A dark-haired man lay on the floor a couple of yards away next to the fridge. Clothesline bound his ankles together. His arms were tied behind his back, and a piece of rag was stuffed in his mouth. He was conscious and eyeing Johnson with a look of utter fury, but he wasn’t making a sound.
There was a small pool of blood next to the man’s head, which had dripped from a nasty gash above his right ear. A brick stood on the floor near the door.
“Come on, Joe, we’d better get the boy from upstairs. We need to get going before this guy’s buddies come back,” Fiona said. Her voice sounded reedy and stressed.
She handed Johnson the wad of paper towel, which was now more red than white. He applied it to the back of his head.
He felt slightly embarrassed that Fiona had rescued him from a fight which, he had to admit, he was far from certain to have won. But he was also grateful that she had done so with such efficiency.
Johnson decided that a touch of humility would do him no harm at this juncture. “Thanks Fiona. You hit him just right. I didn’t know that was in your skill set. I owe you,” Johnson said. The man had gone down like a puppet whose strings had been cut.
“Yeah, like I keep telling you, I’ve got a few tricks up my sleeve.” She smiled. “But this asshole must have banged you against the door post just before that. I’m going to untie Oliver upstairs now. Come up if you can walk.”
Johnson stood and found the room remained horizontal, so he replaced the Walther in the holster under his arm and followed Fiona into the hallway and up the stairs, clutching his head as he went.
In the first room to the left at the top of the stairs, a bedside light was switched on. There, lying spread-eagle on the bed, hands tied to the metal headboard with red rope and feet similarly secured at the bottom, was a young man with a sock taped in his mouth.
Johnson walked to the bed and took a few seconds to remove the sock and tape from the man’s mouth. “Are you Oliver?”
“Yes,” Oliver croaked.
Johnson loosened the bindings holding his hands. “I’m working with your grandfather Jacob,” Johnson explained, wincing at the pain in the back of his head.
“I’m Joe Johnson and this is Fiona Heppenstall. We managed to track your phone. The gang that took you was looking for some of your grandfather’s documents, as you’ve doubtless worked out.”
“Thank you . . . and I’m sorry,” Oliver began. “I think I’ve given them away. My grandfather’s documents, I mean. These guys are animals. Look at my toe, it’s killing me.” He groaned as Fiona carefully untied his badly burned right foot.
Johnson finished removing the rest of his bonds. “Don’t worry, you didn’t have any choice. Now, listen. How many men were there, and do you know where they went?”
“There were three, but I think two have gone,” Oliver said. “They left a few hours ago. They had my grandfather’s map and other stuff on their laptop. I had to give them the password. They were using a blowtorch on my foot.” He winced at the pain, then gestured toward the device, which was on a table near the door. “I thought they were going to burn me alive or something.”
“And how did they get this house? Did they just break in, do you know?” Johnson asked.
“I think I heard one of them say they’d got it on a short lease from an agent,” Oliver said.
Johnson supported the boy as he hopped on one foot toward the door and then held him as he worked his way down the stairs, one step at a time. The man in the kitchen was moving; Johnson could hear him bumping around on the floor below. He took out his gun.
The man had rolled halfway across the kitchen and was trying to rub his bindings on the metal crossbar of a kitchen stool in an effort to free himself.
“No, you don’t. Stop right there.” Johnson aimed the gun at him. “Lie still.”
The man ceased wriggling and stared at Johnson, the anger in his eyes being rapidly replaced by fear. Johnson told Fiona to remove the man’s gag, which she did.
“I’ve got some questions, and I need answers. Now. Otherwise we’ll give you some of the same treatment you gave to this young man here—with the blowtorch. Do you understand?”
The man nodded.
“What’s your name? And don’t try giving anything false because I’m going to check it before I let you go.”
There was a long pause. Then the man muttered, “Alejandro Garcia.”
“Okay, and who are the other two guys in your gang?”
Another long pause. Johnson inched closer and raised the pistol. Alejandro’s eyes opened wide.
