The Blood Flag (26 page)

I got Jedediah and brought him up to the apartment. We went out and bought a couple of pillows and some blankets. We took the blankets to the cars and wrapped our newly captured firearms in them and brought them up to the apartment with the leather suitcase. We put the suitcase in the back corner of one of the bedrooms and checked the weapons. We left them loaded. I went back to the suitcase and carefully removed the flag. I put it into a backpack to take with us.

“Let's go get some dinner.”

“Wiener schnitzel.”

“You got it. And tonight, I don't think there's a prayer that they're going to find us here. But in any case, we're going to have a watch scheduled.”

Jedediah smiled. “Two on, two off.”

“Exactly. And no sitting at all. Ever. Not even any leaning. Your only contact with anything is your feet on the floor. Then tomorrow we'll get up at the crack of dawn and head back to the lab. Tomorrow we find out if this is the real Blood Flag.”

“It is,” he said.

I nodded. “I think so too. And when that's confirmed, this is going to get real interesting.”

The dinner and evening passed without problem. The Wiener schnitzel was excellent and the beer was perfect. We had no communication with anybody. Our cell phones were gone, and I wasn't going to replace them until we got back to Munich. No one had any idea where we were or how to contact us. Exactly how I wanted it.

We got up at 4:00 a.m., grabbed the backpack, put our weapons in the empty suitcase, and headed to our cars. We found a café that was open early and grabbed some Americano coffee and headed to Munich. We arrived in the heart of the city by six thirty. We parked our cars away from each other in spots near the city center. We found an open restaurant and ordered some eggs. We sat quietly until our third cup of coffee.

Jedediah asked, “So, what's the plan?”

“They said they'd know this morning. I'm sure the answer is going to be yes, let's assume so. We've seen what they'll do when they think it
may
be real. Imagine how the stakes will go when they know it is. They're going to try and get it. So we have to make it real clear that it's literally not possible. Our only safety is in them not being able to get the flag.”

“And?”

“And last night when I went out during your watch, I went to the internet café across the street. I was looking at banks in Munich. I don't want a German bank, and I don't want a Swiss bank. But surprisingly, there is a Scottish bank in the heart of Munich that has safe deposit boxes. We'll have a signature card on file with your signature and mine. Either one of us can get in. But even if Eidhalt were to get the key from us, he'd never get the box open because he can't match the signature card. And we're not going to tell them where it is anyway. They can go ransack wherever they want.

“We'll put the flag in there, put the case in one of the cars, and then go to the lab. I'll also get us a couple of new prepaid cell phones. If we want to call somebody we will, but nobody is going to call us.”

Jedediah surveyed the city street for any signs of interest. He looked back at me. “You think these guys are able to eavesdrop on cell phones?”

“Sure. It's not hard. Just illegal. And I don't know who they're working with. If you can explain to me how they knew where we were driving yesterday, I'll have some comfort in what their limitations are. Right now I'd rather over-estimate than underestimate.”

“Fair enough.”

As soon as the bank opened I signed an agreement for one of the largest boxes. Jedediah and I went into the carrel and transferred the flag from the backpack to the steel box. We put it back on the lower section of the column and with the banker's back turned, slid it into the wall. The banker turned back around, pulled out his key, and with my key and his we locked the box. I put my key in my pocket, and we walked out. I told Jedediah to put the backpack back in the trunk of his car and meet me in front of the lab. I walked straight to the lab. Eidhalt was already there. Along with two other men I'd not seen before.

He said good morning to me in German with a smile on his face, but as before, although he smiled with his mouth, his eyes remained cold. I returned the greeting in my best German, which was bad, and asked if the lab was open. He said it was and asked where Jedediah was. I said he was coming and I'd wait for him on the sidewalk. He said he would too. We stood there silently for a moment, then Eidhalt said, “Where are you staying?”

“At a place.”

“What place?”

“In Berlin. Here he comes,” I said as Jedediah quickly walked around the corner and saw us standing there waiting for him. He slowed slightly and walked up to us. He had a hard look on his face, which was appropriate given that he was staring into the eyes of the man that almost certainly had sent others to try and kill us.

Eidhalt asked, “Did you have any trouble getting back to your place yesterday?”

I shook my head. “No, no problem.”

He smiled again slightly. “Let's go find out what the results are.” He turned and all of us followed him into the waiting area. He asked the receptionist to summon the head of the laboratory, who came out about fifteen minutes later.

