Wyatt's Revenge: A Matt Royal Mystery

by H. Terrell Griffin

  “Excuse me?” I said.

  “What do you want? Why are you in Germany?”

  “I’m afraid you have us mixed up with somebody else,” I said.

  “No, Mr. Royal, I know who you are.”

  “Then, maybe you’d better tell me who you are.”

  “That doesn’t matter. I’m here to tell you that you should go home.”

  Jock leaned forward on the sofa, his elbows on his knees. “And why should we do that?”

  “I don’t know who you are, sir, or what business you have here, but Mr. Royal needs to, as you say, let sleeping dogs lie.”

  “If I knew what dogs you were talking about,” I said, “I might take your advice.”

  “Old dogs,” the man said, and got up to leave. He walked a few paces, stopped and turned. “If you don’t leave now, Mr. Royal, you will die in Europe.” He retrieved his topcoat and left the shop.

  I looked at Jock. “That wasn’t a German accent, was it?”

  “No. It was Arabic.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  “What have you gotten us into this time, podner?” Jock asked, as we walked back through the bleak day toward the archive building. “First we’re chasing Nazis, and now we’re being chased by Arabs. You must have kicked over somebody’s hornet nest.”

  “You got me. I don’t have any idea who that guy was, but even worse, how did he find us?”

  “Good question. We’ve only used my credit cards, and those are untraceable. Different card and different identity for every charge. I don’t think he had any idea who I was either. So, somehow, these guys are tracking you.”

  “Probably, but I can’t imagine how. Or why, for that matter.”

  It was a little after noon as we entered the building. When we got to the room where we’d left Jess, she was working so intently on the computer that she didn’t hear us come in. “Ready for lunch?” I asked.

  She started, turned, a little distracted. “No. You guys go on. I’m not hungry, and this is fascinating stuff. I’ll see you back at the hotel later.”

  Jock said, “Jess, call us when you’re ready to leave. I don’t think it’s safe for you to be out alone.”

  “Why? Nobody knows we’re in Bonn.”

  “We can’t be sure of that. Let’s play it safe, just in case.”

  “Okay, I’ll call,” she said, and turned back to the computer, dismissing us.

  We went to a small café next to the hotel for lunch, and then told the desk clerk we would be checking out later that evening. If somebody was on to us, they probably knew where we were staying. If they knew we were leaving, maybe they would assume that they’d scared us off.

  I went to my room and took a nap. At three, the room phone rang. It was Jess. “I’m ready.”

  “Did you find anything?”

  “I’ll tell you later.”

  “We’ll be there in the car in a few minutes. We’re checking out of the hotel today. Time to make a change. A moving target.”

  “Are you trying to scare me?”

  “Yes. Somebody doesn’t like us, and you need to be very careful.”

  “My bag is packed and in my room. If they’ll let you in, get the bag and we won’t have to go back to the hotel.”

  “Okay. Don’t leave the building until you see us pull up. We’ll be there in twenty minutes.”

  For another fifty euros the desk clerk let Jock into Jess’s room to get her bag. We pulled up in front of the archives building, and I could see her through the glass door, standing and talking to a young man dressed in slacks and a dress shirt, no tie. Jock touched the horn to get her attention. She saw us, shook the young man’s hand, and trotted to the car. She got into the backseat, and we drove away, headed for Koblenz.

  Jock took a circuitous route through the back streets of Bonn. He was a professional and if anyone was following us, he’d figure it out. We eased onto the Adenauerallee southbound, which turned into highway nine, hugging the Rhine as we moved farther toward Koblenz.

  We made the trip in a little over an hour, driving though a light dusting of snow. Jessica was excited about her research. Most of the names on the list were not in the archives, but she had found one, Richard de Fresne.

  “De Fresne was a bad guy,” she said, “a really bad guy. He was an officer in the Milice, the French secret police who worked with the Gestapo. He was responsible for transporting Jews from the south of France to the concentration camps. When the Allies invaded France, he moved to Germany and worked for the Gestapo in Frankfurt.”

