“Could this have come from one of those caches?” I asked.
“Perhaps,” Glasgow said with heavy shrug of his massive shoulders.
“How much do you think that bar alone is worth?”
Glasgow turned to his computer again and after a couple of minutes said, “At the end of the war in 1945, gold sold for $37.25 per ounce. Assuming the bar in that photo is the same size and weight as what’s call a Good Delivery ingot—and it certainly appears so—we can estimate it weighs in at 12.4 kilograms or a little over 27 pounds.” He picked up an electronic calculator. “That would be 483.9 ounces at $37.25 per ounce. That bar would be worth about $18,025 and change at ’45 prices.”
I whistled again. “Jesus.”
“That’s nothing,” Glasgow said, fiddling with the calculator again. “In today’s prices, that one ingot is worth $125,986.”
I jotted down the numbers in my notebook then sat back and absorbed the information. A hundred grand might not seem a lot to some people—especially if they were well off like Crane—but to others a hundred large was worth killing for. Was Crane tortured and killed over this single bar of gold? That seemed a bit excessive, especially since Wall Street bandits were bilking investors out of millions of dollars every day without getting their hands dirty or raising a sweat. But what if there were more gold? What if the ingot in Crane’s floor safe was just a sample of a larger stockpile?
An idea began scratching at the back of my head, not fully formed, but persistent.
“Is it possible this bar is part of a larger stash,” I asked, “one of these emergency caches you mentioned—one that is, somehow, hidden here in the States or just over the border in Mexico?”
Glasgow stroked his beard in thought, then shook his head.
“Not in this country,” he said. “German experience at landing spies by U-boat on U.S. soil was never successful. A cache hidden somewhere in Mexico is more likely. Several German colonies existed in Mexico before the war—as throughout Latin America. But without more data, it would just be speculation.”
Glasgow’s beady eyes narrowed as they looked at me.
“You don’t have any more information, Peter, do you?”
I felt my lips involuntarily curl into a sly smile as I looked back at Glasgow.
“Yes, Jonathan,” I said, “I think I do.”
CHAPTER 6
I HANDED GLASGOW THE Kriegsmarine radio signals. “You speak German, don’t you?”
“Fluently,” he said matter-of-factly. He flipped through the photocopies, grunting after reading each one. Then he looked up. “Have you translated these?”
“No. Could you, please?”
“Of course.” Glasgow reshuffled the papers and cleared his throat. “These are decoded messages from a vessel of the Kriegsmarine.”
“I guessed that.”
“Right. The first one is dated May 3, 1942 and roughly translated reads, ‘Destination reached today at 0300. Freight intact. Ready for contact from the German Embassy Mexico City. Müller.’”
He turned to the next message.
“The second one, sent two weeks later, reads, ‘Began preparations for Zebra. Location to be forwarded via messenger. Ready for word from the German Embassy Mexico City. Tijuana consulate staff alerted. Müller.’”
He turned to the last signal.
“‘Message received. Will initiate Emergency Plan Zebra immediately. Müller.’”
Glasgow looked up, blinked twice, then said, “Well, well. Imagine that.”
“What?”
“Germans operating in Mexico.” He glanced at the photocopies again. “May of ’42. That’s just about the time Mexico declared war on Germany. German U-boats were operating in the Gulf of Mexico as part of Operation Paukenschlag. They accidently sank two Mexican cargo ships and Hitler refused to apologize. Public outrage forced the Mexican president—his name was Camacho—to join the Allied cause. But…”
“But what?”
“Up until then, Mexico was neutral,” Glasgow continued, “but there was a strong pro-fascist element in the country, and Camacho allied himself with one of the most extreme, pro-Nazi rightwing factions. There is no doubt German diplomats in Mexico City connived to at least ensure Mexico’s neutrality or, even better, convince Mexico to join the Axis Powers.”
“Like the Zimmerman Letter scandal during the First World War.”
“Exactly, and for the same reasons,” Glasgow continued. “Keeping Mexico neutral meant one less Allied enemy to fight. But if Mexico entered the war on the Axis side, then both the Germans and the Japanese would have friendly territory for their submarines and other vessels right on the door step of the United States. It would force the U.S. into a three-front war, with one front being our own border with Mexico.”
