by Peter Riva
Danny patted Pero’s back and said, “Hell of a partner, you are. Far as I am concerned, I am certainly lucky to work with you, not the other way around. Damn, but we’ll use all this.” He meant in the filming, in the script.
Heep walked in front of Pero and kissed the top of his head. “That’s for Mary, too.”
Since he was done explaining, he asked the major if he there was any way he could call Berlin to tell them Danny and Heep were safe. It was 6:30 a.m., and they would be worried stiff.
“No, Mr. Baltazar, I think we need to prepare our plan of attack before we do that. You see, before your friend Negroni called me, I had a call from a friend of mine in the States, your Mr. Lewis. He asked me to, how do you say it? Ah, yes, to lend you a hand, not much more. I would say he was less forthcoming than you were, but he did say you are new to this level of operational activity, although he has trusted you for minor work for thirty years. The Kenya story was interesting—especially Mr. Mbuno there.” He nodded and smiled at Mbuno. “I find your honesty refreshing. Maybe we can catch these ungeziefer.” (vermin). He said it with conviction. For Pero, the cavalry had arrived.
But Pero felt he needed to check in with Lewis. He needed information that Lewis should have by now. With stray thoughts still bouncing around his head, he realized there was still a mystery to solve.
Chapter 14
Schönefeld
Pero figured the satellite phone would work despite the local cell towers being blocked by the police. Standing outside the Brinker factory with the direct satellite antenna up and working, he dialed, put the phone on a Police BMW hood, and keyed speaker to “on.” He put his finger to his lips to signal silence. Danny Redmond and Heep, now dressed in Police overalls to change from their urine soaked clothing, stood next to Sergio, the major, Mbuno, and Pero. They all listened intently for the connection to Langley while a Brinker factory wing behind them burned. It was a minor fire that Major Schmitz had started to create a plausible diversion for the fire and police activity to placate nosy and concerned local citizens. The plant was locally known to house toxic chemicals. The fire made a good cover. It destroyed an electric tower of no consequence, and could be reported in tomorrow’s papers to be the reason for the telephone blackout for the region.
Unfortunately, the sound of the firefighting wasn’t loud enough to disguise Lewis’s anger. As usual, he wasn’t pleased with Pero soliciting non-professional help, namely Sergio and Redmond, and telling them everything. “Baltazar, how many more people have you involved now?”
“I’ve lost count. But we did rescue them and as Negroni could probably buy the CIA and Redmond could help get a President elected, perhaps you should be more grateful. And, anyway, you called Major Schmitz …”
“Yes, but I didn’t feel I had to tell him … oh, no. I am on speaker again aren’t I? Damn, Baltazar, you might warn me.”
Pero answered sarcastically, “Oh, dear, so sorry.”
“Yeah, well I have news for you. You all it seems. Mr. Redmond, you are under oath not to ever repeat any of this to anyone, get it?” Danny said that he did. “We suspect that there’s more than irradiated gold involved here …”
Pero had to interrupt him. It was too embarrassing having Lewis tell Major Schmitz something, again, that he had explained not ten minutes ago. “Ah, Lewis, they know all that, a third of a ton of Uranium 234, to be used as sheep dressed as wolf in heavy water pits to skew the IAEA verification accounting somewhere.”
“How the hell did you know that?” Silence from Pero. “Hmm … Professor Turner figured that out, and you didn’t tell me? Why?” Again, he didn’t answer. Then, “You think I would have forgotten about Heeper and Redmond, given them up as collateral losses, lost the priority of saving them?” The silence on Pero’s end must have been annoying Lewis. “Okay, okay, well maybe greater priority would have kicked in and they might have been not the number one priority. But you took a chance with world events that you had no right to take.”
“Charles?” The major addressed him by his first name, “André here. You are right, you should have been told, just as you should have told me the truth about all of this. But let’s deal with what we have now. We have rescued the men, and we have proof against Tische. We have arrested, or my men are currently arresting, all the employees of Brinker. I suggest you arrest their agents in the States as well.”
“Agreed, André. Will do.”