“It’s Diego Ruiz and . . . Ignacio Guzmann.”
Johnson gave Fiona a told-you-so look. “Guzmann. Right, and where are they now?”
“They’ve gone.” Alejandro grimaced at him from his position, still curled on the kitchen floor.
“I’m not blind. Gone where?”
Another long pause. Johnson jabbed the barrel of the Walther into his ribs.
“Poland,” Alejandro said.
“What time did they go?”
“Six hours ago.”
Johnson pressed his lips together. “Six hours. Shit.” So they were quite possibly on a ferry or taking Le Shuttle, the car transporter train, through the Channel Tunnel, or were maybe on the Continent already. And they had a copy of the detailed map, which he still hadn’t even seen.
He turned back to Alejandro. “Tell me one other thing. Your friend, Ignacio Guzmann—do you know where I can find his father?”
Alejandro stared at him and said nothing.
“It’s the father I’m interested in, not you or Ignacio. The father’s a Nazi war criminal whom I intend to take to court. He’ll likely be charged with multiple murders dating back to the 1940s,” Johnson said.
The news was met with a few seconds of silence. “These are things I didn’t know,” Alejandro said. “And I don’t know exactly where he is, but I think at home in Buenos Aires. I’m not sure where. I’ve never been to his house.”
“You really don’t know?” Surely he had to be lying.
“No. He won’t be around much longer, in any case.”
“What’s that supposed to mean? He’s ill?”
Alejandro laughed. “No, not ill. Not physically. Maybe mentally. He’ll be worse than ill when Ignacio gets back to him, though. It’ll be retribución, venganza, he calls it. I don’t know what the right word is in English.”
Johnson didn’t need the right word in English. The implications of Alejandro’s words quickly sank in.
“Why don’t they get on, Ignacio and his father?”
“They never have,” Alejandro said. “He hates his father because of the way he was treated as a child. Now are you going to let me go or leave me here?” He had obviously decided that Johnson wasn’t planning to take his life.
Johnson took a moment to think through his options and made a quick decision.
He replaced the rag in Alejandro’s mouth and taped it back in position, then dragged him into the living room, where there was nothing he could use to try and work through his bindings.
Johnson rifled through the Argentinian’s pockets and removed his phone, which he checked and pocketed. To his astonishment, there was no password on the device, let alone any encryption. He would sift through the information on it later. He guessed there would be a wealth of useful e-mails, contacts, phone numbers and other saved documents.
“You can stay here,” Johnson said. “We’ll send the police around to deal with you. That should be an interesting conversation.”
Johnson was feeling more than a little anxious.
Was Alejandro exaggerating Ignacio’s intentions towards his father, and deliberately winding Johnson up? Or was he telling the truth when he talked about Ignacio planning revenge against the old man?
Johnson had no way of knowing, although he suspected the latter. Either way, he had plenty of time to mull over the implications while waiting for a nurse at Bristol’s Frenchay Hospital to finis
h patching up Oliver.
While they sat in the waiting room, Johnson sent a text message to Jayne.
Will be en route back from Bristol soon. Oliver Kew safe and with us. URGENT need to check if Ignacio Guzmann and Diego Ruiz are still in U.K. May have left for Poland by air, ferry. Can you check and put block on if possible? They have map taken from Oliver.
Meanwhile, Fiona used a pay phone in the hospital reception area to call the police and anonymously report a burglary on Woodhall Close, saying a gang had left the tenant tied up in the living room.
“Alejandro will have fun explaining that one when officers turn up,” she said as they helped Oliver into the car.
After drinking a black coffee bought from a nearby gas station, where he also bought a pack of painkillers for Oliver to supplement those given to him by the nurse, Johnson took off down the M4 highway at such a speed that Fiona had to tell him several times to slow down.
He brushed her off. “We haven’t got time to lose. Guzmann will be in Poland well before us, and now I’m worried about what he’s going to do to his father. I don’t want to take a dead body to a war crimes trial.”
