The Blood Flag (23 page)

Eidhalt couldn't take his eyes off the suitcase. Jedediah looked at me, “You got your flashlight?”

I pulled it out of my pocket and directed it at the suitcase. Jedediah opened the two over-center clasps and pushed the lid up and back. My light illuminated the dark red cloth of the Blood Flag. It was folded, but still had a lot of bulk. It was made of very high-quality cotton that had maintained most of its bright red color for the past ninety years. This wasn't just one of the millions of Nazi flags that had been made during the thirties and forties, this was
the
Nazi flag.

Eidhalt said, “Take it out.”

Jedediah looked up at him from his kneeling position over the flag. “I don't want to damage it.”

“Take it out!” Eidhalt yelled.

Jedediah reached in and gently lifted the entire flag. He unfolded it carefully and held it up above his head with his arms spread wide so that the flag fell down in front of him. Even with his arms fully extended, the flag was too large to not bend gently and touch the ground. I had to admit that just looking at it gave me the chills. The dark red contrast against the black swastika angled aggressively inside the white circle in the middle of the flag. The flag looked like it was suspended from a cross-beam pole on this massive gravestone. Eidhalt approached it and knelt down by the foot of the flag. I approached with him. He looked at me and took the flashlight out of my hand. “I have looked at every photograph that exists of this flag. I know where the stains should be. You see here, and here,” he said pointing, “it's hard to see the color because of the red flag, but as you can see, it's darker. Almost brown. These stains are in exactly the right place.”

He stood up and shined the flashlight on the entire flag again. He looked at the edges and felt the cloth. “Either this is
die Blutfahne
or it's an amazing fake.” He glanced at his man, who nodded in agreement.

I replied, “Schullman tried to give us a fake, but we think we have the real one. I suppose he could have had two fakes, but why would he care enough to almost die in a fire to recover a fake?”

He smiled with an animal-like smile. “Nicely done. Did he resist?”

“Let's just say we have the flag and he doesn't.”

I looked up at Jedediah. “You can come down.”

Jedediah folded the flag in half and jumped down to the bottom of the stone. He began refolding the flag like a map, honoring its pre-existing creases.

I said, “We have to be absolutely sure it's the right one so you can use it for the meeting. As the rallying point. But we also want to know, because the Southern Volk now owns it.”

Eidhalt was suddenly furious. “You're going to keep it?”

“
We
went to Argentina to get it. We
own
it. We brought it here because you invited us to your meeting. We want to come, and you asked us to do something to impress you. You asked everybody to do something you'd hear about. Not to give you anything. So it's here, and you can use it at the meeting. Rally the entire Nazi movement around the world. But it's ours, always will be.”

He turned and faced me directly. He said in a low whisper. “If you do not give me this flag, you will not come to the meeting. You will not be part of the future of National Socialism. You will be a memory. A relic. A bunch of southern rednecks who can do
nothing
without
me
.”

I stepped forward slightly. “We have the flag. We will get Friedl's DNA and we don't give a shit whether you're involved. We'll tell the whole world we have it and that history is now on the side of the Southern Volk, the new worldwide leader of Nazism. We'll set up our
own
meeting. We'll invite everybody in the world to the United States. We'll have all the freedom we need to operate. We don't have the laws you have in Germany. In the United States we can wear swastikas all day long. We have the
First Amendment
. Something you'll never have. We can do anything we want and we can say anything we want. We can scream all the racist and anti-Semitic things we want. We can rally everybody to the international cause with complete impunity. And we will tell them that they can come and do what Hitler did at the party convention in Nuremberg in 1936. They can bring their flags, their banners, and
touch
them to the Blood Flag!” I watched his face as he tried to contain his anger. “I can buy a new thousand-acre ranch in Idaho or Wyoming
tomorrow
, and give it to the cause. We can build a massive compound, with buildings, dormitories, gunnery ranges, a chow hall, a
movie
theater—whatever we want—for anyone we invite. They can stay for weeks. We can train. We can train with weapons. Real weapons. Fifty-caliber sniper rifles, M4s, AK-47s, bulletproof vehicles, and a driving track to learn evasive driving. We can have night scopes, night vision goggles, GPS tracking devices, whatever our military has, we can have—as long as it's not fully automatic. And it's all legal in America, unlike Germany. We'll teach them urban combat tactics and the use of explosives. Molotov cocktails, dynamite, and fertilizer. In fact, that is our plan. You were part of that plan, because you're going to do the first thing—unify the international movement. But we plan to train them, and lead the armed side of this struggle. Something that you can't possibly do here because
everything
is illegal in Germany. But everything is
legal
in America. Isn't it a beautiful country?

