Dracula's Ghost - Afterimage: Chapter 4
Part I: Old Ghosts
I.
Berlin
August 1944
The journey from Cologne to Berlin, a four-hour trip by rail in better times, had taken two days. The Allied bombers that pummeled Germany were now accompanied by long-range fighters, and with the Luftwaffe dwindled to nearly nothing, the American Mustangs sought out targets of opportunity. Every passenger train was a potential deathtrap, and even a lone automobile was at risk. Rudolf Diels traveled only at dawn and dusk, sheltered in farmhouses, and prayed for bad weather to ground the Allied planes. The hours passed slowly on the empty road, and Diels was tormented by a recurring thought as he drove. Somewhere above, a farm boy from Kansas has me in his sights.
Herman Goering watched him from the far side of the table. The Reichsmarschall had grown heavier since their last meeting – Diels guessed his weight at 140 kilograms – and his every movement was accompanied by labored breathing as his heart and lungs struggled to keep pace with his girth. His face appeared scarcely better, the broken veins around his nose contrasted sharply with the pallor of his cheeks. Still, the green eyes were alert, and he smiled readily. Diels took those as hopeful signs.
“I never understood,” Goering said, “why the others – Goebbels, Himmler, even the Fuhrer himself – hated the Jews as much as they did. What do you think, Rudolf?”
I think the war is lost, and you’re seeking to cover for yourself. There was a semblance of truth in his mentor’s words – unlike most of the Party elite, whose thought was as shallow as their speech, Goering was not a stupid man, and he had the intelligence to see past the Jew obsession that gripped the nation. Now, as Germany was caught in the pincers of Russian and American armies, he wondered if the difference mattered. He never shared Hitler’s delusions, at least not in full, yet he went along all the same. If things were as bad as he feared, the reckoning to come would devour them all, and Goering’s words would count for nothing. Rudolf Diels sat quietly, afraid to speak.
“Of course, you didn’t come to Berlin to discuss the vagaries of Aryan racial policy.” Goering adjusted his great bulk in the chair. “We have a more immediate problem.”
“What’s that?”
“Arthur Nebe was arrested yesterday.”
“You can’t be serious…”
“I am serious.” Goering regarded him coldly. “Nebe was implicated in the plot against the Fuhrer, and it isn’t lost on anyone that he was one of your men.”
“Jesus, Hermann, that was eleven years ago!”
“I know that, but think, Rudolf. In your case, the Gestapo has so much to work with – the Reichstag fire, your lack of appetite for racial purification, your actions in 1940 – especially those. The Fuhrer was nearly killed in that bombing, and in the current crisis, one can’t be too careful with the niceties of law or evidence. Poor Arthur, of course, tried to save his own skin by selling you out – some nonsense about a ritual in a Jewish cemetery. ”
“I’ve always been loyal.” Diels gripped the edge of the chair with white knuckles. “You know that Hermann.”
“The leadership believes otherwise.” The jowls sagged as Goering’s mouth turned downward. “I’ll protect you as best I can, but there is one more matter that we must address immediately.”
“What’s that?”
“Ilse. If things go badly, I can’t have my own niece dragged into this. The divorce papers are already filled out – all you have to do is sign, and I’ll take care of the rest.”
So that’s it, Diels thought. Germany is falling apart, and you’re worried about your family’s reputation. The quid pro quo suggested that the Reichsmarschall believed victory, or at least stalemate, still within Germany’s grasp. He’s as deluded as the others.
“All right.” Whether Goering could – or would – protect him was an open question, but he had little choice. “Give me the papers and I’ll sign them.”
“I wish you well, Rudolf.” Goering produced a sheaf of papers. “I’ll do what I can, but this is the last time that we will meet.”
II.
Nuremberg, Bavaria
1956
The Palace of Justice was one of the few buildings to emerge from the war undamaged, and its symbolic value was not lost upon the Allies. Nuremberg had been a symbol of Adolf Hitler’s triumph in the early years of the Third Reich, and in the war’s aftermath, it became the sigil of his downfall, the venue of the war crimes trials of 1945 and 1946. Rudolf Diels had spent nearly a year in this courtroom, where he had offended Germans by testifying for the prosecution and angered the Allies by speaking in defense of Hermann Goering. Not that it did him any good. Diels still felt a twinge of regret at Goering’s fate, even if the big man’s denials rang hollow.
