Keepers of the Gate - [Kamal & Barnea 04]

by By Jon Land

  “All the time you’ve spent alone with him... Is that what this is about?”

  “No, Haupsturmfuehrer/”

  “What would your wife think if she learned of this? How would your child feel, growing up in disgrace?”

  “I assure you that—”

  “If you are not fucking the boy, then what are you up to? What are you after?”

  “I already told you, Haupsturmfuehrer.”

  “So if I ordered you to kill Hessler now, you would do it?”

  “I would, sir. But I would be forced to make a report to the Reichstag to question your judgment and administration of this camp.”

  “Is that a threat, Mundt?”

  “It is a duty, sir. I care only about the Reich. Everything I do is in the Reich’s best interests.”

  Weiss clasped his hands behind his back. “I know you’re up to something here, Mundt, and I’m going to find out what it is. You have become a challenge for me. That is why I’m not ordering you killed right now, instead of Hessler. Everything you do, Mundt, beware: I will be watching.”

  Months later, just after orders came to dismantle the camp and execute the remaining prisoners, Weiss was looking out his window when he saw something startling. He saw Paul Hessler shoot Karl Mundt in the head. The Haupsturmfuehrer might have intervened at that point, if he wasn’t preparing to flee himself. But he also took great pleasure in the fact that Mundt had kept Hessler alive for almost a year, only to be killed himself, and by the very person he’d done his utmost to save. This was how all his efforts had been rewarded. This was how his clever plot had ended.

  As Weiss looked on, Hessler hung a small rucksack over his shoulders and began dragging Mundt’s lifeless body into the woods beyond the factory where, Weiss assumed, he intended to bury the corpse. A thick mist was rising and almost at once it swallowed the boy and his burden—the last time Gunthar Weiss had seen either one of them.

  Rather than stay to oversee the dismantling of the camp, Weiss tried to flee too, only to be captured by a Russian platoon. He was arrested and tried before a War Crimes tribunal. He was yawning when the decision was passed down: Life in prison.

  It took twenty years for the world to forget enough so that his release could finally be secured. Ironically, the only job he could come by was as laborer and later foreman of a factory that made shoes. Gunthar Weiss knew the smells of dyes and raw leather well; alone among everything else, these had not changed.

  * * * *

  D

  anielle knew from the receptionist downstairs that Weiss had been a resident for over six years now after a brief retirement from the factory job he had just described. Asher Bain’s interest in this old man must have had something to do with Paul Hessler. Hessler was the only conceivable link. But Weiss’s story had merely filled in empty spaces in Paul Hessler’s life the great man understandably did not want to discuss. Too painful. Too much heartache.

  So what was Danielle missing? Hessler was the link to everything here. He had survived in 1944 by escaping the labor camp outside Lodz after killing the guard who had befriended him. Could that be the key to whatever Bain was on the verge of uncovering? Only Weiss would be able to fill in the rest of the missing pieces as to why. What had gone on in the those last days of the war?

  “I want to hear more about Paul Hessler, Herr Weiss,” Danielle prodded the man in the wheelchair before her. “We’re not finished yet.”

  But the old man’s attention was no longer on her. A new cartoon had begun on the wall-mounted television and he craned his neck to find a viewing angle around Danielle. When this failed, he tried to shove Danielle aside with his frail, bony arms.

  “That will be quite enough, Chief Inspector Barnea.”

  Danielle recognized the voice of the receptionist from downstairs and turned slowly. A pair of men were standing just behind her in the doorway.

  “These men are from the police,” the receptionist said. “They would like to inspect your credentials further.”

  Danielle knew they weren’t police, wished for the gun flying to Germany had made her leave behind. The receptionist cast each of the men a glance.

  She knew them, had summoned them to the nursing home before....

  “If you would just come downstairs with us,” the taller of the two men said, “this shouldn’t take too long at all.”

  Danielle weighed her odds, cursed herself for telling no one besides Ben of her trip here. She moved slowly away from Gunthar Weiss, leaving him to his cartoons. Danielle approached the door, ready to spring as soon as she drew within reach of the smaller man. Disable him and take his gun, while she still had some measure of surprise on her side. Almost there, almost ready, Danielle’s gaze drifted beyond the men down the hallway to plan her escape route.

  Another pair of men stood on either side of the elevator, hands held inside their jackets so still and stiff they looked like department store mannequins.

  “Now, Chief Inspector Barnea,” said the taller man, taking hold of her forearm, “if you would just come with us....”

  * * * *

  CHAPTER 59

  H

  ere it is,” said principal Jane Wexler, standing in front of the computer in her office. “All the e-mail correspondence originating at the school since the beginning of the year.”

  Ben peered over her shoulder. “You’re telling me no one else has ever checked this list?”

