Dracula's Ghost - Afterimage: Chapter 6

Part I: Old Ghosts

I.

Plötzensee Prison, Berlin

July 1940

It is commonly believed that fear of death is the root of all fear, but a timid soldier will march to the sound of gunfire, and the bravest general will quail before a committee. A greater fear, perhaps, is exile – death comes only once, but to be cast out, to face the bitter cold without comfort of family, of regiment or tribe, is to die slowly. The concerns of the larger world were an abstraction to Rudolf Diels, though the war in France raged beyond the prison walls rumors swirled about dark happenings in the forests of Poland. Old friends and well-wishers that surrounded him in 1933 were long gone, but Reinhard Heydrich had visited last week to exchange pleasantries. Diels had been impressed by his adversary’s commitment. A busy man, but he comes to savor my impending execution.

“I’m disappointed in you,” Heinrich Himmler said. The head of the SS was something of a dullard, but he could be quite shrewd where his own interests were concerned. If Himmler was less overtly menacing than his subordinate, Diels remained keenly aware that the power of life and death lay behind the pleasant façade. “The Reich functions through unquestioning loyalty, and one cannot simply disobey a direct order. If your conscience was troubled, you should have come to me.”  

Rudolf Diels nodded. “I suppose so, Herr Reichsführer.”

“Please,” Himmler cut him off. “Call me Heinrich. I understand that there was bad blood between the two of you, but you have a habit of ignoring orders that you find inconvenient. Even Goering is beginning to have his doubts.” 

“I’m sorry.”  With some difficulty, Rudolf Diels mastered the urge to beg – spare my life, and I’ll do anything you want.

“Of course. You were like a pair of children, always squabbling.”  Himmler’s smile was surprisingly warm. “I should let you know up front that I have ordered your immediate release. Not everyone is cut out for this kind of work, and there’s no reason to tie up the courts when so many real criminals roam the streets. However, I would like to clear up one final matter while we’re together – if you don’t mind giving me a few minutes of your time.  As you may be aware, Reinhard Heydrich’s itinerary went dark for an entire month in October of 1933…” 

They talked for another two hours, and Diels told most of what he knew, grateful for another chance at life. They shook hands at the end, and Himmler’s handshake was limp, the soft skin clammy.

“So you don’t know what Heydrich wanted from this old castle? No idea if he found it or not?” 

“He never told me,” Diels said, “but I don’t believe that he found anything.”

“Why not?”

“If he discovered anything important, he would have thrown it in my face during last week’s visit.” 

“Of course.”  The Reichsführer SS donned his cap and turned to leave. “One more thing.”

Rudolf Diels looked up, carefully arranging his face to hide the fear. He knows, Diels thought. Someone told him what we did in Vienna.

“Yes?” 

“Your actions in Cologne made no difference. After your removal, they were all arrested.”

II.

50 Miles South of Madrid

1956

“I’m surprised that they didn’t hang you after the war.”

“So am I.”  Otto Skorzeny laughed as he spoke. “They were gunning for me after that debacle in the Ardennes but didn’t have the evidence. How’s breakfast?”

“Not bad.” 

Diels took another bite of sausage. Skorzeny bore no love for him and had friends among the Falangists, and he had half-expected to be detained in Madrid. Instead, the police had waved him through customs with barely a glance. Perhaps even a hardened fugitive like Skorzeny felt the pull of the Fatherland, and the urge to hear a German voice outweighed the urge for vengeance. Or perhaps he'll have me murdered when I leave.

“I’m surprised they didn’t hang you anyway,” Diels said.

“For what?” 

“For being in the Party, the SS.” 

“Say what you mean Rudolf – they should have hanged me as vengeance for the Final Solution. If the Allies wanted a full accounting, they’d have to kill everyone in Berlin and salt the ruins.”  Skorzeny took a drag from his cigarette and exhaled a cloud of smoke toward the ceiling fan. “Do you want to hear something funny? In twelve years as a Party member, I never killed a single Jew – can you believe that? Never herded an old man onto a boxcar, never pulled the trigger on a young mother. My hands are clean.” 

