“That’s the way it is.” Maria got up and smoothed her skirt. “Was your chase yesterday successful, or did I get all scraped up for nothing?”
He told her what had played out by the pond.
She laughed. “That’s a good story! Didn’t go so well for the lovers, though. I have to get going now, your chief is waiting for my report in a couple of minutes. Nice running into you! And I haven’t forgotten that you still owe me dinner.” She winked and hurried down the hall.
Back at his office, Hannes entered the words “Lagussa,” “history,” and “Nazi era” into the search engine. He changed the search words several times, but even the most diverse combinations did not turn up any information pointing to a connection between Lagussa and the Nazi regime. Then he remembered that the drug company had changed its name several times and was previously known as North-South Pharmaceuticals. His new search resulted in a flood of additional links, and after scanning through several articles, he got an overview of the drug scandal.
In 1992, North-South Pharmaceuticals released the drug Xonux, a prescription psychotropic drug meant to treat anxiety disorders. Unexpected side effects were first reported in 1995, but the company attributed them to prescription errors made by doctors. Supposedly other drugs had been prescribed at the same time even though the combination resulted in harmful interactions. The first deaths associated with Xonux occurred a year later, and a media storm broke loose. Several scientists suspected that North-South Pharmaceuticals had doctored market-entry studies and had not taken early signs of dangerous side effects seriously.
A few months later, the company voluntarily removed the drug from the market and got away with just an official warning. Xonux was linked to several heart attacks and strokes throughout the world, some of which were fatal. According to information from the media, it was never quite proven that Xonux had actually been responsible for these side effects. Nevertheless, a health minister stepped in, and North-South Pharmaceuticals agreed out of court to pay compensation totaling in the millions.
A thought popped into Hannes’s head, but before he could make sense of it, it slipped away. He was about to search for background information on the company’s first name, North German Chemical and Pharmaceutical Works, when Fritz called.
“I have a funny feeling that Mr. Ternheim’s hiding something and wants to shift my attention to this art dealer,” he said. “Have you checked Laval out?”
“Yes, but I found very little information about him.” Hannes briefly described the meager results. “I’m still waiting to hear back about the flights, but I can’t imagine he’s involved in Ms. Ternheim’s death. He’s definitely a crook, but he seems too clueless for murder.”
“Fine. Take a look into Christian Ternheim’s background. I’d like to get a clearer picture of him. By the way, I got two tickets to this charity gala for tonight. We should definitely show up and take a look around.”
“Um, yeah, well, actually . . . I thought I could go out on the water today. My knee seems to be better. And besides, I have nothing to wear.”
“True, you can’t show up in a tracksuit,” Fritz joked. “How about this: get there one hour before the official start, so at six. The venue’s at the old casino. Try to talk to the young assistant again. Ask her if Mr. Ternheim knew about the relationship between Ms. Wagner and his sister and if she remembered anything else. Then we briefly catch up, and I give you my blessing to go practice. I can handle a cold buffet on my own.”
Hannes was relieved when he hung up. Socks nudged his hand. He remembered he hadn’t packed any dog food. He let Socks slurp from his water glass so his stomach was at least filled with something. “Ten minutes, Socks, then I’ll drive you home.”
Hannes devoted himself once again to the Internet, though he failed to find anything on the North German Chemical and Pharmaceutical Works despite several attempts. He shut down the computer and headed for Mrs. Meier’s office with Socks on his heels.
“Mrs. Meier, I need a car again. Do you have something nice for me in the park—”
“Right now, all vehicles are on the road,” she said.
“I’ve found the owner of this poor dog and want to return him as soon as possible.”
“Dogs can walk. You kept him penned up all morning in your office. His bladder’s probably ready to burst.”
Hannes glanced down at Socks. Maybe she was onto something.
“Well, you’re probably right, we’ll walk. One more thing, is there a clothing store around here?”
She frowned. “You want to go shopping while on duty? Has the CEO’s killer been found?”
