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

by Andrew Turpin

  Johnson met her gaze and nodded. “Yes, thanks to you. But this game’s not over until we get Brenner out of here and out of Argentina. We also need someone to contact the United Nations and the human rights organizations about these poor women in the compound here. Can’t trust the local police to do it, obviously. Maybe Fiona can write a story about them as well.”

  “I can get a couple of embassy staff whom I still know to help,” Jayne said. “They can start things moving at the U.N. to get these women out of the compound as well.”

  She set off to fetch the Hilux while Johnson tied up the injured guard, who had slipped into unconsciousness, using lengths of rope he found in the garage. He then did the same with Luis, who also remained unconscious.

  Once Jayne returned, they transferred Brenner to the rear seat of the Toyota, using Ignacio’s original Velcro bindings around his arms and legs. The old SS officer put up no resistance.

  Then they carefully carried Fiona and placed her in the front passenger seat. She looked weak, but despite the large patch of blood showing through the makeshift bandage on her shoulder, her pulse was strong and Johnson was reassured by the look of determination on her face.

  Fiona preempted Johnson’s concerns about leaving her at the hospital. “I’ll be fine,” she said, wincing heavily. “I’m going to need an op to sort this shoulder out. And I’ll talk my way out of it with the police. Don’t worry—you concentrate on getting Brenner out of here. I’ll be okay.”

  Johnson nodded and gave Fiona her phone back. “I’m more worried about you getting those stories written and published,” he joked.

  He climbed into the driver’s seat, but then noticed that Jayne had wandered off toward the concrete strip next to the house. She was bent over, peering into the dust like an old lady looking for a dropped dime.

  “Come on, Jayne, we need to get out of here,” Johnson shouted. He was feeling increasingly agitated at the delays.

  Jayne picked something up and returned to the Hilux, where she climbed into the rear seat opposite Brenner. Johnson let the clutch out, and the Hilux sped back up the single-track dirt road.

  Farther up the road, in the distance, Johnson saw a cloud of dust being thrown up by a vehicle that was clearly traveling at a high speed toward them.

  His instinctive thought was that it seemed extremely unusual for a vehicle to move at such speed in a rural location down such a poorly maintained dirt road as this one. In that moment, Johnson had a gut feeling and acted on it.

  To his right, the road forked into a bay that was separated from the road by bushes, grasses, and trees. Johnson braked hard and pulled sharply into the bay, coming to a halt behind a dense tussock of eight-foot pampas grass.

  “What the hell are you doing,” Jayne asked. “I thought we were in a rush?”

  Johnson pointed silently toward the road. Less than a minute later, a shiny black Ford Ranger pickup sped around the corner, affording Johnson a quick glimpse of the vehicle before it passed behind the other side of the pampas grass.

  It accelerated past the passing bay and disappeared out of sight behind them. Once he was certain it had gone, Johnson pushed the Hilux back into gear and drove back onto the road.

  “I don’t know who that was, but it definitely wasn’t a local in a truck like that, not from this poor area,” Johnson said.

  He turned and glanced at Fiona, then over his shoulder at Jayne in the back. “What did you pick up outside the SolGold workshop back there?” he asked Jayne.

  She leaned around the driver’s seat and held an object in front of Johnson.

  “This,” Jayne said. “I saw something metal bounce out of Ignacio’s pocket when he was running to get into the car. It landed on the concrete.”

  Johnson glanced down at the rectangular piece of yellow metal that Jayne was holding. On the front of it was an engraving of a swastika and an eagle. Below were the words:

  Deutsche Reichsbank

  1 kilo Feingold

  999.9

  Epilogue

  Monday, December 12, 2011

  Portland, Maine

  The first heavy snowstorm of winter was still raging across the Portland area as Johnson opened the envelope and spread the newspaper clippings out on his desk.

  He stood staring at them for a few minutes, then he picked one up, sat down, and began to read.

