today, maybe? I know I’m an old woman with nothing to do, and I live only to wait here for people I don’t even know.”
Kelly and Esther were already in the Mercedes. Kelly took shotgun without even calling it.
“Be right there,” I said.
“Oh, of course. It’s not like I have an appointment with my hairdresser in thirty minutes or anything.” She followed it up with something in German.
I thanked Charlotte, and climbed into the back of the Mercedes.
“Need me to scoot my seat up?” Kelly asked.
“I’m fine,” I said, thinking about Lars. Had he been recruited by magic, or did Himmler just convince him to join his cult?
Zoey pulled a fast U-turn and raced toward the main road.
“She really wants a new hairdo,” Esther said.
“Thanks for the ride,” I said.
“I owe Charlotte.”
“She’s done right by you?”
Zoey shook her head. “No, I owe her because I borrowed money.”
“Oh.”
Zoey mumbled something in German, then said, “Some people let things go. Some people are greedy, and don’t care that you have a life.”
“We appreciate you,” I said.
“Words,” Zoey said. “Just words. If I don’t get my hair done, Jürgen will be disappointed. But you don’t care about that.”
Kelly shrugged and gazed out the window, watching buildings sail by as we cruised down the road.
I didn’t mind Zoey’s attitude. After all, she was giving us a ride, and she hadn’t tried to kill us. You take the positives where you can find them.
Ten minutes later, she turned onto a tree-lined road. The houses here were set back a ways, nearly invisible from the street. The people who lived here valued their privacy.
Another turn, onto a smaller road, still paved, and well-maintained, but unmarked. Zoey turned left and stopped before a large white gate between two brick pillars. Twin cameras swiveled toward us.
So much for the element of surprise.
“This is it,” Zoey said. “If I hurry, I might still make it to my appointment. I don’t want to reschedule.”
“Thanks for the ride,” I said as we piled out of her car.
She didn’t reply. She simply backed out, and drove away, leaving us alone.
“I guess we should have asked her to drop us off in a less obvious manner,” I said.
Kelly frowned at me. “I told her that when you were talking to Charlotte.”
“Oh well.”
I waved to one of the cameras.
An intercom on a black metal pole stood off to the side. There was a keypad to open the gate if you knew the code. I punched the call button.
A voice answered in Spanish.
“Do you speak English?” I asked.
“Of course,” the box said.
“Excellent. Can you open the gate, please?”
“We aren’t accepting visitors.”
“But we came a long way to get here.”
“What is your business here?”
I grinned. “We have a Nazi-gram for Himmler.”
“Jonathan!” Esther said.
The gate buzzed and swung inward.
“I didn�
�t think that would work,” I said.
“They’ll probably shoot us when we step through the gate,” Kelly said, slapping the metal strip into her palm.
“So I should hide behind you?”
“Only if you want to live,” she said.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Hiding behind a girl isn’t seen as vary manly in most situations, but I hid behind Kelly as we slipped through the gate.
It wasn’t necessary. No one tried to shoot us. An elderly Argentinian woman sat in a rocking chair on the front porch, moving back and forth while she knitted a sweater without looking at it. She just did the knit one, purl two routine and stared at us as we walked up the front drive to the main house.
The courtyard was open with plenty of trees lining the sides, but nice green grass filling the spaces between the wall and the house.
A little boy in blue pants and an orange T-shirt pulled the front door open, and stepped outside with a burrito in one hand. Sauce dripped down his arm, and when he moved past his grandmother to a porch swing, he stopped and licked his wrist. He looked at Kelly and me, and smiled. He was missing his two front teeth. His dark hair hung in bangs that almost reached his brown eyes.
Esther drifted inside the house then popped back a moment later. “No guns.”
“Hola,” I said.
The woman’s eyes flicked in my direction, then focused on Kelly.
“Mi abuela no habla,” the kid said and took a big bite of his burrito.
“Gracias,” I said.
The kid shrugged.
The door opened and an attractive woman in her late twenties stepped outside. Her shiny black hair hung to her waist. She wore a sundress, but like the kid, she was barefoot. The air felt a little chilly to me for going without shoes, but she didn’t seem to care. “My father will speak with you in a moment,” she said, and sat on the porch swing with the boy.
A small furry Pomeranian dog raced around the corner of the house and started barking at us in a high-pitched yip.
“Can I kill it?” Kelly asked.
“Only if it has a machine gun,” I said.
She turned and glared at me.
“Callate, Princesa,” the woman said.
The dog barked twice more, turned in a circle, barked again, then darted up the steps to the porch.
The boy fed the pooch a bit of burrito.
