by Glenn Cooper
‘He doesn’t trust us. The man should have some faith.’
Scarface nudged Domenica to wake her up. ‘I trust him to kill us if we screw this up.’
TWENTY-FOUR
Klaus Langer was fairly close in age to Cal but he seemed very much younger. He was blonde and pudgy, with a perpetually mischievous look as if he were constantly wrestling with amusing thoughts. Cal and Irene met him bright and early at the Faculty of Social Sciences at The Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich. He was waiting with a spread of pastries.
‘Welcome to the LMU! It’s wonderful to see you again, Cal, and to meet you, Irene. I am sorry to hear about your brother’s troubles. This must be quite distressing.’
Irene was persuaded to take a sweet bun. He and Cal got each other caught up with their current research projects. Langer proudly revealed that he had recently been appointed to a federal commission on neo-Nazi crimes against Muslim immigrants to Germany.
‘You’d think these vermin would die out but like cockroaches they seem to be quite hardy,’ Langer said. ‘Now, tell me about this SS symbol you’re trying to identify.’
They showed him Irene’s version of the tattoo. He studied it and screwed up his face in thought.
‘There are so many of these kinds of things I’ve seen over the years. They’re variations on the same themes. Daggers, SS bolts, eagles, what have you. This one is more unique for sure, because of the lance and yes – I agree with what you said over the phone – this is certainly meant to represent the Holy Lance. As a symbol, it would be something I’d expect to see in the Nazi period, not during our post-war neo-Nazi eras. It had a potent meaning for the likes of Himmler and Hitler, but I don’t think the young thugs of modern Germany would know what it was if they tripped over it. You’re sure it’s modern?’
‘We believe so,’ Cal said.
Langer waited, perhaps to see if Cal would be more forthcoming, but when he wasn’t the fellow carried on with his thoughts.
‘Of course, it’s hard to speak of the rather bizarre fascination of the Third Reich with Holy Relics without turning to our old friend, Otto Rahn.’
‘I was telling Irene about him.’
‘And the Cathars,’ she added.
Langer giggled, ‘Well, we can thank the Cathars for my introduction to Cal. So you know that Rahn got mixed up with Himmler’s cultural anthropology section, the Ahnenerbe, and was given rather lavish funding to do fieldwork at Cathar sites and elsewhere, looking for the Holy Grail and other early Christian artifacts.’
‘I didn’t think that Rahn had anything to do with the Holy Lance,’ Cal said. ‘That was hiding in plain sight in Vienna. All Hitler had to do was pick it up when he invaded Austria.’
‘Yes, that’s so. I don’t know if Rahn had any direct involvement with that affair. But I do think there’s evidence that he was meant to be assisting Himmler with assembling all the known Holy Relics and displaying them in Himmler’s SS fortress in Wewelsburg. To what end, we don’t know, but likely for propaganda purposes. You know, to rally the SS acolytes. Well, let me start you off in my archive. You can both work through archival material chronologically, starting with the Third Reich. Or one of you can begin with the earlier material and the other with the emergence of neo-Nazis in the 1970s.’
Langer’s archive room was down the hall near the departmental library. He apologized for its archaic nature – it was a wall of metal filing cabinets stuffed with papers – an anachronism in a digital world. Only a long-overdue grant from the German federal government or the EU would provide digitalization funds to fix it.
‘The material is mostly photographic in nature,’ Langer said, ‘but I’ve got quite a few drawings, propaganda advertisements and graphic design pieces. If it’s got anything to do with Nazi and neo-Nazi symbolism, I’ve collected it. It’s a wonder I’ve been able to stay so cheerful.’
Irene seemed startled by the number of cabinets. ‘You don’t seem old enough to have accumulated all of this,’ she said.
He giggled again. ‘Well, I inherited the Nazi-era material from my old professor at LMU who’s retired. All the neo-Nazi stuff is mine. So have at it. I hope you won’t be too fazed by this kind of manual searching.’
Cal assured him they’d be fine. ‘It’s only the second time this week we’ve done something like this.’
Giovanni was having a better day.
