Shout in the Dark

by Christopher Wright

  Chapter 17

  Via Nazionale

  KESSEL FELT EXHILARATED. After spending the morning in the central library, sorting through fragmented records of the German military stationed in Rome, he'd unearthed the names of several soldiers who had been part of a Schutzstaffel regiment, including his father, Manfred Kessel. Young Karl's father, Rüdi, had always said a photographer would have accompanied an expedition to recover valuables, and one man on the list filled the bill exactly. Untersturmführer Helmut Bayer, a photographer stationed in Rome between 1943 and 1944 with the SS SD.

  When he used the library computer to do a web search for professional photographers and visual arts technicians in Germany, he found the name Bayer. Otto Bayer of Köln.

  An Internet directory showed Otto Bayer, a photographer, and Helmut and Monika Bayer, sharing the same address in a small town a few miles north east of Köln. Otto Bayer. It was a bit of a long shot, but the son of a photographer might follow his father's profession. If this Helmut Bayer was the wartime photographer, he would probably remember a bronze head being recovered from behind smashed wooden paneling, and know where the monastery was.

  He returned to the hotel to find Karl on the bed, playing with his home-made dagger while watching a children's cartoon in Italian.

  "Nothing," said Karl, nodding towards the set.

  "The news channel!" Kessel snatched the controller and pressed the button. "We have to know what's on TV Roma."

  Karl laughed loudly. "I don't speak the language, Herr Kessel. Anyway, you seem pleased with yourself."

  Kessel pushed Karl's legs to one side to make room on the end of the bed. "It looks as though our man is called Bayer." He was beginning to wonder if Karl's father had been deliberately lax in not discovering the name, when he had done his own investigation some years ago. Of course Rüdi had not been well, but ill health had not prevented him making incredible plans for the future of Achtzehn Deutschland Reinigung; or to be more accurate, receiving incredible plans through strange visions. What a shame Rüdi had not devoted more time to preparing for that future.

  "The world wide web is our friend, Karl. Your father and I couldn't see the Internet coming, but Phönix plans to use it to tell the world to come and see his head of Hitler."

  "You mean it will be on public display?" Karl was picking his ear. "How can he do that without the German Polizei locking him up?"

  "First he'll put a page on the Internet to say the remains of Hitler's skull will be shown somewhere in Germany, but not where. Think of it, Karl. Our friends in the American Identity movement will come over, and I can see at least a thousand activists arriving from each European country. Thousands of hard-line supporters arriving in Germany hoping to see the Führer's head. Ten thousand minimum. But when I add the head of Jesus Christ we would draw maybe ... ten times that figure."

  "A million," said Karl, working out the sum on his fingers.

  "A hundred thousand, Karl. But there could be over a million when people realize the authorities are preventing them from seeing the exact likeness of Christ. Racial purity is a powerful magnet for our cause. Over half of Germany supports racial purity. The same goes for most northern European countries."

  "Sounds like Phönix needs you," said Karl, with what might be a note of admiration.

  "He's just not thinking big enough in only wanting the head of the Führer. You're right, Karl, Phönix needs me. The press will be reporting the Shrine worldwide by the time our supporters are flocking into Germany. Then we use the Internet to tell them to come to Berlin. Finally, we give the exact location."

  "And the Polizei will be there waiting."

  "So they will, Karl, and a million people who see things our way will overwhelm them. There will be shootings; martyrs. That will encourage even more of our supporters to come out into the open. Ten million? Twenty? You know what Hitler called the burning of the Reichstag in nineteen thirty-three?"

  "A sign from heaven."

  "And he put the blame on the Communists. The fighting in the streets of Berlin will provide exactly the result we're looking for. It will demonstrate to the world that we have a peaceful, religious aim, and everyone will see that it is the immigrants and left wingers who are intolerant. They'll get the blame for the trouble, and it will be like the destruction of the Reichstag all over again. The people will demand a new leader."

  "It won't be you, I hope."

  "Phönix, Karl." He ignored the sarcasm. "When you know the identity of Phönix you'll understand why he's Europe's man for the Third Millennium."

  "So what do we do now, Herr Kessel?" Karl seemed to be showing some interest at last.

  "I'm about to phone the Bayers in Köln, and inquire if Helmut was down here in the war."

  He picked up the phone and dialed the number he had copied from the website directory.

  A man's voice answered. "I am Otto Bayer," he said in response to Kessel's question. "Ja, my father was in Italy in the war. I forget which unit. He is old and frail now. Why do you want to speak to him?"

