Nazi Gold

Chapter 25 — Brutal Truth

“What do you mean? What happened?” Heinz roared over the phone. He could not believe what he heard. Herr Mueller had survived the ordeal, but lost two of his sons. Heinz-Karl Heller, once Mueller’s subordinate in the Leipzig faction of the local militia, asked his friend to help him locate and apprehend these people who were out to hurt the young Romanian boy. He needed to eradicate them without him having to worry about his wife’s hold on the child.

But as fate would have it, the old farmer was still recovering from a serious neck injury and several broken bones and torn ligaments from being subjected to torture for many hours.

“I finally had to tell them where I took the young man in Weimar. And I still don’t know if he survived their hunt. Last I heard, my daughter — she is a nurse at the hospital where we took the journalist — she had spoken to him and told him to find the little boy. That was the last time she saw him,” Herr Mueller informed Heinz.

“So this Sam Cleave character was not a bad man?” Heller asked.

“No. Good boy. Hunted by these pigs for filming them executing four people or something,” Mueller replied.

“And your daughter told him to protect the boy,” Heller repeated, just to make sure he had the whole thing straight. The situation and its new developments had him torn. His wife and stepson were apparently going to kill the man who had to get Radu away from them. Who was he going to side with? A street kid from Romania who stole for a living? How could he side with a stranger from Scotland who was about to turn Heinz’s wife over to the authorities for acts of terrorism and murder? And with Igor helping her, no less, it was a sickening notion what they were up to. But they were his family — for almost three decades.

He could not choose, even though he knew that one side was evil, in pursuit of power, just like the old regime. After speaking to Mueller, Heinz decided that he would not make up his mind about the moral conundrum just yet.

First, he would make sure that Radu was safe. Then he would travel to Romania himself to find this Sam Cleave and hopefully intercept the man’s hunters with the help of the Romanian secret service. Maybe, if he appealed to Cleave, he would not implicate Greta in the murders, even testify against the men in her charge to keep her from going to prison for the rest of her life. In truth Heinz did not really know what he was going to do, but he knew one thing — he had to be there to stop all the killing and god knows what else they planned for Radu. He could not fathom what they would want with the boy.

“Helga!” he called the housekeeper as he exited the study, but there was no answer. He called again, even calling the cook, but she did not answer either. Greta was known to give her staff the day off when she felt generous, and he came to that conclusion. So he went to check on Radu. Heinz was going to take the boy to the military academy where he could put him up until he returned from Romania, until it had all blown over.

When Heinz came into Radu’s room, the curtains were drawn shut. All he could see was the shape of Radu’s body under his blankets, but when he pulled the covers back, he discovered the dead body of his cook. Heinz jerked backward, his heart exploding in his chest at the sight of the petite old woman’s slit throat and her clawing hands grasping the bedclothes.

“Mein Gott,” he gasped. He knew the housekeeper was not given the day off either. But she was missing.

Heinz went charging through the house, calling Radu and Greta. He even acted as if nothing was wrong, so that she would not think he knew what she was up to. After he had checked the entire house, he realized that she had the boy. But fortunately he knew where she was headed and he only hoped he could make it there before her. To check which flight they’d be on, he went back to her office and checked her computer. There were no ticket bookings he could find, so he assumed she would take her own private plane, leaving him to travel the old fashioned, public way.

Cussing incessantly, he went through her files to see what he was up against. Heinz was shattered by the sudden vile awakening he was dealt. He felt as if his entire marriage had been a lie, as if he was just some idiot she used to give her a good image of stability and values. The big German was sobbing as he paged through her remaining files with pictures of their holidays, their wedding photos and video clips of all their adventures with Igor when he was younger.

Wiping the tears as quickly as they kept coming, the hardened man cried, “Why Greta? Why would you throw all this away? You have such a good life and for wealth, or power…or…what in god’s name are you doing it for anyway?” he screamed with clenched fists he slammed down. Under the force of his fists the cabinet door fell open and a file fell out. Choking on his sorrow, feeling utterly betrayed into what escalated to a bloody nightmare, Heinz-Karl Heller opened the folder and paged roughly through the sheets. They were all doctor’s bills, medical aid brochures, hospital bank accounts, the usual fare of what his wife donated to. But then he found a report with her name on it, and he could not resist reading.

