Soul Intent

by dennis batchelder

  When the prisoner leered as he told how he forced Gypsy women to have sex with the almost-frozen men, Flora hefted a discarded brick and smashed it in his face. His cheekbone broke; she heard the crack. She wanted to kill him, and she would have too, if the American soldiers hadn’t pulled her away.

  Baba’s heart had given up that afternoon when the fate of her only son was confirmed. The two of them remained the only survivors of their Gypsy tribe. Baba spent every night telling Flora more of the old Roma stories. Knowing she would soon be the family’s last surviving member, Flora struggled to swallow her anger, pay attention, and learn.

  Where was the overseer, anyway? She leaned out and looked up and down the street. A family dressed in rags even more threadbare than hers and Baba’s poked through the rubble of what must have been their former home. No overseer.

  She turned back to the magazine. “Grim Europe Faces Winter of Misery,” blared one article; the next read “Americans Are Losing the Victory.” Flora couldn’t understand why the Americans obsessed over finding and reporting bad news. Did they think they could just snap their fingers and make centuries of strife disappear overnight?

  Now seventeen years old, Flora was born in a land overly familiar with strife. Istria suffered under Mussolini’s forced Italianization program, which was the latest in a series of indignities inflicted upon the peninsula by her hungry European neighbors. Centuries ago during the Holy Roman Empire, the Venetians took control and remained Istria’s overlords until Napoleon established his Italian Kingdom. Then the Austrians took charge, until they lost the Great War and Italy grabbed the reins. In 1943, after Mussolini’s dismissal and Italy’s capitulation, the new Italian Socialist Republic, Germany, and Croatia each claimed Istria. Finally Tito’s Yugoslavian Army “freed” them last May.

  During the early years of the war, Mussolini had successfully protected Jews and Gypsies from deportation. Life then was hard but bearable. But that was before il Duce capitulated—Flora vividly remembered her and Baba’s return from a week-long food-gathering trip, when they discovered the rest of their family had been loaded on railroad cars and sent to Jasenovac, a Croatian concentration camp. Flora and Baba had been hiding in the forest ever since—even after the war ended—because apparently Tito’s Yugoslavian Communists hated Gypsies just as much as Pavelic’s Croatian Ustasi.

  It was only by chance that the Soul Identity letter had reached them at all. A former Ustasi member had hiked into the forest to deliver it. He spent a month evading bands of Istrian freedom fighters and almost died when they shot and wounded him, but he eventually delivered the letter. That set in motion the chain of events that brought the two of them to Nuremberg.

  Baba kept the letter in a waterproof pouch pinned to her skirt, but Flora had read it to her so many times that she could recite the words from its blood-spattered pages.

  22 March 1946

  Soul Identity Headquarters

  Sterling, Massachusetts, USA

  Violca Drabarni

  Soul Identity Reader

  Umag, Istria, Yugoslavia

  Dear Mrs. Drabarni:

  We have an urgent need of your services in Nuremberg, Germany. A Nazi leader wishes to join Soul Identity and establish a soul line collection, and as his war crimes trial is already underway, it is important that we get him read and enrolled before his likely execution.

  Since the war ended, we have found it impossible to locate a qualified reader in Germany. We have requested other European readers to help, but all have refused.

  Therefore I am willing to make an extraordinary offer: if you travel to Nuremberg and perform the reading, and you assist in the enrollment and subsequent depositary transfers, Soul Identity will help you and two of your family members to immigrate to the United States. We expect the work in Nuremberg to last for as long as six months. We will provide you with a salary, room, and board during the assignment and for one year after arriving in America.

  If you wish to avail yourself of this offer, you must be present in Nuremberg by 8 July 1946, when our overseer, Archibald Morgan, arrives. Please contact me to accept these terms no later than 5 June 1946. I will provide you with more details at that time.

