Knights of the Blood (20 page)

“How may I help you?” The researcher’s voice was as plain as the rest of her.

“I’m looking for information on an SS officer named Kluge,” Drummond replied.

“And why do you want this information?”

“It’s part of an investigation.” He showed her his badge. “I’m with the police in America.”

She looked at his ID card. “You are
Kapitän
Drummond?”

Drummond nodded. “Yes, that’s me. And you are?”

“Magda Krebs. I work in the research department here at the Wiesenthal Center.” Her voice sounded drained in life. “Do you have any other information on this Kluge?” she asked.

“Nope. Just a name.” Drummond tried to read some reaction on Magda’s face, but all he saw was a blank.

“Well, come with me, and we’ll check the main files. “

The files at the Wiesenthal Center were housed in hundreds of filing cabinets crammed into every room on every floor of the building. Trudging up a flight of dimly lit stairs, Magda led Drummond into a narrow corridor lined with files.

“These are service records of SS officers. They aren’t complete, because we simply don’t have the files on everyone who served in the SS between 1923 and 1945. This section covers J and K, and they are more or less in alphabetical order.”

She gave Drummond an exhausted look. “You start here,” she indicated one of the dark green filing cabinets, “and I’ll start over there.”

Drummond didn’t relish the prospect of several hours digging through the gray folders stuffed in the file cabinets.

“Excuse me, Ms. Krebs, but it’s just possible that the file may have been recently copied for the Vienna Police, Office of Special Investigations. If that’s the case, would it have been returned to these files, or put somewhere else?”

Drummond knew that if this was anything like the Los Angeles Hall of Records, it could take months for a file to be returned to its rightful place.

“Ah. If the OSI had a copy of the file made, then it would be downstairs in the activity center.” A glimmer of interest sparked behind the woman’s eyes. “Come with me,
Kapitän.”

Trudging down the stairs, they walked past Button Horowitz, talking animatedly on the phone behind the reception desk, and went into a small but well—lit office that overlooked the street. Stepping behind a high counter, Magda pulled out two large ledgers from the shelf below and dropped them down in front of Drummond.

“In this one are the police requests,” she shoved the book across to Drummond, “and in this one the civil requests. You check out the police.”

It took Drummond only a few minutes to find the entry he was looking for.

“Here it is,” he said, turning the book and sliding it back to the other side of the counter.

Magda Krebs made a note of the file number, then turned to a large Rolodex next to her. Slowly turning the wheel on the side, she stopped when she came to the index number that matched the number in the ledger Drummond had been searching.

“Well,” she said, “your Wilhelm Kluge is a popular man. The Vienna police want to know about him, and an old man named Stucke wants to know about him. I’ll get the file for you.”

She turned away from the counter and vanished through a door on the other side of the room, and Drummond took the opportunity to check the dates in the Rolodex and also to take down the address of Hans Stucke, which he had neglected to note last night. Stucke’s request for the file had been made almost two months ago, and it had been nearly six weeks since the Vienna police requested the file.

Drummond glanced out the window as he did some quick caIculations. Stucke’s body had been in the shower for at least a week, and it had probably taken the office of Special Investigations a couple of weeks to hunt down the Kluge look—alike. That left not more than three weeks of Stucke’s life open to speculation, as far as Drummond was concerned.

Suicide, eh? He’d bet all the strudel in Austria that Alois Sacher wouldn’t bother to check into the last three weeks of the old man’s life.

The researcher returned, carrying a slim gray file. “Here it is, such as we have. I can make a copy for you, if you care to come back tomorrow. Our Xerox machine is down right now.” She handed Drummond the file.

Drummond flipped through it quickly before handing it back, but it was mostly in German. He would need a translator if it was to be of much use, but he’d worry about that later.

“Yes, I think I
would
like a copy, please. What time tomorrow can I pick it up?”

“Any time after lunch. Here.” She handed Drummond a form to fill out. “I need your name and address here in Vienna, just on those two lines–so.” She pointed to the spaces Drummond had to fill in. “When you come back tomorrow, ask at reception and they’ll have your copy of the file ready.” She took the form from Drummond’s hand and glanced at it. “The Palais Schwartzenberg. That’s fine, Herr Drummond.
Auf wiedersehen.”

“Auf wiedersehen, Fräulein,”
Drummond replied, watching her perk up at the form of address. “And thank you.”