  “It was strictly precautionary, as I said.” Then, with a touch of irony, “No one ever had any reason to check it.”

  Ben kept his eyes on the screen. Somewhere amidst this volume of material would very likely be the extortion targets of the students, one of which had later murdered them. But how was he going to identify those targets?

  “What’s next?” he asked. “Don’t change your mind now, Ms. Wexler, or you’ll force me to change mine.”

  Jane Wexler went back to working the keyboard. “We can start by eliminating any messages since the students’ deaths and before their term at the school began.” She waited while the computer did just that.

  “And now?” Ben prodded.

  “You have the names of the companies you suspect might be involved?”

  Ben tapped the pocket in which he had tucked the list obtained from Tabar Azziz at Abasca Machines.

  “Okay, I’m going to conduct a search for those names.”

  “I think I can handle that myself, Ms. Wexler,” Ben said, not bothering to disguise the obstinacy in his voice. “I think you’ve done enough.”

  * * * *

  B

  en waited until Jane Wexler had left the room before beginning his search. The process went much more smoothly than he had imagined. He had never understood computers much and used them as little as possible, annoyed by the nasty habit they had of freezing up on him. Ben could only figure he must constantly be hitting a wrong key; found hitting no keys at all to be the best solution.

  Today he encountered no problems whatsoever. He performed a wide-listing search to ferret out the companies the murdered students had targeted.

  It took a matter of seconds for the computer to complete the search, so fast Ben didn’t even realize that the answers had already appeared on the screen.

  * * * *

  W

  hat’s itmean ?”Ben askedJane Wexler when she returned.

  She studied the results of his search: electronic addresses for four companies, none having an accompanying message.

  “They must have installed a tapeworm to make sure no one could steal their messages en route.”

  “A tapeworm?”

  “Something that scrambles the message an instant after it’s sent.”

  “But the addresses are intact. Their tapeworm must not have worked entirely.”

  Jane Wexler frowned, clearly unsettled by the damning evidence she had not expected Ben to find. “I guess this is your lucky day, Inspector.”

  Ben stood up and faced her. “I’d get going now if I wer
e you, Ms. Wexler. Your students’ killers won’t be far behind.”

  * * * *

  CHAPTER 60

  P

  aul Hessler drove to the castle as soon as the meeting was over. His travel and work schedule had kept him away for nearly a month, and he was amazed at the progress the work crew had made in that time.

  The structure looked virtually finished, every brick and stone meticulously reassembled down to the last detail. The guard at the gate leading into the fenced-in site along the cliffs of New Jersey’s Palisades State Park moved to deny entry until he recognized Hessler and apologized profusely. Paul simply walked on, leaving behind his driver and the bodyguards whom Franklin Russett insisted accompany him everywhere he went.

  Ten yards inside the fence stood the sandstone wall that protected the castle’s perimeter. It had been little more than rubble when Hessler first climbed the hill to the castle in 1944. But his workmen had magically reconstructed it, using a mixture of the original stone along with perfectly matched replicas to restore the wall to its original medieval specifications. The main archway and gate had not been completed yet, to allow space for the heavy equipment that continued to come and go.

  Paul walked through the large gap into a courtyard that would someday house a lavish garden. He sloshed about in the mud, sinking into a deep rut left by one of the massive front loaders that remained on site. Looking up at the castle, he could see that the top floors of the four surviving towers were all in place now. These were the sections he had ordered removed and shipped intact from the castle’s original site and explained the presence of the massive cranes; only such a machine could possibly manage the task of setting the sliced off sections in place. But the massive cranes were gone now, evidence that only the fine finish work remained. Within six months, right on schedule, the castle would be opened to the public, allowing patrons to take a journey into a past they would never understand.

  Paul Hessler entered the castle through the huge oak door whose heavy hinges had been expertly reattached. If it weren’t for the thwack of hammers and the occasional hum of power tools, Paul could have convinced himself it was 1944 all over again. The air inside was surprisingly cool on this warm spring day, as if his construction crew had managed even to retain that feature from the castle’s original setting. He remembered how amazed he’d been when he learned the castle was only thirty miles from the labor camp outside of Lodz. It had seemed so much farther at the time.

  He wanted it to be 1944 again, wanted a chance to start from scratch. Get things right this time, beginning with the night he had come upon this castle for the first time. Since the day he had learned that Polish officials had ordered the castle destroyed, it had taken six years and more millions than even Paul Hessler cared to count to transplant the structure here to New Jersey. Of course, it had been easy for Paul to convince people, especially the media, that he was acting on a whim. An old man reluctant to let go of such a vital part of his past.

  He had them all fooled.

