Wyatt's Revenge: A Matt Royal Mystery (12 page)

He saw me looking at the photograph. “My wife Kim and our son,” he said. “He’s in college in the States. I’ll get another chair.” He left us for a minute and returned, rolling a desk chair into the office. He took his seat, a large leather executive chair, and made small talk while we waited for the coffee.

“My wife’s from Pennsylvania,” he said. “I’m used to Americans. I like them.”

It sounded as if he were talking about some sort of pets that he tolerated for the benefit of his wife. I wasn’t sure I was going to like him. I must have frowned.

“That came out wrong,” he said, smiling. “What I meant was that I understand the American psyche, the need to get things done without a lot
of beating around the bush. I’m that way myself, so I understand it. Tell me what I can do for you.”

I smiled back. He was okay. “Did General Winn tell you why I am here?”

“No. He just asked me to help you. He’s a good friend.”

“Dr. Connor is a historian,” I said, “and she’s helping me do some research on some people who were involved in getting Nazis out of Germany after the war.”

Speer nodded. “A lot of them stayed, you know. Even some of the really bad ones went right back into government and stayed there until they retired. It was only the worst of them that had to get out.”

Jess shifted in her chair. “Herr Speer, we’re not sure exactly who we’re looking for. We have a list of names that may or may not be important. Tell me about how your files are indexed.”

“First,” Speer said, “you have to understand that I am only a repository for the documents that have been digitized so far. The actual documents are in archives spread all over the country, and a vast number of them have never been released or digitized. The copies on the computers are scanned from the originals, most of them handwritten, and not a few of them in Old German script. We do have an index of some seventeen million names, and if you can find the names, you should be able to go to the document. Here, I’ll show you.”

He turned the computer monitor around on the desk so that we could all see it. He pulled a wireless keyboard from a drawer, set it on the desktop, and stroked the keys. An image came up on the screen, some text in German that I couldn’t read. He stroked again, and a list of names appeared in alphabetical order. After each name, there was a series of numbers punctuated with hyphens.

Speer pointed to one of the names on the screen. “The numbers tell us where to find the documents with this person’s name on them.” He gave us a short course in how to use the search engine, none of which I understood. Jessica nodded her head as if she understood everything he was saying. I hoped she did.

Jock had been sitting quietly, sipping his coffee, taking it all in. He
hadn’t said a word since he shook hands with Speer. “What if we wanted to see the original documents?” he asked, finally.

“You couldn’t,” said Speer. “They’re too fragile to be handled. The government spent enormous amounts of money putting them all on computer disks so that no one would have to touch the originals.”

“Makes sense,” Jock said, and disappeared back into his coffee cup.

Speer stood up. “I’ll get you to a room with a computer terminal. If you need anything, just dial zero on the phone and my secretary will come to you.”

We were being dismissed. We trooped down the hall to a bare room with one computer terminal and several straight-back chairs. Speer said he had some things to attend to, and that he would send his secretary in with fresh coffee and notepads. He shook hands all around and left.

Jessica sat down in front of the computer. “This is going to take a while. Why don’t you two go and find something to do. Come back at lunchtime.”

Jock and I left the building and stepped out into the wet cold blowing off the Rhine. We found a coffee shop in the next block and went in. The space was small and warm, with heat blowing out of ceiling vents and a fireplace at one end of the room. The floors were aged hardwood partially covered by large Oriental rugs. Oil paintings depicting river scenes hung on dark paneled walls. Upholstered chairs and sofas were arranged about the room. The place appeared more like a gentlemen’s club than a coffee shop.

A young blonde hostess dressed in a business suit and high heels escorted us to a sofa and took our order. A waiter appeared with our coffee and left. We sat quietly, sipping our drinks, savoring the strong blend.

The door opened and a man entered, hung his overcoat on a peg beside the door, and came directly to us. He was wearing a blue suit, white shirt, and solid blue tie. He had dark skin and black hair, a prominent nose. He sat in the chair facing the sofa. He scowled at us, and said in accented English, “What do you want?”

“Excuse me?” I said.

“What do you want? Why are you in Germany?”

“I’m afraid you have us mixed up with somebody else,” I said.