“The Fuhrer would be appalled.”

“The Fuhrer is dead, Rudolf, and I am alive.”  Skorzeny crushed the cigarette end with a callused thumb. “But you didn’t come all the way from Cologne to relive the glories of the Reich – what’s on your mind?” 

Diels handed him the envelope, and Skorzeny perused the photos, his eyes alternating between the pictures in his hand and Diels’s own face. When he reached the last photo in the stack, Skorzeny paused, the image of the blonde man held daintily between thumb and forefinger as he stared into Diels’s eyes.

“What about them?”

“I want to know about your expedition to Romania.”

“And how the hell would you know about that?” The smile vanished, but there was no hint of surprise on the scarred face.

“Heydrich told me when I was in prison,” Diels said. “He planned to have me executed and wanted to rub my nose in the whole affair.”

“The Gestapo interrogated me for a month in 1941,” Skorzeny said quietly. “Heydrich carried out his plan without approval, and Himmler got word that we found something important – something that Heydrich never revealed.” 

“What did you tell them?” 

“What could I say? Himmler knew much of the story already, but he didn’t care about Sarah Spencer or Vienna. He only wanted to know about Romania.”

“And?” 

“I have no idea what happened,” Skorzeny said. “Heydrich sent me to steal a plane before the shooting started, and I missed… whatever the hell it was. When I found Heydrich the next morning, we were the only ones left, or so I thought at the time. But you were right about one thing.”

“What do you mean?” 

Skorzeny pulled a photo from the stack. “Turns out Egon was alive and well. Are you familiar with the town of Hof? I saw him there, maybe a decade later. He was living next to an old church, about a mile from the Czech border.” 

“I’m surprised Heydrich didn’t kill him,” Diels said.

“Maybe he didn’t come back until that bomb went off in Prague.”  Skorzeny paused, mulling over his words. “I always thought he was slow, but he must have been smarter than I realized.” 

“That is helpful,” Diels said. “One more question.” 

“Am I being interrogated Rudolf?”  The green eyes regarded him with a touch of spite. “Last time I checked, I wasn’t in police custody.” 

“Humor me. What can you tell me about the woman?” 

“The Spencer woman? Never saw her again.” 

“No – the other one.”  Otto Skorzeny’s eyes widened, and though he recovered an instant later, Diels could tell that the big man was rattled by his question.

“There was a woman with Frau Spencer and your Jewish friend in Vienna. Dark-haired and beautiful, like a gypsy. Why do you care?”

“Maybe I want to talk to her,” Diels said. “What happened to her?”

“She came at me with a weapon, one of those American cowboy guns. I stuck a knife in her and threw the body in the river.” 

Photo by Hanna on Unsplash

III.

Purfleet

The ruins were slowly being devoured by a second growth of forest, but Archie found the exterior of Carfax Abbey to be quite pretty in its own way. He had searched the grounds after his mother’s disappearance, wandering through the dark corners of the house and stumbling through the weed-choked lawn. He had plodded through the marshy remains of the old pond and crossed the stone fence, wandering the burned out remains of the old building (A hospital? Archie could not remember) that adjoined the property. The old house left no clues of his mother’s whereabouts, but he returned periodically, for Carfax Abbey had been important to her, and that was sufficient.

The house itself had the musty, slightly offensive smell of a place shut up too long, and its dankness left a distinct impression on his psyche. It was the kind of place, Archie thought, where disobedient servants might be hauled to the cellar for torture, or where children could be popped into the oven for the lord’s dinner. Where a young boy’s mother wanders through its doorway and disappears forever. There were powerful places, Rupert Holmes once told him, and he wondered whether Carfax Abbey was such a place, a fulcrum on which the levers of the earth were moved.

“Hello?”  The woman’s voice echoed over the stones, and Archie jumped at the sound. She wore a blue shirtwaist dress, and her dark hair was curled in the style of a Hollywood starlet. Equally dark eyes regarded him from her vantage point in the doorway.