Johnson glanced at Fiona. “My gut tells me the best option is to head straight to Buenos Aires and track down Brenner before either his son gets to him, or alternatively, he gets wind of what’s going on and flees the country.”
Fiona wrinkled her nose. “No, I really don’t think that’s sensible, Joe. If we’re going to make this story believable, we really need to get to Poland and collect the evidence. We need photos of the gold and to actually see the tunnels. If we go to Argentina first, there’s a good chance that Brenner’s son is going to escape with a multimillion-dollar windfall in Third Reich gold bars. I can’t take the risk of all that evidence simply being spirited away.”
She was doing it again, thinking headlines and photos, Johnson snorted to himself.
“I don’t know, Fiona. I’ll think about it.”
“Yes, but while you’re thinking, just remember Inside Track is paying you over a grand a day for this job,” Fiona said.
That much was unarguable. But Johnson also doubted that Inside Track’s senior editors would want to stand accused of losing Brenner, a Nazi mass murderer. Fiona must realize that.
Johnson looked into the back seat of the Golf, where Oliver was trying to get into his Google Drive account using his phone.
Johnson had a sudden thought. “Oliver, you haven’t called your mother and your grandfather, have you? You’d better ring and tell them you’re safe. Also your friends in Bristol before you’re reported missing, if they haven’t done that already. And I don’t like to keep pushing you, but any luck with those Google Drive files?”
“Don’t worry about my friends. They’ll probably just think I got lucky in the nightclub or something. But yes, I’ll give them a call,” Oliver said. “And no, I can’t get into Google Drive. I’ve tried several times. Those guys must have changed the password on the folder.”
“In that case, can you also remind your grandfather that we need a copy of the map of the gold tunnels and the instructions that were in the folder? Tell him it’s extremely urgent. I asked him once before but he said he’d sort it after I rescued you,” Johnson said.
He could hear the beeping as Oliver started dialing, using the phone that had been vital in tracking him to the house in Bristol.
“Hello, Mum, it’s Oliver. I’m safe . . . ”
Johnson could clearly hear the loud shriek coming down the line from the boy’s mother.
“Yes, I got rescued. Two Americans found me in a house in north Bristol . . . ”
Oliver continued to explain briefly what had happened, although to Johnson’s relief, he bravely played down his foot injuries.
Johnson could hear his mother speaking for a short time, then Oliver exclaimed, “No way! When did that happen? Hell, poor Grandad. Which hospital is he in?”
After Oliver hung up, Johnson glanced at Oliver in the rearview mirror. The youngster was almost in tears.
“I got the gist of that Oliver. Your grandfather’s in the hospital?”
“Yes, he’s had a heart attack. An ambulance took him to St. Thomas’ Hospital down near Westminster a couple of hours ago.”
Johnson grimaced. This can’t be happening.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Wednesday, November 30, 2011
London
Johnson drove into the small rectangular parking lot at London’s St. Thomas’ Hospital at just before midnight, feeling light-headed with tiredness.
He had heard of St. Thomas’, which had one of the largest heart surgery units in the country. At least Jacob would be in good hands, he assumed.
The view from the parking lot across the River Thames to the illuminated Palace of Westminster opposite, with Big Ben towering above it, was one that tourists swooned over daily. But Johnson was in no mood to appreciate it.
Oliver, whom Johnson had spotted several times in his mirror swallowing more painkillers, was horizontal on the rear seat. There had been no reply from Jayne to his earlier text message. He now sent her another.
We’re at St. Thomas’ Hospital. Old man Jacob had a heart attack. All going to shit. Call me in morning ASAP.
Fiona tapped Oliver on the shoulder. “Come on, we need to go and find your grandfather, quickly. You’ll need to do the talking—he’s your relative. Do you have some ID?”
The youngster, still woozy from the tablets, lifted himself up to a vertical position and winced as the movement triggered the pain in his big toe again. All he had were scans of his passport and driver’s license stored on his phone.
“Should be okay,” Johnson said. “Quick, let’s move.”
