The Blood Flag (9 page)

I nodded. “I'll be back.”

As we rode back to the airport Alex said, “You know that Russian was full of shit, right?”

“Which one?”

“About Hitler's skull?”

“What about it?”

“It wasn't crushed. They took it to Moscow. A lot of people think they still have it. I read all about it. I don't believe a word they say.”

“Frankly neither do I.” I pulled out my BlackBerry. “I've got to get on the phone.”

I called Craig Phillips, the director of the OTD, the Operational Technology Division, a critically important office for the FBI. Our ‘Q'. They come up with the technical gadgets, eavesdropping bugs, microphones, invisible ink, the James Bond stuff. They have access to things I don't even know about, and are unbelievably capable.

I told Phillips what I needed. He was intrigued until I told him when I needed it, and then he became annoyed. They were already working twenty-four hours a day, and didn't have the “bandwidth” to pull this off. He was unimpressed when I told him he had to, and he was even more unimpressed when I told him he needed to meet me at his office in the Hoover building that night. I told him this project had the attention of the highest levels of the agency. He told me he doubted it, but he'd see me at the office.

As we waited for our flight to take off from Ronald Reagan Airport, I called Karl and gave him an update. He was surprised by the developments and peeved when I told him what I had said to Phillips. He wondered who at the highest levels of the agency was so concerned about all this. I told him I didn't know yet, but I was going to try to generate the interest needed to get OTD to move this up on their list. Karl wished me good luck and hung up. Karl was distancing himself from me and whatever I was doing. He obviously thought it was all going to blow up.

When we landed, Alex and I drove directly to the Hoover Building and went to Phillips' office. He looked tired. He was looking at his computer through his bifocals and moving his head around to get the reading lens on whatever he was studying.

He peered over his glasses at me. The lab was behind the glass wall of his office. He said, “Pictures?”

No chitchat. I pulled out the two CDs Sergei had given me. He slipped the first one into his computer slot. I said, “I appreciate you meeting with me.”

“You used the magic words. ‘Highest levels of the Bureau.' So who exactly?”

I nodded as if that were a perfectly understandable request. What I didn't know was who I was going to say had any interest at all. Nobody even knew about it except Karl, who had no clout at all.

Phillips brought up the files with the photos in thumbnail, and double clicked on the first one, which brought it to full size. “Hmm,” he grunted. “Interesting. This is the whole bunker. Take a look.” He turned the screen so we could both see it. I had seen a photo of the bunker and its contents in an ad for the Russian display. But these photos were extremely high quality and very dense. The bunker was set up exactly as Hitler had it on the day he committed suicide. It had all the trappings of Nazism with wall hangings and maps, photos, and numerous smaller items with Swastikas. It was carpeted and in the middle was a heavy wooden desk.

He called up one photo after another and blew them up to their full size.

“These are good photos.”

He looked at me.

“But we still need the items. We need to measure them.”

“We can't get them. We just have to get close enough. The men who are going to take these things will have no idea what the exact measurements are. All they know is they were Hitler's.”

He studied the last photographs with annoyance. “We can do it, but I don't have the time. You need to get somebody to order us to do this.”

“Will do, but we don't have much time. We need you to get started tonight.”

He looked at me sharply. “First you tell us what to do, and now you tell us
when
to do it. You know about everything we're working on? You ready to re-order all our priorities?”

“No, sorry. I'm just acutely aware of how important this is.”

“And all the others are just shit projects.”

“That's not what I'm saying at all.”

He sat back. “I can get it by a couple amateur thieves. But if they take this anywhere to get it authenticated, we'll be in trouble.”

“I don't think we have to worry about that.”

“Get me the authority and we'll get started.”

I went to my office, took off my tie, and put my jacket over the back of my chair. I was surprised when my phone rang as soon as I sat down. I figured it was probably Alex, but it wasn't. It was my unit chief. “Good evening. Surprised you're still here.”

“And I'm glad you're back. Where the hell have you been?”

“Atlanta.”

There was a pause. “You're supposed to be focused on al-Hadi.”

“I'm working him.”

“Remember I told you he was spotted in Europe?”

“Sure.”

“Well, what has he been doing since? I haven't seen anything from you on this guy in days. If he disappears I'm going to be really pissed. I want to know where he is and what he's doing. You know he's a player.”

“Financially. Yeah.”