  “What happened to him after the war?” I asked.

  “There’s no record of him. He just disappeared. The archives only went to the end of the war, but one of the assistant curators put me onto another Web site that tracked the French Nazis. De Fresne was one of those who just disappeared. There was speculation that he was killed in the bombing of Frankfurt near the end of the war, but no one knows for sure.”

  “Maybe he used one of the ratlines to get out of Europe.”

  “Could be. I also found a reference to another name on Wyatt’s list, CBS in Zurich. I think that’s the Confederated Bank Suisse. A lot of the Nazis used it to hide money during the war. Some of them weren’t very secretive, and the Gestapo recorded their names on a list of accounts held at CBS. De Fresne was one of the names on the list.”

  “Was there an account number?” asked Jock.

  “No. Some of the names had account numbers next to them, but not de Fresne’s.”

  “Maybe the account’s still in existence,” I said.

  Jessica shook her head. “I doubt it. The Swiss would have closed those accounts after this long and kept the money. Besides, with their secrecy laws, there’s no way we’re going to be able to find out anything about Swiss bank accounts.”

  Jock chuckled. “Don’t be too sure about that.”

  Dusk comes early during the late fall in northern Europe. Traffic was building as we neared Koblenz. We’d chosen it because it was a sizable city, and three American tourists would not be that unusual. The snow was getting heavier, and I could hear the slush of the highway bounce off the undercarriage of the Mercedes. Jock drove steadily, concentrating on the darkening road.

  Jock had the address of the local branch of the rental car company that owned the Mercedes we were driving. We stopped there and returned the car. Jock mentioned that we were going to take the train back to Frankfurt, and the clerk arranged for a courtesy bus to take us to the train station in the city center. Jock used a different passport and driver’s license to rent another car at the kiosk in the terminal. He went to the tourist office and booked a suite at a nearby hotel, picked up another gray Mercedes, and drove off.

  Jessica and I found a beer bar next to the station and waited for Jock to get settled in. He would check into the hotel with our bags and sneak us in later. We didn’t want to register in our own names, and we didn’t want to try to bribe another clerk. Whoever was looking for us didn’t know who Jock was, and certainly wouldn’t be on the lookout for his assumed names.

  Jessica sipped her beer, and a small frown danced across her face. “I’m not much of a beer drinker. Matt, do you know who the Klarsfelds are?”

  “They’re on Wyatt’s list.”

  “Yes. They’re French Nazi hunters. They’ve been responsible for finding some of the worst of the French collaborators. They were just children during the war, but they’ve been relentless over the past few years. They do a lot of good. They have a foundation based in Paris that may be able to help us.”

  “Maybe Wyatt had some contact with them.”

  “It’s worth a phone call.”

  “Will they tell you anything on the phone?”

  “I think so. I know one of their researchers.” Jessica looked at her watch. “It’s too late to call today. I’ll talk to them in the morning.”

  We sat quietly, Jess taking an occasional sip of her beer, making a face with each swallow.

  I watched her w
ince for the third time in as many minutes. “You don’t have to drink that, you know.”

  “Maybe I won’t.” She pushed the glass away and sat back in her chair. “Guess I’ll be sleeping on the floor again tonight.”

  She laughed. “If your plan was to ply me with beer and compromise my maidenly virtues, you screwed up. You should’ve tried whiskey.”

  “Does that work?”

  She smiled. “Sometimes.”

  I was about to suggest another bar, one where they served whiskey, when my cell phone rang.

  “There’s a restaurant in the hotel,” said Jock. “Walk two blocks down Bahnhoff Strasse, turn right on Rizza Strasse and the hotel is in the next block. I’ll meet you in the restaurant.”

  • • •

  Dinner was surprisingly good. The menu featured traditional German food; several kinds of schnitzels and wursts, pork, sauerkraut, sauerbraten, potato pancakes, and goulash. We drank a dry Rhine wine, made from grapes grown in nearby vineyards. I offered to buy Jessica some whiskey, but she declined, grinning at me.

