The Blood Flag (11 page)

I studied Rasch's face as I had many other Nazis. They looked like local bankers or little league coaches. “That's why we're here. They bought into an evil philosophy. Really we should just say they bought into evil. Calling it a philosophy gives it more coherence than it deserves. And it's still alive.”

“Shit,” she said again. “And that was on September 29th and 30th.” She looked at me. “In 1941, before Pearl Harbor. And what were we doing? The U.S.?”

“I don't think we knew about it.”

“Shit,” she repeated.

We walked on. Florian and Patrick were quiet. As we finished walking down the walled path to the central part of the museum, we paused before we entered the larger area. Florian finally said, “I have not seen these things before.”

Patrick added, “We don't really seek them out, though. The period for our country from the thirties through the forties is painful. I think we don't want to know some of it. We are as puzzled as you how this could happen. My generation feels detached, we did not have anything to do with it, but we wish we could change it. We don't dwell on it. Maybe we should a little more.”

I asked, “So this isn't taught in German schools?”

“We learn much about the war, but . . . not this. Not all this.”

We stepped into the main display area, which held the bunker. In the low lighting the metal container looked like a train car. The four of us approached it, looking around for security and people loading the display. It was black with thick windows that looked bulletproof. I saw no door. I assumed the entrance was on the backside behind the curtains that touched the ends of the container. There were a couple of workers at one end and a few people standing near an exit. Otherwise, the main area was empty. We approached the bunker and looked into the window. It was broad enough for all four of us to see inside at the same time. The bunker was divided into two rooms. In front of us was Hitler's desk, with papers and combat maps, as if he had just stepped away. His uniform coat hung from a rack behind the desk, and directly in front of us, not three feet away, was a walking stick and his shoes. Hitler's uniform hung from a hook on the wall. I looked back at his shoes. They had to be a size twelve or even thirteen. I wondered if he wore oversized shoes to look more imposing. The walking stick looked heavy, like a weapon. The map closest to me was full of symbols of army units. It looked more like a city map than that of a country. It was probably Berlin. Hitler's last military objective—to keep the Russians at bay. But he was trapped in the bunker in Berlin as it fell. As the Russians leveled Berlin he took a cyanide pill and then shot himself—with Eva Braun, his wife of forty hours, also taking cyanide—to avoid being captured by the Russians.

I looked at Alex who was staring at Hitler's shoes. “Gives you kind of a creepy feeling, doesn't it.”

She nodded and looked at Florian who was trying to read the map.

It's one thing to see a grainy black and white movie about Hitler, or read about him in history books, or even hear people talk about him who were involved in World War II. But it was another thing entirely to look into a room and see his desk, his chair, his hat, his shoes, and his maps, and think of the teetotaling vegetarian who had done more damage to the world than any other single human being.

I asked Florian and Patrick quietly, “You ever see anything of Hitler's before?”

Florian answered, “No. I don't know if anything like this even exists in Germany. It would be illegal to own it. Maybe a museum, somewhere. I don't know.”

I looked around the large area. “Let's figure out how we'd penetrate the security if we were the Southern Volk.” The display opened to the public the next afternoon.

The next morning I got up early. I showered and shaved, then ate breakfast with Alex at the hotel restaurant. Patrick and Florian had a conference call and said they'd catch up later, so Alex and I went ahead to the museum to be there by the 8:00 a.m. security brief. When we arrived in the conference room everyone was already there, including Atlanta police, FBI, Russian security, and Georgia State Patrol. Everyone talked excitedly and drank Starbucks coffee while picking through boxes of donuts and Danishes. I reached for a donut hole as the door to the conference room suddenly flew open and slammed against the wall. I turned to yell at whoever was making so much noise. An Atlanta police officer flew into the room with a terrified look on his face. A man with a black ski mask held a handgun to the policeman's head. Two other men with AK-47s were right behind them. All three wore black masks, black turtlenecks, black rubber gloves, and black pants and shoes.

The one holding the Atlanta policeman yelled, “Everyone shut up!”

I looked around the room for some solution. There were a lot of weapons in the room, but most, like mine, were in holsters under jackets or on belts. And none of us—even with our vests on—could handle an AK-47 round, a very fast 7.62 by 39 millimeter round that would penetrate any body armor in the room.

The man with the gun to the head of the officer yelled at him, “Kneel!”

The police officer tried to turn and look at his captor, but was pushed down to his knees. He knelt at the door, facing us, blocking the only exit.

“Hands on your heads! Everybody! Now!” he yelled.

We all complied.

“Don't even think about going for a weapon. Or a radio,” he said. “Anyone does either of those things, and I'll put a bullet in Officer Malone's head.”

