The Dark Place: A historical suspense thriller set in the murky world of fugitive war criminals, vengeful Nazi hunters and spies

by Damian Vargas

  He stood up and strolled across the office to the display cabinet and picked up the medal group. They were pinned in a line to a thin strip of worn brown leather he had cut from an old army belt which had, as he once joked to his now deceased wife, ‘become too small for me’. He stared at them, replaying the telephone conversation with Diego Sanz, the interview with Liv Johansson, and the uncomfortable exchange with Guy Weiland.

  He rubbed the dust from one of the metal discs with his thumb; the black and gold Medalla de la Campaña. He pictured the moment it was pinned to his tunic by the Francoist Mayor of Malaga in the autumn of 1939; the military photographer’s flashbulbs popping nearby. It was the year the civil war had finally come to an end - his broken, tortured nation retreating in on itself, the rest of Europe lurching towards an even bigger and bloodier war.

  So many years ago. So many good people lost.

  He dropped the medals into the wastepaper basket at his feet, took a deep breath, then turned and walked out of the room.

  21

  The wake

  Three months earlier.

  Liv Johansson stepped out from the butcher’s shop onto the pavement, while taking note of a black Mercedes saloon that was making its way on the opposite side of the main square towards the Augustiner Tavern.

  The car pulled to a stop next to several other modern-looking cars; four more Mercedes, a black Citroen and a big grey Chrysler with darkened windows. Several men and women in dark attire were standing outside the tavern, smoking and talking. Something was going on.

  Señora Marrón, the housemaid, was walking towards Liv, a bag of fresh provisions in each hand. Liv met the older woman at her battered old Renault, opened the boot and placed the bag of meat which she had just purchased into the back of the car.

  ‘I think that is everything, Miss Johansson. Yes?’ said the housemaid, as she placed her bags into the boot.

  Liv was still observing the group of expensive cars which had now been joined by yet another Mercedes, this one a silver saloon out of which emerged Joseph Navarro and his teenage son, Conrad.

  ‘Miss Johansson?’ the house maid tried again.

  Liv glanced at the Spanish woman, reached into her purse, and plucked out some banknotes. ‘My apologies. I forgot, we also need some more soap suds. Would you mind?’ She nodded towards the small grocery store across the street and closed the car boot. ‘There’s something I need to do. I’ll meet you back here.’ She watched as Señora Marrón turned on her heel and started towards the grocery store, before then breaking into a brisk walk across the paved square.

  The men and women who had been standing outside the tavern had all now gone inside. A stocky man in a black suit stood just inside the door. Liv knew him to be a South African bodyguard, called Peter Stangle, who often accompanied some of the German members of the community on their travels. He had a most noticeable disfigurement, a burn scar on his neck and lower jaw. His stern gaze shifted continuously from one end of the street to the other as she walked past, pretending not to notice.

  She reached the narrow passageway between the tavern and the small industrial adjacent, then slipped between the two buildings, keeping low beneath the tavern windows, and pressed herself up against the wooden structure. She was ensconced behind a row of overgrown bushes that lined the edge of the property. All the windows were open, and she could hear loud voices and Germanic music playing from within. Whatever the occasion was, it appeared to have been going on for some time.

  She lifted her head to peek through one of the windows; spying at least thirty people, mainly adult males, a couple of the women who she recognised, and several teenagers. It seemed to be the town’s entire German community.

  A door to the party room opened and Mr Navarro and his son Conrad entered. Mr Navarro senior was immediately descended upon by two of the guests; one, a middle-aged man with short dark hair and a basketball-shaped gut, the other a slim, younger blonde female. The man thrust out a hand toward Navarro and greeted the older man, only he did not say “Joseph”. Liv was certain the man had instead used another name; “Joachim”.

  She heard the sound of a passing car and crouched for a moment behind the nearest shrub, before moving back to the open window to see a waitress holding a tray of small glasses, offering drinks to Mr Navarro and his son. Mr Navarro watched the waitress leave the room and waited for the door to close behind her, before raising his glass against which he tapped repeatedly with a large, silver ring on his middle finger. He began speaking in German. Johansson, who was herself fluent in the language, could hear almost every word.