“So, you think this Müller skippered a U-boat sent to Mexico with a pot of gold to bribe Mexican politicians?”
“Or just the Mexican president,” Glasgow said. “Despite allying himself with the rightwing of Mexican politics, Camacho truly wanted to remain neutral. He was being pulled from both sides—those who were pro-fascist and those who were anti-fascist. All the Germans needed to do was change his mind.”
“Bribe him to join the Axis cause,” I said.
“Exactly. Or, barring that, to remain neutral.”
“And this gold bar was the bribe?”
“It would take a lot more than one ingot to change Camacho’s mind,” Glasgow said. “He really didn’t want to enter the war. But every man has his price.”
“So, this could be part of a bigger cache,” I said.
“Yes, a much bigger cache. One bigger than a single U-boat could carry.”
“A ship?”
Glasgow nodded.
“Probably a civilian cargo ship since under international law vessels of war could not remain in a neutral country longer than seventy-two hours. Obviously, Müller’s ship remained in Mexican waters or a port for weeks.”
“But it’s obvious that Müller was a German naval officer,” I said. “He was reporting to the Kriegsmarine.”
“Yes,” Glasgow said, running his fingers through his beard like a comb. “Yes, that is a good point.” He paused, then said, “Peter, I will need some time to research this. Müller is a common German name. There were probably dozens if not hundreds of Kriegsmarine officers with that name.” He held up the photocopies. “May I keep these?”
I nodded. “I have the originals,” I said. “Oh, and one more item to show you.” I pulled the SS ring from my pocket and handed it to him. “This was found with the gold bar.”
Glasgow scrutinized the ring and made one of his animalistic grunts.
“SS,” he muttered, “and not Waffen-SS. These rings were given to the real bastards of the Schutzstaffel—the Allgemeine SS. They were responsible for enforcing Hitler’s racial policies.” He looked at the writing on the inside of the ring and jotted down some notes. “Kran.”
The way he pronounced it, the name rhymed with Khan, like the villain in that Star Trek movie.
Glasgow handed the ring back to me. “Shouldn’t be too difficult to research that name.”
I made ready to leave, but Glasgow stopped me.
“Peter,” he said, “are you certain you want to proceed with this?”
“Sure,” I said. “Why?”
“Anything having to do with the Nazis is…well, dangerous,” he said. “Or can be. You are familiar with my theories of a Fourth Reich, aren’t you?”
“That there is still a threat of Nazism rising from the ashes?”
“It’s more complex than that,” Glasgow said. He rose from the chair, searched one of his bookshelves, then pulled down a paperback copy of one of his books and handed it to me. “Here. You should read this.”
I took the book and looked at the title. “The Imminent Rise of the Nazi Fourth Reich by J. M. E. Glasgow,” I read. “That’s quite a mouthful.”
“Read it,” Glasgow said again. “The Nazis of
the Thirties and Forties were unlike any threat seen before. For many Germans, Nazism was a cult of personality led by Hitler. But there was more to the movement than the theatrics of Der Führer. There was a deeply-seated and pervasive evil in its members, almost a demonic possession in the movement that was unstoppable, even with the collapse of the Third Reich. I am not the only scholar who believes that, while Germany surrendered in March 1945, the Nazis and their movement did not.”
“Are you saying this gold bar might be part of a Nazi resurgence?” I asked.
Glasgow heaved his heavy shoulders.
“When the Nazi leadership fled Berlin in ’45, they planned to rely on the notfallreserve caches to rebuild the Nazi movement. But many of the records of where these emergency reserves were stashed were destroyed by Allied bombing and the Soviet onslaught and were never recovered. As I said before, many treasure hunters are looking for these caches hoping to get rich. But there are others still looking for these reserves for a more nefarious reason—to fund a fourth rising.”
“A fourth rising?” I said. “Just what does that mean, Jonathan?”
