Keepers of the Gate - [Kamal & Barnea 04]

by By Jon Land

  “I didn’t mean to bother you,” he said, when the young man about his own age finally swung around.

  “Who are you?”

  “It’s just that I saw the castle and came in to escape the storm.” Paul kept speaking as the stranger strode toward him. The stick in his hand glowed orange, the rabbit upon it still smoking. “I’m sorry if I—”

  The stranger shoved him backwards and pressed the sizzling end of the stick against his throat. “You’re lying! Tell me who sent you or I’ll kill you now!”

  “No one! I’m, I’m alone!”

  “They sent you, didn’t they? Who caught on to my plan? How many others are there?”

  “No one, I tell you! Just—”

  Paul Hessler never finished his sentence. The stranger jerked his smoking stick forward and Paul felt it scrape across his flesh when he turned to avoid the thrust. The smell of the roasting meat filled his nostrils as he pushed the stranger away and held his hands out in a gesture of peace.

  “Please, I mean you no harm. I’ll leave if you want.”

  The stranger screamed and lunged again. Paul managed to rip the stick out of his hand and the smoking carcass of the rabbit plopped to the stone floor still threaded over the wood. The stranger closed his hands around Paul’s painfully thin throat and nearly crushed the cartilage with the first savage thrust of his thumbs.

  But Paul held to enough breath to knee him hard in the groin twice. The stranger’s knees started to buckle, not enough to stop him from holding on, and the two of them hit the floor together. They rolled and the stranger ended up on top, his renewed grasp forcing the air back out of Paul’s tortured lungs.

  Paul flailed his hands wildly, trying to dislodge the stranger’s powerful hands. He felt a numbness spreading through him, his head seeming to expand. His hands flopped to the stone floor and thrashed about, scraping up against the warm soft carcass of the cooked rabbit.

  He grabbed the stick, its roasted rabbit still in place, and drove it upwards. He felt it pierce the stranger’s throat and a spray of warm blood coated his face. The grip, though, still did not slacken and Paul jabbed and jabbed until at last the fingers went limp, and the stranger collapsed atop him.

  It was all Paul could do to lift the body off him and spill it over to the side. He thought he might have blacked out briefly himself and awoke to the feeling it must have all been a dream until he saw the blood running beneath him and felt its slickness against his own face and neck. He checked the young man for signs of life, but found none.

  He sprang to his feet, suddenly revolted. He knew he would have vomited had there been anything in his stomach. The thought of that reminded him he hadn‘t eaten for two days and returned his focus to the still smoking rabbit resting on the floor by the corpse.

  Paul Hessler stooped only long enough to retrieve it, and moved toward the fire to finish cooking the meal that would give...

  * * * *

  G

  ive me the strength I needed to go on,” Paul Hessler finished, pushing himself up to his feet. “After I ate, I exchanged my wet clothes for a dry set I found in the dead man’s rucksack.”

  A pickax left behind by one of the workmen stood in the corner and Paul Hessler picked it up and tested its weight. The pickax looked surprisingly light in his grasp, as he moved toward the newly mortared chimney and measured off his first strike.

  “I left here the next day ...”

  As he spoke, Hessler punctuated his words with a series of heavy blows to the fireplace chimney.

  “... wearing the dead man’s clothes ...”

  whop...

  “... the food he had brought with him ...”

  whop...

  “... and his papers which the American soldiers found in my inside pocket five days later.”

  Hessler launched three more powerful strikes that splintered the chimney in a series of jagged cracks. Then he used the pickax to tear away the brick and mortar, shedding shards and chunks to the floor as his audience looked on in utter puzzlement.

  “The papers made them believe I was Paul Hessler, a survivor of a labor camp north of Lodz. But I wasn’t. I thought I had killed Paul Hessler in this castle and have lived with the guilt over that for all these years.”

  One last savage thrust opened a gaping chasm in the chimney and the old man stepped back, leaned on the handle to inspect his handiwork.

  “Because now the story at last has an end.” Sweating and almost out of breath he focused on Hans Mundt. “You came here in search of your father, Herr Mundt.”

  Mundt started forward, but turned toward the chimney when the man who had lived as Paul Hessler directed him there with his eyes.

  A skeleton-was plainly visible inside, nailed to the inner castle wall.

  “Meet Karl Mundt,” Hessler continued. “The man I really killed that night in 1944.”

  * * * *

  CHAPTER 87

  H

  ans Mundt stared at his father’s skeleton, barely hearing the man who had become Paul Hessler as he continued his story.

  “The papers I took from your father he had already stolen from the real Paul Hessler. I’m not Jewish, but I’m not German either. I’m Polish. My real name isn’t Paul Hessler or Karl Mundt; it’s Piotr Dudek. I had escaped from a different labor camp outside of Lodz, near the village of Minsk. I came upon this castle a day or so after Karl Mundt had killed Paul Hessler and assumed his identity. So, for all these years, I thought Hessler was the man I had killed. Before tonight only one other man knew the story of that night in the forest.” Paul Hessler, born Piotr Dudek, looked toward Danielle. “Your father, Pakad Barnea. I confessed the truth to him as he carried me across the Sinai after the Nasser mission failed.”

