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

by Damian Vargas

  ‘For god’s sake, hurry.’

  55

  We, monsters.

  Police Station, La Mesita Blanca.

  All Saints’ Day, 1970.

  8:30pm

  ‘Let me do this,’ said the Englishman.

  Inspector Garcia stood, arms crossed, glaring at Johansson as she was escorted back to a separate holding cell. He turned back to the Englishman who remained sat on the cell bed. ‘Why? What purpose would it serve?’

  ‘I want him to admit what he did.’

  ‘Tell me where the boy is, then I’ll see what I can do.’

  ‘No. If you want to find the boy, you’ll make this happen.’

  Garcia rubbed at his forehead; the lack of sleep and intense events of the day, causing a blinding fog. He closed his eyes to shut out the room. To be able to think. If the word got out that he’d agreed to put one of the most prominent of La Mesita Blanca’s Germans into the same room as the man who likely wanted to kill him, well…there’d be any number of consequences. None of them good for Garcia. But if it became known that he had stifled a potential chance to free Conrad Navarro, and then if something happened to the boy, well, that too would not serve him well.

  ‘You ask the impossible,’ he said. He was lying. Joseph Navarro was presently less than five minutes away in a nearby bar, accompanied by two bodyguards, awaiting a call from the police station.

  Blackman shook his head. ‘This is not impossible. It is very possible. And it’s the only way that bastard is getting his kid back. Get that into your head, Inspector…before it’s too late.’

  Garcia rubbed at his forehead once more, wishing that he had his cigarillos - he always thought more clearly with one of those tar sticks lodged between his lips. They made everything…lucid. ‘Alright,’ he said, relenting. He nodded to Officer Ramos at the doorway and who spun on his heels and hurried away. ‘Mr Navarro will be here very soon. But he will not stand trial, you know this.’

  ‘This will be his trial.’

  ‘But there will be no judgement.’

  ‘I will judge him.’

  Garcia sighed, glanced to the heavens. ‘Yes, but there will be no sentence. And once this stupid game of yours is through, that man will walk away as free as he is now. But you, however. You will not be free. Not free of the law, not free of your conscience.’

  ‘He will have to admit what he did,’ said Blackman. ‘And you will record it. You will record him saying what he did. What he is.’

  Garcia lowered himself down on the second bed, leaned forward, his hands on his thighs, his arms rigid to prop himself up. ‘I ask again, what purpose will this serve? Do you think a tape recording of an old man’s confessions will change anything in this world? If he says he ordered people killed three decades ago, will it bring them back? If he admits to these things you say he did, will it change anything? Will it heal anything?’

  ‘I believe that it will.’

  ‘Then you are a fool.’

  ‘A fool who controls the fate of man’s son.’

  ‘You talk of playing with a boy’s fate, as if it matters not to you.’ Garcia removed his glasses, rubbing at his weary eyes. ‘You sit here, claiming to want to expose monsters, yet what you do…your actions, they are equally monstrous.’ He peered at Blackman’s face. The Englishman swallowed, his stare scanning the walls, the ceiling. The floor between them. His chest heaved, sucking in clean air. Was it a sign of remorse? A reluctant acceptance of what Garcia was telling him? Was he finally going to acquiesce, to tell the Inspector where Conrad Navarro was being held? Would this one innocent be saved? Garcia’s heart pounded at his ribcage, in his ears.

  Blackman’s head lifted, his eyes meeting Garcia’s once again. ‘Have you read Nietzsche, Inspector Garcia?’

  The sick sensation of failure filled Garcia’s chest as he pushed himself backwards against the coldness of the brick wall. He nodded, knowing full well the notorious quotation from Friedrich Nietzsche’s book, Beyond Good and Evil, which the Englishman was referring to. He whispered it, his mind racing back through the years once again, to the things he had tried so hard to forget. ‘If you gaze long enough into the abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.’

  Blackman gave him a dark smile. ‘I think the abyss has gazed back into the both of us, Garcia.’ His eyes drifted lower, as if peering deep into Garcia’s heart. ‘The difference is, I’ve come to accept it.’