  “Nazi Mass Murderer to Face Trial After 67 Years on the Run,” ran the headline in large type. Below it was a subhead, “SS Killer, 91, Runs Replica ‘Concentration Camp’ in Argentina.”

  There was a color photograph of Brenner, together with a black-and-white one of the Wüstegiersdorf concentration camp taken in 1944 and another of his jewelry manufacturing site in Puerto Iguazú.

  The story below it detailed how Brenner had been tracked down. It included quotes from Johnson about the Kudrows’ London workshop, the tunnels in the Riese complex, and the car chase north to Puerto Iguazú.

  Some of the other cuttings included scans taken from Brenner’s incriminating SS documents.

  Johnson picked up another clipping, this one a printout from Inside Track—which had managed to break the story first, despite Fiona’s injuries. She had filed the piece in great pain from her hospital bed, with the help of a nurse who typed as she dictated and then e-mailed it for her.

  Fiona’s story was headlined, “White House Hopeful Kudrow Steps Down in Nazi Gold Funding Scandal.” It also had a subhead: “Jewish Camp Survivors ‘Blackmailed’ SS Torturer.”

  The story, like most of the coverage, condemned the way the Kudrow twins had plundered Hitler’s stolen gold and used it for their own ends, yet sympathized with their mission to wreak revenge on their Nazi torturer.

  Another article from Fiona’s website reported, “Inside Track Journalist Wounded in Gun Battle As Nazi Is Captured.” Thankfully, the hospital in Puerto Iguazú had been able to repair Fiona’s shoulder, although she would require extensive rehab work with a physiotherapist once the wound had healed. She had flown back to Washington, via Buenos Aires, three days after her surgery. Johnson still felt guilty at leaving her in Puerto Iguazú while he headed south with Brenner, but in reality, he had little choice.

  Commentators and pundits across all the media outlets had struggled to work out what the Kudrow twins might be charged with—if anything—and which country should carry out any investigation.

  Johnson was sure of one thing: if the Kudrows wanted to emerge from the saga with their credibility intact, they would have to agree to identify Brenner, first to have him extradited from Argentina and then again in court in Germany.

  A viable identification would probably require the elderly twins to pick out an unlabeled photograph of Brenner as he was in the 1940s from an array of several different Nazi officers, using images taken from Brenner’s and other SS personal files so they were all of similar sizes and styles.

  Another story read “SS Chief’s Documents Are ‘Smoking Gun’ Evidence.” Well, yes, and copies of the papers were in Brenner’s SS personal files stored in Berlin and Washington.

  But the Kudrows would need to be prepared to go into some detail, both in statements and in court, about the background to the tunnel collapse, their escape from the train near Gluszyca, and the shots they heard as their fellow prisoners were murdered. All of that would corroborate the SS disciplinary notice issued to Brenner.

  Could the two old men do all that, and would Jacob’s ailing heart cope with the strain of the process and a court appearance? Johnson was confident the Kudrows would do it, based on a five-minute phone conversation he had the previous day with Daniel, who was still in London and had promised he and Jacob would do the right thing.

  Daniel had been stunned into silence by news of the concentration camp set up by Brenner in Puerto Iguazú and Ignacio’s line that Brenner had done it to try and make up for the financial hit taken from the Kudrows’ long-running blackmail. But he had ended the conversation with a comment that Johnson found hard to disagr
ee with. “The man is pure evil; he would have done it anyway.”

  There were several other major media stories focusing on the $5 million payment to Nathaniel’s bank account by the Democratic Party official, who was now facing an FBI investigation for trying to influence the course of an election and had still not been found. He was believed to be in hiding in Paraguay or possibly Chile.

  Most of the stories detailed how Ignacio was now the subject of an international manhunt: wanted in connection with the murders of Nathaniel Kudrow and Keith Bartelski and the attempted murder of his father. Police had already questioned Luis, now recovered from his concussion, several times.

