by Fiona Brand
A story on the second page caught his attention. The column was small, the details sketchy. Sourced from a piece published in a local Shreveport paper after the death of Ben Fischer, the article rehashed the scandal surrounding the Nordika—a ship that had been hijacked out of the port of Lubek on the Baltic Sea near the end of the Second World War. The wreck sunk off the coast of Costa Rica, had become central in the investigation into both the Chavez cartel and the cabal, and had been the scene of the mass murder of the team of Navy divers that Todd Fischer, Sara’s uncle and Ben Fischer’s brother, had commanded.
The article mentioned the fact that Ben had brought back possessions belonging to Todd Fischer. Marc had been aware that Ben had gone to Costa Rica to assist in the search for his brother and the seven other missing divers, but to his knowledge, he hadn’t brought anything back. If he had, Todd’s son, Steve, a CIA agent, who had been active in the recent investigation, would have received the items and Marc would have known about it.
If Ben had brought items back and concealed them, there could only be one reason: they would somehow have added fuel to the scandal and disgrace surrounding the disappearances. If that was the case, then the items were undoubtedly connected to the investigation, and he needed to see them.
But that wasn’t all that worried him.
If Ben had brought back material that could provide a lead in the ongoing investigation, then he wasn’t the only one who would be interested in that fact. Lopez and Helene Reichmann—the head of the cabal—would have a stake in recovering what could be incriminating evidence.
There was also another angle. No documentation pertaining to the cache of looted gold, artwork and artifacts the Nordika was purported to have carried had ever been found but, thanks to the media, the legend was now public knowledge. Despite the fact that the Navy had dived on the wreck a number of times and grid searched the area, and that the Nordika was now cleared for recreational diving, the treasure hunters were still lining up.
He studied the newspaper article again. It had been picked up by one of the national dailies, so it was too late to put a lid on it. Chances were there was nothing in it, that whatever Ben Fischer had brought back from Costa Rica had been nothing more remarkable than his brother’s personal effects. But Bayard didn’t like leaving anything to chance.
Picking up the phone, he dialed Sara’s number.
The phone rang several times then clicked through to her answering service. He left a message.
Just before he hung up he thought he heard a small click.
He didn’t normally conduct business from his land line. When he was at home he liked to keep his life as ordinary and real as he could. If he had to make work calls, he had his cell and a satellite phone in his briefcase, but he hadn’t considered a cautionary call to Sara as work.
Picking up the receiver, he listened, but aside from a faintly hollow background sound, all he could hear was the dial tone. The building was old, a grand Victorian lady with high, ornate ceilings and a creaking lift—as far removed from his high-tech day environment as he could get. Sometimes when it rained, the electrics got a little freaky, which could explain the noise. Lately, with the heat and humidity, they’d had rain most days. That probably explained the sound he’d heard.
Frowning, he set the receiver back down.
Four
Shreveport, Louisiana
Sara Fischer stepped up onto the airy veranda that wrapped around three sides of the Fischer family homestead. The house, which had been built in the 1920s by her grandfather, stood nestled in an enclave of bronze-leaved magnolias, towering oaks and a tangle of rhododendrons and dogwoods. The lawns were neatly trimmed, courtesy of a mowing service, but the fields, now empty of cattle, and the For Sale signs that had already sprouted along the roadside, gave the property a derelict air.
Suppressing the raw ache that crept up on her every time she drove to the house and had to face the reality that her father was gone, she unlocked the door and stepped inside.
The proportions of the house were nice: a wide hall, large, spacious rooms, two bedrooms on the ground floor, four above and an attic. In a wild moment, just after the funeral six weeks ago, she had considered keeping it, but the house was just too far out of Shreveport. As pretty as the drive was into town, the daily commute to the library would add an extra hour onto her working day.
Besides that, much as she loved the history and connection of the house, it had been a family home. Her father had rattled around in it by himself, and so would she. It was designed for a large rambunctious family, and that was something she couldn’t see herself ever having. At thirty-four, with a short list of unsatisfactory and, quite frankly, disappointing relationships behind her—and no man in sight for the grand total of three years—clinging to the house was nothing short of pathetic.
The sun slanted through the sitting room, capturing the motes of dust she stirred up as she crossed the large, empty space. The furniture had gone already; there was just the piano left, which she was keeping. It wouldn’t fit comfortably in her apartment, so it would have to go into storage until she moved somewhere bigger, but that didn’t matter. She loved the piano and the memories that went with it: lazy summer days spent listening to her mother play classical pieces and jazz, hours spent in this room after school working her way through music books until she’d gone to college.
Reaching out, she lifted the keyboard cover and ran her fingers over the keys. The notes resonated through the empty house, clear and rich but definitely out of tune. Closing the cover, she continued up the stairs, opening windows in the empty bedrooms to let the heat out and stopping to check all the cupboards and wardrobes to make sure no personal items had been left behind.