  56

  The killer

  One day earlier.

  Johansson peered through the dust and cobweb-covered garage window, watching the intruder’s silhouette approach the rear door of the Englishman’s villa, fifteen yards away. The bulky figure held a pistol with a foot-long suppressor attached to the end of the barrel.

  Blackman stood at her side. She nodded towards the figure moving around in the shadows. ‘That’s one of Navarro’s bodyguards,’ she whispered. ‘His name is Peter Stangle. He is from South Africa, I think.’

  She watched as Stangle stooped, putting his ear to the wooden door, before trying the doorknob. It turned. He raised his pistol in his right hand, opened the door with his left, then crept into the darkness of the house.

  Blackman squeezed her arm, pointed towards the open gate. ‘Now’s your chance. Get out of here.’

  ‘And what will you do?’

  ‘Whatever I have to.’

  She shook her head, looking at the Englishman’s injured shoulder. ‘You’re in no fit state to face him.’

  Blackman glared back at her, but she refused to move. ‘Fine,’ he said, and started to creep down the stairs. ‘Get under the stairs. In the shadow. I’ll get our Afrikaans friend out into the open.’

  ‘How?’ she said, as he tip-toed to a battered wooden chest of drawers, slowly sliding a drawer open. He grabbed for something, held it up to show her - two chrome keys and a black leather fob. He nodded towards the silver Austin Healey. ‘I’ll start it up. He’ll come running.’

  She did as Blackman said, backed into the shadows under the staircase that led up to her bedsit, and watched as the Englishman opened the driver’s door, taking care to avoid making any sound, then lowered himself into the driver’s seat. Her heart was pounding in her chest. She took a deep, controlled breath.

  He looked across to her. ‘Ready?’

  She nodded.

  The car’s side lights turned on. The starter motor whined for a moment, the engine coughed, then burst into life. Blackman revved the engine a few times.

  Johansson heard the sound of heavy footsteps thumping into the loose gravel outside. She lifted her pistol towards the door, steadied herself.

  The car engine revved - harder, louder this time, a cloud of grey smoke spewing from the exhaust into the evening air.

  The shadow of a figure at the garage door. The silencer poking into the garage. A shout in English, the accent from the south of Africa. ‘Blackman!’

  The Englishman ignored it.

  Peter Stangle stepped into the garage, into the red hue of the tail-lights. He was tall - at least six foot two, she guessed. His hair blonde, slicked back and neat. At the side of his neck, a sprawling pale scar - seemingly an ugly memento of a significant burn. He wore a thick cotton jacket with patches at the shoulders. His eyes scanned back and forth, failing to detect Johansson hiding in the shadows. ‘Stop,’ he shouted, then kicked at the car’s rear wing.

  Blackman turned his head, looked at the intruder, feigning surprise. He lifted his one good hand into the air.

  ‘Turn it off and get out!’ Stangle shouted again, waving the pistol’s long suppressor to direct the Englishman.

  Using the engine noise to mask her movement, Johansson slipped behind the African and drove the muzzle of her pistol into the small of his back. ‘Drop it.’

  The intruder froze, his head turning just a few degrees in Johansson’s direction, understanding the situation. He grinned. ‘I have my gun on your Englishman.’

  ‘I have my gun to your spine.’
/>   ‘I will shoot him,’ said Stangle.

  ‘Then do it,’ she said, her voice as cold as the gun in her hand. ‘He might die. You will die. I, however, will not.’

  Stangle grunted, grinned again, and lifted his finger from the pistol’s trigger. ‘Okay, girly. We can do this your way.’

  ‘Place the gun on the car then step away.’

  The man did as he was told. She picked up the silenced weapon before handing her smaller Walther PPK to Harry, who climbed out of the Austin Healey, wincing from the discomfort as he did so. The South African now had two pistols pointed at him. Not that he seemed remotely concerned, thought Johansson.

  She pointed the silenced gun at its owner. ‘Who sent you?’

  ‘You know who sent me.’ The man backed away, glaring at Blackman. ‘And he wants his son back.’