  But none of the media had mentioned Jayne. She had insisted on that and had returned to the U.K. without anyone from SIS appearing to have realized what Carolina Blanco had been up to. Nor did the media reference the CIA or the Mossad. Johnson had decided to leave them out of the briefings he had done with various journalists, and as he had expected, neither of the two intelligence agencies had subsequently raised their heads above the parapet.

  Without concrete proof of wrongdoing by Watson, Johnson felt it was a high-risk strategy to accuse him of anything at this stage. But he had a strong feeling that biding his time would pay dividends. Watson, he was certain, had his finger in a number of pies that contained rotten ingredients. There would be another opportunity.

  One of the reports mentioned Johnson had swapped vehicles twice as he and Jayne spirited Brenner eight hundred miles south to the U.S. Embassy in Buenos Aires. Johnson gave a thin smile on reading it. The report was true. He had paid cash for a black Mitsubishi pickup in Puerto Iguazú, where they had left Jayne’s rented silver Hilux behind after dropping Fiona at the hospital. Farther down the road, they had done another swap, this time exchanging the Mitsubishi for a red Ford pickup in Concordia.

  The trick had worked. They hadn’t been pulled over by local police, nor had they been caught by the CIA or the Mossad. Johnson was still waiting for feedback from Vic on what Watson’s reaction had been to the course of events.

  The door opened behind Johnson. He turned around to see Carrie enter the room, closely followed by Cocoa, who was wagging his tail vigorously.

  Johnson checked his computer screen and pulled at the hole in his right ear. It was only 10:20 a.m., and already six e-mails had arrived that morning inquiring about his availability for work assignments in the United States and abroad. Many others had come in during the days following Brenner’s arrest and the surge of global media coverage that had followed from Fiona’s initial exclusive report.

  He glanced at his daughter, then stood up and walked over to her and gave her a silent hug.

  After a minute, he stepped back and put his hands on her shoulders.

  “You did a good job, Dad. Look at all those headlines. Grandma would have been proud of you,” she said. “Sounded risky, though. More than Peter or I imagined.”

  Risky?

  “Yes, well, I wasn’t really expecting it to turn out the way it did, honey, that’s for sure,” Johnson said. He smiled at his own understatement.

  And was it worth it, he asked himself, to finally catch Brenner? That was a big question.

  “I’m just remembering something your grandmother wrote me,” Johnson said. “Tracking down Brenner means justice for her and for the thousands of others who suffered and died all around her.”

  “You think you will? Is there enough proof?” Carrie asked.

  “Oh yes, there’s enough proof. Documents and eyewitnesses. That won’t be a problem,” Johnson said. “That’s why it was worth it. Maybe if that discourages Brenner’s present-day equivalent, someone else who’s about to commit a war crime, maybe in Africa or Syria or somewhere, the world becomes a tiny bit of a better place. Like she said, these people can’t run and hide forever. She suffered, we’ve persevered, and now there’s hope.”

  He turned back to his computer, selected the first of that day’s e-mails, and pressed reply.

  The next book — free chapters

  I am keen to build up a strong relationship with my readers. As part of this, I plan to send out occasional e-mail updates containing details of forthcoming new books, special offers, and perhaps background information on plots and characters.

  If you would like to join my Readers’ Group and receive the e-mail updates, I will send you, FREE of charge, the first few draft chapters of the next Joe Johnson novel, The Old Bridge, which will be published soon. It is another war crimes investigation, set in 2012, and this time looking back to the Yugoslav civil war of the early 1990s. Most of the action is set in Mostar, Dubrovnik, Split, London, and New York City.

  To sign up and receive the first few chapters, just click here:

  The Old Bridge free chapters

  Speaking of future books, the third novel in the Joe Johnson series is in the works, with the first draft well under way. Watch this space for more details.

  Reviews

  As an independently published author, honest reviews of my books are the most powerful way for me to bring them to the attention of other potential readers. Unlike the big international publishers, I can’t take out full-page advertisements in the newspapers or place posters on the subway!