  ‘Ladies and Gentlemen. Comrades,’ Navarro started, as the room’s guests gathered around him. ‘Today marks the twenty-fifth anniversary of my arrival here in this valley. Some of you were with me at that time, others of you joined us in the months and years that were to follow.’ Navarro dipped his head to the audience as he spoke. ‘The passing years have certainly taken their toll on our hairlines and our waistlines.’ Navarro paused, smiling, and the others laughed. ‘And I know that all of you would have much preferred to have spent those long years on German soil as, of course, would I. But our time here under the protection of our Spanish friends, has also given us the opportunity to prosper, to start new families, to reflect on the past and to build for a new future.’ He swivelled to face Conrad, his son, and placed his hand on the boy’s shoulder. ‘It will soon be the turn of the younger generation to take over our responsibilities, but I for one have no doubt that they will do so with the conviction, determination and fortitude that all of you and our many kameraden elsewhere have also shown these many years.’

  ‘Hear hear,’ shouted one of the men as others applauded.

  Navarro’s face became more solemn, and he raised his glass. ‘To the many fallen heroes of the Reich, to whom we raise our glasses once again today. And it is with much regret, that we must also raise our glasses for another one of our kameraden who sadly passed away earlier this week.’ Navarro lifted his drink higher, signalling to the other men and women to do likewise. ‘To our good friend, Haupt-sturmfuhrer Manfred Weber, who we shall remember as a tenacious soldier and loyal servant of the Reich. To Manfred.’

  Johansson watched as Navarro’s toast was echoed by several of the gathered men and women, their glasses held high, except for one person; a strong-bodied woman with mousey blonde hair tied and clipped neatly at the back of her head, a dark green cloth jacket over her white blouse - Ruth Volkenrath, the manager of the old compound at the end of the valley. Nearly all the German children attended her youth club or, as Liv had heard Conrad call it, the “Wolf Club”. The German woman held her glass at her side in one hand, a lit cigarette in the other, watching the people in front of her. Unsmiling.

  Johansson glared at her, barely noticing that she had been gripping the thick, thorny stem of the nearby bush. She felt the trickle of blood in her palm, then pulled her hand away from the offending thorns, before dabbing at the cuts with a handkerchief.

  One of the men started to sing and was swiftly joined by several others in what sounded like a rousing military marching song.

  Alte Kameraden auf dem Marsch durch's Land

  Schließen Freundschaft felsenfest und treu.

  Ob im Kampfe oder Pulverdampfe.

  Stets zusammen halten sie auf's neu.

  Old comrades on the march through the country.

  Close friendship firmly and faithfully.

  Whether in combat or powder steam.

  They always hold together again.

  Conscious that Señora Marrón was likely now waiting at her car, she forced herself to leave, after making a mental note of the faces, and made her way back onto the narrow street, before heading across the square back to where the Renault stood.

  The house maid watched Liv as she unlocked, then opened the passenger’s door. Only after Liv had started the car and pulled away, did the Spanish woman break her silence.

  ‘You must be careful around those p
eople, Miss Johansson.’

  Liv’s initial reaction was to try to feign ignorance, but it was obvious that the house maid knew where she had been. ‘I was just curious what was happening.’

  The older woman shook her head. ‘The Germans do not like it when you invade their privacy.’

  Sensing that the Spanish woman might be privy to information to which she was not, Johansson asked, ‘Do you know anything about that journalist? The one that went missing two years ago?’

  The Spanish woman’s eyes flicked left and right, as if checking there was nobody within earshot. ‘Not much. But my niece who works in the bank, she spoke to him several times when he came to withdraw money. She said he was very polite, but that he asked a lot of questions.’

  ‘What happened to him?’

  Marrón shrugged. ‘One day he was here, the next he was gone.’ She motioned towards the road ahead, but Johansson touched her on the arm to regain her attention.