“So you decide. Tell me how you're going to play it. If you try to cut us out, it's the last time you'll see us or the flag. And I'll make sure you're no part of the rise of the Nazi Army that is about to occur.” I paused. “So, if you think we need you, we don't. We can do everything alone that you plan on doing, and probably better. You have money, so do I. Maybe more than you. And I don't have the notoriety that you do. I'm not in the
papers
like you have been. I haven't bought a come-and-get-me castle. And people will come to the United States. They'll come to my new ranch. So don't push me. I'll work with you. We'll work together if we can. But if we can't,” I shrugged, “I don't really give a shit.”

Eidhalt watched Jedediah finish folding the flag and put it back in the suitcase. He said, “You have the flag, and it should be at the meeting. Maybe our next meeting will be in the United States, and we can organize it together. But for now, we need to know if we have—if you have—the actual flag. We must get it tested.” Eidhalt hesitated, nearly choking on his words. “We want to work with you.”

I said, “The best DNA lab in the world is in the United States. But I don't want to go back there right now. And I don't want to send the flag back there. So tell us whether you know if there is a place we can do it here. Right away. Because we have to get this done before the meeting.”

“The German laboratories here in Munich are among the best. Everyone knows that. If you're confident they can get a sample off the flag, we can get it identified. But are you sure about getting a DNA sample from an old skeleton?”

I nodded. “I'm sure. We're going to take the skulls and get them all tested, to make sure we get Friedl's.”

“Take what skulls?”

“From Friedl's family. I pointed back to the grave. “There are four names on the gravestone. We're going to take them all.”

“When?”

Jedediah closed the suitcase and picked it up. He turned and walked toward me and said, “Right now.”

We walked directly to the gravesite. Eidhalt and his man stared at the enormous stone with the large letters FRIEDL on it. “His grave was to be unmarked,” he said. “Leave it to ignorant Americans to look anyway,” he said.

Jedediah walked behind the gravestone and pulled out shovels and a pick ax. He tossed one of the shovels to the other German, looked around, and slammed his shovel into the dirt. He smashed it with his foot, then dug up a foot of dirt and threw it over his shoulder. He stopped, took off his turtleneck, and was wearing just his tanktop T-shirt.

Eidhalt frowned as he saw the tattoos in the dim light.

Jedediah looked at him and didn't respond. He looked at the other German and said, “
Dig
.”

Eidhalt said, “Do we have time to do this?”

Things were out of his control and he didn't like it.

“One hour.” Jedediah responded as he smashed his shovel into the ground again and tossed another pile of dirt. The ground was soft and moist and turned over easily. The other German tried to keep up, but was contributing a quarter of the total effort. Jedediah was like a human steam shovel. His massive muscles were visible in the moonlight. They glistened with sweat as he grunted and tore through the dirt.

A little over an hour later Jedediah and the other German were deep enough that only their heads showed above the hole. The German was exhausted. Jedediah kept digging. His shovel hit something hard. His muffled voice called out from below, “We're there.”

He scraped his shovel on top of a casket. He said, “Two caskets side by side. The other two must be underneath. Let me get these two first . . . let me see if I can . . . open it from the side. Otherwise I'll need the pick ax.”

I pointed my flashlight on the caskets as the German climbed out. Jedediah knelt on one casket with his hands in between the two. The latches faced each other and were in the middle of the grave. He tried to pull up the lid of the opposite casket without luck. He looked up at me and squinted in the light. “Hand me the crowbar.”

I handed down the three-foot-long crowbar. He placed it under the edge of the lid and stomped on it with his booted foot. The lid popped open, revealing the deteriorated white satin lining and a skeleton. Pieces of clothing and hair lay around, remnants of what had been there more than ninety years before. Jedediah looked up at us, grabbed the shovel, and slammed it into the skeleton at the base of the skull, severing the spine. He took the burlap bag hanging out of the back of his jeans and tossed the skull into the bag. He slammed the lid closed on that casket, went to the end, then grabbed under the lip and pulled it until it was standing upright. He then leveraged it over until it was standing on top of the other one. I knew he was strong, but to watch him exercise his nearly superhuman strength with such ease and fluidity was remarkable. He handled the casket—which had to weigh two hundred pounds—like it was a bushel of corn. He took his crowbar out, and pried the lid open on the next one underneath the one he'd already opened. I illuminated the inside of the casket with my flashlight while standing on the edge of the gaping hole.

