The Last Nazi (A Joe Johnson Thriller, Book 1)

by Andrew Turpin

  “What about Harrow1991?” He’d definitely used his school and birth year for a password somewhere before.

  “Not that either. I’m going to fetch my coffee, so think while I’m gone.”

  It took what seemed an interminably long time before Oliver finally remembered. He and Nathaniel had made jokes about it. How could he have forgotten?

  “I’ve got it. Try Goldenballs2 with a capital G.” That was the joke, that the two old twins had first been lucky to live, then lucky with money.

  “Right, finally . . . well done. You’ve just saved yourself a lot more pain, son.”

  The man checked the contents of the Google Drive folder, then yelled out the door. “Ignacio, we’ve got it.”

  Oliver could hear someone running up the stairs.

  A third man with light brown hair came in, took one look at the detailed PDF document on the laptop screen, and then punched the air. “Well done, Diego—good job.”

  The newcomer noticed the cell phone and wallet sitting on the table next to the window. “Is that the boy’s phone? I hope the damn thing’s been turned off. We don’t want them tracing it to here.”

  “Good point, boss.” The man called Diego walked over to the phone and switched it off.

  Wednesday, November 30, 2011

  London

  After Johnson had arrived back at Jayne’s flat, he castigated himself as he realized, on second reading, that there were enough hints in Jacob’s red notebook to have indicated the true identity of José Guzmann, had he spent enough time thinking about it.

  He flicked through the pages again. The references there to revenge on Guzmann and making him pay the price should have told him. Come on, Joe boy, sharpen up.

  He fired off an encrypted text message to Vic in Washington.

  A development this end. Guzmann is actually Erich Brenner, SS. Can you check his file and report back pls.

  After that, he photographed all the pages of the notebook and uploaded the pictures to his laptop. Then he removed the memory card from his camera, hid it in the lining of his suitcase, and loaded the camera with a fresh one.

  Johnson decided not to go into detail with Jacob about how he obtained the red notebook. He would just hand it over and concentrate on finding young Oliver.

  As he was about to leave Jayne’s flat for the workshop, he had a call from Fiona, asking about progress.

  Johnson told her briefly about the latest development with Oliver, then instantly regretted it.

  “Joe, Obama’s heading back to the U.S. in the morning, and I’ve now got a few days free before I need to start work again in Washington,” Fiona said. “I didn’t expect that, but the primaries don’t get rolling again until after the New Year, and my boss has told me I don’t need to begin on the curtain-raising stuff until next week. I might as well come and join you and help find Oliver. Don’t argue—I’m coming. Sorry, I’ve got to go, there’s another call coming in. Speak soon.”

  She hung up.

  As Johnson walked back to the Plumbers Row workshop, he lit a cigarette, taking deep drags on it as he went.

  He knew he could probably persuade Jayne to get involved in tracking down Oliver. She could doubtless call in a few favors from her contacts at GCHQ, who would be able to pinpoint the whereabouts of his phone using triangulation or GPS technology. But if at all possible, he would prefer to avoid involving her any further than he had to. He didn’t want to get her into trouble at the SIS, and he felt he had pushed the boundaries already.

  Back in Jacob’s office, Johnson sheepishly handed over the notebook to the old man. He didn’t try to apologize. The old man didn’t say a word but turned and nodded to a scowling Jonah, who returned the Walther.

  “Let’s hope you don’t need that,” Jacob said.

  “Let’s hope not,” Johnson said. “But this Argentinian, Brenner’s son, Ignacio, seems to be continually one step ahead. He’s smart . . . might be a complete thug, but he’s a smart thug.” He decided not to add that having seen what Ignacio was capable of, he didn’t hold any hope that Oliver was going to remain silent for long.

  Johnson looked up. “Does your grandson have an iPhone?” he asked Jacob.

  “He’s like all youngsters. He’s glued to it.”