  ‘Do you think he just left?’

  ‘Without his car?’ said the Spanish woman, shaking her head again. ‘And all his things? No, I don’t think so.’

  ‘Was the disappearance investigated?’

  ‘Only by Inspector Garcia.’

  ‘He didn’t find anything?’

  The woman made a dismissive shrug, opened the car door. ‘You would have to ask him that.’

  22

  The saviour

  Eastern Sicily

  August 4th, 1943.

  The smoke from the artillery shell still hung in the air as Lieutenant Harry Blackman came to.

  How long had he been unconscious?

  He touched his hand to the pain at the side of his head, then peered at his fingers, which were covered in blood. He had not felt a wound, though. It was probably only a cut. But what was that high-pitched whining? He looked around for the source of the alien noise, before realising that the sound was in his head.

  Another explosion a hundred yards away, then another, they throwing clouds of earth fifty feet up into the air. He lifted his head, realised he was lying in the open on the rich, ploughed Italian soil. His body felt as if it had been pummelled from head to toe by a dozen heavyweight boxers.

  Behind him, thirty yards away, on its side, the burning wreck of the jeep he had been travelling in. Two bodies on the ground nearby. His men.

  Good men.

  He rolled onto his side and vomited, then wiped his mouth with his torn sleeve. He lifted his head again, his senses gradually returning. He scanned his surroundings. A cluster of farm buildings to his right, a hundred yards or so to the east. Their roofs aflame, smoke billowing from open windows. In front of him, to the north, the ruined town of Centuripe, its centuries-old buildings reduced to barren, vertical slabs of broken stone by several days of aerial bombing and artillery fire. Clawing upwards to the heavens, their surfaces pockmarked with the evidence of small arms fire and shrapnel.

  A bullet zipped through the air above him. Then another, that one burrowing deep into the soil just a few feet away with a muffled thud. Someone has spotted him. Someone with a rifle.

  He spotted a shell crater close by. Thirty yards away, maybe? Only small, but sufficient to provide cover from whoever had him in their sights. He pushed himself to his knees with a groan, tried to rise to his feet but fell forward into the damp earth, the task too demanding for his battered body. He lay there for a moment, panting, shaking.

  Inside his head, the voice of his drill instructor commanding - ‘Get up boy!’

  He glanced back at his dead comrades near the burning jeep, then forced himself back up onto his hands and knees, began to crawl.

  The ground to his right erupted upwards for several seconds, showering him in earth, pebbles, and vegetation. Machine gun fire, raking a path perpendicular to his position. Twenty yards away. Too close. The gunner finding his range.

  Adrenaline surged through his body. His vision narrowed in on the crater which was now twenty yards away. He dug his elbows, knees, boots into the soil, thrust himself forward as another burst of gunfire cut straight across his path. Enfilading fire, zeroing in on its target.

  Run, you useless little shit, run!

  He summoned the last of his energy, then with a roar, rose to his feet and forced his body towards the crater. With a movement more akin to falling forward than running, he reached the edge of the hole, just as another burst of machine gun fire began snaking towards him from twenty feet away, the rounds thudding into the earth, kicking up divots.

  He threw himself into the hole just before the bullets reached his newfound cover, landing awkwardly on his left wrist, breaking a bone in his forearm. He cried as the agony shot up his arm like white lightening, grabbed at the stricken limb with his right hand. Clenched his teeth together. He pictured his mother, wished to be cradled by her, a child once more.

  He lay there, panting like a stricken game animal worn down by a pack of encircling predators.

  Another burst of bullets hit the ground not too far away. Only a few rounds this time. Six at most. A warning? The Germans telling him that they knew where he was? Or a short applause, perhaps? Admiration for his evading their efforts to hunt him down?

  He had read accounts of RAF and Luftwaffe pilots saluting each other from within the cockpits of their fighter planes, before breaking off to duel to the death. There had been no such chivalry at ground level. At least, none that he had ever witnessed.