The head of the lab had a stoic look on his face that revealed nothing about what the results might be. He invited us into the lab and we went straight into the conference room where we had taken the samples from the flag the day before. We all fit in again, and the technicians who had drawn the samples came in. But the room was set up differently. No flag, but a computer with a projector attached by cable was pointing toward a screen. The head of the lab sat where the computer was, and the rest of us filled in around the table. He dimmed the lights, and projected the computer onto the screen. “Let me explain what it is we have done.” He went through the procedures of the DNA testing in great detail. Far more detail than I had ever seen, even in a courtroom. He clearly knew what he was doing. But his face was completely blank. He wasn't projecting any hint of whether there was a match or not. Whatever the answer was, he was letting us know that he had done his homework, and that their testing had been done properly and within scientific standards. Because of all the preliminaries, I found myself becoming more concerned than calmed.

Finally, he projected some images on the screen of a type that I had seen before. They were the actual DNA test results themselves. It was mostly white with blotches of dark in something of a pattern. They were microscopic slides of the DNA itself. When he brought parallel images up the similarities were obvious even to me. In some respects it was like a fingerprint. It had a physical similarity, where one gene or a piece of a gene looked like another. It was like columns of numbers. Where one four looks like another four and a seven looks like another seven. They're not just random shapes. The director of the lab paused on one slide. “This is the most significant slide I will show you. As you can see, the result on the left is the DNA that we were able to extract from the flag. On the right is the DNA of one of the skulls you gave us. Although it is perhaps not completely obvious, they are a perfect match. There is
no doubt
it is his blood on the flag.”

The room went into a stunned silence. We had all theorized that there might be a match, but probably internally each of us had reserved a lot of space for the possibility that the match would be ambiguous, or the DNA that they could extract would be incomplete, or they wouldn't be able to extract anything that would give us complete confirmation. We were all wrong.

“No doubt?” I asked.

The lab director shook his head. “None. Other than the general rule that it is possible to have very very similar DNA in two people out of a billion. But based on how you represented this DNA was collected and the probability that that person in fact bled onto this flag, I would say the identification is absolute.”

I stole a glance at Jedediah. He was clearly impressed. He tried to control his expression. We had the Blood Flag. The most important remnant of Nazism in the world. And people had already shown themselves ready to kill to get it.

Eidhalt looked at me from across the table. “Where is the flag now? Perhaps you should give it to me for safekeeping for our . . . ” he looked around the room, “meeting.”

I looked into his eyes and could see the mischief. “I assume I'm still invited. I'll bring it. It's in a safe place. But if you don't want me to come to the meeting, just let me know. Jedediah and I will just return to the United States now.”

Eidhalt looked at the lab directors and others and said, “Thank you for your work. We have your pay with us, plus an additional amount for putting us at the front of the line and your quick work. You have done excellent work.” They could tell they were being dismissed and quietly left the room.

They left the presentation up on the screen.

Eidhalt looked at me. “Would you be willing to sell it to me, for the cause?”

I could feel something coming. “I have no intention of selling it.”

“You did.”

I frowned. “Really. When might that have been?”

“In Tennessee.” He pulled an iPhone out of his pocket, touched an icon on the screen, turned it sideways, and showed it to me. It was a video of me asking Schuller how much the Blood Flag would be worth. I wasn't surprised that Schuller had videotaped our conversation. What surprised me is that he was connected to the head of the German neo-Nazi movement.

“So what?”

“So you wanted to sell it.”

“I wanted to know what it was worth. If you know the value of something, you know how much you need to protect it. And it's actually worth millions.”

He smiled.

I stood, and Jedediah stood next to me. I lowered my voice. “But since you've taken to spying on me and sending men to try and kill us, I really don't see any point in going forward with you. You're just another lying piece of shit who is not ever going to be a leader of any meaningful organization. I think I'll take that role on myself.” I paused, “We don't need you. And whatever you start, we'll bury you, because we have the flag, and you never will. I can even leave without the flag if I want to, then I can come back and get it whenever I feel like it. You'd never even know I was here.”

Jedediah stared at the two men next to Eidhalt who were twitching agitatedly.

“So have a good meeting. Let's go, Jedediah.”

We walked out the conference room door, and slammed it behind us. We walked out the glass door to the lobby, and Eidhalt followed right behind us. “Wait!”

We turned around and he was alone. “What?”

