The Parsifal Pursuit

by Michael McMenamin

  Weber had fully regained consciousness by now and began babbling. “Josef, it‘s me! Hans! I did not tell them anything. I swear it. Ask them! I have not betrayed the Brotherhood!”

  “I am afraid, old friend, that you did,” the man with the scar replied softly. “One of the maps you were shown,” he said gesturing to the maps on the low table beyond him, “holds the location of Castle Lanz. Your eyes alone have already betrayed us.” He said, gesturing in the direction of Mattie and Sturm. “They know. I heard them. You were exiled by the Brotherhood many years ago because your judgment was unreliable. An innocent man, a Christian, died by your hand on a mountain road in Scotland. You may have repented but betraying the location of the Holy Lance is of a different order. Our Lord may forgive you but we shall not.”

  The man with the scar made the Sign of the Cross and then held the sword in a two-fisted grip. Mattie watched, mesmerized, as one of the men grabbed Weber‘s stringy black hair and yanked it back, exposing his fleshy throat while the fat man continued to babble. Tears streamed down Weber‘s face as the man with the scar pulled the sword back as if it were a cricket bat and then swung it forward in a powerful backhand arc, Weber‘s sobs stopping abruptly when the polished steel sunk into his neck, just below his adam‘s apple. The sword seemed to meet no resistance as it continued in its arc, droplets of blood flying off the sword‘s edge after it had severed Weber‘s head.

  Mattie screamed as Weber‘s head was held high by its hair, a wideeyed look of horror frozen on Weber‘s face while blood spurted in a veritable geyser from the stump of his neck, nearly reaching Mattie, almost 20 feet away. Weber‘s large body fell slowly forward until its twitching neck rested on the top step and a cataract of red flowed down to stain the white marble steps. The force of the flow diminished as Weber‘s heart finally realized it was no longer receiving instructions from his brain and ceased beating. The stream of blood continued to flow out of the neck and down the steps, now only a phenomenon of gravity.

  “Oh my god!” Campbell exclaimed, his voice high and unnatural. Weber‘s head was dripping blood, and his eyelids and lips opened and closed in irregular rhythmic contractions for a good ten seconds until the spasmodic movements ceased, the face relaxed and the eyelids closed half-way.

  “Hans!” the man with the scar shouted and Mattie watched in horror as the eyelids slowly lifted up, and Weber‘s eyes fixed on the man who had shouted, his pupils focusing as he did so. “You betrayed our Savior and the Sacred Lance!”

  Several more seconds passed and Weber‘s eyelids closed again, his face relaxed.

  “Hans!” the voice shouted and once more, the eyelids of Weber‘s head slowly lifted and the eyes again focused even more intently on the man with the scar.

  “You will burn in hell, Hans!” the man shouted. Shortly after that, Weber‘s eyelids drooped but less than before and the eyeballs rolled up into his head, taking on the glazed look Mattie had seen in battlefield corpses. The entire exchange, Mattie realized, from the severing of Weber‘s head until his eyes rolled up, had taken nearly sixty long, horrifying seconds.

  Stunned, Mattie took a moment to register the sound of gunshots as someone‘s arm knocked her to the floor. She looked up to see that two men already lay dead, their guard with two small red holes over his heart and the other missing the right side of his head.

  Sturm!

  So quickly did it happen that the two men on the landing had no chance to react. The man with the scar had immediately dropped his sword and attempted to bring his machine pistol around to a firing position. The man holding Weber‘s head dropped it and attempted to do the same, as the head hit on the first step and tumbled down, rolling to a stop as it hit Mattie‘s foot.

  Sturm‘s next shot was off target and smashed into the machine pistol held by the man with the scar, and ricocheted off it to the man‘s right arm. He cried out and dropped to his knee. Mattie had jumped back when Weber‘s head touched her foot, but she recovered her wits and reached for her Walther from where it had been nestled in the small of her back inside the waistband of her trousers. She aimed at the man who had dropped Weber‘s head as he struggled to recover his machine pistol from behind his back.

  “Hands away from the weapon!” Mattie shouted in German.

  Sturm hesitated, then followed Mattie‘s lead and held his fire. “Do it now,” he added “Slowly place the weapon at your feet. Do the same with your friend‘s weapon.”

