The Marks of Cain

44

In front of them was the strange skyscape of Luderitz itself: stern Lutheran churches sat atop dirt roads, which ran past gaily gabled Black Forest villas and scruffy miners' taverns. Rolls of barbed wire guarded wooden piers that jutted into the cold blue harshness of the sea.

David followed along, as Angus walked quickly, turned left — and gestured. 'Dresler's house…'

They were confronted by one of the most vividly painted houses; its walls were a bright, Baltic red. Big white jeeps were parked down the deserted road. Scorching hot metal in the sun.

Angus knocked, and paused. He had a hand poised in an inside pocket. David knew why. Angus knocked again, louder and harder, and waited.

Then, a noise. The door was slowly unlatched, and a very old man peered around it. Angus instantly whipped out Nathan's gun, shoved through the door and pushed the man, roughly, angrily back into his own hallway.

The muzzle of the gun was pointing at the old man's orange cardigan. Amy and David exchanged glances. Alarmed and frightened.

Angus showed no such fear or doubt. He spat his words:

'Dresler, listen, everyone is fucking dead. And I want to know where you guys put the Fischer results. Now. Tell me.'

The old Nazi shrivelled away, but Angus loomed over the old German, pinning him to the wall. Dresler was staring at the gun, and at Angus, and then at David. Three times he blinked, staring at David, as if he found David more frightening than the gun.

'Dresler. Tell me. Just fucking tell me.'

Dresler was stammering; Angus was growling his questions.

'Tell me now!'

'Ich weiss es nicht nein nein — '

'I know you speak fucking English, you cocksucker — '

The old man was dribbling. He was so frightened and shocked he was dribbling.

David felt a desire to intervene. The scene was too hideous; just too hideous. He stared around, as Angus shouted and yelled. They were standing in a hallway straight from Alpine Bavaria. There was actually a cuckoo clock ticking on the wall. Some ancient walking sticks, with yellow horn handles.

And a portrait of Pope Pius the Tenth?

Maybe Angus was right to terrorize this Nazi into confession.

Dresler's old mouth was opening and closing. Angus leaned nearer. David surmised the gun must be hurting the old man, the muzzle pressing hard in his chest.

'Where are the Fischer results? Next time I shoot.'

The old man pushed feebly at Angus; and the Scotsman casually pulled back, aimed the gun at Dresler — and he shot in the air, millimetres from his target. Almost grazing the doctor's face. Terrifyingly close.

Amy gasped. David looked away. He looked anywhere else. He noticed something: a little address book on the hallway table, next to a phone. A little address book with handwriting on the cover. What was that? Another echo in his mind. Something. Something there?

Then he looked back.

Dresler had sunk to his knees in fear.

'Listen, Herr Doktor. You have two fucking minutes. Where are the results?'

Angus lifted the gun again, and he set the muzzle to the man's shoulder. 'Next I will shoot your arm, here, at the shoulderblade. Might take the whole arm off — '

The doctor was trembling.

'Ja! OK OK!' The old man lifted a liver-spotted hand. 'Shark Island.'

'Where?'

'I tell you. Shark Island. Go and see.' He was still terrified. There was a moist dark patch in his trousers. Fear had voided his bladder.

'Shark Island? What does that mean? Why? That doesn't make sense.' Angus pressed the gun harder into the shoulder. 'Tell me more.'

'Aber…Aber…' The old man shivered. He shut his eyes, like someone about to be executed. He was mumbling words. What were they? Prayers? They sounded like prayers.

And then Dresler opened his old sad eyes. And then he looked at David, then at Amy. He shook his head. 'I do not believe this…I do not believe you.'

'What?'

'You…you people will not kill me. You do not have the courage. Nein.'

Angus swore, and shot again, this time at the floor. A few centimetres to the left of the old man's legs. Splintered wood spun in the air.

But the Nazi had found some determination. He shook his head, and his eyes gleamed with a sullen defiance. Or maybe it was just a different kind of fear, maybe he was more scared of talking, of confessing, because of what might happen to him then. Amy was protesting.

'Angus — you just can't shoot him — '

Angus swore, and waved the gun.

'But Kellerman said, fuck this, Kellerman said — '

It was an impasse. They were stuck. Angus had the gun aimed at Dresler's head but David knew the German was right, Angus couldn't do this. Not in cold blood. Couldn't kill this sad old man with his spidery writing.

The spidery writing? With a well-oiled click the mental machinery of the puzzle began to turn. He gasped aloud. Of course. The address book. 'Stop!'

Faces turned. David explained:

'He knows me.'

Angus was incredulous: 'What?'

'I've worked it out. This guy Dresler. He knows me. He must recognize me.'