  The suite was two rooms and a parlor. Jock took the sofa in the living room. I could hear him snoring through the door to my room, and hoped Jessica didn’t think it was me. That kind of noise would doom my chances of ever sharing a bed with her. Not that I thought my chances were that good anyway.

  The next morning, Thursday, Jock and I went down to breakfast. Jessica ordered room service, telling us that she would call the Klarsfeld Foundation in Paris and see if they knew anything about de Fresne.

  Over coffee and sweet rolls, Jock and I tried to figure out what to do next. There was no need to stay in Koblenz, and if Jessica didn’t have any luck with Klarsfeld, I couldn’t see much sense in staying in Germany.

  “Maybe we’ve hit a dead end,” I said.

  “I’m not sure about that, Matt. Somebody wants you out of Europe. Maybe if you stick around and let them know you’re here, they’ll make another move, and we can figure out who they are.”

  “I’m not sure I like the feeling of being bait, but that may be our only option.”

  “If you go back to Florida, you’re never going to find out who ordered the hit on Wyatt. And, whoever’s after you may just follow you home.”

  “I hadn’t thought about that. How do we let the bad guys know where I am?”

  “If we could figure out how they found us in Bonn, we could use that connection.”

  “Maybe Speer blew the whistle on us,” I said.

  “That’s possible, but why would he do that?”

  “Who knows? Maybe he’s one of the latter-day Nazis.”

  My cell phone beeped, letting me know that a text message had come in. I opened the phone. The message on the screen was short. “Go home or die.”

  I held the phone up so that Jock could see it. He smiled, a cold smile that didn’t reach his eyes, the smile of the hunter in sight of his prey. “Does the message show a sender?”

  “No.”

  “That’s okay. They know your phone number, but they don’t know where you are. Otherwise, they’d have sent somebody in person. It’s scarier that way.”

  “Also more dangerous. They might think that we’d try to get to them through the guy who brings the message.”

  “They don’t know who I am,” said Jock, “and I doubt they know what you’re capable of. They might not think we’re much of a danger. Maybe Jess talked to somebody at the archives yesterday, or someone there knew what she was doing. It didn’t have to be Speer.”

  We were interrupted by Jessica joining us. She signaled the waiter for coffee and took a seat. “You’re not going to believe this,” she said. “I found somebody who knew de Fresne.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  “Klaus Blattner,” Jessica said. “He’s on Wyatt’s list.”

  “Who is he?” I asked.

  “He was part of a German underground group known as the Edelweiss Pirates. They were mostly kids from working-class families who hated the Nazis. Blattner was a middle-class kid whose dad was a professor at the Goethe University in Frankfurt. He’d been a member of the Hitler Youth, but became disenchanted with the Nazis. He joined the Pirates and became very active in the organization’s anti-Nazi efforts. When the group started appearing on the Nazi radar, a large number of them were arrested and some were executed.

  “Blattner escaped notice, probably because he wasn’t part of the underclass that made up most of the membership, and because he’d used a false name when he joined. When the Pirates organization was rolled up, he enlisted in the Waffen-SS under his real name and was posted to France. He worked with the Milice, the Vichy government’s secret police, and became a conduit to the French underground on what the Gestapo and Milice were doing. When the Allies invaded, the underground got him out of Vichy and hid him for the rest of the war.”

  “He’s still alive?” I asked.

  “Yes. He’s an old man now, but he came back to Germany after the war and worked for the West German government in one of the minor bureaus. He’s retired and lives in Fulda. I called him, and he’s happy to see us. Today, if we can get there.”

  “Where the hell is Fulda?” asked Jock.

  “About three hours from here,” Jess said. “Over where the East German border used to be.”

  I stood up. “Give Blattner a call and tell him we’ll be there early this afternoon.”

