The Blood Flag

by James W. Huston

  Schullman bent over gasping and coughing. “Why did you do this to me? Everything I own is in there!”

  Jedediah pulled him up and looked him in the eye. “Maybe you should have thought of that when you pulled a gun on us.”

  I walked over to Jedediah, as the fire grew behind us. We had to get out of there. “Give me the flag,” I said to him.

  He turned and looked at me with deep hostility. “If I’d left it up to you, we’d have left with the fake. Now we’ve got the real one.”

  “Let me have it.”

  He held the two flags close to him, looked at each of us individually, and turned and walked down the street. “Jedediah!” I yelled. He didn’t ever respond. He took two more steps, then broke into a trot, and ducked around the corner.

  We could hear sirens of fire trucks, and people were coming out of their apartments to look at the fire. I said, “Let’s get out of here.”

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  As soon as my airplane touched down at Dulles, I emailed Jedediah. Unlike so many other times there was no instant response. I stared at my BlackBerry waiting for his reply. Nothing. I checked it every ten seconds as I worked my way down the aisle and into the terminal and while waiting to pass through immigration and customs.

  Either he was still with me and didn’t trust me to carry the flag, or he had turned on me, and was now on his own. With the flag. And he’d brought at least two people to Argentina I hadn’t known about or approved. They had to know the arrangement and that Jedediah was working with us.

  I drove straight to FBI headquarters and went to see Karl. He looked at me with surprise as I sat down on the edge of the chair in his office waiting for him to get off the phone. He could see the annoyance and frustration on my face. He said to the person he was talking to, “Let me call you back.” He hung up the phone and said, “So, how was Argentina?”

  “We found the flag.”

  He looked stunned. “Seriously? That’s unbelievable.”

  “BKA came up with a short list. We cross checked with the Argentine Federal Police—a woman named Manuela Gabrielli—know her?”

  “No. Never worked with them.”

  “She knows the Germans living in Argentina. We found the two guys, and the second one said he had it. Manuela said to leave our weapons behind and just talk to these guys. So he tried to give us a fake, then pulls out a Luger and holds us at gunpoint. Then, curiously, our boy Jedediah breaks his wrist, takes the gun, puts his hand in his pocket for a second, and the next thing I know two firebombs come in through the windows. The old man panics and opens a secret panel in the wall to save the real flag. Jedediah grabbed the real flag and I haven’t seen him since.”

  He shook his head and adjusted his glasses. “You’re making this up.”

  “Nope. Definitely not making it up.”

  “So, Jedediah took somebody with him and signaled him to firebomb the place? Pretty clever, thinking the old man might hand you a fake but he wouldn’t let the real one burn.”

  “Have to admit that. Maybe I could have just looked the other way if he had called me in Buenos Aires and given me the flag. We might not have had a conversation about the coincidental firebombing. Not in our jurisdiction. But he didn’t call. Haven’t heard a thing. Now I’m wondering if he was just using us. Pisses me off.”

  “And the old man?”

  “He’s fine. Broken wrist, but nothing else, and he just lost his beloved fascist flag and everything else he owns.”

  “Yeah, too bad.” Karl paused and waited for me to respond, but I didn’t. “So, you want to know about Jedediah. Anything else I haven’t told you.”

  I nodded. “Is he with us? Or is he using us?”

  He thought for a moment. “He can’t be using us to get the Blood Flag, because we had never thought of it till you came along.”

  “Maybe he was using us to maneuver himself. Find out what we knew about the Volk.”

  “Doesn’t work that way. You and I both know we don’t tell them what we know. Maybe he got this idea when you started talking about the Blood Flag. He saw this as his big chance.”

  “That’s what I’m afraid of. He delivers this Blood Flag to his superior in the Southern Volk and they have their absolute guaranteed ticket to go to Germany. He doesn’t need us.”

  “And you think that’s what happened?”

  “Like I said, he’s gone silent. And the way he conducted himself in Argentina, assuming—which I think is certain—that he had somebody throw firebombs into this guy’s apartment, that was not our plan.”

  He smiled ironically. “Your plan was to walk into an old man’s apartment unarmed and have him turn a Luger on you. That was your plan.”

  “Who said I was unarmed?”

  “I thought you said you left your weapon at the apartment.”

  “No, I said that’s what Manuela told us to do. I didn’t think she’d agree to an American cowboy running around Argentina armed. That old man didn’t have a chance if he was really going to try something. But before I could do anything, Jedediah smashed his arm, firebombed the place, and took the flag.”

  Karl drummed his fingers. I waited. He finally said, “I guess there is one thing I should tell you.”

  I waited.

  “Jedediah had a brother.”

  “Had?”

  “Yeah. Jonah. One of the two founders of the Southern Volk, with Brunnig. Jedediah joined them after he got out of the army.”

  “And?”

  “Jonah was thought to be the brains of the Thom family. Jedediah was always thought to be the muscle.”

  “But you think differently?”