The receptionist called for a porter to bring a wheelchair after Johnson explained that the youngster had a large burn on his foot and that they had driven from Bristol. Then he asked where to find Jacob.
“You need the Evans-Watson ward, up on the third floor of the East Wing. The coronary care unit is down at the end of that ward on the right,” she said.
She looked at Oliver doubtfully. “I don’t know if they’ll let you see your grandfather now. It’s the middle of the night, and they have strict visiting hours.”
But after looking around to check nobody was listening, she winked at Johnson and murmured, “The matron’s a bit of a toughie, so if I were you, I would play the sympathy card.”
The Evans-Watson ward and coronary care unit was down a short corridor with a blue vinyl floor and was largely in darkness apart from a few dim night-lights and a pool of yellow underneath a desk lamp at the reception desk.
The receptionist downstairs had been correct. The matron on duty was a stern-looking woman, probably in her forties, wearing a purple uniform. She approached them straightaway, hands on hips. Her name badge read Angela Ballantyne.
Before she even said a word, Johnson lengthened the odds of making any progress.
He began whispering quietly to her in an effort to explain their situation, sympathizing with the number of patients she was managing and apologizing profusely for the unearthly hour, but she quickly interrupted.
“There’s no way you can go in,” she said. “It’s the middle of the night. I can tell you that Mr. Kew is stable, but he can hardly speak. He’s very weak. Two of you are not even relatives.”
Ballantyne was clearly not a woman to be crossed. She stood, arms folded, her stocky muscular legs slightly apart, blocking their way.
Johnson thought for a second about taking a few twenty-pound bills out of his wallet and trying to bribe her but quickly dismissed the idea. She definitely wasn’t the sort.
He took a step forward. “We completely understand, but we’ve brought Mr. Kew’s grandson here all the way from Bristol to see his grandfather. Oliver was injured yesterday, so this family’s been having a bad time of it, and Oliver could use a break. The lady and I don’t need to go in, but could Oliver just go and see him for five minutes? It m
ight even cheer the old man up.”
Oliver sniffled in his wheelchair. Johnson glanced down. He actually had a tear rolling down his right cheek.
The matron hesitated. A ward sister, a younger blond woman dressed in a dark blue uniform, came over and stood beside her. “What do you think, Marcie? Could you go with this young man if we give him five minutes with his grandfather?”
The blond sister looked exasperated. “I dunno. He’s a bit frail in there. The consultant’s coming around first thing in the morning to see whether he needs surgery or not.”
Oliver sniffled again from his wheelchair, then pulled out his handkerchief and blew his nose.
The sister looked down at him. “Okay, then, just five minutes, then you must let him rest.” She pushed Oliver’s wheelchair to the end of the ward and behind a full-length blue curtain.
Meanwhile, the matron took Johnson and Fiona to a small waiting area behind the reception desk, lit by just one small night-light.
“You two will have to wait here,” she said. Then she disappeared through some double swing doors.
Johnson sat down and clasped his hands in front of him, his back hunched. He didn’t rate Oliver’s chances very high.
The only sounds were of a man coughing loudly farther down the ward and of a woman snoring. A toilet flushed somewhere nearby.
Then came the squeaking of rubber on the vinyl floor and soft footsteps. The blond ward sister reappeared, pushing Oliver in his wheelchair.
She beckoned Johnson and Fiona over and whispered, a little softer in tone this time. “That was okay. It seemed to perk the grandfather up a little. You’ll need to go now, though.”
Johnson took the wheelchair handles, thanked the woman, and pushed Oliver toward the elevator.
When they were away from the ward and out of earshot of the sister, Johnson asked, “Well, did he say anything? How did he look?”
“He was conscious,” Oliver said, “but he looked quite weak, like she said. Very gray. He said virtually nothing. I had about thirty seconds when the nurse went off somewhere. I asked him whether there was another map somewhere. It was strange. He just croaked a couple of words, something like ‘hell loss’ and then ‘pans.’ That was it. He said nothing more, just closed his eyes.”
The Last Nazi (A Joe Johnson Thriller, Book 1) Page 27