Outside the Wiesenthal Center, Drummond hailed a taxi and handed the driver the piece of paper with Stucke’s address written on it. He recognized the outside of the building from the night before, as his driver pulled up across the street, and he handed him a one hundred schilling note as he climbed out of the car.

“Wait here,
bitte,”
Drummond said, pointing at the ground next to the cab. “Here. Stay here. Okay?”

“Ja,” said the driver. “Hier.”

“Good,” said Drummond as he turned and started to cross the street to Stucke’s apartment. He hadn’t made it to the opposite curb before the taxi pulled away and drove off down the street.

“Shit!” was all Drummond could say, as the cab vanished around the corner.

Drummond had worried about making himself understood, but he was able to overcome his lack of German by handing the concierge a thousand schilling note in exchange for the key to Stucke’s apartment. Unlocking the door, he stepped quietly inside and closed it behind him, trying to get a better feel for the place, now that all the police were gone.

Little details suggested that someone had been through the place pretty thoroughly. Not the police, he guessed, if official procedure here was anything like at home. In cases of suicide, any official search was apt to be extremely casual, confined to a cursory look—around for suicide notes and the like. In circumstances like this, though, it was quite likely that another search had been made after the police left–possibly the building’s concierge, looking for anything of value before the state assessor came to impound everything, ultimately to be sold at auction if Stucke had no heirs.

Drummond quickly glanced around the room and decided to start his own search in the chest of drawers beside the bed. What he was looking for would not have appealed to the police or to avaricious landlords.

A quick search through the drawers revealed a few pair of socks and some underwear, a few shirts, nothing else. The wardrobe in the corner held a shabby overcoat, a worn—out pair of trousers, and a pair of galoshes that had been mended with black electrician’s tape, but was otherwise empty. Checking under the bed, Drummond struck pay—dirt.

The battered cardboard box at first appeared to contain only a thick stack of girlie magazines; but after lifting up only two, Drummond uncovered a fat scrapbook and a copy of SS
Sturmbannführer
Wilhelm Kluge’s file from the Wiesenthal Center.

Sitting on the edge of the bed, Drummond took a quick look at the copy of the file, then turned his attention to the scrapbook, which was filled with newspaper cuttings. He flipped through the book page by page, trying to make some sense from the German headlines that were neatly pasted on each page. Suddenly he came to a banner headline that even he could understand. One word in heavy black type covered the entire top of the page: “EICHMANN. “

So,
he thought
, this is it. A collection of newspaper clippings that relate to Nazi war criminals.

He thumbed through a few more pages. Maybe Sacher was right, and Stucke
was
emotionally disturbed. The scrapbook certainly was the work of an obsessive personality: neat, with precise margins, every clipping carefully pasted into place.

Drummond looked around the room. Other than drawers left slightly ajar from the search, everything was in precisely the right spot. The coat and trousers in the wardrobe, the socks and underwear in the dresser, the shoes ...

He hadn’t seen any shoes. Setting the scrapbook aside, Drummond went back to the wardrobe and opened the door. Inside were the trousers and coat, and on the floor the worn—out galoshes, but no shoes. Dropping to his hands and knees, Drummond looked under the bed and dresser.

No shoes. None in the kitchen or bathroom, either. Nor, as he looked more closely at the bathroom walls, did this look like a place where a man had slashed his throat with a straight razor. He should have noticed it before, but there had been too many people crowding the tiny room. Blood should have been everywhere. It couldn’t all have washed down the drain.

Having searched both rooms, he came back into the sitting room and had one final look around before closing the cardboard box on the girlie magazines and sliding it back under the bed. He tucked the scrapbook and Stucke’s copy of the file on Kluge under his arm, heading out of the apartment and downstairs to the street below. On his way out, he paused to drop the key through the mail slot of the concierge’s door.

Outside in the fresh air, in the late afternoon sun, Drummond started walking, clutching his bundle under his arm. He now was certain of one thing: Stucke had been murdered, and his body brought back to his apartment and stuck in the shower to make it look like suicide. Whoever killed Stucke had either carried off his blood—soaked clothes, or had left them behind at the scene of the crime. Including the missing shoes.

Drummond brought his hand up to his neck. Where was it Sacher had indicated the wound? He placed his fingers over his carotid artery on the right side of his throat. Deep within the muscles of his neck, he could feel the steady throb of arterial blood. No, an old man with a straight razor wouldn’t cut his own throat. The pain would be too intense; he would have to cut too deep.