  Sincerely,

  Alexei Ivanov

  Depositary Chief

  Soul Identity

  The Ustasi member gave them the letter in the middle of May, and Flora and Baba went through a mad scramble to contact Mr. Ivanov in time. They finally reached him on an dissident-controlled shortwave radio on the fourth of June, and Baba had accepted the offer.

  Flora argued they should stay in the forest, but Baba held firm: the Roma were almost exterminated from Istria, and America would become their tribe’s new homeland, their amaro baro them. Besides, traveling would give them a chance to locate Flora’s father.

  So Flora had given in, and she and Baba assembled their packs and set off on foot to the Jasenovac concentration camp. This led them to Dachau and the realization that only they from their tribe had survived.

  They reached Nuremberg early this morning, two days after their last scraps of food ran out. They found the Soul Identity residence, but they could not convince the housekeeper to let them in, even after showing her the letter. “Wait for Mr. Little,” she repeated as she closed the door.

  Flora saw some movement at the end of the road. She leaned out the window and saw a Jeep with two men inside: the driver in a green uniform, and the passenger wearing a long sleeved white shirt and a green bowtie. Could it be them? The Jeep pulled in front of the Soul Identity residence, and the driver got out and unloaded the luggage.

  “Mr. Morgan, I’m pleased to welcome you to our final stop, the Nuremberg Soul Identity residence,” she heard the driver say.

  “Thank you, Mr. Little,” came the reply from the man wearing the bowtie.

  The overseer had arrived.

  seven

  Present Day

  Sterling, Massachusetts

  “Thank you, Flora,” Archie said. He shook his head. “When you and your grandmother walked out of that bombed-out shell of a house across the street, I thought you were beggars.”

  “Until you arrived, we were beggars,” Madame Flora said. “Half-starved and filthy.”

  I tried to picture Madame Flora as anything but a well-dressed, classy older lady. “Did you look like Rose and Marie do now?” I asked.

  She shrugged. “I guess if the girls had to live with their own cooking and cleaning for a few years, then I’d have looked like them.”

  “From the moment I saw her, I thought Flora was…” Archie closed his eyes for a minute and frowned while we waited. “Striking,” he said, opening his eyes and looking at me. “Flora was a striking and a most intense young lady.”

  Madame Flora shook her head and sighed.

  “Which Nazi was joining?,” I asked.

  “The second-in-command, right up until almost the end of the war. Reichsmarschall Hermann Goering,” Archie said.

  “And you welcomed him with open arms,” Madame Flora said. “What was it you told me? Nazi gold shines as bright as any other.”

  Archie sighed. “We have discussed this many times over the years, Flora. Soul Identity never discriminates against its members.”

  Apparently not even against Nazis. I wondered about the general problem of depositing stolen money. “Could I rob a bank and deposit the loot in my soul line collection?” I asked.

  “You could try, Scott,” Ann said. “People often attempt to deposit other people’s money, and we usually catch them right away. But even if we don’t, when you make your deposit, you first attest that the money belongs to you, and then you must agree that we’re the sole arbiter on any claims against it.”

  Madame Flora crossed her arms and stared at Archie. “Archibald and I both knew Goering’s gold was looted from the bodies and the belongings of the Jews and the Roma. Yet somehow it was deposited anyway.”

  Archie held up his hands. “You seem to have forgot
ten that we spent months cataloging and rejecting every piece of artwork and jewelry he sent us,” he said. “I only deposited what we could not trace.”

  “The gold was traceable.”

  “No, it was not.” He pointed at a brooch Ann wore on her green suit jacket. “May I borrow that piece?”

  Ann unpinned the gold brooch and handed it to him.

  Archie smiled as he took it. “The handiwork is beautiful,” he said.

  “Thanks,” Ann said.

  He held it out at arm’s length, three tiny golden rosebuds with their stems entwined. He looked at Madame Flora. “How do we know where the gold in this brooch comes from?”

  Madame Flora shrugged. “What does it matter?”