“I have not handled this well. I am inherently suspicious. I've known about Mr. Thom for a long time. I've watched the Southern Volk. It's you I didn't know. And I didn't trust you. I'm still not sure I completely trust you. You don't fit the usual mold. So when I started inquiring about you, I learned a lot of information that was out there, but that I had not been aware of, okay? And then I talked to my friend in Tennessee, who had recently met you. I thought that was an odd coincidence. Then I inquired of my friend inside the Southern Volk. He too was suspicious of you, and sent me a video of you at one of their recent meetings. Nicely done.

“But now you have the flag, and we've proved it. And I want you to bring it to the meeting. This is the most important meeting in the history of Nazism since the destruction of Germany in 1945. We're going to change things. And the
Blutfahne
is just what we need to do that. I still want you to be a part of this.”

Jedediah said in a near whisper, “You got a video of one of our meetings? From who?”

“A friend,” Eidhalt said smiling, clearly pleased at the ugly surprise he had just sprung.

“Who?” Jedediah demanded.

“No need to say,” he said.

“Yes, there is, or we're not going forward. Who?”

“Dirty White Boy.”

I stole a look at Jedediah who was making mental notes.

I said to Eidhalt, “How do I know you're not just luring us into a trap to be killed? Like earlier.”

“I don't know what you're talking about. The German authorities monitor everything I do. The last thing I want to do is give them an excuse to put me in prison. This is the beginning of the rise of the Nazi movement worldwide. I'm not going to jeopardize that by being stupid.”

I didn't believe a word of it. “We'll see. The meeting is still on as scheduled, right?”

“Day after tomorrow.”

“And where are we to go?” I asked.

He indicated to go outside, so we stepped outside the glass door onto the sidewalk. He looked around. “I need to give you a new number.” He looked at Jedediah who nodded. He wrote it on a piece of paper and handed it to Jedediah.

“Call it at one o'clock in the afternoon, day after tomorrow. You'll be given instructions. But one thing that might not have been clear, is this may be more than just a few hours. I have quite a surprise in store. You'll be amazed.”

“Where?”

“You'll be told. Stay near Munich, call, and I'll tell you what the plan is. Everything is in place. It's going to be the biggest event in Nazism since 1945.”

After the meeting, Jedediah and I walked around the downtown section of Munich for an hour or so until we were sure no one was following us. We stopped into a cell phone store and bought two prepaid cell phones. We wrote each other's numbers on pieces of paper and put them in our pockets. We got into my car and I called Alex.

“Hello?”

“It's me.”

“Where the hell have you
been
? I've been trying your phone but you don't answer.”

“Tossed it. Didn't want to be tracked. People out there with a lot of equipment and influence. And I still don't know exactly who tried to kill us. Maybe in the BKA. What about Florian and Patrick. Are they with us?”

“I've been with them all day every day since the cemetery. I don't see anything that gives me any concern at all. Maybe somebody else inside of the organization is tracking things, but not them. They want to meet. They want to figure out what the plan is from here on out. What
your
plan is.”

“Okay, in the cemetery. Where we hid the flag. One hour. Just the three of you. And park a long way away. Walk from three different directions. Have them post guards at the corners. See you then.”

The thing about an ambush is you have to know where your target is going to be. Since I had just set the location, anybody who was inclined to ambush us had to be there before I got there. Jedediah and I drove directly to the cemetery and parked two blocks away. We entered the cemetery from different angles. We checked the area and were confident no one was waiting for us. We took two different spots and stood in silence among the trees, watching the approaches. We saw nothing out of order.

Right on time, I saw Florian, Patrick, and Alex. They converged on the ornate grave, which had held the flag when we first met with Eidhalt. They looked around for us and didn't see us even though we were fifty yards away standing in the trees looking directly at them. Humans are like other animals. Our visual cues are tied to motion. Even without camouflage it's much more difficult to see somebody standing still in a complex background than if that person moves.

We finally walked down to them and greeted them. Florian looked surprised. “Where were you hiding?”

“We weren't hiding, we were standing right up there in those trees.”

“How long have you been here?”

“Awhile. We're fine. There's no one here.”

Florian nodded. “Did you really have to kill those four men? Do you know how difficult this makes it?”

“What did you see as my options exactly?” I said, peeved that he'd be more worried about “difficulties” than me. “I guess we could have made it so you'd only have two dead men to worry about. That would have been much easier. Two foreigners.”

“I didn't mean it like that. I meant there's an investigation, and they want answers. We don't have massacres along the roads in Munich. People want answers and who the other people are who were involved.”

