The Swiss Courier: A Novel (28 page)

Gabi helped Dieter move the clay pot, where the latchkey was waiting as promised. Dieter inserted it into the back door lock, which opened without protest at his quick, twisting motion. They stepped into a tidy kitchen, where a newspaper lay open on the breakfast nook table. Gabi peaked at the front page: it was a regional rag—the
Süddeutsche Zeitung
dated July 14, 1944. Just three weeks ago.

“We take the hall to the stairway.” Dieter pushed open a kitchen door that swiveled in each direction. “Then it’s upstairs and a right to the master bedroom. Next to a sitting area is a wall safe behind a credenza.”

The wooden stairs creaked as they mounted to the living quarters. “Don’t worry about making any noise,” Dieter said. “No one’s around.”

The master bedroom, with a walnut-stained hardwood floor accented by a circular Persian rug, included two leather chairs and ottomans set in front of a fireplace. “Safe should be over there.” Dieter pointed to the far wall and window that overlooked the driveway.

“Behind the French Country sideboard?” Gabi, the daughter of a furniture maker, pegged the chestnut sideboard with brass hardware to be from the Louis XIV era.

“I believe so.” Dieter walked over and studied the antique credenza for a moment. “Here, give me a hand.” He directed Gabi to the other end of sideboard. She set her handbag down, and with the count of
eins
,
zwei
,
drei
, they lifted and moved the heavy furniture piece a couple of meters, revealing a secure lockbox set in the wall just above the floor molding.

“Right where the safe was supposed to be,” Dieter said.

Gabi gathered her ankle-length wool skirt and crouched down for a closer look. “You’re kidding me—a Rubin safe.”

“Is something wrong?”

“No, just the opposite. Rubins are as easy as they come. Manufactured in Hamburg or Berlin. Jewish firm, if I remember correctly. This one looks to be 1870s vintage. Unless the components of the combination lock have rusted out, this should pop open in a jiffy. Maybe we’re lucky and they left the combination lock on the factory setting—100, 50, 100.”

Gabi dialed 100-50-100 in rapid sequence. The lock failed to click, however. “Well, I didn’t think it would be
that
easy.”

She rubbed her fingers and leaned her right ear against the combination lock. Then she rotated the dial to the right several times in quick succession before slowing considerably. Gabi closed her eyes and listened intently for the slight noise of the lever touching the tumblers. Nothing during the first go-around.

“I thought you said this would be a snap.” Dieter peeked past the curtain edge at a window overlooking the driveway.

“Once you determine which of the tumblers the lever is touching, it’s relatively simple to find the exact combination. Let me see . . .” Another rotation of the dial came up dry.

“It’s going bad?” Dieter’s eyebrows folded in concern.

“No, it’s still early. These things require patience.”

Gabi leaned closer again. Four, five minutes of listening passed until she heard something—actually, it was her fingers that ascertained a slight eccentricity in the tumbler. She memorized the number: 72.

She turned the combinational dial in the opposite direction, and her fingers detected the lever touching . . . 36.

“I think I got it,” she said. People were creatures of habit, and if she were playing the roulette wheels at Monte Carlo, she’d push her pile of chips onto the felt square of 72—if the roulette numbers went that high.

She carefully moved the dial toward 70 . . . 71 . . . and detected the slightest indication of the lever touching the tumbler. Safe companies, she knew, always allowed a little bit of fudge on the combination numbers—plus or minus one—meaning that 71, 72, or 73 would work. The safe door unlocked with a satisfying thud.

“We’re in.”

Dieter hurried from the window to her side. Gabi reached in and pulled out a legal-sized brown manila folder, several centimeters thick, stuffed with papers. She didn’t see anything else inside the safe—wait, in the back . . . her fingers touched something soft . . . and out came a royal purple velvet pouch with a gold-braided drawstring.

Gabi held up the fist-sized pouch to the light streaking through the window, surprised at its heft. “What’s this?”

“I’ll take that, please.”

Both heads swiveled toward the deep voice’s source standing under the transom—a voice speaking High German.

“Karl, what are you doing here?” Dieter sprang to his feet.

Gabi turned to see a shadowy figure whose fleshy face was partially obscured by a wide-brimmed hat, and her stomach somersaulted. She was in trouble. Deep, deep trouble. She stood to her feet and thought about making a run for it, but the menacing man with a bulbous nose blocked the path between her and the bedroom door.

