Trusting Viktor (A Cleo Cooper Mystery) (21 page)

Twenty-Two

Tuesday morning—as we hustled
through the doors of Capital Oaks and after I’d brought Viktor up to speed on what I knew of the cylinder’s whereabouts and how I knew it—he summed up the task ahead.

“So we’re going to get this old Nazi, who also happens to be in the advanced stages of dementia, to tell us the location of the map to the Amber Room, right?

“That’s what the Cherry Garcia’s for,” I said as we passed the now-empty reception station and headed for the professor’s room.

“Of course,” Viktor said dryly, then added, “it makes perfect sense. By the way, I speak a little conversational French if you think it’ll help.”

“Great idea,” I said. “Remember, though, I don’t want to upset him.” Borrowing my entry technique from Goggles, I tapped lightly, entered, and called out. I didn’t expect him to answer, and he didn’t. Everything was much the same as it had been yesterday and just as I’d done then, I now checked the professor’s reaction to my raising the window shade.

He was sitting upright, a limp pillow behind him pushing his neck into an uncomfortable-looking angle. Though he was in pajamas, his hair was neatly combed and his hands folded in his lap like he was waiting for a visitor. On the opposite side of the bed, his breakfast sat untouched on a wheeled tray.

“Hello again, Professor Dubois,” I said. “I’ve brought a friend with me today. I thought you might enjoy speaking a little French.”

Viktor stepped up, “
Bonjour, Professeur Dubois
,” he said and continued for a few sentences, none of which elicited a reply in any language. After a few more attempts, he gave me a shrug and settled himself in one of the comfy blue plastic and chrome folding chairs in the corner.

Time for a different tactic. Hiking my skirt so I could sit on the edge of Dubois’s bed, I braced one heel on the side rail and crossed my legs. I scootched my butt lightly against Dubois’s boney little knees. Slowly, I lifted one leg, admiring the ankle-ties on my peep-toe hemp wedge, and hummed a little tune. In the corner, Viktor’s eyes grew large while Dubois’s eyes moved ever so slightly in my direction. Then I went for the heavy-duty ammunition.

I took the pint of ice cream and plastic spoon from my tote. After helping myself to a spoonful, I gave it an exaggerated lick, then said, “May I offer you some Cherry Garcia, Professor Coester?”

The old German’s jaw dropped open, and I took the opportunity to place a little of the soft ice cream gently on his tongue. He closed his lips around the sweet, icy treat. His eyes rolled back in his head. For a moment I thought he’d fainted, but then he blinked and, like a baby bird, opened his mouth for more.

“Good, huh?” I said, taking another spoonful for myself. “Was this always your favorite, or was it Wolfgang’s?”

Without a moment’s hesitation—and in an unwavering voice heavy with French accent and minus any guttural inflection whatsoever—the man I’d originally come to think of as Gerhard Coester said, “It was mine. Wolfgang loved plain old peach. Always did, God rest him.”

No Sergeant Schultz here then; this man sounded more like Maurice Chevalier. I’d had a feeling the captain of
U-498
would be gone. The professor had an aura of loneliness about him that went beyond the isolation of old age. Relying on the mental image I’d conjured up that day Lucy described the two men in the yard planting the crepe myrtle tree and they way he said Wolfgang’s name, I went way out on a limb: “He was the love of your life.”

“Yes,” Coester said, nodding in confirmation, a small smile played across his lip. “But in all these years that we loved each other, no one ever knew. Wolfgang moved two doors down, and we made sure we were never seen together at night unless we were out of state. How did
you
know?”

Giving him a gentle pat on the knee, I said, “I suspect more people than you thought were aware of your relationship, but it was a different time back then. Those things weren’t spoken of, especially if the people in question were held in high regard.”

“But how do you know my name? Wolfgang’s name?” he asked incredulously.

I told him all about Lucy, how I met her looking for information on
U-498
, about the article that had put it all together for me, and how I’d come to acquire it from Hunter’s computer.

“I remember Lucy well,” he said, “though I had no idea she—or anyone—saw us that night. It’s amazing, the turn of events in time. Wolfgang and I were sent out to secure the map to the hiding place of one of this greatest of all art treasures, and on the way, a young girl sees us. If anyone would have believed her, the Amber Room would be back in its rightful place, but no one did and so the mystery continues …”

“To this day,” said Viktor. “Which brings us to why we’re here. It’s time now to end the mystery.”