“Well, it shouldn't be too hard. I rented the car as Jack Bradley and if they ask Hertz, they'll tell them. So that would give them a good clue as to who was involved. And you watched the entire thing from a helicopter, so tell them what happened. That we were ambushed and responded. Simple as that.”

He frowned, knowing I didn't quite understand how things worked in the BKA. “I told them to lay off the investigation for now. They want to come arrest you and ask questions.”

“They're welcome to do that, but after this is over.”

“And him?” He said pointing to Jedediah. “How did he get armed? We don't have Americans carrying guns around Munich.”

“Yeah. I had two guns, and I asked for his help when we were under Siege. I hope you allow for self-defense when four armed men—one with a machine gun—come after you.”

“We'll figure something out. They have given us a little bit of time. But we have to know what your plan is. What is going to happen?”

“We don't know what Eidhalt's plan is. All we know is that we're supposed to make a phone call. Until then, we will have nothing.”

Alex asked, “So how do we put a fence around this group and put them in prison?”

I looked at Jedediah who stared back at me wondering the same thing. I had finally come to the point where I had achieved what I had set out to do. All the leading neo-Nazis in the world were coming to a meeting, and I would be there. But I didn't have an end game. All that passion, all that outrage, all that determination. For what? To get rid of an idea? To cripple the movement? How? What was I going to do in Germany? I turned to Florian. “So if they use the Blood Flag and fly it over a meeting in his castle and scream out
Sieg
Heil
! they go to jail for a year at the most. Right?”

“Yes.”

“That's not enough.”

Alex said, “We should have them for attempted murder.”

I looked at Florian. “You're never going to track those four to Eidhalt. They're like the mafia. Unless you've got a wire on them or someone in the room, you'll never hear the order. You'll never tie it. Plus, if you do, we take out the one guy. That leaves all the rest of these people to return to their countries and keep right on going.”

Patrick said, “Well, this was your idea, what did you have in mind to finish this?”

“Maybe the smell of jail for a year will get them to start thinking about what they're doing. And maybe if I play it right, I can get them to discuss a plan to overthrow the government of Germany and a few other governments to boot. I assume there is some German law that would make that illegal for more than a misdemeanor.”

“Yes, of course. But it is hard to prove.”

“Well, before we go, I'll make sure I understand and we'll make sure we entrap them—in a legal way.”

Alex said, “Call us when you know what's going on.”

I nodded. “And I promise that I will break out the Blood Flag, and I will display it. Everybody will give it the deference it deserves, and I think it will be enough for you to arrest a whole lot of them. So you better have an army of men ready to come into his castle, and arrest anybody for Nazism. And my guess is when you get there, you're going to find a lot of illegal weapons and other violations that will put these guys away for a few years.”

Florian nodded enthusiastically, “See you tomorrow.”

“And Alex,” I said. “I need that other stuff we brought. I'll let you know how to get it to me.”

“What other stuff?” Florian asked.

“Don't worry about it. A little extra self-defense.”

I had the last watch of the early morning. I woke Jededian before the sun had peeked into Salzburg. He sat up quickly as if he were ready for a fight.

“No attackers. Just time to get up.”

He arose like a good solider and washed. He asked, “What's the plan?”

“We'll bug out before the city wakes up and get to Munich early. I want to park, eat, and be at the bank the second it opens. We'll put the flag in the case, put it in my car with both of us in it, then we'll drive around, armed to the teeth, until it's time to make the call.”

I put one pistol in my shoulder holster, and another in my belt, and the others in pillows. He asked, “We're going to drive around all day?”

“We'll make some stops. Maybe take in a museum, who knows. But we're going to stay on the move. They won't know where we're going because we won't know where we're going. And then when the call comes, it's game on.”

“Do you know what the game's going to be?”

“I do. I'll brief you when we get to Munich.”

When the bank opened Jedediah stood guard at the door while I retrieved the flag from the safe deposit box. I put it in the leather suitcase and dropped an envelope into the now empty box before replacing it. I had written down everything that happened since I first became involved in the operation, including the attempt on our lives and our current plan for the meeting. After locking the box, I went to the small carrel room with the Blood Flag and pulled down my pants. I took my key from the safe deposit box, stuck it to a large piece of duct tape with a business card from the bank, and taped them to my inner thigh.

I dressed, grabbed the leather case, and walked out of the bank. Jedediah said nothing. We put the case in the trunk and drove around Munich. We stopped at a couple of cafés, had some coffee, drove to the countryside and back, the airport and back, and waited for noon. It was finally time.

I pulled out my cell phone and called Eidhalt's new number. A man asked, “Where are you from?”