With Gerhardt gone, his sole guard, who had let on that his name was Martin, had relaxed the harsh conditions of his captivity. It seemed he wasn’t as sadistic as his boss.
He moved Giovanni to another bedroom up a flight of stairs, this had an en suite and clean sheets on the bed. Martin provided him with gauze for his wrists and, as for food, he received what the fellow had prepared for himself. Best of all, with a hesitant push, Giovanni was able to open the window shutters and revealed something marvelous; a long, elevated view over verdant hayfields, a hilly village and a sparkling azure bay. The window even opened halfway, allowing a cooling breeze to enter the bedchamber. When he stuck his head out he understood why he’d been allowed this glimpse of freedom. There was a sheer drop, well over ten meters onto a stone patio and there were no visible neighboring properties. He might try calling for help but it was doubtful anyone would respond and he’d probably lose his marvelous privileges.
He unscrewed the top of a bottle of water while turning his face to catch the wind. It was then he realized that his captor hadn’t bothered to remove the plastic film with its label. Font Vella. Spanish. He put it all together – the long journey by boat, the bay views – he was somewhere on the vast eastern coast of Spain.
He began to fret about the transparencies. The Germans hadn’t bothered to hide their faces. And now the one called Martin was allowing him a glimpse of the geography. Didn’t this mean that they had no fear of being identified? Wasn’t the conclusion then obvious; they had no intention of letting him live?
His thoughts turned darkly to his family.
He was ashamed of his cowardice. He’d succumbed to the terror of near drowning and pain and had exposed his mother and sister to danger. The sadist had promised they wouldn’t be hurt, but how could a man like this be trusted? He’d been weak and his weakness might have terrible consequences. Should he punish himself for his betrayal to his loved ones? Should he take his own life? It would be impossible to squeeze his big body through the half-open window, but he might be able to shatter the wood with a chair and hurl himself out. But suicide was a mortal sin and besides, he doubted he could go through with it.
Why had this terrible fate befallen him?
He had only wanted to be a humble priest.
Why had God delivered him to the St Athanasius monastery on that day? Why had he been chosen by the old monk to go down into that crypt?
Suddenly he understood that the answer lay in the question. God had chosen him. That was all he needed to know. He wasn’t meant to understand God’s plans. He wasn’t meant to understand why his family had been drawn into it. And he wasn’t meant to understand why he’d become connected to Jesus Christ in the most tangible way: by suffering and bleeding.
He put the bottle of water onto the windowsill and took a series of lung-filling breaths. A bee buzzed passed the window. Butterflies danced in the meadow. A faint strain of amplified music drifted up from the village.
He smiled.
He needed to suspend his worldly worries and surrender himself to Christ. The Lord would attend to his needs on this green Earth or in Heaven. The Lord would take care of his family.
He’d been chosen.
He gazed out the window, a happier man.
Cal and Irene were back in their groove, flipping through files. It was faster work than sorting photos of Greek and Latin calligraphy in the Vatican Library. It only took a fraction of a second to check a document to see if it matched their lance and bolt image and they were able to move through the filing cabinet drawers quickly.
An hour into it, Cal,
started into his second file cabinet and moaned, ‘God, I hate Nazis.’
‘Me too,’ Irene said. ‘If I never …’
She stopped in midsentence and blankly stared into space as if suffering from an absence seizure.
Cal didn’t notice that she had drifted off, because he too was no longer seeing the filing cabinet in front of him. He was seeing something else entirely. And his mood had, in an instant, been transformed from irritability to something very different.
They snapped out of it simultaneously.
She looked at him. ‘Did you?’ she asked.
He knew the exact meaning of her vague question. ‘Yes.’
‘I need to draw it,’ she said urgently.
He’d just seen a sheet of unlined paper separating two photos in the filing cabinet. He snatched it and gave it to her.
‘I won’t bother,’ he said. ‘You’re the better artist.’
She rummaged through her purse and found a lead pencil.
When she was done she showed it to him.
Nothing amazed him anymore. ‘That’s what I saw too,’ he said.
It was a view out a window, a water bottle in the foreground with a Font Vella label, a hillside village and a crescent-shaped bay in the distance.