“Can I help you?” Archie said.

“I certainly hope so,” Evangeline Morris said. “I’m the owner of this house.” 

IV.

Budapest

He crossed the border, a lone scout sent forth to probe the enemy’s defenses. In the daylight hours, he slept in forests and fallow fields, the inversion of his circadian rhythms a memento of his former life, and moved only at night.  The partisan bands provided food and shelter as he moved through Romania, though his cause was not theirs, but once he crossed the border into Hungary, he was on his own. His thin frame grew emaciated as he traveled, and he might have died as the weather grew bitter, but the peasants that migrated to the city aided him, and their movements provided cover for his own travels. A man of little imagination – a trait that had allowed him to survive the trenches of Verdun – he understood that he could pass through Budapest and continue walking until he reached the German border, it never occurred to him to disobey – he remained indebted to the man who spared his life. Besides, he had nowhere to go, for he was a stranger in the country of his birth.

The mortuary was an ugly brown structure at the edge of the railyard. The influx of peasants produced a surplus of illness and death, and the Soviets, desiring that their own departed not mingle with the common dead, set up their own morgue. When the body of Vladimir Korzh was discovered, he had been watching from the edge of the square, but he had not dared to come closer – to approach the tomb, even in daylight, was too fearful to contemplate.  Instead, he followed from a distance to discover the repository of the dead man’s shell.  It had taken a day to procure the knife and another to work up his own courage. The weapon was concealed beneath his coat now, its blade sharpened to a fine edge. Cut off the head, he thought.  He pitied the dead Russian, for the man’s fate could have been his own. 

He entered through an unguarded door, unaware that several pairs of eyes followed his movements, for his presence in Budapest had been known for weeks.  A fellow German with ties to the secret police had been watching for his arrival and had studied the sickly newcomer with interest.  He has the stink of the pretender about him. It was an odd notion, but the observer was untroubled, for strange ideas frequently entered his mind. Have him followed to ensure that he doesn’t cause trouble. 

V.

London

It was late when Archie slipped the key in his front door, and though the afternoon had been pleasant enough, the meeting with the American woman had left him shaken. Evangeline Morris – what is familiar about that name? They had spent the afternoon exploring the empty rooms, the old chapel (she had blanched at the notion of a house with an attached cemetery), and the wooded grounds behind the stone fence. The house, according to her, was an inheritance from a long-lost relative.

“The old wreck barely looks worth the price of renovation, but according to the lawyer, it’s mine.”

“Solicitor. In the U. K., he’s called a solicitor – why are you laughing?”

“The word has a different meaning on my side of the pond.”   

He had treated her to dinner in a nearby pub, and they had parted company. Archie had left her his address, and they agreed to meet with her solicitor (she turned away, but not before he saw the smirk on her face) next week to sort things out. Archie looked forward to their next meeting, for she was unattached and quite attractive, but their meeting left the impression of more than mere happenstance, as if the workings of some hidden machine guided their footsteps.

The envelope was wedged into the doorjamb, and it fluttered to his feet as he opened the door. Archie opened it and read its contents, half-expecting another coded message from Rudolf Diels. Instead, there was an address in Spain and a single sentence.

I know what happened to your mother.

VI.

Romania

The peasant woke before dawn to the sound of scratching at his window. Perhaps the police had come, just as they came for his uncle in 1951. No, he thought. The Securitate don’t ask for an invitation, they kick in the door. He crept through the darkened room and went outside.

“You smell of garlic. May I come in?”

The peasant shook his head – his wife had been frightened by his encounter in the mountains. “My daughter is sleeping inside.” 

“Of course.”  The dark man smiled. “We can talk out here. How is she?” 

“Her fever was worse tonight.” 

A leather bag passed into his hand, and the peasant noticed the coldness of the stranger’s touch. “Mix this thoroughly with the garlic and apply it to her face and neck. By tomorrow at sunset, her fever will have broken.” 