  He lay still. His heart thumping in his chest and his ears. His lungs slowly replenishing with oxygen. The pain in his arm abating a little, he looked up to the sky; a pure azure, now tainted by rising plumes of burning homes, clouds of cordite, and the crisscrossing trails of aircraft far above.

  A starling shot past above him, fifty feet over the battlefield. Its wings flapping with maximum intensity, the bird understanding not the source of the threat below, but its instincts attuned to the danger. Flying, searching for sanctuary.

  He listened, filtering out the ringing in his ears.

  The battle had moved north. Up the river valley, past the destroyed town. Towards another. An endless movement of men and their machines of death, crawling from habitation to habitation like lava creeping downhill from a red hot crater above. Unstoppable. Inevitable.

  He felt himself drifting into unconsciousness again, tried to fight it. Failed.

  And then, more sound. New sounds. Soft thuds followed by intense hisses.

  He forced his eyes open. The blue above had morphed into a thick white. Was it clouds or fog? No. Artificial smoke. He rolled onto his right, pushed himself up to the rim of the crater and peered at the landscape beyond. There was none. Only a thick, swirling white.

  Mortar munition, spewing smoke. They had landed fifty yards away, deliberately placed between him and the German machine gunner.

  The sound of a car engine approaching. A man’s voice, yelling. The accent Scottish.

  ‘Harry!’

  His comrade. His friend. Gus Ferguson.

  He tried to call, but no sound came from his strained throat. He grabbed for the pistol in its holster. The Webley, his service revolver. He yanked it from the leather sheath, angled it to the heavens and pulled the trigger. The gunshot adding to the whistling in his ears.

  The jeep came to a halt. He still could not see it, but it was close. Twenty yards, maybe? The engine stalled.

  He heard Ferguson’s voice again. ‘Harry?’

  ‘Over here,’ he called, no louder than a whisper. He coughed, took in as much air as he could, then called again. ‘I’m over here.’ Still not loud enough.

  He could not fire the pistol again. They might assume he was the enemy. Of course they would.

  He spotted several rocks in front of him, just beyond the edge of the hole, each the size of a tennis ball. He lifted himself up, arched his right hand forward, then grabbed one. Slid forward another foot, to be in reach of another, then slammed them together, over and over until the muscles in his arm would function no more.r />
  ‘It came from over there,’ shouted one man.

  They had heard him.

  ‘I see him,’ shouted Ferguson, his silhouette forming from amongst the swirling white clouds, then morphing into his full form. ‘Harry, it’s me. We’re getting you out of here.’

  With the last of his energy, Blackman pointed towards the black Webley lying in the shell hole. ‘My gun. I need my gun.’

  Ferguson reached for the black pistol, thrust it into his belt, grabbed Blackman by his webbing, then hauled his commanding officer towards the jeep. ‘Start it up,’ he shouted, and the engine burst into life once more.

  His rescuers lifted Blackman into the rear seat, propped him up, then hurried to get back into the front seats. The clouds of smoke were dispersing, the ruined buildings beyond coming back into view.

  The Scot pounded on the outer steel body. ‘Go, go.’ He leaned back towards Blackman, one hand holding onto the windscreen frame, grinning. ‘I thought you was done for this time, sir.’

  Blackman peered back at his friend. ‘You weren’t the only one. I’ll see you get a medal for this, you crazy jock bastard.’

  The Scotsman waved his free hand in the air to dismiss the notion. ‘Fuck medals. You just make sure you get me home to my family.’

  ‘I’ll do my best,’ said Blackman, as the jeep ploughed across the field, then plunged through a thicket and onto a gravel road. ‘I owe you.’

  ‘Aye,’ said Ferguson as he lit a cigarette, then passed it back to Blackman. ‘You do.’

  23

  Methods

  Three months earlier.

  Liv Johansson was sitting at the kitchen table pushing pieces of pasta and chicken around a bowl with her fork, when Harry Blackman arrived back at the house, having taken his brown Labrador for its evening walk.