Europa Blues (41 page)

In both cases, there had been plenty to be avenged.

‘That still leaves the question of what these two examples of revenge have in common. The prostitutes’ revenge on their pimps and the camp victims’ revenge on their tormentors. Where’s the link between them?’

‘We’ll have to see what Professor Herschel manages to scrape together in terms of names from Weimar,’ Paul Hjelm said.

They didn’t say much more after that.

Their words felt rather insignificant.

ARTO SÖDERSTEDT HAD
always wanted to see Weimar. It was one of his private dreams, those that Uncle Pertti’s money would help him to realise. Some time in the not so distant future, he would make it there.

In other words, he hadn’t been expecting this sudden trip.

He was sitting on the train from Leipzig, where the plane from Odessa had taken him the night before. He had checked in to one Hotel Fürstenhof, fallen asleep without taking even a moment to enjoy the grand old beauty of the building, and hiccuped from pure shock when he was handed the bill by an exquisite blonde he hadn’t the heart to argue with. He paid compliantly and hoped that the National Criminal Police accountants wouldn’t make too much of a fuss about it. Or did he dare send the bill to Europol in The Hague?

After that, he had wandered along Tröndlinring, bathed in the formidable light of a mild, Central European spring morning, and jumped on board the train to Weimar which had just sped past the border between Saxony and Thuringia in the former GDR.

As places like Bad Kösen, Bad Sulza and Apolda went by, he read the latest message from Hultin, which he had paid a small fortune to the Hotel Fürstenhof in Leipzig to access online. Should the bill for that go to The Hague too? Where exactly did the Common European line for abuse of power lie?

He ignored that thought and started reading.

Leonard Sheinkman wasn’t Leonard Sheinkman.

He was a Swedish SS doctor by the name of Anton Eriksson.

Such was the poodle’s real core. As Goethe had written in Weimar.

Elsewhere in
Faust
, he had called Leipzig ‘little Paris’, and as the train pulled in to Weimar Hauptbahnhof, Leipzig was undeniably like a metropolis in comparison.

Weimar was nothing more than a tiny little provincial hole.

And yet the place had been European Capital of Culture just the year before. It had also celebrated the 250th anniversary of Goethe’s birth.

Still going strong.

A dark-haired woman in her early thirties was waiting on the platform. She was holding a handwritten sign reading ‘Herr Söderstadt’.

It was a step in the right direction, he thought, dragging his unnecessarily heavy luggage over to her and holding out his hand. She gave him a quick, sharp, shy look.

‘My name is Elena Basedow,’ she said in English, her voice unexpectedly deep. ‘I’m on Professor Herschel’s assistant staff.’

‘Arto Söderstedt,’ said Arto Söderstedt.

‘Not stadt?’ she asked, glancing at her handwritten sign.

‘Not quite,’ he said. ‘More of a small village.’

She smiled shyly. ‘Like Weimar,’ she said, gesturing with her hands.

‘Hopefully,’ Söderstedt replied awkwardly.

They set off. It was still a glorious Central European spring morning.

‘Staff?’ he asked. ‘Does the professor have many assistants?’

‘Not exactly,’ said Elena Basedow. ‘At the moment, we’re purely a research group. The assistants are PhD students. There used to be more of us.’

‘While you were researching the Pain Centre?’

‘Right. There were plenty of volunteer students, right up to autumn 1998. Unpaid history and archaeology students.’

‘Hmm,’ said Söderstedt.

They had reached an old Volkswagen Vento just outside the station. Elena Basedow opened the door for him and single-handedly lifted his unnecessarily heavy bag into the boot.

‘We’re going to go there first,’ she said, slamming the boot lid with such force that the car jumped. ‘He’s waiting for us there.’

Since her words seemed slightly cryptic, Söderstedt asked: ‘Where?’

‘To the Pain Centre. It’s been completely renovated now. An IT company took over the building without having any idea what happened there during the war. Not that they’d care …’

‘But you do,’ Söderstedt said as the car swung out from the station and began making its way towards the little town centre.

She gave him another quick, shy look.

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I do.’

‘You’re Jewish,’ said Söderstedt.