  After the man did so, Sturm spoke over his shoulder to Campbell, “Professor”. But Campbell didn‘t reply as he huddled on the floor, shaking, his hands over his head. “Professor!” Sturm shouted and Campbell looked up at him. “Please find Anwar and have him bring the automobile around. If they have killed him, you will find a spare set of keys in the glove compartment.”

  Just then, a small frightened voice came from the top of the landing. “Monsieur Sturm. It is me. Anwar,” he said, speaking in French. “It is safe for me now?”

  “Yes, Anwar. Bring our car to the main entrance. We shall depart in a few moments.”

  The small, wiry Egyptian‘s head appeared out from behind the corner and paused as he took in the carnage and the headless body in front of him. He tiptoed carefully down the right side of the marble steps as they contained the least blood. “You can count on me, Monsieur.”

  “Go with him, Professor,” Sturm said. “You, too, Mattie.”

  Mattie stiffened “Why? What are you going to do?”

  Sturm replied without taking his eyes off the two now unarmed men. “I am going to find out who these men are and what they want.”

  “But the one you wounded—with the scar—he‘s the one who shot at me on the train.”

  “I assumed as much. Another man with a scar in less than a week is too much of a coincidence. I don‘t believe in coincidence.”

  “You can‘t kill them in cold blood.”

  “Mattie. This is not the time to discuss matters of this kind.”

  “Kurt, please. Don‘t kill them.”

  “Then go to the kitchen. See if you can find some rope.”

  “I WILL kill you both,” Sturm said, “before the woman returns, unless you tell me what I want to know.” With that, he slapped the handle of his Luger down hard on the wounded man‘s arm, causing him to cry out sharply. But both men simply stared at him and said nothing, their lips moving silently as if in prayer.

  Sturm briefly contemplated who was the weakest and, therefore, the one to shoot last. Neither man had flinched during the beheading, not the one holding the sword, nor the one holding the head. Sturm‘s hesitation saved their lives because just then Mattie returned and began binding the two men, showing no mercy even when the man with the scar winced in pain as she bound his two hands tightly together behind him.

  Pleasing a woman should not influence his decision, Sturm thought, but he said nothing. The woman was a curious mixture of strength and softness. He weighed the odds and decided he could live with them. He spared the two men. Killing was something he did when he had no choice. It was not something he enjoyed.

  “Mattie, we must move quickly. More of them may be waiting for us.”

  32.

  A Cute Birthmark

  Munich

  Friday, 5 June 1931

  BLOOD still streaked Cockran‘s face when he and Harmony walked—or in his case limped—into the Hotel Leinfelder shortly before midnight. It was nearly two hours after their motorcar had crashed off the road to Munich. He had persuaded her he didn‘t need a hospital. The cuts on his face had stopped bleeding and looked a whole lot worse than it felt. His hip, however, hurt like hell.

  The lobby at the Leinfelder was a smaller, quieter affair than the Bayerische Hof, which supplied its own nightlife at its bar, restaurant and cabaret. Cockran only saw two men and a woman lounging just outside the Leinfelder bar. Both men stared openly at Cockran––not something you do if you‘re tailing someone—so he felt reasonably sure they weren‘t SS.

 
The hotel‘s desk clerk was a young man, thin with thickset dark wavy hair. He spoke decent English, as many hotel clerks in Germany did, and became most sympathetic to their tale of being caught in the middle of a political street fight once “Mr. Donovan” handed him twice the amount of German marks necessary for the hotel room. He also understood words like “iodine” and “bandages,” which “Mrs. Donovan” asked for.

  Cockran regretted the necessity for leaving their hotel and checking into a new one under an assumed name but he had no choice. His client‘s safety came first. Now he and Mattie were in the same boat. He still had no idea where she was and, if she ever tried to contact him at the Bayerische Hof, she would find he had checked out with no forwarding address. Neither knew where the other was. What had started out as concern on his part was rapidly turning to anger. Damn it, after two years together, did he mean so little to her that she would simply cut off communications between them because of their arguments? He deserved better. But what other conclusion could he draw? Venice was not looking promising.