The inside of this casket was much less luxurious. It was wood-lined, probably with spruce, as it showed no evidence of bugs. The skeleton looked a little shorter than the previous one. Probably one of the females, but we weren't taking any chances. Jedediah lifted the skeleton out of the casket, grabbed the spine with one hand and the skull with the other, and tore it off. He dropped the skeleton back into the casket and put the skull into the sack.

I glanced at Eidhalt who was nearly falling into the hole with fascination and amazement. Jedediah moved the first two caskets back to where they started, handling them like they were empty boxes, and pried open the lid of the third. He didn't even hesitate. He slammed the shovel into the spine again. The skull flew forward and hit the front of the casket. Jedediah tossed it into the sack with the other two skulls, slammed the lid shut, wrestled the casket up, and opened the fourth. This was the largest skeleton of all. Probably the father, or Friedl himself. He smashed his shovel down, severing the spine of the fourth buried Friedl. The skull came free but the shovel continued through the bottom of the casket. The metal blade was completely out of sight. Jedediah looked surprised. He removed the skull and tossed it into the bag where it clicked audibly into the other three, then pulled his shovel back out. He closed the lid on the casket, and pulled it until it stood upright. He maneuvered around it and moved it to the other end of the hole, and looked down to where his shovel had gone through. We could see what appeared to be metal underneath the dirt. He got on his knees and began moving the dirt aside to reveal what appeared to be an aluminum floor for the grave plot. He could see the hole his shovel had made, but could not see what was on the other side of the aluminum. He looked up at us. We stared at him and the aluminum with puzzlement.

I asked the obvious question, “What is that?”

“Looks like a floor.”

I looked at Eidhalt. “Graves have floors in Germany?” He shrugged. “Not that I know of.”

Jedediah slammed his shovel into the aluminum again and again until he'd outlined a square with one side still attached. He bent the aluminum up and then back so the square was exposed as a hole. He looked up at me. “Toss me your flashlight.”

He caught it and plunged the light into the hole. It wasn't just a floor. There was empty space on the other side of the aluminum. Jedediah got down on his knees and put the light into the hole. He turned and looked up at us. “It's an aluminum box the size of the whole grave area. And it's full of ammo.”

I asked, “Ammo? Bullets?”

“Well ammo boxes, steel ammo boxes.”

“Can you get one?”

He nodded and turned back toward the hole. He lay down on the dirt and reached his arm in and pulled out one of his ammo boxes. It was nine inches tall, twelve inches long, and four inches wide, with a lid that opened lengthwise. He put the small flashlight into his mouth, pointed it at the ammo box, undid the clasp and opened it. He pointed the light into the box and we all saw it at once. Gold. Jedediah let the lid fall back away from the opening, put the flashlight into his left hand and reached into the box. He pulled out what appeared to be a solid gold coin, one of hundreds shining in the intense LED light.

I said, “Is that box full of those coins?”

Jedediah examined the coin, and nodded. “Nazi coins. Gold Nazi coins. Minted in,” he turned the coin over to the other side, “1944.”

I asked, “Are they real?”

Jedediah was apparently wondering the same thing himself. He felt the coin, pressed a fingernail into it, bit it, and said, “I don't really know what a gold coin feels like. Feels a tiny bit softer than a U.S. silver dollar would, but I don't know for sure. I don't know why somebody would bury a bunch of fake coins.”

The other German said, “How many boxes are down there?”

Jedediah put his head into the hole and shown the flashlight around again and counted. He came back out of the hole. “Hard to say for sure, but looks like maybe ten.”

“Is there a floor underneath this aluminum that you just cut through?”

Jedediah nodded, “Looks like a box. A big aluminum box. Nothing else in it except these ten ammo cans. My guess is they're all full of these gold coins. But I can check them.”

I nodded. “Open them all.”

He did. Each box was full of the same gold coins. All apparently minted at the same time, never used for anything and stored away for sixty-five years.

Jedediah stood up, took his shovel and slammed it down through the hole all the way through to the bottom of the aluminum box he had identified. The shovel tip penetrated the bottom layer of aluminum and then stopped. Thom looked up and said, “Looks like that's it. Nothing but dirt on the other side of this aluminum bottom.”

I said, “Hand the ammo boxes up to us.” Eidhalt's man asked, “Why store them here?”

Eidhalt said what I was thinking. “Because they knew the name of the first Nazi martyr. They knew somebody would come back some day.”

Jedediah asked from inside the grave, “Why not a bank account?”

I answered. “Bank accounts are traceable, and safe deposit boxes have keys. Whoever had the Blood Flag, had the future of the Nazi movement. And whoever buried this gold wanted to finance it.”