She had already emptied the main rooms of the house, selling the furniture, taking trunkloads of her father’s clothes and kitchen equipment to the charity shops, and storing anything of a personal nature until she was ready to sort through the last fragments of Ben Fischer’s life, and face the unpalatable fact that, without his cheerful, no-nonsense presence, she was now utterly alone in the world. The only room left was the attic, and the urgency to clear that out had been spurred by a story that had been printed in the local newspaper.
The reporter had somehow gotten hold of photos of both Ben and his brother Todd when they had first joined the Navy. The article described the old scandal of Todd’s disappearance and the fact that, unwilling to believe that Todd was missing without a trace, Ben Fischer had gone down to Costa Rica to personally search for his brother. The story, apparently supplied by a source in Shreveport—which she read to mean one of her father’s old naval cronies—had gone on to rehash the subsequent dishonorable discharge of Todd’s naval team and the recent discovery of the mass grave in Juarez, Colombia.
The fact that Todd had finally been vindicated had stopped Sara from becoming too upset over the story. The investigation, which had resulted in the discovery of the mass grave, was now a matter of public record. What concerned her was that the story claimed her father had brought personal items back from Costa Rica.
She remembered him making the trip, but at no point had he mentioned to her that he had retrieved any of Todd’s personal effects. If he had, logically, they should have been passed on to Aunt Eleanor or Steve, but if that was the case, she was certain she would have heard about it. The Fischer family had been close, and the tragedy had pulled them even closer. A more likely scenario was that, with the media scandal still raging, her father had kept quiet and stored the items rather than upset Eleanor any further. Now, with both Eleanor and her father gone and Steve in the Witness Security Program, there was no one at hand to ask.
If the items were in the attic, she needed to find them. The last thing any of them needed was for some antique dealer or the purchaser of the house to stumble across possessions that were not only private to the Fischer family, but that were potentially newsworthy.
The staircase to the attic was dim and claus
trophobic, and the attic itself was like an oven. By the time she threaded her way through old tea chests and boxes of books to one of the matching gable windows situated at either end of the room, perspiration beaded her upper lip and every pore had opened up. Working at the stiffened latch, she shoved the window open, leaned out and gulped in cool air.
Minutes later, she had the second window open, and a breeze was circulating as she began the task of sorting through the jumble of boxes.
Two hours later, sick of slapping at mosquitoes, she gave up on the idea of fresh air and closed both windows. With darkness blanking out the view and a single bulb her only illumination, she surveyed the junk.
She had gone through two-thirds of what was, mostly, burnable rubbish: old books that had warped and moldered, clothes that should have been thrown away twenty years ago and an assortment of mostly broken kitchen appliances and furniture. She hadn’t stumbled across anything that was connected to Todd, but the more she searched, the more certain she became that if Todd’s personal effects were anywhere, they had to be up here.
She sorted through another chest. Right at the bottom was a cardboard box labeled Fireworks.
Vivid memories of bonfires and Fourth of July barbecues punctuated with the high-pitched whine of skyrockets took her away from the dim, dusty attic.
One summer she and Steve had saved fireworks in order to make bombs. They had made a number of prototypes but had made the mistake of blowing up a small tree. Both sets of Fischer parents had gone crazy. She and Steve had been forced to divulge their hiding place, then watch as the remaining fireworks were dunked in water, rendering them useless. The hiding place was here, in the wall of the attic.
Pushing to her feet, she examined the area where the loose board had been, looking for prying marks that had been made by two kids more than twenty years ago. She found the marks. Holding her breath, she worked the board loose, breaking a nail in the process. Lowering the board along with its neighbor to the floor, she examined the shallow vertical cavity. Adrenaline pumped. She hadn’t expected to find anything, but there was something there.
Reaching in, she grabbed a package and the canvas strap of a knapsack. A cold tingle went down her spine when the weight and the bulk of the knapsack registered.
She carried both items into the center of the room, where the light from the single bulb was strongest. Unlatching the flap, she studied the bag’s contents. There was no doubt in her mind that these were the items her father had retrieved from Costa Rica; mementos too painful and too controversial at the time to keep in plain view or to hand on to either Eleanor or Steve.
Maybe it was because she still felt raw and emotional after her father’s death and funeral, but Sara could remember Todd’s disappearance as clearly as if those events had happened last week.
The fact that her uncle—a healthy, fit man in his prime—had died had been shocking to the nine-year-old girl she had been, and so had the circumstances surrounding his death. The entire family had been proud of the medals and honors Todd had won. Her father had steadfastly maintained that foul play must have been involved, that it hadn’t been a case of desertion, but when the scandal had leaked into the papers, the gossip had spread like wildfire. Sara could remember the whispered comments at school, the pointing fingers in the street, and her father refusing to let anyone answer the phone but him because of the crank calls.
With hands that weren’t quite steady, she unwrapped the package, which was only loosely bound, as if her father had inspected the item then wrapped it again before stowing it in the cavity. It was a camera. Any lingering doubt that the things stowed in the wall had belonged to Todd dissolved. Underwater photography had been his hobby; she could remember Steve endlessly vying to use this same camera on dive trips. The camera itself was empty of film, but the side pocket of the soft camera case held a film carton with three letters scribbled on the side: ACE. She opened the carton, although she already knew it was empty. The film had been removed from the camera for processing.