“According to Nazi lore, there were three German reichs, or empires,” Glasgow explained. “The First Reich, or Deutsches Kaiserreich, was the reign of the Kaiser. The Second Reich, or Deutsches Reich, was the time of the Weimer Republic. The Third Reich, of course, was the Nazi empire. Those hard-core adherents to Nazism who escaped the slaughter of Berlin in ’45 promised to raise a new Fourth Reich using the wealth of the notfallreserve.”
I struggled to keep from laughing at Glasgow’s conspiracy theories, and failed. I blurted out, “Jesus, Jonathan, next you’ll be telling me Hitler survived the war and escaped to South America.”
I expected Glasgow to laugh at my poking, or get angry. Instead, he simply addressed me with his black eyes and stated flatly, “He did.”
I didn’t respond to that.
“Look, Peter, even at the end, Hitler and his lieutenants were determined to keep the Nazi movement alive. They had plans to establish a stronghold in the Alps called the Alpine Redoubt, and had soldiers called Werwölfe who were trained in insurgency warfare to continue the struggle even after Berlin fell. The idea terrified Allied commanders, and they struggled to keep any news of Werwölfe sabotage and assassinations under wraps. Other Nazis escaped to establish themselves in fascist-friendly countries—and there were plenty of them—and both the escaped Nazis and their host countries were—and still are—more than willing to kill to keep their true identities secret.”
Glasgow raised himself from his chair and shook my hand.
“All I am saying, Peter, is be careful,” he said. “Be very careful.”
CHAPTER 7
I NOSED THE MUSTANG south on Interstate 405 and thought about what Glasgow told me. I didn’t give his theory about a new Nazi Reich much credence, but his earnestness in discussing it left me unsettled. And I couldn’t get Jo’s voice out of my head telling me about what she called Crane’s extremist views. Were those views as extreme as the Nazis of the Third Reich? Jo said he was anti-Semitic, but was he so bigoted he could support the mass annihilation of Jews as Hitler had done with his Final Solution? How, I wondered, could a normal American boy of the Baby Boomer generation grow up to support such an evil belief system that our own fathers fought against in World War II? At least my father did. Did Crane’s?
I took the off-ramp to Newport Beach and tried to remember how to get to Fred Danbury’s travel office. After a few wrong turns, I found it and then spent fifteen minutes trying to find a place to park, not an easy thing to do in the popular beach town. With the car finally parked, I hoofed two blocks back to Fred’s storefront travel business and asked a plump, middle-aged woman at the front desk for Fred.
“And may I have your name, sir?” The woman’s eyes narrowed and her voice held a note of suspicion. Considering Fred’s background, I found her distrust understandable. I wouldn’t be surprised if she had a gun tucked into a desk drawer.
“Peter Brandt,” I said. “Fred and I old acquaintances.”
“Peter Brandt!”
Fred’s Texas twang echoed from some back office before the woman could leave her chair. “Well, Maryanne, company’s here—add a cup of water to the soup. Send that tinhorn back here.”
Maryanne, the plump receptionist, nodded down the hall. “Go ahead,” she said. “First door on the right.”
I found Fred leaning back in his chair with his rattlesnake cowboy boots resting on his desk and one of his small dark cigars smoldering between his teeth. His rock-hard face held a sardonic grin. His sharply angled salt-and pepper moustache had a bit more salt than the last time I saw him.
“Howdy, there partner,” he said, erecting his six-foot-something frame, and shaking my hand. “You up to your ass in cow shit again? That’s the only time I ever hear from you.”
I met Fred when I was covering the civil wars in Nicaragua and El Salvador. An ex-CIA pilot, Fred was training Contra pilots how to fly heavily loaded cargo planes dangerously low to the ground so their kickers could drop parachuted supplies to Contra fighters, just as Fred had done for CIA mercenaries in Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos. Fred never held journalists in high esteem, but we had negotiated a separate peace over several Jack Daniels, and whenever I needed information that might come from spook-ville, I turned to Fred.
“Afraid so, Fred,” I answered.
“Figured,” he said. “Sit yourself down.”
I sat and he sat, then he pulled a bottle of Jack Daniels and a couple of glasses from a desk drawer and poured us each a stiff one. “What’s it this time? Phony Bay of Pigs heroes? More mysterious government scandals?”
“Nazi gold,” I said.
Fred’s glass froze at his lips. He slowly lowered it and regarded me as if I were a Martian.
“You’re kidding, right?”
I shook my head, showed him the photographs of the gold ingot, then gave him the same abbreviated story about Jo and Frank Crane and the Nazi gold I gave Glasgow. As he listened, he puffed on his little cigar like a steam engine working up pressure to conquer a precipitous mountain. When I finished, he asked, “You had this gold bar thingy verified?”
“I just came from a guy who’s an expert in all things Nazi, including their looted gold,” I said. “He told me the serial number on the bar came from a German mint known for—the word he used was ‘repurposing’—stolen gold that was then distributed as emergency reserves in case of a Nazi defeat.”
“I take it you think this is from some gold stash?”
I nodded. “Yep.”
Fred shook his head in disbelief. “I heard a lot of stories about hidden gold during my time with the Company. Mostly stories about lost Japanese war booty.”
“Like Yamashita’s gold?” I said.
“Yamashita’s gold was a big one,” Fred said, nodding. “Gold stolen from the Filipinos by General Yamashita when the Japs occupied the islands. Most folks think that little bastard Marcos probably found the gold and kept it for himself. But there were other stories, too.”
Fred puffed his cigar while his eyes focused on something in the past.
“When I was flying in Southeast Asia, there were stories about Japanese gold hordes buried somewhere in Vietnam by a general named Yamashi Tomoyuki. The most common thought at the time was the stash was buried in some mountain in southern Binh Thuan province. Once, I almost convinced myself to go looking for it. But I don’t know snake shit about Nazi gold.”
“What about a resurgence of the Nazis?” I asked.
Fred gave me that you’re-from-Mars-look again. “You mean those skinhead freaks? All tattoos and flabby asses?”
“No, the real thing,” I said. “Sieg heil and Heil Hitler. As in a new Fourth Reich.”
“Shi-it, Peter.” Fred whistled. “What cow pasture you been stepping in now?”
“It’s just a theory this Nazi historian I saw earlier has,” I said. “He thinks the Nazi movement lived on a
fter Germany surrendered in ’45.”
“Well, I do know a lot of the governments in Central and South America we called our friends in the Sixties were a mite indistinguishable from the Nazis. But they were anti-communist, and you know the old saying, ‘The enemy of my enemy—’”
“Is my friend.”
“Exactly,” Fred said. “But I never heard or saw anything about real Nazis marching through the mountains or whatnot. So, what’s your friend believe? Adolf Hitler is hiding out with Elvis?”
We laughed over that and I said, “I wouldn’t be surprised. Nevertheless, Fred, if you could ask around some of your old contacts, I’d appreciate it.” I handed him my business card with my contact information. “Here, I got a cell phone since the last time I saw you.”
“’Bout time,” he said.
☼
I drove down to Rancho Bernardo to see Jo, but no one answered the door bell. I walked back to the street and looked around. There was a dark sedan with darkened windows parked a few yards away that I thought looked suspicious until I saw the driver’s window roll down and an arm wave me over.
“She’s not home, Mr. Brandt,” the man inside said. He was young, clean-cut, with short, brown, thinning hair. In his lap he held a camera with a heavy telephoto lens.
“You know me?”
“Yes, sir,” he said. “My name is Jarvis. Mark Jarvis. I work for World-Wide.” He produced his wallet and showed me his company ID. “I’m part of the guard detail watching over Mrs. Crane and her house since Mr. Crane …”
“Was murdered,” I said bluntly.
“Yes, sir. I saw you when you visited Mrs. Crane the other day,” Jarvis said. He picked up a photocopy that had my picture and name on it. “She gave us this so we’d all know you were okay to visit.”
“Smart lady,” I said.
“Yes, and beautiful.”
“And beautiful,” I agreed. “Do you know where she is?”
“At the corporate offices meeting with the higher ups,” he said. “Big talk about the future of the company. I hope we still have jobs afterward.”
The Fourth Rising (Peter Brandt Thrillers Book 3) Page 4
