Dracula's Ghost - Afterimage: Chapter 8

Part II - The Thieves

I.

Cologne

December 31, 1939

His wife was expecting him, but Rudolf Diels watched the Rhine from his office window, reluctant to begin the journey home. He had fallen far since 1933, but if his current position – a minor administrative post in the city’s government – lacked the excitement of the old days, at least he had landed on his feet. It paid to maintain good relations with one’s patron, and if his marriage to Hermann Goering’s niece was a match of convenience, it cemented his bonds with the big man. Besides, he still enjoyed the company of the occasional mistress, even if the onset of middle age lessened the dark aura that once made him so charming.   

He spent much of the afternoon in the city jail, seeing to the welfare of a troublesome, but politically connected prisoner. “The Prince of Darkness returns to torment me.” The prisoner had greeted him with a broad grin as Diels dismissed the guard. This particular sinner’s torment would be cut short, for his friends had sufficient clout to have him sprung from jail.   Business as usual in the Third Reich, Diels thought, where the right hand undoes the work of the left.

“Before I let you go, I need to know the truth – did they ask about Vienna?” 

“Really, Herr Diels.”  The prisoner stared at him, his eyes wide and blue behind the wire-rimmed glasses. “The whole nation is in peril, and you’re worried about ancient history.”

His eyes drifted to the memorandum on his desk. The Third Reich crossed the Polish frontier four months ago, and though Diels thought the war reckless and foolish – once again, we are fighting with England and France – he had to admit that the Fuhrer’s gambit had united the nation. Indeed, his own longing for German victory was elemental, a thing not considered with the mind but felt in the bones, and he could no more wish defeat upon the Reich than he could unmake his own existence. And yet…  The memorandum was couched in terms of military preparedness, a terse communique that had gone out to every city. All Jews, spies, and other traitors not currently under arrest are to be detained no later than January 31. Diels suspected that the war was a pretext for the order itself, a justification of the Fuhrer’s longstanding aim to remove all Jews from German soil. A handwritten note was scrawled at the top of his copy. Heydrich will personally oversee your progress in this matter.

How many Jews remain in Cologne? Men and material passed through the city each day, moving westward toward the French border. The French had three million men in uniform and twice as many tanks as the Wehrmacht, and Germany had lost twenty thousand soldiers in a single month of fighting in Poland. The Third Reich is finished, Diels thought. When the war starts in the west, there’s no way we can stand against the combined might of Britain and France.

II.

London

1956

Evangeline Morris sat in the reading room of the library, where decades of old newspapers, their yellow pages bound in cardboard, lay in the archives. She worked backward until she found what she sought, a series of news articles about a woman’s disappearance at sea and her miraculous return. The papers included several photographs of a young Archie Spencer and his grandfather, and Evangeline wondered if her understanding of the Queen’s English was lacking – Jonathan Harker had been a wealthy solicitor, but something in those broadsheets – an unfavorable photo here, a subtle turn of phrase there – suggested a man unfit for polite company. Misfortune did seem to follow the Harker family, and another story detailed his connection to a retired doctor in Purfleet, a man named John Seward who had died violently. Harker’s own obituary, published in the fall of that year, identified his daughter and grandson as his only surviving relatives.

She continued to read until she found another item from 1908, a brief article at the bottom of the second page. Police Question Solicitor in Friend’s Death. Long on insinuation but short on detail, the story explained that Scotland Yard sought information about the death of Arthur Holmwood four years earlier, as well as the death of his fiancé in 1893. Harker and Holmwood had invested in property in Purfleet, and the story implied that the deal was of an unsavory nature. Holmwood. Was that who sold the house to Archie’s mother? If Jonathan Harker had stolen that, he had made a poor investment. So what do you think, Em? Is young Spencer the head of a gang of criminals? Evangeline Morris, who had spent a lifetime among thieves, found it doubtful.   

She looked up from her reading and glanced through the window. In the street outside, a man was watching her. Panic gripped her for an instant, and she looked away, fearful that (the Rougarou) the man from New Orleans stood on the other side of the glass. He can’t be there – you blew him away with the shotgun. Evangeline Morris breathed deeply, gathering her courage, and walked to the window, but the street outside was empty.

III.