“Uh, no, but . . .” He was becoming more and more convinced that Mrs. Meier was a witch, and quickly turned around before she could read his thoughts. He walked down the stairs with Socks, and as soon as they had exited the station, Socks sprinted to the first hedge and lifted his leg for a full minute.
“Well, how’s my four-legged friend?” Ben asked. He was sitting on a chaise longue in front of his cottage and laughed as Socks nuzzled him. “Sorry for leaving Socks with you without asking, I couldn’t take him with me this morning.”
“Don’t mention it!” Hannes said. “Socks was well behaved and even conquered the heart of the greatest secretary-cum-witch of all time. Hey, um . . . can I borrow a pair of your underwear?”
Ben burst out laughing. “Well, no one’s asked me that one before.”
“Hero that you are, you forgot to pack any underwear in my bag,” Hannes said.
“Oh, okay, now I understand. Does that mean that you’ve been going commando all this time? Man! How does it feel?”
“Fine,” Hannes said. “But before I chafe any more, I’d love to have a pair . . .”
Ben disappeared into the house and waved to Hannes to follow him. He pulled out a pair of black boxer shorts from a drawer in the living room and threw them to him.
“If you need a new pair, help yourself. But put them back washed, please!” His laughter followed Hannes to the bathroom, where he quickly slipped on the garment before stepping back out.
“How’s the case going?”
“The Internet has turned up almost nothing.”
“What, you have no other means of getting information?”
“Of course, but it depends on what you’re looking for. If a person or company has always been clean, then they won’t be in our system. Police state, my ass! Right now, I wish it were one.”
Ben shrugged. “Maybe you should ask the Federal Intelligence Service or the credit card companies. I’m sure they have a ton of information.”
Hannes had an idea. “You told me about Lagussa’s Nazi past. How did you find that out?”
“So, your boss left you to do the hard work?”
“You guessed it,” Hannes said. “Please, share a few of your sources with me!”
“I’m afraid they’re not official sources, but I have some time this afternoon. If you want, I can help you with the research. And, no, I wouldn’t blab about it to your boss. You’ll probably get somewhere with my help.”
“All right,” Hannes said. “But what I need are facts.”
“I’ll give you facts,” Ben said. “I can assure you that we conduct a thorough investigation before staging any protest. We won’t be picketing an innocent business tonight.”
Hannes felt guilty the moment Ben mentioned his protest against Lagussa. “By the way, I’ll be at this gala for a little while this evening. Don’t you think it would be a good idea to hold off until we’ve solved Ms. Ternheim’s murder?”
“The two have nothing to do with each other. This is a unique opportunity, and we don’t want to miss it. If I showed you everything we know, you’d probably agree.”
Hannes doubted it but did not press the issue. He played fetch with Socks while Ben made some lunch. Half an hour later, he placed two steaming plates of spaghetti in front of them, filled Socks’s bowl, and turned on his laptop.
“You’re not goin
g to find what you’re looking for using a regular search engine. I told you already that everything was covered up. But maybe Lagussa’s just been lucky until now and no one has ever thought to take a closer look at the company. We only stumbled on it by accident when an informant leaked to us a list of companies that supposedly had special status under Hitler. The validity of this list was pretty questionable because much of our research led nowhere. That doesn’t necessarily mean that the list was wrong, just that we were unable to find anything out about most companies on it. Lagussa, however, was a different story.”
He pushed a forkful of spaghetti into his mouth and continued while chewing. “We’re part of a network of various groups, such as victims’ organizations, social institutions, and other private initiatives. That way, we all have access to a larger amount of data, documents, and eyewitness accounts. We’ve also created an Internet forum where we can exchange what we know, and this is where we began our search.”