  We drove across central Germany. The weather was still bleak, and snow occasionally drifted onto the windshield. Jock was quiet, concentrating on his driving.

  Jessica was in the front passenger seat, turned so that she could talk to me. “From what my friend at the Klarsfeld Foundation told me, I gather that Blattner has been a reliable source for them for years. He knew a lot about the inner workings of the Milice and its Gestapo masters.”

  “Had anybody at the foundation talked to Wyatt?”

  “There’s no indication of that. Sauer either. Maybe Wyatt got Blattner’s name from some other research. Since the Klarsfelds were on his list, I’d guess he meant to talk to them.”

  “Maybe. Did Blattner say whether he’d talked to either Sauer or Wyatt?”

  “I didn’t ask him. Didn’t want to scare him off.”

  “What did you tell him?”

  “The truth. That I’m a historian specializing in the Vichy period in France and I wanted to talk to him.”

  “Not the whole truth.”

  “Well, not all of it. Try not to scare the old gent when we get there.”

  We drove for the better part of three hours, stopping once for lunch at a roadside restaurant. We pulled into the old cathedral town of Fulda in early afternoon. Fulda had once been a garrison town for American soldiers guarding the East German border. They were gone now, as was the border. Reunification had obviated the need for troops.

  Blattner had given Jessica good directions to his home. He lived in an apartment house near the old town in the center of Fulda. We found a parking place a block away and walked back to his building. His apartment was on the ground floor.

  The door was opened by a robust man with a shock of white hair. He was tall and appeared fit, not carrying any excess weight. He was wearing a checkered flannel shirt with brown slacks held up by suspenders, sturdy shoes. “Dr. Connor, I presume,” he said. “Come on in and bring your friends.” His English was almost accentless, and spoken with a fluidity that only comes with a lot of practice.

  Jessica introduced Jock and me, using our real names. We followed Blattner through the foyer and into a small living room that contained a sofa, recliner, and large-screen TV. One wall was a solid bookcase, filled with titles in both English and German. As we sat down, an elegant woman, tall with perfectly coiffed white hair, entered the room. The men all stood, and Blattner introduced us to his wife. Frau Blattner offered us tea or coffee in passable English, and when we declined, she left us to what she called our reminiscences.

  Blattner leaned back in his recliner, seeking a comforta
ble position. He looked at Jessica. “I’m guessing that your quest isn’t entirely historical in nature.”

  Jessica returned the smile. “Not entirely. Have you lived in America? Your English is perfect and sounds American.”

  “No, I’ve never even visited the States. I worked here in Fulda as a German government liaison to the American military. I dealt with Americans every day, all day. It was a wonderful experience. I liked them all. Can you tell me why you’re here?”

  “Certainly,” said Jess. “I am a historian by training and did my doctoral dissertation on the Vichy government. But I’m here to help Mr. Royal find out who killed his friend. Mr. Algren is helping also.” She explained what happened to Wyatt, and what we’d discovered so far.

  “Ah, Dr. Wyatt,” Blattner said. “I had several long telephone conversations with him. He was particularly interested in the same man you are. Richard de Fresne. I’m sorry to hear that he’s passed on.”

  I leaned forward on the sofa. “Can you see any connection between de Fresne and Dr. Wyatt’s death?”

  “No. Nobody’s heard anything about de Fresne since the war ended. The French government tried to find him after the war, but lost the trail in Frankfurt. De Fresne was working for the Gestapo at their headquarters there. The city was flattened by Allied bombing near the end of the war, and it has been assumed that de Fresne was just another of the thousands of unidentified dead found in the rubble.”

  “What do you think?” I asked.

  “I think he’s still alive.”

  “Why?”

  “De Fresne was in charge of transporting the Jews from southern France to the concentration camps. I worked in the same office with him, and when a transport order was about to be issued, I would get the names to the French underground. They couldn’t save a lot of them, because that would have led the Germans to suspect a leak in their office. But, they did save some, and that’s better than none.”