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

by Damian Vargas

  She returned her eye contact back to Garcia’s, and sighed. ‘The next thing I know, I’m working for Mossad spying on a secretive community of fugitive Germans, while also an MI6 informant, being paid by the British government to keep tabs on one of their own.’ She angled her head towards Blackman, a sudden coldness in her eyes. ‘Weiland said that I was to learn everything I could about you. To watch and report on everything you did. He didn’t think I knew anything about the Germans that live here. But I did, of course. And when you told me you were the one who caught von Ziegler in 1945, it became obvious why the British were worried. They thought you were going to let the cat out of the bag, about how they helped all those bastards go free. Not just the big fish, though. The faceless ones that also slipped away and who blended back into the world. Like the nurse at Auschwitz that killed my mother.’

  43

  Out of shadows

  One week earlier.

  It had just begun to rain when Harry Blackman yanked the villa’s steel gates closed, clasped the new padlock shut, and reached down to release his dog from its leash. He checked his watch - it was coming up to nine o’clock in the morning - peered up at the ominous grey clouds above, then to the Labrador. ‘Seems like we made it back just in time, old fella.’

  The weary dog ambled after its master as he strode up to the side door that led into the utility room, next to the kitchen. The Englishman glanced up at the window above the garage - fully expecting to see Johansson spying on him from within. She was not.

  He fumbled in his jacket pocket for the keys, then unlocked the wood door. He waited for the Labrador to clamber up the step before stepping inside himself, scraped his boots on the mat, then stooped to loosen his laces.

  It was then that he caught the waft of a strong tobacco smoke.

  He put his hand on the Labrador’s head to still the animal, and reached inside his wax jacket for his revolver, then pulled back the hammer of the black Webley, cocking it, and angled it towards the open doorway that led from the kitchen into the hallway and to the living room at the front of the house. His eyes darted around the room from corner to corner, ears attuned for the slightest sound. He slipped out of his boots, then crept forward, both hands gripping the heavy gun, his index finger curled around the cold trigger. He heard a muffled cough from the direction of the living room. The smell of the cigarette smoke became stronger as he inched forward, one carefully placed step after another, his eyes wide open, searching for the slightest movement.

  As he peered into the living room, he found the source of the smoke; a man sitting in one of the leather armchairs, his back to Blackman. The stranger took a long drag of the cigarette, then stubbed it out into a small china plate.

  Blackman levelled the gun at the centre of the man’s back. ‘Don’t move,’ he ordered.

  The man froze as instructed, his right hand remaining, hovering above the dead cigarette. His head angled towards the Englishman, who paced a slow arc around the armchair. The intruder appeared to be in his early thirties; short, curly dark hair cropped at the sides, chestnut brown eyes, several day’s worth of stubble on his square jaw. He was wearing a dark green, thick woollen jumper, black military style trousers. His eyes followed Blackman as the Englishman edged in front of him. His face projecting an assured self-confidence.

  ‘Who are you?’ demanded Blackman, glancing at the doorways, stairs and windows.

  The man in the chair grinned. ‘Don’t worry, Mr Blackman. I am unarmed. And I came alone…this time.’

  Blackman immediately recognised the voice of the man who had interrogated him two months earlier; the man whose associates had beaten Blackman, then drugged him unconscious.

  ‘You’ve got some nerve, coming back here.’

  The man glanced at a paperback novel that he held open in his left hand. It was Blackman’s well-worn childhood copy of Gods of Mars written by Edgar Rice Burroughs. ‘A man ahead of his time,’ he said. ‘Do you think that maybe his stories about rockets inspired the Germans to build their rockets? The V1s and V2s that killed so many of your countrymen?’ Blackman remained silent, holding the Israeli’s stare. The man closed the book, placed it on the small table to his left, and looked up at Blackman. ‘Maybe I’ll finish it another time.’

  Blackman backed away to get a view of the garage and, above it, the bedsit where Liv Johansson slept.

  The man in the chair followed Blackman’s gaze. ‘She’s not here. I told her to give us some privacy. She went to the village to order some provisions.’

