Back from the Dead (5 page)

She offered an elegant red-nail-painted, long-fingered hand. Hess took it and brought it to his mouth, kissed it delicately, and said, “Emile, and the pleasure is all mine.”

“Well you’re just a gentleman’s gentleman, aren’t you?”

“Tony said if I see you, ask you to make lunch.”

“Aye, aye,” she said, saluting. “Better go talk to the captain, see what he’s got in mind.”

He watched her hips on long tan legs sway up the stairs to the salon. Now he opened the drawer, picked up the revolver and slid it in his jacket pocket. He took the Buck knife, went up to the pilot station, cut the receiver cord on the radio, and went back on deck.

Rausch had been killed in a bizarre shooting by Colette Rizik at her mother’s residence in Bergheim, Austria. Colette, the
Der Spiegel
journalist, claimed self-defense. Zeller found it difficult to believe that a woman, an amateur with no combat training, had out-gunned a former soldier and firearms expert.

Arno Rausch had lived with his mother in a pre-war apartment building near the English Gardens until the old lady had a stroke and was moved to a nursing home in Hanover where she died in ’67. Herr Braun had said no one, to his knowledge, had set foot in the apartment since Rausch was killed, so whatever clues were to be found were evidently still there. The apartment was dark and stuffy, drapes closed, dim light shrouding heavy overstuffed furniture from the thirties. He opened the drapes and now it looked like someone’s grandmother lived there, not a fifty-year-old man, Zeller scanning bookshelves filled with Hummel figurines and antique plates. And a wall covered with cuckoo clocks that had all stopped working. Why on earth would Rausch have kept the apartment like this? Even the mother’s bedroom appeared untouched, clothes hanging in the closet, grey hair webbed in brushes and combs in the bathroom as if she had been grooming that very day.

The apartment, cluttered with old-world bric-a-brac, was an odd contrast to the squared-away neatness of Rausch’s room with its framed military insignias and weapons: pistols, rifles, shotgun, sub-machine gun and assorted combat knives. Rausch, it appeared, was a big German momma’s boy, who, if provoked, might be able to single-handedly take out a platoon.

Zeller had found cardboard boxes stacked in the closet. He carried them out, and set them on the floor in the salon. The boxes were filled with files on former Nazis, prominent citizens still living in Germany, police officers, politicians, judges. There were profiles and photographs in each of the folders, Zeller wondering why Rausch would have this information – until he dug a little deeper and discovered the boxes were the property of a Jewish organization known as the ZOB that helped German authorities find and prosecute war criminals.

There was a file on Ernst Hess, profiling his life, Nazi party affiliation, SS number and alleged war crimes, including several photographs of Hess in an SS uniform, posing in front of a pit filled with dead Jews. Similar pictures had been featured in the article about Hess published in
Der Spiegel.

There was an audio cassette in the folder that said
Cantor Interview
on the label in black marker. He slid the tape in his pocket, took the ZOB file on Hess and walked out of the apartment. He went back to his car and drove to the autobahn.

Zeller listened to the tape on the way to Wiesbaden. The interview was really a conversation between Lisa Martz of the ZOB and a Holocaust survivor named Joyce Cantor. Joyce, now an American citizen, was visiting Munich for the first time since the war, and bumped into a former Nazi in broad daylight on Maximilianstrasse. The Nazi had been responsible for murdering hundreds of Jews in the forest outside Dachau concentration camp in April, 1943.

Her story was corroborated by a second survivor, Harry Levin, who had positively identified the Nazi as Ernst Hess. Although no names were mentioned, these eyewitness accounts were the basis of the article about Hess in
Der Spiegel.
The article appeared October 12th. But Hess had already disappeared a couple weeks earlier. He must have known he was going to be prosecuted.

Zeller arrived in Wiesbaden at 5:17 p.m. Parked and got out at Kaiser-Friedrich-Platz, saw the neo-Gothic spires of the Marktkirche and made his way through the marketplace. Vendors were starting to close up for the day, breaking down their stalls, packing their goods in vans and trucks.

He crossed the street, entered a building he hadn’t been to since his time with the Stasi, rode the elevator to the fourth floor and walked to the end of the hall. Zeller knocked on the door.