  “Okay, can we get his Apple ID? We can use the Find My iPhone tracking tool. If the phone’s switched on, we can log on to his account and see where it is on a map. Let’s hope the Argentinians haven’t disabled the phone.”

  “I’ll phone his mother and check,” Jacob said.

  “And the father?”

  There was a pause. Jacob looked down at the floor. “His father was my son, Adam. He was only forty-two. He passed away ten years ago with liver cancer.”

  The old man shuffled his feet as he looked back at Johnson. “That was harder than Gross-Rosen. It still is.”

  It was difficult to know what to say. His son gone and now his grandson in serious danger. Johnson nodded. “I’m sorry. I’ll do my best with Oliver.”

  “Thanks,” the old man said.

  “But just one thing. Do you have a detailed map of where the tunnels are and exactly how we get to the gold?” Johnson asked. “I’ll need to make sure I get there before Brenner’s son does.”

  Jacob hesitated. “You get my grandson back first, then I’ll sort that out for you. He’s more important.” He picked up his cell phone and walked toward the door.

  A little while later, Jacob came back with his grandson’s account details. Johnson logged on to his account on the computer on Jacob’s desk. A map appeared on the screen, with a small green dot in the center.

  “It’s there. The phone’s still switched on. A house in Downend, north of Bristol. Woodhall Close, the top end of the road. It’s a cul-de-sac.”

  He turned around, grabbed a pen, and wrote the address on a piece of paper.

  Johnson looked back at the computer screen. As he watched, the green dot abruptly disappeared.

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Wednesday, November 30, 2011

  Bristol

  It was almost dark by the time Johnson steered the rented Volkswagen Golf into Downend, a northeastern suburb of Bristol.

  There was just enough light to see a tiny picturesque cricket ground next to a church surrounded by stone walls, the Horseshoe pub and a small shopping center, all surrounded by houses built largely from gray stone.

  “Brenner’s going to be almost a unique capture, if we reach him,” Johnson said to Fiona. “He’s been on everyone’s lists for such a long time, from the Simon Wiesenthal Center downward. Okay, it’s a personal one for me, but it’s much more than that. He’s just about the only major SS mass murderer still alive for whom there are also eyewitnesses still alive and able to give good evidence against him.”

  “Yes, the last Nazi,” Fiona said. “That’s going to be some story. Just make damn sure I’m around when you finally track him down.”

  Johnson followed his GPS down Westerleigh Road past a primary school on the right and a cemetery on the left.

  Sprawling suburbia. Densely populated and nowhere to hide.

  Why would the Argentinians bring Oliver here? Have they moved him?

  Johnson spotted Woodhall Close on the right, just past the school. He drove past and pulled to the side of the road. Then he pulled out his laptop, typed in his three passwords, then connected it to the 3G broadband network via his cell phone. He tried again to see if he could get a response from Oliver’s phone using Find My iPhone.

  Nothing.

  He had seen the green dot on his screen earlier that day for all of ten seconds before it disappeared. Now it seemed to be gone for good.

  “We’ll wait until it’s properly dark, then drive up there and back down and have a quick recce,” Johnson said.

  Fiona’s phone rang, and she climbed out of the car and walked back along the road to take the call.

  A few minutes later she returned. “Well, now we know. That was Des, my boss back
in D.C. Police and FBI have ruled out David from the Nathaniel investigation. He’s got a firm alibi that checks out. Hardly surprising really—I couldn’t see him doing it.”

  “No. But they took their time announcing it. So who then?” Johnson asked.

  “They don’t know. Useless.”

  The pair of them sat in the car listening to the radio for three quarters of an hour.

  Then Johnson restarted the car, did a U-turn, and took a left onto Woodhall Close. It ran straight for fifty yards or so before forking into an oval loop at the top end, with a few small trees and grass in the middle. Semidetached houses lined both sides.

  There seemed to be lights on in every house. Cars were in driveways, children were running in and out of their homes, riding their bikes around the oval. They all looked like typical family houses in a quiet cul-de-sac.

