The Nuremberg Puzzle

by Laurence O'Bryan

  A loud knock sounded on the driver’s window. Kurt turned fast. He had one hand on his waist. Sean saw the black mesh-patterned metal of a gun handle poking out from his waistband.

  Kurt said something in German, jabbed a finger at a button on the door. The window rolled down.

  He shouted something. A man’s face appeared. He was about forty with dark slicked-back hair. He was in civilian clothes, jeans and a navy jacket, but Sean could see a gun on his hip, too.

  The man said something in German. It seemed to annoy Kurt. He shook his head, rolled the window closed. The man stood there, bent down, looking into the car. He stared at Sean, a hard look on his face.

  “Who the hell’s that?” said Sean.

  “He’s a colleague.”

  A rap sounded on the roof of the car. Then the man walked off. Kurt slammed a fist into the steering wheel.

  “Nice guy,” said Sean.

  “No, he is not.”

  Sean didn’t reply. They sat in silence as Kurt sat, stared straight ahead.

  “What did he want?” said Sean a minute later.

  “He was telling me I am needed at once, Herr Ryan. That we have work to do.” His words came out fast.

  It seemed as if every chance he had of finding out what had happened to Eleni and Jerome was slipping away.

  “Do you know what happened here at the end of the war?”

  “No,” said Sean.

  “The Werewolf underground resistance against Allied occupation was formed here in Nuremberg.”

  “It’s still in existence?”

  “No, it’s not, but you should know there’s a long history of people who would like to bring back Nazi ideas here.”

  Kurt shifted in his seat. His unease with all that was going on was clear.

  “What’s all that got to do with what’s happening now?”

  Kurt leaned towards Sean.

  “You must put the pieces together, Herr Ryan.”

  “What does that mean?”

  Kurt stared out the window.

  “My wife was a policewoman. She died a few years ago.” His tone was somber.

  “I am sorry.”

  Kurt nodded. He didn’t look at Sean.

  “The investigation into her death was not handled properly.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Files have gone missing.” He looked at Sean. “What’s happening now reminds me of that time.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “In Eleni Kibre’s diary there was a reminder to herself about an interview with a journalist.”

  “Did it say what she was going to talk about?”

  Kurt spoke again, his voice getting stronger with each word. “She was going to talk about Nazi medical experiments, and how similar experiments were carried out after the war, and what companies were involved.” He sighed. “Now I have work to do.” He put his hand out. Sean shook it.

  Five minutes later Sean was in a café. He needed a coffee. He wasn’t able to eat though, despite not having eaten anything in many hours. His stomach muscles felt twisted. There were only two other people in the café aside from the proprietor and a person who looked like his daughter. Those two people were both tapping away at their smartphones. The proprietor was listening to a radio. It sounded as if the news was on. All Sean could hear was a droning German monotone.

  He stared through the window at the cobbled pavement outside.

  Why had Jerome and Eleni been murdered?

  He checked his phone. He’d missed a text from Isabel.

  Are you okay? it read.

  All good, C U tomorrow, he replied.

  A shout sounded from the back of the café. He turned. The proprietor was coming towards him.

  “Aus,” he shouted. “Alle aus.” His hands were waving threateningly in the air.

  30

  Vanessa Sheer placed her key card against the door pad of the Kaiser Suite at the five star Nuremberg Emperors’ hotel. Moments later she stepped into the bedroom. She slid her long leather coat from her shoulders, stepped out of her skirt. She checked the temperature control unit on the sleek silver panel near the door.

  Twenty-two degrees. Warm enough for her to prepare, but not too warm for what was to come. The room had an Emperor size bed pushed up against the back wall, mirrors on each of the other walls and another large mirror above the bed.

  Black silk sheets made the bed gleam. They had prepared the room exactly as instructed. Two black silk covered pillows waited at the top.

  Thick white candles stood in a row on a side table. She took a silver cigarette lighter from her black leather pouch-bag and lit each candle in turn, then glanced at her watch. They would be here in fifteen minutes. She had to be quick.

  She pulled her Louis Vuitton suitcase near the bed. From it she extracted a black silk bra decorated with black pearls, black silk stockings and knickers, cut high.

  She put them on the bed. What would her banker and politician colleagues think if they knew what she was up to?

  Nothing! They were all enslaved to something or other. She had the details of each board member’s secret deviances hidden away, ready for use if they ever threatened her.

  She put on the black satin bra, the black silk stockings, fastened the suspenders to the stockings. From the suitcase she took a leather whip with knotted cords drooping from it, each tipped with a glistening shard of silver.

  Holding the whip, she knelt, bowed her forehead, kissed a square-shaped cross embedded in silver, which she then placed back in the suitcase.

  She stood after a few seconds and looked around. Each of the hundreds of pieces of glass in the chandelier twinkled as they reflected the light from the candles.

  She went to the side table, picked up a tall Waterford crystal wine glass at the far end. Two drops fell into it from a small black bottle in her hand. They disappeared quickly into the red wine she poured from a bottle already opened nearby. She swallowed the concoction in one gulp. Soon her boys would arrive.