  “I think Jonah was probably smarter, but Jedediah is underestimated by most people. He’s very smart, but more . . . clever. He sees ways through problems that others don’t see. Probably can’t do calculus, but if he wants to get something done? Look out.”

  “So what about Jonah?”

  “That’s the thing. Jonah Thom didn’t make it to the first anniversary of the founding of the Southern Volk.”

  “Why not?”

  “We’re not sure. He disappeared. No trace, no body, no nothing. Jedediah put out a missing person’s report. Said he didn’t have any idea where his brother had gone. Hadn’t seen him in days. Shortly after that, Brunnig took over as the undisputed leader. Been there ever since.”

  “How long ago did this happen?”

  He thought for a minute. “About two years. Maybe more.”

  “And what does Jedediah think happened?”

  “He thinks Brunnig made him disappear. Buried him in some swamp somewhere, or mountain ravine.”

  I felt a little heat building. “Why didn’t you tell me this earlier?”

  “Don’t know. Didn’t occur to me.

  What bullshit. “So Jedediah has a big motivation to overthrow Brunnig. He may be using the flag for that. He may have no intention of helping us. This changes everything.” I stared at him. “How the hell could you not tell me about it?”

  “Just did. I didn’t think anything would come of this. I thought you’d babysit Jedediah for a while then go on your way. I never thought you’d find that silly . . . that flag.”

  I fought back my inclination to yell at him. “You think it’s silly?”

  “I didn’t mean it like that.”

  I stood up. I’d heard enough. “Anything else you should have told me?”

  “I don’t trust Jedediah. I guess I implied I did. I do in minor respects, but in terms of whether he’s with us or not? I don’t know. You know the old saying, never trust a traitor.”

  What an ass. “Yeah. I know the saying. Another saying I know is FBI special agents should share information with each other. Do you know that saying? Especially information on a case they are working on together? Do you know that one?”


  He was feeling the heat. “I didn’t know what we were dealing with. I didn’t really have any idea whether Jedediah was involved in his brother’s disappearance. Almost certainly not. But the head guy probably was.”

  “So that’s what you thought the motivation really was for Jedediah coming to us. Yet you never told me that. He tried to sell me on this thing about him being ‘saved.’ Is that what he told you?”

  “He mentioned it. May even be some truth in it. Did he land in the U.S.?” I nodded. “And hasn’t been seen since.”

  “They gonna charge him in Argentina?”

  “If we want them to.”

  Karl had been playing with his computer and looking at the screen intermittently while we were talking. He squinted at the screen, sat up, and said, “Well, here’s our answer. Check this out.” He turned the flat screen around so that I could see it. It was the home page of the Southern Volk’s website.

  I looked at the banner. “Southern Volk appoints new president—Jedediah Thom.”

  * * *

  When I got back to my office, Alex was waiting for me. She was looking at the Southern Volk website. She looked up at me. “So where’s the former president?”

  “Why don’t you tell me.”

  “I think he’s a goner. I think our boy Jedediah . . . pushed him aside.”

  “And now I know why. Karl just gave me one of those critical pieces of information I should have had weeks ago.” She waited.

  “Jedediah’s brother was one of the founders of the Volk. He ‘disappeared’ a year later. Jedediah blames the current president. Well he was the president.” I contemplated the implications. “Does it say what he’s doing?”

  “No.”

  “Check local news sites to see if he has disappeared.” She typed his name into Google.

  I went to the Southern Volk website and looked at it carefully. There was no mention of Brunnig. “It’s like he doesn’t exist. He’s not even in the article about Jedediah taking over.”

  “What do you make of it?”

  “I think this was Jedediah’s plan the whole time. As soon as he heard about this German thing—about the chance to be on the world stage—he decided it was time to make his move. He’s hated Brunnig ever since he took over. Jedediah thought he should be in charge, now he is. The question is, who are we dealing with? Is he still talking to us? But if he’s still talking to us, and he’s killed Brunnig, we’re done with him.”

  Alex wondered what the next step was. I wondered that myself. This thing could go wrong in so many different directions. It already had. Finally, I said, “How would you like to go to Columbia? Can you crash a car?”

  * * *

  We flew to Columbia, South Carolina, the next morning and went straight to a shady used car dealer near Five Points. It looked like it used to be a doughnut shop. The owner had about twenty used cars, most of which had probably been stolen, submerged, or totaled at some point. We bought an iffy green Accord for a thousand dollars. It had two hundred thousand miles on it. I didn’t care though, as I only needed it to go about five more.

  Alex got in the driver’s seat and we drove off the lot. It was a blistering hot day with humidity that made you want to stop breathing; unusual for October. The engine sounded fine and the car drove well. I turned on the air conditioning, which blew hot air in our faces. We drove through a couple of neighborhoods.

  “We need to find a steel pole somewhere. Let’s go down by the stadium.”

  She drove the short distance to the football stadium and into a parking lot that had light poles with cement bases. “What’s the plan?”

  “Back it into a light pole. About five or ten miles an hour.”

  “You back it into a light pole.”

  “Fine. Get out.”