  Johnson took the left fork and looped around the oval and down the other side. “Can’t see anything unusual here.”

  Fiona suddenly pointed. “That house over there. It’s the only one with upstairs lights on but nothing downstairs. All the others are lit up downstairs. It’s a bit odd at this time of the evening. No car in the driveway, either.”

  Johnson braked and parked on the opposite side of the oval to the house Fiona had pointed at. Two of the small trees in the center gave him a little cover.

  The property was a typical three-bedroom semidetached house, with a pale-brown pebble-dash frontage, a brown wooden-framed front door, a red-tiled roof, a small front garden, and a three-foot-high brick wall separating the property from the pavement. There was an empty concrete driveway that ran down the side of the house to a garage at the rear.

  Lying horizontally on the pavement, up against the garden wall, was an estate agent’s To Let sign.

  Fiona was right. In contrast to the other properties, there was a light that came from the largest upstairs bedroom window, but it was dim and indirect, as if from a bedside or desk lamp, not a main ceiling light. The white lace curtains behind the window made it impossible to see any more.

  A light went on in a bathroom window next to the bedroom, and there was the clear dark outline of somebody moving inside behind the frosted glass. Two minutes later, it went out again.

  There remained no sign of life downstairs.

  “I wish Jayne were here,” Johnson said. “I mean, she’s trained in all this. I don’t like the idea of putting you in yet another potentially dangerous situation, not after the car bomb.”

  “I can handle it. I’ve been in many difficult situations before,” Fiona said, looking somewhat offended. “Don’t worry.”

  Johnson shrugged, opened the car door, and picked up his backpack from the back seat. “We need to check out the back of the house. Let’s see if we can walk around somehow.”

  There was no way to get to the rear of the property unseen from the front. Johnson led the way back down to the main road, turned left, then halted in front of the school. “This must join on to the back gardens of those houses. Let’s see if we can get to it this way.”

  The pair walked down a passageway at the side of the school, through an open gate, and found themselves in a playground, beyond which was a playing field. The rear gardens of the houses on Woodhall Close were now on the left, behind wooden fencing.

  Fiona nudged Johnson on the arm. “That’s the one. No lights downstairs, even from the back, and one on upstairs. Garden looks a real mess.”

  The rear garden was totally overgrown, with the dead remains of the previous summer’s nettles, huge spear thistles, and ground elder forming a dense barrier between the fence and the back door.

  Johnson scratched his ear. “We still don’t know for sure whether it’s actually that house or not. It could be any of them, lights on or not. We’re going to look stupid if we end up in a cell because we disturbed an old granny who’s just ill in bed or something. But we’ll have to do something. Let’s take a look. There’s a few loose planks in the fence there. We can get close to the house behind the garage without anyone seeing and then up to that window there on the right. It looks like a utility room.”

  Fiona nodded.

  The planks were loose at the bottom but nailed to a cross rail at the top, and Johnson was able to push them to one side almost like a curtain, creating enough space for them both to squeeze through the resultant gap.

  They worked their way flush up against the boundary fence on the right until they were behind the garage. Johnson peered cautiously around the corner and, seeing no movement, beckoned Fiona to follow.

  Hunching low, he moved quickly across a decrepit concrete patio area and crouched beneath the window at the right-hand side of the house. He carefully poked his head up above the windowsill. The house seemed unmodernized, with old-fashioned single-glazed windows.

  The room was indeed a utility space but partly unfinished, with an untiled rough concrete floor, makeshift plumbing for a washing machine that stood in a corner, and wall tiles fixed without grouting in between. The interior door to the room, which Johnson assumed led to the kitchen, was closed.

  What a dump. Who would rent this place?

  Fiona tapped Johnson on the shoulder and put her cupped hand to her ear, indicating for him to listen, then pointed upward.

  He cocked his ear. On the night air, there was a muffled moaning sound, very faint but just audible, which seemed to be coming from the house.

  Silence again. That has to be Oliver.