State Protection Authority Headquarters, Budapest

The prison was located at the corner of Andrássy út, in the basement of a dismal gray building. It had belonged to the Arrow Cross, Hungary’s fascist party, until 1945, when the Red Army drove the Germans from Budapest. Now the English think it ironic, the Major thought, that the Communist liberators established themselves in the headquarters of the fascists. He studied the prisoner that sat on the far side of the table, a man of about sixty who had been captured the prior week. He gave off an unhealthy air that reminded the Major of the zeks, sickly, starving creatures that labored in the forests of Siberia or the goldfields beyond the Arctic Circle.

“Let’s start again,” he said. “How long have you been in Budapest?” 

“Four months, I think.”  The prisoner’s voice was a dull rasp. “It’s hard to keep track of time.” 

“Very good,” the Major nodded. “In our last interrogation, you refused to account for your presence in the city, and I would like to start there again – why are you in Budapest with no identity card?”

“I got into some trouble.”  The prisoner paused, on the verge of saying more, then became still.

“What kind of trouble?”

“Don’t remember.” 

You’re lying. The Major nodded, and the prisoner’s head snapped to one side as a guard cuffed his temple. Patience was the key to a successful interrogation, for spies and hardened criminals could not be expected to break easily, but the man across the table was nothing special. Another socially undesirable element, the Major thought. A half-literate peasant who wandered in from the countryside. The only thing to set him apart was his accent, which sounded vaguely German.

“Tell me about Korzh.” 

“I don’t know anyone by that name.”  The prisoner’s eyes were red-rimmed with exhaustion. “Can we finish soon? I’m very tired.” 

“We’ve barely been here an hour.” 

“You took me out of my cell before sunrise, and it’s the middle of the day.” 

“And we will continue until sunrise tomorrow if necessary.”  The Major tapped his pencil on the table. “Vladimir Korzh – the man whose coffin you tried to open. You assaulted a guard when they caught you in the basement of the mortuary. Remember that?” 

“I remember.”  The prisoner nodded, slightly embarrassed. “I didn’t mean to hurt anyone.” 

“Of course not. What did you do with the body?”

“Nothing!  He was already… the coffin was already empty when I found him.”

IV.

Yaroslavl

He waited for two days as his message made its way through the tunnels and warrens of Moscow to whatever final destination his superior currently haunted.  These things require time, he reminded himself, for though the KGB could move with a speed that belied its vast bureaucracy, it was necessary for their communication to move through a series of couriers and dead drops to render the recipient’s name and location untraceable. At sunset on the third day, he received his answer, and the man in the suit left for the outskirts of the city.

The warehouse occupied a weed-choked lot northwest of the railyard, the last remnant of a steel mill that the Germans had bombed in 1941, and it was one of the few places in the Soviet Union where the law – police, courts, and army – held no sway. He lingered at the fringe as four men sat at the table playing cards, shaved heads glistening in the dim light and their shirts removed to reveal the network of tattoos. After a long while, one of them looked in his direction.

“Isvinetya.”  The man in the suit was polite, but though his hosts were dangerous, he felt no fear – he had been a partisan during the war, and death no longer held sway over his psyche. One of them acknowledged his presence with a subtle nod, and he held up the folder clasped between his fingers. They can commit the relevant details to memory, but they will need the photographs.

“I have a job for you.”

V.

“This is Andropov.”  Yuri Andropov spoke into the receiver for the secure line.

“Have you made a decision regarding my report on the English spy?”  The German’s voice buzzed on the other end of the line.   

“That same topic came up recently in Moscow,” Andropov said. “With the recent troubles in Budapest, we need to direct our resources elsewhere.” 

“Of course.”  If the German was bothered by the subtext of his remarks, he gave no sign of agitation. “But you might be able to prevent further bloodshed if the arrest and trial of a spy were to discredit your opposition. What if I were to deliver the spy, along with one or more co-conspirators, into your hands?” 

“It could be helpful, if you succeeded…”

“And if I did not, I would accept full responsibility for any failure. You can tell Moscow that I was acting without your knowledge.”

And that is why you are still valuable, Andropov thought. In a world where every Soviet bureaucrat sought to avoid responsibility, the German took risks and produced results. Andropov was certain that someday, Acwulf would fail in spectacular fashion, and that failure would lead him to a shallow grave. For the moment, he was content to release the dog from his leash.

