Blood Flag: A Paul Madriani Novel (35 page)

“What did you find out?”

“We hired a professional genealogist to climb the branches of Bauriedl’s family tree, and the man does indeed have descendants. Several in Europe and three that we could find living on the East Coast.”

“In the US?” I say.

Herman nods. “Descendants of an Andreas sibling, but close enough for a DNA match. And as to Joselyn’s second point, you can tell her for me that she was right again. It was Edward Pack who figured out how to go about establishing the authenticity of the flag, the issue of provenance.”

“How do you know?”

“We found one of the Bauriedl descendants, different surname, a male, thirty-five years old, living in Florida. He was approached by Dr. Pack almost two years ago.”

I am all ears.

“It’s all there in the report. Take a look under the last tab,” says Herman.

I flip to the page.

“Bauriedl’s heir is a wannabe rock star, over the hill, and probably about as good on the guitar as Andreas was at dodging bullets. From what he told us the recording studios weren’t knocking down his door when Dr. Pack came calling. It’s too bad the doc was such a bad judge of character, cuz he could have saved himself a lot of money and a long story. Pack used his doctor’s license and told this guy that his medical records showed that the fellow had a unique enzyme in his blood that was needed to save the life of a young woman, one of Pack’s patients. He told him the woman’s family was rich and he offered the guy five hundred bucks.”

“And the man believed this?”

“He believed the five hundred bucks,” says Herman. “Pack took a couple of swabs from the man’s mouth and the rest is in the report.”

I read it, look up at Herman, and say: “Then what you’re telling me, according to this, is that . . .”

“Yep. You can tell Joselyn that two out of three ain’t bad.”

FORTY-NINE

T
horpe read everything he could find on the Blood Flag, especially current news items. For the most part they all said the same thing. He sent agents out to question the auction house dealer quoted in the main story. The man claimed to know nothing, and then told them about the reporter and the anonymous phone call.

When the FBI approached the reporter the man saw the opportunity to do a little jail time for contempt and become a national news folk hero.

He challenged the agents to drag him into court and claimed a journalist’s duty to protect his sources. He cited a press shield law that the courts had slapped around like a hockey puck until it went over the glass and out of the courtroom. When the agents told him he had already waived any privilege by telling the broker that the information came from an anonymous call, the guy folded his tent. He told them everything he knew, which was nothing other than what had appeared in the original story. Whoever fed the man the story knew what he was doing. The FBI was chasing its tail. Thorpe was back to square one, except for two things.

There were three names mentioned in the news story on the Blood Flag, the three soldiers who presumably found it in Germany after the war. According to the wire story as well as information from his field agents in Oklahoma City and San Diego, all three of the men were dead. But there was fresh information on one of them that crossed Thorpe’s desk that morning. Walter Jones, one of the three, had been killed in a hit-and-run accident in Oklahoma City some months earlier. According to investigative reports there was reason to believe that the accident was, in fact, a murder and that Jones was the target of a hired hit. Police had been looking for the driver of the car. They had a lead as to his identity. They were hoping they could roll him and convince him to turn state’s evidence against the person who hired him. This morning’s report indicated that they found the driver—dead. He had been stabbed and his throat cut in a skid row hotel room in the downtown area. Thorpe had a sense, a feeling, call it Bureau intuition, that the hand that wielded the blade was probably the same one that held the phone on the anonymous call to the reporter at the wire service. There was too much symmetry for it to be anything other than a plan. Someone was tying up loose ends.

Just when he thought he was about to crawl off the griddle over the Israeli spy controversy, Thorpe now found himself roasting in the flames rising out of the Blood Flag. The news of the flag’s existence had politicians in Washington groping, looking for someone, anyone in the bureaucracy who was in charge of such matters. They wanted the thing found, seized, and made to go away. Members of Congress with large Jewish constituencies were particularly offended.

