The Blood Flag Read online

  I finished my sandwich. “Sounds like a hard target.”

  “It is. And if they try and get it during the load out, that’s not going to work either. The whole display is set up separately from the Hitler materials. Including the bunker room. It’s all finished and ready to go, and gets here by a series of trucks that are separate from the actual Hitler stuff. Neither one knows how the other is going, and they’re required to take routes that are not obvious. The trucks are unmarked. Inside the truck is a container almost as secure as the one in the exhibits. There are Russian security officers with each truck and hitting one of the trucks would be as difficult as an armored car. You’re just not going to get in there without an anti-tank weapon or a lot of time.”

  I asked, “So when are they vulnerable?”

  “Only one time. When they transfer the materials from the truck to the exhibit. It’s about a half hour set-up while the exhibit bunker is open. They have to go in and dust, clean everything up, set it all up, and then secure it. There are a dozen Russian security, fully armed. There are local police, state police, and FBI. I don’t think anybody could get within a hundred yards of that transfer.”

  “Then they’re going to hit it at the museum.”

  “It’s pretty tough. It’s impenetrable. It literally is an armored car. I don’t know how they’d get through it. They’d never get through the key pad on the door and they’ll never find the guy with the combination.”

  I pondered how these amateur thieves were going to break into this vault. “When are the Russians coming?”

  Karen glanced at her watch. “They should be here in a few minutes.”

  “Let’s continue this when they get here.”

  We ate in something of an awkward silence for the next ten minutes until the conference room phone rang. One of the other agents answered the phone. The Russians were there. “I’ll go down and get them,” he said.

  He returned in ten minutes with three Russian men, ranging in ages from thirty to fifty. They introduced themselves around, and it became clear that one of them was in charge. His name was Dmitri. He had a buzz haircut, was rather small, maybe five feet six inches, and had no sense of humor. His two colleagues were also from the FRB, the Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation, and were equally humorless. They looked uneasy being at the FBI station.

  Karen offered them cookies from the leftover lunch, but they declined. Dmitri said, “You called us to this meeting in a great hurry. What is so important?”

  Karen looked at me and then spoke before I could. “There’s going to be an attempt on your exhibit.”

  Dmitri frowned. “An attempt? For what?”

  I answered. “To steal the Hitler items.”

  “It’s not possible. No one can do this.”

  “Maybe so, but they’re going to try,” I said.

  Dmitri spoke rapidly in Russian to the other two men and then looked at me. “Who?”

  I nodded. “A neo-Nazi group based in the Southern United States called the Southern Volk. They are determined to take the items from the bunker. They’re going to do it this weekend while they’re on display.”

  “How do they propose to do this?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t think they know. They’re amateurs. From what I’ve heard of the security so far, I don’t think they have a prayer of pulling it off.”

  Dmitri nodded with some satisfaction. “That is my thinking too. Let them try. They will fail. They will not even get close.”

  There was a pause while everyone realized the truth of what he said. But that wasn’t where I wanted this conversation to go. I said, “I want you to let them succeed.”

  “What? Let them succeed? Why would we do that?”

  “Because it is to all our benefits if they do.”

  Dmitri looked puzzled. “How?”

  “In a few weeks all of the leaders of the biggest neo-Nazi movements in the world will meet in Germany, including, I might add, from Russia. A very wealthy German has bought a castle to train neo-Nazi groups, and is going to provide them with uniforms, weapons, propaganda, and worldwide leadership.”

  “So?”

  “The meeting is only for those who can persuade him, show him actually, that they’re worthy of coming to Germany. We have someone inside the Southern Volk and we need to make sure they get invited. Their idea is to take these Hitler items from the bunker. From your bunker. We need to let them. I think that will almost guarantee that they get to Germany.”

  Dmitri looked dumbfounded. “You want us to give these neo-Nazis Hitler’s last items? Are you insane?”

  “No. And I don’t mean for you to give them his items. I was talking to Alex on the way down,” I indicated her next to me, “and we think we have a way to make this work. We can create near perfect forgeries of anything. Including clothing, shoes, desks, anything. I’ve looked at the photographs of the exhibit online. None of them are close up, and none of them are high quality.”

  “No. We want people to come see the exhibit.”

  “Exactly. But they don’t really know what these items look like up close. They won’t know the real from the fake. They won’t have a high-resolution photo to compare them to. If we make copies, and if they’re in the bunker, they won’t even hesitate to think they’re the originals.”

  Dmitri actually smiled.

  “What?”

  Dmitri inhaled sharply and then exhaled and shook his head. “We thought perhaps the biggest difficulties with neo-Nazism was in Russia. We guard these bunker items in Moscow as if they were all the gold Russia owns. There is a very determined neo-Nazi group in Russia: The Russian National Unity Group, or the RNE. They’re in two hundred fifty cities. They publish a newsletter with a circulation of one hundred fifty thousand. They call each other Soratnik,” he said, his tone dripping with anger and sarcasm. “Comrades in arms. They do military combat training near Moscow. They have openly declared their intention to overthrow the Russian government by force. We have long feared that they would try and use Hitler’s items from the bunker as their icons. I thought in the United States we would be safe.”

  “Do you have anybody inside the RNE?”

  Dmitri looked intently at me. “I am not free to discuss our internal intelligence matters. But you can remain confident that we are doing everything that we can.” He continued, “I also need to know who will pay for the damage to our vault, our bunker.”

  I said quickly, “I will. We will—the American government—you have my word.”

  Alex and Karen both looked at me, obviously wondering how I could be so sure.

  I said to Dmitri, “So how are we going to copy the items? Can we have access to the originals?”

  Dmitri looked at the man next to him. “Sergei?”

  He shook his head. “No. Not possible.”

  I said to Sergei, “The best copies would be made off the originals.” Sergei shook his head. He wasn’t having it. I didn’t have time for this. “Then you must have good photos. And I’ll need to see how they’re displayed in the bunker.”

  “Fine,” Sergei replied. “We have many good photographs.”

  “I need a CD of all the best photos you’ve got. I need to get my people working on these things. I’ll head up to D.C., and I’ll be back by Friday. I don’t know when these guys are going to hit, but I think it will be near the end of the exhibit. They wanted to go through the display several times. When does this display open to the public?”

  Sergei said, “Saturday morning at 10:00 a.m.”

  “Okay. We have to get you the substitutes by Friday.”

  Dmitri nodded. “Sooner would be better. We should probably discuss what needs to be replaced exactly. We can’t replace the desk because they’d never get it out of there. I think we need to look at what can be taken out by hand.”

  Sergei agre
ed. “There are only four things anyone could carry out. His shoes, his walking stick, his hat, and his uniform.”

  I asked, “How are his shoes still in existence? I thought his body was burned.”

  “These were found in his closet.”

  I thought for a minute. “Was his skull ever found?”

  Dmitri responded, “His body was found by Russian soldiers. They were told to crush his skull with their rifles and break it into bits so there would be nothing for anyone to ever see again.”

  “Which gave rise to the myths that Hitler lived on after the war.”

  “I suppose, but it also kept the Hitler worshipers at home.”

  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.

&
nbsp; 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.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  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.