The Blood Flag Read online

  I looked at Alex who was staring at Hitler’s shoes. “Gives you kind of a creepy feeling, doesn’t it.”

  She nodded and looked at Florian who was trying to read the map.

  It’s one thing to see a grainy black and white movie about Hitler, or read about him in history books, or even hear people talk about him who were involved in World War II. But it was another thing entirely to look into a room and see his desk, his chair, his hat, his shoes, and his maps, and think of the teetotaling vegetarian who had done more damage to the world than any other single human being.

  I asked Florian and Patrick quietly, “You ever see anything of Hitler’s before?”

  Florian answered, “No. I don’t know if anything like this even exists in Germany. It would be illegal to own it. Maybe a museum, somewhere. I don’t know.”

  I looked around the large area. “Let’s figure out how we’d penetrate the security if we were the Southern Volk.” The display opened to the public the next afternoon.

  CHAPTER TEN

  The next morning I got up early. I showered and shaved, then ate breakfast with Alex at the hotel restaurant. Patrick and Florian had a conference call and said they’d catch up later, so Alex and I went ahead to the museum to be there by the 8:00 a.m. security brief. When we arrived in the conference room everyone was already there, including Atlanta police, FBI, Russian security, and Georgia State Patrol. Everyone talked excitedly and drank Starbucks coffee while picking through boxes of donuts and Danishes. I reached for a donut hole as the door to the conference room suddenly flew open and slammed against the wall. I turned to yell at whoever was making so much noise. An Atlanta police officer flew into the room with a terrified look on his face. A man with a black ski mask held a handgun to the policeman’s head. Two other men with AK-47s were right behind them. All three wore black masks, black turtlenecks, black rubber gloves, and black pants and shoes.

  The one holding the Atlanta policeman yelled, “Everyone shut up!”

  I looked around the room for some solution. There were a lot of weapons in the room, but most, like mine, were in holsters under jackets or on belts. And none of us—even with our vests on—could handle an AK-47 round, a very fast 7.62 by 39 millimeter round that would penetrate any body armor in the room.

  The man with the gun to the head of the officer yelled at him, “Kneel!”

  The police officer tried to turn and look at his captor, but was pushed down to his knees. He knelt at the door, facing us, blocking the only exit.

  “Hands on your heads! Everybody! Now!” he yelled.

  We all complied.

  “Don’t even think about going for a weapon. Or a radio,” he said. “Anyone does either of those things, and I’ll put a bullet in Officer Malone’s head.”

  Malone was furious. He had clearly been surprised, and now was at the center of a big problem. While Malone knelt, one of the other armed men kept his AK-47 on his shoulder aimed at us, as the third man put his rifle behind his back on its sling and went from one of us to the next, searching for weapons. He took the service weapon of the closest person to him, a female Atlanta police officer and examined it. He pulled a net bag out of his pocket and placed the weapon in the bag. He then pulled her Mace off her belt, and put that in the bag, then her radio, and finally her cell phone. He went to the next person, an FBI Special Agent, and took his weapon. He searched for a secondary weapon but found none. He took his BlackBerry and dropped it in his bag. “Turn around and put your hands on the wall! Feet three feet back from the wall! Lean!” he said to the first two. “You stop leaning, I’ll shoot you in the back.”

  He went around the entire room disarming everyone in it, and put the mounting pile of handguns and cell phones into his net bag. He found a couple of secondary weapons and pepper sprays, but most of us, including the Russians, carried only one handgun and one phone.

  He returned to stand next to Malone and trained his rifle on us, while the other man still held his handgun to Malone’s head.

  Malone said, “My knees are killing me. Can I stand?”

  “Shut up,” the man said.

  We had no options. No weapons, no radios, no cell phones, not a chance of freeing Malone unless we all rushed them at the same time. But if we did that, half of us would die, and we still might not succeed.

  I finally spoke, “What do you want? Why are you holding us?”

  The one holding Malone said, “Shut up! No talking!”

  No one spoke. We tried to memorize anything about them that was distinctive. Size, likely weight, any age criteria we could come up with. The voice of the one speaking was distinctive, and had no accent. I noticed that both of the men holding the AKs were the same size. Less than six feet, and less than two hundred pounds. Probably young. Their movements were fluid and easy. One of the men holding the AKs was left-handed. He held his rifle on his left shoulder, and he had taken weapons and radios with his left hand. Other than that, I couldn’t tell you one other thing about them. And they just waited, saying nothing.

  One of the Russians couldn’t stand the tension. He pushed away from the wall and started walking toward them. “What is it—”

  “Stop!” the leader said, holding Malone.

  The Russian continued to close on him slowly.