  Liv angled the silenced pistol at the man’s head. ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘Mr Navarro sent me here to fetch the boy.’

  ‘Conrad? But he is not here,’ she said, glancing at Blackman, noticing his lack of denial.

  The South African raised his voice. ‘I tracked them back here. All the way from Navarro’s house. Their footprints. Him and the boy.’

  ‘Tracked? I don’t understand. Harry? What is he talking about?’

  ‘You’re not South African, are you?’ said Blackman, ignoring her. ‘You’re Rhodesian, yes?’

  The blond man shot him a proud look. ‘That’s right.’

  Blackman glanced at Liv, who held the silenced gun directed at the man’s midriff. ‘He probably learned how to track animals before he’d hit puberty.’

  The man fixed Blackman with a steely stare. ‘Not just animals.’

  Liv, her gun remaining pointed at the blonde man, said, ‘What is this, Harry? About Conrad, what is he saying?’

  Blackman, ‘Not now. Keep the gun on him. I’ll find some rope to tie him up with.’

  She turned her attention back to Stangle. ‘You work up at the old compound, don’t you? With all the Nazi kids?’

  ‘I teach them sports, sometimes. And I teach them to look after themselves.’

  ‘With her? With Volkenrath?’

  He nodded, his eyes registering a suspicion.

  ‘You and she,’ said Johansson. ‘You are close?’

  He held her stare, said nothing.

  ‘I bet you are. I bet you do everything she asks, don’t you?’ He eyed the pistol. ‘I’m right, yes?’ she said. She took a step back. If he had been considering lurching forward to try to knock it from her hands, he had missed his opportunity. ‘A man came here. Two years ago. A journalist.’

  The Sough African’s eyes narrowed.

  ‘He was murdered. At the compound. Where you work.’ She lifted the pistol, directing it towards his sternum. ‘Did you do it? Did you kill him?’

  Stangle shot her a dismissive look, as if he had been accused of nothing more than stamping on an insect. ‘That Jew was poking his nose in other people’s affairs. He got what he deserved.’

  ‘Did you shoot him? With this pistol? A bullet to the back of the head? Was that how you did it?’

  ‘I don’t have to answer this.’

  She pulled the trigger, the gun emitting a dull thud, the bullet smacking into the wooden doorframe barely three inches from the side of his face. ‘Tell me!’ she yelled.

  ‘Yes. I caught him. Snooping around the compound. Spying on us.’

  ‘Spying on who?’

  ‘Navarro?’ said Blackman.

  The South African shook his head. ‘No, not him.’

  ‘Then who?’ said Johansson.

  Stangle hesitated, seemingly unwilling to answer.

  Johansson fired again, the second bullet drilling into the floor near his foot.

  ‘Ruth,’ he said, backing away. ‘I was with Ruth.’

  ‘Ruth Volkenrath?’ Said Johansson,

  ‘He was taking photos of her, with the kids. We had to find out what he knew.’

  ‘He told you who he was?’

  ‘Not at first,’ he said

  Johansson lifted the gun, pointing it at the man’s face. ‘So you tortured him?’

  Stangle shrugged, glanced at Blackman. ‘He knew what he was letting himself in for, the little rat.’

  She held his stare, her teeth gritted. A seething fire inside her. ‘He was my brother.’

  The South African’s grin fell away. His eyes darted from her, to Blackman, then back to her. To the pistol in her hands. ‘You can’t kill me.’

  She stared back at him, unmoving.

  ‘Others will come,’ he said, his voice wavering, panicked.

  Had her eyes revealed her thoughts, the conclusion she had just reached? The decision she had just made?

  Stangle glanced over his shoulder towards the open gate, thirty yards away, illuminated in the evening darkness by a yellow light from the small lamps on top of each of the stone pillars. He looked back at her, at the gun in her hand.

  She gave him the faintest of reactions, a disguised shake of her head. ‘You won’t make it.’

  Stangle’s mouth opened. He glanced again at Blackman. To the house.

  Johansson raised the pistol, closed her left eye, lining him up in the iron sights with her right.