‘It’s what Giovanni is seeing,’ she said.
Cal sat down. ‘It gave me a feeling of tranquility,’ Cal said.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘It was a kind of happiness. Thank God for that.’
It was almost noon when Irene found it.
The file folder was labeled: Rally at Nürnberg, 1979/R. Franz.
It was a file of photojournalism, a collection of several dozen black-and-white photos shot at a neo-Nazi skinhead rally.
Cal looked up when Irene called his name quietly but urgently. She was holding one of the photos.
In it, a bare-chested young man was caught in frozen motion, shouting, his mouth twisted in rage. And on his arm was the tattoo of the Holy Lance and the SS bolts. On the border of the photo there was a pencil scrawl in German: Knights of Longinus.
They found Langer in his office.
‘Ready for lunch?’ he asked brightly.
‘Look at this,’ Cal said.
Langer inspected the photo, front and back, and looked at the folder it came from.
‘I don’t remember this particular shot but I recall its acquisition in the early 1990s. I was a young pup, a graduate student just getting into the field. This Kranz fellow came to the department to see my professor, but he was away on holiday or something like that. He had to settle for me. He was a collector of Nazi material, a pastime I had always found creepy and distasteful, until I became a collector myself – an academic collector I hasten to add. However, Kranz assured me he was no sympathizer. I’ve come to know him a little over the years, though he’s a difficult man to really know. He lost members of his family to the Nazis and his collection, he said, was intended to bear witness.’
‘Jewish?’ Cal asked.
‘Actually not. Catholic. The Nazis persecuted Roman Catholics with quite some fervor, you know. If I recall, this man’s uncle was a priest who perished in Dachau. He brought this folder of photos he’d acquired from the estate of the photographer who attended this particular skinhead rally. He was trying to find out the identity of one of the speakers.’ Langer went through the file and pulled out a shot of a man standing on a wooden box with a bullhorn near his mouth. ‘This fellow.’
‘Who was he?’
‘I didn’t know but I agreed to dig into it. When I eventually found out, the name meant nothing to me. Just one more bigot in a long line of them.’
‘Why did he want the man’s name?’ Irene asked.
‘I’m not even sure I ever knew. Kranz is quite the obsessive. He collects, he documents and he’s reclusive. Extremely reclusive. In return for helping him, I asked if I could make copies of the photos for the departmental archive. He reluctantly agreed. This script, Knights of Longinus, is my handwriting. Apparently I copied it from the original notation of the photographer. Presumably he asked the young man something about himself or perhaps the distinctive tattoo and made a note.’
‘Do you know who they are?’
‘I’d forgotten about this folder entirely. I used one of the photos as a plate in an early book of mine, but I’m quite sure I’ve never come across a group called the Knights of Longinus again. Clearly it refers to the lance. It’s intriguing, but I haven’t got any more information about it.’
‘Do you think Kranz might have anything to say about it?’ Cal asked.
‘Perhaps. Hard to know. Here’s the thing about him. He became more withdrawn and reclusive the older he got. Over the years I’ve run into non-academic collectors, who’ve told me that Kranz has pulled together one of the pre-eminent archives of Nazi memorabilia and ephemera. I’ve tried to play on our old acquaintance to see what he’s got, but he kept putting me off and I gave up some years ago. He hasn’t any heirs that I know of. When he passes I hope I can get the university to buy the archive from his estate.’
‘Where’s he living?’ Cal asked.
‘A suburb of Munich. Not far.’
‘I want to talk to him.’
‘I can call him, I suppose. There’s no harm in trying but I doubt you’ll have much luck. Why don’t you get it out of your system now so we can get lunch? I’m extremely hungry.’
The three of them sat around Langer’s speakerphone listening to Langer talk in German to the man who picked up the line. Cal read German but his comprehension and spoken word left much to be desired. He could tell that Langer was trying hard to get Kranz to be receptive and finally got him to reluctantly agree, to talk to Cal on the phone.
‘Richard, you speak English, yes?’
The reply was stiff. ‘I am able to converse in English.’