  There would be three of them tonight. A tremble of anticipation passed through her. She caressed the whip.

  A knock sounded from the other room. She pressed a switch. A moment later the door opened. Three six foot, blonde males entered. They each looked no more than nineteen or twenty. They undressed as she watched. Each of their bodies glistened with muscular energy. To them she was a rich woman who wanted to play games.

  Each of them would follow her orders precisely. That was the way she liked it. They lined up for her to examine them. She fondled each of them. They grew bigger quickly. Soon, they were all smiling. Tingles slid up her arms and down her back. She gave an order. They knelt. Her whip crackled in the air. Each felt it in his turn. Not one of them grimaced. But two of them made their hands into fists after their turn came, and their eyes blazed.

  They would be fired up properly now. She lay on the bed and motioned them to her, one after the other. As the cleansing power of their energy enveloped her she smiled, at last.

  As the final moment approached, she let out a scream.

  “Mein Gott, stop!”

  The three of them pulled back together as if they had been slapped. Each of them was breathing heavily.

  In a soft, girlish German, she said, “Put on those collars.” She pointed at the black table. The three boys returned seconds later. Each of them was wearing a black priest’s collar with white at the front. Her eyes widened, as memories flooded every cell of her brain.

  Her naked body rose in the air as she was picked up on either side and the largest of the boys came towards her, grinning.

  31

  This was the right time to visit the Frauenkirche. He’d seen it when he’d visited the market square on Friday night, but he hadn’t gone inside. He stopped and stared. Its roof was steep. Ornamental gothic spikes stood out against the gray clouds, and dark stained glass windows looked out over the cobbled square.

  It was four in the afternoon. There were few people about
. Most of them seemed to be hurrying somewhere.

  As he crossed the square there were five or six market stalls still open in front of the Frauenkirche. They were selling wooden toys, jars of pickles and fruit to very few customers. He looked up at the Cathedral.

  It wasn’t as big St Paul’s in London, but it was still imposing with its black and gray stone, medieval gargoyles and pale blue statues beneath the blue clock high up in its front wall. The main statue was of a man with a beard and gold crown, a depiction of the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, so his guide app said.

  It also said that the church had been built over the site of a synagogue, which had been destroyed during a pogrom against Jews in 1349. Apparently, they’d been blamed for bringing the Black Death to the city. The local elite had owed money to Jewish moneylenders, and had presumably come to the conclusion that mass murder was preferable to paying it back.

  Sean walked around the church. There was no work going on at the site. Had Jerome been mistaken, or was the dig over?

  He went back across the market square, to the nearest stall. It was laden with jars of fruit of various sizes. He examined a small jar of pears in thick juice. The woman selling the fruit was heavy-set and wearing a padded jacket. He asked her, in English, if there was archaeological work going on at the Frauenkirche recently. He pointed at the church. The woman shook her head slowly, shrugged. Then she pointed at one of the other stalls.

  “Ich spreche kein Englisch. Sprechen sie mit ihm,” she said. She smiled and waved him towards a man at the wooden toy stall nearby.

  Sean went through the same procedure at the next stall. He examined a wooden medieval soldier, painted in blue and gold like the statues above them on the church, then asked the man the same question.

  He shook his head. “No, there is none of this work going on there in the last year.” His accent had a touch of American in it.

  “A friend of mine said there was a dig here.”

  The man shook his head. “No, he must be mistaken. No digging up the past here recently, definitely not. We have enough problems, yes.”

  Sean was about to walk away, but a reply came to him.

  “Was this church built on the site of a Jewish ghetto?”

  “I don’t know about that.”

  “I read that the synagogue was burnt down while hundreds of Jews were inside.”

  The man’s face hardened. “The way I heard it, the Jews brought the Black Death here, which killed thousands.”

  “So they deserved to die?”

  The stallholder shook his head. “I do not know the answer to that. I was not there.”

  Sean walked on, then consulted his guide app again, flicking past images of sights to see in Nuremberg. Maybe Jerome had confused the Frauenkirche with another church. He saw a picture of a church called St Laurence’s and another with no roof, whitewashed walls and people praying inside. It was an odd image. It looked as if the building had been destroyed and never rebuilt. He found another stall holder who spoke English.

  “Where are these churches?” He pointed at the two pictures on the screen.

  “They are five minutes’ walk from here. That way for St Catherine’s.” The woman pointed to the left, over the roof of the buildings at the far end of the square. “And this way for St Laurence’s.” She pointed over her shoulder.

  “Is there archaeological work going on at any of these churches?”

  “Ja. There is a big project going on at St Catherine’s. They will finish it by summer, I hope. We can have our concerts again.”

  “Danke,” he said.

  He walked fast in the direction of St Catherine’s. There were still a few hours to sunset, but the sun was nowhere to be seen. Gray clouds, rolling in from the east in thick blankets, obscured the sky and created an oppressive Sunday afternoon atmosphere, as if the whole world was waiting for Monday morning. His feelings matched the sky.

  He’d been looking forward to coming here, but everything about the visit had turned to dust. Not only was an old friend dead, her partner was too. And he had no idea why. Memories of other deaths came back to him.

