Brandenburg (44 page)

The smell of oil. And gasoline. A garage? He could make out the shape of a big car parked in the center, a dull glint of polished metal, a sheen of glass reflected. He was certain he saw another door, ajar, at the end of the building, a thin crack of silver moonlight shining through. Had the men escaped there? Or were they waiting for him?

He listened carefully.

Still nothing.

He couldn’t wait forever.

He took a deep breath, felt the sweat coursing down his face as he leveled the shotgun, swung around from the wall, moved inside.

And then . . .

A light suddenly went on overhead and blinded him.

Sanchez barely heard the barked command: “Schmidt!”

In the sudden, blinding light, he saw the form of a huge man lunge at him from behind the car—big, blond, a crazy look on his face like a wild animal, a jagged knife in his hand.

Sanchez swung round the pump-action and squeezed the trigger. The deafening roar that followed raged through the garage like a sonic boom.

Sanchez saw the look on the man’s face: ugly, snarling, his body like some boulder of granite bearing down on him as the shotgun exploded a yard from the man’s chest.

The force of the blast halted his body in midair—his chest exploding, a cavernous hole appearing in the center of his huge torso, guts spilling out and a wave of gushing blood.

The man collapsed on top of Sanchez, pinned him against the wooden wall, the crushing weight knocking his breath out, the face up against Sanchez’s own, eyes open wide.

Sanchez smelled the wheezing, foul breath.

The man was still alive.

Sanchez struggled frantically to push the man off, but the weapon was wedged between them. The terrible weight pressed down on him, making him helpless.

Two others appeared: a young, dark-haired man carrying a big Magnum pistol, and another older man, tall, silver-haired, coming
toward him out of nowhere, Sanchez recognizing the faces from the photograph in Lieber’s house.

Sanchez made a supreme effort, pushed with all his strength. The huge blond moved, and Sanchez saw the knife swing up. Sanchez found the pump-grip, reloaded, pulled the trigger just as the jagged knife thrust into his shoulder, cut through bone and flesh, pinned him to the wall.

Sanchez screamed in pain, and the shotgun exploded again. This time the man’s face and head disintegrated, his body flung backward, as shotgun pellets deflected back, prickled Sanchez’s body.

And then everything seemed to happen at once.

The two men came forward.

The younger man held the big Magnum in his hand, rage on his face, Sanchez realizing that the dead man had been expendable, a diversion. The man pointed the gun at Sanchez’s temple, his other hand reaching to grasp the pump-action, wrench it away.

The silver-haired man stepped forward. His tall frame towered over Sanchez. Kind, soft blue eyes, but something in them Sanchez couldn’t fathom.

Did it matter now?

The man’s voice whispered something to his companion, but Sanchez didn’t hear. Voices—Gonzales’s men—coming from outside now, distant, too distant to save him, muted, carrying across the lawn.

The distant voices had decided his fate.

The man holding the Magnum pressed the big pistol hard against Sanchez’s head.

It exploded.

6:20 P.M.

The moonlit lawns were awash with uniforms and flashing blue lights.

Ambulances came and went. A little later, a detective took a dazed Gonzales to the old garage, past the bodies on the grass.

When they showed him the body of Sanchez, he wanted to weep.

He looked at the corpse for a long time: the pitiful, lifeless corpse pinned against the wall, the jagged blade driven through his shoulder into the wooden wall, the powder-burned hole drilled through his forehead, the floor awash with blood.

Then he looked at the body of the big blond man. What was left of it. A stench of human excrement drenched the air. Both bodies had defecated after death. Normal.

Sanchez had taken four of them with him. It was little consolation. None really. Besides, there was no pistol near the body of the blond man; someone else had done this. A detective told him that roadblocks were being set up around the perimeter of Chapultepec. But it was a big area. Some hope.

When he finally stepped outside, Gonzales threw up on the lawn. In the silver light, a detective lit him a cigarette, and he took it, wiped his mouth, inhaled deeply.

Gonzales gripped the man’s arm.

“Did Juales make it?”

The detective shook his head. “Dead before they got him to the ambulance.”

Gonzales closed his eyes a moment in grief, said in a dazed voice, “How many others dead?”

“Four of our own men. The two friends of yours from Asunción. Six from the villa. That includes Haider and their man on the gate who got it from Madera when he tried to pull a gun.” The detective paused. “I’m having roadblocks set up all the way to the city. A rookie says he thought he heard a car move off just after he heard the last gunshot. In the confusion and noise, he’s not exactly sure. But the garage doors were open.” He nodded back toward Haider’s villa. “It’s possible some of them got away.”

“I want the roadblocks tight. You understand?” Gonzales sighed impatiently. “What about the one you found alive on the lawn?”

“He’s wounded, not badly, but he’s lost a lot of blood. Two of our
men went with him in the ambulance. We’ll make him talk just as soon as he’s patched up.”

“And the staff from the villa? Anyone alive?”

“A butler. We found him hiding in the basement. Another butler’s dead. I didn’t count him. Shot in the chest. He must have got in the way of their escape. That makes thirteen dead in all. The butler who’s alive is too shocked to make sense. He took some pills to calm down.”

Gonzales jabbed a finger at the detective. “Make him make sense. Find out how many people were here. Get descriptions, names. I want answers.”

The man nodded, walked away.

Gonzales drew on his cigarette; his hands trembled. He looked back toward the scene of the carnage, shook his head, and spoke aloud. “Thirteen men dead . . . I don’t believe it.”

All for what? Who were these people? What the devil was going on?

The sound of an ambulance wailing up the driveway distracted him. Too late now. Sanchez never had a chance. To do what he did was
loco
. Stupid. He must have wanted these people from the villa badly.

Footsteps approached, a soft voice saying, “Sir?”

He turned, in a daze.