“I see you know my real name, Herr Baumann. Quite a game we’re playing. What else do you know about me?” The German chuckled, then quickly lost his smile when he reached into his jacket and extracted a black pistol.

Dieter held out both hands. “Karl—Ludwig—let’s stick to the plan.”

Suddenly, an eerie sense of familiarity came over Gabi. Her racing mind searched its memory banks until something clicked. The memory of the man’s beefy hands wrapped around her throat came to the forefront, as well as the grotesque way he squeezed the last gasp of oxygen from her lungs until she bit into his sausage-like fingers.

“Wait a minute—you’re the same guy as last week in Basel’s Old Town!” Feelings of shock and betrayal swirled through her pounding heart. Dieter had set her up—

“Very perceptive, Fräulein Mueller. I’m running out of time, so if you’ll just hand over the diamonds.”

Gabi gasped.
Diamonds
? She turned toward her partner, anger pounding with every heartbeat. “So that’s what you brought me into Germany to do—bust open a safe on a diamond heist?”

Dieter backpedaled. “Listen, we didn’t know what was in that safe, did we, Karl?”

The German smiled. “You’re right. It could have been anything. Jewish diamond dealers always keep German war plans in their safes,
ja
?”

Karl fluttered his free hand to Gabi, still keeping the pistol pointed in their direction. “The diamonds. I’m waiting.”

She’d never had a gun pointed at her. The stakes had just been raised. The chances of surviving this encounter had dropped dramatically, unless . . .

Dieter dared to take a step toward the hefty man holding the gun. “Karl, we had an agreement, remember? Fifty-fifty.”

“So? I lied. Now, Fräulein Mueller, my patience is fleeting.”

Gabi knew time—as well as her options—were running out. She directed her wrath toward Dieter once again. “Why did you do this to me? Tell me, why!”

Dieter’s eyes widened at her outburst. “Gabi, this wasn’t the way things were supposed to go. I was always going to cut you in.”

“Cut me in? You animal!” Gabi advanced on Dieter, furious. In one smooth move, she dropped the purple pouch and thick folder into her leather handbag and swung it in the air. “You tricked me, you traitor. Now look at what you’ve gotten me into!”

She whipped her handbag through the air, but instead of striking Dieter, she directed the blow across Karl Rundstedt’s right forearm. His pistol clattered across the parquet floor and slid under the four-poster bed. The German dove for his weapon while Gabi secured the handbag’s strap over her shoulder and lunged for the door. Forgetting his gun for the moment, Karl rolled over and grasped her ankle with his left hand.

“Dieter!” she yelped. “Get him off me—”

Dieter kicked the man’s face once, but before he connected a second time, Karl used both hands to trip Dieter, then pounced on him like a raged animal, pummeling Dieter’s back.

Released from Karl’s grip, Gabi scrambled to the fireplace, grabbed the brass poker, raised it over her head, and swung with all her might, striking Karl’s left shoulder.

“Ach!” Enraged by the blow, he swiped at Gabi’s ankles, bringing her down hard. The poker tumbled out of her hand, and Dieter snatched it. He rolled to his knees and raised it above Karl’s head.

“Run for it, Gabi! Take the diamonds and go!”

Gabi turned to the door, then paused as Karl lunged at Dieter, knocking the poker from his hand. They wrestled furiously for control of the brass weapon.

Dieter glanced her way. “Do as I say—now!”

Using this moment of distraction, Karl stretched out his left hand and retrieved the pistol from under the bed.

“Run, Gabi!” Dieter pushed to his feet as he grabbed the poker and swung it, forcing Karl to deflect the blow with both arms. Then came another blow and another . . .

Gabi sprinted out of the room just as a deafening gunshot splintered the air and the wooden doorjamb just centimeters from her shoulder. Hitching her skirt above her ankles, she scampered down the stairs, out the back door, and bolted across the driveway with a single-minded focus—returning to the safe haven of Switzerland as quickly as she could.

Dieter knew he was in a fight for his life.

“You let her get away!” The German’s eyes bulged with anger as he pulled himself up. “With my diamonds!”

