Nazi Gold

Chapter 3 — Skullduggery

Radu stormed out of the tiny alleyway in pursuit of the rat, but he hitched his toes on the protruding cobbles and came slamming down on the stone walkway. All around him passers-by complained about the tumbling boy obstructing their path as they walked along the sidewalk and some of them leered at him with hands raised in a gesture of warning. The ten year old boy scurried out of the way as quickly as he could to avoid a trouncing from one of them. His dark brown eyes appeared enormous in their deep sockets and his head was disproportionately large on his shoulders due to malnutrition. His gaunt appearance likened him to some eerie imp, but his age compelled the citizens of the town to tolerate him.

Since Radu’s mother was killed in an altercation with three drunken attackers three years before he had been eluding social workers’ claws. Even at his age his freedom was more important than a full tummy and a warm bed. He had no idea why he would relinquish the privilege of education and a steady upbringing, but in his little heart he knew he was born to live under the radar of society, a wanderer, like his missing father.

His mother used to hold him at night in their run-down little room, the AM radio waves obscuring the crackling tunes that came and went from what sounded like another galaxy. There she used to tell her son about his father, how he went to work for an affluent family for the harvest season and never returned. Radu remembered looking at the tears in her eyes as she re-told his favorite story of how his parents met while running from the police after a rock concert that got out of hand in Budapest. He remembered how she smiled as she spoke of his father, staring out into space while reminiscing and fondly thinking of her husband.

They had moved to Cluj-Napoca right after their wedding and two months later Radu was born in this very alleyway.

This was why the child remained close to the dirty little space between two mid-town business buildings. He felt close to his mother when he was here. The state took her body and he did not know what became of her remains, because he hid from the authorities, not to be taken in by the system where strangers would pretend to love him for a state subsidy to feed their own desires.

Sometimes his beautiful mother would look at him through her bloodshot eyes after working for eighteen hours at two different residences, and she would shake her head. Smiling at her son, she would say, “You are just like your father, Radu. You are a roamer, a rebel — typical Gypsy.” At the time it was just a word, but he was told by some other hobo’s in the city that the term was either a thing of pride, if you belonged to the culture by blood, while other times being called a Gypsy was an insult and an insinuation of thievery or cheating. Radu chose to be proud of it, because it was the only emotional thread connecting him with his father.

Now he was more alone than ever, with the approach of that dreaded festival that reminded poor people how forgotten they were and nailed the spike of class differences even deeper into the blind eye of morality and compassion — Christmas.

Having abandoned his efforts of catching the rat the young streetwise boy took a walk, wandering up a few blocks north where marveled at the merriment of the patrons under the trees of a local beer garden. Radu wondered what it was like to have. Just to have the means to live. There was a distinct difference between being alive and living, something which he doubted any of them knew. Like he often did lately, Radu frowned with no kind look in his eye. In particular, there was a rowdy bunch of German tourists sitting at one of the bigger tables, looking smug and snobbish to the boy, more so than most.

Immediately he felt a warm wave of willing loathing take him and he started devising a plan to alleviate them of their belongings. Radu watched them keenly. There were two women in their fifties and three men of similar age, apart from one, who was much younger. He reckoned the younger man was the son of one of the couples and the one to watch out for. The younger man was in his late twenties, tall and powerful and very attractive. But he said very little, so the young Romanian vagrant assumed he was too reserved to get violent. After three years on the streets Radu had learned to sum up people’s mannerisms quite easily. He could read people quickly to determine when to make his move and which method to use. Not once did he feel guilty or shamed by his deeds, because he felt like it was owed to him by those who lived in luxury. Giving to people like him, willingly or not, was after all a good gesture, was it not? Radu grinned as he strolled on, hatching his plan.

What worked best in his favor was that he did not look homeless. Little Radu was the epitome of an adorable foreigner — often pretending to be a lost Italian or Portuguese boy looking for his parents. With all the tourists frequenting his city on their way to visit all places that mentioned Vlad Tepes of the legend of the Order of Dracul, it was easy to pick up on their accents and the way they acted. Radu had become an accomplished actor by now and he was rarely ever nervous anymore staging his cons.

After he had gone to the park fountain to wet his hair and wash his face, he returned to the beer garden where the loud Germans were still sitting. Pretending to be the son of one of the establishment’s patrons, Radu simply walked in and hovered around a large table near the corner tree where a local company had their year-end function. All the people at the long wooden table chatted in small cliques as the third round of drinks were already kicking in. Nobody paid attention to the fresh face among the children playing around the tree, running about the whole time. Radu used the opportunity to blend in, because the staff of the company did not know one another’s families well enough to notice that this child had no parents present.

From here Radu eyed the Germans, making sure that they saw him playing there so that they would assume the same as the waiters and guests. A while after he had joined the party, the young boy cordially asked one of the waiters where the restroom was and of course, they were only too happy to direct him there. All this was Radu’s way of building an alibi. Being a child just made his criminal activities easier. With his dirty sweater turned inside out and tied over his shoulders the Romanian boy looked like a proper little yuppie, fooling anyone who did not care to check his fingernails or socks.