There was something else, too. Briefly screwing his eyes shut, Drummond tried to recall a mental picture of the body in the hip bath. Stucke’s blue—white corpse was leaning back in the corner of the deep tub, his head lolled against the white—tiled walls. The shower might have washed away some of the blood, if he’d really done it in the tub, as Sacher maintained, but not all. No, the tile walls were spotless, as if they had been wiped clean. If Stucke had killed himself, the walls and ceilings would have been sprayed with blood pumping from the severed artery.

There was no longer any doubt in Drummond’s mind. Stucke had been killed somewhere else, and his body brought back to his apartment to make it look like suicide. Leaving the shower running on the corpse had been a clever touch. The combined effect of the heat and the pressure of the water on the body would cause the flesh to fall away from the bones, enough to distract most cops from the absence of blood on the walls.

The absence of blood ... Drummond let the thought trail off. A sudden gust of wind made him shiver as early evening closed in on Vienna. Across the street he saw a taxi, and dodging an electric streetcar, he hurried to where it was parked.

“Palais Schwartzenberg,
bitte,”
he said as he climbed in.

The driver grunted and pulled out into the closing darkness.

THE CONCIERGE
met Drummond in the lobby of Palais Schwartzenberg and handed him his room key and a small buff—colored envelope.

“Your telephone messages,
Kapitän.”

“Thank you,” Drummond said as he pocketed the envelope.

“You are welcome,
Kapitän,”
the concierge said, and bowing slightly, returned to his desk.

Drummond took the half—dozen steps to the corridor that led to his room two at a time. Sliding the key into the lock, he had just opened the door when the phone rang. Leaving the door open, he stepped into his sitting room and picked up the phone.

“Hello?”

“Hi, John. It’s Markus.” Eberle sounded his usual buoyant self.

“How are you doing?”

“I’m starving to death. How about dinner?” Drummond looked at his watch. It was nearly seven—thirty, and he realized that he hadn’t eaten since breakfast.

“That sounds like a great idea. Where and when?”

“The ‘where’ is a surprise. The ‘when’ is in about twenty minutes. That give you enough time to shave, shower, and shampoo?” Eberle asked.

“Sure,” said Drummond. “See you at eight.” And then, almost as an afterthought, “Hey, Markus, how fancy is this place we’re going to?”

. “Not fancy at all. Don’t bother with a tie. See you at eight.” With a chuckle, Eberle hung up.

Drummond set down the phone and opened the envelope the concierge had given him to look at his phone messages. Eberle had phoned twice, obviously trying to touch base about dinner. There had been a call from the Wiesenthal Center–Drummond wondered if it had been Button or Magda–and a call from von Liebenfalz.

Looking at his watch, Drummond decided that all of the calls could wait until morning. Draping his suit jacket over the back of a chair, he headed upstairs for a fast shower.

Clean but hungry, Drummond dressed in a hurry, pulling on a pair of blue corduroy trousers, a starched white shirt, and black Gucci loafers. He had just picked up a lightweight gray leather jacket and was going out the door when the phone rang. Imagining it must be Eberle in the lobby, Drummond closed the door and headed down the corridor.

* * *

The huge beer hall was crowded, and Egon felt mildly uncomfortable sitting across the table from the unattractive woman Kluge had sent him to meet. He felt awkward anyway, because Kluge had told him to get rid of the technicolor Mohawk. Egon still wasn’t used to the skinhead look, though he had to admit that it was much less conspicuous.

Returning his attention to his dinner companion, Egon found himself wondering if she had ever slept with a man. Not that he thought she might be a lesbian, but rather that she looked like the sort of woman whose features and personality would keep most men away. He couldn’t tell how old she was, but then Kluge didn’t look his age, either.

Maybe,
he thought,
she’s one of us.

Egon still couldn’t really believe that Kluge had finally shared his power with him. For a moment, he thought back to the night that Jurg had been killed, when Egon had been sure that his own death was only a matter of time–a
short
time.

He had taken the Jew’s body back to the apartment as ordered, not daring to disobey. When he got there, Kluge had been waiting outside in the shadows. Together they had wrapped the dead man in the tarp in the back of the van, and then Kluge, tossing the body over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes, had carried it up the stairs to the apartment.

Inside, Kluge had placed the old man’s body in the hip bath and then turned on the shower, making sure the spray was focused on the dead man’s leg. Then, reaching into his coverall pocket, he had produced an old—fashioned straight razor and flicked it open, staring at its blue and gilded blade in the half—light of the apartment.

