Nazi Gold

Chapter 8 — The Good Samaritan

“You are just going to let him get away with it?” Heinz asked his wife. He could not believe that she did not press charges against the little brat who stole her bag and all her money. He was old school, the brave Heinz. Even his hair style gave away his affinity for discipline and old world values. Shaved much like Hitler’s, his shaded scalp was prevalent on the bottom half of his head while the top of his head sported wet looking straight grey and black strands, carefully Brill creamed with a comb. He lacked the moustache, but his eyes were like Arctic water — cold and tumultuous.

“He is just a child, Karl-Heinz. And who knows how long he has been living on the streets, having to scavenge and deceive for food? He is no more than twelve years old. There is time to mold him into a fine citizen, still, but not if he is already put behind bars just for doing what he needs to stay alive,” his wife replied while she sat in front of the hotel room dressing mirror, fixing her elaborate golden earrings to hang straight.

“He needs a bloody good hiding, that’s what!” he thundered as he struggled to get the triangular knot of his tie just light on his collar. “Children like that need to see that there are repercussions to their actions. I don’t care what his reasons are. When I was a young boy, we were just as poor, but we were on a farm. If we lived in the city, no doubt we would also have been homeless just like this little criminal. But let me tell you the truth — you would never have caught me stealing!” he said under his scowl.

Heinz’ distinct mouth totally resembled his personality. A wide gash with hardly any lips fell downwards at the ends, dropping to give him the impression that he was either very unhappy or very mean. In truth, Heinz was neither. Perhaps it was his giving nature and his love for his wife both, that had him especially fuming at the unfortunate incident in Cluj.

“Oh come now, you have never been that hungry. How would you know? Besides, I did get my purse back with most of my things. All he took was my money,” she defended the boy, to her husband’s discontent.

He mumbled, “And then you still arrange for him to be brought here and have his hospital bills paid too, Greta! Really? I tell you, that seizure was his punishment for taking what did not belong to him.”

Gracefully she rose from her chair, checking her eyeliner just before walking over to her grumpy husband to help him with the stubborn tie. She was a ravishing German woman in her fifties, her hair auburn with fancy signs of grey which only enriched her looks. Her dark eyes were always glinting with innate fire. Greta was a passionate woman. In business, in leisure and in charity she was known as an active and energetic lady who worked tirelessly. What made her so loved by her peers was the fact that she did not allow her wealth to change her or provoke any self-importance. No, Greta was even more helpful to the less fortunate, and ‘less fortunate’ in her case, was a broad spectrum. She was a millionaire in her own right, involved not only in charities but quite a few global organizations as well. Her office held three assistants in the capacity of secretaries and PA’s, and they worked full time to coordinate all her attendances and funding activities.

Her husband was a retired brigadier, ex-mercenary in the 1970’s in Angola and Nigeria and generally a big game hunter when the mood took him. In fact, he had met his wife of twenty five years on a safari she was on with her boyfriend at that time, a visiting dignitary from Austria. He was the father of her only son, Igor, the young man who almost never left her side. Her husband had raised Igor as his own son and the two got along splendidly, which only added to Greta’s amicable demeanor towards strangers. Her life had been good. She came from an affluent family and her adult life was adventurous, free and rewarding, so she had never had any reason to be bitter or unhappy about anything, apart from trivial things all people have to deal with, of course.

After the boy had made away with her belongings, she was contacted by the police in Cluj who returned the ransacked purse and the child’s sweater to her. Naturally, he could not be traced by the piece of clothing, but one of the men from the petrol station was familiar with the little vagabond and when he saw the woolen jersey he knew exactly who it belonged to. On the insistence of Greta’s stern husband the man informed them of all Radu’s hang-outs, one of which was the park where he had been seen often. It was there that they found the two hysterical Australian girls carrying the convulsing child to the road for help.

Greta and her husband had flown their friends to Cluj with them for the weekend for antique hunting in the old Romanian haunts, so they simply hired two EMT’s to accompany them back to Germany on the private jet with the homeless young boy. Greta had contacts at all the embassies and higher orders where she personally knew politicians and judges. Getting a homeless orphan to cross borders was not a problem.

Greta’s cell phone interrupted her husband’s bombastic mumbling.