“We’re closed,” a voice said from inside.

He turned the handle, surprised it was unlocked, opened the door and went in. “That’s no way to talk to a former client.”

Leon Halip, sitting in a leather swivel chair, was studying an image on an angled drafting table, high-beam gooseneck lamp providing illumination. He looked over the top of his eyeglasses at Zeller, massaging swollen fingers, one hand rubbing the other. Next to him a dark-haired teenager was trimming the border around a photograph with an X-Acto blade. Leon Halip at sixty-two looked like an old man, blinking and squinting, trying to focus on him.

“Former client, uh? So former I do not recognize you.”

“Friedrich Benz.” It was the name on the forged documents Leon had made for him years earlier when he left the Stasi.

Leon smiled and nodded. “Ah, yes, Herr Benz. August 1963, if I’m not mistaken. Of course I remember you.”

“I heard you were no longer in the trade,” Zeller said. “But you appear hard at work, and I see you have an apprentice.”

“I still have an eye, is the hands that no longer function.” His arthritic knuckles looked like red grapes, swollen and painful. “My grandson is learning the profession.”

The kid resumed his task, running the blade along the edge of a metal ruler.

Leon Halip, with a heavy Hungarian accent, said, “You think I am out of the business, so why are you here?”

“What name did you use on Ernst Hess’ passport?”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

The grandson glanced at Leon like he wanted to correct him, but didn’t say anything.

“Interesting you can remember me from eight years ago, but not Ernst Hess from less than one month.”

“It is impossible to remember something that did not happen, Herr Benz.”

Zeller drew the Makarov from the side pocket of his leather jacket, aimed it at the kid. “Now you see I’m serious.”

“You point a gun at my grandson. You don’t think I would tell you if I knew?”

Zeller took the suppressor out of his coat pocket and screwed it on the end of the barrel.

“Gerd Klaus,” the old man said.

“You’re sure?”

Leon Halip kept his eyes on Zeller and nodded.

“When was he here?”

“Twenty-eighth of September,” he said, pulling on the end of his mustache.

“Where was he going?”

“We don’t get involved beyond the papers. You should know that.”

Zeller raised the Makarov and shot the boy first and then turned the gun on Halip and squeezed the trigger.

“Klaus flew Stuttgart-London-Detroit the twenty-ninth of September, arriving in the morning of the thirtieth,” customs agent Fuhrman said by phone. “Five days later he took a flight from Detroit to West Palm Beach, arriving the fifth of October.”

“Anything else?” Zeller said.

“From what I can see that was the last commercial flight Herr Klaus has taken.”

Zeller was now convinced that Hess leaving the country had nothing to do with the
Der Spiegel
article. He was going after the Holocaust survivors. Taking out the witnesses would dilute the prosecution’s case. That’s why he had not withdrawn or transferred any large sums of money. He had been planning to come back, but something had happened.

“We’ll stop here for lunch,” Brank said.

The Hatteras was in turquoise water about five meters deep when they dropped anchor near a small deserted island with a white sand beach. Brank took off his shirt and folded it over the back of a chair on the aft deck. The blue shorts he was wearing were swim trunks. Brank raised bent arms, flexed his biceps and grinned. He was a hairy little ape wearing a gold chain with a gold horn on it, the
mano cornuto,
worn by superstitious Italians to ward off cuckoldry. And he was married to an erotic film star. It couldn’t have been more incongruous. Brank strode across the deck, climbed up on the transom, arced his arms and hands over his head, and dove into the ocean, swimming under water and then surfacing, floating on his back. “You’ve got to come in. It’s wonderful,” he said, kicking along the side of the yacht, grinning at Hess. Ernst was thinking he should fire up the engines and speed off with the erotic film star, leave Brank frolicking in the water.

Brank swam for ten minutes, climbed back in the boat, sucked in his stomach, dried off with a towel and went inside. Denise came out and set the small round table on the aft deck. First she put down a white tablecloth and then brought out napkins and silver, plates of shrimp salad with sliced tomatoes and grapes, and a bowl of apples.