She began extracting objects from the pack. The first was a flashlight still containing batteries that were corroded with age. The heavy shape of the second item was instantly familiar. Guns of all shapes and sizes had been a matter-of-fact part of the Fischer family, and her life, for as long as she could remember. Her father had taught her to shoot at the same time Steve had been taught. As academically inclined as she had always been, she was nevertheless a natural marksman and had given Steve a run for his money during target practice.
The glow of the bulb illuminated the maker of the handgun, Pietro Beretta. She placed the gun on top of the tea chest. The knapsack also contained a magazine and a box of ammunition. When she pulled the box out she could feel loose rounds rolling around, which meant the box wasn’t full. The magazine was empty, which indicated that the missing rounds had been used. That fact more than any other hammered home the intimacy of the items she was handling. They weren’t just objects, they had been the personal possessions of Todd Fischer.
The final item was a battered hardbound book. Her heart automatically beat faster as she picked it up. The camera had been an emotional journey, the gun a window into the past, but to Sara, books always carried an extra zing. Whether they contained reference information or a fictional story, she loved the mystery inherent in page layered upon page, all closed between two covers.
But she was reluctant to open this book.
It didn’t have a title or anything on the spine to indicate the publisher or the contents: it looked like a diary. If it was Todd’s journal, then it was private and most definitely needed to go to Steve.
She opened to the first page. It was written in German.
Frowning, she turned a page and skimmed the text. It took a few moments for her mind to click into the structure and format of the language, because her German, which she had studied along with French at college, was definitely rusty.
Flipping back a page, she found a date— 1942—and directly below that the phrase Schutzstaffel Chiffrier-abteilung.
Cold congealed in her stomach. Schutzstaffel was the full name of the Nazi SS. Chiffrier-abteilung meant cipher department.
Not long after her father had come back from Costa Rica, she had overheard her parents talking. She hadn’t meant to eavesdrop. She had been in her room reading and they had been sitting out on the porch. In the stillness of the evening, the words had floated in her window. At first she had thought the discussion had been a general one about World War II and she hadn’t paid it much attention, but when her father had mentioned her uncle’s name, her ears had pricked up.
She knew the basic facts of Todd Fischer’s disappearance and death. She had been secure in the belief that he had died in the Gulf of Mexico in the line of duty, no matter what anyone else maintained. But according to her father, Todd had been on a wild-goose chase, hunting Nazis. The Navy had covered it up, but he had the evidence to prove it.
Standing, surrounded by dust and old memories that had teeth, the gritty reality of the mass grave at Juarez was sharp and immediate.
Her uncle had been working undercover south of the border, but the job he had been sent to do defied belief and common sense. Neither of her parents could credit that Todd and seven other SEALs had gone missing on a mission that belonged decades back in time: a mission that in the 1980s could only be described as crackpot.
Todd had been hunting Nazis, and he had found them, along with a connection to a Colombian cartel. The combination had been brutal. Juarez had resembled the horrific aftermath of a death camp.
She skimmed the first page of the book. Halfway down the reason she still hadn’t adjusted to the syntax became clear. It was a codebook.
A cold tingle went through her, a brief flash of unwanted memory. When she’d been a child, one of the nightmares that had regularly played had been about opening a book and memorizing a word. Later on, it had been an easy leap to conclude that she had been stealing a code.
The conte
nt of the book explained why the cover and the spine were blank. Despite the fact that it had been produced by a printing press—a necessity because every communications post of ground, air and sea forces had needed a copy of their own respective codebooks—it would have been a secret document, requiring a security clearance. Putting a title on the book would have been tantamount to waving a red flag.
The instant she recognized the content, translating became easier. She turned pages and studied the codes, suppressing a queasy desire to drop the book and wash her hands. As fascinating as it was, the codebook had been formulated with the express purpose of aiding Nazi secret communications. The result had been the loss of life of Allied soldiers. She knew that the armed forces had used codes and ciphers, and still did, but all the same, she couldn’t control her natural recoil.
Even worse, for the book to have been in Todd’s possession meant it had been a part of his investigation and had likely belonged to one of the Nazis he had been chasing. The thought that she could be handling the personal possession of a war criminal and a murderer made her skin crawl.
She had always been fascinated by puzzles and codes. Her mind, with its memory for detail and bent for lateral thinking, was suited to puzzle solving. She had studied mathematics for a while, along with language and history. One of her papers had included sections on the use of secret writing and one of her thesis subjects had been cryptography.
Silence closed around her and seemed to thicken as she continued to study the code. She had no idea where or when, but she was certain she had seen this particular arrangement of letters before. That fact in itself wasn’t surprising. The Germans had been excellent cryptographers, the best in the world. The majority of books on codes and ciphers had been written by Germans. It was possible that she had studied a similar code.
Her gaze caught on a penned note in the margin, and for a split second the room faded.
Code leak traced to Vassigny Stop Find Traitor Stop