  The one holding Malone grabbed his hand, pulled his arm up next to his head and placed it flat on the wall. He put his handgun against Malone’s hand and pulled the trigger. The shot was deafening and stunning. Malone cried out and crumpled to the ground grabbing his hand. His left hand bled profusely from the nine-millimeter wound that went completely through. “Go back or I’ll put another bullet in him!”

  The Russian retreated and leaned back against the wall.

  Malone begged for help. He cradled his left hand in his right, trying to stop the bleeding. The blood ran out of his right hand and down to his elbow where it dripped to the floor. “Help me stop the bleeding!”

  “Shut the hell up!” the gunman said gruffly.

  They had trapped ninety percent of the security forces in the conference room right before the security meeting. Malone bled, and we all waited for something to happen.

  Finally the phone of the lead gunman buzzed. He looked at what was probably a text message, and nodded to the other two. The one holding Malone let him go to the floor. He put his handgun in a holster on his belt and said, “We’re leaving. If you come after us, Malone will die. We have placed a video camera outside in the hallway pointed to this door. If any of you come out of this door, he dies. You must stay in this room for thirty minutes, and contact no one. After thirty minutes, if no one has left this room, we will let him go. Do not move!” He looked at the left-handed gunman and nodded toward Malone.

  They bent down and grabbed Malone under his arms and hauled him up on his feet. They opened the door quietly, looked out in the hallway, and led Malone out of the room. They closed the door behind them.

  One of the Russians rushed the door, “Wait!” I said. “They may actually have a camera.”

  “They don’t have a camera! That’s a bluff! We must go after them!”

  “No,” I said. “Here.” I ran to the other end of the room where there was a white board with various names and a security diagram. I reached up to the top of the board and pulled it as hard as I could. It pulled away from the wall. Others saw what I was doing and helped pull the board off the wall. I tapped on the wall to find the studs, then punched my fist into the wallboard between the studs. I stuck my hand into the hole and started breaking the wallboard away. “We need to get through this wall into the other conference room.”

  Others started smashing the wall and pulling wallboard away until we had exposed the studs. We then kicked the other wallboard out that led to the conference room next to ours and several of us crawled through. Karen Brindle in her skirt was right behind me. I stood up and ran to the confere
nce room door. I opened it slowly and quickly stuck my head out and looked both ways. Nothing. I did it again, and looked toward the door of the other conference room. There was a camera on a tripod pointed right at the door. I hoped it didn’t have sound.

  The others came through the wall and out the conference room door behind me. We ran toward the main display area that had the bunker.

  We entered the huge room slowly and carefully. Five security men were lying on the floor with zip-ties on their hands and tape over their mouths and eyes. I ran to the first one and pulled off the tape. “What happened?” I demanded.

  He said, “Help me up.”

  I pulled him up to a sitting position and knelt down beside him. I had no way to undo his zip-tied hands. “What happened?”

  “We were getting ready for the start, and about ten men rushed into the room. We started to draw our weapons, but they started shooting us with rubber bullets. Right in the chest, each one of us. Then they pepper sprayed us when we were down, tied us up, and taped us. Couldn’t have taken more than a minute.”

  “Anybody hurt?”

  “Don’t think so. We heard them get into the bunker. Sounded like they had a torch.”

  I ran over to the display where Alex was inspecting the damage. The Russians had crawled through the hole cut in the window of the container and were looking at everything inside.

  Alex was watching the Russians dart around inside the container. She finally turned to me with an ominous look. “They got everything.”

  “Meaning?”

  “All Hitler’s stuff. They got it all.”

  I was about to respond when I heard a loud commotion at the back of the building. Alex and I ran to the sound, and found the Atlanta police carefully opening the metal door that led to the street. Every time they tried to open it, someone on the outside screamed out. They finally were able to determine that it was Malone; his left hand was handcuffed to the outside handle.

  Karen Brindle tapped me on the shoulder and said angrily, “Everybody to the conference room.”

  We made our way back to our original conference room. Most who had been there during the attack were back. We exchanged glances of anger and embarrassment.

  Brindle got everyone’s attention. “The police have helicopters airborne, and cars on the way. An ambulance is on the way for Malone. Here’s where we are. Initial reports from the officers who were tied up are that there were at least ten of them, all in the same clothing as the men who were in this room. They came at them hard and fast, and the police didn’t have a chance to do anything. They said there was one guy who was big, like a weightlifter, or football player. But the rest were unremarkable. We just looked at the security tape. After they broke in, they headed for the exits, different directions, and there were cars waiting for them at each exit. They had at least seven cars, all different makes and colors, probably a list of the most common cars in Atlanta. And they all headed off at normal traffic speeds and in different directions. They blended right into the Atlanta traffic. We’re looking for them, but I don’t hold out much hope.”