  “What did he say to you?” Danielle heard herself ask him.

  “He told me it didn’t mean a thing. He told me I had survived because I was meant to, and that was all that mattered. He told me Piotr Dudek was dead. I had left him in that castle and that’s where he should stay.” Hessler lowered his voice slightly. “Your father told me I had the chance, the opportunity, to do good for myself and my country. I think I’ve done that. At least, I tried.”

  “What your son did,” Danielle told him, “wasn’t your fault... Mr. Hessler. It wasn’t your fault.”

  “Yes, it was, and I do take the blame for it, because he wanted to prove himself to me. Ari wanted for himself exactly what I wanted for him. He was so driven by the desire to succeed, the desire I had instilled in him, he couldn’t see the evil of these murders. Or, if he did, he rationalized it. Lot four-sixty-one was the first thing he had done on his own. He could never risk letting these children destroy it. Never.”

  Mundt was still standing transfixed before the exposed chimney, staring at the bones of his father, the man who had lived as Paul Hessler had hidden away fifty-seven years before.

  “So I guess I killed your father, Herr Mundt. I, Piotr Dudek, a poor Polish boy interned at a Nazi labor camp until I was lucky enough to escape after they left me for dead. I survived by pretending to be shot and hiding beneath other bodies in a mass grave they spilled us into. If you want to kill me for that. ..”

  Hans Mundt stayed silent and still.

  “That’s why you had to reassemble the castle here,” Danielle said to Hessler. She tried to see him as he had described himself, as Piotr Dudek. But he remained Paul Hessler, hero and benefactor of the State of Israel, to her, just as he had to her father. “To keep your secret safe.”

  Hessler nodded. “They were going to demolish this castle back in Poland. I couldn’t take the chance that the bones of the man I killed would be found, especially with today’s DNA testing. Imagine them finding out the real Paul Hessler died more than a half century ago....”

  “Only it wasn’t Hessler,” Hans Mundt reminded. “It was my father, Karl Mundt, whom you buried behind that wall.”

  “But, you see, I didn’t know that. And all these years I lived in fear of being expo
sed as Piotr Dudek who killed a Jew and assumed his identity. I had nightmares about them coming to arrest me at the Bar Mitzvahs or weddings of my children.”

  “Instead, they would have come to give you a medal for what you did,” Hans Mundt managed.

  “Is that a problem for you, Herr Mundt?”

  Mundt’s face had gone blank, all the emotion sucked out of him. “My father abandoned my mother. He knew exactly what he was going to do the moment he kissed her good-bye for the last time. He had everything planned. All that remained was to choose his ‘victim’ once he reached the camp.” His eyes returned to the skeleton that had been hidden in the tower chimney all these years. “The truth is if you had turned out to really be Karl Mundt, I might have killed you myself. Might have killed my own father. I don’t know. So perhaps you did me a great favor all those years ago. I suppose I’m in your debt.”

  Paul Hessler, who had left Piotr Dudek behind him in this very spot fifty-seven years before, turned toward Ben and Danielle. “As I am in yours for keeping the truth about my son a secret. We should get to the institute as soon as—”

  His words were interrupted by the sound of gunfire erupting outside the castle.

  * * * *

  CHAPTER 88

  T

  he four of them stared at each other in consternation for a few moments, before Ben said, “Quick!”

  He led the way downstairs with Hans Mundt by his side, Danielle next to Hessler just behind them.

  “It must be Anna Krieger,” Mundt said to Danielle. He turned to look at Paul Hessler. “The Gatekeepers have come for him.”

  Hessler’s eyes flashed with fear and recognition. “Nazi hunters? Here? Now?”

  “Executioners of former Nazis who escaped traditional justice.”

  “They believe they’re after Karl Mundt,” Danielle told him.

  “Then what are we going to do?”

  Ben looked at Danielle. “The only thing we can do: fight.”

  * * * *

  T

  hey met up with Hessler’s security chief Franklin Russett just inside the castle at the foot of the stairs. He was sweating, out of breath, and had one assault rifle in hand and another shouldered.

  “How many?” Ben asked him, as the gunfire continued outside.

  “Lots. A dozen anyway, and well armed. They shot the two men I posted at the fence before we even knew what was happening.”

  “What about the rest of them?”

  “I’ve already called nine-one-one,” the burly Russett said. “But the police are too far away to do us any good in the time we’ve got.” He looked at Paul Hessler. “We’ve got to get you out of here, sir.”

  “What about the back?” Danielle suggested.

  Hessler shook his head. “The wall is solid back there. And high.”