  The truth was he cared nothing for the castle itself. He had changed the night he came upon it for the first time and not for the better. He would just as soon see it demolished on the muddy, rancid ground on which it had been built in the fifteenth century by an exiled Norman prince. Maybe even operate the wrecking ball himself.

  But he couldn’t, because of the secret that still lurked within the castle’s walls. A secret he had to protect above all else.

  Paul Hessler shuddered from the chill when the door closed behind him. Work lights hanging from the ceiling cut through what would otherwise have been the impenetrable blackness he remembered from his first visit fifty-seven years before on the night he happened upon the castle in the midst of the storm.

  A gift from God—that’s what this place had been. Paul was certain he would have died if not for the shelter it offered in late 1944. His clothes were drenched, his food and supplies lost miles back to the wind and torrential rain. The only light for those miles had come from lightning bursts, and it had been one of these that illuminated the castle at the top of the hill.

  Initially, getting out of the storm seemed goal enough. He had collapsed against the wall inside the castle’s door, listening to the rain batter its stone facade and smelling the castle’s cold, lonely stench for the first time.

  But, suddenly, another scent invaded his nostrils. At first Paul Hessler couldn’t believe it. A trick of the mind, the imagination, he told himself. Still the smell persisted and at last he sprang back to his feet.

  What happened over the next few minutes was the real reason why Paul Hessler had paid the incredible sum to purchase this castle and have it disassembled brick by brick and piece by piece, so it could be reassembled halfway across the world where his secret would now be safe forever. Paul Hessler wondered what would happen if the world learned the truth about the night he had first come upon the castle.

  The possibility set him trembling.

  * * * *

  CHAPTER 61

  D

  anielle caughtglimpses ofthe German countryside flashing by the car windows, as the drive that had begun at the rest home stretched deep into the night. She sat squeezed in the backseat of the second car between two lean and sinewy men who did not seem to be watching her. That they had not bound or cuffed her hands was a lesson in itself: the men were not concerned about the threat she posed. She had seen their look before, mostly in the army when she served with the Israeli Special Forces. But these men weren’t Israelis; she could tell that much.

  They were Germans.

  None of the car’s occupants spoke a single word to her through the long drive that seemed aimless until they reached the small city of Monchengladback. Continuing on for another fifteen minutes, they neared the Bokelberg, a hill with several off-streets featuring mansions both large and small called villen. The farther up the hill, the larger and more separated the residences became. Several of these had tall fences encircling properties layered with thick foliage making the homes themselves invisible from the street. Danielle saw the brake lights in the lead car come on and felt her car slow near a villa surrounded by a ten-foot wall made of brick instead of an iron fence.

  The cars had barely come to a halt when an electronic gate opened, and they passed up a winding drive adorned with lavish landscaping toward a huge house set well back from the road. The mansion was built of fawn-colored brick that gleamed in the spill of floodlights spaced about the circular drive. The windows were all closed in spite of the night’s warmth, and a pair of men stood rigidly at the top of a granite staircase leading to the entrance.

  Danielle watched the men pile out of the car at the foot of the staircase. One grasped her arm so tightly he pinched her skin, and she tried to pull away in anger. But his grip was like iron and she relented, letting the man draw her out of the car and then lead her up the steps.

  The double-doors were already open when they reached the top, and Danielle stepped inside. Whoever these men were, they had clearly been summoned by officials at the nursing home. And just as clearly, Gunthar Weiss must be someone they were keeping their eye on.

  An old man who did nothing but watch cartoons still under some form of surveillance ... Whatever Weiss hadn’t gotten the chance to tell her must be very important indeed. She thought again of her father, of the list of old men, Holocaust survivors, his name among them.

  What am I going to find at the end of this road?

  Four of the men who had made the drive here with her escorted Danielle through an elegant marble foyer, covered with an Oriental runner, to an open door on the right. They prodded her to enter and then followed her inside an expansive library, its walls lined with leather-bound books set in exquisite built-in, dark wood shelves. The shelves and the paneling gave the room a dark, shadowy appearance even the well-apportioned fighting could not change. The source of the lighting was invisible, emanating from the corners and gaps in a recessed ceiling. In fact, the foyer had been similarly
dark, bathed in shadows as if the villa’s resident preferred them to the light.

  Danielle stood still in the middle of the room. Beneath her feet was a thick carpet that added to the library’s richness. She noticed her four escorts had mechanically taken up posts they must have been well used to, indicating she was not the first visitor to be brought to the villa against her will.

  Danielle heard heels clacking intermittently on the exposed portions of the marble foyer seconds before a woman entered the room. Tall, even taller than Danielle at nearly six feet—more than that in her heels. She wore a dark dress that clung to her every curve like paint. The woman’s hair was dark, cut fashionably short to frame her long, angular face. Danielle couldn’t see her eyes because the woman kept to the shadows, careful to avoid the random splashes of light.