Ben opened a website. After he logged in, a new window opened with several forums. “Here.” He pointed to a link called “Lagussa—Active Player during the Nazi Regime?” “We started this thread and asked if anyone knew anything about Lagussa. Several people quickly responded, saying they could help, including someone whose father had been a forced laborer at Lagussa, or North German Chemical and Pharmaceutical Works as the company was then known. He described in detail the torment his father suffered. There was little concern for the health and safety of the workers. The smallest alleged transgressions were punished with abuse, arrest, or deprivation of ration stamps.”
“Why were the Nazis even interested in the company?”
“Chemical knowledge was a prerequisite for the production of war materials. Plus, the Nazis were interested in vaccines against poisonous gases and diseases like typhus. They were looking to increase the strength of their troops during the war.”
“But Lagussa manufactures psychotropic drugs. Were they trying to protect the soldiers from depression? Given the nightmares they witnessed, that would make sense. But I don’t see the Nazis being too concerned with philanthropy.”
“No, you can safely say they didn’t know what philanthropy was. The Nazis had ulterior motives for everything they did. For example, they were very interested in stimulants, because they hoped to shorten the amount of time soldiers needed to sleep and increase the amount of time they spent on the battlefield. You also have to realize that Lagussa only focused on producing psychotropic drugs in the early seventies. NGCP made a lot more than just drugs at the time, and even if the company wasn’t one of the big players, they certainly weren’t going to say no to the Nazi’s contributions.”
“How many forced laborers worked for the company?”
“It’s impossible to give a realistic estimate. As you can imagine, many records and documents disappeared after the war. According to most estimates, at least eleven million people were abused as forced laborers in the German Reich and the occupied territories. Look here! We’ve created an archive where we store documents related to NGCP so anyone who has access to the site can add and view documents. Here we have two documents from 1941 in which NGCP requested a total of 150 laborers, most of them from Poland.”
Ben also showed him correspondence between Nazi authorities and NGCP. In most cases, it was about the allocation of raw materials. There were also several photos of an assembly line. Even if the photos were grainy, “North German Chemical and Pharmaceutical Works” could clearly be made out on a wall in the background.
“Of particular interest is this letter here,” Ben said and opened a short document dated January 23, 1940. “The addressee was a bank which handled the accounts for the Nazi Party. It acknowledged a transfer of more than 100,000 Reichsmarks. That was a princely sum, especially since, as I said, NGCP was only a medium-sized company.”
“Who ran NGCP then?”
“The company was run by its founder, Heinrich Ternheim. He was the grandfather of the current managing director. But the father of Helene and Christian Ternheim also had an important role in the company at that time. Heinrich Ternheim, today better known as Merlin, was born in 1919 and was only fourteen when the Nazis came to power, so he grew up with the National Socialist ideology. It comes as no surprise that he joined the Hitler Youth at fifteen. At eighteen, he became a member of the Nazi Party and manager at the company. His managerial responsibilities later saved him from being drafted during the war, even though he would have been a prime candidate given that he was twenty-one.”
“Clever,” Hannes said.
“Right. The Ternheims may have supported the Nazis for years, but they let others take the fall. And in more ways than one. In addition to the use of forced labor, there is still another deep, dark chapter in their past: testing on humans!”
Hannes’s pulse quickened. His compassion for the old painter waned. “So not only did they use forced labor, but they also experimented on people?”
“Not on the forced laborers. Cheap labor was far too valuable. No, there was another group of helpless people with an almost inexhaustible supply: concentration camp prisoners!”
Hannes began to feel sick.
“The first concentration camps were established as early as 1933. At first, only political opponents were imprisoned, but that changed. Anyone who didn’t meet the sick image the Nazis had of people could now expect to be interned. Anyone sent to the camps also ran the danger of being used for medical experiments. Vaccines were tested, chemotherapy drugs injected, and wounds like ones caused by incendiary bombs inflicted—often without anesthesia. Even children were tortured in the most bestial of ways. Most victims died an agonizing death; others were eliminated in the gas chambers. Few survived, and most remained physically and psychologically destroyed for the rest of their lives.”