“Are you sure?” 

“Of course. One might say that I am a lifelong student, and I learned much from my predecessor.”

The peasant found this difficult to believe, for the stranger looked scarcely older than himself.

“From your old enemy.”

“Yes, from my old enemy. Now, let us discuss payment.” 

They talked for fifteen minutes, and his visitor left as the first rays of light appeared in the eastern sky. He stood at the doorway, thinking, as an owl flew over the treetops, circled once, and headed for the mountains. It was a dangerous undertaking, and he would face a long term in prison if he were caught. Still, if her fever breaks tomorrow…

VII.

Yaroslavl, Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic

1956

Sexual relations in the Gulag are fleeting in nature, for a lover can be taken away at a moment’s notice through transfer, early release, or execution. Still, their bonding is more than physical release, for two are stronger than one, and having a partner to watch one’s back, to share food, and to provide rudimentary medical care can shift the balance of life and death. The wise ones learn that it is equally important to perform these acts as it is to receive them, for it lends meaning and purpose to one’s existence.

Plekhanov watches over her, but her very nature renders his protection unnecessary. The remaining thieves avoid her, and the guards move warily in her presence, like hunters in the presence of a tigress. She watches over him as well, and another prisoner, a Chechen who threatened Plekhanov in her presence, vanishes into the forest. A touch of her nature rubs onto him – his posture straightens a little, and his eyes no longer wander to his shoes when the guards approach. Perhaps this explains the overlap of his release and her execution - a final act of cruelty before he returns to the world of the living.

He stirred awake and shivered in the night air. The train crept along the tracks, its pace little more than a walk, and Plekhanov could not hear the noise of the engine.

The shackle that held his leg was missing.

Plekhanov brought his knees to his chest and squeezed his eyes tightly closed. Prisoners claimed that with sufficient time in the camps, fences and guards became redundant, for a fearful man would not dare to escape even if the gates were thrown open and the guards carried off to heaven. Perhaps they watched even now through some hidden knothole, but Plekhanov gathered his last reserves of courage and crawled the length of the boxcar. At any second, the guards would enter with clubs and electric torches, and he would screech out his final plea for mercy – an extension of his sentence, hard labor above the Arctic Circle, anything to stop the pain – as he was beaten to death. I have to know the truth. When he reached her corner, Plekhanov reached out with both hands, searching for her presence, and felt nothing.

He stood and moved toward the open doorway. They will never let me go, she told him, and perhaps she had slipped her own shackles before stepping from the moving car. Then where are the guards? Where are the gunshots? Why didn’t they kick me awake to interrogate me? Plekhanov rejected the idea that rose in his mind as pure madness – there were five other men aboard, and a lone woman, no matter how fierce, could not match them all. And yet… She had torn out a man’s throat with no hesitation, and the memory of the thief’s screams echoed in his mind.

He dropped through the open doorway, and as the crew car passed, Plekhanov hoisted himself onto the platform. The unlocked door to the crew car was a bad sign, for the guards lived in fear of assassination and slept only behind a secure cordon. They will have a torch next to the door, somewhere within easy reach. He fumbled about the interior until he found the light, then bent to examine the bodies. The lieutenant’s neck had been twisted beyond the tensile strength of the supporting muscles, and his spine had cleanly snapped. The guards had not been taken so easily, and the wreckage strewn about the crew car told of a desperate struggle with their attacker. Both corpses were an unholy mess, and the right arm of one jutted upward at an odd angle.

The train’s forward momentum finally ceased, and he exited the car as the first rays of dawn suffused the empty steppe. Two more guards had manned the engine, but Plekhanov saw no need to inspect the bodies that surely lay slumped at the controls. The odor of blood lingered in the air as a hand touched his shoulder, and Plekhanov wondered if it was his turn to die – it would not do to leave witnesses as she made her escape. Instead, Sarah Spencer caressed his cheek with a spattered hand.

“Please help me.”