“I don't want you taking your eye off this guy
at all
.”

“I'm on it.”

“I want to talk to you at ten o'clock tomorrow morning. And I want to know
everything.
Where this guy's been, what he's been doing. He's your guy.”

I turned on my computer. I'd seen a lot of emails on my BlackBerry about al-Hadi, but hadn't been able to open any of the attachments. Some of them were secret, which I could only view from my desktop. I grouped them all together and went through them one after the other. Before I knew it was past midnight. I had a cold feeling in the pit of my stomach. The only reason I even got a lot of these emails, mostly from the CIA, was because al-Hadi was tied to several Islamic “charities” in the United States. Most were fronts and were continually being investigated. We hadn't had much luck since the conviction of a Hamas-supporting charity in Charlotte. They had gotten much more clever. They had learned to filter the money and send it to reputable banks in the Middle East, where it was commingled with funds from other sources then redistributed to various terrorist organizations. But something was up. Al-Hadi was normally based in Yemen, the new wild west of the southern Arabian Peninsula. His trail led to numerous banks, shadowy organizations, arms dealers, and terrorist organizations.

One of the memos from the CIA said he might be the cleverest financial mind in the Middle Eastern terrorist network. The emails and the proof were interesting. He'd been tracked across the border three times in the last three weeks going into and out of Zurich and into Germany. They had no idea why. They couldn't connect him to any particular organization in any of those locations, and they saw nothing in the banking transactions—at least the ones we were aware of—that could tell us anything about his objectives. I saved the emails and attachments to my secure folder and then shut down my computer.

I stood in the elevator of the Hoover Building as it descended, wondering how I was going to get somebody with authority to make Phillips do what I needed him to do. I loved the government.

The next morning, I was awakened at 5:00 a.m. by my cell phone. “Kyle, it's Florian and Patrick. Did we wake you up?”

“You know it's only five o'clock here?”

“Sorry. We thought you would want to know this right away. Patrick thinks he has been able to track down the thing that you were interested in.”

“Truly?”

“Maybe. He has a couple of possibilities.”

“What are they?”

Patrick's voice came through loudly, “I have things I want to show you. There are several things you will find interesting, but I can't tell them to you over the phone. Why don't you come back over here.”

“I can't. I've got something blowing up in my face right now. I'll tell you all about it. Any way you could come here? Don't you guys take like two hundred days of vacation a year anyway?”

“At least!” Patrick laughed. “Let us see what we can do.”

Since I was up, I showered, dressed, and went into the office early.

I sat in the chair outside Murphy's office until he arrived looking intense and distracted. His secretary hadn't arrived yet. He looked at me confused, clearly not remembering who I was. He didn't greet me, he just said, “What do you want?” He was wearing a suit that fit four years ago.

“I'm the guy working with Karl.”

He didn't respond.

“I need two things this morning; and if I could impose on you, I need them first thing.”

“Perfect,” he said as he opened his office door and put down his briefcase. “Love dealing with questionable shit before I can even get a cup of coffee. How do I know it's questionable, you wonder? People don't show up at this hour unless they want to do something questionable.”

“Not questionable, just important,” I said, standing.

He looked at me with doubt. He went around to the other side of his desk, turned on his computer, and sat down, waiting for it to boot up. “Make it quick.”

“You know the CI we're running inside the Southern Volk?”

He nodded.

“They're trying to get an invitation to a worldwide neo-Nazi meeting in Germany.”

“You told me.”

I went on. “There's a guy in Germany who is trying to unify all the leaders of the major Nazi groups from around the world. He has asked the leaders of each group to do something that would impress him and he'll decide who to invite based on whether he's impressed or not. Very vague. I have a plan that I think will get our CI to Germany, but his group has thought up a scheme on their own. They're going to break into a Russian display of World War II materials and steal Hitler's walking stick, shoes, hat, and uniform.”

He looked at me frowning. “Where?”

“Atlanta.”

“We've got to stop them.”

“No. That's the whole point. I've set it up with the Russians so that we're going to let them do this. We have to let them think they've pulled it off. Otherwise the Georgia police will arrest them all and they won't be invited to go to Germany. We've got to make this happen.”

“You can't let them have Hitler's things. That would be ridiculous.”

“Exactly. I talked to OTD last night and they're prepared to build replicas. Phillips said he could do it, and he may be able to do it within time, but he's gotta get somebody—I was thinking you—to tell him to put it at the top of his priority list. He can't do that on his own. He said it's not up to him.”