  Once in their room—separate beds, not bedrooms, no suite being available—Harmony pulled Cockran into the bathroom to clean his face properly. Her damp blonde hair was curling and hung in a curtain over her face as she bent over the sink to start the water. With a flip of her head, she flung the curls out of her eyes and looked at him. “Why don‘t you find some place to sit down?” she said.

  Cockran sat on the edge of the bathtub as she turned to him, her powder blue blouse sticking tightly to her skin. She placed a hand on his knee to push it aside and knelt between his thighs. One of the upper buttons of her dress had come undone. Stop that, he told himself. Get your mind off her chest and back in the game.

  She reached out to his face with a soft cloth, soaked with warm water, and ran it over his face, the excess water running onto his already damp shirt. Her touch was firm and purposeful as she washed his wounds, the pressure when she applied the cloth to his cuts no different from that applied to the rest of his face. The cuts weren‘t deep and had stopped bleeding. There were clean cuts on his cheek and forehead that accounted for most of the blood on his face. Harmony reached to place a bandage on his forehead, but Cockran took her hand. “No bandages,” he said. “Not on the face. Not yet.”

  “But you might start bleeding again.” she said.

  “I still have work to do. White bandages on my face are too conspicuous.”

  “So is blood running down your face,” she said, like a good mother chastising her son.

  He grinned. “Then give me one to stick in my pocket,” he said. “I‘ll wipe it away if it starts to bleed.” Harmony made an impatient face. “Blood is hard to see in the dark. Trust me,”

  Harmony sighed, conceding. “Then at least let me wipe the iodine off your face.” Cockran said yes and she leaned in close, dabbing the cloth at his face carefully. Her face rested inches from his, her breath floating over his lips. “There,” she said, her face still close. She leaned her head to one side and gave him a kiss on the cheek. “That was for protecting me in the car. For saving my life.” She leaned back. “Now take off your shirt and pants.”

  Cockran balked. “Can‘t you—”

  “I am not cleaning the wound on your hip through your pants, and you‘re bleeding through your shirt,” she said firmly. “Take them off. You‘re not the first man I‘ve seen in his underwear. I‘m only your client, remember? Your virtue is still safe. Relax.”

  Easy for you to say, Cockran thought. He unbuckled his belt, felt a burning twinge in his wounded hip, and dropped his pants on the floor. He watched Harmony‘s face for a reaction, but if she had one, he missed it. She was already going to work, pulling his boxer shorts modestly down on the side to expose the wound, then washing the deeper cut on his hip. Her hand rested on his leg as she worked, her thin arms tensing with the effort, the sweat beading on her breastbone and rolling beneath the open neck of her dress. Only the sting of the iodine kept his body from embarrassing him with her soft hands so close.

  Harmony shot him a glance of concern when she heard his sharp intake of breath. Cockran stared straight ahead. “This cut is much worse,” she said, looking up from his hip and pulling her hand away from his leg. “The wound won‘t close easily. You‘ll need stitches.”

  “I‘ll get them tomorrow,” he said.

  “May I at least bandage this one, Mr. Tough Guy?” she said, her hand back on his waist.

  “You may,” he said, as she began placing gauze and tape over his hip.

  “Where did you get this?” she asked as she pulled his boxer shorts down lower and put a cool hand on a two-inch long purple crescent on his right hip beside the wound. “A tattoo?”

  “From my parents. It‘s a birthmark.” Cockran tensed. If she didn‘t take her hands off him, one way of showing his attraction to her was soon going to be impossible to hide.

  “I think it‘s cute.”

  Cockran laughed. “It‘s never been called that before.”

  “Now for this last cut on your arm.” She placed a hand on his bare thigh to steady herself and reached past him for the gauze on the sink. He didn‘t move as she strained to reach the supplies. Her damp hair rested against his face and Cockran could smell sweat mingled with perfume behind her ear. She leaned back to look at him, the gauze in her hand almost forgotten. Her face hung above him, her lips parted, waiting to be kissed, and he did. She kissed him back and her cool hand on his leg moved higher, inside his boxer shorts, curling around his unmistakable erection.