  “Because,” he said, “for all you know, it came from the fillings of dead people. This could even be made out of Nazi gold.”

  “That’s disgusting,” Ann said.

  Archie nodded. “I agree—it is better not to think about it. Once you re-factor gold, it loses its provenance and becomes untraceable.”

  Madame Flora looked at Ann. “Where did you get that brooch?”

  “It was a gift from my daughter,” Ann said.

  Madame Flora held out her hand. “If there’s any chance at all that it’s made out of Nazi gold, I want it back in the hands of its rightful owners. Give it here, Archibald.”

  As he was handing Ann’s brooch to Madame Flora, Ann stood up and snatched it. “You two need to stop acting so ridiculous,” she said as she fastened it back onto her jacket.

  Archie shrugged. “Nevertheless, my point holds. Gold is untraceable.”

  Madame Flora glared at him. “Goering’s gold and Ann’s brooch are different, and you damn well know it.” She twisted her body away from us, crossed her arms, and stared at the wall behind Archie’s desk.

  Ann turned to me. “These issues of provenance come up every now and again,” she said. “Before we make the final deposit, we investigate all suspicious funds. I myself reject several transactions every year.”

  I had read many legends about Nazi treasures, including some scandals. I could easily imagine how an organization like Soul Identity had been involved.

  But I had a hard time imagining how that organization could reach the Nazis in their prison cells. That took some serious clout.

  “Wasn’t Goering locked up tight during the Nuremberg trials?” I asked Archie.

  “He was.”

  “So how did you read his identity?”

  “We found a way,” Madame Flora said, still staring at the wall.

  “I’ll need to hear that story,” I said. “But first I want to know why Archie decided to open Goering’s collection yesterday.”

  “I want to know that too,” Madame Flora said.

  Archie looked down at the coffee table.

  I waited a minute for him to speak, and when he remained silent, I asked, “Did the new carrier show up?”

  He shook his head. He glanced up at me, then back down at the table. “Yesterday was the sixty-fourth anniversary of that deposit,” he said quietly. “I felt it was time to right an old wrong.”

  “So you admit you were wrong,” Madame Flora said.

  Archie stared at her for a long moment, then nodded. “Yes, Flora, I admit it.”

  He stood up and walked over to the window, then turned back to face us. “When our adventure with Mr. Feret ended last year, those old Nuremberg memories started haunting my dreams. Hermann Goering condoned and committed repugnant acts of evil. He looted treasuries and museums all over Europe. And I was the unlucky new overseer whose job it was to make him a member. I was the one who had to swallow my pride and do the dirty work.”

  Archie’s voice rose in volume and he shook his finger at Madame Flora. “Contrary to what you may think, I despised that man, and I hated what I had to do. I could not wait to complete my task and return to Sterling.”

  He started coughing, and he bent over nearly double with his hands covering his face. After a minute he caught his breath, wiped his eyes, and sat back down.

  “Back then,” Madame Flora said, “you told me I was an idealistic child who should stay out of grownup problems. You may now say you hated what you did, but I hated you then for doing it.”

  Archie muttered something under his breath.

  “What was that?” Madame Flora’s voice was sharp.

  He narrowed his eyes. “You did it too, right alongside me.”

  “You made me do it,” she said, her mouth in a snarl. “Your threats against my grandmother left me no choice.”

  Another drawn-out period of silence.

  “But that’s all water under the bridge,” Ann said. “You two have patched that up over the last six decades, haven’t you?”

  Archie and Madame Flora looked at each other, then eventually they both nodded.

  “Good,” I said. “Now quit your bickering and tell me how you got Goering enrolled.”

  “I’ll tell it,” Madame Flora said. “It’s faster this way.”