“Come here, Egon.”

The voice had been dispassionate but commanding. In his soul, Egon felt he was about to die, but he was unable to offer any resistance. Despite the total dread that encompassed his very being, he managed to walk over to where Kluge stood in the semi—darkness, just outside the bathroom.

Only the pale light of the single streetlamp down on the sidewalk below found its way into the apartment through the one tiny window in the sitting room. Staring at Kluge, Egon watched as he slowly unzipped his black coverall to the waist, exposing the smooth white flesh of his chest.

Lifting the razor in his right hand, Kluge pressed the blade against his chest until the steel corner suddenly punctured the skin. Pulling downward on the polished bone handle, Kluge made an inch—long incision in his chest above his heart.

Egon watched with horrible fascination as the blood welled up around the blade and trickled down Kluge’s chest like a rivulet of blackness in the shadow light of the apartment. As Kluge’s hand took the blade away, letting it fall to the floor, the distant hissing of the shower seemed to drown out any other sound save Kluge’s soft voice.

“Come here, Egon.”

Clutching Egon’s head between his hands, Kluge forced Egon’s mouth over the wound on his chest.

“Drink. “

Egon sucked at the wound, his mouth filling with Kluge’s hot blood. He swallowed, the hot, salty fluid clutching at his throat. He sucked harder, swallowing more of Kluge’s blood, feeling himself growing weak at the knees. Kluge sensed his impending collapse and put one of his arms under Egon’s arm pits, holding him up.

“Drink,” he commanded again.

Egon obeyed, and it became an almost sexual euphoria. Finally, when Egon thought he could bear no more, Kluge pushed him away and let him collapse boneless to the floor, at the same time retrieving the straight razor.

Walking into the bathroom, Kluge carefully wiped the handle clean of any fingerprints, then dropped it into the tub by Stucke’s feet. Still a little dazed, Egon watched as Kluge returned to the darkened sitting room, pulled shut the bathroom door, then turned and looked at him, smiling slightly as he placed his hand over the cut on his chest and pinched it closed, holding it between his thumb and forefinger for a few seconds while he stared at Egon. When he let go, it had stopped bleeding, although an angry red welt remained where the wound had been. Egon simply could not summon up the will to move.

Kluge zipped up his coverall, then leaned over and pulled Egon to his feet. Half dragging him by the wrist, he took him downstairs and out to the van. Shoving him behind the wheel, he stared hard into Egon’s eyes.

“Go back to the warehouse and collect Jurg’s body. Take it out to the country and dump it.”

Egon nodded.

“Any mistakes, and you’ll wish you had died with him. Understand?” Kluge’s voice was as clear as ice water.

Egon nodded, wide—eyed, but Kluge leaned closer to grasp his bicep again.

“Do you understand,
Egon? Say it.”

“Yes, Master,” Egon managed to whisper. “Excellent.” Kluge released him and smiled.

“And Egon–“

“Sir?”

“Get rid of the hair?”

Egon nodded without speaking, any thought’ of disobedience gone forever, and started the van ... .

Sitting opposite the woman Kluge had sent him to meet, in the noisy beer hall, Egon found himself reflecting that it all seemed like it had happened a hundred years ago. He wondered what it would be like in another hundred years, when he would still be twenty—two. How old would the woman be?

The waiter brought two plates of wurst and sauerkraut, along with two steins of beer, and set them down in front of the oddly matched couple. They consumed the meal in silence, and after paying the bill, the woman handed Egon a slip of paper with an address on it. Egon nodded; he and the woman both got up to leave.

Outside, a black BMW pulled up in front of the beer hall and parked under the “No Parking” symbol. Grinning, his two stainless steel teeth flashing in the light of the streetlamp, Eberle tossed a POLICE VEHICLE sign up on the dash.

“Come on, John,” he said. “Now I’m going to treat you to some real Austrian food.”

The two men got out of the car and headed inside. Past an entry vestibule, the huge, low—ceilinged room was filled with long tables crowded with students drinking to excess and all talking at the top of their voices. Scattered around the edge of the room were smaller tables, and in the very back, obscured by the blue haze of cigar and cigarette smoke, were half a dozen booths.

“This way,” Eberle shouted, to make himself heard above the din. “I’ve reserved us a booth in the back.”

Grabbing Drummond by the elbow, he steered him down a half—flight of stairs and past the noisy tables of students. As they approached the booths, a short, fat man with bald head and drooping walrus moustaches stepped in front of them, blocking their path.