“States.”

“What group?” It was not Eidhalt.

“Southern Volk.”

“Tonight at 8:00 p.m. at his castle. Just the two of you.”

“Understood.” I hung up, rolled down the window, and threw the cell phone out into traffic.

“What's the word?”

“Eight o'clock at his castle.”

“And until then?”

“It's time to tell you what I have in mind, and to prepare. And we've got to meet up with Alex.”

We met in a Starbucks, where she gave me a heavy shopping bag. The rest of the afternoon seemed to take three days but finally darkness enveloped us. We pulled off the main road and on to the road to the castle. We turned the car around so we were facing outward. We turned off the lights and waited. There was no one around. No one had followed us and there were no other cars on the road. “You ready for this?” I asked. “I'm ready for anything. I wish I knew what we were doing though. We're going in there with no plan, which isn't a good idea. Just my opinion.”

“It's like I told you. We do have a plan. Just depends on how things play out. If all we can do is get them for Nazi flags and salutes, then that's what we'll do. But if we can find a way to get them for anything else, we will. And Alex, Florian, and Patrick are standing by. They and a force of a hundred can be here in five minutes.”

“I don't know,” Jedediah said. “I think this guy is more clever than that.”

“So do I. Which is why we have to stay flexible. We'll respond to whatever happens.”

He pondered.

We turned on the lights, turned left, and headed toward the castle. It was a dirt road but perfectly maintained, like tightly packed dust. We couldn't see the castle initially, but as we drove around a large grove of trees on our left it came into view in the distance. It was spectacular. It was illuminated by floodlights pointing to the sky whose beams rubbed the light colored stone on their way by. The castle was made of thick limestone, with parapets and towers at the corners. It was much bigger than I had expected, and sat on property that had to be a hundred acres of forests and lawns.

We pulled up to where there were large spotlights trained on the approaching traffic. Ours was the twentieth or thirtieth car outside the castle. We got out, gathered the heavier leather suitcase, and walked directly to the castle entrance. Two men stepped out as we approached. They were next to lights so bright we could barely make them out. They spoke loudly. “Halt!”

We stopped and waited. They examined us, and in a German accent said, “Are you the Americans?”

“Yes.”

“They said to look for a man who was built like the old Arnold Schwarzenegger. The one on steroids. Please step forward.”

We did. They stepped out from the lights and we could see them. They were dressed in khaki uniforms with riding boots. They wore armbands, red with a white circle and a black swastika in the middle, just like Hitler had worn in the twenties, and illegal as hell in Germany. They were clearly not afraid of being arrested. They walked up to us. “Put out your arms.”

Neither of us did. “We're not going to be searched. We're armed, and we're not turning over our weapons. If that's not agreeable, you'd better contact Herr Eidhalt right away.”

“No one is to be armed.”

“
You
are.”

They looked at each other unsure what to do. Everyone had been searched and everyone knew that they were not to be armed. It was one of the preconditions. “Everyone is searched, no exceptions.”

“We are the exception. Call him.”

One of them retreated to the guardhouse and picked up the phone. He spoke in a tone low enough that we couldn't hear, looked at us, nodded, and hung the phone back up. He came out of the shack, came over to us, and said, “He will discuss it with you himself. Follow me.”

He turned and walked as the other guard remained in position. We followed him, with Jedediah carrying the leather case. He opened a huge wooden door in an arched entrance to the lower level of the castle. When we stepped inside two more guards joined the escort, walking behind Jedediah. We followed the first guard down a long hallway that was damp and cold. We went up some stairs in the middle of the castle to a large receiving area, where a wooden door led to another room. The guard opened the door. We entered, and he closed the door loudly behind us. It was an ornate den with leather furniture, tall bookshelves, and a massive desk in the middle of the room.

Rolf Eidhalt was sitting at the desk. He rose, came around, and shook our hands. “Welcome! I'm glad you came. Many of the others are here, but we still have many more to arrive. I'm letting them gather in one of the ballrooms where there are hors d'oeuvres and alcohol, as well as innumerable pieces of Nazi memorabilia and photographs. In the room next to that ballroom, however, is a room full of uniforms. Tonight, as a symbol of our international unity, and the resurrection of Nazism as a worldwide movement, we will all don the new uniforms that I have designed based on the old Nazi traditions. Mostly, those of the SS, of course,” he said smiling. “I have uniforms for the two of you as well. But first, we must discuss your insistence on remaining armed. I don't allow anyone to be armed.”