The major continued, “We captured the two ex-Stasi in the local Banhof Hotel, the ones who took them prisoner, kidnapped them in Berlin. They are being held on criminal charges, international criminal charges, but we still do not have the police sample, the bag of liquid, back to re-open the case in Zurich. And we still have no way to proceed to determine where these materials were going to be made into fuel rods Baltazar is talking about. I take it you agree with that scenario? The fuel rods I mean?”
“Yes, our experts and,” Lewis emphasized this for Pero, “upstairs agrees this has the highest probability and is a number one priority for every government office worldwide. We must find where these were going to be made into rods and where they had been already sold and were going to be sold. And the history of all those dealings. Tische’s prosecution is unimportant until we find that out.”
Pero chimed in, “As you probe around wasting time, Tische will disappear into the woodwork like his father before him. He’s Tische today, he could be Aue tomorrow …”
The major interrupted, “You seem obsessed with Tisch …”
Lewis cut in, “He’s right. If Tische gets away, he’ll revert to his father’s real name the next day. The red line file I told you about? It told me the truth about Tische. The man he called Vater was a very high-ranking SS officer: Oberführer Josef Spacil, former head of Amt II of the Reichssicherheitshauptamt, known as the RSHA, the head Nazi Department of Security, in Berlin. He pretended to be an army sergeant, Joseph Aue, to get captured by the US, not the Russians. He knew what the Russians would do to him—slice and dice him, no doubt, for his activities in the Ukraine in 1943. But in Allied prison, he was identified by a fellow SS officer and re-arrested by CIC, by one Adam Fellars, commanding Detachment 307, on June 16, 1945. He tried to bargain his freedom with a one million dollar—real 1946 dollars—gold cache. Remember, gold was thirty dollars an ounce back then. CIC turned him over to the newly forming OSS secret activities group, later to become the CIA in 1947, Fellars again controlling the money. Fellars also controlled the Japanese money MacArthur recovered and hid from our Federal Government. This money became the backbone of CIA clandestine ops. In 1964 when Tische’s father died, in Stuttgart by the way, still under the false name and papers the CIA provided, Aue, as he was then called, defected to the East. He rose to prominence quickly, adopting his real name, Tische. We suspect he used secret gold still hidden in East Germany or Czechoslovakia to leverage authority. But he was also a secret double agent for us—secret even from most people here at Langley.”
Lewis took a breath and continued, “So, he rose to become the third overall in charge at the Treuhand. He was a useful double agent. He did hate Communism. When Treuhand became westernized, he moved over to the West. He apparently was still helping to manage hidden assets and provide corporate assistance to our operations.” Lewis could hear the men in Switzerland making disapproving comments, “Yeah, I hear that. Look, no one here is proud of this, and I wouldn’t be telling you any of this unless there was now an urgent mandate to break him. And, frankly, if the DG wasn’t likely to resign tomorrow, anyway. The Senate has called for hearings, beginning on Monday.” Two days away.
Pero had to ask, “You said, real name Tische …”
“Yes, his adopted father, Oberführer Joseph Spacil had a daughter only, his wife died of typhus caused by living near one of the disease-riddled death camps in the Ukraine that he was in charge of. He adopted a Jewish boy there, Jewish father, non-Jewish mother, a Pole. Names were Jerome Tische and Hannah Tische. We don’t know how, but
Spacil took their son, made him his.”
“But Lewis, that’s incredible! A Jewish boy, orphaned, is raised by an SS officer who later supposedly turned CIA informant? Then this boy becomes an agent himself, working for the very people his adoptive father opposed in the war? Does this make sense to you?”
Mbuno chimed in, “Animals do not behave that way.”
“Mbuno, is that you? You there too? Oh, good Lord … Well, he’s not an animal, although he may act like one. He’s an opportunist, grabbing what he can. He saw a way to fame and riches and took it. Although analysts here now suspect the driving force is something else, power mixed with idealism. He may still be a Nazi.”
“How high did his father get … what’s the Amt II division you spoke of?”
“You don’t get any higher. The head of Amt II was in charge of the Nazi program to expatriate so-called ‘Enemies of the State’ and Jews and expropriate the possessions of the deprived persons—gold from teeth fillings, for example, paintings, anything. Spacil was in Berlin when Hitler killed himself. He kept a blood-soaked flag as a souvenir, said it was taken from around the Fuhrer’s body. It was stolen when Spacil died. He was in Gestapo headquarters, Berlin, ordering mass exterminations from June 1944 on.”