  The African turned on his heel, spun around, tried to break into a sprint towards the gate. To safety.

  Johansson exhaled, dug her left elbow into her hip so that her left hand was supporting the hand that held the gun. Just as the Israelis had trained her to do.

  The blonde man was moving already, but he lost his footing on the gravel, making only three strides before…

  Johansson’s finger tightened around the trigger. She fired twice in quick succession, so quick that the two suppressed thumps became almost as one.

  The bullets struck Stangle between his shoulder blades. He lost momentum in an instant. His arms dropped to his side, fingers flailing. He took a clumsy step forward. Then another, looking for all the world like a newborn giraffe taking its first uncertain steps in the world, only these steps were to be the African’s last.

  She heard Blackman speak but not what he said, strode towards the fallen man. Focussed. Certain what she must do.

  His legs failing him, the stricken man sunk to his knees, his body rigid, still resisting with all his will. Commanding his ineffective body to obey.

  Blackman was limping towards her now. He was close.

  This time she heard what the Englishman said.

  ‘Don’t do it.’

  She ignored him, lifted the pistol to the back of Stangle’s skull - his eyes lifting towards her, desperate, a red froth falling from his mouth - and pulled the trigger.

  Blood splattered across her blouse. The spent cartridge ejected to her right, landed on the gravel, bounced with a gentle metallic chime as the dead man’s body slumped to the ground.

  She stared at it, the legs and fingers twitching, contorted. His eyes wide, unable to accept the demise of their host. The man’s lungs emptied one final time, the last air he had ever known, the molecules caught in the breeze, dispersing into the cold evening darkness - intermingling with the dying breaths of all those that had gone before him, passing on the story of his demise.

  ‘You didn’t have to do that,’ said Blackman, now close to her.

  Johansson’s eyes remained on the dead man at her feet. ‘He worked for Navarro. He came here to find Conrad.’ She turned her head to the Englishman, saw he was looking at the silenced gun in her hand, saw the small, black Walther pistol in his. ‘Did you take him? The boy. Did you take him?’

  Blackman’s eyes rose to meet her’s. She tightened the grip on the silenced pistol, her arm loose. Her finger hovering over the trigger still, at the ready. There was less than three yards between them. Would he come at her? She tried to read his eyes. But they were still. Unreadable. Was Blackman her enemy now? Or were they the same? She could no longer tell.

  The Englishman broke away from h
er stare, looked to the gate. He pushed the Walther into his belt. ‘I have him, yes.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I came here, to Spain, for his father. For what he had done to a good friend of mine. For my past failures. My guilt. But I couldn’t get to him. Not now. Not now, you and your Mossad friends snatched Krügel.’

  ‘Why the boy?’

  ‘Because,’ said Blackman, peering back at her. ‘Holding the boy is the only way I can get to his father.’

  ‘As a hostage? A bargaining chip?’ She shook her head. ‘You think Navarro will come here of his own free will and face you, knowing you intend to kill him?’

  ‘I already told you, I didn’t come here to kill him.’ Blackman started towards the house.

  Johansson put her thumb on the hammer of the gun, carefully released it back to its safe position. ‘What then?’

  Blackman did not answer, his attention focussed elsewhere. He stopped, stared towards the dark passageway between the garage and house, towards the land at the rear of the property that was populated by the small orchard of citrus and olive trees. Bats were out, zipping back and forth in and out of the light, picking off small insects for their evening meal. A hose hung from the tap on the wall at the side of the house, snaking along the ground, disappearing into the undergrowth under the first of the trees.

  The Englishman’s head dropped. His eyes widened, as if struck by a sudden recollection. He rubbed at his forehead, his eyes. ‘Was Manolo here?’ he said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘When you had me tied up in your room? The gardener, did he come to the house?’

  ‘Yes, this morning. I found him messing about outside. He’d come to water the roses, I think. I told him to take the day off. Why?’

  Blackman stood, peering back towards the darkness at the rear of the property, his breath condensing in the cold evening air.

  ‘We need to leave this place,’ she said.

  ‘Not yet.’

  ‘Why not?’