At least I’d gotten the baron talking like a man. “Okay, okay,” I whispered, “but give it to me straight. Can’t you just give it to me straight?”
“Indeed.” The baron sat back, put a hand to his chest. “As middleman, my intentions for the train started out innocent enough. I had my contacts in Zurich. Herr Engels from the—which bank is not important—was committed. I had a goal. My share provided more than I needed personally, so I had planned to put a portion of it to a higher use.” I sniffed at that and the baron shot back: “Ah, I see you think me admitting fault is a pathetic sight? Well, it is. I must digress: You see, more than one monarchist group had been striving for the prince’s attentions, and my little circle has not been the most attractive.”
“Like I said: straight.”
“Fine, then. A few weeks ago I sent an emissary to the prince. I offered His Highness most of my share of the train treasure, without divulging its origin, mind you. Because at that time I did not know its exact origin. This was stupid of me, so amateurish, to make such a blind offering …” The baron stopped to rub his soft wet eyelids, then he stroked them as if wringing out every last drop. Across the room, on a roll-top desk, stood a decanter of clear schnapps. Winkl fetched the baron a glassful and then retreated to the hearth and the baron gulped it down with a grimace, as if it was warm cod liver oil. “So many compete for the prince,” the baron went on, “pretenders surely, but… I assumed the money would help, and Colonel Spanner, well, he said he was behind me. You heard him, did you not?”
“I also saw he gave you a good whipping. So your prince rejected you. There’s others. Not the end of the world.”
“Oh, no, no, you misunderstand. The rejection, this I have learned to accept as fate. But it seems I’ve not only misjudged the prince, but the whole enterprise.” The baron paused yet again.
“You must be ready,” Winkl said to me.
His stoking had made this room an oven, and yet my arms and legs had tightened up when they should’ve felt sluggish from the warmth. “I am ready. Haven’t I been ready?”
“The prince’s letter condemned me and my movement,” the baron said. “Because the issue is not my checkered past, but a much graver one. It concerns the contents of your train.”
“The contents?”
“Herr Kaspar, I come from a certain—how does one say?—social stratum. A standing. From the prince’s retinue in Italy to my circle here in town, from my wartime friends in Karlsbad and the military and even certain Golden Pheasants in the party, we are all aristocracy. Regardless of affiliation, most of us come from the same noble stock, or at least we pretend to be. Call this silly. Call this out of date. We are what we are. In any case. When I set up the train job I overlooked this completely, obvious as it is.”
“So pretend it’s not obvious.”
“Word gets around among us. Yet the ones at the top of the heap often find out before the ones fighting to climb it—men like me. Prince Rupprecht sits much higher.”
A hot rush hit me. I was already sweating. It made me itch, right under my hair.
“The prince knew where the train originated,” the baron continued. “So he was appalled at my offer, enraged and insulted. I claimed I had little idea, but to no avail. I was the fool. I should have known, but I did not want to know. You see? Things looked too good for me.”
I shot up, fists balled. “Know what? Spit it out.”
“Ach, this is wrong, so wrong.” The baron rose and, patting his greased hair, circled the room and ended up at the fireplace, speaking into the flames, oblivious to its searing heat. “It’s really too much of a burden to place on the captain,” he said to Winkl, who stared dumbfounded, so the baron moved on, rubbing at his hands. “Especially since the man is on the job himself, and not only that, I mean, our good captain was practically there from the start, and people have died, haven’t they? And he could have done something about it, oh yes, what a burden, such a tragic twist of—”
I lunged. I knocked the baron to the animal rug.
“Desist!” he wailed, squirming on his back. “Don’t hit me, don’t hit me!”
I sat on the baron, right on his chest. I held him by his oily neck with one hand and raised a fist. “Listen up, you. You’re going to tell me exactly what I’m dealing with here, Maulendorff, or this time I will shoot you—and in the back if I have to.”
I dismounted and the baron rolled away, gasping. We stayed on the animal rug, the Baron with his back to the settee and my back against my chair. The sweat rolling down our faces.
“Quit huffing and puffing. I wasn’t choking you,” I said. “Look, I’m sorry. I’m no thug.”