Pero suddenly realized that the man, the father, Aue, was a killer, a serial, mass killer. How much of that had rubbed off on his son? “Where was the boy, Tische, during 1944 and 1945?”
“In Berlin, a dedicated Hitler Youth, defending Berlin. He was caught by the French stabbing a soldier in the dark.” Pero knew, then, where Tische’s love of the stiletto had come from. “He was arrested as a minor, never tried, held, and then released, on good conduct in May of 1946. He joined his father in Stuttgart, under our umbrella, our care.”
Major Schmitz had a question for Lewis: “Charles, we know the uranium material was to be ground up, smelted maybe, here and shipped, but we can find no shipping containers suitable for such radioactive material. Just the usual airfreight containers and truck containers. There are rail wagons as well, but they don’t seem used, much.”
Pero had an idea. “Where are these wagons, Major?” Pero had been looking across the runway. The major pointed to the side of the Brinker complex at the closed garage doors. Pero continued, “Are your communications blackout orders effective for the whole region, including that factory over there?” He pointed across the runway at the dark hulk a half mile away.
“Yes, all of Schaffhausen is incommunicado.”
“Lewis, you still have that list of TruVereinsbank companies? Can you read the companies, starting with the letter P to me, please?”
“One moment. Here it is. Okay, it starts with Pi …” Pero stopped him. It was too obvious. Excitedly, he said, “Mbuno had it right, the hyena keeps all the same meat in the same place.” Adrenaline flowing again, he pointed. “Major, that’s your extruding plant. I’ll bet the train tracks connect to there. Place a third of a ton of uranium beads, now mixed with cadmium and cesium, into an old wooden rail truck, push it across to the robotic watch components’ factory, have them extrude the metal, truck it back here, and fly it out. Very low tech in a sense, almost no human hands involved, very safe, and no public roads. Who’s the head of that factory? Who owns the Pi watch company?”
The major called a lieutenant over and asked him to find out. He got on his army radio. The men stood around looking across at the factory lights now coming on in the early dawn in preparation for the first workers to arrive. They all stood there listening to the slight hiss from Pero’s speakerphone still connected to Lewis. They all watched the distant little harmless sodium lights starting to illuminate the Swiss watch factory. The lieutenant came back, “Frau Renate Spacil is the Geschäftsführer.”
Lewis chimed in, “Oh my God. Remember that Spacil was the Oberführer of Amt II. His daughter, Joseph Spacil’s daughter Renate, is now the head of Pi watches, is that possible?”
Sometimes the obvious is overlooked, but sometimes it is too good to ignore.
The major barked an order to a lieutenant, “Get the army, use my authority, seal that factory, no one goes in or out. Anyone there or arriving there, hold them, no one talks, no one calls, use force. Now!” The lieutenant took off running toward the radio setup.
* * *
Pero knew that belief is a fundamental trait of humankind. It is what separates mankind from animals. They used to say it was opposable thumbs, but other creatures have alternate ways to manipulate with dexterity. Then they said it was the ability to communicate, but any dog owner will tell you dogs do the same, as do dolphins and whales, even if it is not with the same refinement as humans. Then they claimed it was the ability to dream or imagine, and then science showed that dreaming and imagination are essential to any cognitive thought process, so even ants had that one licked.
But the ability to believe in an abstract principle and to dedicate your whole life and your children’s lives to that process, that seems to be a human characteristic. At times, it is a dangerous one.
* * *
Thirty minutes later, in the sleepy village, only three miles from the Pi factory, the major set another fire, this time to a car on the street outside a very luxurious house with old world charm. That early in the morning, the sounds of the crackling gas and windows shattering, combined with the stench of burning rubber awakened the whole street. While the fire department doused the flames, uniformed officers went from door to door, politely knocking, asking whose car it was. The major and a uniformed officer knocked on the door of the closest house and, as it opened, rushed and grabbed the man who kept asking what they wanted. They silenced him and handed him to more uniformed officers. From behind them, four of the major’s best men rushed the house. It took only minutes to secure the rooms and floors. The occupants included: one maid, one servant, the butler they had captured, and Tische’s adopted sister.