Cal tried his best. He told him about his background, that he was in Munich with a colleague doing research and that he wondered if they could come and see him about a group called the Knights of Longinus. He described finding a photo of a man with the distinctive tattoo in the photo archive he had contributed to the LMU.
The reply was short and simple. ‘This is not possible.’
‘Have you ever heard of this group?’
‘I am sorry, professor, but I am a busy man. I cannot entertain your requests. Now if you will excuse me …’
Irene leaned toward the speakerphone. In English she said, ‘Please, Herr Langer, this is Irene Berardino. I understand you are a Catholic.’
‘Whatever does this have to do with anything?’
‘Have you heard of the Italian priest with stigmata, the one who they call Padre Gio?’
‘The one who has gone missing. Yes.’
‘He’s my brother. We think he’s in grave danger. There may only be the slightest chance that visiting you might help save his life, but I would be eternally grateful for the opportunity.’
There was an uncomfortably long silence on the line before Kranz said, ‘Then you must come at once.’
Kranz’s villa was in Alt-Bogenhausen in the northeastern quarter of Munich. It was invisible from the road, hidden by an iron gate and mature plantings. The taxi waited while Irene, clearly the persuasive one, buzzed Kranz from the intercom in the stanchion. When Kranz opened the gate they let the taxi go and walked up the long drive. The nineteenth-century mansion house had a white-plaster façade, a tile roof and tiers of fancy balconies.
Cal whistled. ‘Not too shabby.’
‘Langer said he lives alone,’ she said sadly. ‘In such a huge house.’
They rang the bell and waited.
‘You’re the one he responds to,’ Cal said. ‘You do the talking.’
Franz was dwarfed by the massive front door. He was well into his eighties, hunched with scoliosis and needing a cane. His wispy white hair was plastered onto a bright pink scalp with a shiny pomade. He must have shaved for the occasion because there were a few red dots of the tissue paper he�
�d forgotten to remove. His elegant woolen suit was too large for him – apparently he had been more robust when younger. It was also too warm for the summer day and he was beaded with sweat.
He greeted Irene warmly and gave Cal scant attention. Cal was fine with that and let her take the lead.
The house was a masterpiece of carved wood paneling and marble floors. He took them through a series of art-filled rooms to a two-story library showcasing a magnificent collection of leather-bound historical and natural history books.
Franz had them sit and apologized awkwardly that he wasn’t much good at entertaining guests and wouldn’t be offering refreshments.
‘I do not trust servants although I have a woman who cleans. And a groundskeeper, of course. I live on my own. I drink instant coffee and subsist mainly on toast and jam.’
‘It’s a very beautiful house,’ Irene said, seemingly uncomfortable at his unusual candor.
‘It was my father’s. He made his fortune in pharmaceuticals. As his sole heir, I have spent it on collectibles. My siblings were older. They did not survive the war. Is it just you and your brother?’ he asked.
‘Yes, only the two of us. We’re quite close.’
‘I did not love my siblings. I do not know why, but I did not. Also I did not love my parents and I suspect they did not love me. My affection was reserved for my uncle, Hans, who, like your brother, was a priest. We had a bond. The Nazis killed him. I was heartbroken. I am to this day heartbroken.’
‘I’m so sorry,’ Irene said, shedding a tear.
Cal wondered whether her sorrow was for the old man, for her brother, or both – not that it mattered the least.
Franz took his pocket square and gave it to her. ‘It has never been used. You may keep it.’
She composed herself and said, ‘You’re very kind and we appreciate you helping us. We’re desperate to find Giovanni.’
‘His stigmata, are they real?’
‘Yes, we believe so,’ she said.
‘There are too few miracles in our world,’ he said, his voice trailing off. ‘There were none when my uncle was taken to Dachau and murdered. There were none when the Nazis butchered millions. My collection would be misinterpreted by most. They would say I have a prurient or perverse motive or that I am a glorifier. This is not the case. I collect to bear witness to what the Nazis did. When I die I will make a bequeathment. If Herr Professor Langer does not irritate me too much his university will likely receive it. I have hinted at this before. Show me the picture of what interests you.’