Jedediah was skeptical. “How would they have known about DNA in the forties?”

I said, “How do we know the gold was buried in the forties? We don't. But whoever had the gold didn't have the flag. He wanted them to go together. And maybe there is gold buried under every one of the martyrs' graves that Hitler honored.”

I looked around the graveyard then said to Eidhalt, “Since it was our idea to dig up Mr. Friedl, the gold is ours.”

Eidhalt was instantly angry. “
We
are the future of the Nazi movement.
I
am the future. This entire unification movement is
mine
. The gold stays with the movement.”

I looked at him intensely. “
I
am the movement in the United States. This is our gold.”

He bristled. “This is on German soil, put here by Germans, for the future rise of the Nazi party. It was put there for
me
.”

I knew this was the moment. I looked at him and said, “We both have important roles. I say we split it.”

He was surprised by my sudden change of heart.

I said, “Five boxes each. But we need to get it out of here tonight. We can't leave anything here for somebody else to come and get. Once somebody sees this fresh dirt, they're going to start digging.”

His face lit up. “I accept. But these are heavy. How do we get them out of here?”

“We'll drive right into the cemetery and load the boxes into our cars. We're going to have to move fast. Call me in the morning and let me know where you want us to bring the flag for the testing.”

“I think we should keep the skulls, you have the flag.”

I shook my head vigorously. “No way. We're not letting these out of our sight.”

He looked at me suspiciously. “How do I know that you haven't brought a phony flag with you and skeletons that you know will match? No. You keep the flag, we'll keep the skulls, and we'll meet at the lab and give them both things at the same time.”

His position was actually smart. “I agree. Call Jedediah tomorrow and tell us where to meet.”

He nodded. “If this is the Blood Flag, and if this matches, you will have invigorated Nazism like nothing else could have. This will be the very thing that we needed to unite all movements around the world.” He looked at me directly, “And I will need you as part of the international movement.”

Jedediah jumped out of the grave. “I'll get the car.”

As soon as we cleared the curb at the edge of the cemetery, I started driving around Munich randomly. After an hour, when I was sure we weren't being followed I pulled off the road under some overhanging trees.

We opened the trunk and took out the suitcase holding the Blood Flag. I gently removed it and laid it on the seat, and folded back the false bottom to the suitcase. I took out one of my two handguns that I'd placed there in its holster, and put it on my belt. I handed Jedediah the other one. He checked it and put it inside his waistband in the small of his back. As we drove on, randomly watching the traffic, I started calculating. Each ammo box weighed about fifty pounds. Assuming the gold was relatively pure, with sixteen ounces to a pound, that was eight hundred ounces of gold. At twelve hundred dollars per ounce that made nine hundred and sixty thousand per box. About a million dollars. Five million dollars for our five boxes.

We headed out of Munich. Jedediah asked where we were going. I told him I wanted to end up in a random German town and stay in a nondescript hotel no one would ever think of. When we learned where we had to be later that morning, we'd be there. But no one was going to know where we had come from. I wasn't even going to tell Alex or the BKA.

Michelle's voice was echoing in my head. This was where it started getting dangerous. Five million in gold and a flag people would kill for. Danger I'd brought on myself. All to prove a point, or prove something to myself, as she saw it. Unnecessarily.

I stayed on two-lane German roads. After driving through the dark countryside for a half hour, we entered a town. By the time we pulled in it was two in the morning. All I needed was a light. I didn't mind waking somebody up. It wasn't a big town, maybe five or six thousand people. It was near the mountains so I hoped it had a tourist base, and at least a couple hotels. We looked for any signs of life and then I saw a hotel sign. It was lighted, although the building was dark. As we pulled up in front, I could see the glimmer of a light in the lobby. I walked in and went to the reception desk, which had a bell on top. I rang it a couple of times and waited. I heard someone stirring in the back. A woman in her sixties came out through the door in her house slippers. The back of her hair was flat. She regarded me with skepticism. She said nothing.

I said, “Do you speak English?”

“A little.”

“I'm here with five other colleagues. We are a geological team studying the mountains. I apologize for arriving so late, but we didn't finish our work until recently. So if possible, I'd like six rooms. Do you have six rooms available?”

She looked at me quizzically. “Six? I see only you.”

“One is out in the car with me, the other four are on their way.”

“It's one hundred euro per room. How many nights?”

“One night. Then we're back on the road.”

“How are you paying?”

“In cash, if that is alright.”

She nodded. She turned and prepared six electronic keys. She put each of them in small envelopes and put the room numbers on them. She stopped. “Do the rooms need to be together?”