He presented his identification to the guard, a bored American who waist was growing thick from German beer, and made his way to the archives. The courthouse was the final repository for millions of old Party files, and as a representative of the government in Bonn, Diels had full access to the records. He spent the morning among dusty papers, chain-smoking as he worked. “Ten men went missing in Romania,” Heinrich Himmler had told him as much during his first stint in prison. The lone survivor, if one believed in fairy tales, had died nine years later in Prague.
Sarah Spencer had been kidnapped at sea, and four hours into his search, Diels found his first clue – a purchase order for a motor launch. My God, how could I have forgotten? Diels’s informant in Munich had tipped him off, and he had laughed about it with Sigmund. “They’re going to jump ship when it gets to the Channel. Twenty marks says they drown in the Thames.” Instead, they had taken Sarah from the boat and disembarked to Italy. The inflatable boat had been ordered by a low-level Party member named Hans Dell, and its purchase had been approved by none other than Reinhard Heydrich. And the informant ended up dead. Diels pulled out a box of old Party membership files and found Hans Dell, a Bavarian and veteran of the first war, listed as a member in good standing for every year between 1925 and 1933. One of the old guard, Diels thought. A true believer who joined when Hitler was a nobody. He pulled the records for 1934, but the name and membership number were both missing.
Two hours elapsed, and Diels smoked a half-pack of cigarettes as he cross-checked the party rosters and copied names into a notebook. He found nine men who had gone missing from the rolls between 1933 and 1934, and all nine names appeared in a discarded passenger manifest, the record of a flight from Munich to Sibiu. A tenth man on the manifest was not listed as a party member, and the eleventh was Heydrich himself. And then there is the twelfth name, he thought. The old rumors were wrong. Archie Spencer would be pleased, for the youngster would get his encrypted letter – for the first time, Diels thought, they had information to protect.
Not one, but two men survived that expedition, Diels thought. And I know that other man.
III.
London
She sold the house in Houston and sailed from New York Harbor, and though the ship boasted every amenity, Evangeline Morris kept mostly to herself. Her only indulgence was a nightly visit to the bar, where she drank a toast to the memory of Dustin Thoreaux. Thank God he got himself killed without dragging me down. Perhaps her new fortune was not on par with the Rockefellers or Carnegies, but two million pounds was more than enough to ensure a comfortable life. The only requirement was for her presence in London as the settlement worked its way through the English courts. If, her English visitor had explained, she could make time for overseas travel. Mister, I have nothing but time, Evangeline thought. She had spent the last three years looking over her shoulder, and a long vacation overseas was a new lease on life.
She returned from the bank and locked the door of the hotel room. There had been a thousand pounds and a large envelope in the safe deposit box, and her fingers trembled as she untied the string. The first photograph showed a young woman with a frowning boy and contained a simple inscription on the reverse – India, 1929. Evangeline stared for a long time at the second picture. Four men posed together, and the figure in the center was instantly recognizable from his mustache and Stetson hat, but the writing on the back – London, 1893 – gave no explanation for her great uncle’s presence. The final item was not a photo but an old postcard, its face decorated with a painting of a mountain landscape and a single word at the bottom. Transilvania.
“What do you know about Quincy Morris?” She had declined to answer the Englishman’s question. Josiah Morris, already ill in her earliest memories, had not mentioned his brother’s name, and what little she knew came from her grandmother. As a child, she had often wondered if he had gotten into trouble at home.
She drew a bath and relaxed in the warm water. An inheritance from her great uncle was a welcome gift, even if his sudden appearance in her life was unsettling. Perhaps she would stay in London for a while, or perhaps she would retire to a beach in the South of France. Either way, she had no intention of returning to America.
London was much safer.
IV.
Siberia
They spent a week in a transit prison near Chelyabinsk, and when Plekhanov counted the days, he realized that had served the last of his abbreviated prison term. He was a free man by any fair reckoning, but time in transit did not count toward one’s prison sentence, and he would serve another two months in the Lubyanka when they reached Moscow. What is fair doesn’t matter to them. They can do as they see fit. At any rate, things could be worse – his condemned cellmate slept on the far end of the boxcar, her wrists and ankles bound by shackles.
“I’ll be riding the train to Moscow with you.”
“They’re letting you go?”
“Be serious. They will never let me go.”
He closed his eyes and drifted into sleep.
Alexandr Plekhanov stands at attention as the Germans inspect the prisoners. The Red Army provides little enough food to its frontline soldiers, and in the two days since his capture, the Germans have given him nothing to eat. He is naked, and the morning air is already frigid, though winter is several months away. A German officer, his uniform marked by twin lightning bolts and a death’s head, walks the line. He carefully examines the penis of each prisoner, and heat crawls up Plekhanov’s cheeks as the officer stares at his crotch. Finally, the guards move out of earshot, and the prisoners trade jokes about the sexual preferences of the Germans. Every so often, a man is pulled from the line. Plekhanov gives a quizzical look at the prisoner beside him, a huge Cossack.
“They’re looking for Jews,” the Cossack says. “If you’ve been cut down there…” he grins and draws a finger across his throat.
Plekhanov moaned in his sleep as his mind continued to drift. A week after his capture, he had slipped through the cordon and made his way to Minsk. The big Cossack was already dead by that point.
In the forest outside of the logging camp, the big thief grabs the woman’s arm. Every last drop of his dignity has been wrung out, but Plekhanov adjusts his grip on the axe handle. If the thieves do not kill him outright, the guards will execute him when his crime is discovered, but he prepares to swing as the smaller man looks away.
The thief’s laugh becomes a high-pitched scream as he pulls the woman into his embrace. Her own hand snakes around his neck, and as she lunges, he stumbles backward, spinning with the clumsy pirouette of a drunken ballerina. The divot of missing flesh in his throat reminds Plekhanov of a bite from an apple, and blood sprays from the wound, staining the snow crimson. Her eyes lock onto his own, and for an instant, her irises glitter in the sunlight. The second man lies dead at his own feet.
They drag the bodies to the nearby river and release them into the current. The guards assume that both men escaped into the forest, and for the next two weeks, the remaining prisoners are punished with longer hours and reduced rations. He could earn a reprieve by giving up the woman, for foreigners in the gulag are never trusted, but Plekhanov says nothing.
V.
Budapest
The Városliget was located near the city center, a short walk east of the Soviet Embassy. Heroes’ Square served as the main entrance, though its centerpiece, the Memorial Stone of Heroes, had been removed by the Communists in 1951. Its rectangular boundary ran northwest to southeast and encompassed slightly more than a square kilometer. The park had not escaped the ruination of the city, first by Allied bombers, then by German and Soviet ground troops, but seedlings began to sprout in the aftermath of the peace, and the city’s residents returned to the pond, the city’s wintertime skating rink, as life returned to something approximating normality.
The police found him at the southwest corner, near the base of the statute, and when he answered in a slur of barely intelligible Russian, they contacted the embassy. Vladimir Korzh could provide no lucid account of his activities when he awakened in the hospital, and he and remembered little of the previous night. He had met someone in the park but could not remember a name or the face (the KGB, ever vigilant for spies, had questioned him for two hours on this point). His bones ached, and it was difficult to breathe, but the doctors found only the wounds on his throat, a pair of small punctures with an unhealthy white tinge around the edges. After endless questions, they left.
Korzh slept, and his rest was troubled by bad dreams.
VI.
East Berlin, German Democratic Republic
Acwulf Kiel strolled along the Potsdamer Platz, skirting the barbed wire that formed the boundary between east and west. Most of the citizens avoided the area after sunset – the ground on which he walked had been the scene of a vicious crackdown in 1953 – but he strode along the sidewalk without fear. The Volkspolizei, fearless with ordinary Berliners, gave him a wide berth, and he rarely had to show his identification. He came and went as he pleased and gave account of himself to no one.