It was a medical report, dated several months before already, stating irrevocably that Greta had rapidly passed through to Stage c4N3M1 of her liver cancer and that it had spread to her pancreas. Heinz-Karl wept bitterly at the sudden collapse of his entire world. It was not just the devastating news that his wife, his partner and lover for no less than a quarter of a century, was dying, but perhaps even more the fact that she was all of a sudden nothing more than a stranger to him. Heinz-Karl felt as if he had been living in a beautiful dream all these years in blissful comfort and trust while outside his slumber his wife and her son lurked as nightmares of the waking world, keeping him asleep.

He called the security at the gate.

“Herr Heller?” the voice said.

“Is everything in order? Has anyone come into my estate that we do not know?” Heinz asked apprehensively. He wished the guard would say someone did, that someone they had never seen before came in and killed the Heller’s’ cook and probably their housekeeper, too. Above all he just did not want to know that his wife was a murderer, but deep inside he knew what security was going to answer. He knew that she had done it, much as he vehemently denied it in his heart. If she could keep so many secrets from him for so long, it said much about her true character and such fickle minds were normally prone to homicide.

“No, sir. Only Frau Heller and little Radu left just a short while ago, but no-one had entered the premises other than your wife when she came back earlier, no. And only she left the premises. There have not been any strangers here, sir,” the man reported. Heinz felt his heart implode under the strain of it all. So suddenly, so severely, his life was gone for good.

“Thank you. That is all,” he said with his most composed tone of voice amidst his immense sorrow.

He booked a flight to Bucharest and packed an overnight bag for light travel. The old German did not have to take any of his side arms or rifles for his private excursion. He had plenty of friends in Eastern Europe from his days in the Wehrmacht, men with armories under their houses and access to an arsenal at any time. They would supply him with all he needed.

Heinz-Karl Heller stood at the Lufthansa check-in with his bag in his hand. His eyes were bloodshot and his countenance grave, but he was determined to put his emotional chaos aside and embark on his own rescue mission. Radu was in serious danger, if Greta was really this far gone in her madness. He had no idea what she wanted with the boy, but he reckoned it had to have something to do with her resolute insistence to adopt the child when they were in Romania. At the time it was an odd enough gesture, he thought, to adopt a child from another country who robbed you, no less. But now he knew there was some arcane reason for it, the details of which he was desperate to discover.

‘It is going to take far too long this way,’ he thought as he looked at the departure times.

With his own money, not that of the sponsors or trusts normally available to him and his wife for their exclusive travels, he chartered a private jet instead, forfeiting his trip on the national airline in lieu of time. He arranged with the manager of EuropAir Jet Rentals to book privately and for no receipts or flight itineraries of his trip to go on record. With his reputation it was a small favor to fulfill.

Once on the jet Heinz was forced to spend the journey thinking about what had happened and it was not at all pleasant. The worst was not being able to cry. Not since he was an early teenager had he so felt the urge to weep, but as usual he had to subdue it under the snakeskin of his image. Tough leather hides like him were expected to take control, know what to do, execute their duty with precision and efficacy — never were they allowed to have feelings. It was the worst pain Heinz had ever been in, even more than when his mother succumbed to her battle with Tuberculosis.

Broken hearted he sat staring from the small window of the jet as they flew over the Czech Republic. He knew what country it was, having flown over it so many times during the war, not the Second World War; the other war, the one no-one was supposed to know about after WWII. The big German was not sure if he was more distraught over his wife’s failing health and impending demise or the death blow she dealt him with her lies. Again Sam Cleave came to mind, the adversary of his beloved Greta. Was the man friend or foe? The question begged, which was his wife? Could he cast aside his lovelorn loyalty and do the right thing?

Tears welled in his eyes and his chest burned with the sting of injustice. Finally, he set his seat back just enough to make him comfortable and he closed his eyes. So much apprehension and rage ebbed and flowed through his heart that he almost looked forward to even the scales in the gross unfairness that polluted his life now. With his eyes closed the flight staff would not bother him, a clever disguise for his crying eyes and need to be alone without fear of judgment or the poison that would build up in his spirit if he did not purge it.