“I know that. I’ll tell you the truth: Colonel Spanner’s train of four freight cars does not carry the prized museum art, overpriced known antique pieces or central bank gold of top Nazis as I had let myself assume. As you might have. Or perhaps, since your justifications differ from mine, you let yourself assume it was something like top secret Nazi plans or weapons parts? And why not let Colonel Spanner grab it before the other party, eh? Expensive, rare art. Rocket blueprints. Why not?” The baron lowered his chin to his chest, directing his grimace at me, zeroing on in. “Those four freight cars? They hold the fine heirlooms and personal effects, assets and savings, of European Jews. Bourgeoisie, most of them. All of it looted. Stolen. From the heaps of personal belongings in the concentration camps to the plundered homes of Europe. There is much quality art here, do not misunderstand. Only no one hears of this plunder, do they? Because most of it has no provenance or listing, clout or cachet. This is not the glory the Monuments Men in your MFAA art units seek, or even know about. Thus, it may be all the more valuable, for it remains untraceable.”
I probably hadn’t blinked. My sweat had cooled. It made me shiver.
“You understand, yes? You see?” the baron said. “This finery was passed down, for generations, only to be snatched from trembling hands—from those who had dreamed of these, their cherished pieces at night, and which of their fine young children would receive each. The treasured belongings of a household. Of a family. Now, it is perhaps the largest remaining yield of a most vicious human harvest. I hear you have seen Dachau. This is everything that did not end up in those monstrous storeroom heaps there. Much more stayed at home. Let me remind you, Himmler’s SS-state-within-a-state had taken great care to extract Jewish wealth. The most valuable products were plundered from homes and gathered from his camps as part of an elaborate laundering operation. There were foreign banks. In Switzerland, this scheme bore the code name ‘Melmer,’ but it had other code names elsewhere. Portugal, Sweden, England—the US? Few know. Even fewer know that, near the end, those hoards that had not made it west were loaded in special trains and pointed toward Berlin. They said it was Bormann’s idea. Bormann believed this could help buy the Führer’s safety. Other trains, with so-called ‘unknown’ goods, were sent south. This was such a train. It had enjoyed special priority on our rail lines, but the Red Army overran its route. For two weeks it sat in a depot, its masters on the run. Then, competing claimants within the SD and the SS canceled each other out until someone brought the train into Bavaria. Now, some three months later, it is to be liquidated by a certain Colonel Eugene Spanner.” The baron pulled himself up, eye to eye with me now. “Captain, I tell you, this train was stocked through rape and murder, tears and blood, and fueled by greed. This is not even the spoils of war. No museum collections or catalogued art. No gold bars. This is a sacking of unthinkable evil, a rolling museum of the deep cruelty that is possible between us all.”
“And me, I’m the delivery man.” I had slumped. My hands lay limp on the fur rug. “Dachau. Heimgau. Same damn thing.”
“Not quite so. Opportunistic, certainly. But you have not killed anyone, have you?”
My chin wobbled like a spent top. My eyes burned hot and I squinted them shut. The tears swelled and trickled out.
“Captain?”
The baron was frownin
g at Winkl, who’d joined him up on the settee. “Really, Prince Rupprecht must think I was in on it all along,” the baron was saying, the first thing he’d said in minutes.
I didn’t respond. I hadn’t responded in some time. For a long while I just gaped at the ceiling. Now I sat sunk in my chair and stared at the roaring fire, my cheeks burning and my right hand clenching a glass of herbal hunter’s liquor I sipped on at intervals unknown to me.
“It is good for the stomach,” the baron had said of his thick and minty brown hooch.
I had seen Spanner’s freight cars again. Sergeant Horton had showed up at my villa to take me on a jeep ride up to Dollendorf as promised. I had played the jolly new Acting CO for him; I didn’t even mention Major Membre, and that thick mug Horton probably could’ve cared less if I had. Those freight cars were hidden deep inside that rocky hill, all right. Horton unlocked and rolled each door open just as Spanner had done that first time. Horton hadn’t kept those doors open long yet it still had looked so harmless to me—stacks of crates, mostly. That’s what I was thinking, even then, only two days ago. Stacks of crates had nothing to do with Major Membre, or with torture, or murder, certainly not mass murder or concentration camps. Those were different animals. How could anyone make a buck from extermination and the reaping of its spoils? Anyone could, when properly motivated. I saw that now.