He nodded with understanding. “I'll think about it.”

“Thanks. The other thing is, this whole thing is going to be a felony. I need to get OIA for our CI.” I was talking about “otherwise illegal activity” status, an authorization for a confidential informant to commit a crime that we know about ahead of time.

He exhaled audibly and looked down at the floor. He wasn't happy I was there. “So first thing in the morning you ask me for an OIA? Seriously? What is your boy's role in this?”

“Well, I don't know what he's actually going to do. Not specifically. I just know he'll be involved.”

“You in control of this? Maybe it's time to reel this guy back in.”

“We need to close down the Southern Volk. And he's going to help us, but he can't yet because all we've got so far is talk.”

“And soon, you'll have a brazen robbery of some items of infinite value, but they won't
actually
steal them because we're going to replace them with fakes. So it's actually not much of a robbery. And he'll be right in the middle of it, so your primary witness will be a co-participant which is, as you know, extremely problematic.”

“I understand that. But that's not our long-term goal. Our long-term goal is to get us inside this international meeting, and try to shut down these groups worldwide.”

He shook his head vigorously. “No. That's
your
goal. We don't give a shit about neo-Nazism in Russia, or Croatia. We deal with American issues.
Domestic
terrorism. Maybe you've forgotten.”

“No, I haven't forgotten. But this is bigger than just domestic. This is international. They're all connected. What if those overseas strengthen domestic terrorists? You wouldn't care? Of course you would. Money and arms are starting to flow. It takes the internal threat to a whole different level. We need to shut it down.”

He turned away, clearly done with the conversation. “I'll consider your request for Atlanta, and I'll talk to the director about the OIA. I sure hope you know what you're doing.”

“And there's one other thing.”

He looked back at me trying to control his frustration. “What?”

“The Russian display of Hitler's bunker is a metal container that is about the same as a train car. The items that are kept in there, as I said, will be switched out. But for the robbery, they're going to have to break into that container. My guess is they're going to do some damage. The Russians wanted to know who was going to pay to repair the damage. I told them that we would pay.”

“What in the
hell
is wrong with you? Now we're an insurance company? How much?”

“No numbers were discussed.”

He threw out his hands. “Perfect. No matter how much it costs, we'll fix it. That was how you left it?”

“I don't expect these guys to burn the place down. They're just going to have to cut into it or break into it somehow. So we'll have to repair whatever they use to get in there.”

“Simple as that?” You don't have any idea do you?”

“No, but it's not like it will be hundreds of thousands of dollars. I would expect it'd be ten thousand dollars or less. But I don't know.”

His voice was now rising and full of sarcasm. “Let's recap. You're going to allow this robbery to occur, your CI will be committing felonies, you're going to let them cut into a Russian display which you said is the equivalent of an armored train car, you're going to fund the immediate and emergency construction of Hitler's shoes and whatever the hell else, repair the train car, and we're paying for all of it. That about sum it up?”

“Yes. I think so.”

“And what if I say no?”

“If you say no, I think the display will go on, and the Russians will make sure that there are enough Georgia and Atlanta police there that nothing happens. All the Southern Volk who are trying to commit the robbery will be stopped and arrested, and they will be put in jail, and that will be the end of our relationship with our CI inside the Southern Volk. It will be the loss of the only chance we have to get them to Germany to this meeting, and I'll go back to working my usual job and I'll find some other way to do damage to neo-Nazism.”

He responded harshly, “Reminding me of course, again, that this is just really your
personal
vendetta.”

“No,” I said forcefully. “This is domestic terrorism. And if we don't stop this through the Southern Volk, we won't know which other U.S. group has found favor and financing. It is not a vendetta.”

He shook his head. “I'm not promising anything.”

The conversation was over. It could not have been more clear from the chill he sent across the room. I left his office and headed back to my cubicle.

It wasn't even 7:00 a.m. yet. I grabbed a cup of coffee and turned on my computer. The first email that came up was from Florian. He and Patrick were on their way. I did further research on al-Hadi, and looked at some additional CIA background information on him that I hadn't looked at in a while. All the message traffic indicated that no one could figure out why he was in Europe. He'd been there before, but not this broadly and not this extensively. I reviewed his most recent trip, from Tunis to Madrid to Marseilles to Frankfurt to Zurich, then to Geneva, and finally to Amman. He had never been to two-thirds of those cities before, and no one knew who he'd met with. European intelligence was too concerned about being seen to actually follow him. So the itinerary was based on passport scans and videos from airline and train terminals. The stop in Switzerland was of particular interest. He had stopped at a bank, but the bank wasn't talking.