“No, Mr. Royal, I know who you are.”

“Then, maybe you’d better tell me who you are.”

“That doesn’t matter. I’m here to tell you that you should go home.”

Jock leaned forward on the sofa, his elbows on his knees. “And why should we do that?”

“I don’t know who you are, sir, or what business you have here, but Mr. Royal needs to, as you say, let sleeping dogs lie.”

“If I knew what dogs you were talking about,” I said, “I might take your advice.”

“Old dogs,” the man said, and got up to leave. He walked a few paces, stopped and turned. “If you don’t leave now, Mr. Royal, you will die in Europe.” He retrieved his topcoat and left the shop.

I looked at Jock. “That wasn’t a German accent, was it?”

“No. It was Arabic.”

“What have you gotten us into this time, podner?” Jock asked, as we walked back through the bleak day toward the archive building. “First we’re chasing Nazis, and now we’re being chased by Arabs. You must have kicked over somebody’s hornet nest.”

“You got me. I don’t have any idea who that guy was, but even worse, how did he find us?”

“Good question. We’ve only used my credit cards, and those are untraceable. Different card and different identity for every charge. I don’t think he had any idea who I was either. So, somehow, these guys are tracking you.”

“Probably, but I can’t imagine how. Or why, for that matter.”

It was a little after noon as we entered the building. When we got to the room where we’d left Jess, she was working so intently on the computer that she didn’t hear us come in. “Ready for lunch?” I asked.

She started, turned, a little distracted. “No. You guys go on. I’m not hungry, and this is fascinating stuff. I’ll see you back at the hotel later.”

Jock said, “Jess, call us when you’re ready to leave. I don’t think it’s safe for you to be out alone.”

“Why? Nobody knows we’re in Bonn.”

“We can’t be sure of that. Let’s play it safe, just in case.”

“Okay, I’ll call,” she said, and turned back to the computer, dismissing us.

We went to a small café next to the hotel for lunch, and then told the desk clerk we would be checking out later that evening. If somebody was on to us, they probably knew where we were staying. If they knew we were leaving, maybe they would assume that they’d scared us off.

I went to my room and took a nap. At three, the room phone rang. It was Jess. “I’m ready.”

“Did you find anything?”

“I’ll tell you later.”

“We’ll be there in the car in a few minutes. We’re checking out of the hotel today. Time to make a change. A moving target.”

“Are you trying to scare me?”

“Yes. Somebody doesn’t like us, and you need to be very careful.”

“My bag is packed and in my room. If they’ll let you in, get the bag and we won’t have to go back to the hotel.”

“Okay. Don’t leave the building until you see us pull up. We’ll be there in twenty minutes.”

For another fifty euros the desk clerk let Jock into Jess’s room to get her bag. We pulled up in front of the archives building, and I could see her through the glass door, standing and talking to a young man dressed in slacks and a dress shirt, no tie. Jock touched the horn to get her attention. She saw us, shook the young man’s hand, and trotted to the car. She got into the backseat, and we drove away, headed for Koblenz.

Jock took a circuitous route through the back streets of Bonn. He was a professional and if anyone was following us, he’d figure it out. We eased onto the Adenauerallee southbound, which turned into highway nine, hugging the Rhine as we moved farther toward Koblenz.

We made the trip in a little over an hour, driving though a light dusting of snow. Jessica was excited about her research. Most of the names on the list were not in the archives, but she had found one, Richard de Fresne.

“De Fresne was a bad guy,” she said, “a really bad guy. He was an officer in the Milice, the French secret police who worked with the Gestapo. He was responsible for transporting Jews from the south of France to the concentration camps. When the Allies invaded France, he moved to Germany and worked for the Gestapo in Frankfurt.”

“What happened to him after the war?” I asked.

“There’s no record of him. He just disappeared. The archives only went to the end of the war, but one of the assistant curators put me onto another Web site that tracked the French Nazis. De Fresne was one of those who just disappeared. There was speculation that he was killed in
the bombing of Frankfurt near the end of the war, but no one knows for sure.”

“Maybe he used one of the ratlines to get out of Europe.”