The apples reminded Hess of
shpil,
a game the SS had played on the Jews of Miedzyrzec. He had been sent to Poland, arriving May 1, 1943. The next day all of the Jews in the Miedzyrzec Podlaski ghetto had been rounded up for deportation, and forced to squat in the marketplace for hours on a hot day. Hess thought of a way to relieve the boredom and entertain his men. He told guards to toss apples into the crowd. Any Jew hit was pulled out and beaten to death or shot. It was high drama. The Jews were terrified and the SS guards were having a wonderful time. Whenever a Jew was hit the guards erupted with laughter. The game went on all afternoon and continued at the train station. The dead bodies were then loaded into freight cars with the prisoners going to Treblinka.

Brank came out with a bottle of Blue Nun and three stemmed glasses, wet hair combed back, beach towel wrapped around his waist, no shirt. “You’re going to love this. Famous som-al-yer in Boca turned me on to it.”

He set a glass at each of their places and poured the wine. Hess was familiar with it, a mediocre Liebfraumilch he would have refused to drink in any other situation.

“Tony tells me you’re an actress,” Hess said to Denise, trying to shift the conversation into gear.

“And a good one,” Brank said. “Still is.” He winked at her.

“I quit when Tony proposed.”

“How long have you two been married?”

“Seven years,” Brank said. He raised his wine glass. “To seven more.”

They clinked glasses, sipped their wine and ate the shrimp salad that Hess had to admit was delicious. When they were finished Denise cleared the table. Brank and Hess smoked cigarettes and finished their wine.

“Where is Florida from here?”

“You kidding? That way.” Brank pointed at the horizon. “Due west about sixty miles. Latitude twenty-six degrees north, longitude eighty degrees west.”

Of course, Hess was thinking, follow the angle of the sun. Easy to do on a nice clear day like this. “Don’t you use the Loran?”

“Yeah, but you still have to chart your course. I thought you were a sailor.”

At one time Hess had an Italian yacht he kept in Nice. “I have a captain.”

“A captain? You pussy.” Brank grinned. “Kidding you, partner. Say, I never asked. What’re you doing in Freeport?”

Hess didn’t answer because Denise came back on deck in the orange bikini, breasts bouncing in the skimpy top, long legs, flat stomach, barefoot, carrying a striped towel.

“Ready?” Denise said.

“We’re going to explore the island,” Brank said.

“Come with us,” Denise said, throwing her towel on the chair next to Hess.

“No, I’ll stay here and relax, if you don’t mind. Maybe take a nap.”

“You don’t know what you’re missing,” Brank said.

Denise climbed the stairs to the top of the transom and jumped. Hess heard the splash when she hit, got up and stood on the port side of the Hatteras, watching Denise floating on her back in the turquoise water. Brank removed his towel skirt, ran to the stern and dove over the transom, swam to Denise and the two of them held onto each other, treading water before swimming for the island. They made it to the beach, got out and started walking, stopping occasionally to pick up shells. When they were out of sight, Hess went to the bow, raised the anchor and felt the yacht start to drift.

He climbed the ladder to the flying bridge, glanced in the direction of the island. From this higher vantage point he could see Brank and Denise strolling, holding hands like young lovers, coming back toward the stretch of beach closest to the boat. Hess sat at the controls, started the engines, heard the rumble of the exhaust, looked back, saw Brank running, Denise trailing behind him.

Brank was in the water halfway to the yacht when Hess opened up the twin throttles and took off, the Hatteras picking up speed, and within a few minutes the island was fading in the distance. Hess went below and punched new coordinates into the Loran, and put the yacht on autopilot. His chest itched from the gunshot wound. He rubbed it and tried to relax.

Three hours later he passed a freighter creeping along the horizon, and a couple of fishing boats before he saw the Florida coastline, Hess using a telescope in the salon to identify the twin spires of the Breakers Hotel, confirming it was Palm Beach.

When he was five hundred meters from shore, Hess turned off the engines and lowered the boat, cranking it over the port side to the water. He went down the stairs, crossed the deck and stepped over the side into the dinghy. He started the outboard motor, unhooked the davit lines and cruised toward shore.