The Blood Flag Read online

  I sat back and rubbed my face. Argentina. How would we ever track a flag down in Argentina? “So how do we find it there?”

  “We have to send someone down there to look for it.”

  “How? Just go and start asking every German-speaking person we can find, ‘Where’s the Blood Flag?’”

  “Someone will have to go down there looking to buy it. Money will bring the flag to us.”

  “Who is going to go down there looking to buy the ultimate symbol of the Third Reich?”

  Florian smiled, glanced at Patrick and then said, “You are.”

  As I contemplated what he had said the phone rang. I walked over to the phone and answered it. It was Murphy.

  “I’ve considered your request.” He was ice cold.

  “Great. What do you think?”

  “Denied. I’m not authorizing your OIA, and I’m not authorizing the United States Treasury to reimburse the Russians for damage done by a bunch of neo-Nazis. I don’t really care if they get them, and I don’t really care if they don’t get them.”

  I took a deep breath and tried not to just react. “Why?”

  “I don’t like the whole thing. I’m not going to intervene and hang our asses out. I’m just not going to do it. So shut it down.”

  “We’ve already told the Russians the exhibit is going forward.” I looked at my watch. It was Wednesday. “Russian security is in place and they’re expecting our replacements. I told them we’d do it.”

  “Don’t ever promise anything like this until you have authorization from me first.”

  “We’re not going to have any credibility—”

  “No, you’re not going to have any credibility.”

  “I didn’t see an alternative.”

  “Too bad. Take care of it. Shut it down.”

  I hung up and turned back to Florian and Patrick. “Let’s finish up.” I glanced at my watch, “I may have to go to Atlanta and pull some Russians down from the ceiling.” I looked up at them both and a thought occurred to me. “Want to come?”

  CHAPTER NINE

  I got Alex and the four of us flew to Atlanta that night. I had emailed Karen Brindle telling her there had been some developments and I needed to meet with her and the Russians as soon as we arrived. If it’s possible to transmit ice by email, she did. “As I expected. Come straight to the museum. They’re setting up tonight.”

  The museum was fully lit and alive with security activity when we arrived. Brindle and the others were in the back conference room. We walked through the modern and attractive central entryway and down the hallway to the back office area. There were fifteen or so people around a large wooden table, some seated, some standing and talking on their cell phones. Most looked up as we entered the room. I saw Brindle and two of the three Russians I’d met on my last visit. They were pouring over diagrams with two Atlanta police officers. Brindle broke off and came over. “You’re back.”

  “Yes.”

  Before I could say anything else, she asked, “Who are these two gentlemen?” It was a tone of accusation.

  “Sorry, this is Florian Köhler and Patrick Sonnenstrahl.”

  “German?”

  “They’re with the Bundeskriminalamt.”

  She looked at Alex and asked her, “What are they doing here?”

  Alex didn’t miss a beat. “They’re helping us,” she said in a tone implying that Brindle wasn’t.

  She looked back at me. “I didn’t authorize their coming here.”

  I said, “They’re working with me on the ‘project’ from the German side.”

  “I don’t care what they’re working on.”

  I ignored her. I had no time for this. “I need to talk to the Russians right away. This is not going to go how I told them it would.”

  She stared at me and said loudly, “Dmitri!”

  He looked up at me, “Ah. You’re back. You have the items?” He came closer and we shook hands. He glanced at Alex while generally ignoring her, and then was suddenly aware of the Germans. “Who are they?”

  I introduced Florian and Patrick again and told him they were with the BKA.

  His eyes narrowed as he examined them carefully. “Germans? Were you both raised in Germany?”

  They nodded their heads. “Educated in Germany?”

  Patrick spoke, “We grew up in different cities, but yes.”

  Dmitri got an intense look on his face, which was colored with anger. “Did you study the war? World War II? Did you study it?”

  “Yes, we did.”

  “Well then, tell me how many Russians were killed at the hands of Adolf Hitler and his troops?”

  Patrick looked awkwardly at Florian. “Millions.”

  “Twenty-three million!” Dmitri growled. “At least! Some even say twenty-six! And why? Because you did not see this man for what he was. And then when you did, no one had the balls to stop him! How is this possible in Germany? The country of Beethoven and Kant?”

  Patrick replied. “I believe twenty million Germans died in the war too.”

  “No! Maybe six or seven million! But so what? That makes it all the same? If Germans died too?”

  “No, that’s not what I was saying. It was a tragedy, a disaster.”

  “A tragedy? Ha! Like a flood, huh? No. Hitler was evil. You Germans were murderers. ” He stared at Patrick for an awkwardly long time and then turned to me. “ I need the items. We have already set up the bunker.”