Renate Spacil was seventy-five if she was a day. Tall, thin, elegant, and blue-eyed (gone to blue-gray with age). She commanded the room. Admittedly, it was her rococo living room, but even disturbed from her bed, standing there on the silk carpeting, she had a presence they all could feel. Her German was hohes Deutsch, the aristocratic German of the Weimar period before Hitler. The Nazi elite spoke hohes Deutsch, thinking it gave them class to hide their bestiality. Her English was also starchy and precise.
“What is it you wish, gentlemen?”
Major Schmitz stepped forward. “Madam, you are under arrest.”
She reached for the phone, “And what is the charge?”
“Do not touch that phone.” She removed her fingers, folded her hands in front of her nightgown. “Treason and other such crimes to be determined. You will be placed in custody presently.” He was waiting for a female officer to take her in charge.
“No, I will not. You will regret this intrusion, Major. When you have finished your bluster and bravado, you will allow me to call Judge Remke who will order you to leave me alone.”
He decided to shake her confidence. “I am glad you mentioned him. He will now be arrested as we speak.” He snapped his fingers and a junior officer left the room hurriedly.
Her eyelids fluttered once, twice, and she resumed her calm composure.
Schmitz continued, calmly, with authority, “Now, you will sit, and when the policewoman arrives, you will be completely bodily searched, your staff will be searched, and your house will be torn apart. We will find everything. We have your brother …” again the eyelids fluttered, “so your übles geschäft,” (evil business), “is at an end.” With that, she exhaled and sat, waiting, beginning to look somewhat vulnerable, an animal who realized she was trapped. The years had, perhaps, weakened her father’s indoctrinated resolve.
Mbuno’s words came back into his head at that moment, so Pero said it aloud “The hyena always has a special place he keeps food.” Heep and Major Schmitz nodded.
Pero kneeled before her and said, calmly, “Renate, where is your father’s flag?” V
ery fleetingly her eyes darted to the left and then came back to rest on her hands folded in her lap. It was so brief. If he hadn’t been watching only her eyes, he wouldn’t have seen them dance. He walked over to the ornate Viennese chest of drawers, with a pink marble top, and pulled on the ormolu handles of the top drawer. There, in a glass box, folded Swastika uppermost, was Hitler’s flag, the icon of their true belief intact, now a family tradition, an icon still to be worshiped.
As he lifted it out, Renate sprang up and threw herself at Pero—all one hundred pounds and seventy-five years, like a screeching banshee, “Nein!” Schmitz grabbed her and muscled her back into her chair. Schmitz didn’t like Nazis, not even old woman Nazis. He almost struck her. The uniformed officer stopped him.
The woman officer arrived, and she handcuffed Renate Spacil and led her away. Schmitz ordered, “A thorough body search, everything.” Then he commanded his twelve men present to sweep the house, “Everything, nothing is to be left to chance. This man here,” he pointed to Pero, “has a theory that has proven correct again.” He pointed to the glass case with the flag. “Examine that most carefully and everything else that is in this house. And I mean everything.”
Having given orders, the major strode out into the morning and waited for Danny, Mbuno, Heep, and Pero to pile into a police car. They proceeded to the landing strip and Sergio’s plane. When they got there, Sergio looked better. “It just a little bump really.” He laughed, but no one else thought it funny.
A call came from Lewis as they gathered at the steps of Sergio’s plane, “Baltazar, urgent matters. The man who tried to impede you, the one Mbuno shot? He was a contractee of the agency, British actually, ex-SAS, one of six given authority to take orders from Tische—everything authorized by upstairs. Five of these agents are still at large. We cannot recall them, we don’t know how. Sorry about that.” He made it sound so casual. It wasn’t. Pero’s neck still hurt. “Another thing, we have lost sight of Tische and can offer no additional assistance in Germany. The only four service people we can count on are protecting your people there at the hotel. The rest may be riddled with ex-Stasi spies reporting to Tische. We can’t take the chance of using the police for the same reasons.”
