Emerald (16 page)

“Holy smoke, look at the size of that building! If that’s the library, It’s the largest one I’ve ever seen. It must take up the whole city block.”

Enquiring at the front reception desk for the Department of Eastern Europe they we given directions and walked up a very wide stairway to the second floor and through a cavernous reading room filled with rows of tables illuminated by lengths of light shaded by green shades. Only a few people were at work in the room and the silence of study filled the huge space. Shafts of sunlight filtered into the room from a row of arched windows near the ceiling. At the other end of the room a door opened and a tall slender woman completely dressed in black, her white hair tied in a bun, walked toward them.

“You must be Mr. and Mrs. Cohen. I am Josephine Kratz. The front desk called and said you were looking for me. If you follow me I will see what I can do for you.”

The two from Israel followed Ms. Kratz as she left the reading room and seemed to flow down another corridor and enter a door half way down the hall on their right. She motioned for them to sit on one side if a long, low table covered with books of all sizes and shapes.

“I understand from Malcolm that you are looking for some information about the family of one Hans Huber. Is that correct?”

“Yes. We think it’s possible that he has been murdering Jews in Europe for a number of years and we would like to know why?”

“I understand, and after Malcolm’s call to me I did a little digging in our stacks. What I have here,” picking up a large leather-bound book, “Is the personal diary of one Hartmut Huber, who I believe is the Grandfather of this man you are looking for. Well, in fact it is much more than one man’s personal diary, for it contains quite a bit of his knowledge of his family even before he was born. I had a chance to read it this morning before you arrived and let me briefly give you some of the Huber family history.’

After several minutes of family history, Miriam whistled and said, “So what you are saying is that “our” Hans’ father, the SS maniac, was disinherited by his father when he joined the SS back in the thirties. Hartmut’s diary clearly indicates that the family was fractured by his son’s involvement with Hitler.”

David joined into the conversation, “And this Hartmut person was very wealthy and the family goes all the way back into the court of King Ludwig in the 19
^th
century.”

“Yes and his diary indicates, the most valuable artifact in the Huber family estate was a extremely large emerald, purchased at one time, from the Bavarian National Treasury when their government was in financial trouble. Not only that,” Josephine continued, “The ruling family at that time was part of the Wittlesbach dynasty.” This very library was started in the 16
^th
century and known as the Wittlesbach Court Library until the name was changed in 1919.”

“This may be too much of a stretch, but I remember that there is some jewel named Wittlesbach or something being auctioned in Geneva in a couple of weeks.”

“Yes, I’m aware of this auction because Christies International in Geneva asked this Library if we could do some verification of the provenance of this emerald.”

“You have been most helpful, Josephine. I’m not sure how all these bits and pieces fit together, especially as a motive for all these killings, but we will take this information with us back to Geneva and see if we can fit the pieces of the puzzle together.

Later that night while Miriam combed her computer for more information on the Wittelsbach dynasty in Bavaria, David lay on one of the beds with his hands behind his head.

“You don’t think our killer is after this emerald, do you, Miriam?”

“What, David, I didn’t hear you.”

“Listen, oh quiet one, I said I wonder if he is after the emerald for some reason?”

“Why would he be doing all this killing if all he wanted was that emerald? He could just steal it or buy it. After all, evidently he is quite wealthy.”

“You don’t suppose he thinks it should be his even thought his Grandfather disinherited his father?”

“So now you are a psychiatrist delving into the brains of people.”

Miriam shut off her computer, closed the lid and said, “David I’m tired and want to go to bed. We can explore some of your weird ideas tomorrow. Please go to your own room, Mr. Cohen, and let me get ready for bed.”

“But Mrs. Cohen, this bed is so comfortable.”

“David, go!”

D
avid and Miriam left the library and headed back to the safe house in their rented VW.

Miriam said, “I don’t get it. It doesn’t make sense. What does all that Huber family history have to do with anything?”

“I don’t know either, but let’s talk about what we found out. We know the Huber family goes back over a hundred years here in Munich and one member was something in King Ludwig’s government in the 19
^th
century.

“Yes, and Josephine said that the family acquired the emerald, when the government put some property up for sale because of financial problems.”

“Right, that’s when it came into the hands of a Hartmut Huber, evidently the grandfather of this man we’re supposed to be looking for. Remember his diary, that Josephine showed us told of this Hartmut disinheriting his son who joined the Nazi party in the early 30’s.”