A young cop stood there awkwardly. “Sir, there’s a man out front who says his name’s Cortes. Judge Felipe Cortes.” The young man put the emphasis on “Judge,” hesitated, looked pleadingly at Gonzales.

“What does he want?”

“He says he wants to talk to the officer in charge. He seems pretty angry. Wants an explanation for all the noise and shooting. He asked if we knew where we were.” The cop swallowed nervously. “He said this was a respectable area, not some tin-and-cardboard barrio.”

Gonzales knew the judge: a pompous idiot who lived in a big house with servants and a fat wife. As corrupt as many of his neighborhood friends.

“Did he?” Gonzales was barely able to contain his rising anger. “Tell him I’m busy.”

“Sir, I told him. He refuses to listen.”

“Then”—Gonzales said it slowly, but frustration edged his voice—“tell him to keep his fat nose out of my business. Or I’ll have him arrested for hampering the police in their duty.”

He saw the young cop’s eyes open wide at the angry disrespect.

Gonzales stubbed out his cigarette on the lawn. “Don’t worry, I’ll tell him myself.”

He turned and left the young man standing there, walked slowly back up toward the villa, each step an agony.

PART FOUR

39

DACHAU. WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 21

Volkmann awoke at eight in the morning and after breakfast checked out of the hotel and drove by Wilhelm Busch’s house again.

The white Audi wasn’t there, and when he rang the doorbell, there was no reply.

Snow was forecast in the next twenty-four hours, and he decided that if Busch hadn’t appeared by the middle of the afternoon, he would drive down to the old monastery off the Salzburg road before the weather turned bad.

There was nothing to do but wait, but his mind was restless. He drove to the old Dachau camp, and the parking lot reserved for the tourist buses was empty. He parked the Ford and walked up to the gate. The railway tracks were no longer there but the camp was still ringed by the original concrete walls, barbed wire, and wooden watchtowers.

The metal entrance gates still bore the words
ARBEIT MACHT FREI.
The gates were open, but a sign on the wire fence said the camp was closed to visitors. He saw a truck with building materials parked inside, and decided to step through.

The camp remained much as it had looked during the war, but the
Blockhaus,
the U-shaped barrack house that had once served as the administration building, was now a museum and cinema. To the right were the cells that had housed the maximum-security prisoners, kept in isolation by the SS.

The only testament to the rows of prison huts that had once stood were two solitary wooden replicas, to show visitors how the prisoners had existed in the squalid camp. He saw the redbrick chimney where the crematorium still stood. A sign on the wall outside the modernized Blockhaus annex said in German: “Museum.”

He opened the door.

Blown-up photographs hung from the walls, and there were several exhibits in glass cases. A tangled mound of eyeglasses in one, looking like some grotesque work of art; a tattered, striped prison uniform in another, a ragged yellow Star of David sewn on its sleeve. In the middle of the long room stood a grim reminder of the brutality inflicted in the camp: a wooden whipping block used by SS guards.

On the wall to the left was a series of photographs: victims of the camp experiments, a cattle train loaded with corpses, lines of emaciated flesh that had once been men, women, children, laid out in the sun. In one, a grinning SS officer, hands on his hips, stood looking down at a young mother, wide-eyed in death and clutching a dead little girl with matchstick legs.

He did not know why he had come here, but for a long time he stared at the pictures, until he was overcome by the images of brutality and torture.

A noise sounded behind Volkmann. A startled woman stood in the doorway, carrying a sheaf of papers. He guessed she was one of the administration staff.

“Are you with the building repair people?”

“No, I’m not.”

“The camp is closed to visitors right now. Didn’t you see the sign outside on the gate?”

He walked past the woman but said nothing and went outside.

As he drove out of the parking lot, he was thinking of his father, and he never noticed the dark green Volkswagen pulling out a hundred yards behind him.

•   •   •

When he drove by Busch’s house again, there was still no car in the driveway, but he decided to stop and try the bell just the same.

When he rang for the second time, the door was opened by a man. Despite his obvious old age and his frail appearance, he was big and burly. He wore tinted, thick-lensed glasses and a woolen
cardigan, his sparse snow-white hair combed back off his deeply wrinkled face.

He peered at Volkmann sternly. “Yes?”

The voice was sharp and aggressive. The man’s skin was yellow from ill health.

“Herr Busch, I wonder if I might speak with you.”

“About what? Who are you?”

Volkmann produced his identity card. The old man held out a wrinkled hand and stared at the ID for several moments before looking up at Volkmann.

“You’re the fellow who called yesterday. My granddaughter told me. What do you want?” Impatience bristled in the old man’s voice as he handed back the ID.

“I was hoping you could help me. I’d like to ask you a few questions, Herr Busch.”

“Questions about what?” he demanded.

“Could we talk inside?”

Busch broke into a sudden wheezing fit of coughing. He removed a handkerchief from his pocket and covered his mouth. When he had recovered, Busch wiped his mouth with the handkerchief and said gruffly, “You better come in.”

He led the way past a hallway into a living room. “This way.”

The room was long and wide, and steps led down to a warm conservatory. Sunlight poured in through the glass. Framed photographs of Busch’s family hung on the living room walls, and Volkmann saw an old one in black-and-white of Busch in officer’s uniform.

Volkmann went to sit in a cane chair. Busch was still good on his feet considering his age, but when he sat opposite, he coughed harshly again and placed a hand on his chest.

“The consequences of old age and a former cigarette habit, Herr Volkmann. The medicine helps, if only for a while. Now, what’s this about?”

There was a gruffness in the man’s voice that irritated Volkmann;
it suggested he was used to giving orders. The images on the walls of the camp museum were fresh in Volkmann’s mind, and when he glanced at the photograph of Busch in uniform, he felt a flush of anger.