On his way to the restroom, Radu checked his surroundings for witnesses. It was at the back of the beer garden where the all the vehicles of the patrons were parked. Once he determined that there were no prying eyes to blame him, he took two rocks, climbed into one of the trees and, from the shelter of the high set branches, he picked two luxury cars. Honing his aim, Radu flung the first rock at the wind shield of a brand new red Mercedes. As the alarm started to scream, he rapidly hurled the other rock at another posh set of wheels well away from the first, the make of which he could not determine from the vantage of the tree.

At once there was an unholy cacophony of screeching car alarms coming from the parking lot and as he expected, it immediately drew the urgent attention of all the establishment’s patrons. With their focus on what was happening, some running to check on their cars and other watching the panicking runners, the people at the beer garden presented an easy pick-off for the unremarkable little boy. Without hesitation he swept the one German women’s bag from under her seat in the stride of his walk as he casually sauntered past the table while she was leaning across the table to see what was ensuing in the parking area.

By the time she noticed that her bag was stolen it was too late. Radu was long gone; he had left during the madness and stopped only to slip on his sweater and ruffle up his hair. There were many things he learned quickly on the streets, but one of these was paramount. Never run.

Running through a crowd of slow pacing people drew attention. He learned to take his time moving through people to get away from a scene where he had committed a theft, because for some reason police officers had the mistaken idea that all thieves sprinted. Radu smiled as he slipped into the back yard area of a petrol station where he emptied the bag. From the contents he kept the cash, discarding the woman’s wallet. He did not want to look at her ID. He did not want to know her name, because then she would be a person, not a target. If he knew her name she would become someone’s mother, someone’s daughter, someone’s widow, even. Then he would feel guilty about stealing from her, because his mother taught him that only hard work gave a man pride in his money. Stealing would then be construed as quite the opposite according to his mother’s law.

“I know you understand, Mama,” he said quickly, looking up. “Her husband will give her more.” Making amends to his late mother’s spirit when he robbed people did not bring much peace of mind, but he did it anyway because he knew his mother was watching.

Radu found some things in the woman’s purse he had not found before in any of the others he had swiped.

For one, he found a strange key that resembled a dragonfly, bronze in color and far too large to unlock anything smaller than an unsolvable riddle or a universal secret. It was not even considered for a door’s lock, not any door, anywhere. He marveled at the piece with a gaping mouth. It felt somehow magical between his fingertips, yet it did not exhibit any of those traits magical things possessed — not obviously anyway. To Radu the strange key felt heavy, not in weight, but in substance. He decided to keep it.

The rush of his thievery had the child sweating, so he pulled off his sweater and put it on the ground next to him before he opened another compartment of the woman’s bag and shoved his hand inside.

Another oddity he pulled from the purse was a card, missing from the rest of its deck. It was much bigger than the cards he was used to playing with some of the hobo’s in the park and it looked more like a painting than a mass produced item with two dimensional suits and numbers upon it. This one looked like it was hand painted by a consummate oil paint artist from one of the museums in Bohemia or Italy. His mother used to give him art books to page through while she prepared dinner or washed their clothing, hoping to cultivate a taste for culture in her son. One of her books featured the art museums and galleries of the Louvre, Prague, Rome and Vienna, among other ancient cities and countries of artistic treasure. This card could easily have represented a replica of any of the pieces he had seen in their inventory, expertly hand drawn by any of the grand masters whose names were revered by scholars and philosophers of the ages. The picture upon it frightened him, yet he stared in a state of thrall and thrill. It depicted a boy about his own age holding an eyeball upon one open supine palm, the eye being his own. Above him a pitch black circle with rays like tentacles to which his other hand was reaching.

Radu got the sensation of treasure from it and he imagined that the card was charged with some form of life force. He could feel the current of tiny electrical sparks permeate from the card into his fingers, playing gently with his nerve endings in such a way that it caused a playful sting throughout his hands. Had he known better, Radu would have interpreted the sensation as a mild shock, but his curiosity doused his alarm and kept him spellbound. With the money he could eat for two weeks, but still he was ransacking the inner pockets of the bag for more loot.

To his disappointment, the owner of the purse had nothing more than crumpled tissues, sunglasses, cosmetics and a hairbrush to offer. For a moment Radu was extremely curious to learn her name, just this once. He opened the other section of her wallet slowly so that he could still resign from his silly idea should he feel that knowing her name would ignite his guilt. But what he saw immediately struck fear into his little heart, from tales told by his grandparents when he was small.

Long before they died, his mother’s parents talked about the terrible misdeeds of the Austrian man who led the German army in the days of their youth, who attacked their villages and committed unspeakable atrocities on the Jews. Radu’s big dark eyes blinked rapidly with uncertainty and terror as the red Swastika presented itself under his thumb, securely held back by a plastic pocket as if he feared that its evil would char his skin. He shut the wallet and cast it aside to display his displeasure and revulsion at the contents, but like the big card he had claimed, the object seemed to call to him, speaking from where it lay abandoned.

Once more he crept closer to see the woman’s name on the open wings of the leather wallet.

Two men’s voices suddenly spoke from the side of the building, growing louder as they approached. They would certainly catch Radu red handed with the stolen goods, so he shoved the card and key into his pocket with the money and he jumped up, bolting around the corner as fast as his legs could carry him. Unfortunately, in his haste he neglected to take his sweater.