“And Josephine thinks Hartmut’s son was the bodyguard of Eichmann, Hans Huber, to one our agents killed in Argentina, and the father of the one we’re looking for.”

“If this is the family line, what are Hans’s reasons for all this killing?”

“You don’t suppose the Wittlesbach Emerald is the key to the whole thing, do you?”

“That’s a possibility, but why the killing? Why not just steal the emerald and be done with it?

“I don’t know, that would seem logical to me.”

Miriam excitedly pointed at a restaurant they were passing and shouted, “Stop, David. There’s a restaurant I remember from when I was here with my father, and the food was wonderful. Find a place to park and let’s have lunch, I’m famished.”

“I’m not too fond of German food,” David responded, but still found a parking spot nearby. “I hope they have a decent matzo ball soup and a hot pastrami sandwich.”

Getting out of the car Miriam quipped, “David, you’re hopeless. Didn’t you ever hear “When in Rome, do as the Romans do?”

“Sure I heard of that, but I still would like a good Jewish lunch.”

Just as they were to enter the restaurant Miriam’s cell rang and she listened for a few minutes.

“That would be great. We’re just going to have lunch at Restaurant Ederer on Kardinal Faulhaber- Strasse. Do you know it? It’s about six blocks east of the Bavarian State Library. Oh, you know where it is. Could you meet us here? Wonderful, we’ll look forward to seeing you.”

Miriam hung up and turned to David. “That was Elsa, Chief Beinschmidt’s secretary. She knew we were in the chief’s office asking questions about the murders of the two officers and she wants to talk to us about that.”

“I wonder what that’s all about.”

They had just finished ordering, no matzo ball soup on the menu, but David did order a hot pastrami sandwich and a beer, when a young woman entered the restaurant and looked around. Miriam waved at her and David pulled out a chair and waited for the obviously nervous woman to join them.

“Glad you could join us, Lisa. Won’t you have something to eat with us?”

The nervous woman looked around at the others in the restaurant and then responded, “No thank you. I can’t stay long. The chief would probably fire me or worse if he found out I was talking to you, but I had to come. The chief didn’t tell you about the other suspicious killings in Munich.” Lisa looked around again, and then continued, “Two days before Marvin and Herzog were shot; another murder occurred - - - this time again the victim had slash marks on his upper arm. This murder had taken place in an alley behind the Cobra nightclub, in a rather seedy part of the city. I think the chief should have mentioned it to you,” she said. “And you ought to know that the chief was very angry when the Police Board recruited Marvin and Hertzog. There is something going on in the department ever since he took over about a year ago, nothing that I can actually put my finger on, but things just aren’t the same.” Agitated, she again looked around at the other patrons in the restaurant and began to get up. “I have to go. I’ll call you again if I find out anything more.” And almost tipping over her chair in her need to leave, she walked quickly out of the restaurant.

Their food arrived. David took a drink of his beer and said, “Well, what do think of that? What does your womanly intuition tell you about our new, but very scared friend?

You know, with all this weird stuff going on with the police here, I’m not too sure we should stay at that safe house.”

“But Levi said he trusted Simon completely and Simon told us that safe house hadn’t been used in a while.”

“I know, but Levi and the Office trusted Marvin and Herzog also and look where that trust got them. If you’ll trust my male intuition this time I think we should check into a hotel and not even tell Simon. I know he’ll be pissed and no telling what Levi will do, But I have a feeling about this.”

“Ok, I’ll go along with you on this one, but I think hell-fire and brimstone may be headed for both of us.”

Hans pulled the vibrating cell phone from his pocket, turned it on and listened. Emily, on the other end was telling him, as Klaus, that the bank had released the emerald and it would be in their next auction in two weeks. If he really wanted to bid on that, he would have to finish filling out the required financial statement and other papers for Christies right away. She concluded with the words, “I hope this is the right number, Klaus, just thought you might want to know,” and the cell phone went dead.

Hans called Lufthansa Airlines and found that he could get a flight to Geneva several times a day and decided that day after tomorrow would be fine and that would give him enough time to plan his bid at the auction.

“Let’s go back and see the Chief again, Miriam. We can snoop around and see if we can’t find out more about the killings and Hans. It might even give us a lead to where the Nazi groups hang out,” suggested David.