They were demanding that lawyers at the Justice Department hatch an argument that if the flag was found on US soil, it belonged to the United States government. The theory was that the soldiers who took it were agents of the United States at the time, occupying foreign soil in Germany. Part of the argument was obvious. Whoever had it, assuming it was in the United States, would be well advised to take it somewhere else, at which point it would become the problem of some other government.

If it was found here, those in power in Washington wanted it immediately destroyed as a symbolic gesture if nothing else, and to prevent it from becoming an icon of continued racial and sectarian violence.

There were cases on point involving stolen artworks and other valuables. Except that in those cases the property was restored to its prior owner or their heirs. The prior owner in this case was Hitler, and he was dead. No one was even jokingly suggesting that the flag be returned to his heirs. It was out of the question. As far as Thorpe was concerned, if they wanted it burned, he was willing to strike the match.

But lawyers at the Justice Department told Congress that if the government asserted control and took the flag it could not be destroyed until there was a final determination by the courts as to its ownership. Thorpe had visions of every skinhead in the world lined up with his own lawyer trying to lay claim, probably along with ISIL and their attorneys, and lawyers for the heirs of the soldiers who found it. It would be a judicial circus.

Members of Congress turned their wrath on the Justice Department. To this point the FBI had managed to stay off the radar. That was before an unnamed source passed a rumor to the
Los Angeles Times
that the recent murder of an Israeli diplomatic attaché in that city was connected to the flag. It was the second lead that got Thorpe’s attention, word that the FBI had the attaché under surveillance and had botched it. Thorpe saw the fiery finger of God writing on the wall and recognized the slant as belonging to the wily consul general from Israel. Thorpe’s agent in charge in L.A. delivered his message the day before. The Israelis had shipped the body of their agent home and now they were ready for war. Suddenly the entire world was pointing at Thorpe. They were taking straw polls in Congress to see which committee would be calling him to testify first.

Thorpe’s tribulations over James Pepper, DARPA, and an espionage plot to steal naval plans for an underwater drone, an Israeli intelligence op that never existed, suddenly seemed trivial.

He had only one more string to pull, and if that failed, Zeb Thorpe was in trouble. The problems he faced now were a career capper and he knew it.

A familiar name had crept into the case involving the Blood Flag. It was a San Diego lawyer named Paul Madriani. A few years earlier Madriani had gotten sideways with a Mexican cartel killer known as Liquida. He had landed on some of the Mexican’s ill-gotten assets and earned his anger. As a consequence Madriani, his family, and half of his firm ended up in federal protection and, as a result, under Thorpe’s thumb. They had developed a warm relationship, though Thorpe was not entirely certain if the two lawyers, Paul and his partner, Harry, saw it the same way. At the moment Thorpe didn’t have a lot of options.

He picked up the phone and dialed.

FIFTY

I
’ve got a problem. I was hoping maybe you could help me out.”

As I listen to his voice I’m thinking that it must be something personal. I haven’t talked to Zeb Thorpe in a while, but his voice seems restrained, out of character for the man Harry calls Jughead, the Mad Marine. Not to his face, of course. I’m wondering if he’s sick.

“If I can. What is it?”

“It seems you’re sitting on something that’s in the middle of my career at the moment. I need information.”

“What does it regard?”

“The Blood Flag,” he says.

“You’ve been reading the newspapers.”

“Among other things,” he tells me. “I understand that you represent a client, Emma Brauer, the daughter of one of the soldiers involved with the flag.”

“She’s my client. As for the rest of it, Robert Brauer’s involvement with the flag, you may know more than I do.” I feel him out.

“I doubt that,” he says. “Let me come directly to the point. Does the flag exist? Do you know?”

There is a long silence from my end for the reason that there are things that I know that I can’t tell him. “The difficulty here is that all of this, the information you’re seeking, is bound up in the theory of our defense. What I know is confidential, attorney work product, the result of our investigations and lawyer-client communications. You know I can’t discuss any of that.”

“Do you know where the flag is?”

“Why are you asking?”

“I’m not talking to the state prosecutors, if that’s what you’re thinking. Nor are any of my people. Our interest in this is purely federal. We want to know where the flag is because it presents some real problems.”