  Archie smiled.

  eight

  August 1946

  Nuremberg, Occupied Germany

  “I still don’t think we can do it,” James said for what Flora thought was at least the fifth time that night. “The guards are right outside his door, peeking in every thirty seconds. His lights never dim, and thanks to Robert Ley strangling himself on the john last October, they won’t let him sleep with his hands under the bedcovers. We can’t sneak the old gal in to read him, and we sure as heck can’t sneak Goering out.”

  “I am sure we will find a way,” Archibald Morgan repeated.

  It was a little past two in the morning. Mr. Morgan and James had been poring over a set of architectural blueprints of the Nuremberg Palais du Justice while Flora sat on the floor in the corner of the front room and watched them.

  James ran his fingers through his close-cropped brown hair and glanced over at Flora. “How about another cuppa joe, hon?” He held out his chipped coffee cup.

  Flora stood up and took the cup, then headed to the small kitchen in the back of the house. She took an American “K” ration breakfast package from the cupboard and slid out the inner wax carton. She emptied the coffee packet and sugar tablets into the cup and filled it with water from the kettle on the coal-fired stove.

  As she stirred the coffee, Flora poked through the rest of the food in the package. No wonder the Allies won the war—the GIs consumed twice the calories of the Axis soldiers. Flora saved the gum for Baba, tucked the cigarettes in her skirt pocket, and left the biscuits, cereal bar, and ham and eggs for the housekeeper to bring to her family.

  James was right—she had grown tired of the rations after only a month. When Flora and her grandmother first arrived in Nuremberg, he laughed at the way they exclaimed over the chocolate bars and canned meats. The Gypsies had wolfed down the food on that first day, barely noticing the two men gaping at them.

  “Eat all you want,” James had told them. “Soul Identity has rations a-plenty, and none of us will touch them.”

  Flora ran her hands over her hips. The bones no longer jutted out the way they did four weeks ago. Sitting was now less painful with some padding covering her pelvis and tailbone. And with her clean new clothes and shiny black hair, the soldiers around town were perking up and nudging each other as she ran her errands.

  Even Baba had gained weight. She was back to her old self—except for her unrecovered heart.

  Flora had spent the last month helping Mr. Morgan sort through Goering’s paperwork. They completed the final documents that afternoon, which was why the overseer turned his attention to breaking into the prison.

  Hermann Goering needed his soul identity read, but for that to happen, either Baba had to get to him inside the prison, or the Nazi had to get out.

  It sure didn’t seem like Goering would be getting out. The trials had uncovered so many evil deeds that Flora didn’t think any Nazi deserved to live. James reminded her to keep an open mind,
as only the prosecution had presented their case, but Flora’s had been shut ever since she and Baba learned of her father’s fate in Dachau.

  Hating the Nazis only made her job harder. She rinsed the spoon with some hot water from the kettle. How did she let herself get roped into helping Goering join Soul Identity?

  It must be her awe of the mighty organization Mr. Morgan worked for—awe of their vast funds, and their ability to obtain food in a city where many German inhabitants were still dying of starvation. How did they obtain their unlimited rations, anyway?

  It was more than awe—it was the new clothes she wore, and it was the vitamins and medicine they supplied Baba. Flora had been seduced by the easy life. Every day she found herself drawn deeper into the comfort Soul Identity offered.

  But she wasn’t drawn into their plan—Goering’s Last Shot, James called it—the Nazi leader’s grasp at immortality by entrusting his memories and what remained of his fortune to Soul Identity’s depositary, in the hope that one day his reincarnated soul would return in a fresh body to take up the Nazi mantle.

  Flora shivered as she imagined a future Soul Identity member, excited to see what a previous soul line carrier had left for them, only to be burdened with Goering’s evil Nazi machinations.

  She knew what she wanted—what she needed—to do. She must destroy Goering’s memories and return the money to its rightful owners, the Jewish and Gypsy survivors.

  Mr. Morgan had pointed out that it wasn’t that straightforward. “Our number one job is to protect our members,” he declared. “Whether we agree with their philosophies or not, we must safeguard their collections until future carriers are found.”