  "I have some questions I'd like to ask."

  "Not now," said the man called Otto. "My father is resting. I will ask him if is convenient for you to phone later."

  Karl was standing close enough to the phone to overhear the conversation and he shook his head vigorously. "We'll go and see them, Herr Kessel. If you frighten the old man on the phone he'll tell you nothing. But don't let him know we're coming."

  Kessel realized that by leaving Rome he would be out of the reach of Phönix and the senior members of ADR for a few days. Any time now they'd be contacting him to demand an explanation as to why he'd become involved with TV Roma. But as soon as he had the relic -- the real one this time -- he would be the one to call the tune.

  The photographer had still not returned to the phone. Kessel replaced the receiver. "Very good, Karl. You're being helpful all of a sudden. We'll get the next train north and pay Herr Bayer a surprise visit."

  The youth was balancing his knife on one finger. He flicked it high into the air and caught it by the ornate handle. "I want to get back to Germany, Herr Kessel. I hate Rome."

  IN HIS CAR across the street, Bruno Bastiani punched the air triumphantly. He pulled the lightweight headphones from his head and ran a comb through his dyed, thinning hair. The transmitters were digital, sophisticated and performed superbly. Many of Rome's famous names had unwittingly broadcast their most intimate conversations through his carefully placed bugs.

  He glanced at his watch. Köln. It would mean an afternoon flight to get to the Bayers' home in Köln first, but no one stayed ahead in the press game by sitting on their backsides. Enzo's train wouldn't arrive in Germany until early tomorrow morning. His half-brother was the slow fool he'd always been. But how did the Bayer family in Köln fit into the picture? Were there to be more flies for their web?

  TEN MINUTES later, Kessel came back into the room. "Get your things, Karl!" he shouted. "I've settled the bill, and our train leaves in forty minutes."

  Karl grinned to himself. Herr Kessel was boasting that he'd tracked some old photographer to Köln. Bonn, Frankfurt, Köln: did it really matter? Anywhere on the Rhine would do, with plenty of good German food. Even one of the Ruhr cities would be better than this disintegrating dump. It could only have been for strategic reasons that Germany occupied Italy in the war.

  "Hurry up, Karl!"

  Karl Bretz pulled the bedroom door shut for the last time. He was glad to be seeing the back of this stuffy room that was no bigger than a cupboard, and be returning to civilization. Rome was much too hot for anyone with even half a brain.

  "Karl!"

  He refused to be hurried. The Central Station was only a few minutes away. But perhaps the sooner they were on the train, the sooner they could get back to civilization.

  "Coming, Herr Kessel."

  THE JOURNEY TO Germany seemed long, just as it had on the way down, with the economy class seats still short on support. Kessel constantly shif
ted his position but was unable to get comfortable. The only good news was that as the evening, and then the night wore tediously on, they would be getting closer to der Vaterland -- the Fatherland.

  He felt in his pocket for the notebook holding the photograph. The creased picture, showing an SS group beside broken wooden paneling, still obsessed him. When he was ten, he had found it in a drawer in his mother's dressing table, along with some German papers she had snatched from his father's room when he was murdered by the Gapists in the Via Tasso. On the back, the man who must be his father had written in German: Soldiers holding the bronze head of the statue of Jesus Christ, seen by Eusebius. My property stolen from me by a Jew and taken to the Vatican. When she realized what he had found, his mother became so angry that she screamed at him. He could still hear the scream now.

  "Where's that monastery, Karl?"

  The big skinhead was almost asleep. Other passengers had been giving the boy distasteful glances ever since boarding the train in Rome, and frankly his looks were an embarrassment right now.

  "What, Herr Kessel?"

  "If only we could go back eighteen years to the death of Canon Levi." Kessel realized he might as well be talking to himself. "That man did something with my father's property just before he agreed to sell it to us. The problem is, I wouldn't recognize that bronze head if it was staring me in the face. It probably isn't painted white any more. If the picture was clearer I'd have a better idea of what I'm looking for. The bronze head you wrecked at TV Roma was rubbish. I'm thinking that the Canon probably gave the real one back to the monks -- but I don't know where to find the monastery."

  Karl shrugged his shoulders and closed his eyes again. "I'm sure you're right, Herr Kessel."

  Kessel looked across at the sleeping youth. It didn't matter that Rüdi's son had not been listening. Just talking aloud had brought the truth home to him -- if he had no idea where the genuine relic was hidden, neither did the Vatican.