  She stopped, put the car in park, and got out. I walked around, got in, and put it in reverse. I looked over the seat with my right hand on the passenger seat and backed it toward a pole. I glanced up and saw Alex standing there with her hands on her hips and her teeth clenched. I looked back and saw the pole. I was going maybe five miles per hour. So I hit the accelerator to ten. I slammed into the light pole and the impact was much harder than I expected. I felt my head go back sideways, which surprised me, but I was confident I’d inflicted enough damage.

  Alex walked over and looked at the damage. “Holy shit! I’m glad I wasn’t in the car! You must have been going twenty-five miles an hour! You’re going to have a sore neck.”

  I got out to look at the damage myself. It was a serious impact. More than I had intended. I was worried it wouldn’t drive. I climbed back in the driver’s seat, Alex got in, and we drove away. I could hear a strange sound coming from the rear end, but the car drove.

  I drove straight toward Jedediah’s auto body shop. We stopped two blocks short and pulled up to a Starbucks. I took out my pocket notebook and tore out a sheet of paper. I put it in the center of the steering wheel as I wrote “Same place as last, 11:00 p.m.” I handed it to her. “You sure you can pull this off?”

  “Just stay here.”

  “I’ll be waiting.” I got out and stood on the curb as she pulled away. The Accord looked like it had been in a demolition derby. I’d overdone it a little bit. I was lucky I hadn’t punctured the gas tank.

  I walked into the Starbucks and ordered a cappuccino and a Danish. I sat in the corner and pulled out my iPad. It had been a couple weeks since I had looked at the neo-Nazi websites and news stories on Nazism.

  I checked out the American neo-Nazi websites to see if anyone was talking about the meeting in Germany. Or the change of command at the Southern Volk. Not much new. I started wondering how we’d prove this flag—assuming we got it from Jedediah—was the one that was bled on in the twenties and carried in the thirties and forties. We had already been shown one fake, and we now knew that the Russians had a whole trailer full of fake Hitler memorabilia.

  I googled “Otto Hessler” again to see if I could find out anything about his family. We had to get DNA. The Blood Flag was called the Blood Flag because it had blood on it. Those stains were still there. But could they be used? Were they too old? And tested against what? Who?

  I’d been in a lot of cases where DNA testing was used. It was now so common that it was done almost as a matter of course. It had changed forensics forever, and frankly, made it far better. DNA testing has been so much more accurate than all the other types of forensic evidence put together that it has made the odds of a wrongful conviction significantly lower. We, of course, always deny that there is any chance of a wrongful conviction. That’s what law enforcement always says. But wrongful convictions are well known. By the hundreds.

  But I had never had a case where the DNA I wanted tested was from 1923. DNA testing was really about cell biology. I got on my BlackBerry and sent an email to the head of our forensics lab near Quantico. “Assume a blood stain on a cloth from 1923. How can I prove it’s a certain person (I know whose blood it is)?” I hit send.

  I knew the names of all the men who had bled on the flag. Of course none of that mattered if we couldn’t persuade Eidhalt. He’d have to be involved in the testing to really believe it.

  I sent an email to Florian asking him to start thinking about the best DNA lab to use in Germany. After getting sidetracked by checking sports scores and political blogs and losing track of the time, I was brought back to the present when the door flew open and Alex came in looking like she’d seen a ghost. She looked around desperately then saw me. She came over to me and dropped her purse on the small table in front of me like it contained all her burdens. She sat down and tried to catch her breath. She was nearly unable to speak. I waited. She shook her head subtly, got up, went to the counter, and ordered a cup of green tea. She returned to the table and played with the tea bag in the hot water. Finally, she looked up at me.

  “Never in my life have I
ever met or even seen anyone so completely . . . intimidating.”

  “You’re FBI. You’re not supposed to be intimidated by anybody,” I said half joking. “He was there?”

  She nodded.

  “What happened?”

  She took a sip from her tea. She was holding her cup with two hands, probably so her hand wouldn’t shake. Finally, she spoke. “I found the shop, and pulled in. I haven’t been to a body shop in a long time. It feels strange, especially for a woman. This isn’t one of those fancy shiny body shops that your insurance company sends you to if you get hit. This is one of those dirty, greasy, body shops where sketchy men hang out and probably chop stolen cars and fix cars involved in hit and runs. The kind that never wants any insurance company to pay them for anything, because they don’t want the scrutiny. Once I pulled in it was much bigger on the inside than it looked from the outside. The door is kind of small to drive through, but once you get through, it’s like you’re in a warehouse.”

  “Go on.”

  “I got out of the car and stood there waiting for somebody to approach me. I was looking for Jedediah the whole time, but didn’t see him. You know those offices that have a glass window and they can see the whole shop floor? They have one. And a guy was staring at me from there and not moving. I stood looking around with some of the men working on cars glancing at me now and then, but nobody moved. It was damn awkward. Finally, the guy in the office gets up and comes out. Looks like he’s doing me a huge favor just by getting his ass out of his chair.”