“And here I was thinking you were the crony,” I told the baron. “I make you look like a goddamn nun.”
In the evening we ate tiny servings of Kuchen und Kaffee in the kitchen, a stark white room with open cupboards. The coffee was weak, but the cake filled with a rich poppy seed sauce. Winkl was out tending to the fire. The baron smiled as he ate and talked. “The first legal elections will come one day and I need a real political party. Have you heard of the new Christian Social Union? CSU. Solid Catholic center base. Yes, I’m giving up my wish for monarchy. Ah, but there was a time… Not twenty years ago, I managed to get His Majesty one-on-one at a party in Bayreuth, to discuss dachshund breeding—”
“Stop. Hold up. I want you to tell me more.”
“You know dachshunds? As I say, I once had quite a passion for longhairs.”
“No. More about Colonel Spanner. The train. Everything. I have to know everything.”
The baron frowned at his plate. He picked at the last of his cake. “Well, you know as much as I. You probably figured out more. Colonel Spanner required a ‘respectable’ straw man, a man with contacts, and there was Major Membre obtaining his command. Major Membre was to be the obedient pawn, but our proud major developed other notions. The fool. He challenged Colonel Spanner. And, with time, our mighty colonel began to see Major Membre as the threat to his operation instead of the answer.”
“I helped him see it. Without me, maybe he wouldn’t have seen it so fast.” I pushed my plate away. It was all I could do not to fling it.
“Sadly, yes, you are his answer.” The baron held up hands. “I am through, Herr Kapitän. I must tell you. I went to see the colonel in Munich. I divested myself of my share. So he deals directly with Zurich now. If he knew I was telling you any of this, I would be dead.”
“So why me? Why come to me?”
“You know why. You and he are two sides of the same medal.”
“The same coin, we say. What, some kind of depraved doppelgänger? The evil twin? I don’t buy it.” I tried to smile at that. It felt sick and greasy on my face, like a toxic goo. The kitchen had a window looking out onto a veranda. I went and gazed out into the night. The rain had ceased, the veranda slate all shiny bluish-white from the full moon. “How do you get out of this so easily?” I said.
“Me, easily? The colonel did thrash me, don’t forget.” The baron shrugged. “Now, I pose no threat. One hopes. The beast can gain nothing more from me. He was never going to give me ten percent. So I gave it up before it was too late. Still, I’ve taken a holiday up here, just in case.”
“Your plan C.”
“Yes. But for you, on your own, it is not so easy, I’m afraid.”
“Right. Now it might be a guy’s funeral. And yours too …”
The baron pulled back as if yanked by a cable. He shot up, knocking over his chair.
“Easy! Don’t get the wrong idea. Pick that up. And sit back down, will you?”
The baron righted his chair and sat, hands limp in his lap, faced drained of blood.
“Good,” I continued. “Now, listen up. Are you listening?”
“Yes,” he whispered. “I’m afraid so.”
“Here’s what you need to know. You’re not going to like it. The man we call Lieutenant Colonel Spanner is not a colonel at all. He’s not even in my Army. He probably hasn’t been for a long time. He was once. He fought in the war.”
“Thus, his hand,” the baron muttered.
“You noticed?”
“I have an eye. But I did not ask. I did not want to know.”
“That makes two of us. I didn’t even see it. The man saw nasty things. Did nastier things. What exactly, we probably don’t want to know.”
The baron had closed his eyes, squeezing them shut. “Dear God. He’s a deserter of the rarest kind. The very worst kind. The one who went to war and did not find it horrible enough. Well, then I can assure you that Spanner is certainly not his real name.”
“I can assure you that it’s not.”
The baron saw his coffee cup. He grasped at it and sucked down the last of his coffee as if it was the last ever made in the world. “I stand corrected. For you, the trick must be to get out of the colonel’s way.”