Trained as a chemist, he had been planning a quiet life in academia when the Nazi party swept into power in 1933. Acwulf finished his studies and with his doctorate in hand, he entered the ranks of the civil service, then of the SS. By 1939, he was in Poland, moving behind the frontline troops to identify Jews and resistance elements (in Party propaganda, the two were indistinguishable). By 1943, he was involved, to some extent, at every level of the Holocaust. Shoah, he thought. The Jews called it the Shoah. Acwulf liked the word, for it had a mournful sound that rolled exquisitely from his tongue. His name appeared nowhere in the official records, and if the Allies had known the truth, he would have swung from a rope like the others. Instead, he remained just out of sight – a minor functionary at the Wannsee conference, a low-level official who oiled the bureaucratic machinery of Belzec and Treblinka, a nameless shooter at the pits of Babi Yar.
When the war turned against Germany – his wife and infant son were killed in the firebombing of Dresden – Acwulf headed east. Others might cower before the Americans, but he recognized the kinship of Stalin’s henchmen, and they welcomed him – perhaps not with open arms, but with recognition of his unique skills. Acwulf studied their liturgy, recited the proper words, and transformed as if by magic from Nazi to Communist. After all, he had merely been a low-ranking (if unusually competent) cog in the machinery of fascism. Had they only known the truth…
His real purpose remained hidden, just as it had been concealed from his masters in Berlin.
VIII.
Romania
His eyes were undimmed by the darkness as he descended to the river and wandered the remains of the old village. The fallen roofs and rotting beams of the cottages were covered in a second growth of vines and saplings – in another decade or so, the forest would erase what signs remained of human habitation. Beyond the ruins, where the ground sloped upward from the river, was an isolated grave, and he lingered there for some time, bending to clean the accumulated lichen from the headstone. He had placed the marker at the suggestion of Rupert Holmes, and though he had no need for monuments – her memory was sufficient for him – he found the cold stone pleasing to the touch. Overhead, the stars twinkled, their brightness dimmed only by a sliver of crescent moon, as he ascended the stone steps and returned to the castle.
The war years had treated him well, for the great movement of armies ensured that the missing would not be noticed, and the first years of peace had been nearly as plentiful – Stalin’s lackeys in Bucharest murdered with enthusiasm, and a steady stream of refugees fled into the mountains. In the end, the stultifying, impoverished peace of Moscow had prevailed, and if the last few years had been safe, they were also lean. No army would enter his dwelling with flamethrowers, and no errant bomber would mistake his abode for an enemy outpost, but he grew thin and hungry, and since Egon’s departure, he had only the ghosts for company.
The women had been fearsome creatures once, before Abraham Van Helsing made his way to their resting places, but only their bones remained now, and their sprits could do little more than follow him through the old castle, whispering obscenities in his ear and mocking him with laughter. A trace of Gabriela remained, and he spoke to her on occasion – I never intended to hurt you – and though she made no replay, he felt her kindness, the compassion of a tender heart for a wounded animal. You could not have done otherwise. It is your nature to destroy what you touch. On certain nights, he could sense the others – Jonathan and Mina, Arthur and Seward – but they were not trapped by this place, and he perceived them only faintly, voices raised in greeting from a great distance.
He heard nothing at all from Lucy Westenra.
And nothing from the enemy himself. His foe was stronger, and Quincy had considered the problem at some length – How to turn the tables on him? – before his visit to the monastery. “Tradition says that he was buried on the larger island, but no remains were found when they excavated the grave. That is because they were looking in the wrong place – there’s a smaller island to the north, and almost nothing remains of the chapel, but that is where he was buried.” The abbot’s story was questionable, for Quincy doubted whether He had been who he claimed, but last week, he had risked the long journey to see for himself. As he stood at the water’s edge, he understood the truth, for its aura shined like a distant beacon, and had he been less cautious, he might have stepped into the water to meet it.
It's perfect.