  But, having a committed and loyal bunch of readers is actually more powerful than adverts. It is something the big publishers would very much like to have.

  So, if you enjoyed reading this novel, then I would very much appreciate it if you would spend five minutes and leave a review—which can be as short as you like.

  To leave a review, just click on one of the two Amazon store links below, depending on where you bought the book.

  Scroll down to ‘Customer Reviews’, then click on ‘Leave a Review.’

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  Or just go to your Amazon website and type “Andrew Turpin The Last Nazi” in the search box. You can’t miss it!

  Reviews are also a great encouragement to me to write more.

  Many thanks!

  Thanks and dedication

  Firstly, I would like to thank everyone who reads The Last Nazi—which is my debut novel—and my future books. You are the reason I began to write in the first place and I hope I can provide you with entertainment and interest for a long time into the future.

  I would also like to thank those who helped me through the long process of research, writing and editing and who encouraged me to keep going when the road ahead seemed uncertain.

  A special thank you to my brother, Adrian Turpin, who patiently read through endless early rough drafts of the book and provided a lot of valuable ideas, feedback and encouragement as I inched my way slowly toward the finish line, often doubting whether I would ever get there. Others, such as David Cole, Martin Scales, and Colleen Jacobs, did likewise at slightly later stages.

  My parents, Jean and Gerald Turpin, showed great tenacity in getting to grips with using Kindles for the first time, at the ages of ninety-two and eighty-seven respectively, in order to read early drafts and provide very welcome encouragement. They were the ones who instilled in me a love of story, reading, and writing in the first place, and without that, I wouldn’t have even started.

  Adrian also helped enormously with setting up my website, especially the photography and artwork. He runs his own professional photography, lighting design and cinematography business based in Kendal, Cumbria, called The Light Direction.

  On the editing side, Katrina Diaz Arnold, of Refine Editing, consistently and enthusiastically provided great suggestions for improvements to the book at both the structural and the detailed levels, while Jon Ford’s fantastic eye for detail and ideas for improving the authenticity of the project lifted it very significantly and meant I was able to eliminate many errors. I would like to thank both of them—the responsibility for any remaining mistakes lies solely with me.

  I also had valuable input from David Rich, research historian at the US Department of Justice, which
enabled me to improve the characterization of my protagonist, Joe Johnson, as well as give a better feel for the sources and methods a war crimes investigator might draw on.

  I would also like to thank the team at Damonza for what I think is a great cover design.

  Finally, a thank you to my children, Alexa and Ross, who have both been very patient while this book was being written and edited.

  Author’s Note

  Much of the historical backdrop to The Last Nazi is factual, including the details of Hitler’s Project Riese in Lower Silesia and the extensive complex of tunnels that was built in the area in and around Walbrzych. This includes the tunnels underneath Książ Castle and in the Owl Mountains.

  The Sokolec group of tunnels was one of seven such structures within the Riese complex, including Książ Castle.

  However, I have taken poetic license in describing the layout of these tunnels, including the existence of emergency exit tunnels.

  The Gross-Rosen concentration camp, including the Wüstegiersdorf subcamp, was built to provide the labor that dug out the Riese tunnels. Most prisoners held there were Jewish.

  There has been a lot of speculation about the storage of gold and other treasures looted by the Nazis from across Europe during the Second World War, including gold bars taken from various government reserves and smaller gold items stolen from Jewish prisoners as they arrived at concentration camps, including tooth fillings that were forcibly extracted. For example, a large volume of gold and jewelry was found in a mine at Merkers, Germany, by American soldiers in 1945.

  The tunnels of Project Riese, some of which have not yet been explored or which remain blocked due to rock falls, are believed by many to have been a storage location for some of this Nazi gold, but none has so far been found. I have therefore been creative in describing how gold bars were stored in the Sokolec tunnels.