“And NGCP was involved?”
“They didn’t conduct the experiments themselves; the camp doctors were responsible for that. But here’s a delivery receipt that was leaked to us. It shows that NGCP sent some sort of drug to the medical officer of a concentration camp.” Ben opened another file. “Unfortunately, we don’t know what kind of drug. It’s only referred to as Compound 3282. This is also the only delivery receipt we’ve seen so far.”
“And what are these?” asked Hannes, pointing to some image files.
“Those are images of test subjects.” Ben opened one. “This man here actually survived the ordeal. He was one of the unfortunate ones they experimented on with the incendiary bomb wounds. The picture was taken five years after his release. As you can see, he’s disfigured.”
Even Ben’s voice had faltered; Hannes gulped.
“Since we do not know what NGCP delivered to the concentration camp, we can only guess what suffering the drug inflicted. NGCP definitely had nothing to do with incendiary bombs. I bet it was a tuberculosis vaccine: researchers have proven that the company was working on one then.”
“Why wasn’t NGCP held accountable during the trials?”
“At first, the focus was on the major war criminals, and NGCP was a small fish. Plus, this delivery receipt only recently surfaced.”
“Maybe it’s a forgery?”
“I don’t think so. Why would it be? Who would have an interest in pinning something like that on Lagussa? Once this document was uploaded, another witness came forward. His mother was a victim of concentration camp experiments. She’d told her son when he was growing up that she had been injected with something that had four letters printed on the packaging. He couldn’t remember these letters for a long time—after all, he was just a child. But he told us he heard her voice in his head as he read our documents. He’s certain those four letters were NGCP.”
“So the woman survived?”
“Yes, but with serious side effects. According to her son, she suffered from so-called concentration camp syndrome, a type of post-traumatic stress disorder. In addition to physical ailments, she suffered from anxiety, depression, and nightmares. She took her
own life.”
They sat in silence. Only Socks’s panting could be heard. The sun shone on Hannes, and it was inconceivable to him how completely different this country must have looked seventy years ago.
“Do you understand now why I’m committed to fighting neo-Nazis? It’s bad enough to hear about these events and to know that they actually occurred. It’s even harder to bear the thought that my own grandfather was murdered by these criminals.”
Hannes nodded. He understood Ben only too well.
“So you see, Luther’s famous words also apply to me.” Ben found his irresistible grin again. “‘Here I stand; I cannot do otherwise.’ That’s why I can’t take your new friendship with the young executive assistant at Lagussa into consideration. I have to go through with it tonight. We’ve created a website containing all the documents that show the company’s connection to the Nazi Party. It will go live tonight. I have to go again, but you can browse through the archive on your own. Maybe you’ll find something. I’ll write down my username and password. Without the password, you can’t log back in to the forum. Can I leave Socks with you again?”
“Sure. When will you be back?”
Ben pushed himself up from his chair and went outside to grab his bike. “I don’t know yet. Just lock Socks inside if you have to go somewhere. But make sure he goes beforehand!”
Ben whistled softly as he pushed the bike across the lawn and disappeared around the corner. Hannes watched him go, lost in thought, then grabbed the laptop.
FRIDAY EVENING
How she loathed this darkness! When Merle had painted her room black as a teenager and blocked out all the light, the darkness had protected and comforted her. Now it posed a constant threat.
After eating the pizza, she had walked around the room for hours and anxiously waited for the onset of fatigue. Her watch battery had died, and Merle had lost all sense of time.
Now she was sitting back in front of the steel door, trying to force the edge of the wooden food tray into the door’s narrow gap to use as a lever. She kept failing until finally the tray became slightly wedged. She pushed with all her might against the other end, but the wood broke and drove a splinter deep into her right hand. In pain, she grabbed hold of the big splinter and pulled it out.
Time Heals No Wounds (A Baltic Sea Crime Novel) Page 22