  A few seconds later, they both instinctively ducked down when a light went on downstairs for the first time, shining through from the other side of the kitchen and partly illuminating it. Then Johnson and Fiona heard the back door of the house open, just around the corner from their position under the utility window.

  Then came the staccato tapping of hard shoe soles on concrete.

  The footsteps ceased. A double clicking noise followed, and within seconds they could smell cigarette smoke wafting on the cold night air.

  Whoever it is must be very close. Around the corner.

  Johnson’s hand went underneath his jacket: he grasped the Walther in its holster below his left armpit and slowly withdrew the gun. He could feel his chest tightening.

  He eased his way on to his knees, got as low as he could, and peered around the corner, looking through the crack between a drainpipe and the wall.

  A dark-haired, Latin-American–looking, man wearing a black leather jacket and jeans stood there, no more than five yards away, smoking a cigarette.

  Johnson pulled back.

  After a few minutes, there were more footsteps and the sound of the back door closing. Then the downstairs light went off again.

  Johnson moved his head near to Fiona’s left ear. “Latin-American guy, so it’s probably them. I’ll try the back door. We’ve got to give it a go. If it’s not them, I’ll talk my way out of it. Wait here. If anything happens, call the police.”

  Fiona pressed her lips together tightly but had no option but to nod in agreement.

  Johnson, still crouching, inched around the corner and underneath the kitchen window until he was next to the white PVC door, which had a glazed upper half.

  He reached out and pulled the handle softly downward. It was unlocked. Using his fingertip, he eased the door open and peeked around the side.

  The kitchen was small and almost dark, apart from the faint light coming from the open door of a microwave oven on the countertop and additional dim light coming from the hallway.

  Lying on the small circular kitchen table was a pack of cigarettes, a lighter, and a folded newspaper. Johnson peered over at the paper through the gloom. The masthead was just about visible. El Mundo, the Spanish-language daily.

  Then Johnson heard footsteps moving rapidly, coming down the stairs.

  He didn’t hesitate: he took three steps and hid behind the open door that led to the hallway, gripping his gun tightly in his right hand.

  Within seconds, the man with the black hair and black leathe
r jacket appeared in front of him, no more than a yard away, standing with his legs apart and facing the other way as he surveyed the kitchen.

  Johnson made an instant decision: he twisted the gun in his hand, grasping it by the barrel, and brought the butt down hard toward the man’s head. But the man must have sensed the movement. He spun sharply to his right and lifted his right arm in self-defense, deflecting Johnson’s blow.

  Johnson grasped the man’s right arm hard with his left hand.

  They grappled with each other, arms aloft, breathing heavily. The man seized Johnson’s right wrist with his left hand and squeezed, his long fingernails digging into the tendons at the base of Johnson’s palm.

  The sudden piercing pain forced him to drop the Walther, which clattered on the hard-tiled floor and spun away to the right.

  Johnson shoved the man back, the momentum forcing him into the fridge door, both of his arms still locked with Johnson’s above their heads.

  But then the man swung his trunk sharply sideways, throwing Johnson off balance and swinging his body into the door jamb, where the back of Johnson’s head crunched hard into the wooden frame. He was now pinned to the door frame leading into the hallway, his opponent’s back facing the open outside kitchen door.

  Johnson freed his right hand and jabbed the flat of his palm up into the man’s jaw, pushing it upward and sideways. Then out of the gloom, a shadow appeared behind the man, and Johnson glimpsed a brick swinging around from the left.

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Wednesday, November 30, 2011

  Bristol

  The back of Johnson’s head throbbed like a lawnmower engine, and he had a headache that had already spread its tentacles to his forehead.

  “It’s a mess,” Fiona said, her face red, her mouth set in a thin line. She sat on a chair next to him with a jug of cold water in her left hand. In her right was a wad of wet paper towel, which she used to dab the back of his head and his forehead. Every few seconds she examined the paper towel for signs that the blood flow was diminishing. So far, it wasn’t.