“No, it was you who botched it! I had her perfectly under control until you came and screwed things up!” Dieter warily circled Karl, who stood in the center of the master bedroom, tracking him with the gun. He wondered for a scant moment if the German would murder him in cold blood. If only he had his ankle pistol! But he’d left the weapon back in Basel in case the Germans searched him at the Badischer Bahnhof.

Desperation turned his mind to a hidden weapon still at his disposal—a heavy blackjack in his right pocket. He switched the poker to his left hand and pulled out the blackjack to show he meant business. “Don’t worry. I can get the diamonds from her.” Then he faked a throw.

Karl feinted to his left and moved in a circle with Dieter, so as not to be outflanked. “Then you’d have all the diamonds. Do you think I’m stupid?”

Dieter regarded the pistol aimed at his torso, then locked eyes with the German. “Karl, we can work something out.”

“If I let you go, I’ll always have to worry about you.
Nein
danke
. I like to sleep at night.”

“But . . . but I can get to the girl. I know where she lives.”

“I can find her too, and when I do, she’ll give up the diamonds, all right. If she resists, I’ll shoot her mother . . . then her father—”

“Don’t do this, Karl. I left a file on my desk with your name on it in case something went wrong. The OSS knows about you, and if I don’t come back—”

“All the more reason to kill you.”

“No, Karl, please, don’t. I beg you.” Dieter sunk to his knees and raised his arms. “I’ll take care of the girl so that no one will ever hear from her again.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“You have to, please.”

“Sorry, but I prefer to go this alone—”

Dieter flung the blackjack. It struck Karl hard in the stomach. The blow nearly buckled Karl’s knees, and in a split second, Dieter leaped at Karl and knocked him off balance. Dieter rolled to the floor and seized the blackjack, then sprang to his feet. He reared back his right arm—

Then a gunshot sounded, and Dieter felt an explosion in his shoulder. His arms splayed, and his body hit the wall.

Dieter felt himself sliding to the floor as everything went black.

A second shot rang out. A look of surprise came over Karl’s face as his body crumpled. The clean entrance wound in his left temple leaked a thin crimson rivulet down the side of his face.

Jean-Pierre rushed to Karl’s side and grabbed his jacket’s lapels for a closer look. The German’s wide-open eyes bore a hole right through him. He dropped the lifeless body to the floor and hurried to see how Dieter—lying in a heap—was doing. He hoped the traitor had survived the trauma, but when he rolled Dieter onto his back and spotted the bleeding wound that had ripped open his upper chest, he had his doubts.

Jean-Pierre grasped his left wrist and checked for a pulse. Dieter’s eyelids flickered for a moment, as if in some sort of recognition. Then they quickly closed.

Dieter Baumann would not be double-crossing anyone else again.

By the time Gabi reached the street, a gunshot reverberated through the neighborhood, followed almost instantly by another, but she didn’t look back.

Instead, she looked up and down the street. No traffic, no pedestrians, no mothers hanging out their laundry. She turned and lowered her head, retracing her steps back to the bus stop. Gabi suddenly realized that she would have to give the Germans at the Badischer Bahnhof checkpoint a good excuse why she was getting off “work” before noon.

It better be a good one, or there would be a lot of explaining to do—in a German prison.

“Telegram from the Reichsführer.” Becker handed the missive to his superior, then retreated one step and clicked his heels.

“I know what it’s going to say.” Sturmbannführer Bruno Kassler buried his face in his hands and rubbed his red eyes. “Read it to me.”

Becker approached Kassler’s desk and grasped a pewter letter opener embossed with the National Socialist German Worker’s Party
Hakenkreuz
—the swastika symbol. With a flick of the wrist, he sliced opened the telegram and cleared his throat.

“Sturmbannführer Kassler to arrive at Berlin headquarters no later than 20:00 hours, 4 August 1944, with or without Engel. Accompanying escort to arrive Heidelberg Hauptbahnhof at 9:52 a.m. Reichsführer H. Himmler.”

Becker set the telegram on the desk. “Sounds like he’s giving you one more day, sir.”

Kassler drummed his fingers on the wooden desk, then set his chin on his palm. “We’ve squeezed a twenty-kilometer radius like a lemon. Engel slipped through our fingers for a time, but he has to be holed up somewhere. He can’t move, at least in public. He can’t show his face within 500 meters of a train station. His picture has been distributed to the rightful authorities, printed on thousands of fliers. A reward has been discreetly offered to those we can trust.”