“Could be. I also found a reference to another name on Wyatt’s list, CBS in Zurich. I think that’s the Confederated Bank Suisse. A lot of the Nazis used it to hide money during the war. Some of them weren’t very secretive, and the Gestapo recorded their names on a list of accounts held at CBS. De Fresne was one of the names on the list.”

“Was there an account number?” asked Jock.

“No. Some of the names had account numbers next to them, but not de Fresne’s.”

“Maybe the account’s still in existence,” I said.

Jessica shook her head. “I doubt it. The Swiss would have closed those accounts after this long and kept the money. Besides, with their secrecy laws, there’s no way we’re going to be able to find out anything about Swiss bank accounts.”

Jock chuckled. “Don’t be too sure about that.”

Dusk comes early during the late fall in northern Europe. Traffic was building as we neared Koblenz. We’d chosen it because it was a sizable city, and three American tourists would not be that unusual. The snow was getting heavier, and I could hear the slush of the highway bounce off the undercarriage of the Mercedes. Jock drove steadily, concentrating on the darkening road.

Jock had the address of the local branch of the rental car company that owned the Mercedes we were driving. We stopped there and returned the car. Jock mentioned that we were going to take the train back to Frankfurt, and the clerk arranged for a courtesy bus to take us to the train station in the city center. Jock used a different passport and driver’s license to rent another car at the kiosk in the terminal. He went to the tourist office and booked a suite at a nearby hotel, picked up another gray Mercedes, and drove off.

Jessica and I found a beer bar next to the station and waited for Jock to get settled in. He would check into the hotel with our bags and sneak
us in later. We didn’t want to register in our own names, and we didn’t want to try to bribe another clerk. Whoever was looking for us didn’t know who Jock was, and certainly wouldn’t be on the lookout for his assumed names.

Jessica sipped her beer, and a small frown danced across her face. “I’m not much of a beer drinker. Matt, do you know who the Klarsfelds are?”

“They’re on Wyatt’s list.”

“Yes. They’re French Nazi hunters. They’ve been responsible for finding some of the worst of the French collaborators. They were just children during the war, but they’ve been relentless over the past few years. They do a lot of good. They have a foundation based in Paris that may be able to help us.”

“Maybe Wyatt had some contact with them.”

“It’s worth a phone call.”

“Will they tell you anything on the phone?”

“I think so. I know one of their researchers.” Jessica looked at her watch. “It’s too late to call today. I’ll talk to them in the morning.”

We sat quietly, Jess taking an occasional sip of her beer, making a face with each swallow.

I watched her wince for the third time in as many minutes. “You don’t have to drink that, you know.”

“Maybe I won’t.” She pushed the glass away and sat back in her chair. “Guess I’ll be sleeping on the floor again tonight.”

She laughed. “If your plan was to ply me with beer and compromise my maidenly virtues, you screwed up. You should’ve tried whiskey.”

“Does that work?”

She smiled. “Sometimes.”

I was about to suggest another bar, one where they served whiskey, when my cell phone rang.

“There’s a restaurant in the hotel,” said Jock. “Walk two blocks down Bahnhoff Strasse, turn right on Rizza Strasse and the hotel is in the next block. I’ll meet you in the restaurant.”

• • •

Dinner was surprisingly good. The menu featured traditional German food; several kinds of schnitzels and wursts, pork, sauerkraut, sauerbraten, potato pancakes, and goulash. We drank a dry Rhine wine, made from grapes grown in nearby vineyards. I offered to buy Jessica some whiskey, but she declined, grinning at me.

The suite was two rooms and a parlor. Jock took the sofa in the living room. I could hear him snoring through the door to my room, and hoped Jessica didn’t think it was me. That kind of noise would doom my chances of ever sharing a bed with her. Not that I thought my chances were that good anyway.

The next morning, Thursday, Jock and I went down to breakfast. Jessica ordered room service, telling us that she would call the Klarsfeld Foundation in Paris and see if they knew anything about de Fresne.

Over coffee and sweet rolls, Jock and I tried to figure out what to do next. There was no need to stay in Koblenz, and if Jessica didn’t have any luck with Klarsfeld, I couldn’t see much sense in staying in Germany.