“If it’s work, tell them no,” he grumbled. His wife responded with a look of light reprimand, rolling her eyes as she answered the call. Heinz washed his face with cold water in the en suite bathroom, trying to eavesdrop on Greta’s conversation, but he could not hear any of the words he was listening for. He always allowed her her independence, but still he kept a keen ear on her calls and diary appointments. For all her admirable qualities, she was a bit of a flirt, something her husband had never been able to make peace with. There was no doubt that his wife was a very fetching woman who’s standing and reputation only made her more charming to all who encountered her. That was all good and well, but Heinz was neither young, nor attractive and he knew it. He often wondered what kept her to his side. After all, she was the wealthier of the two of them, the better looking, but he was nonetheless grateful for her loyalty. Regardless of the fact that he thought she stayed out of some sort of moral driven pity or perhaps for Igor, she never gave him reason to doubt her affection. Things like requited respect always posed a subliminal doubt deep inside Heinz, born from his countless let downs with women and military superiors alike in his youth.

When Greta chose him he reckoned it was his history as a disciplined and capable man of the world that intrigued her. Later on in their relationship he realized that it was more a matter of support and freedom, both things she craved and he gave freely. He soon noticed that she would acquire much of her aid, both financially and socially, from men she flirted with, however subtle her charms. At first he shrugged it off as diplomacy, but sometimes his beautiful wife would take her hand gestures and grazing of jaw lines a bit far.

Yet, she had never conclusively cheated on him. They were almost inseparable, Greta and her Heinz, most of the time. Whenever she had to spend time on business trips she usually asked him along without reservation and most of the time he complied with his darling spouse’s wishes. With her progressing age she seemed to have become more restless in her personal pursuits and quite recently she had Heinz worried with her insistences on keeping her latest ventures more…to herself. It sparked a small amount of jealousy in Heinz which he hid successfully under his stern appearance, through which his little self-doubt would ever elude his control.

Now he listened for anything that would point to infidelity. Words and phrases like ‘soon’, ‘where do we meet?’, ‘away’, ‘I miss you too’ swam through his conjured precognition, but his hearing pleasantly disappointed his expectations. Not one of those horrid things was said while she spoke, although she had begun to have her conversations a bit more under her breath than before. Heinz hated secrets. As a military man he knew secrets could be deadly, and so they were in relationships too. He stood nearer to the door to find out what she was discussing, but what he heard perplexed him.

“And when can we do the test?” she asked, standing as close to the open window of the hotel room as she could. Her index finger was tapping lightly against her chin as she spoke, a gesture Heinz had learned through the years, meant that Greta was dead serious — even obsessed.

“I can’t. I have to be at the agency on Tuesday, but I’ll see if I can make the trip while I am in the city,” she said softly, her big dark eyes staring ahead of her. Heinz perked up and sharpened his hearing for what was to come, but he would not get any more information from the call.

“I…I have to go, if you don’t mind,” she said suddenly, anxious to end the call, “I have another call coming through. Thank you. I’ll talk to you soon, alright? Goodbye. Bye.”

She pressed the button with uncharacteristically shaking hands. Her husband could not determine the reason for her haste, or her tremors, for that matter. From behind the slit of the bathroom door, which was slightly ajar, he watched her behavior. It bordered very mildly on panic and it frightened him. He had never seen her like this — off kilter, even so slightly.

“Yes,” she feigned her firmness for the next caller. He watched her face change into the mask she wore most of the time and it fascinated him how even her hands had no stopped shaking. Suddenly, at the change of topic and person on the phone, Greta went from a frail, anxious woman with rushed words to the smart, independent leader she was known as — but then…

“That is an inconvenience, Markus. I don’t tolerate unnecessary obstacles, as you know,” she snapped at someone on the other side of the line.

Heinz-Karl watched in unprecedented horror how his wife disappeared under the skin of the new face she pulled. Already caught off-guard by her aberrant fragility a few minutes before where she had been positively groveling, he was now taken aback a hundred fold more by the new side of Greta he had never seen before. Not in over two decades had he ever seen her eyes fall to shadow, her lips pursed in frustration and her elegant fingers turn to clutching talons around the phone as she sneered through her clenched teeth, “Get to him before he leaves Germany. And get the camera, Markus, or else you will be the one with the dogs at your heel.”

Heinz caught his breath. What was she talking about? More yet, who was she talking about and why did this person vex Greta so? He stood frozen in amazement as she flung her phone on the bed.

“Ready, love?” she called to him in her usual way, completely docile in tone.

“Uh, ja!” he jumped on his side of the door and put on his usual charade as well, prancing out in his evening wear with his well-known proud strut and impeccably combed hair.

They left the hotel room to leave for the fundraiser downstairs they were invited to attend. As Heinz clicked the door shut, he wondered as to the identity of the man Greta was after. And then he wondered what was on the man’s camera.