“Ah. I’ve been watching the news,” I tell him. “Washington is worried about the political fallout. What else is new?”

“They are planning on having an auto-da-fé, meeting for me with the grand inquisitor,” says Thorpe. “They want to tie me to the stake and set the brush under my feet on fire.”

“How did you get yourself in that situation?”

“It’s a long story,” he says.

“I have the time.”

“Unfortunately, I don’t. Do you know where it is?”

“If you’re asking me whether I have it, the answer is no.”

“Do you know where it can be found?”

“I can’t answer that.”

“Then I take it you do,” says Thorpe. “Tell me.”

“I’ve told you already. I don’t have it and that’s the truth. I can’t go beyond that for the reasons I’ve stated.” The fact is that everything I know about the Blood Flag, the key, the box, the stuff on Grimminger, is all we have to keep the jury off Emma’s back. The theory that someone else killed her father, Walter Jones, and probably Edward Pack to get to the flag is our only defense. How much of it I can get into evidence is at this point the big question. I was counting on the encrypted materials, the instructions from the attorney Elliott Fish to tie it all together, in order to bolster our case. But the thumb drive with the instructions disappeared with Tony Pack.

“Have they told you yet who murdered your employee?” he says.

“What?”

“Sadie Marie Leon.”

“Sofia.”

“Was that her name?”

“What do you mean, have they told me yet? What do you know?”

“Tit for tat,” says Thorpe. “An exchange of information.”

“Come on,” I tell him. “She was a friend. She was my assistant.”

“
We’re
friends,” he says.

“I know, but there are limits.”

“You said it, not me,” says Thorpe.

“You know I can’t.”

“During the course of your investigation did you ever run across the name Ari Hadad?” he says.

“How do you spell it?” I ask.

He spells it for me. I write it down.

I look at it. “It doesn’t ring any bells.”

“What about James Pepper? Do you want me to spell it?”

“You said Pepper, right?”

“Yes.”

“I don’t recognize it. Who are they?”

“Hadad was an attaché to the Israeli consul general in Los Angeles. He was murdered last week. We believe he had been assigned by his government to hunt for the flag. The Israelis want it, as you can imagine. The story was in the newspaper in L.A. yesterday morning.”

“I haven’t seen it. Did it mention the flag?”

“Yes.”

“Then the clipping service should find it. Or our investigators will file it for review. Who killed the man, do you know? Do you have a name?”

“No. They say it was a woman. But I’m not so sure,” says Thorpe. “See, we’re exchanging information. At least I am.”

“You’re asking for information I can’t disclose.”

“You’re playing with fire,” he tells me. “You’re out of your league. The Israelis are not the only ones looking. You’re up against neo-Nazi groups. Do you understand?”

“I’m aware.”

“Have they visited you?”

“Not that I’m aware of.”

“How’s Joselyn?” he says. Thorpe is playing every angle.

“She’s fine.”

“Let’s hope she stays that way. We can provide you with protection.”

“We don’t need it.”

“Are you sure? How can you be sure? Your assistant could have used some.”

“That’s below the belt,” I tell him.

“Help me out,” he says.

“I wish I could.”

“I do, too,” he says.

“What do you know about Sofia? Who killed her?”

“Ah. Something you want to know,” he says. This is the old Thorpe I know.

I could throw him Fish’s name and let the FBI descend on his office. They might find a copy of the written instructions for the Blood Flag, perhaps even the flag itself. The question is if they do, would they share any of it with us? Probably not. Even if Thorpe promised. On an issue of high profile involving other nations, Israel and probably Germany, it’s a promise he would never be able to keep. Governments, I have learned from long experience, take care of themselves and their own lofty interests first. This is true in particular if it involves the political class, for whom there are always special rules. I can be sure that if they landed on Fish and found what they wanted, it would probably disappear, all of it into some dark hole labeled “Classified.”

“I’m waiting. What do you have to offer?” he says.