  “Perfect,” Danielle disagreed.

  “Give me your coat,” Ben told the old man, as he eyed both Hessler and Danielle.

  “Why?”

  “Just do it!” Ben took Hessler’s overcoat and turned toward Russett as he pulled his arms through its sleeves. “Mr. Russett, you’re going to stay with me, by my side once we move outside.”

  “I’ll do no such thing!”

  Ben waited for a break in the gunfire to respond. “Yes, you will—if you want your employer to survive.”

  * * * *

  O

  utside theair sangwith gunshots.Hessler Industries’ surviving four guards returned the enemy fire from behind the castle wall where the gatehouse would someday be. If only it were in place now, Ben thought. He noted with relief that the four guards wielded assault rifles which evened the odds somewhat. The bodies of two guards who’d already been shot down lay just in front of the fence where Russett had posted them.

  The strategy of the Gatekeepers was well thought out. They were firing from the wooded cover that rimmed the castle’s cleared site on the cliffs. That made it impossible to get a firm fix on the gunmen’s positions, as they set about picking off the guards one at a time.

  Ben moved outside, draped in Paul Hessler’s overcoat and holding it so his face was obscured. He moved hesitantly, hunched over to appear as an old man. Franklin Russett clung to his side, firing off token volleys into the woods just to keep the opposition honest. They stopped behind a massive front loader that had helped fit the massive stones of the castle wall in place, pressing their backs against its cool yellow steel.

  Ben tried to spot Danielle back near the door but she had already disappeared around the side of the castle, Paul Hessler safe by her side for the time being. If Hessler didn’t survive this attack, Lot 461 would no longer be an option for her, for them. The baby, Ben’s son, had to be saved, which meant saving Hessler.

  Hans Mundt had volunteered to escort the two of them around to the rear of the castle to make sure it was clear. From that point, it would be up to Danielle to figure out a way to get Paul Hessler and herself over the wall.

  Mundt zigzagged back in a dash, camouflaged by the night. His cold eyes stared at Russett behind the loader’s cover. “I need a gun. I gave mine to Barnea.”

  Russett yanked a pistol from his belt and handed it to Mundt, while Ben considered the prospects of Hessler and Danielle trying to scale a wall identical to the one that lay directly before them. Even if they made it, they would have to traverse rough terrain near the cliffs pursued by a dozen or more gunmen.

  “We’ve got to stop the Gatekeepers here,” he said to Russett and Mundt.

  “We’ll be lucky just to hold them off!” Russett insisted, a grimace stretched across his face.

  “No, we have to stop them. End it now.”

  “Impossible!”

  Ben focused on the castle’s front wall, the battlements. “Not if we get the rest of your men up there,” he told Russett as the Gatekeepers’ fire continued to pepper the site.

  “That’s crazy!”

  Mundt followed Ben’s gaze to the vertical slits through which arrows had flown in centuries past. “No, he’s right. He’s right.” Then, to Russett, “We do it his way or we all die!”

  * * * *

  D

  anielle led Paul Hessler to the rear wall without attracting any gunfire. “Those stairs over there!” she signalled, veering toward them in the open.

  Hessler snatched her arm and restrained her before she had taken a step. “There are none on the other side.”

  “But there’s scaffolding, just like in the front of the castle, isn’t there?”

  Hessler’s eyes widened. “By God, yes.”

  “We can do this, sir.”

  Hessler still didn’t let go of her arm. “I’m doing this for your father, Pakad. Not just for my son’s reputation and to save myself from the disgrace.”

  Danielle closed her hand tenderly over his. “Thank you.”

  Then, holding the gun Mundt had provided before her, Danielle started forward in a crouch. She swept the smaller, rear courtyard in search of motion, sound, or stray light, but there was none. She reached the steps and climbed them ahead of Paul Hessler, an outstretched hand signalling him to hold at the bottom until she beckoned otherwise.

  He caught up with her on one of the lower segments of the wall, then held his position again. From there Danielle climbed a shorter set of stairs to the higher segment, called a merlon, where the construction scaffolding was still in place against the outside of the wall. Keeping her knees bent to stay low, Danielle signalled Hessler to follow her again. The scaffolding was just a short drop from them now.

  She was reaching a hand down to help the old man up when she felt something like a match strike her skin, only with the force of a kick. She had never been shot before and assumed it was just a cramp, a stubborn muscle acting up.

  Then, through the darkness, she saw flecks of sandstone spurting into the air all around her.

  Bullets!

  As Danielle started back for the stairs, her legs gave out and she collapsed atop Paul Hessler, tumbling both of them
back down into the yard behind the castle.

  * * * *

  CHAPTER 89

  N

  ow!” Russett signalled, having given his men their instructions.

  As Ben watched, the four guards, armed with assault rifles, darted from their positions of cover behind the castle wall up two sets of stairs to positions before the open slats atop the battlements.