Amy went to speak; David interrupted: 'Angus. Where was this guy living — before he came to Luderitz?'

'France. Provence.'

'There. That's it.' David gestured, fiercely, at the kneeling old Nazi. 'He recognized me when I walked through the door. I saw it in his eyes.' He leaned very close to Dresler's sweaty face. 'You know me, don't you? Because you met my father. He found you. Someone in the Basque Country, a Gurs survivor, gave my father your details, your name, and Dad traced you to Provence.' He was leaning even closer to the quailing old German. 'And my dad threatened to reveal your past to the world — so you confessed — or you helped him — I'm fucking right, aren't I?'

Dresler was shaking his head. Mute. Determined and mute. But his silence was unconvincing. Amy whispered: 'I think you're right. Look at him.'

David didn't need any encouragement.

'It's the only thing that makes sense. Someone must have told my father about the monastery, someone who knew secrets. Who had an interest in the story, like an old Nazi, from Gurs. Who became a member of the Society of Pius…He would know where the archives were kept. It was you. You told my father — and then you had to flee, to Namibia, and this — this here — '

David grabbed at the address book. He waved it under Dresler's face.

'I recognize this handwriting! This tiny precise scrawl. You wrote on the back of my father's map. Didn't you?'

Again Dresler shook his head. And again it was unconvincing.

Angus was visibly excited.

'OK. So let's say that's it. You must be right. Let's put the clues together — '

'How?'

'Shark Island. That's what this fucker said. Shark Island.'

'Where's that?'

'Just down the road. Luderitz! By the fish wharves.'

Angus swivelled on Dresler. For a second it seemed Angus would strike the bowed and silent head of the Nazi with the butt of the pistol. Then he seemed to think better of it. He spat with contempt, but lowered the gun.

'Come on — we haven't got much time and Miguel could be anywhere, that chopper leaves in two hours — '

They ran to the door, leaving Dresler burbling and shivering in his hallway. A Nazi kneeling in the contents of his own emptied bladder.

The brutal noon sun was like a punishment, a fierce chastisement. Angus gestured south. They ran down the dusty road which doubled back to the wharves.

Two black men were sifting listlessly through piles of white dust on a corner. The smell of fish and decay was overpowering. Bleak white dust and hot blue sky — and an old Nazi wetting himself. David's mind was alive with fears and anxieties, and hope. Maybe they would find the secret. He realized, now, at least he was beginning to realize, that he needed to find the secret. The secret of himself. The terror of ignorance was too much.

The road terminated at a gate.

'That is Shark Island.' Angus indicated a kind of peninsula, jutting out into the sea. 'We take this path…'

They paced along a hot burning track that hugged the shoreline, hemmed in by broken concrete walls. Then they paused. A windswept and derelict warehouse loomed to their left, providing shade. The smell of the cold rich Benguela current was intense in the burning air.

Swift and concise, Angus explained.

'Shark Island is where the Germans did a lot of their killing, in the 1900s. Used to be an island, now it's attached by a causeway. This is where the Germans herded all the Witboii to die. In the Holocaust.'

'Not the Herero?'

'Nah. Different Holocaust. Another Holocaust. I know. I know.'

'Jesus.'

'I'll explain sometime. Show me the map, with the writing.'

The precious old map. David pulled it from his jacket. The blue sad stars, the sad old creases. And the writing on the back.

Angus squinted at the tiny scrawl, and exhaled, his eyes barely an inch from the paper.

'You're quite right. It's his handwriting. Dresler.'

Seagulls wheeled above them; a Namsea fish-truck rumbled in the distance, backing into a vast warehouse.

'I think it might be an address,' David said. He pointed. 'See. Isn't that "strasse"?'

'Yes. But…' Angus frowned. He twisted, looking around, the sea-wind tousling his rusted hair. 'This is an address, a German name I don't recognize — there is no Zugspitzstrasse here. In fact, not anywhere in Luderitz. How does it link to Shark Island?'

Amy spoke: 'Maybe he was just…decoying. A lie?'

'No,' Angus replied, very firmly. 'Dresler was petrified when he coughed that info. You saw him. Pissed himself like a baby. That bit is true. There is something here…on Shark Island. But I don't see if it connects with what's written on the map…'

Again, he gazed around at the yellow scene, at the haze of dust, the scruffy grey road, the derelict sheds and wharves. The hot wind ferried the elegiac coughs of seals from beyond the cliffs. 'We need something German. Here. Connected with the Germans.' His gaze fixed. 'There. The Holocaust museum. That hut…must be.'

'Holocaust museum?'