‘I’m a bit of everything,’ she replied. ‘I’m part descendant of the Rousseau-influenced eighteenth-century educationalist Johann Bernhard Basedow. Then I’m part Greek. And I’m part Jewish, yes.’

‘A mix of the best,’ Söderstedt said, feeling shockingly pure, racially speaking.

She gave him yet another of those quick, shy looks.

‘There it is,’ she said, pointing.

On a secluded little street to the north of the very heart of the town was a building which looked almost plastic, as though it had been iced, covered with a glistening sugary coat. Slightly beyond it, the hexagonal, newly renovated tower of Jakobskirche loomed.

‘I see time.’

From the cellar windows in the frosted building, the church tower would most likely be visible.

Outside the iced building, where a glossy sign shouted OUD data, a straight-backed, smart-looking man in a suit was waiting. He marched straight over to the passenger door of the Vento and opened it for their guest.

‘Professor Ernst Herschel,’ he said, holding out a hand.

At the sight of Arto Söderstedt he froze. It was just for a brief second, but long enough for the detective within Söderstedt to react. Since Herschel’s face immediately returned to normal, he decided to wait and see what happened.

It didn’t feel especially good.

After all, it wasn’t long since he had been told: ‘I must admit it was something of a shock when you walked into the room.’

With that at the back of his mind, he climbed out of the car and looked over to the candied building.

‘This is what it looks like now,’ Ernst Herschel said in a casual tone. ‘The new times are taking over, airbrushing everything else into golden oblivion.’

Then he jumped into the back seat. Söderstedt clambered back in himself. The Vento drove off.

‘We’re heading south towards the Hochschule für Architektur und Bauwesen,’ Herschel explained. ‘I still have my old study there. I’m from the university town of Jena, twenty kilometres to the east. There’s no real university in Weimar, but there are some smaller colleges. One of them rented out rooms for our research.’

The car passed the enormous castle, which looked as though it belonged somewhere else, in a much bigger town. Or why not an empire?

And then they arrived at the Hochschule für Architektur und Bauwesen. As they wandered up a staircase which seemed as though it was drenched in fine old traditions, Arto Söderstedt wondered what the architecture college staff had to say about the iced building in the vicinity.

They came to a cold but elegant study. Elena Basedow set the coffee machine brewing before disappearing out through the doorway.

Assistant staff, Söderstedt thought, sitting down in his assigned seat. Herschel sat down behind the desk.

‘I’m very rarely here these days,’ he said. ‘The final stages of the Pain Centre work are taking place in the Department of History in Jena.’

He held out a list to Söderstedt.

‘I just faxed this off to Stockholm. A list of all staff and all conceivable people who, during the research period in Weimar, might plausibly have heard of … the nature of the experiments. You can have one too. There you go.’

‘Thank you,’ said Arto Söderstedt. ‘And thank you for your cooperation in general. It’s been invaluable.’

‘Your colleague Kerstin Holm managed to convince me. I must admit, I was initially rather sceptical. I still don’t quite understand it all. She said something about a league of some kind, wreaking havoc around Europe with nails like this?’

Herschel opened a drawer in his desk and took out a long, thin, sharp, rusty nail. He handed it to Söderstedt.

‘Jesus,’ Söderstedt said, taking it from him.

It had a heavy legacy, that much was clear. He almost struggled to lift it.

‘Yes,’ he continued as he turned the nail in his hands. ‘That’s right. But we’re having real trouble working out who they are.’

‘The Erinyes,’ said Ernst Herschel.

Söderstedt observed him. Had Kerstin really told him that? Had they got on so well?

Herschel went on:

‘According to the legend, they become Eumenides when Athena civilises them. They’re brought into a modern society, governed by law. Do you think something similar is going to happen now?’

‘Is there a modern society governed by law for them to be incorporated into?’ Söderstedt asked.

Herschel stared at him for a moment. Then he started to laugh, loudly and almost savagely.

When the fit was over, he said: ‘There was one thing I forgot to tell the charming Fräulein Holm. Speaking of a modern society based on law. Do you know what the Pain Centre’s three figureheads were given as a salary bonus?’

Söderstedt had no idea.

‘Dental gold,’ said Herschel.

He paused.

‘They shared their victims’ belongings. Dental gold was the most important source of income. They seem to have collected a considerable amount of it. The more Jews they killed, the more gold they earned. It was an art.’

Söderstedt felt sick to his stomach. Eventually, he spoke.

‘One thing struck me. You faxed a fairly abundant amount of material on Anton Eriksson but you said you also had files on Hans von Heilberg, the head of the centre. I don’t think that material ever made it to Stockholm. It never reached me, at least.’

Herschel nodded. ‘You’re right,’ he said. ‘I probably only sent the Eriksson material. Here is Hans von Heilberg’s file.’

It appeared as though on demand.

Söderstedt paused for a moment before looking through von Heilberg’s file. He was quite sure of what he would find.

He took a deep breath and dived into the file.

He found it immediately. So simple, so obvious.

‘Heilberg, Hans von. Born 18.7.08 in Madgeburg. Father of noble German birth, mother of noble Italian birth. Bilingual.’

It didn’t seem necessary to read on.

Hans von Heilberg was Marco di Spinelli.

That was that.

Mentally, Arto Söderstedt was already en route to Milan. He pushed the papers back over to the surprised Herschel and was just about to get to his feet when he remembered something.

‘Oh, I forgot,’ he said. ‘Stockholm, they told me that the photograph of the third man was badly affected by the fax transmission. It would be good if I could see it.’

For a moment, Ernst Herschel froze. The exact same movement as he had made before. Marco di Spinelli’s voice echoed through Söderstedt: ‘I must admit it was something of a shock when you walked into the room, Signor Sadestatt. You truly do remind me of someone I knew an eternity ago, back in the beginning of time.’ And he saw an image, a photograph of an imposing-looking man anchored in a snowdrift, his hand gripping a sabre. The picture wasn’t only impressive, it was also familiar.

Strangely familiar.

He sighed deeply as the photograph of the Pain Centre’s third man was held out to him. He knew he would see himself.

And sure enough, he did.

The man in the picture was Arto Söderstedt himself.

A shiver passed through him.

‘A remarkable likeness,’ said Ernst Herschel.

Arto Söderstedt jumped to his feet and rushed out of the room.

ON THE PLANE
between Leipzig and Milan, he finally managed to put his thoughts into some kind of order. By then, the worst of the fury and the worst of the horror had abated.

But everything was utterly clear.

There was no escaping it.

He felt as though he had been driven out of Paradise.

In Finland, Finnish SS men enjoyed the same rights as all other war veterans. Since the Finnish Winter War had been fought against the invading Soviet Union, it was natural that members of the resistance had turned to the USSR’s enemy, Germany. Many of the fighters from the Winter War had later joined the SS. There were always plenty of commemorations.

Just over a year ago, an international scandal had blown up when the society for the memory of the fallen announced plans to build a memorial for the Finnish and German SS men who had died in battle in Ukraine. Only recently, the Jewish community in Helsinki had protested against a special event. The Finnish veterans had invited their German counterparts to an SS memorial event. This raised all kinds of questions about whether Finland should really be sending official invites to German SS veterans, old German Nazis from the organisation responsible for the systematic elimination of millions of Jews in Europe.

It was all a bit too much for the Jewish community to stomach.

But there was, in other words, nothing unusual in Finnish fighters from the Winter War having links to the Nazi SS. They were officially sanctioned as war veterans by the Finnish government.

Arto Söderstedt’s Great-Uncle Pertti Lindrot had been an enthusiastic young provincial doctor who found himself drawn into the Finnish Winter War after the abrupt attack by the Soviet forces. He turned out to have a great aptitude for guerrilla warfare in the winter forests and quickly climbed the ranks. He became a hero after several decisive offences and disappeared without a trace after the Russian victory. According to his own version of events, he had gone out into the Finnish forests like a classic guerrilla fighter. He returned after the war, more or less a broken man. Drank more and more and had trouble keeping his job as a doctor in a variety of increasingly remote backwaters, before eventually returning to Vasa and becoming an eccentric, living that sad life until he turned ninety.

Now Arto Söderstedt knew what Uncle Pertti had really been up to after the Russian victory in the Finnish Winter War.