  Too many.

  The only thought that reassured him was that Isabel and Alek were safe. They had been through too much because of him already.

  Perhaps he should let it all go, just go back to London. Try to forget.

  As he walked down a narrow lane leading towards St Catherine’s, in the oldest part of the city he’d been in so far, he remembered the injuries Eleni had suffered. The thought of what she must have gone through made a rage spill up inside him. How could anyone do that to another human?

  When he reached the church he walked slowly around St Catherine’s walls. The building was all locked up. He checked the chains on the ancient-looking barred gate set into a side wall. It faced into a narrow passage between medieval stone buildings. He’d read in the guide that St Catherine’s had been the main church of Nuremberg in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, when it had been home to the Nuremberg Meistersingers. Wagner had created an opera during that era in Nuremberg. Albrecht Durer had painted a triptych for the altar.

  The church had been destroyed when the American army took Nuremberg in 1945, and it had been left as a ruin to remind people what had happened to the city.

  At the back of the church there was an eight-foot-high wire fence, protecting the rear wall. Sean looked through a gap in the fence. There were piles of rubble in a line of blue skips set in a row against the wire.

  As he passed them he looked between the skips. A man on a bicycle went by. He stared at Sean, as if he knew he was a foreigner. Sean turned, saw a glimmer of an electric light from between the skips, bent down, as if tying a shoelace, then peered forward to get a better look.

  Could there be someone in there on a Sunday? No, wasn’t it more likely the light was on for a reason, perhaps for security guards inside? He looked up and down the wire fence. There were no security cameras on top of it.

  But there was a thin wire on the top of the fence. He knew immediately what that was. They had considered the same thing for their house in Chelsea. It was an electronic trip wire. If anyone tried to climb over it an alarm would be set off. There was no way to get over this fence, unless you were a pole vaulter.

  The wire was trembling in the wind. The system was probably capable of distinguishing between the weight of the wind or a sparrow, and a human, so that the alarm only went off when there really was a security incident underway.

  He passed another skip. Light was coming from a window beyond it. It appeared to be part of a basement level. He stopped, leaned forward, careful not to touch the fence.

  The gap between the skips only allowed him to see a part of the window, but the light inside it illuminated a stone passage wall beyond, with a curved ceiling. And there was something to the left that looked like the entrance to a staircase, as the roof curved down above it. The wall there was blackened stone, which looked older than the church above.

  A draft of wind pushed him in the back. He almost reached forward and held the wire mesh, but he didn’t. He looked down though and that was when he saw the bottom of the wire was bent a little. Perhaps a dog had gone through that way. He leaned down. Yes, the wire was loose at the bottom. He pulled it up a few inches, waited. No alarm sounded. No one came.

  He could get through, if he didn’t mind putting his chest into the dirt.

  But should he? He bent the broken edge of the wire up higher, waited some more. Perhaps the place was remotely monitored. Perhaps no one was here. He could go in, have a look around, then get out again quickly, even if he did set off an alarm. All he wanted to do was see what was going on. If all these skips were anything to go by, they had to be digging deep. He hesitated.

  Maybe he should leave. There wasn’t any evidence connecting this site to what had happened to his friends. Then he remembered what Eleni had said about sites in Nuremberg she was interested in. She’d said there was a lot still to be uncovered in
the city. Was this site what she was talking about?

  He imagined what Eleni would have said, if she had been here. She’d have encouraged him to go in. She wouldn’t have taken him down below the Nazi rally grounds if she didn’t believe in pushing your luck.

  He had to do this. It was the least he could do for her memory.

  He pulled the wire up some more. It would take only a few seconds to slip under it. He glanced down the lane, one way, then the other. The lane was empty. A snatch of distant rock music came to him on the wind. He might not get another chance like this. And what would they do if they caught him, slap his wrist?

  He’d be in and out in a few minutes.

  He bent down, slid under the gap.

  His jacket caught.

  He shifted, undid it. Still no alarm sounded. He stood up on the far side, brushed dirt away, walked along the wall of the church.

  There was nobody around. He reached the square window. Light was still shining from it. A pane of dirty glass separated him from a stone corridor. The spiral staircase was fully visible now. He walked further along the wall. There was a door ahead. He reached it.

  It was made of dark brown wood, flecked with black and reinforced with battered bronze straps. It looked as old as the building. He reached for the handle, a pitted bronze ball, turned it and pushed at the door. It was locked.

  Of course it was locked. He bent down. There was a small keyhole below the handle. He wasn’t going to get in easily. He should have watched that lock picking video online.

  He continued along the wall, looked up. At the corner of the building, there was scaffolding. It reached to roof level, if the church still had one. There wouldn’t be much point in going up there. The building was a shell.

  He put his head around the corner. That was when he heard a scuffling behind him, like a rat scrambling on a wall.

  32

  Isabel tried to sit still, for fear of disturbing Alek. He looked like an angel, the Superman duvet thrown aside, his eyelids fluttering now and then. She put her palm to his brow. He definitely still had a temperature, but it seemed less than it had been an hour ago.