Angus shrugged. 'I know. Doesn't look much. But yes, that's a museum, it's tiny, this is Africa — but it's very important to the Namibians. It's usually closed. I mean — so remote, they get no visitors. You book by appointment and — '

David advanced.

'Come on!'

The museum was a low wooden building, battered by the brutal Benguela winds, at the very end of the promontory. The museum door was shut. The air was somehow cold and hot at the same time. David could feel his skin burning, the sunshine was truly painful now.

Angus turned a handle and pushed. Locked. David stepped alongside, and briskly kicked at the door. It succumbed with ease, the lock shattered.

They were inside. The hot wooden space was full of shelves and cabinets and glass cases ranked along the walls; and three large skulls grinned at them from the top of a large plinth.

'Christ,' said Amy.

Angus explained: 'The Herero Skulls. Fischer had them scraped clean by Herero women, they had to flense the skulls of their own murdered husbands. He wanted to examine them, compare skull sizes. Bless his little callipers. But we need to find — I don't know — where would the Fischer data be — they are here — there must be something here — '

They searched. Frantic and determined, they searched and scoured, they ransacked the dusty display cases, they overturned shelves of old books with titles in Gothic script, flicking desperately through the pages. Die Rehobother Bastards und das Bastardierungsproblem beim Menschen.

But nothing. They sorted and sifted through scientific instruments, somehow gynaecological and ghastly in their pristine steeliness. Nothing. David shunted aside a box of desiccated human bones, feeling guilt and horror as he did so. He was mistreating the evidence of two forgotten genocides, the hideous relics of a lost racial empire.

There was nothing. They were confounded. It was done. The three of them knelt in the centre of the little hut and shared their despair: whispering and quick. Angus was looking at his watch.

'That chopper goes in forty minutes — if we don't get it — '

Amy stared around, her eyes bright and hostile. The Herero Skulls grinned at them, from the tragic plinth in the corner. She coughed the dust and said.

'Horrible place. Horrible. I don't understand, Angus. There is nothing here from Germany, nothing at all, it's all Namibian. German Empire but Namibian. How could the Fischer data be here anyway?'

Angus nodded, his voice low and resigned. 'You're right. It's all Namibian…'

David listened. Saying nothing. The skulls smiled at him, laughing at the Cagot. Was he a Cagot? They were mocking him. He tried to drive the thought from his mind. Focussed himself on the map. The clue.

'Zugspitzstrasse. What does it mean?'

'Nothing obvious.' Angus sighed, and shook his head. 'It's a common German street name. I've heard it before…' His expression stilled, and changed, and flashed, and was transformed. 'I've heard it before! Jesus!' He stood up. 'I've heard the name before. David. The map! One more time, yes yes, this is it — '

They all stood. Life quickening in the veins.

The map was unfolded in the dusty light. Angus held the paper a fraction from his face, reading the tiny line of writing.

'It's the address of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institut. In Berlin! Zugspitzstrasse. 93. The store rooms.'

'How — '

'Famous in…eugenic circles. Not really known to anyone else. This was a note made by Dresler for your father, right?'

'Yes.'

'So he's given him an address. Where to find the Fischer data, maybe, or some clue as to where the data might be…This is the Institut.'

'But it's in Berlin. How does it relate to here — '

The scientist's smile was triumphant. Even in the pure and horrifying drama, he was helplessly exulting in his own cleverness.

'I worked it out! There is something in this room from Germany.'

He turned and pointed. At the Herero Skulls.

'Them?'

'They were repatriated, from Berlin, in 1999. After years of wrangling. They used to be kept in the Kaiser Wilhem Institut. Now they are here. They have been to Germany. They were in Fischer's possession throughout the war, and after at the Institut. The answer must be in them somehow.'

Angus moved quickly to the plinth and picked up the biggest skull. He turned the sad and smiling cranium in his hand.

'An obscene joke. The Nazis loved obscene jokes, they paved Jewish ghettos with Jewish gravestones, so the Jews would trample their own dead. And — ' He was examining the skull, closely. 'And where better to hide something very, very…important…than a skull like this? A sacred relic of a terrible genocide. Fischer must have known no one would ever smash it open, retrieve the secret, unless they definitely knew what they wanted, where they were seeking.' He lifted up the skull, squinted inside, then he lifted it higher, talking quietly to the skull. 'Sorry, brother, I am so very fucking sorry — but I have to do this. Forgive me.'

He dropped the skull on the floor. The dry aged bone shattered at once, almost gratefully. Crumbling in the dust, adding dust to orange dust.

A tiny steel cylinder glinted on the floorboards, amidst the scattered shards of bone. Angus picked it up.

'Hidden in the olfactory cavity.'