  The female Atlanta police officer said, “This was a professional job. The only reason anyone got hurt was because the Russians tried to make a play—”

  Brindle responded, “Let’s not worry about that right now. They’re surveying the damage and seeing what was taken. But they are furious about how all this happened.” She looked directly at me. “Did you know this was coming?”

  “Of course not. And we don’t even know if this was my guy.”

  “The hell we don’t. Where is he?”

  “I don’t know. I met with him yesterday. I told him if they were planning anything they’d better call it off. But, he didn’t really respond.”

  “And how is it they knew there’d be a security team meeting at eight this morning? Lucky guess?”

  “I have no idea.”

  She asked, “Did you tell him?”

  “Of course not. I didn’t and I wouldn’t.”

  “Then how did they know?”

  I thought for a moment. “If I had to guess, I’d say that one of the members of the Southern Volk is on the Atlanta police force.”

  She looked at me skeptically. “And where are your German friends?”

  I smiled, surprised at her boldness. “You think they were involved somehow? They’re what, secret Nazis?”

  She looked away, then back. “You’d better tell us who your CI is so we can arrest him.”

  I should have seen that coming. If one of our informants commits a felony that we know about that is not authorized, the relationship is over. She knew that. “We don’t know he was involved. He might have tried to stop them.”

  “Right. Sure. What’s his name?”

  “I can’t tell you that. He’s a CI and you don’t have a need to know.”

  “The need is that he just participated in one of the boldest heists in American history. You think the FBI is going to let this go because he is a CI?”

  “No, but we don’t know he was involved.”

  “You going to tell me his name?”

  “No.”

  She paused. “I’m going to ask your boss. We need to get these guys. This is a disaster. And we both know the Russians will go public on our inadequate security.”

  “You mean Atlanta police’s security.”

  “But we were here. If we’re in the room, everything’s our fault. You know that.”

  I nodded. “I’m gonna go look at the bunker.”

  Another special agent tapped Brindle on the shoulder and showed her a document. I turned and left. I walked straight back through the displays to the large room with the bunker. There were police and FBI everywhere. I walked straight up to the windows and examined them. The bulletproof Plexiglas was at least an inch thick. The main part of the window lay on the floor inside the bunker. I examined the edge where it had been cut. It was less a cut than a burn. It had a beaded edge like melted plastic. The torch used to cut through the Plexiglas and the two large tanks on a dolly were still there, right where they had been left. It looked like a common torch and I suspected tracing it would be futile, but I was sure we would try. I stood at the open window and looked into the bunker where I had stood the day before with Florian and Patrick. The room was in complete disarray. Everything on top of the desk was missing, and the coat rack behind the desk chair was lying on its side. The hook that held the uniform was bent down and the table on which the shoes and walking stick had been placed, right under the window so that you could look at them from eighteen inches away, had clearly been used to get in and out of the window. It was slightly askew. Alex had walked up and was standing next to me looking into the rooms inside the bunker.

  I asked Alex, “They find anything? Any prints?”

  I could see an FBI forensic team was already hard at work on the scene. “Not yet. They say it’s pretty clean.”

  “Probably all wearing masks and gloves. What about their cars?”

  “Found them all.”

  I turned. “What? Where?”

  “Half hour ago a woman called the police station and said the cars matching the descriptions had pulled into a warehouse. The police went there, and found them all.”

  “And?”

  “All intact, clean, undamaged. All stolen. And nothing there. None of the Hitler stuff. None of the people. No prints.”

  “Where’d they go?”

  “It was a switch. They moved all the stuff to other cars or vans or whatever, and drove out the back door. She saw the cars go in, but she didn’t see anybody go out. Different door on the other side of the block. It’s a big warehouse. So now they’re somewhere in Atlanta in cars or vans or pickups or whatever that we don’t know anything about driving all over who knows where.”

  To South Carolina, I said to myself. “They pulled it
off. They broke into the impregnable vault the Russians brought, made off with all of Hitler’s mementos, and now the trail’s cold. Fifty minutes later and we’ve lost them.”

  “In a nutshell,” she said. “The press is going nuts. CNN has trucks on the way. Everybody’s flying in. Commentators are standing outside the building with microphones, and the entire security force is standing around with their thumbs up their asses looking stupid. Including us. And by the way, just to make your day, since everyone loves a scapegoat, a lot of people think you started all this.”

  “If it had gone my way they’d have the fakes. But Washington was—as usual—unwilling to take any risk. Had to play tough. So here we are.”

  “I think we’d better get back to Washington.”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN