The Serpent's Egg

by JJ Toner

  “There’s a body in the trunk. I want you to help us dispose of it.”

  The butterflies in his stomach took flight. “Whose body is it? You’ve killed someone? Why, what did he do?”

  “He was a traitor, a Gestapo informer. That’s all you need to know.”

  “Shit, Bruno, why involve me?”

  “I needed someone I can trust. Can I trust you, Comrade?”

  “Don’t call me that. I’m not a member of your Party.”

  “Can I trust you?”

  “I suppose you’re going to have to, now that you’ve told me you have a body in the trunk.”

  Bruno and Max got out of the car. Bruno held the door open while the big man in the back climbed out. Then he opened the trunk and pulled out two shovels. He handed one to Max and the other to the muscleman and they stepped over a low stone wall into a church cemetery. Tombstones stood about silently in the rain, the newer ones erect, the older ones, weathered, made of gray stone, leaning at crazy angles. A sign at the entrance to the church read: Holy Cross Roman Catholic Church. It showed the times of the Sunday services and the name of the Parish Priest: Father Schmitt.

  Bruno led the way to a recent grave. He threw the flowers to one side and retreated to shelter under the wall of the church. Max and Muscleman began to dig. The rain continued to pour down. The soil was heavy, saturated with water. Both men were soaked to the skin within a minute. Within 20, they were both caked in mud from head to toe. The hole was long and wide enough for a body.

  Muscleman stopped digging and straightened his back. Bruno came over to inspect their work. “It needs to be deeper. Dig deeper.”

  The big man climbed out and Max continued digging on his own. As he worked, rivulets of rainwater ran down the sides, depositing wet soil back into the hole. It crossed his mind that he might be digging his own grave. He’d had no more than a quick glimpse inside the trunk. He hadn’t seen a body, only what looked like a roll of carpet.

  Max’s shovel struck the lid of a coffin.

  “That’s it,” said Bruno. “You can stop digging. Come on, give me a hand.”

  Bruno opened the trunk again. The roll of carpet clearly contained a body, a pair of black shoes protruding from one end.

  Muscleman took the end with the head, Max the other.

  “On three. One. Two. Three. Lift.”

  They lifted carpet and body out, carried it across to the grave and dropped it in. The rain pounding on the carpet made a pattering noise that seemed totally at odds with the environment and loud enough to attract attention. Max’s end fell outside the hole. Muscleman climbed down and tugged at the carpet.

  “Help Edmund, Max.”

  Max stood on the coffin lid beside muscleman, Edmund. He took a handful of carpet and they pulled the body into position in the grave. Max could see the top of the head. He recognized the tonsure of black hair. “It’s Vigo! You’ve killed Father Vigo.”

  Part 4

  Chapter 70

  October 1939

  Bruno hissed, “Keep your voice down. Now fill it in.”

  They climbed out and worked their shovels together to cover the body. Max was shaking with emotion, his heart racing, although he couldn’t put a name to what he felt.

  As they toiled, the rain eased and then stopped. The wind continued to howl around the tombstones.

  All three got back in the car, Max in the back this time. They headed west, dawn light emerging from under the blanket of cloud in the sky behind them.

  “Tell me why.” Max struggled to keep his voice under control. “Tell me why you killed Father Vigo.”

  “He was a Gestapo informer. We have suspected him for some time. Yesterday, we put the final piece of the puzzle in place.”

  Sitting in the front passenger seat, Edmund grunted agreement.

  “You tortured him?” Max’s blood boiled. These Communists were no better than the Brownshirts!

  “We didn’t have to torture him. The evidence was clear.”

  “What evidence?”

  Edmund answered in a surprisingly high-pitched voice, “We found a map in the parish house.”

  “You killed him because of a map?”

  Both men clammed up again. Then Bruno said, “We had other evidence. Vigo was the worst kind of wolf, a wolf disguised as a sheep.”

  “I can’t believe that.” Max was shouting. “Vigo worked tirelessly for the Red Orchestra. He delivered hundreds of leaflets. He took countless risks. How could he have been a traitor?”

  Bruno turned his head, taking his eyes from the road. “What do you think the Red Orchestra is? It’s a Communist Resistance movement. And what do you think is the number one enemy of the Roman Catholic Church?” He spat the words out. “Every Roman Catholic priest is dedicated, from the day of his ordination, to the absolute destruction of Communism. This is their secret mission in life.”

  Max was silent after that. Could it be true? Could Vigo, his friend and companion, the man who stood by Delma when she arrived in a foreign land as an orphaned teenager – could this man have been working secretly to bring down the Communist Resistance all this time?

  #

  Anna was horrified when she saw the mud on his clothes. “Where were you? What were you doing all that time?”

  Max stripped off his clothes. “We’ll talk about it tonight after work.”

  “We’ll talk about it now, Max. How could I get back to sleep not knowing what mischief you’ve gotten up to?”

  He left his clothes out to dry and went to bed. She got in beside him. “Tell me, Max.”

  “I’m tired, Anna, just let me sleep. I’ll tell you all about it in the morning, I promise.”

  She relented, and Max fell into a deep sleep.

  She got up early and checked his muddy clothes. They were nearly dry. She used a stiff brush to scrub the dried mud from them. Then she put the clothes in a basin to soak, and cleaned his shoes.

  Next, she prepared his breakfast. When the food was ready she woke him. Max leapt out of bed. He got dressed and sat at the table. She waited patiently while he devoured his food. When he’d finished, she said, “Now will you tell me what happened last night?”

  Max hesitated. She locked her eyes onto his and waited for an answer.

  “That was one of the Communists at the door. He needed my help.”

  “With what?”

  He blinked and his eyes darted away. “The Communists killed a man, Anna. They said he was a traitor. I had to help them dispose of the body.”

  She couldn’t believe her ears. “You went out in a storm in the middle of the night and… what? Buried a body!”

  “I didn’t have a choice. They said they needed my help. They didn’t tell me why until it was too late. I couldn’t refuse.”

  “Where was this? Look at me, Max.”

  He met her gaze again. “Holy Cross Church cemetery. It’s a long way from here.”

  She clenched her fists. “Didn’t we agree that we would act together in future? That you wouldn’t take any major decisions without discussing it with me first?”

  He looked at his watch. “I have to get to work. We’ll talk about it tonight.” He kissed her on the cheek and was gone.

  Anna left the apartment shortly after Max. She usually took the tram to work, but today she walked. She needed time to think.

  What had she married?

  I thought I knew Max, but first he admitted he was mixed up with Communist subversives. That was bad enough. But now he’s gone out in the dead of night to bury someone!

  Her head was reeling.

  Mama was right. I should never have married him.

  #

  Max called Greta and they arranged to meet at the canal on his way home from work.

  “Tell me why Vigo was killed.”

  “I’m sorry, Max, I know you liked him. I asked Bruno and his comrades to find out who betrayed the location of the Hectograph to the Gestapo. They started with a list of three names. Vigo, Edmun
d and you.”

  Max opened his mouth to object, but Greta continued, “I told them you didn’t know where the printer was located. That left two names. They investigated and decided Vigo was the culprit.”

  “Based on what evidence?”

  “They broke into the parish house and found a map of the city. The map had a pinhole marking the location of the printer.”

  Max was silent for a few moments while he absorbed this information. “You’re telling me they killed him because of a pinhole in a map? How do they know that Vigo put the pinhole there?”

  “Who else could have put it there?”

  “Edmund, maybe? Was he there when they found the map?”

  Chapter 71

  October 1939

  At the police station on Storkowerstrasss, Kriminal Kommissar Erhart Neumann approached the booking desk. “Anything I should know about, Rainer?”

  With two hours left on his shift, the desk sergeant had one eye on the clock. A week of wind and rain had been followed by two nights of extreme Brownshirt activity. The station was inundated with floods of complaining citizens. Neumann marveled at the calm way the desk sergeant dealt with the public, entering everything into the incident book with endless patience.

  “Nothing, Erhart. It’s been busy, but it’s all trivial stuff.”

  There was a bond between the two men. They were of similar age, and both had joined the police force at roughly the same time, 20 years earlier. It was nothing but the vagaries of Fate that had propelled Neumann to a position as a high ranked detective while his friend languished in obscurity at the desk.

  Neumann ran his eyes over the book. There were several beatings in the streets, two missing dogs, a spate of burglaries, and a report from a woman who claimed someone stole her dead grandfather.

  “What about this one? Give me the sheet.”

  Neumann took the sheet to his desk and studied it. The woman’s name was Frau Glueck. Her grandfather, Bismarck Rachwalski, had been buried two days earlier. She claimed that his grave had been interfered with during the night. She was convinced her grandfather’s body had been spirited away by grave robbers.

  Neumann showed it to his assistant. “What do you think of this, Fischer?”

  Kriminal Oberassistent Fischer read the sheet. “It’s probably nothing, Boss. Maybe some wild animal looking for an easy meal.”

  “I’ve never heard of anything like that before. I thought that’s why they buried them deep and in wooden boxes.”

  Fischer shrugged. “You don’t really think Herr Rachwalski has been dug up and taken away, do you?”

  “No, but I think we should take a look. Grab your keys.”

  #

  In the cemetery behind Holy Cross Church a light mist clung to the ground between the ancient gray slabs. The grave of Bismarck Rachwalski was easy to spot, freshly dug with no gravestone, a dirty bunch of flowers on the soil. All around the grave, traces of scattered soil in the grass and waterlogged footprints suggested recent activity.

  Neumann scratched his square chin. “What do you think, Fischer?”

  “It looks untidy, but shouldn’t the mound be lower if the coffin has been removed?”

  “We’re going to have to take a look. Wait here. I’ll talk to the pastor.”

  Fischer pulled his coat tighter around his chest. “I’ll wait in the car, if you don’t mind, Boss. Graveyards give me the creeps.”

  #

  Neumann’s boss, Oberst Vogel was not convinced. “What are you expecting to find?”

  “I don’t know, sir. Maybe nothing. I just have a strange feeling about the case.”

  “Don’t you have a full caseload already?”

  “Yes, sir, but my instinct tells me this one is special.”

  Vogel gave the go-ahead. “Do it by the book. I don’t want any citizen’s complaints landing on my desk.”

  The disinterment authority took a week to arrive. It took three days more to find two volunteers willing to dig up a fresh corpse.

  They arrived at the cemetery early on a misty October morning. The two volunteers discarded their tunics, rolled up their sleeves and began to dig. Father Schmitt, the parish priest, stood nearby with Frau Glueck in case they were needed.

  Fifteen minutes later they uncovered what looked like a rolled up carpet. They dug some more, uncovered the carpet and hauled it onto the grass. They unrolled it to reveal the body of a priest dressed in a cassock.

  The parish priest crossed himself several times when he saw the body. “Saints preserve us!”

  “One of yours, Father?” said Neumann.

  “No, that’s Vigo. Father Salvatore Vigo.” He crossed himself again. “He’s from St. Angar’s Church on the far side of the city.”

  The coffin lid was visible beneath where the body in the carpet had been. The digging party continued until they could unscrew the coffin lid.

  Neumann called Frau Glueck over and asked her to identify the body in the coffin. Covering her mouth with her hand she looked down and confirmed that the body in the coffin was that of her grandfather. They replaced the coffin lid. A sobbing Frau Glueck retired to the church with the parish priest.

  Fischer used the parish house telephone to ring for a police ambulance. The ambulance arrived within 15 minutes and took the body and the carpet to the city morgue. Then Neumann, Fischer and the digging party began a careful search of the cemetery.

  Thirty minutes later, Fischer gave a loud cry. “Over here, sir.”

  Neumann hurried across. “What have you found?”

  Fischer pointed into the long grass close to the cemetery wall. “It looks like a cigarette lighter.”

  Chapter 72

  October 1939

  Kriminal Kommissar Neumann walked into Oberst Vogel’s office.

  Vogel was stuffing his pipe. “I hear you found a body in the cemetery.”

  Neumann didn’t appreciate the obvious joke. “Yes, sir, the body of a priest from a parish on the other side of the city. He was rolled up in a carpet.”

  “Probably the Brownshirts,” said Vogel. “You know how they feel about religious pastors.”

  “I don’t think this was the Brownshirts, sir. They don’t usually go to the trouble of burying their victims. No, this is something else. I’d like to open a murder file.”

  “Do you have any leads apart from the carpet?”

  “Just one. We found a cigarette lighter with War markings on it.”

  “Let me see it.”

  “I’ve sent it to the laboratory for fingerprint investigation.”

  “Very well, but don’t spend too much time on it. And keep me informed.”

  #

  The police photographer took a picture of the dead priest.

  Neumann and Fischer set out for St. Angar’s Church. They found the parish priest, Father Zauffer, in the parish house. Concerned about how the old priest might react to the bad news, Neumann asked if they could all sit down before Fischer showed him the photograph.

  As soon as Father Zauffer saw the picture, he covered his mouth and scuttled from the room. When he returned, he took the picture from Fischer. “That’s Salvatore Vigo. What on earth happened to him?”

  “He was one of your priests?”

  “He was a priest of this parish, yes. He has been missing for several weeks.”

  “When did you last see him?”

  Father Zauffer checked the calendar on the wall. “He conducted a Baptism on September 14. That was the last time I saw him. What happened to him?”

  “He was killed and buried in a graveyard on the far side of the city. Holy Cross Church cemetery, do you know it?”

  “I know it, yes. That’s Father Schmitt’s parish.”

  Neumann signaled to Fischer to retrieve the photograph. It was buckling in Father Zauffer’s fierce grip. Fischer eased the picture from the old priest’s hand.

  Neumann said, “Did you report his disappearance?”

  “No, he leaves me from time to time.
He has – had – interests outside parish affairs.”

  “What sort of interests?”

  “I don’t know. He never told me, and I didn’t like to ask.”

  Fischer and Neumann exchanged a glance.

  “Did he have any enemies?”

  Father Zauffer had regained some of his composure. He shrugged. “No more than any other priest in the Third Reich.”

  “And why do you think he was at the Holy Cross Church?”

  “I have no idea.”

  #

  Neumann took the car keys from his assistant and got behind the wheel. Driving the powerful car gave him the sensation that he was taking charge and doing something to solve the case. “Why would anyone want to kill a priest?”

  The question was rhetorical, but, like a good Kriminal Oberassistent, Fischer tried to answer it. “The Communists hate the Romans, the Jews hate the Romans, the Nazis don’t get on with anyone. And there’s the Calvinists, the Lutherans…”

  “Yes, yes, but we’re talking about murder.” Neumann chewed his lip. “We’ll talk to Otto.” Narrowly avoiding a group of schoolgirls on bicycles, he executed a crude U-turn and headed back toward the city center.

  #

  They found Doctor Otto Schranck, the Medical Examiner, in his laboratory, peering into a microscope.

  “Take a seat Kommissar. I’ll be with you in a minute.”

  Kriminal Kommissar Neumann peered at Vigo’s naked corpse laid out on a bench, his head at a strange angle to his body. The priest looked resigned to his fate.

  Fischer said, “He looks peaceful.”

  “He does. He would have known what was coming. He would have prepared his soul to meet his God.”

  “Unless he was wearing a blindfold when they killed him.” Doctor Schranck stood between and behind them. For one horrible moment, Neumann thought the Medical Examiner was going to put his arms around their shoulders, like pals at a football match.