“Name?” he demanded in German. “Gotta have your name. All these booths are reserved. No name, no booth.”

Eberle grinned at the man. “Hitler. Name’s Hitler. Haven’t been here for about fifty years, but I’m sure you remember me.”

Distracted by Eberle’s baiting of the waiter, Drummond hardly noticed the punker with the tattoo on his cheek and his mousy female companion, just getting up from one of the small tables near the wall. The two were far less memorable than many of the patrons of the establishment. He had determined to enjoy himself as he followed Eberle and the waiter to their booth.

Eberle had been right about the food. It was delicious. The wurst was tangy and succulent, and the kraut, served with applesauce, had a zest of its own. Washed down with several steins of beer, it was one of the most satisfying meals Drummond could ever recall having eaten. The bohemian atmosphere created by the raucous students at the long tables provided the perfect backdrop to the meal as the two men settled back to their coffees, Eberle lighting up one of his ubiquitous cigars.

“So, John, what did you see today?”

“Not much in the way of tourist attractions, I’m afraid,” Drummond replied. “I spent most of the day doing some research for my master’s thesis.”

“Oh, really?” Eberle blew a lazy smoke ring at the ceiling. “Where was that?”

“At a place called Ritterbuchs, over on the edge of the second district. It’s run by–“

“Baron von Liebenfalz,” Eberle supplied.

“Yeah. Do you know him?” Drummond asked.

Eberle cleared his throat. “Let’s just say that he is not unknown in our professional circles.”

“Really? Is he one of the regulars on the fraud squad lists?”

“Oh, no. Nothing so uncomplicated as fraud.” Eberle reached for his coffee. “During the war, when Austria was occupied by Hitler’s Reich, his home was the headquarters of the
Ahnenerbe.”

“What’s the
Ahnenerbe?”
Drummond asked.

“Oh, it was a special branch of the SS. They spent all of their time investigating witchcraft, occult sciences, Freemasony, and the like. Anyhow, in 1938, two days after the
Anschluss,
they rounded up a bunch of Freemasons, took them to ‘Number 17,’ as the
Ahnenerbe
headquarters was known, and executed them.”

Drummond set down his empty coffee cup. “Why wasn’t von Liebenfalz arrested as a war criminal then, when the war was over?”

“He was in Switzerland at the time–an iron—clad alibi. Besides, after the war, the Austrian government decided to prosecute the
German
officer in charge of the executions, instead.” Eberle looked at his watch.

“Gads, it’d nearly midnight. We’d better head back. I’ve got to be in court in the morning.” Tossing two hundred—schilling notes on the table, Eberle stood up and stretched. “Drop you back at your hotel?”

“No thanks, Markus.” Drummond smiled at his friend. “I think I’ll walk.”

The night air was crisper than he thought, and Drummond could feel it reaching through his lightweight leather jacket like some gigantic cold hand slowly squeezing the breath out of his lungs. Ignoring the cold, he walked on towards the heart of the city, retreating to the comfort of a taxi only when a light rain started to fall.

Back at his hotel, the night porter greeted him at the door, and Drummond made his way back to his room. The room was stuffy and overheated. Obviously the staff had turned on the heat to compensate for the cold front that was moving through Vienna, but Drummond found the temperature uncomfortable. Walking over to the French doors that led to a small balcony outside his room, he opened them wide, then shed his jacket and tossed it over the back of a nearby chair.

Stucke’s copy of the report from the Wiesenthal Center was lying on top of a small writing desk in one corner of the sitting room. The report was in German, so Drummond was unable to do more than just look at the first few pages of closely typed material. Further on were German military forms, but even without a dictionary, Drummond had no trouble figuring them out.

Kluge must have been the embodiment of Hitler’s “ideal” Nazi. Looking at the photocopy of his ID picture, Drummond saw a ruggedly handsome young man with neatly clipped blond hair in an immaculate black uniform, the silver SS runes and three pips of a second lieutenant on his collar tabs.

Next to the photo, Kluge’s physical description tallied with Drummond’s first impressions. After a bit of number crunching, Drummond decided that at 183 centimeters tall and 75 kilos in weight, Kluge had been just on six feet tall and weighed just under a hundred and seventy pounds. According to his birthdate, he had been just twenty when the picture was taken, which would have made him twenty—six in 1944. The rest of the page was unintelligible, although Drummond guessed that most of it must have related to Kluge’s overall physical condition.