  Cockran reacted instinctively and took her in his arms, pushing her back and up onto the marble shelf containing the wash basin. He slipped a hand inside her dress, beneath her bra, feeling her breasts. She gasped, pulled up the hem of her dress and guided his free hand along the inside of her bare leg. She slid her filmy step-ins aside and pulled him closer with her hand firmly grasping his hip. Cockran winced at the pain in his hip and tried to pull back but she held him firmly in place, kissing him and guiding his hand higher along her leg. He freed his hand and tried to back out of her embrace but both her hands were on his hips now pulling him forward. With a great effort, he leaned back from her arms, broke free and pinned them to her sides. Harmony shot him a look of surprise but her protest died in her throat when she saw his face. He released her arms and turned away, awkwardly pulling his trousers up. He didn‘t trust himself to speak so he silently reached for his shirt, breathing heavily.

  “Where are you going?” she asked, gasping for air, the hem of her dress still well above her waist.

  “Back to the Bayerische Hof,” he said. “We need to steer them off our trail.”

  “Won‘t they be waiting for you?”

  “Probably,” he said, sticking the other arm through.

  “What about the cut on your arm? I haven‘t bandaged it.”

  “Let it bleed,” he said and left without looking back.

  A LIGHT rain had begun to fall and it was a welcome sensation as he limped the two blocks back to the Bayerische. He took his time, gathering his thoughts, trying to pinpoint where exactly he had lost his head. What the hell had he been thinking? Harmony was an attractive woman, intelligent too. His kind of woman. But he didn‘t think much of lawyers who slept with their clients, especially vulnerable clients as Harmony most certainly was. Yet he almost had done just that. He was attracted to her in a way he did not expect. She was not an adventureseeker like Mattie. He would not have to worry about her rushing headlong into danger at every turn. Like Cockran, she wanted a quiet life. With children? Cockran didn‘t know her that well yet. But he wanted children. Did Mattie? He didn‘t know that either. In fact, given her failure to contact him, he didn‘t even know whether Mattie wanted him anymore. He‘d find out in Venice.

  As for tonight, he passed it off to an old truism from his old CO and current boss, Bill Donovan. “When a man‘s little head gets hard, his big one goes soft.” Cockran shook his head. If that wasn‘t the truth, nothing was. His father
had told him the same thing but had used different and certainly more diplomatic words. He just couldn‘t remember them.

  Right before reaching the Bayerische, he turned left, searching for an unmarked doorway at the base of a short stairwell. Before leaving, Cockran had tipped the Leinfelder concierge—Rolf—one mark to find out whether the Bayerische had a service entrance where he could slip in without notice. Rolf knew of such an entrance but recommended a much smaller bribe than one mark to the laundry workers employed there. “Most of the staff there work two jobs. Many are Nazis,” he had said “They have to pay for their own uniforms. They bribe easily.”

  “And you don‘t?” Cockran had asked.

  “No, only tips for good service.” He had smiled and then said. “The Leinfelder furnishes my uniform at no cost.”

  Cockran found the stairwell and waited. The dull pain throbbed in his hip and he could feel blood seeping through Harmony‘s bandage. It took ten minutes before a laundry worker emerged with a bag. A couple of twenty pfenning coins was all it took to gain access. Inside, he limped up the employee stairwell to their suite on the third floor. Spotting no signs of surveillance, he entered the suite and grabbed a change of clothes for both of them and stuffed it all into Harmony‘s hard leather suitcase. He worked his way down to the lobby. He knew he should leave the same way he entered. That was the safest thing to do. But he couldn‘t. Gathering a change of clothes wasn‘t the only reason he had come.

  Someone was waiting for him. A tall man with close-cropped sandy hair holding a glass of beer, trying his best to remain inconspicuous in the bustling night traffic of the hotel lobby‘s bar. Cockran stood just out of sight in a hallway watching the man.. He scanned the lobby but no one else was so focused on the hotel‘s front doors. With the lookout‘s attention focused on the entrance, he was able to cross the lobby to the check-out desk without drawing any attention. With any luck, the SS lookout would be so busy waiting for Cockran to enter the hotel that he would not notice him leaving it. “Checking out, please,” Cockran said. “Room eight-oh-four.”