  ‘Will Mossad be paying for them, too?’

  The man reacted only with the barest hint of a smile, his eyes fixed on Blackman, who pulled up a footstool and sat down opposite the stranger.

  ‘Why are you here?’ said Blackman.

  ‘We need your help.’

  Blackman snorted with derision at the suggestion. ‘Not that long ago, you had me tied to a chair and accused me of being a Nazi sympathiser. Now you want my help?’

  The man mimicked holding his hands up in a surrender pose. ‘We got off on the wrong foot.’

  ‘I should put a bullet in you.’ Blackman raised the pistol to emphasise the threat.

  The man in the chair leaned forward, ignoring the black pistol directed at his face, steely eyes staring at Blackman’s. ‘That would be a mistake.’

  The two men remained glaring at each other for several seconds, before Blackman carefully released the Webley’s hammer, and pushed the weapon into his shoulder holster. ‘What are you planning?’

  ‘We are here for a man called Walter Krügel and, if possible, Ruth Volkenrath.’

  ‘I don’t know anyone called Krügel,’ said Blackman, his eyes narrowing. ‘But Volkenrath, I know who she is. She runs that Hitler Youth revival club up at the old army compound.’

  ‘That’s her, but she’s not our primary target. Krügel is. He led one of the Einsatzgruppen that operated behind the lines on the eastern front. He answered to Heydrich himself. His unit killed more than one hundred and thirty thousand people after the invasion of Russia.’ The man’s eyes drifted elsewhere for a moment. He swallowed. ‘Some of my team lost people.’

  ‘I’ve not heard of a Krügel living here,’ said Blackman, a look of confusion on his face.

  ‘He doesn’t live here. He made his way to South America in the fifties. He runs a Kamaraden network from over there.’ The man in the chair leaned forward, hands clasped together, elbows resting on his knees. ‘But he has a daughter in Hamburg. He’s not seen her since she was very young. We’ve had her under surveillance for several months. We tapped her phone and intercepted her mail. The woman’s no Nazi, quite the opposite in fact. She’s on the radical left and had recently gotten herself mixed up with an extremist group calling themselves the Baader-Meinhof gang.’

  ‘So?’ said Blackman.

  ‘So we paid her a visit. It was explained to her that we needed her help and in return, information we knew about her radical affiliations would not make its way to the West German authorities.’

  ‘You blackmailed her.’

  ‘We gave her an opportunity to do the right thing.’ The man grinned. ‘Krügel’s been writing to her for years, asking to see her. She’s never replied.’

  ‘Until now, I suppose?’ said Blackman.

  The Mossad man winked at him. ‘He’s ill. Lung cancer, we think. He wants to see her before he dies. She’s meeting him in La Mesita Blanca in seven days’ time. Well, that’s what he thinks.’

  ‘And then what? You kill him?’

  The man shook his head. ‘No. We’ve got a boat. We’re taking him back to Israel. We will put him on trial, just like we did with Eichmann.’

  ‘What’s the point? You just said he’s dying. It doesn’t sound like he’ll be spending much time in prison?’

  ‘My country’s leaders consider that catching these people and exposing their crimes is what matters.’

  ‘And the woman…Volkenrath. What is she in all this?’
<
br />   The Mossad man broke away from Blackman’s dark stare. ‘She was a nurse at Auschwitz. An unpleasant specimen for sure, but for us more of a target of opportunity, you might say. Krügel is our primary.’

  Blackman eyed the man in the armchair. ‘Why would you risk the mission for this nurse?’

  The man glanced out of the window. ‘Some personal business…for one of my team.’

  ‘And the one who calls himself Joseph Navarro?’ said Blackman.

  The man in the chair shrugged. ‘I have no orders regarding him. Why?’

  Blackman held the other man’s stare, said nothing.

  ‘I see,’ the man in the chair replied, a wry smile on his face. ‘You have “personal business” too.’ He shrugged. ‘That’s up to you, but do not get in our way.’