“Or, get the colonel out of the way myself. He’s got me. He’s involved me too deep in all this. It’s incrimination, see. If I don’t play by his rules, he might have a way of framing me. I can’t know what high friends he has bought or blackmailed or what. On top of that? I’ll end up like Major Membre. It’s only a matter of when.”
Saying these words gave me a chill, sure, but I’d already made up my mind. The problem was, I had no clue how to do what had to be done.
“It’s the choice that is no choice,” said the baron.
I returned to the table. The baron stared at me, his face slack. I sat with him in silence, the fire crackling in the other room. I said: “Do you know the name of Beckstein? Abraham Beckstein?”
“The first name I do not recall, but the surname? Well, there were the Berlin Becksteins, in Grunewald, and the Becksteins in Hamburg.”
“Were.”
“Sadly, yes.”
“There were Becksteins in Heimgau, too.”
“Yes! You are right. I remember.” The baron slumped. “But I fear they are gone also.”
“There was a son. Abraham. He escaped from a camp. I think he came back to Heimgau because he must have learned about the train. Maybe the SS had made him work on this Melmer program. We might never know. But I think he was after that train and Spanner found out.”
“Oh, dear. That certainly makes sense. But, I didn’t know.”
“I know, relax, I believe you. You know what else I found out? I’m living in the Beckstein’s house before the Nazis nabbed it. It’s my billet. Katarina told me.”
“Yes, of course. That would be the very Strasse. I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be.”
“In any case: She knows everything, that girl, always one step ahead.”
“Yes. Yes, she does …”
My mind was racing, revving. I thought things out, right there. Brainstormed. The baron was watching me, waiting. I didn’t notice him anymore. I must have sat there twenty minutes, transfixed.
One idea persisted, taunting me, no matter how still I sat. If I was going to go after him, somebody might as well get something out of it. Somebody who deserved it.
I looked up so quickly the baron flinched.
“That porcelain jester of yours,” I said. “The Meissen you left in your cart that evening I chased you down. Is that one real?”
The baron nodded. “I looted
my own house, I told you that. That’s what we Germans do now to survive—we loot our own houses. In any case the artisans and their work came later. The forged, finer chattel, this was Major Membre’s idea.”
“I wouldn’t be able to tell if such goods were faked, would I? Not if one of your artisans did the job.”
The baron pressed a hand to his chest. “I should think not. They are the best around.”
I wagged a finger. “Now, be honest. About this train. You really didn’t know until the prince told you?”
“I told you,” the baron said. “I never dealt with such goods during the war. I dealt in black market foodstuffs, set up high-class Kompensation. Caviar and rare venison, Absinthe, morphine—and mistresses, if you must know. I was more or less a glorified caterer.”
I shook my head. “Right, and, suddenly now you just up and quit altogether.”
The baron’s lips had drawn tight.
“Maybe you don’t get out of this so easily,” I said. “You want a new start? Your Year Zero, where everything restarts from nothing? You’re going to have to earn it.”
“Earn it? God help me.”
“With any luck. Now listen. You and Membre’s bogus goods—are you still producing?”
The baron released a nervous snort. “Producing? Well, Major Membre, he had us stop selling. He did not want the colonel angry about it.”
“I’m not talking about selling. Talking about production. Come on, you can tell me. After all, I am stepping into Major Membre’s shoes.”
“Yes, yes, okay. The artisans have nothing else. So they keep doing what they do. Even without pay they keep doing it. It’s what they do.”
“How much is there? Your inventory.”
“We have our warehouse, up at the castle, the monastery. That’s near full.”
“Full how? In crates?”
“Yes. Stacked high.”
“Good.” I could go and smile now. It felt fine and loose. The goo had dissolved.
The baron’s chin had dropped away, right down his shirt. “That’s a right dead set look you have there,” he said, frowning, and I saw it wasn’t going to be easy to rope in the baron. Landing his commitment would take the right balance of flattery and argument, stroking and pleading, just as his touchy caste required. There were things I could not tell him yet. Still, I had all evening, plenty more of his hunter’s hooch around, and two packs of Lucky Strikes in my pockets alone.
Liberated Page 20