Malone was furious. He had clearly been surprised, and now was at the center of a big problem. While Malone knelt, one of the other armed men kept his AK-47 on his shoulder aimed at us, as the third man put his rifle behind his back on its sling and went from one of us to the next, searching for weapons. He took the service weapon of the closest person to him, a female Atlanta police officer and examined it. He pulled a net bag out of his pocket and placed the weapon in the bag. He then pulled her Mace off her belt, and put that in the bag, then her radio, and finally her cell phone. He went to the next person, an FBI Special Agent, and took his weapon. He searched for a secondary weapon but found none. He took his BlackBerry and dropped it in his bag. “Turn around and put your hands on the wall! Feet three feet back from the wall! Lean!” he said to the first two. “You stop leaning, I'll shoot you in the back.”

He went around the entire room disarming everyone in it, and put the mounting pile of handguns and cell phones into his net bag. He found a couple of secondary weapons and pepper sprays, but most of us, including the Russians, carried only one handgun and one phone.

He returned to stand next to Malone and trained his rifle on us, while the other man still held his handgun to Malone's head.

Malone said, “My knees are killing me. Can I stand?”

“Shut up,” the man said.

We had no options. No weapons, no radios, no cell phones, not a chance of freeing Malone unless we all rushed them at the same time. But if we did that, half of us would die, and we still might not succeed.

I finally spoke, “What do you want? Why are you holding us?”

The one holding Malone said, “Shut up! No talking!”

No one spoke. We tried to memorize anything about them that was distinctive. Size, likely weight, any age criteria we could come up with. The voice of the one speaking was distinctive, and had no accent. I noticed that both of the men holding the AKs were the same size. Less than six feet, and less than two hundred pounds. Probably young. Their movements were fluid and easy. One of the men holding the AKs was left-handed. He held his rifle on his left shoulder, and he had taken weapons and radios with his left hand. Other than that, I couldn't tell you one other thing about them. And they just waited, saying nothing.

One of the Russians couldn't stand the tension. He pushed away from the wall and started walking toward them. “What is it—”

“Stop!” the leader said, holding Malone.

The Russian continued to close on him slowly.

The one holding Malone grabbed his hand, pulled his arm up next to his head and placed it flat on the wall. He put his handgun against Malone's hand and pulled the trigger. The shot was deafening and stunning. Malone cried out and crumpled to the ground grabbing his hand. His left hand bled profusely from the nine-millimeter wound that went completely through. “Go back or I'll put another bullet in him!”

The Russian retreated and leaned back against the wall.

Malone begged for help. He cradled his left hand in his right, trying to stop the bleeding. The blood ran out of his right hand and down to his elbow where it dripped to the floor. “Help me stop the bleeding!”

“Shut the hell up!” the gunman said gruffly.

They had trapped ninety percent of the security forces in the conference room right before the security meeting. Malone bled, and we all waited for something to happen.

Finally the phone of the lead gunman buzzed. He looked at what was probably a text message, and nodded to the other two. The one holding Malone let him go to the floor. He put his handgun in a holster on his belt and said, “We're leaving. If you come after us, Malone will die. We have placed a video camera outside in the hallway pointed to this door. If any of you come out of this door, he dies. You must stay in this room for thirty minutes, and contact no one. After thirty minutes, if no one has left this room, we will let him go. Do
not
move!” He looked at the left-handed gunman and nodded toward Malone.

They bent down and grabbed Malone under his arms and hauled him up on his feet. They opened the door quietly, looked out in the hallway, and led Malone out of the room. They closed the door behind them.

One of the Russians rushed the door, “Wait!” I said. “They may actually have a camera.”

“They don't have a camera! That's a bluff! We must go after them!”

“No,” I said. “Here.” I ran to the other end of the room where there was a white board with various names and a security diagram. I reached up to the top of the board and pulled it as hard as I could. It pulled away from the wall. Others saw what I was doing and helped pull the board off the wall. I tapped on the wall to find the studs, then punched my fist into the wallboard between the studs. I stuck my hand into the hole and started breaking the wallboard away. “We need to get through this wall into the other conference room.”

Others started smashing the wall and pulling wallboard away until we had exposed the studs. We then kicked the other wallboard out that led to the conference room next to ours and several of us crawled through. Karen Brindle in her skirt was right behind me. I stood up and ran to the conference room door. I opened it slowly and quickly stuck my head out and looked both ways. Nothing. I did it again, and looked toward the door of the other conference room. There was a camera on a tripod pointed right at the door. I hoped it didn't have sound.

The others came through the wall and out the conference room door behind me. We ran toward the main display area that had the bunker.

We entered the huge room slowly and carefully. Five security men were lying on the floor with zip-ties on their hands and tape over their mouths and eyes. I ran to the first one and pulled off the tape. “What happened?” I demanded.

He said, “Help me up.”

I pulled him up to a sitting position and knelt down beside him. I had no way to undo his zip-tied hands. “What happened?”