  The Englishman sought to maintain his cool, but inside he felt a whirlwind brewing. If a Mossad team swept in and spirited Walter Krügel away, the rest of the senior Germans would surely go to ground. He pictured Gus Ferguson’s wife, Fiona, in her car outside Blackman’s house when she had told him that Gus had been murdered, and how she had blamed him for not helping.

  ‘You say you need my help?’

  The man nodded. ‘We need a hopping off point. Somewhere on this side of the valley where we can lie low for several hours. Away from prying eyes.’

  ‘So, you want to use my property.’

  The Mossad man pointed an index finger at the Englishman. ‘I assume that isn’t a problem?’

  Blackman thought for a moment. ‘Alright, I agree.’ What choice did he have? Mossad did not do things by halves. They had put Liv Johansson in place nearly two years ago. That meant that they had been planning this mission for a long time. Long before Blackman arrived. They would not risk it because of some disgruntled Englishman. He had to make sure that the man sitting opposite him was certain that he was not liable to jeopardise those plans.

  ‘In that case, there’s something you should know,’ he said.

  ‘Go on,’ said the Israeli.

  ‘When you were last here. When you had me tied up. I had been up at the old compound. Surveilling it.’ He pushed himself up, hands in his pockets, looking down at the man in the chair. ‘I found a body.’

  The Mossad man’s eyes widened, suspicious. ‘What body?’

  ‘Actually, my dog found it. It was buried in a shallow grave just outside the perimeter fence. It was badly decomposed, but I think it was male.’

  The Mossad man’s eyes were working Blackman over, then froze, his face turning an ashen grey, his head dropping into his open hands.

  ‘I think it was that journalist that went missing two years ago,’ said Blackman. ‘He was working for you lot, wasn’t he?’

  The Man from Mossad rose to his feet, looked Blackman in the eye. ‘Have you told anyone else about this?’

  ‘Not a soul.’

  ‘Good,’ said the Israeli. ‘Keep it that way.’ His eyes carried no uncertain amount of menace. He turned and picked up his coat. ‘My team will be here before dawn on the thirtieth, in one week. And don’t worry,’ he said, ‘Liv can let us in. You just make sure that your maid and gardener aren’t around.’

  ‘I’ll tell them to take the day off,’ said Blackman.

  ‘Good,’ the Israeli said as he walked to the front door. ‘It would be unfortunate if anyone were to get in our way.’

  The Englishman watched as the man from Mossad closed the door and strode away. He gripped the top of the armchair, his fingernails digging into the leather. Everything had changed. He was going to have to act quickly.

  44

  On a mission

  Two days earlier.

  The Israeli team arrived in the early hours under the cover of darkness, having trekked across the six-hundred-metre high craggy hills that reared up behind Harry Blackman’s property on the southern flank of the valley.

  Johansson held the gate open as they snuck through it into the villa’s front garden, safe from prying eyes. She approached the leader, the one that the other Israelis called “Beni”- a tall, lean man with short, curly brown hair and chocolate brown eyes. She had met the man, whose name was Benjamin Ginsberg, a few years earlier at one of the survivors’ group meetings. She had only discovered that he was a Mossad agent when he had come to tell her that her brother, David, had gone missing, presumed murdered. He had told her that Israel needed her help. She had quickly come to see that he had been gifted with a magnetic charm and possessed an ability to make swift, effective decisions under pressure. She could not imagine anything fazing the Israeli, and suspected that even Harry Blackman must have realised he had met his match when the two men had first locked horns.

  She and Blackman had barely spoken in the several weeks since the Israelis had interrogated him in the villa. They lived on the same property, with the minimum of interactions. A common existence. A toleration. The Englishman had long since stopped giving her chores to do. Had it been his way of telling her that he knew of her betrayal?

  It would be over soon, this uncomfortable, silent limbo. Very soon. And then what? Would she feel a sense of relief? She wasn’t so sure. She had seduced Blackman, given herself up to him for the mission. For Mossad. And it had not been for the first time; the years after the war had been tough for so many people in the formerly occupied nations. Food had been in short supply. There had been a shortage of livestock and seed, and the winters in the late 1940s and early 1950s had been particularly hard. Those that find themselves in such situations often have to make difficult decisions. Painful decisions. And she had a younger brother to care for.