  I sighed, “That’s what I wanted to talk to you about. My proposal, well it wasn’t accepted by Washington.”

  Dmitri was startled. “What?”

  “They said no.”

  He stared at me. “You told me that you would do it. We relied on that in setting up this display. If we knew what you now tell us we would have canceled this show.”

  “I’m sorry. I thought I could get it approved.”

  He was disgusted. “Now what? We have confirmed the opening of the display on Saturday morning. That’s a day and a half from now. We can’t have the display without the items there, and you’re telling me that a bunch of neo-Nazis are going to steal them and you have no plan. Is that what you’re telling me now?”

  I felt like a boy who’d been caught by the teacher. “I’d understand if you shut the display down and moved on.”

  “You don’t understand! We have already taken the money!”

  “Then we’d better make sure they don’t take the items.”

  “Oh, and have a cowboy Western shootout? Have my men killed?”

  “I’m sure there won’t be a shootout.”

  “How? How do you know this?”

  “I don’t think they’d operate that way.”

  “You don’t think? You can guarantee? Is the FBI going to provide perfect security? And the local state police?”

  “Security will be fine.”

  Dmitri looked at me like he wanted to cut me open. “Your credibility is not high with me. We are in this position because we relied on you. Why would I rely on you now? We will handle this ourselves.”

  * * *

  I didn’t tell Florian or Patrick that I’d emailed Jedediah. That night I went to my hotel bar at exactly eleven. I was surprised to see how many people were in the dimly lit bar. It wasn’t large, but it had an energy, mostly local office workers. I didn’t think Jedediah would choose this kind of bar. I’d expect he’d want to meet at a biker bar or somewhere with pool tables.

  I glanced at my watch. And how did he know where I was staying? Just then, I saw a man wearing a backwards baseball hat sitting in a booth in the corner behind the bar. I could only see the top of his head over the bar and through the people. I walked closer. It was him. He looked up at me without expression. He was wearing a long-sleeved, black, mock turtleneck T-shirt, which just covered the iron cros
s on his neck, and a Braves baseball cap. It was hard to see his face in the dark corner, but his massive form was unmistakable. I slid into the booth opposite him. “What are you drinking?”

  “Sprite.”

  I leaned on the table. “You drink at all?”

  “Quit.”

  “When?”

  “While ago.”

  The cocktail waitress approached wearing tight black pants and a short white blouse. She glanced at Jedediah, wondering what he was, but was quite at ease with me. “What can I get you?”

  “Beer. Whatever’s on draft.”

  “Be right back.”

  “You used to drink?”

  “Right.”

  “Why’d you quit?”

  He acted as if he hadn’t heard me.

  I waited, then said, “Okay. Look, I’ve got to talk to you about your plans.”

  “Go ahead.”

  “You’re in Atlanta for a specific reason.”

  “You know why I’m here.”

  “Yeah. And I thought I had it all taken care of. I thought everybody would get what they wanted and I could get behind it. But Washington didn’t buy in. They shut me down. They don’t want you anywhere near this place.”

  Jedediah stared at his glass, looked over my shoulder at the approaching cocktail waitress and waited. She placed the beer in front of me and a small basket of pretzels on the table, and then she left. He looked around and waited longer. The silence grew awkward. Finally he spoke, “We’re way past that.”

  “You’ve got to stop it.”

  He stared at me. “How?”

  “Tell him you’ve checked and they’ve doubled security. Everybody will get caught.”

  He shook his head. “He’d ask how I knew that. And then he’d ask me, ‘Why would they double security?’ And then he’d look at me with his narrow-eyed snakelike look.”

  I took a drink from my beer and pondered. “There’s Russian security, there’s FBI because you all crossed interstate lines, there will be Atlanta police, it’s not going to happen. You’ll be in jail for a long time.”

  He lowered his voice to a whisper. “You were supposed to help. You were to keep them off our backs. Now you’re going to do nothing? Just tell us how tough the security is? What the hell good are you? Why am I even talking to you?”

  “We should find the Blood Flag.”

  He sat back disgusted. “That’s just your fantasy. You have no idea where it is.”

  “I have a couple of German FBI types here with me. They think they may know where it is.”

  He stared, then asked. “Where?”

  “Argentina.”

  “Argentina. You’ve narrowed it down to a country. What bullshit. May as well just say we have no idea.”

  “We have an idea who may have it. We have to go down there.”

  “And then what? If someone took it to Argentina and has kept it hidden for decades they sure as hell aren’t going to just hand it over to you.”

  “I haven’t figured that out yet.”