“We were getting ready for the start, and about ten men rushed into the room. We started to draw our weapons, but they started shooting us with rubber bullets. Right in the chest, each one of us. Then they pepper sprayed us when we were down, tied us up, and taped us. Couldn't have taken more than a minute.”

“Anybody hurt?”

“Don't think so. We heard them get into the bunker. Sounded like they had a torch.”

I ran over to the display where Alex was inspecting the damage. The Russians had crawled through the hole cut in the window of the container and were looking at everything inside.

Alex was watching the Russians dart around inside the container. She finally turned to me with an ominous look. “They got everything.”

“Meaning?”

“All Hitler's stuff. They got it all.”

I was about to respond when I heard a loud commotion at the back of the building. Alex and I ran to the sound, and found the Atlanta police carefully opening the metal door that led to the street. Every time they tried to open it, someone on the outside screamed out. They finally were able to determine that it was Malone; his left hand was handcuffed to the outside handle.

Karen Brindle tapped me on the shoulder and said angrily, “Everybody to the conference room.”

We made our way back to our original conference room. Most who had been there during the attack were back. We exchanged glances of anger and embarrassment.

Brindle got everyone's attention. “The police have helicopters airborne, and cars on the way. An ambulance is on the way for Malone. Here's where we are. Initial reports from the officers who were tied up are that there were at least ten of them, all in the same clothing as the men who were in this room. They came at them hard and fast, and the police didn't have a chance to do anything. They said there was one guy who was big, like a weightlifter, or football player. But the rest were unremarkable. We just looked at the security tape. After they broke in, they headed for the exits, different directions, and there were cars waiting for them at each exit. They had at least seven cars, all different makes and colors, probably a list of the most common cars in Atlanta. And they all headed off at normal traffic speeds and in different directions. They blended right into the Atlanta traffic. We're looking for them, but I don't hold out much hope.”

The female Atlanta police officer said, “This was a professional job. The only reason anyone got hurt was because the Russians tried to make a play—”

Brindle responded, “Let's not worry about that right now. They're surveying the damage and seeing what was taken. But they are furious about how all this happened.” She looked directly at me. “Did you know this was coming?”

“Of course not. And we don't even know if this was my guy.”

“The hell we don't. Where is he?”

“I don't know. I met with him yesterday. I told him if they were planning anything they'd better call it off. But, he didn't really respond.”

“And how is it they knew there'd be a security team meeting at eight this morning? Lucky guess?”

“I have no idea.”

She asked, “Did
you
tell him?”

“Of course not. I didn't and I wouldn't.”

“Then how did they know?”

I thought for a moment. “If I had to guess, I'd say that one of the members of the Southern Volk is on the Atlanta police force.”

She looked at me skeptically. “And where are your German friends?”

I smiled, surprised at her boldness. “You think they were involved somehow? They're what, secret Nazis?”

She looked away, then back. “You'd better tell us who your CI is so we can arrest him.”

I should have seen that coming. If one of our informants commits a felony that we know about that is not authorized, the relationship is over. She knew that. “We don't know he was involved. He might have tried to stop them.”

“Right. Sure. What's his name?”

“I can't tell you that. He's a CI and you don't have a need to know.”

“The
need
is that he just participated in one of the boldest heists in American history. You think the FBI is going to let this go because he is a CI?”

“No, but we don't know he was involved.”

“You going to tell me his name?”

“No.”

She paused. “I'm going to ask your boss. We need to get these guys. This is a disaster. And we both know the Russians will go public on our
inadequate
security.”

“You mean Atlanta police's security.”

“But we were here. If we're in the room, everything's our fault. You know that.”

I nodded. “I'm gonna go look at the bunker.”

Another special agent tapped Brindle on the shoulder and showed her a document. I turned and left. I walked straight back through the displays to the large room with the bunker. There were police and FBI everywhere. I walked straight up to the windows and examined them. The bulletproof Plexiglas was at least an inch thick. The main part of the window lay on the floor inside the bunker. I examined the edge where it had been cut. It was less a cut than a burn. It had a beaded edge like melted plastic. The torch used to cut through the Plexiglas and the two large tanks on a dolly were still there, right where they had been left. It looked like a common torch and I suspected tracing it would be futile, but I was sure we would try. I stood at the open window and looked into the bunker where I had stood the day before with Florian and Patrick. The room was in complete disarray. Everything on top of the desk was missing, and the coat rack behind the desk chair was lying on its side. The hook that held the uniform was bent down and the table on which the shoes and walking stick had been placed, right under the window so that you could look at them from eighteen inches away, had clearly been used to get in and out of the window. It was slightly askew. Alex had walked up and was standing next to me looking into the rooms inside the bunker.

I asked Alex, “They find anything? Any prints?”

I could see an FBI forensic team was already hard at work on the scene. “Not yet. They say it's pretty clean.”