I decided to pull out everything I knew about him from all of my old files and read it all again. I had to look for patterns, small pieces that might fit together. I stacked them up on the left of my desk and started reading, while wondering whether Murphy would give me the authorization I needed for Atlanta.

Shortly after lunch, I got a text from Florian. They had landed at Dulles and were on their way into the city. I alerted security and set up a conference room. I called over to Karl to see if he wanted to meet with them, but he said he was too busy.

Florian and Patrick arrived at 1:00 p.m. I waited for them to pass through security then escorted them upstairs. They were in good spirits and seemed excited to be in Washington. We went to the second floor where I'd reserved a conference room that was far too large for our needs, but comfortable. It was our “boardroom,” our showy conference room where we would have meetings with dignitaries or whoever was injecting himself into the FBI's work at that moment. The wood paneling looked like it had been recently oiled or refreshed. The granite table and the leather chairs looked equally new.

Patrick carried a briefcase the size of a roll-aboard suitcase. I placed my notebook at the end of the table and pulled out the chair.

Florian asked, “Is it okay if I smoke?”

“No, definitely not okay. No smoking in this building at all.”

Florian smiled. “I'm glad I asked. I'll take a break in a little while.”

Patrick lifted his massive bag onto the table and began pulling out notebooks and papers. The briefcase was black and battered and looked as old as the copied documents coming out of it. The papers were copies of old Nazi documents that had been typed, not printed. Eagles sat on winged swastika crests on virtually every page. Patrick began arranging the documents and notebooks.

Patrick began. “So,” his
s
was more like a
z
. “Here we have the best documents I have been able to find so far. They will help us find this flag, I think. Many of these documents we got back from the Russians only recently. As you know, the Russians took Berlin in 1945. As conquerors do, they took it upon themselves to capture all of the German documents they could get their hands on. Probably to identify people to hang. But we have recently gotten many of them, or copies, back. It is a very good thing for us, because I think it gives us a hint on where we should go.”

I stood up then walked over to Patrick to look over his shoulder. He was excited and focused. Florian had his glasses off and was examining a particular document very closely. Patrick went over them all again carefully and then divided them into two piles. He nodded, as if he was finally ready. “Ok, I'm a little tired. I've been doing this round the clock for a few days now. But I think we have identified the two most likely possibilities for the current location of the flag. First, let me show you this.”

I looked at it carefully, but it made no sense to me.

“It goes with a couple of other things,” which he looked for and then found. He handed them to me as well. “These are the documents that talk about
die Blutfahne
during the time of the Third Reich. Early on, well before the war was started with Poland, Hitler had already identified the flag as special. It was displayed at rallies and marches. And he decided, hold on,” as he looked for another document and found it, “to name an individual as the person who would be responsible for the flag. Who would carry it in public and keep it safe otherwise. He wanted one person to be in charge of the Blood Flag. That person is well known. We talked about him in Germany. Otto Hessler.”

“Yes.”

“This is the document that gave Hessler his commission as the one to tend to
die Blutfahne
. Full responsibility for it until it is revoked. See this here? This is the German word for ‘until revoked.' And look at the signature.”

“Adolf Hitler.”

“Yes, exactly. His signature was very simplistic and readable. And it is authentic.” He made a sweeping motion with his hand. “All these documents have been authenticated. And it was Hessler's job right up until the end of the war. We are sure.”

“What happened to him?”

“He survived the war, and lived in Germany after. But, as far as we can tell, he was never asked about the flag. Quite remarkable, given the importance of the flag. In any case, he died in 1951. We found his grandson, though. He claimed to know nothing of the flag. He was of no help.”

Florian said, “It's a little bit strange that his family claims to know nothing about it. This was something they were very proud of during the war. It was considered a job of highest honor. So we don't believe the grandson, which makes us look even harder at the family. We think the family does know, and the fact that they did not say long ago that the flag had been destroyed makes us believe even more that the flag does still exist and they know what happened to it. But they are clearly not telling us, so we have continued our research.”