  He shook his head and took a drink. “You don’t have shit. You don’t know if it even exists. You’ve got no location and you have no plan on how to get it back even if you do find it. This is a joke.”

  I leaned forward slightly. “I’m going to get the flag, Jedediah. I’m going to bring it back, and you’re going to take it to Germany. And you’re going to use it to set these guys up, and we’re going to take them down. That’s the plan. Are you with me or not?”

  He leaned forward even more. “I don’t think you can get the flag. You clearly don’t even have influence in the FBI. If you think you’re gonna go down there and buy it, the FBI won’t give you the money. They wouldn’t let you work this Atlanta thing out, what makes you think they’re going to endorse a wild goose chase to Argentina?”

  “I’m going to get it done.”

  “Maybe I should go down to Argentina and grab it. Tell me where it is and look the other way.”

  I couldn’t tell if he was serious. “I don’t think that’s the way to go.”

  “Probably don’t need to anyway. ’Cause in a couple days we’re going to have all the Hitler stuff we need. We’re going to get to Germany without your help.”

  “That’s the point, I don’t think you are. You’re not gonna get through.”

  “Why don’t you tell me the security setup and make it so we do.”

  “Can’t do it.”

  He shrugged. “Then we’ll take our chances.”

  “If you get caught, I can’t help you.”

  “Who said I was going to be there?”

  “I’m just telling you not to look to me to bail you out.” I drank deeply from my beer. “Can I ask you one other thing?”

  He nodded almost imperceptibly.

  “I don’t understand your motivation. Why are you doing this? Why are you turning on your Nazi friends?”

  He looked out at the other people in the bar and back at me, clearly deciding whether to go into it. “I got saved.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Saved. A church. I changed.”

  “Ah. That’s why you don’t drink?”

  “I had a problem with alcohol. I can’t really touch it anymore.”

  “When did that happen?”

  “About a year ago.”

  “And that made you want to turn on your friends?”

  “They claim to be Christians and that being Christian leads them to hating Jews and other races. It’s complete bullshit.”

  His language surprised me. “So you go to church and all that?”

  He wrinkled his nose slightly. “Did for a couple of weeks.”

  “So why only a couple of weeks?”

  “I look like a freak to them. I can’t be showing up at a normal church every Sunday. They think I’m going to eat their children.” He looked at my watch. “I’ve got to get back.”

  I looked at the bill that the cocktail waitress had left and put a twenty on top of it. “So I can’t stop this plan of going after Hitler’s bunker?”

  He shook his head.

  “Well then, tell me when you’re going to do it.”

  “Not a chance. I don’t want any of our guys getting arrested because of what I told you. Not yet, not now. Not for this.”

  “I’ll be in touch.” I slid out of the booth and left.

  * * *

  Florian and Patrick walked next to me as we made our way through the Russian display. It was almost dark. Direct lighting illuminated the serpentine walk between two faux walls, with narrative text, photographs, and posters. The photos showed the massive destruction at the hands of the Germans in graphic detail. I stopped in front of the section on the Siege of Stalingrad. Eight hundred thousand Russians died, including hundreds of thousands of women and children. We moved on, to the cities destroyed, the buildings ruined, the crops stolen, and the viciousness of the killing squads—the Einsatzgruppen. The ones who sought out and murdered the Jews, the gypsies, and the political commissars. Shot like dogs, in ditches, in town squares, in front of their families, it didn’t matter.

  We paused in front of the panel that told the story of Babi Yar. I stared at the summary and the pictures. Patrick and Florian were silent. Alex caught up with us and was out of breath. “She’s on the warpath. Using your name in vain,” she said quietly.

  “She can wait.”

  “What’s this?” she asked.

  “Babi Yar.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Never heard of it until five minutes ago. It was the bloodiest day in the entire Holocaust. The SS took,” I leaned forward and read, “33,771 Jews out of Kiev, in the Ukraine. They told them they were going to be resettled. Then they made them take off all their clothes, marched them into a ditch, and shot them in the
neck.”

  “Shit. Seriously?”

  “Look at the pictures.”

  She studied the panel and read about what had happened. In particular she studied the photographs of Kurt Eberhand and Dr. Otto Rasch, two of the SS officers responsible for the decision. She particularly studied Rasch’s panel, which told how he studied philosophy and law, and received two doctorates, one in law and the other in political economy. He was called Dr. Rasch. He was the one who enforced the Babi Yar massacre. She looked at his eyes in the photo next to his panel. She spoke to me while staring at Rasch’s face. “How did he get to the point in his head that murdering men, women, and children—because they were Jews—was justifiable?”

  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.