“All right. If you can provide me with anything useful, I will consider it. How you plan to lure a ring of spies to Budapest is beyond me.”

“Leave that to me.” 

VI.

50 Miles South of Madrid

The coded telegram from Madrid prompted a sensation of déjà vu, as if it he were back in 1933, a black-shirted thug ready to shed blood for the Fatherland. Skorzeny remembered the name, for Jonathan Harker had been one of Heydrich’s blackmail targets, but Jonathan Harker – if he were still alive at all – would be ancient by now.  If this is the kind of shit that you sell to the Russians, just make something up. Nonetheless, Acwulf paid well, so he sat at his desk and wrote what he remembered. Skorzeny tried to remember the old man but saw only a Romanian woman, floating in the river as she bled from a dozen stab wounds. A snippet of memory, a nighttime revelry in some nameless beer hall, flashed through his mind. Somewhere between the eighth shot of whiskey and the brawl that saw them all ejected, one of Heydrich’s thugs had turned to him, swaying in his chair.

“Do you know what Heydrich’s seeking? The fountain of youth - he thinks the Englishman knows where it is.” 

Otto Skorzeny scratched out a sentence and began again. Could a man live on like that? Never aging, never growing frail? Perhaps Acwulf was playing a cosmic joke at his expense. Acwulf must have been quite the salesman to pass such dreck to Moscow, but Skorzeny sat with pen and paper, and when he was finished, he had a produced a reasonably good timeline of the events as he remembered them. Otto Skorzeny paused, then added a postscript at the end.

Almost forgot to add – Hans and Richard had to run for it after they killed an English doctor. Don’t remember the exact location, but it was somewhere on the edge of the city near the river. Burned the whole house down, from what I can remember. Good luck with whatever scheme you’re running.

VII.

Near Smolensk, Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic

They hid in fallow fields by day and moved only at night, and at sunset on the third day, they happened upon an idling train. That night, they made a good two hundred miles in the darkness and abandoned the freight car as the sun rose in the east. Their movements would have seemed aimless to an observer, but Sarah moved with purpose. Plekhanov had argued bitterly when she told him the truth.

“Things in Romania are even worse than the Soviet Union!  If  we’re lucky, they’ll send us back to Moscow for execution when they catch us. More likely, they’ll let us rot in some prison in Bucharest.” 

“They won’t catch us. I know a place in the Carpathians where we will be safe.”

She slept now, and Plekhanov stroked her cheek with a dirty hand. She claimed to be fifty-one, and her hair was streaked with gray, but Plekhanov, at thirty-two, looked a good ten years older than she. Such a strange woman. In the forest and on the train, she had killed with an efficiency that was almost graceful, yet she clung to him like a child as she slept.

“Alexandr.”  Sarah opened her eyes.

“What is it?”

“If I go south, you should continue west. If you make it to Austria or Switzerland, they won’t send you back to Russia when they catch you.” 

“No.”  Plekhanov buried his face in her hair as she watched the sunset. “Wherever you go, I’ll go with you. But Romania is not safe.” 

“No place on earth is safe for me.”

VIII.

Budapest

Mátyás Rákosi, a disciple of Joseph Stalin and Hungary’s ruler since 1948, resigned that afternoon, and no one mourned his departure – his mismanagement and repression had created so many enemies that even the most ardent believers hated him. Rákosi was shipped off to a quiet life of exile in Moscow, and when the news was announced in Budapest, there was a small riot in celebration. The police did not intervene, except to keep the crowds away from the Soviet embassy, and Yuri Andropov watched from his office window as the crowd moved up a nearby thoroughfare. Perhaps the sacrifice will placate the mob, he thought.

The celebration continued late into the night, and in its aftermath, the first disappearances went unnoticed. A railway worker vanished into the darkness near Fiumei Road Cemetery just before ten o’clock, and two hours later, a student disappeared at the northern end of the Varosliget. Just before sunrise, a secretary at the Soviet embassy heard scratching outside of her apartment window. When she failed to report for work the next morning, a policeman knocked on her door and found her weak and ill, but alive. The woman was taken to the hospital and was unable to remember the previous night’s events. Anna Igumnov’s KGB file noted her as a diligent, if unenthusiastic, low-level employee, not the kind to be targeted for assassination by foreign governments or domestic subversives.

The other item in her file, her rumored affair with Vladimir Korzh, went unremarked upon.