“I believe you’re right, my boy,” Coester said, gently folding his hands in his lap.

Viktor and I waited, but he didn’t say anything else. I looked at Viktor, and he looked back at me. Then we both looked at Coester, who had suddenly gone vacant. Had he withdrawn to the private world he retreated to when convincing the likes of Goggles of his senility? Viktor gave me a horrified look.

Frantically, I scraped the bottom of the pint of ice cream. We were out! Close to panic, I tried to think of something to do short of shaking the old gent when I considered that he could have fallen silent simply because he didn’t want our visit to end. I motioned for Viktor to pull up his chair, and I grabbed one and did the same.

We sat by his bed like children waiting for a story. Eventually I asked casually, as if we’d never stopped conversing, “So about that night, you mentioned rowing in, but you didn’t say why. Were you put to sea according to a plan, or was the sub attacked?”

“Attacked! And sinking!” he said, snapping back as if he’d never been mentally absent. “And fast too. I had always been prepared to leave. Wolfgang was supposed to put me over off the coast of New York. We went through the drill of releasing the lifeboat from the sub many times. I had American dollars, a French passport, and all the paperwork I needed to rent a safe deposit box at the Bank of New York to safeguard the cylinder until the war was over.”

“New York?” Viktor said. “You missed New York by a long shot.”

“Yes,” Coester nodded sagely. “But you see, by the time we got that far, Wolfgang and I were in love. And you have to realize, neither Wolfgang nor I were members of the Nazi party. We were just two German men swept up in a course of events that even a blind man could see would be the destruction of us all. I was trying to escape the purge of the university that had been going on since 1933, and Wolfgang never wanted to be in Hitler’s Kriegesmarine. For us to have said no, however, would have meant death by firing squad …” Coester’s words drifted off and he paused again.

As we waited patiently, not wanting to hurry him, it occurred to me that he was hardly senile. In fact, his withdrawal, in such a place as this, might have been more accurately diagnosed as self-defense—maybe even survival. After a few minutes, I decided a prompt might be necessary after all.

“Did anyone else on the boat know about your mission?”

“No,” he stated clearly. “We were the only ones, and we decided to keep it that way. Our plan was to tell the crew our destination was Uruguay. We intended to abandon the sub and the crew once there and hide in the mountains until the war was over.”

“But that didn’t happen because you were hit, right?”

“We were running on the surface when suddenly, without any warning from the radar, a plane was on us, dropping bombs. One was a direct hit. Wolfgang and I just made it to the lifeboat … but we were the only ones. The sub sank in just a few minutes. All hands were lost. After we got over the shock of what had happened, we realized fate had wanted us to be together. So we rowed ashore and started a new life together. I had my passport and plenty of money, so I was able to purchase a fake one later for Wolfgang. I taught him French, and we changed his name on his new passport to Eudon Colbert. That’s because he so loved Claudette Colbert.”

My head was spinning. All this, and Claudette Colbert too. “I still don’t understand the purpose of making a map and hiding it in another country when the artifact was in Germany?”

“Who said it was in Germany?” He sighed heavily. “Even I didn’t know where it was. It was in twenty-seven enormous crates, so it wasn’t like a painting or something that could be easily moved.” He cleared his throat and smacked his lips. I dug out a fresh Evian from my tote—I keep everything in there—and handed it to him.

He took a swig. “Thank you, my dear.” Then, sensing our confusion, he went on. “You see, only Koch knew the exact physical whereabouts of the crates. That was pretty easy to accomplish since so many crates containing so much looted art were being shuffled around. Who knew what was in what crate? Hitler ordered him to create a map to the crates to stand as … well, tender.”

He took another sip, eyeing Viktor and me as we struggled to understand the plans of a madman. “Hitler already had plans in place for his escape to South America. The map to the crates was meant as payment to allow him admittance into one of the countries there. I was to await his orders, then retrieve the cylinder and bring it to him … wherever he ended up. Of course, as it turned out, Hitler was killed and Koch captured, so there was no one to call for the cylinder.”