Amy and David gathered around. Faces tensed, and perspiring.

Angus ripped the top off the slender metal tube, and pulled out a tiny, exquisitely rolled piece of paper, almost leathery in consistency, like parchment but somehow finer.

The Scotsman focussed and examined the yellowed slip of paper. Etched across the paper, in faded old ink, was a tiny map.

'Zbiroh!' A sigh of exultant relief. 'Zbiroh…'

Any explanation was truncated. A shadow had just flickered the dusty light of the hut. A Namibian security guard had passed the window, and was standing at the door, pushing his way inside.

Angus shoved the map in the tube, pocketed the tube, and ran to the entrance; he flung the door open, and confronted the guard — waving his gun at the terrified guard's chest.

The guard stepped back, retreating into the dazzling sun.

'No! No trouble! Want no trouble!'

'Good,' said Angus, as he advanced, and patted the guard's pockets. He drew out a pistol and phone, and handed them to David. And tilted a head at the sea.

Grabbing the items with gusto, David hurled the gun and the phone into the crashing waves, just metres away. Seagulls fluttered and shrieked in alarm.

Angus was gesturing at the guard. 'OK. Stay here. Don't move. We're going. Take a staycation. All-fucking-right?'

They sprinted down the path to the mainland; David glanced behind — the guard was indeed standing there, black and statuesque in the sun, staring at them, perplexed, immobile, a silhouette of doubt.

The path turned onto the road and they ran right into the traffic — Angus waved a wad of South African rand at the very first Toyota sedan. The driver grinned and squealed his brakes.

The three of them jumped in, sweating and cramped. Angus snapped.

'Airport! Fast as you can.'

The drive took ten minutes: swerving and racing through the sun-dusted streets. They tilted past the Bank of Windhoek, an old pool hall, and a Shell garage — and then they were out of town: on the surrounding flats. David was remembering Miguel. The big black cars, roaring up the canyon.

The thought was horrifying. Miguel could be around here, right now. Any minute he could just show. The big black car door flashing open.

Found you.

The whirring yellow sands were writhing across the road, making serpents of dust. They were out in the desert again. They were motoring through the wilderness. Angus took out the map and scrutinized it. And then he sat back. And yelled.

'Look!'

Terrible panic filled David: he looked, and saw nothing. Miguel?

Angus was still pointing: 'Look at that. That's a rare and precious sight. Look at the horse!'

It wasn't Miguel. David felt absurd relief, as he and Amy stretched to see through the scratched car window. But what were they looking for?

At first there was nothing. And then he saw: a horse, thin and solitary and loping across the dirt road. Then David saw more — dozens, then hundreds. Curvetting and playing in the sandy heat-haze.

Angus was rhapsodizing.

'The wild horses of the Namib. I love these animals. They're the last remnants of the Schutztruppe — the German colonial army. The horses escaped and turned feral.' He gazed, almost serene, at the dreamlike spectacle. 'Now they are the only wild desert horses in the world — becoming a new species, specially adapted to dryness.' Angus sat back. 'I always think they look like the souls of horses, roaming free in the afterlife…That's why this place is so hard to leave. Things like that. But here's the airport. Just past the dunes.'

The car prowled around the last of the soft Barchan dunes. They were slowing onto a wide flat space. The driver stopped at the perimeter of a surreally bleak airstrip.

A small plane and two helicopters sat on some asphalt amidst acres of sun-scorched dust. One of the choppers had Kellerman Namcorp inscribed on the side. Its propellers were already turning.

David turned to Angus and said: 'But where are we going?'

'Amsterdam — '

'Yes, but then?'

'Zbiroh! An SS castle. Bohemia! I'll explain later — mate, we gotta hurry, Miguel is still out there — '

They ran across the flatness. A man with a low slung sub-machine gun was standing by the helicopter, he stared at them, astonished, as they ducked under the whumping blades.

'Angus?'

'Roger!'

The black man smiled.

'Angus my man!'

Angus was shouting above the loud churn of the spinning chopper blades. Something passed between them. Something from the black velvet pouch? David guessed it was diamonds. Maybe. Roger did a nodding salute.

'Get in!' said Angus. Roger was shouting at all of them, gesturing them into the chopper. Quickly!

David and Amy climbed in, and sat on the first seats they could find. Angus joined them, his face strained and exhausted. They strapped up, and even as their safety belts clicked, the chopper lifted up.

They were flying.

David stared down. Roger was a small figure now. Looking up at them with a hand to shield his eyes from the sand. David blinked and looked a kilometre south. A wild horse was cantering across the wasteland.

Then the clouds of dust intervened, and all was blank.