  She’d seen that same toughness of spirit, that single-mindedness, in Harry Blackman. A kindred soul who was willing to embrace the darkness if it could be justified, if it were for a greater good. A greater cause. And she’d felt drawn to it. To him. No matter how high he built his walls. She wondered, had she only seduced him for the mission? Or for more selfish reasons? To be close to him, even for a brief moment in time. Even if it would lead to the uncomfortable present that they now found themselves in.

  And now the Israelis were here. Here for two of the monsters that lived in this dark valley, ready to come for them in the night; to haul them away from their safe, comfortable existences, to face a final justice. A justice that for her parents, and her brother, had been a long time coming.

  The Mossad snatch team were in Spain masquerading as a group of European university students on a walking holiday. They had left their transport - a Volkswagen camper van and a Citroen saloon - at a hostel eight kilometres away on the other side of the high hills over which they had just traversed. She watched them as they made their way into the villa, dropped their kit to the floor, and gratefully accepted the coffee and sandwiches that she had prepared for them.

  ‘Where’s Blackman?’ asked Beni.

  Johansson pointed upwards. ‘He’s still in his room. He usually gets up around six to take his dog for a walk.’

  ‘Good. Make sure he keeps to his normal routine. We don’t want to raise any suspicion.’ He stepped towards the seven men who were forming up in the middle of the living room, having shed their jackets and jumpers, and glanced at his watch. ‘It’s coming up to five a.m. now. We made good time, gentlemen. Well done. Grab yourselves a few hours’ rest. I’ll take the first watch.’ He turned back to face Johansson, nodded towards the front door. ‘I need to talk to you.’

  She opened the door, stepped onto the porch. It was pitch-black, save for the haze of the crescent moon that showed itself every now and again through occasional gaps in the thick blanket of cloud. The morning breeze had picked up over the previous few days. It swept down the valley, creating vast ripples through the foliage of the pine trees, creating a haunting howl as thousands of branches buckled one way then the other.

  The Israeli downed the remainder of his coffee, placed the cup upon the wooden table, sat down, and beckoned at her to join him. He lit a cigarette, offered the Norwegian one. ‘There’s been a
change of plan,’ he said.

  Johansson already knew what the Israeli was about to say. Steeling herself, she whispered, ‘You’re only going for Krügel.’

  Beni reached for her hand, but she pulled it away. ‘Liv, I wanted to go for the nurse too, but—’

  ‘Then why not?’ she snapped. ‘This might be my only chance.’

  ‘This can’t be just about you, Liv.’

  ‘That monster murdered my mother.’

  ‘I’m sorry, but the prime minister felt that it’s too much of a risk. Getting Krügel has to be the priority. If we’d been able to get them at the same location, we’d have gone for her too. But you said it in your reports…she almost never leaves that goddamned compound. It’s three kilometres from Krügel’s hotel and we don’t have transport. We can’t do it, Liv. Not this time.’

  Johansson, her chin resting on the palm of the hand that held her cigarette, the white smoke rising up through her hair, glared back at him. ‘I’ve been working on this for nearly two years, Beni. Two fucking years.’

  ‘I know—’

  ‘I think she killed David.’

  Ginsberg broke away from her stare.

  ‘You knew?’ she said, forcing her way back into his line of sight.

  ‘No,’ he said, ‘…but I suspected.’

  ‘And yet you didn’t tell me, his sister? Why?’

  ‘You know why.’

  She grabbed at his bicep, peered into his eyes, waiting for an answer. He remained quiet. But his eyes said it all. ‘Because you knew I’d go after her myself,’ she said, ‘…before you could get Krügel. Because it would ruin your plans, your mission.’ She released her grip on his arm, brought the cigarette back to her mouth.

  ‘I’m sorry, Liv. I really am,’ he said. ‘But this is bigger than you. Bigger than any of us.’

  ‘We’ll get her next time. I promise. Even if I have to come back by myself to help you. But please, you know you can’t interfere with this now. Tell me that you understand this.’