“Did you take it to New York according to your orders, just to be on the safe side?” asked Viktor. “I mean, after you settled in North Carolina?”

“No. What would have been the purpose? Besides, I didn’t have it.”

“What do you mean, you didn’t have it?” I asked, stunned.

“Oh my God,” Viktor said. “It
is
still on the sub, isn’t it?”

“Of course. I told you, what was left of
U-498
went down so fast that if Wolfgang and I hadn’t drilled beforehand, we’d have gone down with it too.”

“But, but,” I stammered. “Hunter said it wasn’t there.”

“Hunter?” Coester was confused, and I didn’t blame him.

“I told you about him, remember?” I asked. “He worked for the man who found the sub. He explored its remains with a remotely operated robot and reported the cylinder wasn’t there. I only have limited information here, and it’s second hand. But the gist was no cylinder, not even in the forward compartments.”

He smiled, “Ah. This I can explain. Several hours before we were hit by the American bombs, we were running submerged, trying to get some relief from the pounding we were taking during a storm. One of the crewmen realized there was no torpedo in the top starboard tube.
U-498
had the usual configuration of four tubes, two up and two down. Not knowing the top starboard had been designated to hold the cylinder as
well
as some document boxes, he tried to load a torpedo in the tube, but of course, it wouldn’t go all the way in. Document boxes and the heavily wrapped cylinder were in the way. When the crewman tried to pull the torpedo back out, he couldn’t. It was stuck. I remember the day so well,” Coester said, shaking his head.

“Wolfgang didn’t want to risk an undersea explosion, so we surfaced. He had all nonessential crewmen move topside and stand at the stern while two crewmen disarmed the torpedo. I don’t know if you’re aware, but these bombs are very large. It takes two men to load one. Once they completely disarmed it, we tossed it overboard, and Wolfgang ordered the men back inside. Most went to their quarters. We were the last to climb down the hatch. That’s where we were when we were bombed, and I suspect it’s the reason we survived. We were the closest to the only means of escape. My knapsack was already with the inflatable. I loaned Wolfgang some of my clothes when we got ashore.”

I looked at Viktor. He looked at me, then at the elderly man who’d just finished telling us this extraordinary story. “In all these years, you never said anything to anyone about the Amber Room? Didn’t you feel some responsibility?”

“Of course we did. From the beginning, neither Wolfgang nor I had any intention of turning the room back over to Hitler. It was our plan to turn the map to the treasure over to the proper authorities once we got to a stable government and let them return it to its rightful owners. But that task was taken from us when the sub went down in over two thousand feet of water. It might well have been on the moon! And remember, we lived under constant fear of being revealed, not just as Germans, but as homosexuals.”

Just then, a commotion arose in the hall right outside the room. Goggles was confronting a large man in a ball cap wearing uniform-style work clothes, starched and pressed, his shirt out over his trousers. “Didn’t you hear me?” she demanded. “You need to come back and check in at the reception area before visiting a guest.”

It was then I recognized him. “Well, well, Miz Cooper,” said Davy Duchamp, pushing past the indignant nurse as he and his sons strode into the room. “We meet again.”

Viktor and I rose from our chairs so fast his fell over. Momentarily at a loss for words, I could only gape as Goggles, close on Duchamp’s heels, poked him in his beefy ribs. “I said you need to—”

“Get lost!” Duchamp snarled.

“Well, we’ll just see what security has to say about this.” She sniffed and stomped out without apparently noticing that Viktor and I were in breach of the rules as well.

“Davy. What are you doing here?” Viktor asked.

“Following you and her. We need to talk.”

“I declined your
invitation
last night. Apparently you didn’t get my drift,” I said with way more authority than I was feeling.

“Well, you’re not declining again.” He stepped aggressively up to me.

“Now just a minute,” Viktor pushed between us only to get the stiff arm from Davy.

“Back off, Kozlov,” Duchamp ordered. “I’m going to make this short and sweet.
She
is coming with me. I’m going to put her where she won’t be in my way, and she’s going to stay there until I get what belongs to me and my boys. After all, we’re the ones that found the treasure.” Then back to me: “You should have taken the hint to steer clear when Hunter caught you trying to read the internal log on the ROV and roughed you up pretty good. But you didn’t—”